The Eden Paradox: the Complete Series
Author: Barry Kirwan
Date: 2019-05-09 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: It begins with a murder, in sun-baked Los Angeles in 2063, when Earth's climate is nearing collapse. A new planet, Eden, is within reach, but the first two trips there did not return. What really awaits us on Eden, and who are the Alicians, an ancient sect on Earth who have been biding their time... All 4 Eden Paradox books in one volume! From the discovery of a desperately needed new planet, Eden, to humanity's escape to the stars, to finding a new home on the planet Esperia, to fighting the galactic invader Qorall and the Machine species who will end all life... This is epic scifi, seen thro

Contents

Title Page

THE EDEN PARADOX

THE EDEN PARADOX

Dedication

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

PART TWO

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

PART THREE

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

EDEN'S TRIAL

PART ONE

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

PART TWO

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

PART THREE

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Eden’s Revenge

Prologue

Eden’s Aliens & Artifacts

Abbreviated Galactic Historical Timeline

Petra’s notes

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

PART TWO

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

EDEN’S ENDGAME

Abbreviated Galactic Historical Timeline

PROLOGUE

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

PART TWO

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

PART THREE

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

EPILOGUE

About the Author

Eden’s Aliens, Artefacts and Ships

EDEN PARADOX

The Complete Series

THE EDEN PARADOX

EDEN’S TRIAL

EDEN’S REVENGE

EDEN’S ENDGAME

BARRY KIRWAN

All original artwork by John Harris

THE EDEN PARADOX

THE EDEN PARADOX

Copyright © 2011 Barry Kirwan. All rights reserved.

Original cover artwork by John Harris

2nd edition published 2019

1st edition published 2011

© Barry Kirwan
www.barrykirwan.com

This novel is entirely the product of the author’s imagination and intended to be fictional. All content, including people, names, and events, whether real or imagined, are used fictitiously. No part of this book or artwork may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, the only exception being brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ALL ORIGINAL ARTWORK IS BY ARTIST JOHN HARRIS

Praise for the book and the series:

“A science fiction thriller with terrific images and revelations.” SF Author Gary Gibson

“The reader is pulled into an all too real future, with memorable characters, leaving the reader craving more.” Lydia Manx, Piker Press

Top Amazon and Goodreads reviews:

“This is Orson Scott Card quality scifi.”

“Best science fiction of the year.”

“Masterful science fiction.”

“A breath-taking, truly epic series.”

“A fabulous four-book set, full of imaginative new ideas.”

“Six stars. This series is addictive.”

For Lisa

PART ONE

JOURNEY TO EDEN

Chapter 1

Assassin

People rarely search for bodies in ceilings, Gabriel O’Donnell reminded himself. He should have a couple of hours before anyone discovered his latest victim. Slipping unseen from the side door, he dissolved into the amoebic mass of dignitaries arriving for the fund-raiser at Eden Mission Control. He itched to shed his tuxedo and starched shirt, but he needed the camouflage, along with the stolen emotion-ID that had required a messy killing, to secure entry. He blended in with the wealthy entourage decked in stark designer suits and power dresses. He didn’t speak to anyone, didn’t sip from the champagne glass he occasionally raised to his lips. He let his eyes glaze over as if he, too, were rich enough to forget what was outside, an Earth maimed by War and near collapse from heat exhaustion.

Somewhere here was his target, but as yet he didn’t know who. He slowed his breathing and sharpened his senses, filtering out the bass hum of the aircon and the drone of conversation. He suppressed the cocktail of cologne and perfume the crowd wore to mask residual traces of sweat from their journey through the early evening LA heat-haze. He glanced at his wrist-com, switched to privacy mode so only he could read it -- no message yet confirming his mark’s identity. The display did tell him it was a cool nineteen degrees Celsius, compared to forty-five out in the open, and way below the 2061 climate control mandate for public buildings. Nothing new, he thought: the rich make laws for others to follow.

The idea flickered across his mind that if he dispatched ten or twenty of the moguls here tonight, instead of just one, a lot more mouths would find food. But only for a while. The latest vidcast from his mentor had confirmed what he’d already suspected -- the holocaust was mere days away. When he found the right target, maybe he could delay its onset, and save millions.

Maybe.

A fanfare of horns sliced through the banter, announcing the holorium was open: the Eden show awaited them. He swept forward with the elite mob, a spider hiding amongst flies.

As the alcohol-rouged gathering rounded a corner, he glimpsed the twin Stentons bordering the corridor: floor-to-ceiling carbon-black monoliths. State-of-the-art security gear. He focused his mind, careful not to tense his body. A few surreptitious glances verified what the memorized floor plans had told him: this was the only access point. Six heavily-armed security guards manned the station, eyeing people as they passed through. The two in the front used an age-old technique called the fence, an unblinking stare-down subduing those passing through, ruffling a few of the male celebrities in the process. The middle two checked people and bags, but this was more for show, as the Stentons did the real work. The final two guards scanned the assembly using peripheral vision, letting their right brains detect any unusual behavior patterns of the swarm. Not bad, he thought. He knew he could take down all six if necessary, but then his mission would fail.

He had to get past them.

The Stentons were top of their class, a biometric system based on psychological finger-printing, using subliminal stimuli to trigger minute fear responses. The monoliths were especially good at picking out kamikaze terrorists, whose fear response had a singular signature, and experienced assassins like Gabriel, who had none. Earlier, he’d had to instill panic into the day’s first victim before terminating him, while downloading the visceral feedback. Gabriel now had those terror responses primed in the neural net embedded in his scalp. They would match the dead man’s E-ID card Gabriel held in his left palm. He’d actually apologized to the corpse afterward, taking rather more care than usual with the body. He was a Sentinel assassin, not a psychopath.

Slowing to an amble, he let one or two suits rub past him as he weighed his options. He laughed at a nearby joke as if he were part of that particular gang. But his insides felt hollow, too much was riding on tonight’s mission. Watching the shuffling pack tighten toward the checkpoint scanners, he decided he needed an extra edge. Distraction was also an assassin’s tool.

As they herded like cloned beef toward the final security check, he surveyed the audience and picked out a busty woman in her thirties, sporting an emerald halter neck dress of gossamer-thin silk. Most of the middle-aged men pretended a little too hard not to notice her. As he mingled behind the woman and her escort in the funneling queue, he casually reached into his pocket and extracted a sliver of acid-coated razor-wire from its sheath. He coughed as he approached the twin security columns. His right hand, en route to cover his mouth, grazed the woman’s halter material with the filament, depositing a trace of acid. He let the hair-like strand drop to the floor, crushing it underfoot. Holding up his E-ID pass, he stared at one of the monoliths, as required, and held his breath.

Whoops and guffaws erupted as the busty woman's halter snapped. Gabriel turned around, feigning surprise and interest, and the guards manhandled him through the full-scan checkpoint without serious attention. Once past, he walked to the empty restroom and located the locked stall marked Out of Order.

His fingers rapped in the entry digicode, he stepped inside the stall and found what he expected, a small black rucksack containing gravitics, stiletto knife, and slim-line S&W pulse gun with night-sighter. All he required now was his target’s name, but his wristcom stayed quiet. His handler didn’t usually cut it this close.

He zipped the bag. As he headed out, he caught his reflection in the restroom mirror. Gone was any trace of the young man he’d been before the War, before becoming a killing machine, before losing her. His eyes were black and remorseless; like a shark's they stared back at him. Hers had been green and forgiving. She would have been twenty-seven today. Happy birthday, Jenny. He broke off his gaze, stole through the door, and entered the holorium.

◆◆◆

Despite the aircon maintaining the room at a fresh fifteen degrees Celsius to optimize the technology’s performance, Micah sweated.

"You won’t make it, not this time," Rudi said, leering beneath a wavy moustache. He anchored his feet against the chrome desk, tilting the recliner back further, hands linked behind matted black curls.

You could have helped. Micah’s silver gloves were a blur as he worked at the holo-bench. Its data columns and networking filaments resembled a complex city of skyscrapers: sapphire flying buttresses connecting golden spires and towers. He grimaced at the writhing red sores leaching energy from four of the amber columns, defects he had to remove for the program to run.

"Let me work, Rudi. I’m almost there."

Rudi persisted. "Why’d you agree to do this in the first place? Thought you’d get a chance to work with our resident Slovakian princess in Comms, eh?"

Micah dropped a filament and felt a stab of dread as it tumbled down inside the cylinder, ricocheting off several columns towards the central golden nexus. He caught it just in time with his left hand, without disturbing the overall structure. That was close! No time to wipe the beads of sweat building on his brow.

"Nice catch," Rudi muttered. "So is she, but out of your league. You know that, right?"

Micah ignored him, suspecting it wouldn’t make any difference.

Rudi stretched his hands forward, framing Micah between thumbs and indexes as if taking a holopic. "I mean, look at you. The basics are okay – no hunchback, all your own teeth, body parts in the usual places. But the wiry fuzz on your head, the bulging eyes – is that a thyroid thing, by the way? And as for dress sense..." Rudi’s hands returned to their habitual position, clasped behind his head. "Does your Mom still buy your clothes, or what? No style. That’s the problem, Micah. She’s class, you’re not."

Micah braved a shrug, but he knew Rudi was right: unlike Rudi, he had an abysmal record with women. He glanced at the countdown: 3:08. Any second, he’d get the call. His fingers, wrapped in second-skin holo-transducers, felt the subtle vibrations in the digitized information, like pulsating ice cubes covered in Braille. This part of his job at Eden Mission Control still gave him a buzz. He threaded the teraquad info-strands into place with a precision and purpose he rarely knew in the rest of his life.

On cue, the screen switched on. A red-faced, balding man glared at him. Micah didn’t stop. Seconds mattered.

"Sanderson. Tell me it’s ready."

"Yes, Mr Vastra, Sir. Almost ready. It’ll be on time."

"Better be." The screen blanked.

Rudi chuckled and added, "You’re in deep shit. Three minutes till lights out."

Micah dismissed the remark and flipped back into the zone, holding his breath, rapt in concentration. All sound ceased in his mind, like a frozen waterfall. As he slotted the final filament into place, the reds vanished. The resultant data harmonic sent a tingling rush through his gloves into his arms and spine, making him gasp. He snapped his right forefinger and thumb together, transmitting the program.

"Done!" The display shimmered and was gone. He peeled off the gloves, threw them onto the work bench, and slumped into his chair.

Rudi sighed. "Why didn’t you just re-use the last vid – why does each one have to be different? Why make work for yourself? These shitheads don’t care. You’ll get no credit. And meanwhile, she doesn’t even know you exist!"

Micah grinned. This one was going to be good. It would move the audience, he just knew it. "You wouldn’t understand, Rudi. It’s… art. Besides, some of the Hi-creds here today have been to the show before – they’ll be impressed when they realize it changes each time."

Rudi shook his head. "No hope whatsoever…"

Micah snatched up the remote-ball and squeezed it to select the holorium view-screen on his macro display, then pressed harder to show feeds from all eight cameras. He scanned the views, zooming in and out on the audience about to see his production. The stock-straight profile of the Eden Mission Director, Keiji Kane, was easy to pick out from the crowd, greeting indistinguishable men in dark suits with expandable waistlines. The younger women in the audience were strikingly dressed in angular flow-suits, the older ones decked out in more classic elegant outfits.

He watched Kane’s acerbic assistant, Sandy, march up to him and whisper something in his ear, her hand touching his waist as she bent forward. Kane nodded, and headed over to his front row pew. People followed his lead and took their seats for the show, a prelude to a tour of Eden Mission Control, the first step in eliciting continued financial support from the ultra-rich. Micah wasn’t keen on the fact they had to do this every month, but it was vital to keeping alive the four astronauts on their way to Eden.

He zoomed back out when someone unusual caught his eye – a tanned, slim man floating through the crowd like a dancer – all in black, no jacket, just a small back-pack. No one seemed to notice him as he headed toward the rear exit, cutting through the flood of people vying for the best places. Micah leaned forward, intrigued by his effortless movements, like a dolphin swimming through the current. He lost him, though, as he moved out of camera range. Plain-clothes security, he assumed.

Rudi was right about one thing, though. This wasn’t his real job. They were both full-time telemetry analysts, poring over sensor information slip-streaming back from Earth’s only faster-than-light ship, the Ulysses. Comms was haphazard at best, involving unpredictable and still barely-understood tachyon fields, coupled with an increasing delay as Ulysses got farther from Earth. He didn’t fully understand the theory, but he and Rudi were two of the people disentangling the data and making sense of it. Still, he had a modest talent for holo-vidding – not enough to give up his day job – but he enjoyed watching people’s reactions, and it made a break from the drudgery of endless analysis of signals traversing incomprehensible distances across the void, telling everyone that all was still well on the mission to Eden.

Reluctantly, he had to admit that Rudi was right on the other count, too. He pretended he wasn’t searching, but when he found Antonia in the audience, his breath softened. He zeroed in on her. Although she was staff, like him, Antonia always got an invite to these functions, being the daughter of the Slovakian ambassador. Though "Princess" wasn’t correct, it wasn’t entirely inappropriate – she was regal, statuesque, with porcelain skin and dark coffee eyes. He watched her slink into her seat, and observed the fading holorium lights twinkle on her sequined dress.

"Naughty, naughty!" Rudi said. "Mustn’t spy on staff, you know."

Micah frowned, only in part due to Rudi's comment: she had a tall, suave escort. Switching the cameras to night-vision mode, he zoomed away from her, resisting temptation.

Rudi slapped his thighs and got up. "God, I’m sorry, man, I can’t bear to watch another one. I’m going for a spin on the Optron. Catch you later."

The door hissed closed. Micah switched off four of the camera views to allow a central picture to emerge of the main holo-images the two-hundred-strong audience had gathered to experience. They were in for quite a ride, and he’d have to write a report later on their reactions, to fine-tune it for next time. He sat back, and waited.

◆◆◆

Gabriel’s wristcom located the surveillance weak spot at the rear of the holorium. He set it to emit a fold, allowing him to work within a three-meter sensor void, rendering him invisible to normal security sweeps.

The lights dimmed. All eyes gazed forward.

He slipped on a black silk hood, donned his gloves, and switched his wristcom to nerve-stim mode. He curved his thinly-sheathed tongue inside his mouth to activate the hands-free control mechanism. Few could master it: a single cough, yawn, or inadvertent swallowing could be misinterpreted as commands. But to Gabriel it was the ultimate assassin’s tool: internal, invisible to anyone looking for signs of subterfuge.

Turning away from the audience immersed in the holo-show net, he approached the vertical steel wall at the back of the holorium. He switched his genetically-coded boots and gloves to lizard mode, tough microscopic hooks and barbs crystallizing within seconds. His breathing remained silent as he scaled the sheer face, taking care not to move too fast. He knew enough psycho-physiology and anatomy not only to kill efficiently, but also to use the strengths and weaknesses of human and animal perception. Oblique, rapid movements were perceived by all mammals and reptiles faster than any other sensory signals, especially via peripheral vision, for self-evident survival reasons.

Six meters up, he positioned himself underneath a vacant balcony. He maneuvered upside down, using his tongue control to activate gravitic contact pads on his feet, knees, waist and ribs. A millimeter at a time, he peeled his hands from the ceiling to test he was secure. His masked head fell backwards, upside down, like a gecko hanging from the ceiling, so he could see the audience. He had no interest in the holo. Tapping a short command into his wristcom to signal he was in position, he lifted an object the size of half an apple from his pocket and attached it to the ceiling. Last, he strapped the mono-pulse barrel with sighting lens to his forehead. He could see everyone in the audience – the backs of their heads at least. Everything was set.

He waited, immobile, an obsidian gargoyle ready to spit fire.

◆◆◆

In the darkening holorium, the last murmurings of the audience died away as all attention fell on the iridescent holographic net descending around them – as if it was snowing diamonds. A fanfare of brass horns and an explosion of eye-wrenching white erupted throughout the room. The audience flinched and squinted, before the light condensed into stars racing away from a central glowing hub. Holophonic tricks whirled and sustained a spiraling crescendo of strained violins. People gasped as they fell through space, away from the centre of the galaxy, coasting along a spiral arm towards a yellow star and a small, blue-green ball. As the image slowed and the tones merged into a softer cadence, a deep, stone-calm voice spoke.

"Earth. A jewel. A gift from heaven. Our home for millions of years."

The audience broke through the atmosphere, surfing cirrus strands until Everest reared up beneath them. They dived through a sea of clouds, speared over verdant Himalayan valleys, picking up speed. Streaking over the Indian sub-continent, they dodged the outstretched arms of the Mumbai Tower, the tallest building in the world, in the shape of the goddess Kali. They swept across a sparkling aquamarine Indian Ocean, soared over the Serengeti plains of Africa, disturbing hordes of wildebeest, and looped Kilimanjaro. The audience accelerated, skimming across the steel-grey Atlantic. Breathless, they breached the shores of North America, zipped over a subliminal patchwork of maize and soybean, slalomed through the Grand Canyon, then slewed upwards, punching through the cloud layer back into space.

Micah watched dignitaries clutch the arms of their seats during this roller-coaster ride. Good opening. He sat back in the Media lab to listen to his script’s perfectly synthesized voice, designed using the latest emo-ware.

"This amazing world, this incredible resource, here for all mankind." The evangelical tone made even the hard-nosed magnates listen. "And then…" The holorium contrast grew stark, then grainy, as the green-blue globe changed color. Swirling amethyst clouds bubbled forth across the Earth’s face, acid on flesh, leaving in their wake a rusty swathe raking across half the globe. Pock-marks appeared on the surfaces of North America, Europe and Asia, visible from space. Though this vision of what had happened to Earth was not new, the impact was palpable. Members of the audience bit their lips, nostrils flared, one or two of the women dabbed their eyes, and several men clenched fists. Micah tapped coded entries into the audience reaction slate, while many shook their heads with exasperation, and more than a few inspected their feet. Some here aren’t without guilt.

The audience relived the relentless degradation of their planet, in fast-frame.

"How did we get here?" the voice asked, as the audience segued through pages of Pre-War history, images of humanity’s progress and prowess leading up to the War.

Proud of this part, Micah zoomed in to see Antonia’s reaction. Her eyes widened at the grand vistas of the exploration of Mars with its unexplained crystal caverns, and the underwater Arctic oilfield-cities of the first half of the century. Her lower lip trembled when the legendary African Conglomerate doctors from the medical "Golden Age" stood before her, brandishing their Nobel Prizes in one hand, and the vaccines for malaria, AIDS and CoR16A in the other. Her eyes steeled as she witnessed the First Generation robot soldiers quelling the Turkmenistan rebel invasion, paving the way for robot peacekeepers across the world, ushering in short-lived hopes for an end to war. He zoomed out; it was about to get rough.

The vidcom buzzed, catching him unawares. He hastily took his feet off the table, then relaxed as he realized the message was audio-only.

"Sampson?" The voice was sharp and clipped, the caller’s register blank.

"Sanderson. My name is--."

"Okay, okay, Sanderson. Security here, so pay attention. We need you to check something. Just before the show started, we did a head count. Should have been 208, but for a moment we had 209. With the show running it’s hard for us to see anything on our monitors. You have bio measures, don’t you? You can scan the number of people?"

"Er, well, maybe." He called up the biometric screen, tracking audience heart rates and pheromone levels.

"Well?"

"Um. The thing is, they’re macro measures, designed to look at whole audiences, not individuals." The vidcom became muffled; he thought he heard the word, "Jeez!"

The sound cleared. "Look, just see if you can filter them, okay? If you get a count, just hit call-back – think you can do that?"

"Sure." It cut off. Micah raised a third finger in silent protest, then turned to the bio-filter controls. He wished Rudi hadn’t left, they could have done this quicker together. Glancing back at the Holo Control Screen, he saw he’d missed the collapse of the Chinese Dragon Hegemony, and the nano-plague. He caught the tail-end of the bungled US-led anti-terrorist nuclear bombing in Afghanistan, which finally triggered the three-year long World War between the United Secular Nations and the "Big Five" Religious Front countries.

Micah knew that most saw War as the inevitable blood-letting following two decades of increasingly polarized basic religious rights: fervent believers on the one hand, whose beliefs affected all aspects of their lives, and on the other, those who either did not believe, or believed in moderation. The War’s outcome, with a price tag of a half-billion dead, was the Global Tolerance Pact, with the inter-meshed Fundie religions exercising power and in some cases neo-Sharia law, depending on the country, at local but never national level, and the secularists running governments and international trade. Global freedom of movement meant people moved to where they felt they fit best, if they could afford to move.

Following the fragile truce borne more from mutual exhaustion than true reconciliation, Peacekeeper forces merged with anti-terrorist agencies to form the much nastier and hence more effective Chorazin Interpol, semi-autonomous agents accountable only to national governments and the fledgling New World Alliance Council. Despite a pessimistic post-war outlook, the peace had so far held for ten years.

But Micah scowled. The War’s secondary ignition points, which had escalated a tragic but singular event into global carnage, had all occurred in the vicinity of places such as the Venezuelan deep-ocean oil fields, the Botswana uranium mines, the Amazon rainforest, what had been left of it, and the Asian e-stock market. The War had also been about money and resources, as usual, all of which had been depleted during the bitter fighting.

He picked up his cold coffee, downing it in one gulp to chase away morose thoughts, and focused on his new task, staring at the forest of green and red biofeedback signals shuffling across the monitor. He munched on a stale noni-muffin for inspiration.

He decided to go with heart rate rather than any of the other measures as the rest were too sensitive, too evanescent. If he could predict when certain reactions would happen, he should be able to obtain a number of correlated signals. The perfect event to elicit a visceral reaction was just about to happen. He set up a parameter file, hit "track," and turned to watch the audience.

Silent visions of nuclear detonations in Frankfurt, Dublin, London, Moscow and his own Los Angeles were unleashed in the holorium, amplified by the vibration devices in the audience seats, slowed down to show their devastating power. The audience felt the warm lick of holographic flame fronts spreading outward from incandescent mushrooms.

He drew his arms around him. He’d left out the bass, grinding sound, partly because this way allowed more artistic impact, but also because, like many survivors, he knew the sound of a nuclear detonation only too well, and would panic if he heard it again.

The image pulled back, showing the final stages of the "browning" of Earth. He noticed some audience members were distressed. He brushed aside a momentary pang of guilt. The Eden Mission needed the money, being fifty per cent funded by donations and advertising. Kane, with his political influence, somehow kept their financial head above water, not an easy thing after two expedition failures. If it weren’t for him, the Mission wouldn’t survive another month.

He edged forward and zeroed in on Antonia again, then wished he hadn’t. Her eyes were wet, but worse, the man next to her was squeezing her hand, offering comfort. Micah bit off another chunk of muffin.

A single beep rescued him. He swung over to the biometric monitor and froze mid-chew. The number of hearts beating in the holorium was neither 208 nor 209. There were two additional hearts beating.

That wasn’t all. Two heart rates had remained completely stable during the nuclear detonation scenes. He’d never seen that before. But now the data had merged again. He glanced sideways toward the vidcom, wondering what to do.

◆◆◆

Gabriel’s wristcom twitched. He maneuvered his arm to see the text-space through the autofocus gun sight. A single name appeared -- Kane. He’d hoped it would be someone else, given Kane’s philanthropy, but he didn’t question orders. Beneath his name was an hourglass symbol: not yet. He checked to see if anything else followed, then his head returned upside down to scan the audience. Locating Kane’s front row seat, he zoomed in, and found the tell-tale mole on the left side of the man’s neck, nestling below a well-groomed hairline. He locked his target.

◆◆◆

Micah cleared his throat and tapped the vidcom.

The reply was instant. "How many?"

"Well, the only stable count I got was during the nuclear scene, that’s when the filters have most chance."

"Answer the question."

"Two-ten," Micah said, annoyed at himself. He heard a muffled silence.

"Okay, leave it to us now. No need to monitor anymore."

The vidcom clicked off. Micah stared at it, then at the biometrics. He flicked the main viewer to a bird’s eye view of the holorium. He filtered out the holoshow, switched to infrared, and began counting the blobs on the screen.

The effusive voice from the show continued. "...that mankind was on the brink of extinction. But we were not extinguished. As the politicians and the people realized that they were about to be destroyed, we pulled back, just in time."

Micah’s teeth clamped down at these last words. He always left them in the speech, but for him they were laced with bitterness. He’d been a fifteen-year old draftee, his squad captured on their very first field training mission, three weeks before the end of the War. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to exhale slowly to the count of ten, suppressing the memories of his brief incarceration, of nights littered with tortured screams; the naked silence when they abruptly stopped.

Ten years on, the episode still clung to him like a phantom limb.

Yet in many senses, he knew humankind had been "lucky," as all the computer models of global nuclear theatre had proved wrong. Only a few countries had suffered blanket attacks, and most other nations had found their situation "recoverable", especially after scour-tech had been developed to dampen rad-levels. Life was still tough, he only had to look out a window to see the relentless heat haze rippling buildings in the distance or stars at night, and rationing of food, power, fuel and aircon would go on for decades. But it could have been so much worse, terminal even.

He recalled a few pundits who’d argued that the results of the War were so counter-intuitive, the only rational explanation was that it had all been orchestrated by an unseen organization, controlled to do limited damage. Conspiracy whackos. What possible motive could there be? He was just thankful it hadn’t gone too far.

He resumed the head-count. From the corner of his eye he saw the main holo screen suffuse with green, showing more upbeat images. He’d been advised by the Mission psych, Carlson, that in Post-War culture, lifting people up after taking them down a guilt trip was the best way to wring out money. He knew the show by heart anyway – the audience were trundling their way through the genetically-modified Astrasa wheat fields of snow-less Antarctica, which still fed most of the world’s population.

Two-o-eight. No question about it. He shook his head. Maybe the equipment was faulty. He’d have one more shot at it, but he’d have to wait. He slapped a control, restoring the full holo-show image. The prototype dark-matter-powered propulsion system whisked the audience away from Earth, accelerated past Mars and then executed a slingshot around Saturn to whiplash out of the solar system. He’d fused original vid-footage from both the ill-fated Prometheus and Heracles missions. Most people assumed it was sped-up for effect when, in fact, he’d had to slow it down. What he was unable to show, because no one really knew what it looked like, was what happened next. Once well past Pluto’s orbit, the long-researched Alcubierre drive kicked in, forming a warp shell around the Ulysses, its dark energy wave-front slicing through normal space-time.

The audience catapulted forward to Eden, a purple-green world bathed in blood-orange sunlight from its star, Kantoka Minor, then screamed down through its outer atmosphere, piercing puffy, ivory clouds. They re-emerged and pulled up at the last moment, scraping so close to the mountains that most of the audience half-stood, then sat back down again, laughing, as the vista panned out, unveiling Eden’s virgin lakes and forests.

It reminded Micah of pictures he’d seen of pre-War Switzerland, albeit with a mauve tint. He could almost feel Eden’s sunlight, though it was over a hundred light years away. Still, just knowing it was there warmed him.

◆◆◆

Gabriel didn’t allow himself to tense, though the main lights would flick back on soon. When they did, his chances of being spotted would spike. But he would wait until the signal. Perhaps his masters wanted him to terminate Kane and be discovered. He had the standard suicide unit. His wristcom pulsed again. Secure. He pressed his jaw together for one full second to release the target auto-lock from Kane. The message meant two things: first, Kane must be protected, not terminated. Second, another assassin was hidden somewhere in the chamber, with Kane in their sights. This time Gabriel tensed. He had to up his game; this was no simple hit anymore. He scanned the audience, checking to see if anyone was paying more attention to Kane than the show.

◆◆◆

Micah reached the point in the show where he could do one last heart rate check linked to the final emotional event. He tapped "track." Seconds later, each member of the audience saw the four Ulysses astronauts, Blake, Zack, Pierre and Katrina, standing right in front of them, as if they were with them aboard the space station Zeus I, hours before the Ulysses’ departure for Eden, three months ago. He pumped up the volume.

"They will be arriving in Eden in less than a week’s time, and when they breathe in Eden’s atmosphere they’ll be taking a breath of fresh air for all mankind. This whole venture has given humanity the solid hope we so desperately need. Of course, it will take decades to transfer a sizeable portion of the population. But Eden represents a second chance for us all, and that helps keep peace here on Earth. The hope, the dream, must continue."

The final, only completely fictitious scene in the show, pictured the Ulysses settled on Eden, its four astronauts walking atop a ridge above a Mediterranean-blue sea, to a background of stirring music, the New World Alliance anthem.

The holorium lighting returned to normal. Kane strode tall onto the stage to rapturous applause, the audience rising to their feet. Far away on the other side of the building, Micah stood up, took a mock bow, and sat down again. Not bad.

Kane held up a hand as he spoke into the microphone. "Hopefully, we’ll all be seeing real pictures and accounts of Eden from our four heroes in just over a week. We wish them God’s protection, and all religions pray for their safe return. Mankind is moving on to a better future."

The beep brought Micah back to the biometric analyzer: 210. He trawled his fingers through his hair, unable to work it out. Then he remembered the man who moved like a dancer, and looked like he didn’t belong there; Micah couldn’t see him anywhere. He noticed several agitated security men enter the chamber, looking over the heads of the crowds, toward the back of the holorium. They were armed. Micah sat up, and instinctively searched for Antonia.

◆◆◆

Gabriel activated the visual diffuser as soon as the lights went up. It would mask the area in front of him, though only temporarily. Once the security guards arrived, he knew he had to act quickly. He sent an electronic signal to a small explosive device eight floors down in another part of the complex. Within seconds, the security guards each moved their left hands to their earpieces, then quit the chamber.

◆◆◆

The final wave of applause sputtered to a close as people quit their seats. Micah watched Kane stride to the front exit to press the fatty palms of his wealthy guests, sending them on their way to visit the rest of Eden Mission Control; every handshake worth millions of credits.

Micah watched the security guards depart, and leant back in his chair, guessing it must have been some kind of false alarm. He flicked off all the monitors except one. Antonia’s backless, low-cut silver dress clung to her as she stood up, hair held high with a gold clasp. He touched her image on the screen with the tip of his finger, then drew it back, trying to ignore her depressingly handsome escort, looking instead for any sign that she was unhappy, that something was missing from her life, but saw none. Who am I kidding? Rudi’s right. She’s class, and I’m..."

The comms screen flashed on. "Nice work, Sanderson," Vastra said. "Just spare me the fucking down-to-the-wire heart attack next time, okay?" He cut off without waiting for an answer.

"You’re welcome." He watched everyone leaving and gave up on the heart rate monitor. It was useless now, and Security was down there.

Facing the opposite wall, his gaze fell upon the solitary poster of the four Ulysses astronauts standing at the Zeus I airlock, helmets in hands. He tried to imagine himself there too, a fifth astronaut. Like thousands of others, he’d taken the entrance exams as soon as he was twenty-one. The psy-profile had screened him out: over-analytical. He’d thought about that evaluation a lot, not missing the irony. At least they’d given him a job. He remembered what Rudi had said one day.

"Micah, with you the glass isn’t just half empty. You think the liquid is wrong because your life is a beer glass, but you want champagne."

Maybe he was right. Micah stood up and stretched. Now that his mind was free of the holo-presentation, he returned to the problem he’d been wrestling with the past few weeks: the missing lighthouse markers in the recent Ulysses data streams. If the third one was no longer there, it could spell trouble for the astronauts. He left the Media Lab, as if discarding an old shoe. Rudi’s right. I don’t know why I do this. Eager to immerse himself back in Dataland as they called it, he headed off to join Rudi in the Optron Lab.

◆◆◆

Gabriel scanned the holorium using his sighter’s fish-eye mode as the last of the delegates, attendants and security left, Kane shooing them onwards until he was alone. The hit was imminent, but Gabriel could see no one. Kane paced a little then made a call on his wristcom. Just in case it was relevant, Gabriel activated his eavesdropper. It only picked up Kane’s side of the conversation.

"We need to meet... Yes, I have it... No, not on an open line... Very well… Tonight... late… let’s say midnight... Don’t worry, I’ll be alone."

Kane flicked off his wristcom and spun around towards the exit, to catch up with his entourage.

The tiniest flicker of movement caught Gabriel’s eye in a darkened and disused glass-fronted control booth on the right side of the holorium. It had been his own back-up choice as sniper location. The woman, from what he could see of the side of her face, had waited till the last moment. He used his sighter to auto-zoom in. The woman’s eye met the sighting-glass of her pulse rifle, forefinger curling around the trigger. Gabriel flexed his tongue against his lower gum, and a red spot appeared on her left temple. As he heard Kane grab the exit door handle, he clicked his teeth, fast. There was no recoil. The laser pulse passed straight through the glass booth window with minimal refraction. A black hole of charred flesh, the size of a small coin, burst open where the spot had been, accompanied by a wisp of grey smoke. The woman slumped on the table she’d rested her rifle on, then slid silently out of sight, the weapon toppling after her. He hadn’t been sure if the booth had been soundproof, but was relieved to find that it was.

The holorium doors closed behind Kane and the lights dimmed. Gabriel de-activated the gravitics and fell, twisting like a cat to land on all fours. He sprang up and raced to the side wall, to the sealed control booth. Forcing open a panel, he entered the tiny room to find her spread-eagled on the floor, eyes glassy green.

All assassins knew this fate awaited them sooner or later. He rested his right palm on her forehead, closing her eye-lids with a fluid stroke of his fingers. "Be at peace now, your part is over. Rejoin the river." He said it in Tibetan, incanting their shortest prayer for the dead.

He searched her matt black clothes and her body for any signs of her origin or who she worked for, not expecting to find anything; she was clearly a professional. On instinct, he pulled up her tunic and checked her waistline for a clan assassin’s tattoo, but saw no mark. Gloves off, he ran his fingers around her lower waist. He encountered a rougher layer of flesh above one hip. A stenciled tattoo had been erased, though not without leaving a trace of the yoga mudra symbol. So, she was from Indistan, most likely ethnic but gene-altered to render her skin white and her hair blonde, though her eyes should have remained brown. He re-opened one eye-lid and placed a finger-tip on her eye-ball, dislodging the tinted contact lens.

Satisfied, he heaved her limp frame over his left shoulder, carrying her rifle in his other hand, and headed towards a nearby maintenance shaft leading to the furnaces, seven floors underground. As he opened the hatchway to the vertical shaft, a gust of hot air greeted him. He wondered if she had climbed up it to get into the booth, since the only other way in was through a heavily secured area. He inhaled deeply, but smelt no traces of sweat from her body. Not good. Unlike him, she’d had inside help, which meant Kane was still in danger. He tapped in a coded message: target not safe, and waited.

Gabriel’s wristcom twitched three times: return to base. He would be instructed to kill again. He launched the corpse into the shaft, re-activated his boots and gloves, and descended, ignoring the searing heat. He recalled Kane’s last words -- a meeting tonight, at midnight. His instincts told him that whoever had arranged this hit would do all in their power to make sure the meeting never took place.

Chapter 2

Ulysses

Kat heard the footfalls pounding behind her, getting louder, closing. She sprinted towards the Lander, cropped black hair glistening with sweat, muscular arms punching through the gritty breeze. Her slate-grey eyes remained locked onto the desert terrain five meters ahead, like she’d learned in the Falklands. She dared not look back, partly because she might trip, but more because she would freeze if she saw it bearing down on her. Two hundred meters. The open hatch promised sanctuary. Zack – be there!

She ran full throttle, clutching her helmet in her right hand. She’d seen the scalpel-sharp claws: one slash and she was history. She flung the helmet over her right shoulder, and counted. One – Two – She winced at the crunching noise. As if it was egg-shell, not carbo-titanium, for God’s sake! How far behind? She couldn’t work it out. It didn’t matter; the hatch was barely a hundred and fifty meters away. She raced, ignoring the muscle-lock cramping her lungs, the strain in her thighs begging her to slow down. Go to hell!

Pumping her arms harder, she drew in a breath, and vaulted a table-height rock, grazing her left knee and almost losing footing as she landed hard on the other side, arms flailing to maintain balance. As she got back into her stride, the ground shook as the creature hit the deck behind her without missing a beat. Her legs finally got the message – she increased her speed.

◆◆◆

"Any time now, Pierre," Zack bellowed. He watched Kat’s mouth twitch; her thin lips pull back in fear, eyes darting wildly beneath pale eyelids. His instinct was to place one of his stocky black hands on Kat’s shoulder to comfort her, or else shake her to bring her out of it, but he stopped short – they’d agreed not to wake her. Pierre strode in as fast as the synth-grav would allow, deftly maneuvering between the stasis cots in the cramped second compartment, pianist-length fingers meshed in a tangle of short black hair even a crew-cut couldn’t subdue.

"About time," Zack said.

Pierre primed a contact syringe, and in one smooth movement flicked it switchblade-style towards the side of Kat’s neck. There was a hiss, like a sharp intake of breath. A wash of deep red crawled across her face then vanished.

"Will it calm her down?" Zack frowned at her normally smooth, fine-featured face, now crumpled like a piece of paper, slick with sweat.

"No, but she’ll realize she’s in a dream. If she remembers, she can control it."

Zack looked down at their youngest crewmember. Yeah, if she ain’t too shit-scared. Her chest rose and fell with increasing speed. "Her vitals okay?"

Pierre tapped the holopad next to the cot. Several red spikes radiated outward, but none pierced the edge of the surrounding green hexagon. "Tolerable. In the dream she’s running, so her lungs work faster."

Zack chewed his lower lip. The nightmare was coming more regularly the closer they got to Eden, and Kat reckoned it wasn’t a normal dream, always exactly the same. So they’d decided to try a lucid dreaming technique, injecting a stim during the nightmare, so she could maybe control it and recall what was chasing her.

Pierre gazed into the mid-distance as he discarded the syringe. "Do we run because we’re afraid, or are we afraid because we run?" He said it as if reciting, a hint of his Parisian accent lingering.

Zack sighed, wondering for the hundredth time why Pierre wasn’t back at MIT, surrounded by his best friends – equations and a muon-scope. "Spare me the psy-crap, Pierre." He glared at him. They both knew why she was running.

"I have to go. I’m finishing some tests. There’s a strange variance –"

"Whatever." Zack said, not letting up on him. "I thought you liked Kat?"

Pierre hung there for a moment, then spun on his heel and retreated to the cockpit.

Zack re-focused his attention on Kat, planted himself on a mag-stool, and leaned back against the graphite-grey inner hull. "Take it from me, kid, sometimes it’s okay to run. You run as fast as you damned well can."

◆◆◆

Kat felt a pricking on the side of her neck, like an insect bite. Her cheeks and scalp burned. It was the signal she’d rehearsed, so she'd know she was in the nightmare again – the same one she’d had every night for the past week – injected with the stim as planned. But it didn’t help. Just because she knew she was in a nightmare didn’t mean she wasn’t terrified. Yet she needed to see the creature, needed to bring back details that were flushed away moments after waking. She knew what she had to do to control the dream: hold her hand up in front of her face and see her palm. That was all.

Even as she began to raise her right arm, a bone-shaking roar erupted from the creature. Her ears shriveled in pain. The wake of the primal howl hit the back of her head. Though she didn’t think it possible, she increased her pace one final time, as if her transition from mortal fear to pure panic allowed one last gear-shift. But it was right behind her. She wasn’t going to make it. She tried to believe it was just a dream, telling herself: Look around! See it before you wake up! But she couldn’t – she imagined its claws raising, ready to strike.

For the first time she noticed that although she was in a desert, the light was a ghostly green, like an old radar screen. Why? No time to figure it out. Zack was at the hatch, beckoning wildly with one hand, leveling the shoulder-mounted cannon with the other. She tried one last time to turn and see the creature, but her neck refused. "Get down!" she heard Zack shout, just as the creature swiped her feet from under her. She fell, tumbling through air like a high diver in slow motion, before spiraling downwards, crashing through the desert floor into blackness.

Kat sat up sharply and hit the rubber pad above her cot with her head. "Shit! Every – bloody – time!" She collapsed back, breathing hard. She drove her fingers through wet, matted hair and laid her forearm over closed eyes, waiting for the tremors to subside. She was safe, back on the Ulysses. Not that she’d left it in the past three months since they’d departed Zeus Orbital. She breathed out slowly, to bring her pulse back under control, and tried to recall. What had been chasing her? What had been so important, aside from the obvious – to escape? She couldn’t remember. Vague, receding thoughts uttered muffled cries through a thick fog in her mind – something about color – something was green. But what? And why did it matter? By the time the mist had dissipated, there was nothing but the distant low grumble of Ulysses’ engines, cushioned by the susurration of the aircon, with its attendant hospital-like smell. The nightmare, along with all its secrets was gone. Her shoulder and neck muscles unwrapped and she let out a long sigh. She wanted to sleep more, but not at the risk of nightmaring again. She heard the scrape of a mag-stool and left her forearm in place. "You babysitting me again, Zack?"

"Good thing we placed that rubber mat there, else you’d have head-butted a hole in the hull by now."

Kat nudged her forearm upwards just enough to reveal Zachariah Katain, his large, oval black face grinning downwards, framed by wire-mesh eyebrows and a gleaming bald pate. His jaw stuck out, as if permanently mocking life. His eyelids were a different story as they always seemed to be a fraction closed, alert, as if targeting something. She’d met other vet attack-pilots who’d had that same perpetual hunter look, like they couldn’t switch it off any more. It reminded her that although Zack appeared to be a regular, jovial wife-and-two-kids guy – because he was – he also had that killer instinct just underneath the surface.

He beamed. "Been dreaming about me again, babe?"

The banter was part of their routine. It helped. "Course. But you know it’s not that kind of dream. Your weapon was bigger this time, though."

He belly-laughed, mock-punching her shoulder with his fist, then grew more serious. "Well?"

Kat replaced her forearm blindfold. The dream had gone again, sunk back through the crevices in her outer cortex to the inaccessible, squishy middle regions of the brain.

"Don’t worry, kid. Next time."

She heard him pad back out to the cockpit. She decided to rest a while longer; still had an hour off duty, not that there was anywhere to go, or anything to do as far as leisure was concerned. A day in the life of an astronaut. An image of her four-poster bed back in New Oxford flickered seductively, but she rinsed it from her mind. No point. She’d made her choice.

She closed her eyes, determined not to sleep.

◆◆◆

Zack ducked his head as he entered the cockpit the Ulysses’ chief designer had once explained to him was "compact." He squeezed past his Captain and their Science Officer, Blake and Pierre, as they’d become after three months of sardine-can intimacy. Busy, as usual. Both working separately – ditto. Pierre was in virtual again, immersed by his visor in data slipstream analysis, oblivious to his surroundings.

From the back of his pilot’s chair Zack caught his reflection and sighed. He’d have traded his cobalt one-piece uniform for his old flying jacket any day of the week. The one consolation was the golden-winged image of Daedalus – the wiser father of Icarus, now employed as the Eden Mission logo adorning the crew’s chests. The crests glinted in the cockpit spots, especially Blake’s, since he polished his every morning.

Zack plumped himself into his servo-chair at the front of the cockpit, to the left of Blake and in front of Kat’s empty comms station. Three men and a girl in a tin can. But then he’d seen the early Mercury and Apollo craft, the Endeavour, and even the Mars Intrepid – those guys would have wept over such luxurious real estate. He fingered the two multimode joysticks that made him one with the ship, and felt his mood lighten. He couldn’t maneuver with the warp online, but once they decelerated… He could barely wait.

He stared out at the black velvet of deep space, punctuated by random pinpricks of ice-cold light sliding towards him with a glacial grace. Constellations that’d been his friends since childhood were gone. A girlfriend had said one night, a lifetime ago, that as long as you can see the stars and their patterns, the Big Dipper and Orion, you’re never lost, you’ll always find your way home. Zack’s substantial bulk, maintained despite space rations, shuddered.

He glanced across to Blake, his Captain and vet War buddy for fifteen years, studying a small-scale hologram of ship integrity. It showed the cockpit near the front end of the fifty meter long Ulysses, resembling a hornet’s body, its four sections and two back-up conical ion engines and dark waste exhausts at the rear. Zack frowned. The energy exchanges going on in the back of the fourth compartment were measured in yottawatts, off the imaginable scale. Only Pierre really understood it, but even he’d admitted that if the engineers had got it wrong, they’d be dead in a picosecond. Zack thought of the crew of the Heracles, lost with all hands. He’d known each of them personally.

The harsh red flicker from the Ulysses holo reflected off Blake’s rusty hair and chiseled features, lighting up the bow-shaped scar above his right eye from hand-to-hand combat in Thailand, and the pockmarks on his left cheek from the gassing at Geronimo Station. Blake had lost a lot of men in the War, but always got the job done.

"Seventh nightmare in the past week," Blake said, in his Texan drawl. He didn’t look up from his display.

"Yep," Zack replied. It was starting to affect morale, his own, at any rate; superstition and ill omens made lousy companions on long, confined trips. Seafarers had known it for millennia. Space was like the sea, just infinitely less forgiving.

Blake swiveled his chair to face him. "Anything new?"

Zack understood the implied question: was it like that screwed-up mission ten years ago, where one of their marines kept having nightmares for two full weeks beforehand? He shook his head. Blake resumed his work.

Zack toggled the forward screen control and with a flick of a finger, a single star changed to red – Kantoka Minor, Eden’s star, dead ahead. One more week, he mused; one more week before setting foot on another planet.

Before seeing if Kat’s nightmares have any substance.

He kicked back in his pilot’s chair and pondered. Neither the robot-based Prometheus nor manned Heracles missions had returned. Prometheus had arrived three years ago on Eden, but stopped transmitting after an hour. A year later, the manned Heracles had exploded, just five days before arrival, the list of possible explanations long and wild. Still, as they approached the nebula where Heracles disappeared, he was getting edgy, spending more time in the cockpit than was good for his spine; they all were. He glanced at his holopic of Sonja and the kids, smiling and waving, tucked into his console. He tried to smile back.

Kat slipped into the cockpit, furtive as usual, as if she’d just stolen something.

"Anything exciting happening?" she ventured.

Pierre stowed his visor and responded. "I’m afraid so. I’ve been checking and re-checking for the past hour. There’s no mistake. We’re losing oxygen."

Blake collapsed the holo. Kat halted mid-step.

Zack reached base first. "You’re kidding, right? I mean, you have no sense of humor, Pierre, but this time?"

Blake interrupted. "Data."

Pierre handed Blake a holopad. "There’s a consistent one per cent oxygen depletion rate per hour. I don’t know where it’s going. Not outside, otherwise there’d be transient ice micro-crystal formation on the outer hull, inside the warp shell, even at this velocity. The air purifiers are working well, unless the sensors are malfunctioning. But I don’t think so."

Zack joined in. "Why the hell not? This wouldn’t be our first sensor glitch."

Pierre continued to stare at Blake, as if the Captain had asked the question. "I looked at the increased rate of carbon dioxide build-up in the recyclers, and also the growing power usage of all three independent gas exchange systems, and I used Kat’s breathing rate while asleep – before the onset of her nightmare – as a baseline. The covariance is undisputable."

Smart, Zack had to agree. He and Blake hunched over the pad to check the calcs, but Zack had no doubt – Pierre was never wrong when it came to facts and figures. After the second check, he sat back. He’d wanted something to relieve the monotony, but not this. The data stated flatly they were losing oxygen, but there was nowhere for it to go. It didn’t make sense, but unless they worked it out…

Kat piped up. "Well, if it’s only one per cent… I mean there’s a whole planet-full of oxygen on Eden, and we’ll be there in a week." She looked to Blake.

Blake handed back the pad. "We’ll be dead in two days." He turned to Pierre. "You sent this to EMC?"

"No, Sir – I wanted to be sure. I’d assumed it was an anomaly of some sort – calibration drift of the sensors, for example – but I confirmed it in the past hour. Then I ran some simulations to consider ways of conserving oxygen, but none of them will be sufficient."

Zack shook his head – Pierre ought to have informed Blake from the start. He just never did get military protocol, never understood the chain of command.

"Very well," Blake said, "this is how it’s going to be. Kat, you check those purifiers by hand, just in case it’s a local sensor problem. Zack, you work with Pierre to see how we can either increase oxygen output or cut down usage. Zack, I’m looking for some of your usual unorthodox suggestions." He stood. "Answers in two hours, people. I’ll handle Comms and send the transmission – the turnaround time for messages sent back to Earth at this distance is currently two days, so I don’t have to tell you we can’t count on solutions from home. I’m hoping we can find the cause before then. So, let’s –"

Pierre butted in. "Captain, there’s one more…" he paused, the end of his sentence wilting under Blake’s glare.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"Well, Sir. Whatever this is, I don’t think it’s a normal abnormality, if you understand me. What I mean is that we have seventh generation redundant and diverse systems here, and the engineers took account of all credible, and to be frank, some highly improbable independent and common mode failures. So it’s just this could be sabotage, something done to the ship before we left."

Zack scowled. It had been the number one Heracles theory, and for good reason. Despite Earth being on the brink of environmental collapse, the terrorist group known as the Alicians, anti-tech and anti-Eden, argued the War had been a sign for mankind to work out its problems on Earth and return to a simpler life-style. Not content with rhetoric, they’d assassinated the original Ulysses crew during a training flight.

Zack’s security background extrapolated Pierre’s proposition to the next level. What if one of the crew was involved? He buried the idea, knowing it was a shallow grave he’d have to return to later.

"That’s why Zack’s going to be working with you," Blake said. "You may be the best science officer there is, Pierre, but Zack can smell a rat at fifty parsecs. So let’s get to it, our air’s burning."

Zack stole another glance at the holopic of his smiling family, taken the day he’d left. He’d looked at it hundreds of times before, but now, for the first time, he sensed the look of worry behind his wife’s sunny smile. He thought about the crew of the Heracles -- is this what happened to them? Sabotage? But this was different. No explosion this time, just a painful, slow asphyxiation.

He shifted over to share Pierre’s console. There, the Frenchman opened up all his holo-data portals so they could inspect them together. Zack spotted a digital countdown of oxygen depletion rate in the corner of the screen: Time till irrevocable loss of consciousness: 42 hours, fifteen minutes, thirty-six seconds. He ran a sweaty finger around his collar.

And then the irony hit him. For the first time he hoped Kat’s nightmares of being hunted by a creature on Eden were true. Not that he believed them for a moment, but at least that way they’d die on their feet and have an enemy to fight, rather than arriving on Eden as canned corpses.

Chapter 3

Lighthouse

Micah paced the Telemetry Analysis Room – the tar-pit as he and Rudi called it, since they tended to get stuck there. There wasn’t much ground to pace over – the white-tiled lab was filled with dark, glass-fronted computer cupboards, almost no visible wall-space. Myriad beads of light twinkled silently as the computers sifted the Ulysses information streams from cosmic noise. Two beige metal desks with angled fluidic touch-screens flanked the lab centre-piece, the Optron: a gleaming chrome artifice marrying together a dentist’s chair and what looked like a laser cannon on an articulated boom, aimed straight toward the head-rest where Rudi’s head lay immobile. High tension cables around the Optron made the floor resemble a snake pit, reinforced by numerous skull-and-crossbones signs plastered on the main struts and solid parts of the device. This was no toy or cheap holo-sex device.

He glanced at his wristcom. Seven minutes left. Rudi was still hooked in, two titanium optrodes at his temples winking green every three seconds. His eyes were closed, but the facial muscles were taut, and the REMs behind his eyelids showed he was very much awake, simply… elsewhere.

Rudi was thirty minutes overdue. If Micah missed this slot, he’d have to wait another two weeks to check the third and final marker. He wanted to find an excuse to break into Rudi’s session, but that would arouse suspicion, especially with Rudi. He’d been aware of a change in Rudi lately – seeming to be laid back, but always observing. Recently, when Micah came out of an Optron session, he’d find Rudi sitting watching him, or double-checking Micah’s data searches, seeing where he’d been. Micah knew his father would have confronted Rudi about it. But he wasn’t his father.

He paced some more and went over the problem again. One of the markers had disappeared two weeks ago. That could easily have been a system fault, especially with something as complex and covert as a lighthouse sleeper code. But then, yesterday, he’d searched for the second hidden marker from the Ulysses’ third module. It should have flashed orange in the data landscape, but it never showed up, even though he’d waited an hour. He’d hardly slept. If the third marker was gone, the key one from the cockpit, well… A double-click announced Rudi disconnecting, accompanied by a slow descending whirr as the machine wound down. Micah pretended to read a print-out.

"Oh, Mikey, hi there. Sorry man, over-shot again."

He ignored the nickname and turned with fake nonchalance to see Rudi rubbing his eyes. All Optron Readers did that, even though the optrodes hooked straight into the visual cortex, bypassing the eyes completely. But after all, the eyes carried on moving even if they weren’t actually seeing anything.

He cleared his throat. "No worries. But I should probably get started." He walked over to the recliner.

Rudi paused mid-yawn, and then gave him a sideways look. "In a hurry?" he said, with an easy smile Micah knew relaxed most people onto the treacherous slope of honesty.

"No," he lied, making sure to return the eye contact and not look away, remembering the tricks his Mom had taught him throughout the brief Occupation, during the daily random interrogations. "Just – you know – I promised Mom I’d watch an old vid with her later, and there’s still a lot to finish up here."

Rudi nodded thoughtfully, but didn’t budge. Micah waited, fighting an urge to check the time. He wondered if Rudi somehow knew about the lighthouse markers, but then dismissed it. They only showed up periodically, and Rudi hadn’t been checking Micah’s searches long enough.

Seconds drizzled away. He’d need three minutes to find the file – if he was quick.

"What’s the vid? Your Mom’s into the really old stuff, isn’t she?"

Shit! This could be a ten-minute conversation. What the hell was on tonight that he could use, because Rudi might just check? Then he remembered. Perfect! "There’s one on the Asian Campaign. You know, that’s where Dad…" He stared at the floor.

"Oh. Look, sorry, man, didn’t mean to…" Rudi levered himself out of the recliner.

"Its okay," Micah said, and began climbing in.

"Wait, let me wipe it down, you know, we all sweat a little on this baby." He went over to his desk.

Micah saw the tell-tale imprint of Rudi’s back on the fake leather upholstery.

"Don’t want the Med girls getting upset, do we?" Rudi brought back a couple of strips of tissue paper and wiped the chair methodically.

Micah sneaked a glance at his wristcom when he was sure Rudi couldn’t see, even from reflections in the Optron slave screens. Four minutes. He tried to appear blasé, forcing his hands to relax.

Rudi finished rubbing it down. "There, that’s better, all yours. And say "hi" to your Mom for me, eh? And listen – sorry if I’ve been… well, you know, a bit of a jerk lately, work’s kinda getting on top." He half-smiled.

"Yeah, sure, I’ll tell her. And it’s no problem, I’m a bit tense too," he added. He slotted into the seat, slapping his optrodes to his temples, and flicked three switches. Rudi seemed in no hurry to leave, even though he’d already passed his duty hours for the day, but Micah had no time left to wait. He closed his eyes. A silky female voice whispered the automated countdown: 3 – 2 – 1… His mind surged forward out of his body, surfing over a mutant sea of dimly fluorescent data streams: writhing, multi-colored eels of digitized information swirling amongst frothy uncertainty riptides. The entry process was like being tossed into a moonlit stormy ocean – the untrained usually threw up in the first thirty seconds. He flew toward solid "land", soaring over a still, twilight desert, and began searching. In his visual field to the left he saw the transparent aquamarine rectangle upon which key parameters glowed red.

Although the Optron was immersive, he could still sense a little of what was going on outside – if he concentrated, if he peeled his mind back. He sensed Rudi was standing there, watching the slave screen, able to see a much simpler, digital version of what Micah saw, in particular the data streams he was about to access. Too bad, a risk I’m going to have to take.

He ran a few random files first, then selected file kappa-237. The hidden marker which should have been inside was gone. He waited a few more seconds then changed to a new file. It was hard to carry on doing random tests on parameter accuracy and system health, knowing what he had just found: the Ulysses’ telemetry was being corrupted in some way, which meant the astronauts could be in trouble.

It meant he could be in trouble, too: the insertion of his own health markers hadn’t been sanctioned. Ever since Prometheus and Heracles missions had failed, security at the Eden Mission had intensified. He’d have to face some questions, but hopefully any disciplinary action would be waived in the light of his evidence that someone was tampering with Ulysses data.

He hoped the Chorazin didn’t get wind of it, though; they’d like nothing more than to take over Eden Mission’s security, and wouldn’t hesitate to interrogate him to see if he was an Alician spy. The thought of the Chorazin chilled him – a necessary evil, an Interpol with unlimited powers and jurisdiction, supposedly accountable to governments, but he had his doubts. They were the logical counterpoint to the Alician global terrorist threat which had sprung up a year after the War, apparently the dark heart of the Fundie movement, religious zealots who never accepted the armistice and its tolerance pact. It was a miracle Kane had kept the Chorazin at bay this long. The thought resonated: Kane – he’s the one I have to go to.

He continued for another twenty minutes checking a further forty files, hoping it would throw Rudi off the scent. Then he turned to the rectangle on his left and focused sharply on the red square, the Exit symbol.

When he disconnected, Rudi was lounging at his desk, idly juggling a couple of data holo-cubes while staring at his desktop display. He snapped his fingers and the cubes vanished. He gestured for Micah to come over, without looking in his direction. Micah took his time – he was still groggy. A light vertigo lingered, and he had no desire to keel over.

"Hey, buddy, what’s the interest with that kappa-237 file? Third time you’ve accessed it in a month. We’re supposed to do random but comprehensive searches, not go over the same files. There are thousands to check, you know."

Micah rubbed his eyes a little longer than usual, faking drowsiness. He had to think fast. "Kappa file?" He walked over and saw the dense, time-indexed matrix of digitized records, K237 highlighted in red. His eyes grew wide; Rudi had been surreptitiously checking his access of that file over the past two months. He recalled his Aunt, who’d been in the underground during the War. She’d lied successfully for most of the occupation, pretending to be a housewife, till someone finally betrayed her. "A complete lie can be undone by counter-evidence," she’d said. "Then you are caught, like a lobster into the pot. No way out. The best lie is half-true."

"Oh, the kappa file," he said, hands massaging his temples. "I know we’re supposed to do random, but I sometimes do a re-run, in case of hysteresis-based faults, you know, ones that come and go. I just pick a file at random, check it again a few weeks later. I guess three times in a month is a bit excessive, though. Hadn’t realized, to be honest." He tried to look gullible, goofy even. It came easier than he liked.

Rudi studied him. Then he flashed one of those smiles where the lips spread wide but the corners of his eyes didn’t move. "Probably a good idea. Maybe I should try it." He tapped his nose with an index finger. "Don’t worry, I won’t tell," he whispered. He stood up, stretched his back, picked up his jacket and walked to the door. "Hey, wait a minute – Sphericon Five is on the net tonight – you’ll miss it if you watch the vid with your Mom."

Micah pulled a face, but at least this was safer territory.

"Come on, Sphericon really kick alien butt!"

He’d wanted Rudi to leave, but couldn’t let this one go. "I just don’t buy it. You do remember Fermi’s Paradox, don’t you?"

Rudi rolled his eyes and waggled a finger at Micah. "Don’t even go there."

"Okay, putting aside the fact we’ve never seen any aliens or sign of them, why is it, in all our Sci-fi vids, we’re the smartest kids on the block? And it’s always about aliens trying to plunder our resources, right?" Micah gestured to the window.

Rudi affected a yawn. "Yeah, yeah, Earth is pretty much toxic, I got it already. Well maybe their idea of resources is different from ours." He slung his jacket over his shoulder. "Whatever. The babes in S-5 are hot, Micah. Even your Mom would agree." He opened the door. "It’s your life, such as it is. As for me, Debra from Tech-Support is coming over to my place to watch it on my new holoplayer." He winked. "So long, buddy, enjoy the War vid."

Micah let out a long breath and surrendered to the chair. He kicked aside the image of Rudi and Debra locked together in a passionate embrace, and stared at the Ulysses poster, wondering what was really happening onboard. He drummed his fingers and glanced at his wristcom. Five pm. He checked the intranet and found Kane’s agenda – he was in a meeting for another twenty minutes.

Gazing through frosted windows to the milky light outside, he wondered if he should take his weekly ten minute sun-dose. Instead, he visited the washroom, splashed cool recycled water on his face, and changed into a new shirt.

◆◆◆

He’d never been inside the Director’s office suite before: real teak, late 20th century. It fit Kane, the Ulysses Project Manager, perfectly. The one man Micah knew he could trust. But he reckoned Sandy wasn’t pleased to see anyone arrive at 5.29, one minute before the official work-day ended.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other in front of her desk, until she raised her head from her holopad, eyes kestrel-sharp. He read her mind by following her eye movements – she glanced at his temples just under the hairline where two tiny red dots marked him as an Optron Reader. She looked down his body – he’d only just tucked his shirt in, and had hastily put on a tie – from the way her nose pinched, he wished he hadn’t bothered, though it hadn’t been for her benefit. At least she couldn’t see his sneakers from where she sat. She probably thought him some low level nerd, but it didn’t matter. She glanced at his badge.

"Yes, Mr… Sanderson? May I help you?" she said, but to Micah’s ears it sounded like a barbed wire fence had just been erected in front of him – any help she offered would require drawing his blood first.

"I need to see Mr. Kane, the Director."

"I know who Mr Kane is." She let the words dissipate, and it appeared she was going to say nothing more, least of all take his request seriously.

"It’s urgent."

She sat back. "I see. And what is it about?"

Micah tried not to squirm. "I can’t say. It’s, uh, sensitive."

She propped a finger to the corner of her mouth and cocked her head to one side, raising her eyebrows. "And I don’t suppose you would have something like an appointment?" She looked to her screen, beamed back at him, and said, "Ah – no, I would know that, wouldn’t I?"

Micah frowned. He hadn’t thought it through – why would Kane see him, an analyst way down in the hierarchy? But it was important; he had to break through this bureaucratic wall guarded by Kane’s assistant. He switched into analysis mode. It took only a second, his mind flickering in saccades while his eyes remained fixed on hers: highlighted hair in a bob; expensive make-up making the best of an almost-pretty face, a blemish under her right eye; taut body; professional but slightly revealing suit accentuating her assets up top and drawing the eye away from her legs for some reason; hazel eyes, alluring and open, flints of bitterness in the background. He made his assessment.

"Look, Miss Mindel. I know you probably think I’m just a nerd, but this is very important. I need to see him – please." He gestured to the double doors at the other end of her office.

"Why don’t you come back tomorrow? Better still, I’ll talk to Mr. Kane and see if he can speak to your manager later in the week, okay?" She reached for the off-switch on her console. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and leaned forward over her desk.

"No. I need to see him now." He held his ground. The air temperature between them freefell. She stood up.

"Listen very carefully," she said. "In five seconds my foot is going to activate the security button, and you’ll be in big trouble, little man, unless you’re gone." They stood, locked onto each other’s gaze, the only sound his breathing. He took a few steps back, towards the entrance. She sat down, and began shutting down her console.

Nothing to lose. He hoped to God the rumors were true. He tried his best to sound confident, worldly – like his father, dammit.

"Of course it would be in your interest for me to see him."

She didn’t look up, but paused. "Excuse me?"

"I mean, if he hears me out, he’ll need to work late. Very late."

Her face darkened. Her eyes flared, and what he’d sensed earlier came into the foreground. It wasn’t pretty. She trod hard on something, picked up a silver-handled paper knife, and skirted round the desk towards him, much faster than he’d anticipated. She stopped very close, her breathing labored. He tried to ignore the paper knife in her right hand, level with his groin.

"Look, you little piece of shit. I don’t know who you think you are, or what you think you know, but you’d better cut this crap right now, or so help me –"

The double doors opened with a sharp click and a swish. Kane, elegantly tall with a shock of white hair, around fifty yet still exuding the strength of an ox, stood framed in the doorway, the shaded early evening sun behind him.

"What’s going on, Sandy? What does this gentleman want?" His voice was as commanding as it was reassuring.

"He was just leaving, Sir," she said, facing off Micah.

Micah knew it was now or never. The next few words counted more than anything. He turned to Kane. "Sir – Ulysses is in trouble. There’s been a security breach." He held back the rest. Nothing else could be said here.

Kane met his eyes head on. "Then why haven’t you taken it to Mr. Vernt, our Head of Security?" he asked.

Micah had no choice but to confess. "Because… because I inserted my own security check into the Ulysses’ telemetry systems. It’s unofficial."

Sandy raised a disbelieving eyebrow, shook her head and walked back to her desk.

"A moment, Sandy," Kane said, holding up a hand.

She leveled the paper knife at Micah. "Sir, he said something to me, of a personal nature, so I de-activated the recorders. But now he’s confessed to a misdemeanor, probably a sackable offence. We should record it. Even if he’s right, Vernt will want to see it."

Micah looked from her to him. He was, as his aunt would have said, in the boiling pot, or at best dangling above it. At least the cameras and recorders were off. He remembered his aunt had also said that in times like these, words were just so much extra rope. He stayed quiet.

"All in good time, Sandy. First, I’d like to hear what this young man has to say. And if I have any trouble, clearly you are ready to defend me." He nodded to the paper knife, still in her right hand. She replaced the knife on the desk, and folded her arms.

"Now, please do come in, and sit down. You’d better tell me about it." He gestured to the open door into his executive suite.

"Oh, and Sandy, you’d better call my wife. I’ll be home late tonight. She should understand – it has been a while since I had to work late. And… I might need you here later on, would that be possible?"

"Of course, you know I’m always…" Her voice trailed off. "Yes, Sir. And I’ll switch the cameras back on in here."

Micah walked into Kane’s office, feeling Sandy’s eyes burrow into his back.

Kane closed the doors behind them, gesturing to an antique leather chair.

"Alright, Mr. Sanderson – Micah, isn’t it? You’d better start from the beginning. And don’t worry, there are no cameras or recorders in here."

Kane spread his hands flat across his varnished desk. "So, let me see if I’ve got it straight. Four months ago, you inserted your own covert security program into the telemetry software for Ulysses, because you’d been worried on account of the Heracles and Prometheus. I applaud your motive, even if I cannot condone your method." He cast Micah a stern look, then continued. "The program is called a lighthouse, because it only shows up periodically, meaning it’s hard for our system’s anti-virus security systems to detect and clean it. Essentially it says the telemetry hasn’t been tampered with. If the signal disappears, it means that we’re not receiving valid data. Is that a reasonable summary?"

He nodded. His faith in Kane had intensified in the past hour. In any case, he had to trust someone – he couldn’t figure this out alone.

"So," Kane continued, "we’re receiving telemetry that says everything is okay, and in fact it is not, or may not be."

"It could be used to mask something happening on the ship."

"But we don’t actually know what the real telemetry should be?"

"No, just that we’re receiving false telemetry, module four being the longest one having disguised readings."

"And the parameters affected are?"

"Environmental and visual."

Kane planted his hands on the desk to stand up. Micah followed suit.

"This is very serious. And you did the right thing to bring it to my attention. Well, it will take us a couple of days to communicate this to the Ulysses crew. I’ll need one of my people to check all this out of course. Tonight, before you and your colleague return to work tomorrow morning."

"But Sir, I could stay – "

"No, go home young man, we’ll take it from here. We’ll talk again, very soon. And say nothing, not a word, to anyone, understood?" He nodded to Micah and to the doors.

Micah hesitated at first – he’d imagined himself being involved in the investigation, playing a key part. But Kane’s statesman-like smile continued to indicate the way out. Micah got up and walked to the double doors, Kane following him, as they swung open automatically. They shook hands in full view of Sandy. Micah nodded briefly to Kane, threw a sideways glance at Sandy, whose eyes were glued to her screen, and made a quick exit.

◆◆◆

Kane waited until Micah was gone, then walked over and handed a piece of paper to his assistant.

"Please call these people for a conference at nine o’clock this evening in my office, and get Vernt on the vidphone right away." He headed back to his office and closed the doors.

She made the calls. When she saw the line between Kane and Vernt disconnect, she transferred all incoming lines to the answering system, switched off the surveillance cameras, and input her leaving time into the system as 19:00.

She opened her drawer and inspected her reflection in the small mirror inside. She sighed. She’d looked far better – and worse. She rose, adjusted her skirt, made sure the lace-stocking top covered the fencing scar on her right thigh, undid another button on her blouse, went over to the entrance door and locked it. She walked to Kane’s suite, knocked gently three times, and then entered, closing the doors behind her

◆◆◆

Micah took one of the tubes heading below ground to the Bubble station. He thought about his dead father and the psych assessment. You see? I can act when required. My way – not yours.

But as he sardined his way home amongst other commuters, his thoughts turned to the mechanics of telemetry manipulation. It had to be someone inside the Eden Mission. His first thought was Rudi, but he didn’t fit the profile – he had everything he wanted, and was too laid-back to get involved in espionage. Drawing a blank, he switched to thinking about Ulysses. The false telemetry was environmental and visual. Something was happening to their environment. He wondered if they were aware of it. He shivered, despite the balmy temperature.

As he crossed one of the myriad pedestrian bridges in underground Sylmar, he felt his neck prickling. He spun around, sure someone was behind him in the shadows, watching him. It wasn’t that late, and usually there were more people around, but not tonight. The lights were dim, and all he saw was a stray cat; but the cat was looking in the same direction as Micah, towards a closed street booth that sold coffee and snacks in the daytime. Micah waited half a minute to see if anyone emerged. No one did. He carried on, quickening his pace till he arrived at his door. Some distance behind him, a cat shrieked as if in pain. He had the prickling feeling again, but didn’t turn around. He fumbled with the lock, slipped inside his apartment, and double-locked the door.

Chapter 4

Ghoster

Pierre’s wristcom twitched twice: twenty-four hours of breathable air left. He closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb, the way grand-pere used to. Eighteen hours after discovering the oxygen depletion, the crew were still no nearer finding where it was going. This looked like the last day of their lives. As a scientist, dying without even knowing the cause was the worst end.

He and Kat re-checked environmental systems, while Blake and Zack worked in the cockpit on ways to put them all into stasis for the remaining five days before their arrival in Eden. But even if that plan succeeded, they would wake up on an airless ship. Both tasks reeked of futility.

Kat’s incessant finger-drumming on the console made it difficult for Pierre to concentrate. They’d checked all components related to atmospheric control for three hours, manually and via main and back-up computers. The onboard diagnostic wizard had drawn a blank, its only output being "insufficient data; good luck". Neither he nor Kat had said a word – not even an expletive – during the last sixty minutes. He stared at a holo of a neural-wiring cluster, unable to focus on account of Kat’s dashboard arpeggios. He strode through the holo-image and thrust his hand over her drumming fingers, flattening them.

She glared, but didn’t start up again. He returned to his writhing spaghetti.

She kicked something he didn’t see. "We’re too stupid to work this out, and we’re going to die."

He shook his head. "We’re missing something. Either it’s defying the known physical laws of gases, or else –"

"Somebody’s screwing us over. Somebody’s pissing themselves laughing ninety light years away. You’re supposed to be the clever one, remember? Figure it out!"

He winced. As the principal scientist onboard, everyone expected him to find the answer. It reminded him of the bad old days at home, solving problems under pressure, battling saber-toothed enigmas unleashed by his father into the supper-time coliseum of their dining room. But he liked Kat, though he hid it – buried it, to be precise. He’d never told her, and the way things were going, he wouldn’t get the chance.

He was getting nowhere. Normally, whenever he worked on a problem, whether his father’s conundrums or scientific puzzles he’d faced back at the Sorbonne, it was like a yacht’s sails catching the wind, his mind billowing like a spinnaker, the boat surging ahead with a clear direction and land in sight. This time, however, he’d been adrift in a windless ocean.

He gathered himself, and picked up his air-pen. "Let’s try one more time."

Kat adjusted her slouch.

He wrote in licorice-black in the ether between them, reading out each premise. "One: Oxygen is being depleted." He paused with the pen, filling in the narrative gap orally. "Normally the carbon dioxide we exhale can be re-cycled to recover the oxygen, but –" he flourished the pen again "– two: something is stripping it out; three: no condensation or ice outside; four: no sign of hull depressurization; five, no airflow disturbance that would signify a leak." He stopped. The first line had already started to melt. He folded his arms, staring at the premises as they lost cohesion, dripping out of reality. "We’ve checked everything organic that uses oxygen, and anything inorganic that could, in theory, bond with it." He tossed the pen back onto the table, then smeared the last of the holo-words out of existence with his hand.

Kat’s face softened. "I like it when you skywrite, Pierre – you should teach me sometime." Her voice snagged on the last word. She put her heels onto the chair’s edge, bringing her knees up to her chest, muttering something he didn’t quite hear. He tried not to stare at her, but her eyes caught his. He coughed.

"One of our assumptions is wrong," he said.

"Obviously – but which one? Nothing you wrote just now – something so basic we don’t see it." She folded her arms. "Killed by our collective blindness; not a great epitaph."

He sat down. "How to see what you don’t see…?" He pictured his father lecturing him, striking the dinner table with the blade of his right hand with each argument he made. Right now, Pierre would welcome the childhood ritual torture as long as his father could solve this particular riddle. If only he were here.

The wind caught the sails of Pierre’s mind. If only he were here…

"Of course!" His hand chopped onto the table, bouncing the pen onto the floor. He shot to his feet. "It’s been here all along, but it changed state!"

"What?"

He fished around in a sheaf of a dozen flimsies, found the one he was looking for.

"What? Talk to me!"

He stared at the figures and charts on the transparent sheet. "Merde," he whispered. He lowered it and looked at Kat, his eyes unwavering.

"You’re starting to scare me, Pierre, which is pretty good going, considering."

He took in every feature of her face. He’d been worrying about them dying – about her dying. But this… He walked towards her, wanting to take her hand. Instead, he touched her arm gently. "Come on."

Kat followed him.

"You’re absolutely sure?" Blake said, just as Pierre and Kat entered the cockpit. Zack nodded once, heavily.

"Sir," Pierre said, almost standing to attention, "I have a new hypothesis." His pulse raced, sure he was on the right track.

"So have we," Blake said, as he and Zack turned to face Pierre and Kat. "Sabotage: we’ve found evidence of a Minotaur virus planted deep in the comms software."

Pierre dismissed it in a flash. "That’s not it, Sir. The comms software has no primary or even secondary functional connection with life support. The neural clusters use immunity protocols to prevent cross-functional contamination. I’ve checked them three times."

Blake and Zack exchanged a quick glance, and then Blake stood up, facing Pierre. "I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying, so let me make it pulse-beam clear for you – we’ve found a level six labyrinthine virus in the software that links us to Earth. We haven’t been able to disable it yet – "

"Is it active?"

"Excuse me?"

"The virus – has it been activated? Or is it still inert? Because if it’s not activated, it isn’t the cause."

Pierre felt Blake’s eyes burn into him. Logic wasn’t always appreciated in moments of crisis, and Zack would always back up his friend.

Blake spoke softly. "It would take someone very knowledgeable on software to hide such a virus – an expert scientist, perhaps."

He didn’t at first grasp what Blake meant – of course it would – but then he saw the sideways look from Zack, and stepped backwards as if slapped. "Sir – no – never…" His throat dried up. It felt like the time as a boy when his father had wrongly accused him of stealing money from his mother’s purse. He almost turned to Kat, but maintained eye contact with Blake.

Zack intervened. "Maybe we should hear him out, Skip."

Blake’s glare slackened off. "You’re right. Sorry, Pierre – I know it’s not you – it was most probably uploaded on Zeus, in any case. And you’re right about the software, it hasn’t activated – yet – I’m just damned annoyed about it. God alone knows what it’ll do when it is triggered."

Pierre noticed how tired Blake looked.

"So, Pierre, why don’t you tell us your theory."

He collected himself. "My father used to say that when you’ve ruled out everything and still have no solution, it’s because you’ve dismissed something incorrectly, something unthinkable. We’ve been looking for either a leak, or something which could strip out oxygen from the air."

Blake leaned back. "You have our undivided."

"The most obvious thing to strip out oxygen is one of us. That is, not exactly one of us, but… someone else."

Zack slapped his thighs. "A stowaway! Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? Now you mention it, I saw someone I didn’t recognize just the other day in the kitchen making coffee –"

Blake held up his hand.

Pierre sped up. "The security screening for this mission has been incredibly intense, especially for any conceivable explosive, and anything which could interfere with our drive systems. Everything checked and scanned before entering the ship, and triple-checked afterwards: organics, chemicals, moving parts, everything."

He paused, to hammer it home. "Nothing, aside from us was alive when we left Zeus. But something else is now."

Blake’s eyes narrowed. Zack hauled himself upwards. "Now wait a goddam minute, Pierre, if you’re going where I think you’re going –"

"What?" Kat asked, "will somebody please tell me what he’s getting at?"

Pierre watched Blake, who stayed perfectly still, tight-lipped. "I’m sorry, Sir. I know you have some personal experience –"

Zack grabbed Pierre’s shoulder. "Where’s your evidence?"

Pierre swallowed, trying to remain calm. He handed the flimsy to Blake. "I correlated the oxygen depletion rate with data from post-War studies. When one of them comes out of hibernation mode, the oxygen usage rate is significant. As you probably know, they process all of it; there’s no carbon dioxide afterwards for stripping.’

"A Ghoster," Kat said. "That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?"

Blake glanced at Zack. "The aft compartment, the reserve food stocks, in sealed vacuum-packed crates."

"Skipper –"

"Did you check them, Zack? Did you break them open?"

"I … they’re scanned for bomb material and tech-ware; what was in them was only organic material, cold meat… I mean nobody would have thought…" He bowed his head.

Pierre glanced from Blake to Zack. Having breached land, his sails began to collapse. "You two are amongst the few to have ever survived a ghoster attack. You must know how to take one down."

Blake got up and ripped the seal off the weapons locker at the back of the cockpit, grabbed a pulse pistol and checked its charge. He passed one to each of the others.

Pierre felt his own fear rising. "You killed one, in Kurana Bay, though the records are vague."

Kat cradled her pistol. "How many were you when you met the ghoster?"

"Twenty," Zack answered, priming his pistol. It emitted a low start-up hum. "A full platoon of experienced soldiers."

Pierre swallowed. He was a scientist, he’d never seen any actual combat. He thought the next question, even as Kat asked it.

"How many of you came out?"

"Let’s go," Blake said, heading out, Zack right behind him.

Kat fumbled with her pistol, arming it. She glanced up at Pierre. "We’re so screwed."

If he’d been someone else, he’d have held her, comforted her in some way. He glanced down at his own pistol – he wasn’t much of a soldier, certainly no match for a ghoster. His brain – that was the only weapon he had that could be of any use right now. He hurried after Blake and Zack. Think, he heard his father say, smacking the dining room table, think fast!

Chapter 5

Chorazin

Micah lounged on the sofa, catching up on the news with his portly mother, her brightly-dyed chestnut hair making up for a lack-luster floral dress. An overdose of facial powder gave her a striking appearance – "she who shall not be ignored" – as he’d joked to his school-friends when younger. He sipped the soy-beer she’d poured him after they’d had another disagreement. It had started as usual about his not having a girlfriend, at his age…

"There’s that lovely girl, Antonia. You used to talk about her all the time."

"Don’t start, Mom."

She humphed. "You’ll find a nice girl on Eden one day."

He tried to change tack. "How do you feel about going there? You could maybe find…"

Her scowl choked off his words. "Don’t you worry about me, I had quite enough of that for one lifetime, thank you very much." She kept her back to her husband’s military portrait. "Besides, I’m not going."

He stared at her, as if he hadn’t really looked at her in a long time. "But, I assumed –"

"You know what your father always said about that word."

He sighed. Assume makes an ass out of you and me.

"Besides, this Lucy Beer rocket –"

"Alcubierre Drive"

"– isn’t for the likes of me. It’s – what do they call it – payload limited? Why would they carry my old carcass that distance?"

She had a knack of getting the words wrong but understanding the essentials nonetheless. Much as he hated his life, he hadn’t thought of leaving her behind. His gaze swept around their magnolia sitting room, cluttered with memorabilia of his father, the Great War hero, who’d been a complete bastard to his wife. And now she wouldn’t leave his ashes behind. "Anyway," he said, "it’ll be a long time before they start transporting people."

She wagged a finger. "Long after I’m dead and buried, that’s for sure."

That was below the belt, on two counts – he didn’t want to think about her dying, and she was right that it would take a very long time. The new drive couldn’t break light speed unless its payload stayed below a narrow limit, so no mass transport until someone figured it out; or else stasis for a hundred years.

He clicked on the late hour news summary. Beef had hit 300 dollars a kilo, not that he could remember the last time he’d tasted real beef. There’d been a rumor of a sub gone missing near Guam, and another fire tornado in New Missouri, flattening the shanty town that had just been getting on its feet. Micah swigged a gulp of his beer, brooding.

"One step forwards, three back," he muttered.

"I don’t know why they bother!" his mother piped. "These fringe towns get nowhere. They should have built underground like we did here, before the War. The desert lands are too hot now--"

He lip-synched the words as she uttered them for the umpteenth time.

"– baked like a cake. It’ll be centuries before anyone can live there again."

He reckoned they didn’t have centuries. His mind sieved through the statistics, lies, and propaganda: half a century at most, probably less. But he didn’t say it. At least she wouldn’t be around to see how much worse it was going to get.

"Things always look clearer with hindsight, Mom. We were lucky. The pre-War aerial attacks and the rising temperatures pushed the Cave Bill through. This place was almost ready to move into when War hit." He looked out the window of their subterranean two-bed flat across the cavernous Kaymar Precinct: forty other blocks thirty stories deep, glistening bubble-bridges criss-crossing at every fifth level. Biofuel copters dodged in and out of the towers, the day-time sun-globes replaced by neon advertising strips.

He couldn’t see into any of the other apartments. All windows became opaque whenever anyone wanted it that way, which was always. We were lucky, he reminded himself. Only twenty nukes hit the US during the War, low-yield thanks to the Pact of ‘36. Pretty awful, of course, maybe irrecoverable. But it could have – no, should have – been much, much worse, according to all the tit-for-tat predictions.

The vid they’d caught earlier had interviewed some of the surviving "fire-breakers", a handful of soldiers and generals of different nations who couldn’t bring themselves to detonate the nukes when instructed to do so. Most had been executed for treason in the final days of the War, but the few who survived were later hailed as heroes. It was one of the few episodes of recent history which stopped his cynicism plummeting into freefall.

He tried to lift the mood. "If the Fringers can survive a year, the grass might stick, and we can start to reclaim the land. God knows we need the space."

"No, no, no!" his mother countered "Rushing too soon, that’s what drove us to this –" she waved a mottled hand at the window, "– in the first place. Life got too fast. No one had any time, everyone running around, losing touch with each other and nature."

He rolled his eyes.

"Yes, my boy, nature. Your forefathers didn’t care about the environment. It was always about the quick buck, and the quick –"

"Mom!" He couldn’t abide it when she feigned to be coarse. Or maybe it was the fact that she’d had more sex in her day than he was having now. But she was in full flood.

"Good, hard-working people rebelled. I don’t side with them, of course," she glanced at the portrait of Micah’s father in battle dress, "but they did have a point. Humanity had lost direction. It’s not surprising these funnies –"

"Fundies."

"Yes, well, whatever, it’s not surprising they took up arms. It was a wake-up call. And we damned well needed one!" She folded her arms in an unassailable conclusion.

He sagged. To say anything now would only invite another tirade. He focused on the vid, and with a jolt he realized the reporter was speaking about the Eden Mission. His mother’s sour face suddenly beamed.

"Oh, Micah! Look! Do you think we’ll see you this time? Why are you never on the vids, when you do such important work?"

And why do I still live with my mother if I do such important work? He tuned in to what the newscaster was saying.

"... A break-in at Eden Mission Control earlier tonight. We have little information but members of the Chorazin have been in and out of the building for the past two hours. No further news at this stage. The Gov-pod says that there is no impact on the Eden time-scale."

Break-in? He wondered if it could be connected in some way, but it seemed far-fetched. He switched off the vid.

"What did you do that for? What does it mean anyway, you were there only a few hours ago, weren’t you? Did you see anything?"

He turned away so she couldn’t see his face. She was a lot shrewder than she let on. He headed for the kitchenette and opened the fridge. He ignored the Molsen lites; he needed to clear his head – maybe an ultresso. He barely heard her come up behind him.

"What is it?" she said quietly. "You’re not in any trouble, are you?" He turned to face her, saw the concern in her eyes. Truth was, he was tired, and the argument had worn him down even further.

"I honestly don’t know, Mom." He was about to say he’d done nothing wrong, quite the opposite, when the door buzzer made him start. They both froze. She gazed up at him, and he saw how frail she was, like worn china. He knew she was wishing his father was there. He sure as hell wasn’t.

"Don’t answer." she whispered.

He shushed her, and headed for the door. Before he reached it, it opened. Two figures entered: a man and a woman, wearing the instantly recognizable silver-grey Chorazin uniforms, the regulation jackets cut off at the waist, lightweight and bullet-proof, a small red eagle insignia on the left breast. The man, late thirties, athletic and bald, carried a small brown sack in his hand. They didn’t appear armed, but Micah knew better.

The man strode to the centre of the lounge, immediately taking control of the apartment, and its occupants. He looked Micah over, then held out his hand. Micah shook it warily. It felt like rock.

"My name is Vincent. You can call me Vince. This is my associate Louise."

Micah glanced in her direction, and then his eyes lingered – a hawkish blonde, hair lashed back in a tight bun. She moved around the room with the grace of a gymnast. She held a small scanning device, though he guessed she relied on her senses far more. She met his gaze briefly. His eyes dodged back to Vince.

"You are Micah Sanderson, employee of the Eden Mission, working in Telemetry?"

He found Vince’s ice-blue eyes disconcerting, like staring into the vertiginous blues of an ice-field.

"Er, yes." Then as an afterthought, "And this is my mother." He turned to see his mother standing in the kitchenette doorway. Her face was stone. He’d not seen that expression since his father’s funeral, when an old admiral had made a muffled, snide remark about her dead husband. With alarm he noted she was clutching the bread knife.

"May I sit, please? It’s been a long day," Vince said.

Micah appreciated that he didn’t sit down straightaway, but actually waited for permission, so he nodded. Micah and his mother perched on the sofa, Vince on a hard-backed chair facing them, placing the small sack carefully on the floor between his feet. Louise walked over to the window, apparently uninterested in their conversation. Micah’s vision was drawn to her perfect ass in stretch pants. She glanced over her shoulder, alert, elfin eyes catching his look. Her gaze struck him like ice on his neck, but there was openness, too, daring him. The sort of woman his mother would tell him to avoid. Louise raised an eyebrow. He cleared his throat and turned back to Vince.

"Er, Mom?" he said, prying the bread knife from her fingers, laying it to rest on the coffee table.

Vince seemed about to say something then paused. "Is that a battle commander top you’re wearing? Looks like the original nannite-protective model."

Micah had forgotten he often wore it now in the evenings when the windows were open, the massive turbo-fans blasting a chill breeze around the stalagmite-like tower blocks. It pleased his Mom, and he had to admit it was comfortable. It had been his father’s in the War. He never quite knew why he liked to wear it – somehow it was to spite his father, who when alive had never as much as let Micah touch it.

"You know what it’s worth, I suppose? Probably more than this apartment."

Micah nodded and caught his Mom’s approving eye. He glanced at his father’s stern face in his military portrait on the wall.

"Family heirloom. Non-functional of course. Otherwise I’d have it registered with the Nannite Oversight Commission." And you’d know about it already.

Vince nodded. "Have you seen the vids tonight Micah? May I call you Micah?"

Did anyone ever say "No" to such a question? Vince seemed like someone you could talk to, but shouldn’t. He didn’t like being on familiar terms with the Chorazin. "Yes, we just switched off. What happened? The reporters didn’t seem to know anything."

Vince rested his finger-tips on the table as he leaned forward. "We were rather hoping you might be able to help us there."

"Well, no idea really," he answered hesitantly. "I left several hours ago."

Vince nodded." At 18:45, to be precise. Working late? You are, of course, aware of the anti-overtime laws? I believe the Eden Mission isn’t exempt."

The beer had definitely been a bad idea. He wished he’d had time to fix an ultresso. But Kane had wanted to keep "it" quiet. He took a breath. "Things are pretty busy now, with less than a week till Ulysses reaches Eden. I’ll take time off later. That’s allowed." He sat back, trying to remember how to look relaxed.

"Nothing out of the ordinary?" Vince said.

There had been no cameras in Kane’s office. "No, nothing really." He caught his mother’s curious eyes on him. Shit, even she can see I’m lying!

Louise’s voice cut in, deeper than he’d been expecting. "So you normally have after-hours meetings with Mr. Kane, the Eden Mission Project Manager?" She looked him up and down. "Seems unlikely."

Micah bridled. "I did drop in to give a status report. Nothing unusual."

She cocked her head and considered him for a few seconds, then returned to the other side of the room. With some difficulty he stopped eye-tracking her.

"And then?" Vince said.

Micah felt like he was a ball in a tennis match – with hard hitters."Then I came home. That’s all."

"And he’s been here with me ever since!"

Thanks Mom, that’s all I need to make me look guilty. "What’s this all about anyway? Why are you here? What do you want from me?"

Vince said calmly, "We want to know who killed Mr. Kane at nine pm this evening, and why."

Micah’s mouth dropped open. "What?" He tried to replay in his head what Vince had just said. He heard his mother gasp. She began wringing her hands, looking to the portrait. He tried to regain control. "Killed? But how? I was there earlier, and he was…"

"Alive?" Louise offered.

"What? Yes." Then it really hit him. Kane was dead. He’d just been talking with him a few hours ago. He walked unsteadily to the window, turning to face them all.

"Wait a minute! You don’t think I..." He flushed. "I – I’ve been back here for ages. I mean, how did he die anyway?"

Vince placed the tip of an index finger on his sternum. "Stiletto. Professional. And, lucky for you, we know you didn’t do it, for two very good reasons. First, the crime scene investigator pinned the death down at 9:02, and yes, you were here by then. The tram and bubble-cams show that. Difficult to fool so many of them."

Micah needed time to think. But his head fuzzed up, and these Chorazin kept throwing him off-beam. "Second reason?"

Vince opened the sack he had brought in with him and pulled out an object the size of a grapefruit, made of gleaming metal. There were a few wires visible and some kind of timing device. One of the wires had been cut.

"Oh my!" his Mom exclaimed. Micah stared at it, his mouth reluctant to verbalize what his eyes recognized.

"Exactly, Mrs Sanderson," Vince said. "You’re lucky we found it. We always inspect premises before entering for an interro –" he paused, "– before an interview. Happily, my associate is very thorough. She found it in the heating duct outside your apartment. It was set to go off –" he held up his wristcom "– around about now." He tossed it back into the bag. "It would have taken out three whole floors. Alicians are also known for being thorough, though excessive is a more appropriate word."

Micah felt dizzy. He leant against the window frame. "Is it true, Vince, what they say about the Chorazin? Shoot first, question later, take no prisoners, takes a criminal to catch a terrorist. Etcetera."

Louise answered. "That’s what the recruitment brochure says. That’s why I joined."

Vince rapped the table twice with a finger-knuckle. "Micah, assuming you did not kill Mr Kane, we nevertheless have an interest in what you were discussing with him."

Micah suddenly remembered. "Sandy!"

"Excuse me?" Vince said.

"Sandy, his personal assistant. What about her?"

"Files show she left shortly after you did. Why?"

"She was still there when I left, didn’t look like she was leaving. In fact Kane asked her to stay late." His breathing was rapid. He was trying to think. Could she have killed him? Surely not, but then… He remembered how defensive she’d been, not allowing him to disturb Kane. Was that to get him out of the way? But she didn’t seem capable of killing, and the rumors were that they were lovers.

"You’re sure about this?" Vince asked.

Micah nodded. Louise walked to the kitchenette, activated a sub-dermal earpiece, and began talking in coded Chorazin language. The only intelligible word Micah heard was "Sandy." Vince got up in one fluid motion. "We need to know what happened between you and Kane. What did you discuss?"

Micah’s mind felt like an out-of-synch vid channel. He ran through the data he had: Kane had been killed two hours after their meeting. Kane’s office was well-known for its anti-surveillance technology. No one else knew what they had discussed. That meant only one thing. Someone Kane had contacted – and trusted – had killed him.

Vince’s voice took on a harsher tone. "Talk to me, Micah!"

Micah needed air. He turned and opened the window, trying to decide what to say, trying to think faster than the speed at which Vince’s patience was failing. The cacophony of urban nightlife flooded in, but it actually helped. He focused. Once I tell, then it’s out, it’ll be on their internal net. Kane would have called people he trusted, Eden security. Some of those had to be Chorazin; the Eden Mission was too big to escape Chorazin surveillance from the inside. And if a Chorazin had killed him, then that person by now would have had me killed, and would have stalled Vince. Vince doesn’t seem to know anything yet. So – I should be able to trust him.

Vince raised his voice. "Micah, close the window and sit down. Trust me, you’ve nowhere else to go, and I’d rather not send you to interrogation. But if you don’t talk right now, I will arrest you as a suspected accomplice."

Micah turned to see his mother get to her feet.

"No, you mustn’t – he’s a good boy!" Her face was white marble, ready to crack.

In that instant Micah decided to tell Vince everything. But as he took a breath, he heard the shrill whine of a copter. Everything slowed down. Louise sprang towards him, arms outstretched, aiming to push him out of the way, but not in time. He felt the projectile hit him sledgehammer-hard in the back, knocking him off his feet, sending him crashing through the glass coffee table. As he sank into blackness, the last sound he heard was his mother screaming.

Chapter 6

Code Red

Blake stopped two meters from the darkened hatchway, fingers flexing near his holstered pulse pistol. He couldn’t believe it was happening again. He’d lost eighteen men last time, all about Pierre’s age. Nineteen men, he corrected himself. At the end it had come down to him and the ghoster, and his intuition told him history wanted a re-run. The tremors re-surfaced in his right hand, shakes he’d not had since Kurana Bay. He squeezed his fist hard to stop them.

"The lights are off inside," Pierre said, inspecting a small panel adjacent to the airlock connecting them to the fourth compartment. "Since zero-two-hundred, though the cockpit systems said they were on – I checked an hour ago."

Zack sighed. "And the night goggles would be – let me guess…" He gesticulated towards the pitch-black porthole in the airlock hatchway.

Pierre confirmed with a nod.

"Figures," Zack said.

Pierre closed the panel. "As we suspected, whoever planned this did a good job. The air circulation sensors were looped so we wouldn’t detect where the oxygen loss was coming from, and the emergency vents to the fourth compartment were wired open. I’ve sealed them now."

"Good. Both of you, suit up," Blake ordered. "Arm yourselves as you think fit."

Pierre hesitated. "Sir, reports state that it can take four days for a ghoster to regenerate after extended hibernation, and the oxygen depletion started just two days ago. Maybe it’s still comatose, buried inside one of the food crates?"

"Pierre, forget theory right now," Blake said, "or you’ll die in there."

Pierre held his ground for a moment then gave in, following Zack to the weapons locker.

Blake peered through the airlock porthole, but only saw his reflection. His breathing slowed of its own accord, the way it always did just before battle.

When they returned, he saw that Zack had retrieved an item from his personal area. He ignored it. But minutes later, as Zack and Pierre were donning their standard space-suits and oxygen backpacks, Pierre spotted it.

"Zack, you can’t be serious taking a commando knife in there? We’ll be in spacesuits and in a vacuum if we have to go to Plan B."

Zack grinned, and slipped it into its sheath under his backpack, hilt pointing downwards. "You never dress commando style?" He leered at Pierre. "This knife has saved me more times than I care to remember. Think of it as a good luck charm. You asked how we killed it last time; well, my knife played its part."

But Blake knew how they had taken out the ghoster in Kurana Bay – the slow gun. They didn’t have one aboard; why would they? He switched on Zack’s backpack, three telltale green lights and a single beep indicating it was fully functional. "Each man takes in what he feels appropriate."

Pierre bristled. "But plasma pulse rifles, right – according to procedure?"

Blake finished with Zack’s suit, and moved to check Pierre’s.

"Actually, Pierre," Zack said, as he picked up his helmet, "I’m taking a pulse pistol. It’s not that big a compartment, and if there’s a need to use something, it’ll be close quarters."

"But the rifle charge is more powerful."

Blake snapped on the switch to activate Pierre’s backpack – three greens and a single beep. "Pierre, how many of the people who wrote those standard procedures actually went into space, or dealt with ghoster combat situations?"

Pierre frowned. "You haven’t told us what you’re taking in there, Sir, if it comes to that."

Zack laughed, wiry eyebrows stretching into grey mesh. "Man’s got a point, boss. Care to share?"

He eyed them both. "No."

Pierre hefted his rifle, and shook it in pump action mode to arm it. It hummed softly. "Sir," he said, swallowing, "this is my first real combat situation."

Zack spoke as he donned his helmet, muffling his words. "You’re shitting me, right?" Zack shook his head, settling his "fishbowl", as he called it. His voice came through clear on the speakers. "Just try not to shoot me in there, okay? Boss, maybe I should go in alone – seriously."

Blake picked up Pierre’s helmet. "Keep your head, Pierre, or you’ll lose it." Pierre donned it, and with a click and a sound like a gulp, it sealed.

He noticed how stiffly Pierre stood, how he held the rifle like… like so many men he’d sent into battle who’d never returned. He wanted to go in there first with Zack, but this was about strategy. Most likely scenario was that the first two who entered died. The third one had to be able to react fast, see what they were up against, and finish the job. Best credible scenario was that Kat alone survived, and they stopped the ghoster before it sabotaged the engines – if they lost the FTL drive, they’d all die in any case, drifting in space until everything ran out.

He picked up two lanyards and handed them to Zack and Pierre.

"For Plan B, if it’s mobile. Remember, this ship wasn’t built for a man overboard scenario. Either of you go out the window, you’re history, so stay clamped at all times."

Kat cut in from the cockpit; Blake had almost forgotten she’d been monitoring them via intra-vid, listening to everything.

"Captain, telemetry’s set up, just get some light going in there as soon as possible, I can’t see much from up here."

"We’ll do what we can. Kat – I want an open four-way com-line during the entire operation. No unnecessary comms."

There was a pause. "Understood. Open four-way comms as of now."

He pressurized the inner airlock, then spun the wheel to open the hatch. "Good luck."

Only Zack nodded acknowledgement. Pierre stepped first into the airlock chamber. As Zack followed, Blake patted him once on the shoulder, and sealed the door behind them. There was a sucking sound, a clunk, then silence. His hand hung onto the airlock wheel. He tried not to think about last time. He didn’t have to. The pit of his stomach felt like it was in a vice. He started thinking instead about Plan C.

◆◆◆

Shoulder-to-shoulder inside the airlock chamber, Zack heard Pierre’s ragged breathing across the intercom.

Pierre checked the dials. "Fully pressurized inside the compartment."

Zack chewed his lip, peering through the small porthole into the darkness beyond. "Time to check on our guest." He opened the inner door to the fourth compartment. As it swung open, the light spilled in from behind them, revealing the outlines of a room ten meters deep crammed with cylinders, boxes, and crates, all strapped down. It looked just like it had done twelve hours ago when he’d checked it over. The lattice of harnesses resembled a giant spider web laid over the contents of the compartment. He stared towards the far wall, behind which the dark matter engines lay, adding to his unease.

They each took one pace into the compartment and clipped their lanyard karabiners onto hull eyeholes. Zack’s gaze swept the room, but he didn’t use the flashlight attached to his left wrist. If there was anything in here, he didn’t feel like lighting himself up. Pierre’s rifle sighting beam flashed upward to the escape hatch which was their Plan B – the ghoster-overboard plan, as Kat had christened it.

"Zack, I don’t see anything." Pierre took a step forward.

"Wait." Zack squinted through the semi-darkness towards the crate at the far end of the chamber housing the neutralino detonator. It was one of two, the other used to start the dark matter ignition after Saturn, enabling them to get up enough speed to engage the warp shell. This one was for the return journey. Something was behind the crate. His eyes tracked to the left, knowing from theory and experience that unaided night vision worked best if you looked slightly off target. He saw it. His head recoiled inside his helmet.

"Kat," he said, voice taut. "Tell me what you see through the internal cameras" He still hadn’t aimed his flashlight, instead straining his eyes towards the location of the detonator. Her reply came through, rendered grainier than usual by the voice-com transmitter.

"Not much. I need more light."

When Pierre went to shine his flashlight on the crate, Zack gripped his forearm.

"Don’t." He was sure now, though he had a hard time accepting it.

Blake’s voice cut in from outside. "Report."

Zack let Pierre reply, while he began to think of tactics to outmaneuver what he believed was crouching just behind the detonator. He still had his hand on Pierre’s arm, and felt Pierre’s body jerk.

"Sir, it… mon dieu." Pierre’s breathing accelerated, bordering on hyper-ventilation. Then he exhaled deeply.

Zack removed his arm. Good – remember your training, because if you don’t we’ll be dead a lot faster.

Pierre’s voice was edgy. "I can see a human head, but… it has no eyes."

Blake didn’t respond. Zack could only imagine how he was reacting; it was Kurana Bay all over again. He couldn’t remember unholstering his pulse pistol, but it was in his hand. He ramped it up to maximum. He spoke in a steady tone. "Don’t move, Pierre. Get ready to fire." He took a deep breath, as he did before any close-quarter battle. His palms sweated inside his gloves. He gripped the pistol harder.

"Skipper," he said, "it’s a ghoster alright, fully awake. Lock us down, seal us in. We’re going to Plan B."

◆◆◆

Kat couldn’t see Blake on her screens. "Captain? Where are you?"

Blake re-appeared, suiting up. "Kat, get on the comms. Issue Code Red to Earth – at least they’ll know it was sabotage and not an accident. Fast as you can, then confirm."

Kat cursed as she realized her own rifle was two compartments away. Not that it would help. She took one last look at the silhouetted figures of Zack and Pierre, then shifted position and began typing fast.

Code Red. She paused, looking at the letters on the screen. Then she hit the button. Transmit.

Unable to transmit, flashed up on the screen. Her brow furrowed. Now what? She typed it again, and got the same message.

"Captain, the message; it won’t transmit."

"Slow down, try again."

Pierre cut in. "Kat, wait – don’t try more than twice. Do you hear me?"

But she’d just hit Transmit a third time. Large bright red letters on the screen said <Goodbye>. The screen blanked.

She stared at the lifeless screen. She leant back in her chair, allowing her foot to rise up and then stomp down hard on the dead console. "Alician mother-fuckers!"

"Kat, what’s happening?" Blake shouted.

She suddenly felt how small and defenseless they were, hurtling through a pitiless vacuum, light years from help. She bit her lip hard.

"It’s dead. It said 'Goodbye,’ then shut down. It’s the virus." Please God, tell me this is just another nightmare.

"Kat, listen to me – Zack hotwired an emergency protocol to disengage navigation, propulsion and life support to a secondary sub-processor – press the red plunger on Zack’s console – do it now!"

She sprang out of her chair, spotted the plunger, and slammed her hand down on it. "Done!" She knew without that switch, the virus would spread to propulsion and navigation within minutes, and they would disintegrate under obscene torsional forces as soon as they slipped out of their flight envelope.

"Kat," Blake said. "Salvage as many secondary systems as you can, but keep an eye on the screens, in case the ghoster moves."

At first, she didn’t understand – Zack and Pierre would see it if it did anything – but then she remembered the tales of how quickly ghosters could move – and kill. "Understood."

◆◆◆

Blake sealed his helmet, the familiar muffling sound lending him confidence, shutting out extraneous noises, allowing him to concentrate. He peered through the porthole. "Zack. Do you have line of sight?"

Zack’s voice was low but steady. "It’s right behind the detonator, in front of the reserve oxygen cylinders. One miss and we’re all dead."

"The detonator – activated?"

Zack sighed. "Was afraid you’d ask that. I see two red lights, one green. Pierre?"

"There’s only one safeguard left. A final control command to arm it, then a one-minute countdown. The arming control is in front of us. If it goes for it we’ll get a clear shot. We caught it just in time."

Blake leant his gloved hands against the door. He took three measured breaths. He’d trade their remaining oxygen for the slow gun. "Options?"

Zack replied with a snort. "Not many. Plan A, we circle the perimeter. It’ll come out screaming, moving like a bat, and we’ll probably shoot each other in the crossfire, but maybe we’ll hit it enough to stop it. Plan B…" he paused. "Pierre?"

"We blow the hatch. The problem is, ghosters can function for several minutes in a vacuum. If it manages to anchor itself inside the compartment, it will arm the detonator before we can react, and defend it until it blows. We need a Plan C, Sir."

"Skipper, he’s right. All we’ll do is slow this thing down a few seconds. You know they’re practically unkillable without explosives or industrial lasers. We’re in serious danger of becoming another fucking Eden Mission mystery."

Blake was only half-listening. Abruptly he went back to the weapons locker to pick up his Plan C. He secured the bagel-sized explosive charge with pushbutton actuator – a hand-made land-mine – to his chest.

◆◆◆

Inside the compartment, Pierre spoke, his voice unsteady. "Zack, why doesn’t it have eyes?"

Zack lodged his flashlight on the floor, not taking his eyes off the grey-skinned scaly head and neck. He grimaced as he met the dark sockets where its eyes should have been. His mouth felt dry as sandpaper, but he tried to reassure Pierre. "It has eyes; they’re permanently open underneath a protective membrane. They have no weak spots. Makes people hesitate, too, because it looks blind – got many a soldier killed in the War – not to mention the scream when they attack. If – when it moves, just aim for its trunk – don’t look at the face."

"What’s it waiting for?"

He felt sorry for Pierre – his first real battle experience, and encountering a ghoster was a supernova of a baptism. He knew Pierre’s instincts would be playing push-me-pull-you between fight and flight; waiting wasn’t instinctive at all. But if they moved now, they’d have little chance. He tried to appeal to Pierre’s intellectual side, to help him keep his nerve.

"Its higher cortical functions are suppressed; you can’t negotiate with it, and it’ll never question its instructions. A ghoster’s reptile-brain fighting instincts have been heightened. But it still has basic tactical abilities. It has a mission, a goal, and is fucking adaptable. Its goal is to destroy the Ulysses, probably by activating the ND. But it knows if it tries now, it might fail, because we’ll have clear line of fire. But if we move first, it’ll strike in fast random attacks. We’ve got weapons trained on it, so it’s waiting for an advantage."

"Waiting for us to blink?"

"Yeah, you could say that." But a chill ran down hid spine as he recalled what he’d said earlier – a ghoster’s eyes were always open behind the membrane – they never, ever blinked.

◆◆◆

Blake primed the mine. Him and the ghoster. That’s how it was always going to be. Now he had accepted it he felt calmer. The tremors had vanished.

Kat defied protocol. "Not exactly regulation issue."

He glanced toward the camera and offered a bare smile. He picked up two pulse rifles and shook them into readiness. "You’re in charge of the ship now, Kat. Auto-lock the hatch when I’ve gone through. If I fail…"

"Don’t you worry about me, I have my pistol." She tried to laugh.

For a moment he wished he’d gotten to know his crew better. Like all captains, he’d been trained to keep a distance.

"Okay, Zack, Pierre, get ready. I’m coming in. When the inner hatch opens on your side, the ghoster will see it as an advantage or a threat. Either way it will attack. Each of you break to your respective sides and open fire. Leave a pathway open between it and me. No discussion. I have a little surprise for our guest."

He spun the wheel.

◆◆◆

Through the comms system, Kat heard the hiss of air as the outer hatch opened. Sitting alone in the cockpit, she pulled up her knees and locked her wrists around them, the pistol resting on her console. They’d all probably be dead in the next few minutes, and no one would even know what happened to them. Silently, she saluted Blake. But even as she did so, the Minotaur virus reached environmental system control. Lights all over the ship started to fade.

Chapter 7

Star Council

Gabriel knelt in the gothic church, hands clasped in prayer he didn’t believe in. He tried again to still his mind – he’d gotten further than any Sentinel before him, close to finding the leader of the Alician Order. A slim chance to overturn their endgame was at hand. But the bitterness of remorse threatened to overwhelm him: he’d just killed his best friend.

Samuel, like him, had been in deep cover working inside the Alician cell-structure, living, breathing, and sleeping in the enemy’s ranks. His mission had been to uncover the facts about the loss of the Prometheus and the Heracles. In doing so he’d unearthed the ghoster plot on the Ulysses. Samuel had been about to release it on the nets: the Alicians made a pretence of being anti-tech for their Fundie supporters, whereas ghosters were tech-weapons, reviled by every soldier who had survived the War.

An Alician section led by Brother Marcus had surprised Samuel and Gabriel during a meeting. Samuel had immediately acted as if Gabriel had found him first, and had reached for his pistol, knowing Gabriel would have to react. There had been a brief glimmer of forgiveness in Samuel’s eyes just before Gabriel shot him. The worst part was that Gabriel had not been able to close Samuel’s eyes, with Marcus and his men present, and had to leave his corpse in the rotting apartment for the rats to plunder.

For four hours Gabriel had incanted the Tellurathonicat, the long-lost song for the dead. Although he didn’t believe in God, he believed in his best friend. He closed with "Amen".

The emotional gale that had threatened to undo him from his own mission died down, and a hollow semblance of calm finally arrived. He would need it to honor Samuel’s sacrifice. He scanned the rows of wooden benches around him. Since the War, churches were rarely empty – there were so many lost loved ones that people used the churches to commune with the dead. Cemeteries had become a thing of the past, every last scrap of decent soil used for crops. Funerals culminated in cremation and vitrification of the deceased’s ashes into a dusky glass teardrop that fitted into the palm of a hand. Four people knelt, heads bowed down on the bench’s ledge, arms outstretched, holding the "pearls" as they were called, as if offering them to God, or perhaps, in the silence and impunity of prayer, asking "why?"

In order to concentrate, he parked everything about Samuel. He pressed his left palm to his right, his right palm to his left, with equal force. He was about to penetrate an Alician Inner cell. He needed to get into the role again, immerse himself in the thinking patterns of the enemy: believe like one of them, react like one of them. He recalled the scripture: structure, discipline, equanimity – the three principles of Neo-Fundamentalism. Even the posture for praying was critical. If the base was strong, all else would flow correctly, and all action emanating from such a structure would be right.

He checked his wristcom. Two small green lights on its side, linked to micro-sensors on his jacket collar, told him there was no one behind him. Reaching into his pocket he snapped open a mini-phial with his thumb, bowed as if in prayer, and smeared a trace of clear liquid onto his lips. It evaporated in moments. He rose silently, and trod softly as if still in prayer towards an alcove and a bolted iron door. He didn’t touch the handle. Placing his eye to the peep-hole, he circled his eyeball once to let the ret-scan do its job. The door, bolt and all, heaved upwards like a mute portcullis. It descended behind him as soon as his rear foot had passed the threshold, encasing him in total darkness. He remained perfectly still.

"A boy kills his sister with a gun. Who is guilty?" The tone invited feelings of unworthiness, the voice of a man who commanded people to serve in a Holy war. Gabriel answered immediately – reflex not reflection – as he’d been taught.

"The father, for letting it fall into the hands of the son." He spoke louder than intended; he instructed his body to relax.

"Who else?" The voice was aggressive.

"The mother, for not admonishing the father." Gabriel heard the speaker pace. Still not enough. "The government, for allowing weapons in the population." Continued silence and pacing. Was the speaker carrying something? Gabriel detected unevenness in his step, favoring one side. As an assassin, he’d been trained to hear the nuances in every movement. He would not be allowed too many more attempts. "The manufacturer, for not equipping the gun with a child-sensor-block." As soon as he’d said it he knew it was wrong – too tech. The pacing stopped, a sleeve rustled, something being lifted. He didn’t panic. Then he realized what was expected.

"Scientists, for making the weapon possible." Gabriel relaxed. He knew it was right. He felt balanced again. A whisper somewhere in the chamber; something metallic put down, a drawer closed. He heard another speaker, female.

"Welcome, Brother Matthias," she said, an accent he couldn’t place, her voice guttural yet fluid. "Change and join us in the Inner Chamber." She left, followed by the other man, the coldness from her voice lingering in her wake.

Bright light deluged the room, stinging his eyes. He found a simple grey robe neatly folded on a stool. He didn’t look for the weapon the first man must have been carrying: he knew he was being watched, one always was. He undressed, removing the wristcom that otherwise never left him, and put on the robe, naked underneath, as the Structure required.

In the nearby mirror he performed the mental self-examination ritual. Regard truthfully that which the Creator has fashioned. A gaunt face, fringed with black hair, jet-black eyes. Know thyself, the Structure taught. Killer’s eyes, he said to himself, the last things my victims see, eyes of a Cleanser, one who releases souls to God. The ritual satisfied, he opened the door, and walked through the ultraviolet-tinged archway that scanned for any hidden devices or bio-implants. Anti-tech when it suits them. He flushed away the thought – he had to play the role, be the zealous assassin they believed him to be.

The inner chamber was cave-like; myriad candles scattered shadows onto whitewashed brick walls. Five figures awaited him, draped in white robes, hoods covering all but their chins and mouths, hands concealed inside billowing sleeves. Each stood on the point of the blue chalk pentagram drawn on the smooth granite floor. The points were connected with gold lines, creating a star inside the pentagram. Gabriel stood in the star’s centre, hands open by his side where the others could see them. He bowed deeply.

"Welcome, Brother Matthias. You may report." It was the voice of the man who had questioned him in the Outer Chamber; the leader of this Alician Star Council, the Cultivator. He stood at the pentagram’s vertex, facing Gabriel.

Gabriel was concise, in accordance with what he knew about Star Council etiquette. "From the Devil’s craft, all contact has been lost. An analyst in the Project suspected something, told the Project Manager. Both have been cleansed."

There was no reaction from any of the five until the Cultivator spoke.

"All is not as you say."

Gabriel’s breath closed in, his sinewy muscles tensing. To lie in the Star Council meant death. He waited. In theory he could kill all of them in less than two seconds, but he’d heard that lasers targeted the centre of the star, primed to activate in case of sudden moves – he was fast, but not that fast.

"The Eden Manager is indeed cleansed. The analyst, Micah Sanderson, lives on."

Gabriel didn’t see how that was possible, he had made the hit himself, as ordered – but the Cultivator would not lie.

"In addition," the female voice cut in, "a woman is missing –"

Gabriel preferred the man’s voice: his was like bracing seawater; hers was like a wave of rotting seaweed, concealing broken glass.

"– we do not know where. The Project Manager’s assistant, Sandy Mindel."

Gabriel had seen her file.

The Cultivator cut in. "She must be brought to God, Brother Matthias, as quickly as possible, by whatever means."

Gabriel knew the "by whatever means" included doing it in public, in which case he would be discovered. Before he could voice his question, the woman spoke again.

"You must find her, Brother Matthias, and eliminate her. She may have seen our brother in the Eden Mission. He cannot be unmasked; his work is not yet done."

He raised his left hand in front of his shoulder, palm facing the leader.

"You may speak, Brother Matthias," the Cultivator said.

"I will do this. But if I am caught?"

The woman lashed out, "Then you will kill yourself as you have been trained, and go to meet your maker!"

Gabriel’s tongue involuntarily flicked back to his false left molar. Painless, so they said, but he didn’t believe it – he’d seen a comrade’s contorted face after one had been accidentally broken during a training bout. Besides, he’d seen too much death to believe it was ever painless. He bowed his head in silence. Inside the Star, respect for the Council was paramount, even if the interviewee had been misunderstood. The Cultivator rescued him.

"I believe, Sister Esma that Brother Matthias is referring to the ramifications after his body is found."

Gabriel knew now why this man was the leader of this Council. Sister Esma was the most righteous, but sending people on suicide missions was not just about orders from God, it required careful handling. However, the fact that the Cultivator had used her name was not good news for Gabriel.

"If you die while executing your mission, the Chorazin will realize they had an Alician within their midst. Even though you left them ten years ago, this will be damaging to them. A Chorazin agent becoming an Alician Cleanser is unheard of. If you are caught performing this act, it will focus attention on you, drawing it away from another Alician agent."

So, another Alician was still in the Chorazin.

The Cultivator continued, "Such a finding will cause fear and increased self-monitoring in the Chorazin; it will slow them down at a time when we are moving forward at a greater pace."

Gabriel knew they were telling him far more than they should. They firmly believed – presumed – he would be dead in the next twenty-four hours.

"Then my sacrifice will be all the more beneficial," he replied, and bowed deeply. Although the disciplined group remained motionless, he nonetheless heard their collective breathing ease, reflecting their satisfaction with his answer, with the exception of Sister Esma, whose out-breath was a derisive snort. He also perceived that the session was over, that he was about to be dismissed. He pressed his luck, raising his left hand again. Sister Esma inhaled sharply, but the Cultivator got there first.

"Brother Matthias, you have a further question?" His tone was a potent cocktail of surprise and menace.

"I have a question, but am not sure I am permitted to ask it."

This time Sister Esma did not wait. It had been what he had hoped for. He knew the leader would be annoyed by the question, but would be even more vexed by Sister Esma’s abrogation of his authority.

"You know very well the Dictates of Structure, Matthias!" she shouted.

He noted she had dropped his earned title of "Brother".

The Cultivator broke in. "To ask any question is your right, Brother Matthias, but you must take responsibility for what the answer brings."

He foresaw a power struggle between these two – it would be ended by the assassination of one or the other, as was the usual course of Alician internal politics.

"Brother Matthias, what is your question?"

He thought of Samuel: this is for you. "I understand, Your Eminence, that a ghoster may have been installed on the Devil’s craft." There, he had said it. He heard the two behind him gasp. Sister Esma said nothing, but her hooded head moved momentarily towards the direction of the leader, before she checked herself. She hadn’t known. The Cultivator drew himself up to his full height. Clearly, he had.

"Where did you hear this?" His voice was a drawn blade, seeking blood.

Gabriel knew he had to answer this question, or forfeit his own life here and now.

"In the Fourth Chapel."

"WHO?"

Gabriel bowed his head lower. "Brother Marcus," he said quietly. He saw the Cultivator make a quick hand movement, and the one behind Gabriel’s left side immediately left the Chamber.

The leader’s voice softened. "You have done well to bring this to our attention, Brother Matthias."

In Gabriel’s mind he closed Samuel’s eyes.

"And why does this concern you, Brother Matthias?" Sister Esma was no doubt enraged that she had not known, another reminder that she was not the leader; not yet, at least. Gabriel did not hesitate this time, but answered directly.

"Ghosters are an abomination. They are derived from science, and…" he paused, "even though they start as humans, they have no souls."

He waited for the answer. This time the Cultivator placed his hand on Sister Esma’s robed arm, and spoke as if delivering a sermon.

"Brother Matthias, ghosters are a tool. In this war – and we are in a war – we must use whatever weapons we have to secure victory. If we must use the devil’s own tricks against him, then that is what we will do. The ghosters these days, few as they are, volunteer for the procedure."

Gabriel found the idea of anyone volunteering to be changed into a ghoster an unlikely prospect. Alicians outwardly eschewed technology, to lure a blind following from gullible and angry masses, but he knew they were more advanced in some ways than most military governments.

"Go now," the Cultivator said, "release this woman Sandy’s soul. Do not fail."

Gabriel dropped to one knee, lowering his head. The Cultivator proffered his hand so that Gabriel could kiss it. With head still bowed, Gabriel stood and backed away to the entrance. It was done. As soon as he was back in the chamber he picked up his wristcom and wiped his lips on it, downloading the Cultivator’s pheromone signature.

Gabriel stood on the barely-lit street outside the Church, dressed in his original clothes. A light drizzle fell undisturbed by any breeze except the steam rising from hot-ground level. He walked over to the sleeping tramp on the otherwise deserted sidewalk – the rad-level was high even up here – and bent over to pick up what looked like a discarded plastic food carton. He snatched it up and glided over to a nearby disposal chute, retrieving something before discarding the box, and placed both his hands in his pockets. It was an antique silver locket, a four leaf clover carved on its front, his only connection with the past. He was relieved it was still there, where he had left it five hours ago. Luckily nobody picked up rubbish anymore, least of all that which lay next to a stinking, radioactive tramp. Gabriel had drugged the man just in case – Cleansers who left things to chance did not survive long.

He stared up into the rain, not bothering to shade his eyes from its acidic sting. Somewhere up there the dart-drone waited, primed with the Cultivator’s pheromone signature. As soon as the man left the building, the drone’s sensor would pick up the scent. Then it was just a matter of time. Samuel’s sacrifice had not been in vain, though he wished he could have taken out Sister Esma as well.

He took an elevator to the mid-levels and walked towards his squalid apartment in the ruins above the orange level rad-zone, passing the Virtual Sex boutiques. He lingered outside one. A flabby sleaze ball with waxed moustache called out to him, vaunting lurid promises Gabriel did not even hear, but he approached the man. Gabriel knew he was being captured on some vid system. They’ll think I know I am about to die, and wish one last carnal act before the end. He held his wristcom to the man’s reader, confirmed the credit transaction, and stepped inside.

No real women there, of course; that made the charade easier. He found an empty booth smelling of cheap deodorant, entered, and sealed the door. Inside were the usual plastic-sheeted padded table, an immerser headpiece, and a data crystal port.

He ignored the table and sat cross-legged on the floor. Pulling out the locket, he flicked it open and gazed at the holopic of the young girl inside, noting the family resemblance. He touched the picture, pulled out a sliver of quartz the width and depth of a fingernail, then snapped the locket shut with a click.

He got up, removed the sex menu crystal and jacked his own data shard into the port, donned the headpiece, and lay back on the table. It took only a few seconds to adjust. He was in a white room, so uniformly bright it was hard to see where walls, floor and ceilings began and ended. He heard stiletto heels, and turned around.

"Good evening, nice to see you are still alive," she said, a stunning redhead with green, feral eyes. She wore a vermillion tycra mini-dress. Gabriel and his Master always played along like this, just in case anyone hacked in. Of course in reality she could be fat and forty, or, in this case, a seventy year old pony-tailed male. What you see is all you get, he remembered, echoing the ambivalent ad of the Virtual Sex industry. But he wasn’t here for games. He switched to an undocumented Tibetan dialect, just in case any porn-hackers bypassed the audio jamming code built into his crystal.

"The Cultivator is taken care of. Samuel is gone, as I’m sure you know, but he is avenged: Brother Marcus tonight. Sandy Mindel, Kane’s assistant tomorrow."

"We’ve paid a high price for this. Nonetheless, Samuel would be proud of you," she replied, her dialect more polished than Gabriel’s. "There is a slim chance this Miss Mindel may know the password – if not, it died with Kane. We’ve already searched the city for her, but there is no trace. Not an easy trick with all the micro-surveillance these days." She smiled coyly, all part of the show.

Gabriel knew her words were a challenge to him to find Sandy, but he said nothing. She seemed about to turn, and then cocked her head at him. "You know where she is, don’t you?"

Gabriel nodded.

Her smile vanished. "The battle we have anticipated for a millennium is almost upon us."

"How close?"

"Maybe a week. We must find the password to open the ships. Then we can destroy them." Her face was grave, the charade suspended. She nodded once and turned, just as another woman entered. For the sake of the show, the two women embraced, languorously. Gabriel, embarrassed, wanted to look away, but that wasn’t possible inside a V-Sex scene. A low shanga beat started up as the platinum blonde let the redhead depart, and slinked over to Gabriel, stripping before him. His crystal had tactile sensory effects disabled – just as well, as she promptly sat on his lap and began to grind to the music, breasts brushing his chest, lascivious lips pouting centimeters from his own. He mentally disconnected from the scene, though it had been a very long time. He voided the thought and decided to end this – it was an illusion after all, like life. Letting his breathing rate increase, he began to moan, and within a minute faked an orgasm. It wasn’t so hard to counterfeit a climax – virtual sex booths enabled mental orgasm without its usual physical messiness – allowing the sex industry to escape certain laws, and sidestep health regulations. The too-perfect blonde stood up and sauntered off into the background. The entire scene faded to black static.

Gabriel slipped off the headpiece, removed the crystal, and put the locket back in his pocket. A week till they arrived; till the end of the world. So his own days, maybe his hours, were numbered. But he would play it out. Hundreds before him had died in the silent war that had endured nine centuries. In the fifteenth century Sentinels had gained the upper hand, but not for long. And now, trained Sentinels were few and far between, living on the run.

Outside, he smoked a cheroot he bought from a street trader in a darkened alleyway, watching the few people who dared the mildly acid shower scurry past. He leaned over a railing, his eyes following the cascade of rain plunging to ground level two hundred meters below. He remembered his real, non-Alician Master teaching him that life was like a drop of water in a waterfall. Each drop felt alone, confused, tumbling in chaos. But when it hit the water below, it rejoined the river and was at peace again. Gabriel let go of the cheroot, and watched its red ember blaze as it fell amongst the drops of rain.

Back in his apartment, he waited until midnight, then opened a psy-locked suitcase – letting the locking mechanism scan his EID signature. He thought of his dead sister, his emotional password. The carbo-titanium composite lock buzzed, then cracked open. He fished out his favored S&W plasma-bullet pistol, night lenses, navcon, and a pulse grenade. He fixed the locket around his neck, tucking it under a tight-fitting Chorazin vest.

Descending from his apartment, he took a service elevator down to ground level, entered a disused building, and forced open the rusted door. Broken glass crunched under his boots, sending several dinner-sized rodents scampering away. He continued down a metal spiral staircase until he reached a lead-lined storm door in the basement. Prying it open, he entered the stinking sewer that ran between the still-radioactive ruins of old Los Angeles, and the rad-free cave cities deeper below ground. He headed for the Eden Mission complex in New LA, five kilometers away. He knew why they couldn’t find Sandy anywhere in the city – she’d never left the Eden Mission building.

Chapter 8

Snow

Micah lay half-awake, half-dreaming that he was on Eden, with something alien crouching over him. He didn’t want to open his eyes. He heard a rustling sound, like sand-paper being crumpled. Inside this grating noise he could hear his name.

"Micah. Micah!"

It shouted his name, shaking him, screaming at him, growing to an ear-splitting roar.

He jerked awake with a gasp, gripping linen sheets. Hospital room, he assessed straight away, from the white everywhere and the sharp smell of disinfectant. A twang of nausea gripped his stomach. A blonde woman leaned over him, emerald green irises reefed with sharp brown borders. The way she studied him reminded him of a bird of prey. After a second he placed her as Louise, the Chorazin agent in his apartment. In the room’s cruel brightness he noticed several lines around the eyes – she was older than he’d first thought. He tried to smile but was overwhelmed by a throbbing that hammered outward from the centre of his brain. His face contorted into an ugly grimace. He rolled to his side, groaning, sure he was going to throw up.

"He’s awake," Louise said. "I’m out of here."

Despite the churning in his stomach he rolled back so he could see her. She reached over his head to do something he couldn’t see. However, he got a ring-side seat, observing the honed contours of her torso as it stretched within the narrow confines of her black tunic; all sinews and taut flesh. He heard something mechanical twist, and a flood of cooling rain burst in his head, drowning the pounding that had been there moments before.

"Trimorph, Micah," she said. "Pleasure and pain, never that far apart, really."

She left his field of vision, stiletto heels clacking her way out of the room. She paused at the doorway. "Later?" she asked, clearly not talking to him. Micah didn’t hear a reply, but the door swished behind her a little harsher than necessary. He listened to the dull susurration of the aircon, and the distant gurgling of assorted liquids invading his body via catheters in his wrists and neck. His eyes glazed toward the tiled ceiling, but despite the gentle warmth flushing through his body, as if he’d slipped into a foaming bath, he didn’t relax. He’d already guessed who else was in the room.

"Welcome back from the dead, Micah."

The crisp, word-perfect enunciated speech-pattern was still fresh in his mind, from just before whatever had happened to him. He scrunched his face, trying to remember. He’d been at home, in the lounge with two Chorazin agents, Vince and Louise, questioning him; Mom with the bread-knife; and he’d just decided to tell Vince why he’d gone to see the Project Manager… who was dead! Then that sound – a micro-lite. And then – here.

His speech came out like little black slugs. "Er…Vinz? S’at you?" He coughed, trying to get his larynx to work properly. Some spittle dislodged, and he swallowed, which took some effort, making him gag into the bargain. He was glad Louise had already left. "What happened? Where’s my Mom? Is she okay?" He tried to sit up but nothing happened. His heart accelerated – was he paralyzed? Whatever it was had hit him in the back, he recalled. He saw a black sleeved arm reach above him, and he felt the upper part of the bed inclining slowly, accompanied by a low motorized hum. As his viewpoint shifted, he recognized that he was indeed in a small private hospital room, one bed, a single window to his left, a couple of meters away, and an opaque sliding door directly ahead of him. Two uncomfortable-looking chrome chairs, one on each side of the bed, were the only other furniture. But it was suspiciously quiet for a hospital – at least any he’d been in before. No muffled sounds or cries of infants, or even creaking trolleys. He guessed he was in a Chorazin medical facility.

"That’s better," Vince said, in such a clipped fashion that Micah wasn’t sure who it was meant to be better for. His uncertainty didn’t last long.

"Now we can see each other. We have a few important issues to discuss."

He cast an eye over Vince: gun metal grey uniform, the vermillion Chorazin crest on the left breast, showing an eagle, one claw clasped around the blade of a dagger. Micah had read somewhere that no one outside the Chorazin knew what it signified. He watched Vince stalk over to the window. Every step measured. Micah presumed it was a holo-window, since it had a pre-War view – nowhere in this State had that kind of sunshine and blue sky anymore. And birdsong, that was too much. No birds lived in the cities anymore, or anywhere near them, especially as there was no longer any grass to give rise to the insects they’d eat.

The holo-window meant they could be anywhere, even underground. Vince turned to face him, hands behind his back, still standing bolt upright, not bothering to lean on the window ledge. This guy is all about control, tightly wrapped.

"You were shot with a voltage compression charge – a bullet big enough to cause massive organ damage and death, and an electrical charge high enough to fry your heart and engrams at the same time." He smiled thinly. "Best of both worlds. They wanted you dead – twice – first the bomb under your apartment, and then very quickly afterwards with a reliably terminal weapon. Some consolation for you is that the assassin is probably experiencing difficulties for failing twice to claim his or her target."

Micah stared at Vince, mouth open. Why kill me? He didn’t say it out loud, it seemed so ludicrous. He was just a systems analyst, a telemetry expert for heaven’s sake. But then why was he still alive? That question seemed less preposterous, somehow.

"Then, how come…?" he tried to gesture with his right arm, but a thunderbolt of pain stopped him dead within a centimeter. "Fuck!" Panting, he experimented, very slowly, and some movement returned. He placed his arm back on the bed. He closed his eyes momentarily, the pillow supporting the back of his head. Not paralyzed, then.

"The jacket you were wearing, Micah. You told me the nannites were inactive, as per the law."

Micah raised his eyelids to see Vince walk towards one of two metallic chairs, laying a hand on one, but remained standing, looking down on him.

He concentrated, with difficulty. He knew about the nannite-embedded jackets, worn by high-ranking military commanders in the last war. The nannites could react unbelievably fast, in picoseconds, changing the composition of the jacket to become a momentary barrier, protecting the wearer from harm, or at least usually from death. He couldn’t recall his mother ever saying it was inactive – he’d just assumed it was. Nor had she ever explained how his father had come to own one, since he wasn’t high-ranking, although he’d died with honours. Micah had never studied the medals that closely. They were gaudy reminders to Micah of where his father’s priorities had always lain, away from his family.

He knew, as everyone did, of the infamous Nannite Catastrophe which in only a month morphed fifty million people into muddy mush, and came close to infecting the whole planet. Since then it was highly illegal to own active nannites, in any form. Even in the War they were only brought out in limited supply after too many generals were assassinated by DNA-homing darts.

The risks of nannites mutating were deemed so high that possession alone carried the death penalty. Ignorance might commute the death sentence to life, but was difficult to prove in a court of law. He had to tread very carefully.

"So, it was active? I guess that means I’m in big trouble with the NRC?"

Vince walked over to Micah, very close, so that Vince’s head filled Micah’s whole field of vision. He had the type of streamlined baldness that zeroed you in on its owners’ eyes. Micah felt cornered by a cobra.

"Micah, it means three things. First, your mother has confessed to knowledge of the nannites and stated that you knew nothing. You should be proud, particularly in an era when most parents these days take out indemnity covenants in case their offspring decide to sue them later on in life. Second, it means that if we go to the public authorities, she will be executed, or with leniency, serve her remaining days in the state penitentiary." He strode to the window, turning his back.

Micah made to clench his fists, but his hands failed pathetically. His instinct was to find something spiked to throw at Vince’s back. But he was in no condition to attempt any such thing, and suspected in any case that Vince would dodge it or, worse, catch it in mid-air. This is what Chorazin do. Keep you off-balance. I must play this out at his level. Remain calm. He spoke, his voice not as steady as he’d hoped.

"That jacket saved my life. From some terrorist murderer, most likely. She saved my life. How could you let her be prosecuted? What possible good would that serve?" He tried to think Chorazin. He knew that compassion wasn’t in the Chorazin lexicon.

Vince stared outwards, as if he hadn’t heard Micah’s outburst. Micah tried to think. What did Vince want? And then it struck home. Micah had to acknowledge he was caught, to submit, to surrender. He thought of his mother, and his father, the big hero to others, no longer round to protect her. So be it. He decided to try and gain some kind of concession, though. He’d seen enough vids…

"Alright, you said three things. What’s the third?"

Vince spun around, fixing his eyes on Micah’s; no emotion.

"Third – you go back to the Eden Mission, but you work for me. We root out – then neutralize – the Alician threat. Afterwards, the jacket ends up an anonymous donation to the Memorial Military Museum, you never see me again, your mother is released, and she bakes you apple pies." He flashed a pencil-line smile.

Micah scowled. He felt like a rodent half-inside the mouth of a snake. He needed to find an edge, some act of defiance, no matter how small.

"And if you die, Vince, before it’s over? Do my Mom and I go down with you?" On instinct, he added, "Would you leave me in the hands of Louise?"

There was a subtle shift in those eyes, something small. The analyst part of Micah’s mind jumped to a conclusion that there was tension between Vince and Louise. He clung to it, some small reaction at least. Reluctantly, he considered what his father would have said. Why not try it?

"I want my mother released unconditionally. I’ll work for you, you have my word."

Vince nodded. Micah calmed down a little, though it had seemed too easy. Vince touched a panel and the door swished open, revealing an empty white corridor. Micah thought he heard a distant cry, or was it an adult scream?

"Wait," Micah said. "What happens next? I can hardly move for the pain. What am I supposed to do like this? And where’s my Mom now – is she okay?"

"Your mother was released two hours ago."

Micah’s relief at this news barely compensated for the instant humiliation he felt.

"You can call her before you leave. The doctor will give you something for the pain. We call it a booster. They were used in the War to keep people going when they should have really been in hospital in a coma. The pain will disappear. You’ll actually feel very good, for at least seventy-two hours. In an hour you go back to work. You act as if nothing has happened to you because no one knows it has, except us and the Alicians. However, you’ve lost thirty-six hours, so we called in sick for you – you had a random rad-check at your local clinic, according to the records." Vince’s smile radiated ice. "You do your job for now, Micah, and your job is to re-establish the real link to the Ulysses."

Micah couldn’t disguise his surprise.

"We found out why you went to see the Project Manager. While you’ve been out cold, we’ve been busy. Mr. Kane got a message out before he was killed, but our man didn’t arrive in time."

Vince’s brow furrowed for a moment, as he appeared to weigh something up in his mind. His face smoothed again, as he touched the panel, sealing the door closed again.

"Micah – I’m going to give you some information, because it’s important you understand the gravity of the situation. You also appear to put things together pretty fast – that’s your training as an analyst, I assume." He interlaced his fingers and then pushed them outwards, cracking the knuckles.

"Bad for the joints," Micah offered.

"Unfortunately, the Alicians have also been busy. Fifteen key Chorazin operatives worldwide were assassinated early this morning in various cities around the world. My own network – aside from Louise – was eradicated. We don’t yet know why, or whether it’s connected with the Eden Mission. But we believe the Alicians are accelerating their operations. Again, we don’t know why."

Micah still found it all surreal. How could he be mixed up in this? He’d often fantasized about being involved in some grand plot, but – fifteen people dead! His new-found tough self-image that he’d been basing on vid characters had to hit the slope sprinting. And it wasn’t a vid – real people’s lives had just… stopped. And he’d nearly been one of them.

"But am I meant to do things, you know, covertly? My colleagues, especially Rudi, will know if I start checking into the transmission source."

Vince cocked an eyebrow.

Micah tried to sit up, to think straighter, but couldn’t. Then he understood. "Bait! You’re using me as bait!"

"Your analytic training wasn’t a complete waste of money. Yes, the Alicians will try again. They never leave loose ends. You might as well be performing a useful function. And we’ll be watching your back."

"The jacket saved me last time, not you." He felt a welling-up of anger – at being shot, at suddenly being thrust into all of this; anger about his job, his life, Antonia, his father; at being coerced into a probably fatal role in some game he neither understood nor cared about. He began to fear he’d be overcome by this sudden torrent of emotion, even though he realized it must be at least partly related to the drugs coursing through him.

Vince gave a small shrug. "Fair point," he said. "This is a war, Micah. You and I aren’t each other’s enemies. The enemy is out there. They want you dead. They also want Sandy dead."

He’d forgotten about Sandy, and although his last encounter with her had been abrasive, she was like him now, a pawn caught up in something neither of them had volunteered for.

"She’s still missing. Louise is trying to find her before they do."

He knew Vince was right, but despite himself, he launched a fresh attack.

"But why are we at war, Vince, eh? Why are the Alicians here? Does it ever occur to you that they only exist, only thrive, because of the Chorazin and its excessive measures?"

Vince laughed, shaking his head. He walked over to the window, touched a small panel on the wall. It began to snow. "Well, I can see you’re feeling much better. Anger is a more useful emotion than people realize, and you’re going to need your strength. I’m neither philosopher nor historian, Micah – I’m a pragmatist, so I’m not going to get into socio-political rhetoric with you. I never, ever sympathize with the enemy. But let me leave you with something to ponder." He reached over to the drip feeding trimorph into Micah’s veins and shut it off. For Micah it felt like being thrown out of a warm bed into a bath full of ice and glass. He gasped, but gritted his teeth, determined to say nothing.

"Our most recent intelligence suggests that the Alicians are a much older organization than we ever suspected. I know what you’re going to say – their very name, Alicians, a nickname taken from one of the early, vitriolic verbal assaults on them by our late President before they took up arms, comparing their political naivety to Alice in Wonderland – is too recent. But did you ever wonder why they accepted this name so quickly?"

Micah decided to store these points for later analysis. He simmered. He glanced upward at the trimorph control, out of his reach.

Vince carried on. "You’re right, of course, at least partly – the situation surrounding the creation and rise of the Chorazin may have actually increased their support and given them a substantial legitimate political base via the Fundies. But I assure you Micah, that even without the Chorazin, they’d be here. And maybe they want people to think just the way you do. The greatest weapon in earth’s history has always been ideology. With ideology you can persuade millions to fight, to revolt, to resist, or to give up and never fight. So, Micah, the question is, what do the Alicians really want?"

Micah had no immediate answer. He’d always considered them as counter-point to the Chorazin. It was his turn to shrug, painful though that was.

"Exactly," Vince said. "One of our intelligence agents recently uncovered something, a deeper scheme. He was terminated before he could give any information over a secure network. But he was one of our top operatives, and he was pretty scared. Well, we found a few pieces of him yesterday morning." Vince faced Micah again. "So, Micah, you decide who your enemy is. And if you’re ever unsure, take a look at the bruises on your back. Or ask your mother. And one more thing. You should freshen up before you go to work. Trust me, you look infinitely worse than you feel."

Vince walked to the door, palmed it open, and stepped outside into a bland corridor, the door swishing closed behind him.

Micah watched the snow falling for some time, cooling his anger. He’d read about the Chorazin, how they were trained in advanced psychological manipulation techniques. Perhaps Vince was telling the truth, but probably only as he saw it. The Chorazin used ideology themselves, and precise, constrained information flow. Disinformation as well, to keep Chorazin members aligned and on track. Fear – always a deeper, more sinister plot – the favorite myth of the despotic hierarchy. He decided then and there that he didn’t believe a word of it. But now that the anger had subsided, the full extent of the pain from his back returned with a vengeance. He hoped the doctor would turn up soon with this miracle booster injection. Reluctantly, he also wished his mother was there to comfort him. The tough hero image he was experimenting with could re-emerge later.

But as he lay there, thoughts of his father intruded. He’d died in the decisive battle for Indonesia, near the end of the War. Died a war hero. Micah had had heroism rammed down his throat since he’d been a child. Yet he’d seen the other side of it, how it tore up families, how heroes usually had sharp edges with their spouses, how they couldn’t tolerate weakness from their own offspring – they could save people they didn’t know, but fail to protect and nurture their own.

He’d not shed a single tear at the full military honors funeral. Nor had he ever really considered how his father had actually died. For the first time, he imagined his father lying prone on that blood-soaked battle-ground in Jakarta, the life draining out of him while all hell was breaking loose, the din of combat all around. He wondered what his father would have been thinking in those last moments, whether the heroism, the honor, even the war itself would have been finally irrelevant as he’d felt life slipping away. Instead, maybe, just maybe, he’d have focused on the smaller people in his life, his family.

Micah shut out the hospital room, the world. He imagined himself on the bloodied battlefield, sitting by his dying father. He wouldn’t reach out his own hand unless his father did first, which was unlikely. Still, Micah remained, not speaking, not looking at his father, just staying there with him at the end, as the snowflakes slowly settled on both of them. It was the best he could offer.

Chapter 9

Decompression

The outer airlock door hissed closed and clunked into its locked position. Blake peered through the porthole into the fourth compartment. In the dimming light he could just make out the helmeted outlines of Zack and Pierre. Even in the near darkness, he could tell both men were stressed, shoulders tensed inside their suits. They were immobile, like statues from the New Smithsonian. He secured his lanyard to the airlock eyebolt, and strained to see the ghoster.

"Pierre, very slowly, lower your flashlight to the floor, point it to the ceiling like an uplighter – it has good night vision, we don’t."

As Pierre obeyed, Blake caught his first glimpse of the creature – still basically human in shape. It crouched behind the neutralino detonator. The last time he had seen one… he skipped over the memory. He glanced down through his visor to check the self-rigged short-range land-mine lashed onto his chest. The push-button actuator protruded two centimeters. It would kill him and the ghoster, but the others should survive.

He circled his tongue inside his mouth a few times to generate some saliva, and then swallowed, angling his two pulse rifles forwards at rib height. "Okay, everyone listen up. This is what’ll happen. I’ll count down in one second intervals from five to one. On 'Two', Zack go short to the left, Pierre, go three meters to the right, so you don’t shoot each other in crossfire. On 'One' I’ll open the door, and that creature will do one of two things – it’ll either come straight at me, or go for you, Pierre. I know you have the pulse rifle, but at close quarters Zack is a better shot. Reel out your lanyards so they don’t auto-stop when you jump. Kat – stay sharp and speak only if urgent. Any questions?"

"Just one, Skip," Zack said. "What’s the surprise you have in store?"

"Then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?" He couldn’t tell Zack, or else he’d try to save him, and they’d all end up dead. Blake took the silence that followed as assent.

He drew in a breath.

"Five."

Pierre reeled out several meters of lanyard, not taking his eyes off the ghoster, nor lowering his weapon. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was being used as bait because of the friendship between Blake and Zack. But there was logic in the plan. Even though he had the rifle, he’d never been in a real battle, and might freeze up. Zack wouldn’t.

"Four."

A trickle of cold sweat rolled down Zack’s spine. He’d been in too many battles to worry anymore about whether he would survive. He just wanted to get as many shots into the ghoster as possible. He wasn’t too sure of the "surprise" – especially after Blake’s once-only hesitation to kill the last one in Kurana Bay. He flexed his knees, shifting his weight onto his thighs, ready to spring.

"Three."

Thirty meters away, Kat sat in the cockpit, wondering how long it would take after the others were dead for the ghoster to make it to her, if it bothered at all. The landmine was a noble gesture, but she’d heard how indestructible these genetically re-engineered soldiers were, having been morphed with reptile genomes to make them fast and very, very tough. She chewed on a knuckle as she watched the screens, oblivious of how hard she bit down.

"Two."

Blake watched Zack and Pierre dive to left and right, and open fire. The ghoster leapt faster and higher than seemed possible, ricocheting off the ceiling, heading straight towards Pierre. Its head bobbed lizard-like to left and right, making it a tempting but elusive target

"One!" He rammed the "open" button with the rifle muzzle. The airlock door stayed closed. Christ! Not now! "Kat! Power!" He smashed a glass panel with the butt of his rifle to gain access to the manual lever, knowing it could take thirty seconds to open the hatch by hand. He cursed again, as he had to put both weapons down to try and get the door open.

He watched helplessly as Pierre got five rounds off into its chest before the creature smashed the firearm out of his arms, almost dislocating Pierre’s shoulder, and lunged forward with a claw-like hand to break his neck. Zack fired successive shots into the creature’s knee, causing it to lose its balance. Pierre kicked hard at its left side, trying to knock it over, as he dived out of range. A swipe from the ghoster’s claw-like hand hammered onto the floor where Pierre’s head had been a split second earlier, denting the metal deck.

The ghoster sprang backward off its good leg and spun in mid-air, hit the front of the neutralino detonator, and then rebounded off, colliding with Zack, knocking his pistol out of his gloved hand. Zack dodged the ghoster’s gnarled fist just in time as it pistoned into the hull, sending a deafening echo around the room.

"Got it!" shouted Kat, re-energizing the relays. "Captain, it’s armed the detonator! Fifty-seven seconds!"

The hatch slid open. Blake snatched up both rifles in one fluid motion and began firing, just as it stamped its good leg down on Zack’s knee. Zack yelled with pain, while Pierre got to his feet and loosened his lanyard, his shattered pulse rifle lying next to him. Six shots from Blake pounded into the ghoster’s right side, enough to make it turn. Zack, his faceplate close to the ghoster’s eyeless head, rammed his knife into its stomach, between ribs that criss-crossed its torso, twisting the serrated blade between the scales. The ghoster’s scream intensified as it leapt off Zack towards Blake.

He fired both weapons at the ghoster in synchrony. Each double-pulse shot shoved it back, but still it closed on him. The ghoster’s mottled scales glowed red where the pulse charges hit. It leapt forward and swept Blake’s arms aside, spinning his pulse rifles against the walls. Then it saw the landmine on his chest and recoiled. For a fraction of a second, Blake could discern the features of the human face that had once been there, and almost faltered, but then he seized the ghoster’s wrists and tugged it towards him, pushing his own chest outward.

With a strangled shriek, the ghoster was yanked backwards, breaking Blake’s grip. Pierre’s lanyard was taut around the ghoster’s neck, like a lasso. After a moment of disbelief that he wasn’t dead, Blake dived for one of his rifles, rolled and came up firing again, this time aiming at its head. It was losing strength, but it yanked Zack’s knife out from its ribs. With its double-jointed shoulders it slashed the lanyard behind its neck and once again went for Blake, raising the knife high.

Zack, his voice choked in agony, shouted. "Pierre, hang on to something fast!" Zack fired his pistol at the escape hatch panel. Pierre threw himself towards two large crate straps and locked his arms around them. The ghoster saw where Zack was aiming and moved to grab a harness. At that moment, a shrill ghoster-like wailing erupted from the comms system, causing the ghoster to spin around to see where it was coming from. Blake fired twice hitting it straight in the face, knocking it off-balance. At Zack’s third shot, the hatch flew open.

The room depressurized with a thunderclap and a howling wind. Zack had already anchored himself. Pierre clung on for his life as his legs lifted off the ground.

Blake was whisked off his feet, suspended in mid-air by the decompression, tethered by his waist lanyard, but he kept firing at the creature. The ghoster hit the man-sized hole and almost passed through it, but clung on to the edges with its claws digging into the metal, trying to pull its body back inside the ship.

Blake knew that if it hung on for a few seconds longer, the room would fully depressurize, and then it would enter the room and once again attack.

Kat shouted "No!" as he retrieved his own knife and in one smooth cut slashed through his lanyard. The suction propelled him head-first into the ghoster. He spread his arms wide and smashed into the ghoster full-on, head-butting its chest like a human cannonball. With one last gurgling scream, the creature lost its grip and reeled into space. Blake’s shoulders tore at him as he fought to prevent himself being dragged out too. With his head poking through the hull, he watched the ghoster flail wildly, spinning away from the ship. When it reached the invisible warp shell, it blazed bright as a meteorite for a second, then was gone. The depressurization ceased, and the artificial gravity pulled Blake back inside.

Kat came on-line, desperate. "Pierre, the detonator!"

Pierre sprang over to the ND console. For a moment he stared at it. He hit several keys, his left hand steadying his right wrist. The counter stopped at two seconds. He slumped down with his back to the ND, raised his knees, and rested his helmeted head on them.

Blake had landed hard on the floor, where he crouched, panting, sweat streaming past his ears inside his helmet. He lifted his wrist console and checked the heart rate indicator: 192, descending.

Zack spoke first. "Sweet Jesus! I just aged…ten years. Nothin’ to do…with relativity. Kat. Trimorph. Please…Leg..." The rest was mumbled expletives.

Blake helped Pierre upright while he flicked a few more ND switches. The counter reset to zero and three green lights glowed.

"It’ll take 30 minutes to shutdown fully, Sir, but it’s safe now. I’ll come back later. I can seal the escape hole, but to save on air, I suggest we transfer the three remaining oxygen cylinders out of here and leave this room depressurized."

Blake was still catching his own breath. "Agreed. And thanks Pierre, that was a pretty unorthodox move back there."

Pierre was visibly shaken, but a smile cracked across his face. "Just came to me. My mother once sent me to a ranch in the Pyrenees, to get me away from equations. I spent the summer working with wild horses. They usually broke me rather than the other way round, but I learned a few rope tricks."

Blake nodded, and then looked to one of the internal cameras. "I assume that was you, Kat, distracting the ghoster."

She laughed nervously. "Felt pretty helpless up here – had to do something. I figured the one thing it wouldn’t expect to hear was another ghoster. I recorded one of its screams and played it back over the speaker."

"Good work, Kat."

Blake moved over to Zack, squatting next to him. "How are you, buddy?" He stared down at his mutilated leg. The word "ugly" didn’t cover it.

"Shattered. Cracked rib, too. You gonna… take off… your surprise?"

Blake tilted his head downward. The actuator had been pushed half-way in. Gingerly, he eased it back out, then twisted it clockwise, locking it into safe mode. He unhooked it and set it down on the floor.

Zack tried to laugh, grimacing. "That was… your whole… fucking plan?"

He shrugged. "Kat, meet us outside the hatch with the trimorph. He watched Zack’s face contort with pain. "Double-dose."

Blake re-entered the cockpit where Zack, leg plastered in an ivory gelcast, tried unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position. Pierre and Kat slept. They were all exhausted, but someone had to stay awake – he was Captain, and Zack was in too much pain to sleep, despite the trimorph.

"That was pretty close," Zack said. "A little too much like the old days."

"Unless Eden becomes a real possibility, those days will be back soon enough." He brooded, while the silence congealed around them. He hadn’t noticed how noisy the cockpit had been, until the virus wiped out most of their systems.

"What’s up, Skip? Is it Robert?"

He hadn’t been thinking about his dead son, though he knew why Zack might assume he was. He stored it for later. "Something else. You won’t like it."

"I didn’t sign up with you for happy endings."

Blake got up and walked around the small cockpit, testing various pieces of equipment; most of it didn’t respond in any way. "The Alicians hold three as a holy number."

Zack’s brow furrowed. "Oh, I get it. The ghoster and the computer failure: that makes two." He looked around. "You thinking another piece of equipment?"

"No. They call it a triangulated attack. The three attempts must be of a different nature."

"Boss, I’m just a simple astronaut from Queens."

"You see, a computer – something electronic; a ghoster – something bio-engineered."

Zack leaned forward. "You know I’m crap at this. What comes next?"

"I’m not sure. There’s no textbook, but it would be something more subtle."

Zack nudged him on the arm. "You have a hunch. What the hell is it"

Blake frowned. "Trouble is, once I say it, it’s out, there’s no going back, and if I’m wrong…"

"Goddammit, Blake. Tell me what you think it is. What if you’re right? At least let me know, just in case, you know…"

"Something happens to me?"

Zack shrugged, then winced with pain.

"Okay. Here it is: one of us. Unconscious implant, so we’d get through the screening, unaware until a pre-set trigger event or signal."

Zack sat back and let out a whistle. "You’re right. I don’t like it at all. We’ll be watching each other like hawks, knowing that once the implant is triggered, that person will turn into a homicidal maniac." Zack pounded the upper part of his cast with a fist.

Blake raised an eyebrow. "Does that help?"

"Sometimes one pain can dull another." He scratched his cast where he’d just been hitting it. "Makes you wonder though, don’t it, why they’ve gone through all this trouble to stop us getting there?"

Blake pursed his lips. "They feed on people’s desperation. Eden is hope; spoils their rhetoric, not to mention their balance sheet." He wanted to spit.

Zack shifted position, grimaced, and shifted back. "I guess." He heaved himself up, and began limping out of the cockpit, then paused. "Hey, hang on a minute – the oxygen situation. How’s that fit with your implant theory?"

Blake spoke quietly. "Pierre said the oxygen left will just do if two of us go into stasis until we get within half a light year of Eden."

"So, which two? If one of us has an implant…?"

"Good question, my friend, good question.

Chapter 10

Stakes

Four months earlier…

Blake stood on the threshold of the antique wood-paneled office. The smell of leather upholstery, mingled with the residue of a Havana cigar, drifted out into the corridor. The mid-afternoon blinds created a lattice of orange shafts of light which sliced diagonally across the office. The rays framed the slim, seated figure surrounded by a nebula of drifting dust motes. It gave Blake the overall impression of a miniature galaxy, this one man as its epicenter.

From his silhouette, Blake recognized someone who used to be a fit soldier. But age and battle had exacted their toll, lending a hollowed-out leanness to the body. Still, the alertness, obvious in the angle of the neck and head, spoke of someone who was no stranger to command. The seated man with five polished stars on his shirt collar looked up from a holo-pad and punched a desk control, snapping the blinds shut, restoring the lighting to a more tolerable sunset level. Blake had seen what was on the holo-pad before it had cleared – photos of the four assassinated astronauts who were to have led the Ulysses mission to Eden. Blake had wanted this mission like hell, but not at this price.

"Come in, Blake," he said, his voice raspy but firm. "And don’t salute me. I sit behind a desk too much these days to respect myself, so I don’t want it from you of all people."

Blake saluted anyway, and waited, standing to attention.

"At ease, soldier," General Kilaney sighed.

Blake nodded and sat down in the chair indicated. He remained straight-backed, refusing to surrender to the inviting black leather. He noticed how much weight his old mentor had lost.

"I see you haven’t lost the tricks of the trade." The General passed Blake a glass of iced water. Blake took it and clinked glasses with him. A single splash of bourbon escaped from the General’s tumbler, as he met Blake with defiant eyes. "To absent friends."

Blake held his glass high. "To absent friends." He savored the cool water. It was thirty-five Celsius outside, even in the depth of winter high in the Rockies. Somewhere he could hear soldiers marching, being drilled. Some things never change.

He sipped gingerly and watched the General – his erstwhile mentor – wondering whether he would indeed end up like him, stuck behind a desk these past ten years, shuffling papers instead of soldiers, riding a holo-rig instead of a real fighter, wasting away in endless meetings. Still, he respected the General. The NWA, the shaky Post-War coalition of some fifty-three aligned nations, needed people like him near the top. He waited while the General scrutinized him over the rim of his glass. His eyes hadn’t lost their edge.

"How’s Glenda doing?" the General asked.

Blake’s grip on the glass became iron. "Fine, Sir. She’s doing fine," he replied. "Thanks for asking."

The General slammed his glass down on the edge of his desk, grabbed the sides of the chair and hauled himself up. "Stay put, Captain! And don’t give me any more bull. This is me you’re talking to. I said how the hell is she?"

He took another sip, not meeting the General’s gaze. He felt the soothing water travel down his throat, but a moment later it felt as dry as the Potomac riverbed.

"First cancer successfully treated.’ He took another sip. "With the ambient rad-levels, it’s almost certain to return within a year." He paused, feeling the pressure rise in his chest, pushing up against his throat. He didn’t want to say it. He hadn’t said it to Glenda, though she knew well enough. He took a breath. "Then she’ll have a few months at most – second timers don’t usually…" He willed his fingers to ease off the glass.

The General perched on the desk. "Damned sorry. You tell her that, Blake."

He wanted to change the subject. "Sir, why –"

"You pretty much have command of the mission, there’s just the final psy check tomorrow, then it’s yours."

He nodded once. He’d worked so hard for this, even if others would assume he only got it because of his so-called "hero" status.

"Thank you, Sir."

"Well, I don’t mind telling you and no one else – I always had you as first choice. Kacheng was a good man, sure, but his assassination put you back in front."

He flinched at the memory of Alpha Team’s shuttle exploding in a shroud of white-hot flame seconds after take-off to Zeus. He stared down at his glass. The last shards of misty ice surrendered to the afternoon heat. "Who’s my team, Sir?"

The General slumped back down into his chair. "Zack will be your first officer and Chief Pilot."

Blake allowed himself a sigh of relief.

"The other two – well, one thing about the Forces is I don’t have to argue with you about it. You’ll have Pierre Bertrand as Science Officer and our Katrina Beornwulf, on Comms."

He stiffened. "Bertrand – you can’t mean Professor Bertrand’s son? After his father blocked all our gen-defense research during the War? And Beornwulf – you want me to baby-sit?" He stood up and walked around to the back of the chair. "Permission to speak freely, Sir?"

The General’s eyes glinted as he raised his glass in a mock toast. "Denied. I know neither one is your choice, but Pierre’s a genius, and smart too, and you and I understand both the difference and the rarity of the combination. Don’t blame him for the sins of his father. Beornwulf – well, she passed all the exams. Practically a comms wizard, and the last thing we need is a third loss of communications. Anyway, her uncle and all that… You can’t always avoid politics. God knows we owe both France and England enough."

He noticed how weary the General seemed, the hollowing around the eyes, that haunted look. He instinctively glanced to the General's right wrist, under the shirt-sleeve cuff. He could just make out the tell-tale small triangular holes of a micro-transfusion implant. He met the General's gaze again – the look on his face confirmed it, but the General continued unabated.

"Blake, there’s more. And it’s Black level. You don’t tell anyone – not Zack, not Glenda, not even your mistress if you damned well had one. Nobody outside this room."

Blake leaned forward.

"Why do we need Eden?"

He sharpened his eyes on the General. He couldn’t be joking. "We need its resources. In the longer term, a sister planet for Earth – we can colonize it, though it will take around –"

"Fifty years." The General finished the sentence for him. "We have ten, that’s all."

Blake’s mouth opened involuntarily. He thought of all the things he could say, but there would be no point. He studied the deep lines on the General’s face that spoke of heavy responsibilities and things nobody would want to know, but somebody had to.

"Sir?"

"The biosphere isn’t going to recover. Not for around fifty thousand years. We have maybe ten years like this, hiding from the sun, waking and sleeping in our sweat unless we’re fortunate enough to live underground. You know the only remaining productive food farms lie in the Polar grain-belts, but a couple of years after the last subsea permafrost is gone, the average temperature outside will shoot up from forty-five to sixty-five degrees Celsius. In one year. Unsustainable."

Blake needed to be sure. "But the research – I’m no scientist, but I took a good look. The re-forestation; the Arctic re-freeze project…"

The General waved a hand. "Statistics and lies – garnished with some truth, of course, but the climate cascade we instigated with our little nuclear catharsis is locked in. We’ll actually have a drop in temperature of a couple of degrees in the next five years, but then it will rise and keep on rising, linear at first, and then after a decade, a step change."

"What about the lunar projects? Mars reclamation?"

"Won’t work on the moon without Earth’s resources. And Mars – well, Mars is probably what we’re going to look like a million years from now; after we’ve cooled down again."

He trusted this man’s judgment – he was high enough in the machinery to have quality information. He sank back into the chair, draining his glass.

"Now you see, Blake. You see why we need Eden. Survival. Plain and simple. We have a decade to start colonizing it, and start building as many ships as possible."

"We’ll only move a fraction of the population, even if things go well. The Alcubierre Drive won’t handle transport-sized ships."

"I know, it’ll be tough. But we’ve had some luck recently with this new dark matter tech. Maybe with another research break… If we can get Earth organized... But only if there’s the dream – if Eden fails, all humanity will see is the abyss – we’ll tear ourselves apart before the end. So, Eden’s the only game plan, our last chance. Someone needs to set foot on it, come back, talk about it – shout about it."

Blake nodded slowly, but in so doing, he knew he was transferring the tremendous weight from the Old Man’s shoulders onto his own.

"You can handle it, Blake. Frankly, I don’t know another who could – except maybe me, fifteen years ago." He heaved himself up out of his chair. "Two more things," he said, as he picked up the bourbon bottle and held it out. This time Blake nodded, and watched the cedar-colored alcohol sluice into his empty tumbler.

"You have to return with good news. Eden is like propaganda during a war, but this time everyone needs it – they need the dream, or God help us all. Whatever it takes – that’s why I wanted you in the first place. You get the mission done, even if you have to leave people behind."

Blake winced inside.

"Oh, I know you lost a lot of men in Kurana Bay. But you completed your orders. You understood what I taught you all those years ago. Mission first, men second. It sucks. Most soldiers can’t handle it. You can. It’ll be rule number one on this mission."

Blake gazed into the bourbon. He’d been having the old nightmares again, seeing faces of the dead, their unseeing eyes wide, as if they still had something to say. "Second thing, Sir?"

"Heracles didn’t suffer an accident. It was sabotage – we don’t know how yet, but there’s no question about it. Explosion. Tore the ship apart. They never stood a chance."

Blake felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, but he wasn’t surprised. He’d known that crew well, too. "Alicians?"

"Seems crazy, but the more society unravels and despair sets in, the more people turn to those bastard Fundies, and the more support bleeds into their terrorist wing. They’re a virus, and they’re making us weak just when it’s our last chance to be strong and survive. It almost makes me long for the days of the Chinese Dragon Hegemony before WWIII tore that abomination apart – at least they thought long term."

Blake narrowed his eyes as he remembered something. "You know what Professor Bertrand said? He said that the rise of a global religion, with easy-to-follow rules and a multi-cultural God was inevitable after a global war." But then Blake remembered more – he’d said the rise of fundamentalism had been engineered. No one had paid much attention to him by then – he’d moved too far beyond his comfortable scientific domain to the treacherous landscape of politics. He’d also developed a habit of ranting in public. And after he’d been assassinated, giga-quads of his data disappeared in the infamous web-net crash. "I never quite grasp why they fear Eden, Sir."

The General swirled the remaining bourbon in his glass. "Well, my father told me a long time ago the last thing a priest wants to see is a genuine miracle – it reminds ordinary people that priests are servants – representatives – not the real thing. Alicians don’t like it. But Eden’s a miracle alright, and we damn well need it. And we’ll fight for it all the way." He raised his glass.

Blake remembered how different the General had been at his and Glenda’s wedding twenty-three years ago, bursting with life and energy. Everyone had told Blake he was marrying too young, but this man, a captain then, had told Blake to listen to everyone, then do what his heart commanded, and never second-guess himself afterwards. It had been his way of life ever since. He owed this man a great deal. "You can count on me, Sir."

The General eased backwards and closed his eyes, a hint of a smile emerging.

Blake stared again at the General’s wrist, wrapped in frail skin like waxed paper. Glenda had the same micro-porous chemo transfer system. He sensed the formalities were over, and cleared his throat. "What stage are you, Bill?"

The General’s smile faltered, but his eyes stayed shut. For the first time in Blake’s presence, he spoke softly, his voice no longer in uniform. "I should be around to hear you arrived on Eden, but I’ll miss your homecoming. Now, go home to Glenda, leave an old man in peace."

Blake knew better than to push the issue – dignity, the last vestige of this man’s identity, was all that was keeping him going. He got up quietly, and parked his half-full glass on the desk. At the doorway he took one last look, saluted and held it for a long moment, then closed the door behind him with a soft click, as if closing the coffin lid on a dear friend.

Chapter 11

Kurana Bay

Ten years earlier…

Zack heard the shouting voices, including his own, screaming at Blake.

"Pull the trigger; take him out for Christ’s sake!" Zack saw the ghoster leaping from man to man, ripping out their throats like they were paper soldiers on a daisy chain. Only Blake had a clear shot. But he wouldn’t take it. The screeching of the ghoster was mind-numbing, but Zack fought against it. Ted and Abe fell as the ghoster smashed their skulls together, ignoring the two commando knives they had both buried half-way into its thorax.

"Blake! Shoot! For fuck’s sake shoot!" Zack knew why he didn’t. Sons of bitches! He limped, blood pissing from a gaping wound in his left leg, his left arm already broken, a machete in his right hand. Shots rang out but only Blake had the Slow Gun, the ghoster killer that embedded a delayed pulse charge inside the body, exploding it from the inside. Archie and Kalim were grappling with it but it was triple jointed and soon it had them, snapping both their necks with a dual, sickening crunch. Only three of them remained. Charlie pinned himself against the wall, terrified.

"Charlie, high and low, you high!" Charlie glared, knowing it meant his death, but he bit his lip and screamed like a madman, flinging himself high in the air, two razor sharp machetes raised to strike it, while a fraction of a second later, Zack dropped onto his back, pushed off from the wall with his good leg, and slid in the blood-soaked floor. The ghoster caught both Charlie’s wrists and was about to bite through his jugular when beneath him Zack slashed six inches through the ghoster’s groin. It couldn’t raise a foot to crush Zack’s skull because Charlie’s weight was still on him. It spun Charlie’s left wrist, breaking it, and drove one of the machetes through Charlie’s neck, decapitating him. Blood sprayed the walls. Zack chopped the left leg of the ghoster clean off at the calf. It somehow kept its balance, threw Charlie’s slack body away, and hopped to face Zack, Charlie’s machete in its claw. Zack gazed into those hooded eyes he had once known so well. There was a dull popping sound and a flash of light. The ghoster looked down at the hole in its stomach, then it exploded, flinging parcels of flesh and clay-colored blood over the entire room. Blake had fired the weapon.

Zack crawled over towards Blake, past the open-mouthed head of the ghoster, finally silent. Blake sagged against a wall, bleeding from a chest wound caused in the first seconds when they’d encountered the ghoster, only a minute ago, after having destroyed most of the ghoster complex and set free a dozen captives, and killed four more ghosters already transformed but not activated. Once transformed, there was no way back.

Zack leaned against the wall too, next to Blake, surveying the carnage. They both looked inevitably towards the ghoster’s head: the trace of curly black hair still apparent if you knew where to look; a scar on the cheek from a farming accident two years ago; the mottled Caucasian skin. Zack noticed Blake’s right hand trembling. It had never done so before, not in nearly three years of battle. But Zack knew why it did now. It was the hand that had pulled the trigger.

They’d come to Kurana Bay, deep behind enemy lines, because they’d captured and interrogated a ghoster scientist to find out the location of the processing centre. They’d heard a rumor they were using POWs as ghosters. After the questioning, they were going to send the man back to base for further interrogation. The scientist had known he would be tortured by Chorazin there, so he’d taunted Blake with terrible information, and it had worked. Blake had slit the man’s throat from ear to ear and watched him bleed to death, convulsing for a full minute. It seemed too lenient now, as Zack gazed at the head of the boy he’d been godfather to.

Zack studied Blake’s ashen face, as he stared at the ghoster’s – the boy’s – head. And when he spoke, it was not the voice of his captain Zack heard, but of a man distraught, chopped up inside, who would never be whole again. He turned to Zack, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the bloodstains of his offspring.

"They took my son, Zack! They took Robert and they stole his soul!"

There was nothing Zack could say. He gathered up the dog tags of their dead platoon members, got the released captives – young boys Robert’s age – and Blake, outside, then torched everything. A heli-jet picked them up minutes before the enemy’s reinforcements arrived. They had to leave the burning bodies of their men behind, to give room for the half-drugged captives they’d saved. Zack gave Blake a heavy dose trimorph shot. It seemed the best thing to do. Robert was listed as Missing in Action. No one ever found out he’d been at Kurana Bay. Blake and Zack made sure no one ever would.

Chapter 12

Mariana Trench

Jennifer knew a prize worth fighting for when she saw it. Professor Dimitri Kostakis was a burly, brusque Greek – not the statuesque version. His goatee beard and large mahogany eyes danced in accompaniment whenever he laughed, which was often. His hands seemed far too big to manipulate the cramped submersible controls, let alone work the students he seduced.

Jennifer was the current young researcher willingly under his spell. She’d ignored the warnings, even the sad evidence of his damaged cast-offs. He was a true genius, and when they were together, they skated along the rim of scientific discovery, peering over the edge. She was along for the ride, and had no illusions about how long it would last. Besides, many of the women left in his wake were themselves now highly sought-after researchers, so great was the influence of working with this man, his mind, and his legendary resources.

Jennifer didn’t consider herself pretty, being short, and a little stockier than she would have preferred. But she possessed shoulder-length auburn hair and dark bottle-green eyes, a combination she knew how to use to effect. She’d snared him when he was going through an awkward break-up with another student. She had arrived to console him when he was working late in his University office. At one point, while they were both studying a large oceanographic map of the Solomon Trench, she’d leaned across it to reach a far-flung pencil, and stayed there. She turned her head and gazed at him. He’d been surprised, but hadn’t disappointed her.

A year later, given that she was now alone with him ten thousand meters underneath Pacific rollers, in the most advanced research submersible in the world, she guessed he wasn’t disappointed with her either. It wasn’t exactly a honeymoon, though, in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific, mid-way between Japan and New Zealand, with no decent toilet facilities since departing Guam.

She stared into the darkness outside the bathysphere’s single porthole. She imagined a giant milky eye being lowered into the depths on a fishing line. But they hadn’t seen anything interesting for two hours, except the ubiquitous suspended sediment, shining like lazy white worms in the bright halogen lights. Sometimes it was there, a hypnotic snowstorm, but at other times it was as if someone had painted the portholes black.

The pressure outside gave her a chill. She imagined a continent of solid, ice-cold water sinking them ever deeper, burying them so they would never return. There was no plan B, no rescue plan if anything went wrong: no standby sub, and they couldn’t exactly swim ten kilometers upwards holding their breath. She switched tracks; this line of thought was on its own downward vector.

They hadn’t spoken for at least thirty minutes, and she longed to hear his musical voice, to dispel the silence that hung like damp fog in the air.

"How are you?" she asked, though she hadn’t been oblivious to his constant tampering with the controls for the last half hour. He’d exhausted all his funding reserves on this trip. Six months earlier a deep-probe robot sub had been lost in this God-forsaken place, but not before it had transmitted a single picture. Analyzed a thousand ways, all it revealed was a blurred angular silver shape in the vertiginous depths of the trench, with a massive metallic structure in the background. After initial media hype, it was dismissed as a camera refraction error, or at best a new species of deep-water shark, and promptly forgotten. Deep sonic probes from the surface picked up nothing, but Dimitri had argued that the very symmetry of those sonic results was suspicious. She’d been one of the few non-sycophants who also found it sinister. He had tried to link this incident with ancient stories from aboriginal tribes in the Caroline Islands, tall tales of a giant comet crashing into the seas a thousand years earlier. But whenever he’d gotten close to current sources of those oral myths, people had disappeared, unable to be traced.

She asked a second time. "I said, 'How are you?"

He stopped fussing with the controls, and returned her gaze, his face lighting up. "I’m fine so long as you are here with me."

She loved his clichés, because she knew he really meant them, even if they all had a makeover date, when some new girl would catch his eye and become his mistress. Most Greek men, she’d heard, were like this – boys who never really grew up. She didn’t care. These days, it was refreshing to know someone with so few emotional scars or hang-ups.

"You’re worried," she said, hoping to spur him into conversation. If it hadn’t been such a small space, she’d have expected him to stomp up and down as he did in his office, or when he was giving a lecture, exasperated at his students’ inability to see beyond the equations to the larger principles, to the meaning, to the very passion of life he saw in everything. But instead she saw his ox-like shoulders sag, as he leant back in the pilot’s seat that struggled to embrace his girth. He savored all good things in life. Gourmand, she knew the French would call him, which English-speaking people would incorrectly translate as "greedy".

"I had hoped to find something by now. We’re at least as deep as the probe was."

She’d observed him many times in action, crossing verbal swords with other academics in treacherous public scientific debates resembling gladiatorial matches. He’d left ego stains and ruined careers scraped across auditorium walls. She countered his uncharacteristic glum mood in the only way she knew would work with him. She shifted gear into scientist-mode.

"Remote probes have significant variance in calibration integrity at extreme depths. We don’t know what actual depth the incident took place, or exactly where it was, to more than a precision of five hundred meters. And its black box was crushed when it imploded." She smiled, as if she’d just answered an oral exam question – with honors.

He nodded, but the frame of his smile faltered.

She knew why: it had been a major part of the mystery. The remote probe, needing no human crew, had been very tough, rated to twelve thousand meters, far deeper than where implosion occurred. As for the black box, they were all but indestructible these days, and the probe’s umbilical's, once wound back up to the surface, had looked as if they’d been bitten through by very sharp teeth.

She remembered her father saying this region was one most submarine captains – Perishers as they were called inside the navy – avoided if at all possible. They called it Lucifer’s triangle, a reference to its surface cousin off Bermuda. There had been strange sightings at depths, he’d told her, and the unexplained loss of at least four nuclear submarines in the last seventy years, though only two of those were ever made public. She touched the silver locket around her neck, her father’s picture in full dress uniform on one side, her brother at age sixteen on the other. She rarely looked at the pictures. She didn’t need to.

Dimitri’s hand reached across to take hers.

"You miss them, don’t you?" he said. "Is there really no one left for you back home?"

Images fast-framed across her mind: the aerial nuclear detonations, the return to her incinerated village, the news of her father’s submarine lost with all hands, her brother killed in action somewhere in Tibet, and two years of Irish urban guerrilla warfare – when she’d done as many unspeakable things as had been done to her. She’d even had to change her identity for five years afterwards until the general amnesty came into force. She bolted a smile in place.

"No one," she said, and added, before her smile caved in like quicksand. "What about you? Your family in Greece?"

"Ah," he said, eyes downcast, "My beloved Santorini is still there, sheltering my mother underneath that hideous sunroof across the whole island – but from the cliffs she gazes down over the hazy sea, not up to the scorched sky. She is still sturdy, and manages to bear the forty-five degrees. Of course, she stays in during the summer. My brother Kostas lives in the Achilles dome just outside Athens; it is more for climate control and water reclamation than staving off radiation." He gazed through the hull into a remembered distance. "Greece was lucky in the War – unlike your unfortunate emerald isle – but it is now being rent in two by the Fundie movement – those for, those against. I even had mother, an Orthodox Christian all her eighty years, suddenly quoting the Alician Structure to me last time I was home. Still, maybe it’s preferable to the previous seven years of bitterness after she lost two sons in the War. The happy Greece of my childhood and adolescence, of laughter, sea, sun and – "

He skipped over a word, and she appreciated the afterthought.

"– friends, is now relegated to antique postcards. Whenever I return to my University, both sides plead with me to speak for them, so I …" His voice cracked. He stopped.

"What?" she asked quietly, leaning forward. She rarely heard him talk about home. In fact, she realized she’d never heard him speak like this about anything – he usually concentrated on his work, where he was so upbeat, so positive.

When he looked at her, she realized it was as if he was naked before her, nothing to hide behind. With something between shock and elation, she realized he trusted her. His cast-offs would kill her if they knew.

"I hide underwater." He uttered a solitary, mirthless laugh. "That’s what my brother said, last time we spoke – shouted – at each other."

She reached out her hand. "Dimitri –"

A single harsh beep intruded, shattering the intimacy. His eyes widened more than usual. He twirled his chair back around to the multron panel. Her hand hung in mid-air for a moment, before she too returned to her displays.

His voice regained its exuberance. "Something is there! And it’s big!"

His excitement caught her. "Two hundred meters to port," she read from her display. As the image updated with the next sonar sweep, she saw it more clearly. "It’s huge," she whispered, as the sonar revealed the outer edge of a colossal structure.

"We have to go in closer," he said, almost shouting. "Prepare to release the umbilicals." He stood up, rocking the submersible as he did so, moving to the release panel overhead.

"Wait!" she said. "Give me thirty seconds, I want to send a data-stream up before we release."

"We can send data pods up when we get closer." He began punching in the release code.

Her fingers worked fast; she had her own suspicions about what had happened to the probe. "Please, darling, just twenty more seconds." She hit a key and the upload began.

He waited only ten. "There, my love, you’ve had your twenty seconds!" He tapped in the final digit.

She glanced at the screen. She’d done it, the data-squirt had left one second earlier, racing up the umbilical comms line.

The sphere wobbled back and forth like a skittle not quite knocked over, as the submersible unshackled from the ship ten kilometers above, a puppet severed from its strings. The auto-thrusters switched on to compensate. Dimitri threw himself back into his pilot’s seat.

"Now, let’s have a closer look!" He planed the sphere forward and down as fast as it would go, 25 kph. The pulses from the sonar increased in frequency as they approached the source. It was so large Jennifer had to reset the range parameters on the sonar screen. When they were fifty meters away, he brought the sphere to a halt, and switched the forward beams to maximum. They both crouched at the porthole, peering outward to see it with their own eyes. Neither of them could speak.

Jennifer was reminded of the time her father had taken her at age seven to a Navy dry-dock, to walk beneath the new Tsunami class nuclear submarine. She’d felt her senses almost sucked in; the vessel had so much gravity. Words had failed her then. Yet what she saw now was more majestic. She switched on the microphone and started recording, one of her tasks on this mission.

"This is DSV Cousteau 12, Mariana Trench, July 19, time index 17:34:02, piloted by Professor Dimitri Kostakis, assisted by Dr. Jennifer O’Donnell. We are seeing a massive structure – estimated nine hundred meters in diameter, approximately round – no, more like, er, a cooling fan, each section blade-like, stretching out from a central core structure resembling a tower. ‘Take us over to the tower, please,’" she whispered, her hand over the mike, then continued. "The structure –" what was it, she wondered: a machine? A city? A ship? "– is… about seven levels high, then on top is the tower, another four floors. The whole object is slate grey in color, evidently metallic – no rust, abrasions or markings." She clicked off the microphone for a moment, and glanced down at the laser spectrograph display. It reads--unknown. The only time she’d seen something similar was when her father had shown her secret radar images from a prototype stealth submarine just before the War. She gazed at it through the wide porthole. Who could have built this, on such a scale? Her mental search of all the dockyards, even the covert ones from the days of the Chinese Hegemony, came up negative.

"Composition unknown. Perhaps stealth technology."

Dimitri tore his eyes from the porthole a moment to cast a question mark in her direction, but she continued. "Age indeterminate, spectral dating process unable to interrogate. Sensors unable to penetrate its exterior."

She felt knots tying themselves in her stomach. The ship looked like it had been dropped into the ocean yesterday – as if nature wouldn’t touch it. Some of the more paranoid-sounding hypotheses about the lost probe gathered force in her mind.

She clicked on again. "Approaching the central tower – one or two windows of some description." She felt her pulse racing, her scientific curiosity competing with her preservation instincts. "Cannot see inside, but I can now confirm six outward radial sections. And –" What was that?

"Did you see that?" Dimitri shouted.

She’d seen a glint of silver at the edge of the porthole, something moving very fast out in the open water. She put the microphone down and began typing rapidly. She downloaded compressed files to a pod and let it go, hearing the thud on the hull as a burst of air sent it wobbling up to the surface.

Dimitri turned to her, surprised. "So soon? We only have three."

Her instincts had kicked in with a vengeance, but her scientific mind wasn’t sure yet. "Sorry, guess I’m a little trigger-happy."

A higher-pitch sonar beep – faster, rising steadily with each pulse – made her start. It signaled something getting closer. She felt an icy shiver abseil down her spine. They both focused on her sonar scan, because they could see nothing in front of them – whatever it was, it was coming from part of the ship that was now behind them. With each sonar sweep, it was changing heading, erratically.

"You know what this means?" he said, as he worked the controls to turn them around.

She prayed it was his path to the Nobel Prize, but her intuition was screaming that they were in big trouble, and should leave now, though she wasn’t sure it would matter anyway. They both glimpsed something pass the porthole, a hundred meters to port. A flash of grey-silver. At first it reminded her of a hammerhead shark she’d seen off the Shannon coast on a diving expedition – it had that same demonic feel to it. It was at least four meters in length, she reckoned. They stared out the porthole, waiting, counting. After five seconds it passed again, heading in the opposite direction. It was zigzagging, but getting closer with each pass.

She did the mental calculation, and kept it to herself.

"It’s going amazingly fast for an underwater creature – maybe seventy kph!"

She nodded. It appeared to have legs, and moved in short spurts. Was it riding something, or did it have some kind of sleek harness and propellant system? She was thinking quickly, the way she used to back on the cinder-streets of Dublin when she and her gang were hunted by kill-drones. It was on an attack vector, closing with each pass. They had no weapons, and their maneuverability was pitiful. She kissed a fore-finger and touched her silver locket, closing her eyes briefly, and then spun into action.

She checked to see that the optic scanners had properly recorded it. They had. The next crew will be better prepared. She started downloading the file. As she turned back, she saw her lover still staring, enthralled, now projecting a ghostly green head-up display onto the porthole plazglass showing its speed, size, and proximity, so he could watch its progress, homing in on them, moving inexorably closer. It made its fourth pass. It was bigger than she had first thought, yet able to move with terrifying speed through the water. She predicted that the fifth pass would collide with them. She terminated the download and jettisoned the data pod toward the surface, sending it off on an oblique sideways angle behind them before it would head straight up to the surface.

He turned to her, his face a question mark. "Jen, why –?"

She bit her lip. "I love you." She hoped the non-sequitur might get through to him. She watched the recognition dawn on his face – he grasped what she’d already intuited was happening.

He looked from her, to the silver creature, then back to her. His face became stern, as he gripped the controls tightly. "No, Jen, I won’t allow it. We will not perish here! Look," he pointed through the porthole.

She followed his gaze and made out an oblong black hole within the structure, at the base of what seemed to be the conning tower on top of the leviathan ship – some kind of hatch, and it was open. Dimitri slewed the submersible forward, engines whining as he gunned the thrusters to steer them toward the entrance.

We won’t make it! Still the creature didn’t hit them, and they got closer. She dared to hope, her eyes falling on her lover’s determined face. But as sanctuary lay within just a few meters’ grasp, the soot-black gaping mouth of the hatch about to swallow them whole, the submersible was struck and knocked sideways as if it had been hit by an underwater train. She flew like a toy to the opposite wall of the sub, her head banging with a nasty thud. The lights failed, except for electric blue flashes punctuating the black, their own personal lightning storm. Power relays shorted all around her, releasing the acrid smell of burning cables. A precious few dashboard lights held their ground, preventing her from being plunged into abyssal darkness.

The submersible clanked onto the external metal surface, and settled. She held her breath a moment, waiting. At first there was no sound, but then a labored creaking ushered a series of stabbing hisses as stress fractures surrendered to the pressure, and pungent seawater punctured the hull with ice-cold needle sprays. Bruised, broken and bleeding, the shock deadening the pain, she crawled blindly forward and found Dimitri’s unresponsive hand. With relief, she heard his unconscious breathing. However, the water, stinging only for a few seconds before it numbed flesh completely, lapped around her feet, like Death’s embalming fluid.

She coughed, tasted blood, and then spat it out. No, not like this! Her mind tried to outrace her two immediate enemies: the rising water and the onset of the temporarily shock-deadened pain. They were only a meter from the opening. She tried to think. What still had power? She plunged her fractured elbow into the freezing water to give her a few more vital seconds to concentrate. But the pain burst through, like red hot scalpels stabbing into her, and she allowed herself one stark cry of anguish through clenched teeth, her good hand reaching out again for Dimitri’s bulk, squeezing his arm hard. She caught her breath after the first smarting flood of hurt eased off, then grimaced again, as she realized there was only one system that had any power remaining – the emergency escape hatch. She was sure she’d been in worse situations during the War, but nothing came to mind. The water rose. She shook violently. She clamped her teeth together to avoid breaking them.

Her father had taught her that in real emergencies underwater you had five seconds to decide what to do and act on it. The freezing water clawed at her waist, Dimitri’s bulk floating off the floor. She pulled him towards her, cradling her elbow around his neck. She took three deep breaths, sealed his mouth and nose closed with her left hand, and kicked at the hatch release.

◆◆◆

SSV Ganesh, Mariana Trench

Four men skulked around a broad oak table in the conference room two floors beneath the ship’s bridge. The horizon rocked back and forth every eight seconds, and every third pitch downwards was accompanied by a yaw to the left, then the right, which was in turn succeeded by a rolling action that meant any object slid off the table unless it was held fast.

One man chain-smoked, one looked sea-sick, and another held a closed vidcom. The fourth man was Captain of the vessel, his wiry beard long ago bleached white by unremitting sun and sea-spray. They hunched around the sturdy table that had seen many years at sea, and many discussions, but few as somber as this one. They all wore Indus Valley Systems weatherproof parkas.

"So, he was right after all," the smoker said, blowing a ring of pale grey smoke.

"Dead right," Jason said, beginning to turn green.

"Didn’t know you had a sense of humor, Jason," replied the smoker.

He chafed at that, loosening his collar, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the rolling horizon.

The man with the switched off vidcom played with it idly. "What about Calder?" he said. "He’s the reason we funded this in the first place."

The smoker stubbed out his cigarette with his left hand, while his right flourished another. "Disappeared. No trace. Either Chorazin or Alicians have him. Probably dead either way. We need the special sub, the new armed one the Indonesians have."

Jason got up and began pacing. "Jesus! Let’s just head back to shore and work this out. We’re obviously way out of our depth here – literally. Two people just died, or will be dead soon enough, and we lost a fifty-million dollar sub." He staggered to the window, grabbing the rail just in time. "And for what? We don’t even know what’s down there, only that something lethal is protecting it."

"We have to try again," the smoker said. "Word will leak out soon, and if we leave, another ship will take our place, our stake. Do I have to remind you all? The Corporation needs this find." He lit the new cigarette, and threw a sideways glance at Jason. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought him along after all. He was too new to the company.

Jason turned back towards the table. "Maybe we should go public – I mean, this is bigger than a corporate find – Christ, whatever it is down there, it’s not from here, is it?" He stared at the faces around the room, failing to find purchase. He walked back to the table and slammed both palms down, hard. "Hell, guys, am I the only one who recognizes we’re no longer in fucking Kansas?"

The smoker made his decision. He raised his hand and fixed Jason straight in the eye.

"You’re right. We should abort. You go on ahead. Take the V-jet back to Guam. And the pictures from the pod we recovered. Encrypted of course. Meet with our man there, brief him and wait for instructions. I’ll call Head Office."

Jason nodded. "Hallelujah! I’m out of here!" He raced out, ushering in a blast of strong salty air, and headed below to pack his things, interrupting himself to lean over the side as a vicious roll of the ship caught him unprepared. The door swung closed, the sound of the wind and the sea muted again. A blast of spray lashed against the windows.

The man with the Vidcom man stopped tapping. "Never seen Jason get seasick like this before. Must be those pictures. Scare the hell out of me, too."

The smoker drew in a long breath, exhaling slowly through pursed lips. "The V-jet will be intercepted of course, assuming it even gets as far as Guam. Satellite’s too risky – it’ll be hacked for sure."

A scratchy voice from the Vidcom, not switched off after all, came on-line.

"Indonesian Government just agreed to dispatch their newest IP Attack sub. It can be with you in forty-eight hours."

The man with the vidcom eyed the smoker, waiting.

The smoker nodded. "Get the sub here, and give Jason false data, suitably encoded. Make the V-jet ditching look like an accident, but ensure the files are found." He exhaled slowly. "No survivors."

The Captain glared at both men, and stood up, hammering two balled fists onto the table as he faced the smoker. "Then I’ll pick a pilot who isn’t married."

He didn’t look back as he launched himself through the door into the sea spray outside, his footing firm despite a brutal wave breaking over the side. The storm was getting worse.

The man with the vidcom spoke as soon as the sound of the sea receded.

"Kostakis and the girl – I’ll notify their next of kin tomorrow morning. I served once with her father in the War, though she didn’t know me." He paused and looked out to the sea. "He was a good man."

The smoker nodded ruefully, stubbing out his barely begun cigarette. He gazed forwards towards the heli-deck where the Captain was already talking to someone. "They usually are."

Chapter 13

Booster

The beetle-shaped aero-taxi powered straight upwards like a glass bullet emerging from the barrel of a gun, as it exited the underground shaft towards ground level. Micah held on to the steel handrail as he was spat out into the granite sky, skyscrapers looming around him on all sides. The pilotless vehicle slowed its ascent, pitched forward as if gathering breath, then sped off through the towers, a small buzzing insect hurtling through giant redwoods.

He’d only travelled in one once before – they were so expensive – on the occasion of his father’s funeral, and he’d shared it with his mother and only sister, who had followed their father three years later courtesy of radiation-induced multiple cancers. She’d been that much closer to LA zero, the largest detonation.

The sun never quite managed to chip its way through the rice-colored haze above New LA, though occasional splashes of orange dribbled around the hills near sunset, like melting wax. Just as well, he thought, with so little ozone left. The aero-taxi crossed an invisible boundary into NLA Central, sailing between the most recent and fanciest buildings, all at least two hundred floors high, the first thirty or so window-less, shielding against the background radiation, most concentrated at ground-level. And the dust. Millions of people had been instantly cremated in the initial shock attack on LA – city of angels – and once somebody had pointed out that the fallout contained the ashes of millions, it became impossible to forget. People wanted to live and work high up, or else underground. Almost no one walked the city streets, even though the ashes had long ago been washed away, scoured clean by acid rain. At ground level, ten hours a week was maybe safe, but after that you had a dose that would start looking for cells and genes to mess with.

The aero-taxi, slightly bigger than an old-style car, was mainly made of the ubiquitous transparent and tough plazglass, so Micah had impressive views in any direction, including down. Most of the skyscrapers were traditional block-shapes, but some of the latest ones were triangular, like sharply rising stepped pyramids. Off to the left the Global Fundamentalist Headquarters came into view – a vertiginous, twisting tetrahedron, a three-sided building that swept up from the mucky city floor on three massive graphite-colored spokes. There were no floors until mid-level, but entrail-like elevator tubes stretched down to ground and subway entrances. Its gold-tinted windows reflected the sky in sepia. Micah had to admit it was impressive, majestic even. They certainly had money, and knew how to make a statement. ‘Better to inspire than coerce’ was one of their mottos. He suspected they did both.

He stared forwards, past the automated control console – automatics steered all public transport these days – to the distant edge of the city, and beyond to the old LA center leveled a decade ago by three separate nuclear detonations on the very first day of the War. He shuddered. He remembered the sirens, him and his two school-buddies laughing and joking that some idiot had let them off a day early before their regular weekly test. He stumbled backwards shielding his retinas when the first flashes lit up the sky above LA Central ten kilometers away. They’d played this game often enough, but now it was for real.

They ran full pelt ahead of the shock wave – a broiling tsunami of rubble and flaming cars and trucks consuming buildings in its wave front – radiating outward toward them. Micah had always been the fastest, and tore ahead of Timmy and Jonah, running in the relative silence, in and out of cars and machinery stopped dead in their tracks by the EM pulse, dodging people not realizing what was happening, until they saw a burning cloud rushing their way. Micah knew that if he heard the blasts, then the wave would be upon him, and it would be too late.

He remembered diving for cover though the closing shield doors seconds before the scorching wind caught up. Timmy and Jonah, and other people had been behind Micah, running for their lives too. They were never found. No one knocked on the glowing shield door for a long time afterwards.

The ground kept warping, the seismic after-shocks rippling outward for two whole days, making even the reinforced nuclear shelters hazardous. Micah had been lucky. He’d been granted a day off school since his father was home after a long mission. Micah had wanted to be anywhere but home, so had cycled to a suburb, near the hills. His friends, his teachers, all of them had died. Ashed.

He recalled lying in a shelter with imperfect strangers: quiet, confused people, all in deep shock, terrified. Only the babies made any noise, the rest sat, arms around knees, some rocking, listening to the rumbling and occasional crashing down of buildings merely crippled by the first batch of incinerating shock waves. He lost track of time, since it was dark even during the daytime, with the smoke above, and the thick dust that tasted like metal, everywhere. They had a pump to keep positive atmospheric pressure, so the dust stayed out, mostly. But he saw and tasted it whenever they opened the entrance to let someone in, always watching, waiting for his family to arrive.

At these moments he glimpsed the sky, ravaged by curling talons of fire and black smoke – the only reference he could think of was an image of William Blake’s painting of Dante’s Inferno he’d seen in the art gallery on a school trip. But the flashes left his vision blotchy for days, and he couldn’t stop his body’s violent tremors – his own internal earthquakes.

Everyone had known it might come to war, the government had been so gung-ho. The satellite-based anti-missile lasers, as well as the aerial patriot robots were thought to be impenetrable – God knew they’d cost enough. LA wasn’t alone in the first wave – the White House and the Pentagon, along with New York Central, had been obliterated in the same moment as part of a tightly coordinated attack; the government finally held accountable for their arrogance, their hubris.

His parents had survived; they’d taken a day-trip to Santa Barbara. One day his mother arrived in the shelter, then his father initially joined them, but had to leave them as he was an army major, and felt he had more chance of finding Micah’s sister from inside what was left of the military machine. So he said goodbye to Micah and his mother, telling Micah to pull himself together – a tough order for any thirteen-year old – to look after them both while he was gone. But Micah cried, held onto his father’s sleeve, begging him not to go. His father threw him a cold contemptuous stare, unpeeling Micah’s fingers from his jacket, one by one, until Micah grasped air, hot tears tumbling down reddened cheeks. Micah’s mother immediately grabbed Micah and held him close. From that moment on, Micah knew he was no hero, not like his father, and from then onwards, he never wanted to be. His father returned, two years later, with the hero’s rank of military colonel – at least that was what it said on the coffin.

Micah realized he was gripping the aero-taxi seat arm tight with clammy palms. He let go, averting his gaze to look eastwards, towards the Eden Mission complex. It was a purely functional affair: three brown, closely inter-connected blocks, the tallest reaching two hundred floors. It had been hastily constructed, then extended numerous times as it became more ambitious, and as The Heracles failed to deliver. Its blandness was intentional – it sent a message that no money would be wasted on extravagance – only the pursuit of colonizing Eden.

Like many others, when space colonization had become a realistic possibility, Micah jumped at the chance to work there. His father’s credentials got him through the tough security checks, and though he’d never be an astronaut, probably would never even make it off the planet, he wanted to work on that dream. But as he looked at the Eden complex, seeing the chaotic pattern of construction, the lack of forethought, he couldn’t help but wonder if humans would just drag all their baggage with them and trash Eden as well.

Then, as if on cue, he felt different, more positive. The doctor had said it would happen, that the booster had psychoactive properties that would make him feel more confident, more in control – he would see opportunities where before he’d seen insurmountable challenges. But there had been a warning, too.

"You’ll feel better, and with it, cockier, more powerful. You’ll take more risks, maybe say things you always felt you should say; things that have been bottled up will get released. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble on boosters. That’s why they’re illegal, not to mention psychologically addictive. Just watch yourself, think before you speak or act, and try to go through things habitually. And when it wears off, be prepared for an equivalent scale of depression – best to take a few days off when that happens. Oh, and just so you know, and you will soon enough, you’ll feel a lot more libido. Be careful of that, too, there are enough diseases out there… Well, I don’t have to tell you."

Micah had asked whether he would get another one after 72 hours if his mission was not finished by that time.

"No, on two counts. First, Vincent said you’ll be finished by then, one way or another." The doctor had cleared his throat at that point. "Second, three boosters in a row tend to cause sterility and impotence; five in a row and that becomes permanent. And since you’re one of the thirty percent safe-sterile men left on the planet, because you got to the shelters fast enough, you should hang onto that."

The booster had arrived in a syringe that looked like it was destined for a horse, and had left a lump in his upper arm, which the doctor had said would go down in an hour or two. Micah had taken a shower and changed into some new clothes, and seen how beat-up he looked, especially his back. The doctor said the booster would help with the bruising. Micah tried to see his image in the aero-taxi plazglass, but it was too bright outside.

He was, however, really feeling a lot better, no matter how he knew he must look. His mind turned to Antonia. He wondered if his temporary confidence would enable him to get noticed by her. But his mind jumped of its own accord to Louise, and an array of images paraded through his mind. He shook himself. This stuff’s pretty strong. He faced the exit door as the aero-taxi docked at mid-level on one of the Eden complex towers. He saw from his wristcom it was 08:35.

His retinal scan passed security, and he joined the queue for the express elevator to the upper working levels. He was the only one in the aluminum-walled lift smiling.

Rudi arrived at 10:30 am. They went straight for coffee in one of the lounges scattered through the complex, some four hundred meters above ground level. This one was an octagonal affair, furnished with several coffee and stim machines. The room contained a variety of red leather seats, holographic notice boards, and a vid-screen running a news channel continuously without sound. The place was decked out with bland oval tables at standing height, which was what people used most of the time, since they spent enough time sitting when they were doing their jobs. Half a dozen people were already there, but Micah knew none of them by name; over nine hundred people worked at the Complex.

"You’re in pretty late today, Rudi." He tried to say it innocently. Rudi’s short black curly hair and dark-ringed Hispanic eyes made it impossible for Micah to ever tell if Rudi had had much sleep – he always looked like he had been out till the small hours of the morning. With his features, Micah always assumed he had a string of women.

"Well, actually, I’ve been in a meeting all morning with security. And you can talk; you didn’t even show up yesterday."

Micah coughed on his coffee, which didn’t go unnoticed, but rather than play it down he decided to play it up. "Random rad-check, you know how it is. No big deal. Security, eh? What have you been up to, something naughty?"

Rudi looked pissed off.

Micah smiled, but it erupted into a grin. "Hey, just messing with you!"

Rudi didn’t smile back. "Well, cut it out, man. The Project Manager’s dead and there are –" he looked around, lowering his voice. "– there are Chorazin in the building, man. Fucking Chorazin! Here! What’s gotten into you, anyway?"

He’d almost forgotten about Kane. He felt disoriented. He had to take the doctor’s advice, think before talking. Act naturally…

"Listen, sorry Rudi, you’re right, I – er – took something this morning, left me kind of heady. Anyway, what did security want?"

Rudi took a sip of black, steaming Alaskan mocha. "Actually they were asking me about you."

Micah froze. Then Rudi slapped him on the back, laughing, "Just messing with you man! Hey, your face was a picture." He laughed some more. "And on that subject, what the hell did happen to your face?"

Micah made up a story about falling asleep on the sofa and smacking his head on the coffee table when he woke up in the morning; it had enough grains of truth to carry it off.

Rudi mentioned a hot Chorazin agent called Louise. Micah managed not to react, so Rudi gave it up. They chatted about nothing for a while, and just as Micah realized Rudi hadn’t actually told him why security had interviewed him, Antonia strolled in, impeccable as always: two-tone blonde-brown short hair, no make-up that Micah could detect, a stylish white blouse, open deep at the neck, revealing a platinum-colored necklace with a single fire jewel, blouse tucked into a navy, knee-length pencil skirt. Micah was mesmerized.

"… and he said, no man, you keep the money! Hey, Micah, are you even listening to me? Oh, I get it." Rudi nodded in Antonia’s direction.

"Sorry Rudi, I, er, got distracted."

"Yeah man, join the line!"

He was encouraged that Antonia wasn’t part of Rudi’s harem.

"Anyway," Rudi said, "I need to head back. You coming?"

"Er, I’ll be up in a minute."

Rudi left, muttering something like, "in your dreams, buddy", while Micah gazed openly at Antonia from behind as she selected her drink. He needed to say something – anything. She was actually on her own, without her usual entourage of equally attractive girls, or worse, male model look-alikes. Downing his coffee too fast, so he swallowed the bitter granules at the bottom, he squeezed the nearly-disappeared lump on his arm for one last spurt of confidence. He strode towards her purposefully, just as she turned without looking, towards him. Her arm hit his, causing a fountain of coffee to rise up between them, her zappucino showering over both of them.

"Oh my god, oh my god, I’m so sorry!" she said quickly, in an Eastern European accent.

"No, no, it was my fault. Really." He stood there, arms opened wide, not moving lest he spread it more. He hardly noticed the hot, stinging coffee. He’d never been this close to her. Before he knew what he was doing, he said "There’s some on you." In slow motion he watched his own right hand as he brushed a splash of coffee from her left breast. But his fingers lingered on the slope, and stroked her nipple. In an instant her eyes transformed from doe-like and apologetic, to razor-blade angry. He retracted his hand and froze, staring at it like it wasn’t his. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He looked at her and was about to say he was really sorry when the slap hit him, hard. She whirled around and disappeared out of the room. One or two stifled giggles from the others in the coffee lounge cut through Micah’s frozen moment, as he stood there, a large brown stain down his shirt, and a red handprint smarting across his cheek. He heard a crisp, female voice behind him.

"Mr Sanderson, if you’re not too busy, I’d like a word, please."

Louise. She had obviously seen the last few moments, and was wearing a school-teacher expression.

‘Please put your arms down and follow me." Without another look she pirouetted and headed off.

He did as asked, wondering if things could get any worse.

He followed her into the lift, where neither of them said a word. They alighted on one of the uppermost floors, and Micah figured where they were headed. They left the elevator, and she walked ahead of him. He tried not to notice the way her pert buttocks salsa’d before him inside her tight black skirt, pony tail swinging from side to side. When they arrived, Louise told the two security men guarding the crime scene to leave for an hour. They departed without a word, sealing the door behind them.

She sat in Kane’s leather executive chair, Micah opposite across the antique desk, where he’d been sitting less than ten conscious hours ago, though it had now been nearly two days. She lit up a cigarette, one of those long filter-less ones. So few people smoked these days, it surprised him. She didn’t speak for a while, just watched him through the coils of smoke. Booster or not, he couldn’t return her stare. His eyes roved around the room instead. There was a chalk outline between the desk and another door that was ajar. From Micah’s vantage point, it seemed to be a bathroom. He could see some kind of cubicle, and part of a large mirror behind the bath.

"Booster trouble, Micah?" Louise said, high heels on the desk. She puffed a smoke ring.

He was jolted back to the situation, and also began to wonder whether she operated outside of normal Chorazin dress code regulations. "Er, no! Well, yes, maybe a little. My hand just –"

"Well, don’t let it, or any other part of your anatomy, just do anything. Or else, if you are going to do something, don’t apologize for it afterwards. Life is unbelievably short."

There was that cold but open gaze again, daring. He tried to ignore it. "Right. Sor –." He was in foreign territory. His track record with women was laughable. She got up and glided around to his side of the desk, perching on its edge. He tried not to look at her, especially her legs. He didn’t trust her, but he was definitely having booster-related issues with her this close. Is she doing this on purpose?

"We interviewed Rudi this morning to give you time to search unimpeded. Did you get anywhere?"

Of course. He kept acting as if he was on his own, but he wasn’t. There were others working to help him: Louise and Vince. Like it or not, he was on their team. He tried to look straight into her emerald eyes, gave up, glanced down to her hips, then away.

"No. I mean I used the time to make some overt searches, but nothing yet. This is going to take time, maybe days rather than hours. If Rudi wasn’t around…"

"You mean you want him out of the way?" She raised an eyebrow.

He recalled he was dealing with Chorazin. "No! No, I mean, well, not like that. But if there was a work reason, maybe he could be reassigned for a day or so?"

She leant very close toward him, almost whispering, "Don’t worry, Micah, we’re not the cold-blooded killers you think we are." She remained close to him. Her eyes had that same look he’d seen in the Chorazin med facility – no warmth at all – someone, or something – had done a real number on her, screwed her up, he was sure of it. The bitterness had cemented-in a long time ago.

His hormones, however, had an agenda of their own, circumnavigating his rational mind. Despite himself, he began to move towards her mouth. She was wearing velvet crush lipstick – he’d read about it in an e-zine – some crap story about a femme fatale actress. Yet its darkness teased him, enticing him to explore her mouth. She straightened up before he arrived, and strode toward a closet. Shit – what’s going on with me? He felt dizzy. He needed a glass of water. Cold water. His heart pounded a deep bass rhythm. "I think I should head back to the Optron."

She opened the closet and pulled out a pressed shirt. "Here, this should fit you more or less. Let’s clean you up first." She turned toward the bathroom. He couldn’t help but trace her curves as she moved away from him. Then he caught her checking that he was watching her via a mirror next to the closet. He flushed, his pulse racing. She opened the bathroom door wide.

"I need you focused on the task, Micah, not distracted by young girls."

He swallowed. Antonia flashed into his mind. He considered bolting for the other door, the exit to Kane’s office, but it seemed ludicrous.

"Micah, we don’t have all day. Take off your shirt and clean yourself up."

It sounded so reasonable, but so not innocent. Seduction is the lie that allows us to do what we really want to do, he’d heard on some vid somewhere. Still he hesitated. He remembered something a professor at school had once asked his class. Does a moth know what a flame is? Micah wondered, and extended the aphorism: would it fly there anyway, even if it did? He made up his mind. He reached for the shirt, snatched it from her and stepped into the bathroom and tried to close the door. But she was too fast and strong for him, slipping inside too, locking the door behind her. Her skirt fell to the floor, and she removed her top in one deft movement. He backed away as she approached him in stockings and heels. He looked away only to see her reflection in the mirror.

"As I said, Micah, I need you focused on the task." She pushed him against the bathroom wall. "Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you." She smiled, for the first time, cleaving in two his resolve not to sleep with her. His mouth collided with hers with a vengeance.

He sat cross-legged, propped against the bathroom wall, naked except for a hand towel draped over his groin, and watched her dress. His eyes were drawn to the tattoo of a red dragon that climbed her sinewy back, its ruby eyes level with her shoulder blades. He detected fine diagonal lines scratched underneath the tattoo. With a shock he recognized the scar pattern from some old vid about the darker hours of the War, something to do with rape camps in demobbed China. Female soldiers caught by the gangs were tortured with a neural whip until they submitted and performed. Micah counted a lot of scars.

She caught his eye in the mirror, her lips a thin line. "They’ll be back in about twenty minutes. I’ll see to it that Rudi is busy elsewhere this afternoon and all day tomorrow."

The way she talked was so matter-of-fact. Like they were in a meeting – a fucking meeting. It sounded funny, but it wasn’t. It had all happened so fast. He felt blown away by it all. It was either the best sex he’d ever had, or the emptiest, or both at the same time.

"Leave everything just as it was before, Micah. Take a shower elsewhere. They’ll notice otherwise." She smoothed down her skirt.

He wondered if it was part of her job, some pre-planned event to bond him to her, or just to regulate the booster. He had to admit he had no idea what motivated her.

"I’ll come by and see you at 6pm, to see if you’ve found anything." She checked herself in the mirror. "Are you okay?" she asked, tying her hair back into the pony tail. He’d been surprised by her hair – when it was down, it transformed her – softening her. But now she was Chorazin again. Again? Who am I kidding!

"Yep, fine. 6pm. No problem." Like this happens all the time. Like never.

There was a question he felt he had to ask. "Louise… you and Vince… Is there anything –"

Her head turned on him quickly. "Don’t go there," she said. She came over to him, bent down close, as if she was going to kiss him, but her eyes blazed. "Ever." She waited till he nodded.

And she walked out. No kiss. He saw his reflection. Is that me? He heard her close Kane’s office door and then the outer door, behind her. He was alone again. He remembered Antonia, wondering where she was now. The coffee event had only been forty minutes ago; the very idea staggered him. If she saw him now…

He stared out into Kane’s office at the chalk line on the pile carpet. "This is one truly weird day," he said out loud. He heard a click. It seemed to come from the next room. Another click, closer this time, coming from the horizontal mirror next to the bath. He backed away. With a gentle swish, the mirror slid aside, revealing a darkened recess behind. Out stepped a bedraggled, half-naked Sandy, straight into the dry bath, her clothes crumpled, a furious expression clouding her face.

"Tell me about it," she seethed, "please tell me how much fucking weirder it can get!"

Chapter 14

Nebula

Pierre faced Blake in the cockpit. Blake aimed the pulse pistol at Pierre’s chest, his arm as steady as his gaze. Physically Pierre knew he was no match for Blake, so everything would depend on what he said in the next few moments. His mind flashed through the last fifteen minutes which had led them both to this point…

Pierre sat in a semi-lotus position in his narrow tube-bed, his back to the hull. He glanced at the cots occupied by Kat and Zack, the rotating glass entrances misted up as always with stasis, though their hearts only beat twice a minute.

He’d been running a series of complex calculations. Most of the computer systems were still down or couldn’t be trusted since the virus, but after working on it for twelve hours straight, he had come to the cot to rest. But that wasn’t happening. He could have turned on the delta band sleep inducer, but there was something else on his mind.

He unfolded his legs and lay down, sealing himself inside the cot. The routine sounds of the ship, the humming, the little clicks and knocks, evaporated. They were replaced by the type of hush that arrives with its own reverberation, an echo of former unheard, unlistened-to sounds, when all external noise is switched off, and the ears anxiously search for the slightest tinkle. That too faded, and he was in total silence. The lighting automatically dimmed to a twilight setting inside, but his eyes remained open. The holopic he’d stuck on the ceiling of the cot showed a smiling middle-aged couple, him as a late teenager, standing almost to attention between them. It had been taken nine years earlier, the summer before his father died – was killed, he reminded himself. His mother had followed a year later, one of the so-called first-wavers of a virulent form of skin cancer.

"Well, maman, papa, not quite the trip I was expecting." He’d thought he would never need a photo to remember them, but he’d been surprised to find that after all, it helped to see their picture. He couldn’t recall all the lines of their faces.

"Dad, I need some advice. The calcs, the technical aspects of the job, well, you know they’re not a problem. Challenging, sure, but I’m comfortable with that part of the mission. Even the ghoster. I found I could function, somehow, even if I was pretty shook up. But it’s the team. That’s it. The team. We’re no longer a team, if we ever truly were one. Kat… well, she’s not the issue." Not this one, anyway. "And Zack, well, he pokes fun at me, but it’s not serious. But the Captain – Blake – he never gives me a millimeter; always on my case. And if I do a really good job, then it’s just about adequate. Papa, you taught me not to be emotive about these things, because that leads to bias, but… Well, truth is…" He drew in a breath; he needed to say this out loud. "I think he dislikes me, and I have no idea why."

Pierre knew what he had to do. For three days since Zack and Kat went into stasis, he and Blake had been avoiding each other. There is no "right" time, he heard the echo of his father’s voice inside his head, there is only now. Pierre abruptly opened the cot and clambered out, heading for the cockpit. As he left the second compartment, he caught sight of his reflection in a mirror and noticed his face looked thinner, more angular, more set than in that holopic. His parents, even during the War, had aged gracefully over their years, always looking younger than their true age. He wasn’t sure he would have that luxury.

"How are their vitals?" Blake barked the question as soon as Pierre entered, without turning his command chair around to face him. Pierre noticed Blake change the screen image just as he entered – something he didn’t want Pierre to see. And he thought Blake quickly slipped something into his right hand pocket.

"They’re fine, Sir. I compensated for the stasis effects on Zack’s leg. It will continue to heal, albeit at a slower rate than normal." He paused. Blake continued staring at the one remaining cockpit console that worked, occasionally tapping at a key. Pierre automatically half-turned, ready to leave, then stopped himself.

It had been four days since the ghoster event and loss of communications with Earth. Three days since Kat and Zack went into stasis, after a heated debate. Kat was the junior officer and saw herself as the least contentious candidate. But Zack had been furious. Pierre had laid out the logical arguments: Zack’s broken leg, the need for a scientist to try and retrieve the comms and other computer functions. Eventually, after some thirty minutes of discussion, during which time Blake hadn’t said a word, he had suddenly turned to Zack and said simply, "Pierre’s right." Zack had flared, but said nothing. He’d just turned and stormed off, limp and all, to prepare for stasis.

In the three days since, there had been minimal communication. Of course there was some logic to it given the oxygen situation, but it was pretence rather than sense, and they both knew it. Somebody had to make the first move.

"Sir, I was wondering if we could talk."

Blake’s index finger paused above the touchpad. He cocked his head, though not enough to see Pierre. He sighed as he turned back to the screen, and carried on tapping at several more keys. "What’s on your mind, Pierre?"

This was the farthest Pierre had got in three days. He didn’t want to blow it. He needed something of mutual interest. In a moment he had it.

"Sir, your implant theory that it’s a likely third Alician option; I’d like to know more about it."

Blake swiveled his seat around to face Pierre, looking haggard, blackness ringing his eyes; he’d hardly slept since the others went into stasis. No, Pierre corrected himself: since Zack went into stasis.

"Take a seat; you’ll use less oxygen sitting down."

Pierre sat at his post, leaned forward, and waited.

"Well, Pierre, you’re our mission scientist, you know about implants. You studied terrorist psychogenic methods. What is it exactly you think I know more about?"

"I know the theory. Implants were originally piloted in the last century in the so-called cold war – they called it brainwashing – and for sure also in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the Sumatra episode in 2028. But in the last war they got more technical. More advanced psychological techniques, particularly acute traumatization to prevent the memories from surfacing, even under deep counter-intelligence probing. The implant must be triggered by a very specific event, usually visual, best if a composite or superimposed image with depth, one that would only be encountered in the desired circumstances. Once triggered, the trauma overwhelms more recent memory since the implanting process happened, so the subject doesn’t second guess the original programming based on more recent experience."

"Victim, Pierre, not subject – victim."

He nodded, knowing such academic insensitivity fuelled people’s distrust of science. But this wasn’t going right. He been speaking like he was in an exam, or worse, lecturing. Blake looked disinterested, as if he was about to turn back to the screen.

"So, Sir, what I’m wondering, specifically, is why you think there is an implant that wouldn’t have already been triggered?"

Blake gave him a sideways glance. "That is the question, isn’t it?"

Blake’s eyes sharpened. Pierre realized he’d been missing, no, needing the Captain back in control.

"Let’s review the facts, Pierre. The ghoster was meant to activate the detonator without us ever detecting it. The Trojan was there as a back-up in case we did. So, whatever happened, the Alicians wanted it to be another mystery, another "failure". That way a fourth mission would never get funded.

Pierre nodded. So far it made sense, and they were communicating, at least. He began to wonder if the whole "team problem" was in his own head. "The Heracles didn’t have a comms position. I always wondered about that. Is that why we have one, to have more redundancy onboard?"

Blake leant back in the chair. "Heracles sent a distress message just before it went dead."

Pierre wanted to say, No, you’re mistaken, I’ve seen the logs. But he knew Blake wouldn’t make such an obvious error. "But, Sir –"

"I know what you’re thinking. But the Code Red operates on two wavelengths, one much lower register – fractally encoded – appears to be stellar radiation noise, unless you have the right sequence decoder. Doesn’t show up on the logs. Almost no one knows about it, but it’s there." Blake’s eyes roamed the largely dark console, where the central panel fluttered many red indications and a few Spartan greens, and then he continued. "Except the Alicians obviously found out about it, and made sure that it couldn’t be transmitted this time. If indeed the logs themselves haven’t been altered for the entire mission."

Pierre sat up. "You mean they’re inside the Eden Mission itself? That’s pretty hard to believe."

Blake laughed, "You mean pretty hard to accept! I’m surprised at you, Pierre, aren’t you scientists meant to have open minds?"

Pierre reddened. "Do you have any evidence? Scientists try not to indulge in wanton paranoia."

Blake almost grinned. "A little defensive today? You’re beginning to sound like your father."

Pierre wondered: had Blake known his father?

"Well, unfortunately," he continued, "I do have some evidence, albeit circumstantial. You see, Kat’s quite a wizard at carrier signals."

Pierre glanced briefly over to her empty chair.

"And she has a ‘friend’, a member of staff in the Eden Mission. They were sending each other coded messages disguised as background radiation. Harmless messages. Of course Eden security knew about it. But guess what?"

Pierre parked the info about Kat having a "friend" for later; he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to redeem himself with Blake. "They let it happen because it was another way of knowing that things were working properly."

Blake raised an appreciative eyebrow. "Exactly. Only, a week ago, something happened."

"It stopped?"

Blake shook his head.

Pierre’s brow furrowed, and then smoothed. "It started repeating!"

Blake nodded, "Kat realized something was odd a couple of days before the ghoster attack, as she hadn’t heard from her friend for some time, and had been running some tests to check the telemetry output. She told me afterwards, a bit sheepishly mind you, as far as Kat can be sheepish, that is."

Pierre analyzed it. So Eden Mission personnel should have spotted it. "Did security try and warn you?" he asked.

Blake shook his head. The mood shifted, the game part of this little exchange was over, Pierre realized. "So you believe they’ve infiltrated security?"

"Probably just as well we’re not in communication. I’m not sure I’d trust any orders right now."

Pierre frowned; the implications were enormous. But in particular, it meant they were truly on their own.

Blake stood. "So, the ghoster was initiated, we defeated it, but lost our comms. That left a third approach."

"Have you figured out the trigger?"

"Maybe. Something very unique. Only seen once in a lifetime."

Pierre started to look around the cockpit. But that would make no sense – nothing much ever changed in the cockpit, especially after the virus struck.

"Eden?" he said.

"Alicians don’t want any human footprints on the planet. In any case, too few distinctive landmarks we know of, nothing to act as an implant trigger."

Pierre had known it was wrong as soon as he’d said it. And then it hit him. "The nebula! Of course. It’s the last unique phenomenon between here and Eden. But it would have to have been seen from an unusual perspective. We could have seen a holo of it before. I mean, I have, for example."

"Me too," Blake said. "But not like this," he said, leaning outward and tapping the viewscreen. Pierre stared without comprehension. And then he understood. They could have seen pictures of the nebula. But here they saw something else as well – their own reflection. And it fit perfectly with the psychogenic implant theory.

"There. You have your father’s genes after all." Blake said.

Pierre side-stepped the barb, and followed the logic to where they were today.

"But now two crew members are in stasis. So, you had to gamble which two, including yourself."

Blake stretched his back, and looked through the plazglass to the nebula. "It doesn’t do anything for me." He moved aside.

Pierre hesitated. He hadn’t yet inspected the nebula, hadn’t had time since they arrived in its vicinity several hours ago. He crossed over to Zack’s seat, and took a good look. After all, if anything was to happen, he had better make sure it was now, while Blake was prepared. He took in not just the nebula, but his own reflection superimposed over the image.

"Well?" Blake said.

Pierre’s vision embraced the violent clash of silky blues and reds, frozen waves of color expanding outwards to solid gas edges. In his mind he mapped the equations defining the sheer brutal energy behind this phenomenon. He registered his own awe-struck face superimposed on it. He waited for what should come next if he had an implant, within seconds. But he was simply swept away by this fantastic vista, gliding past them like a giant, hallucinogenic butterfly.

"It’s more impressive than any of the pictures. It’s… I could study it for years!" He turned smiling to Blake, but froze as he saw Blake aiming a pulse pistol at his chest.

"Pierre. What’s Kat’s nightmare?"

He tried to swallow. "Captain, Sir, it’s okay, it’s me, there’s been no reaction."

"Answer the damned question, Pierre. Recent memories!"

His heart pounded. For an instant, he was tongue-tied, unused to having a gun aimed at him point-blank.

"Now, Pierre!"

"S-she’s running, running from something on Eden. We don’t know what, but it scares her to death." He caught his breath. "We fought the ghoster four days ago. You had quorn rashers for breakfast today, and you skipped most of it. You decided to put Zack, and not me, in stasis. And two minutes ago you accused me of sounding like my father." As if you had actually known him.

Blake lowered the weapon, placed it on the console, sat down in his own chair, and dragged his palms over his face and head.

"Sorry, had to be sure."

"Right," Pierre replied, his immobility masking the raw emotions cascading helter-skelter through him. He tried to focus on the implant threat. At least he could see now why Blake had been so tense, so distant – he’d been concerned Pierre had the implant. But then why had he put Zack in stasis?

"Sir, if you thought it was me, then why –"

Blake looked at Pierre square. "Now you’re not being scientific."

He glanced from Blake, to the console in front of him. He hadn’t until this moment seen what Blake was studying at his console. Blake tapped refresh. It was a personnel file, but it wasn’t Pierre’s.

"You think it’s Zack?" Pierre’s eyebrows rose.

Blake stared at the file.

Pierre tried to reason it out. "It’s logical; he would have been the pilot, the first to see the nebula. The one most likely to survive, if anyone did, if the ghoster attack had not quite gone to plan." He saw Blake’s lips were tightly pressed together. He clearly didn’t like this. Of course, it feels like betrayal, especially having this conversation with me – of all people.

Blake spoke up. "Initially I assumed it wasn’t him. Nor Kat – too young and inexperienced, and always under surveillance, being Beornwulf’s daughter. But as Captain I had to consider all the possibilities. The more I thought about it as an Alician strategy, the more I thought it could be Zack. He was missing in action for ten days in Thailand during the War – the only survivor from his platoon that time – long enough to carry out the trauma conditioning phase of the implant procedure. And shortly after we were selected for this flight, he went missing one night – said he got drunk and ended up with another – well, it doesn’t matter, but he could have been kidnapped, and the final trigger implanted then, a holo-image of the nebula as sent back from the Prometheus. And Zack of course none the wiser, and feeling guilty over something he didn’t do."

"But what if it triggered?"

Blake’s eyes flared. "Mission before men, Pierre. I’d do what I’d have to do. Zack knows that and would expect nothing less."

Pierre thought about it. The pieces slotted together. "You haven’t talked to him about it, have you, Sir?"

Blake shut the pistol back in the weapons locker. "I’ll be honest, Pierre, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to." He shrugged and smiled. "But I will, when he wakes up."

"There’s no treatment for implants, Sir. You know that. And if we come back, we’ll have to put him in stasis for the return, just to be sure."

"Maybe I’m wrong about the trigger. Maybe there is no third plot, and I’m just being – what was that phrase – wantonly paranoid?"

Pierre, for the first time, detected a morsel of trust. He still wanted to say so much, to ask if Blake had known his father. But he decided to quit while he was ahead. "You look tired, Sir. Really."

"You’ve no idea. I’m going to hit the sack. You have the Con, Dr. Bertrand." He left the cockpit.

Pierre sat down. He looked over to Blake’s chair. When he’d said "You have the con", it meant he, Pierre, was in command. He could sit in that chair. He could try it for size. He’d never once sat in it, not even for a moment, in the past three months onboard.

He stayed where he was.

He remained in the cockpit another three hours, trying to salvage more from the computer systems, peeking occasionally at the nebula, then gave up. With Blake sound asleep, he went aft and dug deep under his cot mattress to pull out a small phial and old-style syringe. He injected it into his left elbow crease carefully, and then discarded both phial and syringe in the usual manner. He waited. After a few minutes, an ugly grey-black bruise like spilt ink flushed around the needle entry point for thirty seconds, accompanied by a razor-like slash of pain, and then vanished beneath his skin. He regained his breath. Satisfied, he headed for the shower.

As he passed Kat’s cot, he thought he noticed movement inside. He tried to see through the condensation. Kat was fast asleep, but was clearly dreaming – he could see her eyes darting about beneath her eyelids. He was surprised. You weren’t supposed to dream in stasis. He laid his hand, with a tenderness he could never show if she’d been awake, on the top of the glass covering of the stasis tube. "I hope for your sake, Kat, it’s not the nightmare – because you’re not going to wake up for another two days."

Chapter 15

Rudi’s World

With one last shove the naked body tumbled down inside the furnace chute, seven floors underneath the Eden Mission. Gabriel heard no sound, no crashing or explosion, no cry or scream; he knew his job. Closing the vent, he wiped his hands on the dead janitor’s greasy faded brown overalls he now wore. There had been no blood: a snapped vertebra at the base of the neck, and a hand clamped over the mouth and nose.

He listened, hearing nothing but the dull whirr of air-circ pumps. Satisfied, he picked up his rucksack and pulled out a syringe, inserting the auto-anaesthetizing needle into his neck. With a measured motion of his right thumb, he coerced the algae-colored contents inside him. He began consuming water from the six liter-size bottles he’d taken from the supply cupboard. He barely had time to lift the vent, toss in the two first empty bottles and syringe, and throw the rucksack on top of the furnace housing, before he started to convulse. But he made no noise, not even clenching his jaw. It will pass. In his head he recited the Ashkram Elat. Its rhythm helped him control his breathing, taking his mind off the tearing pain.

Shaking on the floor, he drank another liter at the end of each stanza. By the time he reached the last one, the burning sensation ebbed. He opened his eyes, and got to his feet, leaning against the hot metal of the furnace shield. Standing unaided, he uttered the final two lines aloud, to see how his voice had changed.

Gabriel looked down at his body: heavier, like the man he had just released from life’s strains. The water content around his waist took on a less fluid quality and behaved like fat. He tested the puffiness of his face with podgy hands, and inserted the contact lenses rendering his black irises a dull blue. The sim-skin mask, which minutes earlier had been placed over the janitor’s limp face, took a while before it moved synchronously over Gabriel’s own features. He checked his reflection in one of the panels: no line visible between skin and mask; the chameleon pigment-blend worked.

Stooping, he attached his janitor’s name-badge, and shuffled towards the service elevator. As he entered it, his tongue flicked to the false wisdom tooth at the back of his mouth. He flexed his forearms to confirm the retractable blades were in place. He didn’t glance at his watch – he knew the exact time. He pressed level one-eighty-five.

◆◆◆

Micah hunched over his console computer data, some flat on flimsies, some in 3D holos: digital cylinders rotating and twinkling, mathematical contours of rainbow hues like the hallucinogenic ski-slopes you could surf on the vidnet. The air tasted of high-end fluidic computers hard at work – a metallic taste like coins. He’d been nagged by his mother to try plants to add some relief, but even the cactus had wilted.

Rudi had been called away fifteen minutes ago, none too happy about it. Micah had shrugged, offering insults about the jerks upstairs.

"You know what they’re like, assholes one and all, and as for the Chorazin…" He’d ranted for a while and Rudi seemed to swallow it. Micah didn’t need to put up much of an act in any case. He didn’t trust the Chorazin a micron.

With Rudi gone, he focused on his Optron session; he needed to find out what had happened to the missing lighthouse markers he’d installed in the Ulysses’ matrix. But he was plagued by a menagerie of images: Antonia slapping him, Louise writhing on top of him, and Sandy coming out from behind the mirror. Sandy had gone into the main office to retrieve some spare underwear from a drawer in her desk, used the toilet, and had stolen back inside the hideaway, squirreling water and snacks from Kane’s drinks cabinet. There was nowhere else for her to go.

Micah couldn’t believe she’d been there for two nights, though she’d emerged once or twice in the small hours. There was no way out past the internal cameras. Clearly she knew who had killed Kane, and it scared the hell out of her. She wasn’t about to tell Micah, though he’d guessed Security were involved. She’d made Micah swear not to tell anybody she was there – reminding him of what she’d just witnessed between him and Louise – she would pick the right time to emerge.

He’d tried to persuade her to talk to Louise, and then suggested Vince. She said the Chorazin weren’t safe – Kane had called them, too. Micah had promised to come back later to help her leave the building.

To calm down his mind, he used an old Japanese breathing technique from Optron School – breathe in five seconds, hold twenty, breathe out ten, then hold "empty" for a further ten, then repeat twice more. His mind settled, and he climbed into the Optron chair. This moment always reminded him of boarding a roller-coaster sled with his sister when he was a kid. He hooked in. As it powered up, there was a brief sensation of falling, as if the chair had dropped through the floor, then he was weightless, floating above a kaleidoscopic topography of metallic-hued geometric shapes and symbols. This was the Foundation, the rudimentary building blocks for Optronic landscaping. He fast-forwarded past it.

Skimming over multi-colored data landscapes, he sent mental commands to organize the flow, using shape imagery. Ninety-seven basic types of data were slip-streamed back from the Ulysses, and he and Rudi and others had long ago developed complex patterning techniques to enable all but a few data parameters to stay in the background, and then focus on a select few to look for irregularities. The program adapted to each individual, so even though they used the same technique, he and Rudi would see different landscapes. Micah soared over rolling fields, islands of dense trees, grazing animals, flocks of birds, rye and barley, rivers and streams, nostalgic structures such as farm houses, tractors, roads, and a steam railroad. An archaic and long-gone English landscape his mother used to show him in vids and even some actual printed books from her childhood in rural England.

He had no idea what Rudi saw in his own landscape. They never discussed it, because to do so could subconsciously interfere with the program, and in any case the whole point of having two analysts was to look for the same things in different ways.

He experimented with the two main constructs: data packets represented by different animals or birds, and data channels, symbolized by the landscape architecture such as grass, trees, rivers and "man-made" structures. He picked clusters of data and brought them out of the background. In one case, the grass glowed red, and in another certain birds fell to the ground, frozen stiff, but they recovered quickly. He knew which Ulysses lighthouse markers had disappeared, but not what had happened to them. Deleted markers should leave a trace, such as grass burned to ash, or something rotten, like a carcass. He reversed time so that the landscape unripened from summer to spring, and then winter. But still he couldn’t figure out what had gone down. He ran through every tactic in the book, and then switched to the unorthodox ones which could induce psychotic feedback inside the analyst’s mind. Nothing. He was getting nowhere. The answers weren’t there.

With an inward curse, he exited, shut it off, and pulled the Optron headpiece boom away from him, rubbing his eyes. The fluorescent lights smarted after his benign virtual environment. He got off the reclining chair too fast, stumbled, and then regained his balance. He looked at his watch. An hour! He usually did thirty minutes, tops. He headed for the closest coffee machine in the corridor outside, almost colliding with Ben, the janitor, who looked pretty rough. Micah keyed in for an ultresso, just as Antonia turned the corner. They both froze. Micah made to speak, but she whirled and disappeared around the corner. He hadn’t even gotten the word "sorry" out. He turned back to Ben, but he had also gone. He shrugged, grabbed his cup with its steaming black liquid, and returned to the telemetry room, ignoring the strictly no food or drinks sign. He blew across the top of the coffee, savoring the synthetic cannabis aroma. Time dripped away. If only they’d given him a mental, rather than a physical booster.

He knew what he had to do – he had to enter Rudi’s world, see if any clues were there. But it was a violation of sorts, and could get him into serious trouble with the Optron committee if they ever found out. His eyes fell on the poster of the Ulysses crew. God alone knew what was going on up there; the people they were relying on had proven untrustworthy. He wondered if the astronauts were aware of it, what comms they were receiving from Earth, if anything. The key to re-connect with them was here, somewhere, he could sense it.

He downed the ultresso in one gulp and glanced at his wristcom. Four-thirty. Enough time for one more session. Micah went over to Rudi’s console, and searched around the desk, inside the drawer that Rudi avoided whenever Micah was watching. There was a picture of a scantily-clad girl, and on the back a nine-digit code, his Optronic frequency! He raced back into the chair, leapt onto it and reached for the ‘trodes, setting the Optron to Rudi’s frequency. If Rudi caught him, it’d be ugly. He took a breath.

He was immediately hit by the most basic of problems. It asked him for a password. Micah didn’t use a password, and assumed Rudi didn’t either, though of course it was allowed. It made him think he was on the right path, at least. But what could the password be?

Rudi loved women most of all – Micah had given up keeping score, and Rudi had thankfully long ago stopped recounting his sexploits – that game was only sustainable when there was at least occasional reciprocation. Micah suppressed the notion that he finally now had something worthy of grabbing Rudi’s attention – Louise – and tried to remember the names of Rudi’s lovers. It wasn’t that there were so many – just that none of them meant anything to Rudi. He swept aside the preposterous idea that Rudi would use his mother’s name.

Then he remembered Rudi’s reaction earlier that morning. He glanced at the keypad. He tapped in A-N-T-O-N-I-A and held his breath. The console light stayed red. Dumb idea. But it stayed in his mind. Maybe not. He recalled what Rudi called her. He keyed in P-R-I-N-C-E-S-S, and green lights illuminated Micah’s smile.

"Rudi! I always said your sex drive would be your undoing." He took one last look at the poster of the Eden crew, and activated the Optron.

He tensed as soon as he entered, completely unprepared for what he saw. He didn’t know if his physical body recoiled or not, but as soon as he arrived in Rudi’s world, as usual from a medium height above the landscape, he shot back upwards, away from the scene. The sky was a swirling mess of fierce blue and purple, streaks of scarlet zipping from one horizon to another. But that was not the worst. Beneath him was a charred city, bodies strewn amongst the ruins. Mutated human figures staggered amongst the carnage. Micah had difficulty controlling his breathing, and then realized why: a stench of burnt flesh. His own landscape was visual, but some analysts also used taste and smell.

Micah had never seen anything so apocalyptic – or had he? He remembered in training, once, the professor had briefly shown his students a landscape that had been used to develop a highly resilient and aggressive computer virus.

He thought about it: a virus, but not a normal one that just destroys. What had been done had been subtle, an "Emperor’s Cloak" virus. It prevented real data getting through and supplanted it with fake data, what you wanted to be seen. But this was also a virus in the more conventional sense, eviscerating a vast data-stream. Micah pulled back and gazed towards the horizon. Flames billowed in the distant sky; voluminous clouds of grey-black smoke drifted across the land. He flew, increasingly fast, to see how far it extended, whether the whole landscape was the same, and whether the virus had affected everything.

He covered a dozen kilometers surveying the devastation below, everything dying or dead. Raven-like creatures tore strips of flesh from corpses; it meant non-recoverable data deletion. Although it was sickening to watch, he was impressed – data streams were highly protected by security protocols – to do this inside the Optron environment must have taken immense skill on Rudi’s part. He saw a green flash down below, the color catching his eye. He dropped down. It seemed to be a figure, hiding behind the large stump of a tree. He was stunned when he got close enough. It was Katrina, the astronaut. Micah had never met her, but ten minutes ago he had been looking at her on the poster, even if she now had a jade green body. The simulacrum beckoned to him. He drew closer, at first reluctantly, and then he chided himself – nothing physical could happen to him here.

"Take me to the South river," she said. Her voice was scratchy, synthetic, she clearly had problems speaking. Micah knew that it meant her program was degrading. Yet there was desperation in her voice. He had no real plan in any case, so he nodded, and moved behind Katrina. Then he realized he did not know where South was, so he asked. She pointed to the right.

Weight wasn’t a problem in the Optron landscape, so he picked her up, holding her by her waist as they flew. There was little sensation of touch, Micah noted – presumably Rudi had toned down that particular sense – not surprising given the violence all around.

Carrion birds flocked in the distance. "Higher. Go higher," she gurgled.

Micah complied and whooshed above the birds. They were now so high it grew dark, though there were no stars. Katrina coughed. He knew the simulated air rarity affected her programming, and he made to descend, but she shook her head vehemently.

"Not yet."

After five minutes that included gut-wrenching coughing on her part, she pointed down to the right, and Micah swooped below. He saw green in the distance. He accelerated. With a sense of exhilaration he realized that it was his own landscape: beyond a boundary of red-soaked earth, lay green hills and trees, and a river winding toward the horizon.

"Stop!" she screamed, coughing in spasms that juddered Micah. He slowed down, intending to land on his own territory.

"NO! Stop NOW!" Lime green blood sprayed from her mouth.

Micah stopped dead, and they hung for a moment. Her body relaxed, though the coughing continued. Slowly he descended to the ground. She was a mess. She curled up in a fetal position on the damp red heather, and pointed to the other side, a few meters away.

"Walk," she croaked, and then resumed coughing.

Micah looked from her to the green lawn, and walked towards it. As he made to step onto cool grass, he collided with an invisible wall; it connected with his foot, knee and head, and he bounced off, falling back onto the turf. It hadn’t hurt him, just been a surprise. He got up again and tested the barrier. He could barely see it, but it was impenetrable. No wonder she’d screamed at him to stop. He glanced back to her to check Katrina wasn’t going anywhere, then shot straight upwards at high velocity to find the top edge of the wall. About a kilometer above the ground, the glass curved backward behind him. A dome. No way through or out.

He traced his way back to the simulacrum. She’d crawled to the barrier. He realized there was another figure, on his own side. That worried him. Had Rudi inserted a virus in Micah’s landscape? But as he got closer, he froze. Katrina knelt with her two hands against the wall. On the other side was another green figure, her palms placed against the wall too, so that their hands appeared to be touching. Tears streamed down her face, and her body shook. It was Antonia.

Micah dropped to his knees. He felt like he’d just been hit by a hover-car. As he watched them, his hands tore some of the grass up by its roots, and he dug his fingers into the soil. Abruptly, he pushed himself back up. They were oblivious to him. He felt a sucking vertigo, dangerous in an Optron landscape, so he shut down his emotions and switched into analyst mode.

They don’t belong here, he thought, in either landscape. Someone had inserted them – a very smart programmer. They’d been hidden from him and Rudi for a long time. Autonomous programs. Secret contact channels, he guessed, and because the emotional representations in the programs were intense and well-scripted, they were encoded by the two personalities themselves, or at least one of them with the others’ consent. It was ironic. Love had been programmed in because it meant that these programs could hide, could adapt, and wouldn’t give up. As a systems analyst himself, he had to admire it, but in terms of what it told him about Antonia, it added iodine to the wound. She has a relationship with Katrina. The sting of that thought made the desolation of the landscape seem fitting. He looked away, toward the butchery in Rudi’s world, and then through the barrier to his own landscape, green and naïve, completely missing what was really going on. He hung his head.

After a while, he cleared his throat to gain their attention. He was burning Optron time. Katrina kept one hand on the glass wall, and turned to face him. Antonia seemed to be trying to see what was going on but couldn’t make out Micah, perhaps because it was too dark on his side, and too light in hers. He was glad for it.

"You should go now," Katrina said, her voice a thin scratch across his ears.

"What about you?"

"You can only help me from the outside. Or maybe from in there." She pointed to Micah’s world. He stared through the glass to note certain landmarks in his landscape to find the border again. He wondered if the Antonia simulacrum would remain there. He doubted it. These two would hide again quickly. The carrion birds would erase Katrina if they spotted her.

He gave the mental command to exit, and changed the setting on the Optron to his own landscape. In that brief instant he thought maybe he heard a small noise in the real world, but he didn’t have time to check it out; and there was no sign of Rudi.

It was refreshing to be back in his world. Rudi’s had been so stressful, in more ways than one. He headed to the far North of his landscape. After some minutes, he saw the landmarks: a telegraph line, a deserted stone farm building, and the river. But he could see nothing of Rudi’s world. He slowed down. In the distance, a similar telegraph line and a deserted stone farm building. He stopped and looked back, then forward. Idiot! He glided down and stood at the bank of the river. He saw two depressions in the grass where Antonia’s simulacrum had been, and in front of him, his reflection; a mirror, the perfect metaphor for reflecting a data-stream back on itself, and one difficult to spot given his chosen landscape format.

He tried to reason it out: Rudi’s landscape was chewing up the real incoming data from Ulysses, and feeding his with false data. But where do the false data come from? Rudi couldn’t create that, and it couldn’t be a copy of the Prometheus or Heracles data as they wouldn’t match. Later. He needed to get out before Rudi returned.

He imaged the exit symbol, kneading tired eyeballs with the heel of his hand, and removed the 'trodes'. As he opened his eyes, about to get out of the chair, he stopped dead. Rudi stood before him, aiming a pulse pistol at his face.

"Hello, Mikey, been anywhere interesting?"

Chapter 16

Eden Approach

Kat sprinted at breakneck speed but it was closing fast. She saw the hatch door open. Someone was shouting, egging her on. With a shock she realized it was her elder sister. In an instant she knew that was wrong – her sister had been dead for years – she must be in the dream again. Abruptly, her viewpoint shifted and she saw herself from above, running across Eden’s landscape towards the Lander. Eden was no longer green as she’d seen from the Prometheus vids – instead it was a sickly rust color. For the first time she saw the creature chasing her. It was hard to make out. It ran in a strange way, in spurts, like it was jumping, or hopping even. It was long, longer than a horse. She tried to count the legs, when it jerked suddenly, left the ground, and flew upwards towards her. Its head had small mandibles, but it also had a human-like face. She recognized it, wild with anger, the face screaming at her. She shrank back as it seized her shoulders and opened its blood-red gaping maw wide.

"Wake up! Kat, wake up, dammit!" Zack shook her hard.

Kat woke, drenched in sweat. Pierre stood behind Zack, looking at small holo-readouts emanating from her monitor. "She’s not supposed to dream in stasis," he said.

Zack huffed. "Well, she sure as hell was. Seemed like a real shitter, too. You okay, girl?"

She could see and hear them but she felt drugged, as if a transparent pillow was over her head. She didn’t know how to respond, her mouth not yet connected to her brain.

"She’s still pretty groggy," Zack said.

Although she couldn’t feel her tongue, she decided to try to speak anyway. She lifted her head.

"Kreechhhur; froo..." She rolled her eyes and flopped her head back down to the cushion.

Zack squinted at her, while talking to Pierre. "You sure she ain’t brain damaged?" He winked at her.

"Well, she just made a lot more sense than you did in the first five minutes of your revival phase yesterday." Pierre collapsed the holodata and turned to leave. "Give her a few minutes. I’ll be in the cockpit. The captain wants to give us all a briefing as soon as Kat’s capable."

Zack grinned at Kat, ran a stubby finger down the right side of her face, and made to go, holding the end of a makeshift walking stick. "See you soon, kid."

Kat managed to find the muscle co-ordination to grip his wrist. She needed to tell him. She tried to speak, but just gurgled.

"Hey, okay, take it easy. I’ll stay a while. Must’ve been some nightmare, eh? Deep breaths now. Try to move your tongue and jaw – loosen them up."

Kat tried. Her throat felt baked. She was desperate to tell someone what she’d seen – the creature, the desert. It was already slipping from her mind, like sand falling through floorboards. Finally she found some words.

"Saw it – big – fasht – aily-in... alien." Kat caught her own reflection in the stasis lid: hair matted with sweat, and the four days of stasis had brought out freckles on her cheeks.

"Wait – you mean after all these nightmares you finally saw the thing chasing you?"

"Yessh." Her tongue felt swollen. She coughed. Zack reached somewhere out of her line of sight, and produced a chrome mug of warm liquid, and brought it to her lips. Half of it didn’t stay in her mouth, but it was strawberry sweet, a hint of menthol, and soothed her throat. She gulped it down, then gasped for breath.

Zack’s features sharpened, as the fuzz lifted from her brain. White noise she hadn’t even noticed phased out. Her shoulders relaxed.

"Thanks, Zack," she sputtered, coughing.

"S’nothing. Took me fifteen minutes to come round properly." He leaned closer, a heavy hand on her shoulder. She’d never minded before that he was physical with her – he never meant anything by it, and she could tell the difference – but this time... He must have seen a small reaction, because he transferred his hand to the edge of the cot.

"So, tell me. What’d it look like?

She’d been struggling to remember what it reminded her of most. Her first thought was of an insect – a praying mantis – but that wasn’t quite right. A grasshopper wasn’t right either. It didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen. She imagined how Pierre might describe it – objectively, matter of fact. She closed her eyes, placing her mind in free recall mode.

"A three meter long insect; can bend in the middle; six legs, trapezoidal head like a hammerhead; black body; six wet-looking slit-eyes, dripping red, no iris or pupil; no wings… muscular, armored like… like a rhino." She opened her eye-lids wide and stared at Zack. She shuddered. She was relieved she’d been able to remember it, but now the terror of it was more real. It was fixed in her mind, and from now on it would haunt her when awake.

Zack pursed his lips and blew out a long breath. "No wonder you were running, kid." He frowned. "And Eden? Did you see Eden this time?"

She squeezed her eyes shut again to help remember, then opened them.

"Yes! But it was reddish-brown, dry. Not green anymore. Withered trees scattered around. It was a desert."

Zack snorted triumphantly. "Well, there it is then, Eden’s greener than Earth – than Earth used to be, that is. So, just a nightmare, kid. Case closed." He made a mock salute. "I’ll inform the skipper we can land there after all! That’ll teach you to eat too much cheese before going into stasis."

Kat offered one of her crooked smiles.

"Now, you get up in a few minutes, and take a shower, because, I’ll let you in on a little secret of my own – after stasis, you stink! Then join us up front, okay?" He turned, grinning, and shuffled off, his metallic cane clunking on the floor.

She knew he must be right. This past month she’d been having premonitions of Eden – that some terrible alien was there, waiting to kill them all. And the fact that it was in a desert, and her dead sister – what was that all about anyway? And of course the face. She hadn’t told Zack that part, it would have upset him. In the last few seconds before the monster reached him, its face had changed into a human face: Zack’s.

Shaking her head, she attempted to sit up, but her arms were jelly, and she collapsed back down. She tried again, slower this time, and realized how sweaty she was. Definitely time for a shower. She crawled out of the cot. Her legs quivered, weakened from stasis. All that running, she thought, and laughed.

Setting the shower-head to "Rain", she let the hot water cascade over her head and body. As she relaxed, she remembered a detail she’d forgotten – it hadn’t seemed important at the time. But she’d studied dream psych at college, and you almost never saw yourself from above – except in near-death experiences – not in dreams or even nightmares. And that top-down viewpoint – whose view was it? The creature had attacked it, no longer chasing the Kat figure on the ground. She didn’t know what that meant, but somehow the thought chilled her. She shivered. But she didn’t believe in anything metaphysical. Zack was right. Just a dream, nothing more. Dreams don’t have to make sense, and don’t have to mean anything. She set the water to very hot, adjusted the nozzle to "Needle", and turned around, leaning her head against the misted cubicle door, hoping the pinpricks of steaming water would melt the shivers from her spine.

The cockpit was more cramped than usual: they’d had to adapt Zack’s pilot chair due to his leg being in a cast. Kat’s area, directly behind Zack’s, was now squeezed. She envied Blake’s position, and Pierre’s science station looked positively spacious. Real estate was a prime commodity on a space-ship, she thought to herself, and laughed inwardly – space ship – now there was an oxymoron!

She watched Zack rig up for decel. He operated a compound joystick and neural interface connected to an oculometer, a small device that fit like glasses, which shone an infrared beam onto his right eye. It allowed him to make rapid course changes if necessary, simply by looking in a direction he wanted to go and uttering a sub-vocal command through his throat-mike.

Kat envied his pilot skills – not many people could use this kit at all, let alone with his precision and response speed. She knew it came from his battle experience: dodging heat-seekers and blister-mines that took out half of all aircraft in the War.

They were nearing visual sighting of Eden. Zack, his leg propped up on a non-functioning part of the console, had been making minor course adjustments for the past two hours to get them there in the fastest possible time. All the calculations and contingency plans had been prepared and triple-checked manually. She noticed more instrument lights were on than when the virus had first hit; Blake and Pierre had been busy while she’d been in stasis. They’d managed to restore thirty per cent of the software, so they’d have good sensors, and alarms would sound if they were too steep or shallow on orbit intercept. But for the rest, they were in Zack’s hands.

It was quiet, the only sounds occasional thruster burns, Zack’s wincing noises, and the "beep" that occurred every two minutes confirming they were still on target and lined up for Eden.

Kat felt a subdued excitement. After all they’d been through, they were finally about to reach Eden, the salvation of humanity. And they had oxygen to breathe, at least enough to get them down to the planet’s surface, where they could replenish supplies for the trip home.

As astronauts, it was the ultimate dream: to reach a new, habitable planet. The first major step had been that of Neil Armstrong, onto the moon’s surface. Then there had been Yanni Sorensen, the first man to set foot on Mars, and Carlita Fernandes, the first woman to place a foot, or a fin as it had turned out to be, into the icy quagmire of Europa, floating around the awesome spectacle of Jupiter. But none of these worlds had been remotely habitable. They could build stations there, but the resource requirements meant they were unsustainable, and all such stations except a couple of so-called strategic bases on the Moon had long since been abandoned Post-War, due to the sheer cost, with almost nothing in return except abstract scientific data.

Their mission was different. Everything had fed forward to this point. Over a century of space exploration had been building to this moment. The whole crew sensed it, and despite being cut off from Earth, those back home would be aware that they were nearing Eden. Better still, they were out of harm’s way, the Alicians couldn’t touch them. Despite ghosters and viruses, they were going to make it.

She studied Blake, his eyes fixed outside the spaceship hunting for Eden, seeking it out in amongst the millions of points of light, a look of resolve welded onto his face. He’s willing us to Eden. They picked the right man for the job.

Zack interrupted the silence and her train of thought. "Okay, folks, this is it. Time for decel. Buckle up!"

They all fixed their harnesses including forehead straps. Kat didn’t have to be told to do it properly. The first experiments on deceleration from dark matter drives had been wildly successful and simultaneously catastrophic for the crew, who had ended up splattered all over the cockpit, their internal organs shredded by the decelerative forces before they had escaped the body’s fickle confines. The harnesses in fact were a minor part of their survival kit. Most of the work was done by the Schultz-Piccione inertial dampening system inside the ship. She was relieved when its tell-tale thrum kicked in. Her body started to tingle, then vibrate, as its pitch rose. Pierre had told them once, over dinner, that if the sound rose to roughly high C, it meant that it was failing, and they were about to explode, but that they would probably lose consciousness. Pierre wasn’t one to take along to dinner parties, she’d decided a long time ago.

Kat shook so much she finally realized how a cocktail must feel: she felt her abdominal organs moving around, though she couldn’t tell which. Speech, and even yelling were impossible. It was advisable to keep her mouth clamped shut – the nearest dentist was a long way away. But soon enough it began to die down. Her relief was blanketed by nausea. She hit the harness release buckle, eager to see out of the cockpit, and stood up, leaning on Zack’s burly shoulders, staring forwards.

"Welcome to Eden," Blake said, as they all gaped at the main viewscreen. It was still some way off, a medium-sized disk, a silhouette in front of its own sun, some hundred and forty million kilometers away on the other side. They were still travelling relatively fast, but decelerating at a speed that could now be handled by the inertial field. She felt a thrill run through her, even though they couldn’t see much yet.

It had been so long just seeing stars, dots of white light, that she’d forgotten what it was like to see a whole planet again. The last one they had seen had been Saturn, before the slingshot out of the Solar System. She felt a lump in her throat, and apparently Pierre also was moved, because he placed a hand briefly on her shoulder – at least she hoped that was the reason.

Zack chimed in. "She sure is a sight for sore eyes! Hang on to something, this’ll be worth it!" He moved the joystick forward, and the ship gave a spurt of acceleration – catching Kat off-balance, so that Pierre caught her. The ship veered outward in an arc, placing the sun initially behind Eden, creating an eclipse, and then showing the sun burst out from behind, forcing them all to shade their eyes until the screen polarized. Kat regained her balance.

For the first time they could see color on Eden. The lush forest green and Mediterranean blue, after so much black, silver and white made Kat gasp. The continents were very different to Earth’s, and two small polar caps blazed like icing on a spherical cake.

"My God, it really is Eden!" She wanted to whoop.

Blake nodded to Zack. "Well, my friend, you’ve got us this far, take us into orbit. Kat, Pierre, take your stations."

She felt a cautious happiness, like a small animal daring to come out of its hole into the sunshine. So much of her personal life had gone badly wrong.

Pierre jarred the mood. "That’s unusual."

She turned back round to catch what the other three were now staring at. At first she didn’t see it. But as they headed further to the sunward side of Eden, it was unmistakable. A circular orange-brown patch decorated one of Eden’s continents.

"Looks like a desert," Pierre said, "but it wasn’t there when the Prometheus came two years ago."

Kat glanced at Zack’s face reflected in the screen, but he didn’t return the look. She gazed again towards Eden. It was a desert alright. No question.

Blake broke the silence. "Okay, we’ll figure it out later. First things first. We get into orbit and then prepare for descent. Stations, please."

They all sat down and busied themselves. It proved trickier than they had thought, but they achieved a stable orbit on the first attempt. Kat glued her eyes to the console, not wanting to face Eden right now, nor Zack. She wondered if she should tell the Captain or Pierre. But it would seem ridiculous, and wouldn’t help anything. For the first time in a while, she thought of her faraway lover back in Eden Mission Control.

A red light on her console flashed, her earpiece automatically activating. Pierre swung out of his chair and leant over her shoulder – he had obviously picked it up on the science console, too. Blake turned around. Zack was using the neural interface and oculometer, so couldn’t even deviate his eyes to see what was going on.

"Report," Blake said.

Kat’s stomach turned to ice when she heard the com-message.

Pierre waited for her to answer, but when she didn’t, he offered what he knew. "It’s a com signal, Sir."

She turned her right palm towards her and stared at it, in case she was in the nightmare again.

"From Earth?" Blake asked.

Her breath sounded raspish in her ears. She listened again, praying she’d misheard. She regained control. "It’s… from Eden."

The ship veered slightly, then recovered. Blake stood up, faced Kat, and placed a steadying hand on Zack’s shoulder, leaving it there.

"What does it say?" His voice was quiet.

Kat removed the earpiece and handed it to Pierre.

Pierre cleared his throat. "It says, Captain, that is, it keeps repeating…" he looked out toward the planet below, which was now occupying most of the screen, then back at the Captain. Blake didn’t say anything, just waited for him to compose himself. None of them had ever known Pierre hesitate before. He cleared his throat again.

"It says, 'Do not land here. Eden is not safe. Eden is a trap.’ Then it repeats."

Everyone held their breath. Kat gazed up at Blake. His face locked itself down, serious. "Where is it coming from exactly, on the planet’s surface?"

Pierre returned to his station and ran a triangulation algorithm to fix it. Kat slumped in her chair. Pierre was getting an answer from his console. But Kat already knew, and spoke, her voice uneven. "It’s from the desert, isn’t it?"

Pierre gave her a sideways look. "How did you know?"

She didn’t answer, just stared at her console, wanting to punch it. She remembered her dream, the running, running to save her life, running to save everything. It was all going to come true, somewhere down on the planet’s surface. And when it did, she knew this time she wasn’t going to wake up.

PART TWO

EDEN

Chapter 17

Furnace

Micah’s heart pounded up into his throat as he stared into Rudi’s dark-ringed eyes, peering at him over the barrel of a pulse pistol – what sort he couldn’t tell, but at this range it hardly mattered. Rudi’s hand wasn’t steady. Micah didn’t know if that was a good or a bad sign.

He was strapped into the Optron chair with safety harnesses. His arms were free, but he couldn’t reach the release buckles which Rudi had moved to the back of the chair.

"Rudi, what is this? I was just –"

"Save it, Micah, I know you’ve been inside my world. So you’re a smart guy, you know at least part of what’s going on, enough to put me in prison."

Micah saw a movement behind Rudi, in the corridor, someone bending down. Maybe he could attract their attention. Or stall until Louise arrived.

Rudi’s usual smooth tones took on a ragged edge. "Did you like what you saw? Not what you were expecting, eh?" He appeared to be gloating.

Micah thought fast. He’d always been seen as the clever one, the higher ranking of the two of them; that must have irked Rudi over the years. Low-level flattery might buy some time.

"To tell you the truth, I was impressed. And the mirror? Real smart. I would have hit it except for…" He stopped. Did Rudi know about the simulacra?

Rudi tilted his head to one side. "Except for what? And how did you find out about the mirror – you should have slammed right into it and exited the program immediately. There was a bio-feedback loop installed to create an energy build-up in the Optron if you hit it. Would have knocked you out, at the least."

Micah tried to work out the ramifications of telling Rudi about the Kat simulacrum. In any case, would Rudi really kill him? Here in the lab? Somewhere else? He noticed the Optron was still on, fully powered.

"Rudi, listen, can I get down from here, I’ve been here for –"

"Stay put buddy, you’re not done yet."

So that was it: Optron overload, rigged to kill or mind-wipe. His time was running out. Could he overpower Rudi? Not a chance, tied to this chair. He took another tack.

"Where’s the third program, Rudi, the third interface? You get the real data, mine sends back spurious shit – but what feeds my program?"

Rudi lowered the pistol, but gestured to Micah to stay put. He strutted around in front of Micah, never taking his eyes off him.

"You were always the intellectual. The natural pattern recognizer, manipulator of equations. The geek, Micah, you fit the part perfectly. But I was smarter, I had any woman I wanted, pretty much. Life was good, but I didn’t fit the profile. I had this idea, years ago, but couldn’t express it in math. They wouldn’t listen. Thought I was a good guy to have a beer with, but not the real deal. I was going nowhere, fucking nowhere. And then someone did listen, someone who understood my talents. One thing led to another." He shrugged.

Micah had never thought of Rudi as a friend, had never been out with him for drinks, but never thought of him as a spy. Now it all seemed to fit. Rudi had enough character traits to fit the role. But still, he never thought Rudi had it in him to be a traitor.

"Alicians?"

Rudi laughed. "Do I look that dumb? Bunch of fanatics! No, I’m working for another corporation. They helped me with the mirror simulation. It’s a beaut!"

There was a gleam in his eyes. Micah recognized the old Rudi he’d met four years ago, cocky but full of ideas. But it crumbled, like all of Rudi’s ideas over the years. Rudi had finally gotten his dream to come true, but Micah knew that without recognition it wouldn’t soothe the pain. The old Rudi was gone, which meant Micah’s situation was grim.

"What does the other corporation want?" He guessed the mirror was the third interface, even if he had no clue how it worked. Still, it would need an access portal out of the Eden Mission, through the firewalls. "Which corporation, and why?"

Rudi glanced at his watch, then at Micah and the Optron. "Sorry, Mikey, out of time." He raised the remote control and pressed a button that moved the boom to connect to Micah’s head, pinning him to the chair. Micah started to panic, reaching for the Optron headset, but there were no wires to pull, only cold, implacable carb-steel. The auto-electrodes clamped onto his temples.

"Rudi, for God’s sake, you can’t do this!" he yelled, the loudness of his own voice sending him further into panic. He kicked aimlessly.

Rudi’s previously confident voice now sounded strained, but laced with bitterness. He glanced towards the door.

"You’re right, Micah. I don’t have to do it. But I will. I’d say sweet dreams, but we both know that would be a lie. I’ve switched you back to my world. Before brain death, the carrion birds will eat you alive. It won’t be real of course, but you’ll feel it just the same. So long, little big shot."

Rudi flicked a switch and the Optron emitted a low hum, climbing in pitch.

Micah fought helplessly, squirmed, kicked, and screamed "No!", and then he heard a small gasp, and something heavy slump to the floor. He was unable to turn his head. The Optron gleamed in front of him, and he felt himself being sucked in. He didn’t want to die, not like this. And for the first time in his life, in his mind he called out, not for his mother, but for his father, to help him. Then he felt something touch his neck, and a tingling coldness spread like a freezing cobweb across his face and down his arms; an icy chill that squeezed him out of consciousness.

He awoke on a dusty floor in a dark room, little bigger than a broom closet. He’d been roused by a clanging, but he couldn’t make out where he was. He couldn’t move. He tried to get up, but nothing happened. He opened his eyes with a massive effort. Then he heard movement – someone else was there, maneuvering around him. He felt a sharp pricking sensation in his neck. Nausea surged through him; tremors wracked his body, then vanished. He fell forward and vomited, remaining on all fours, trying to recover his breath in between spasms of retching. A graveyard voice came from behind him.

"Your colleague is dying. What awoke you was the sound of the furnace chute door closing. He is burning to death below. He will be gone in a few moments. In such a predicament fear and pain usually trigger a heart attack before the burning boils the brain. I am a Cleanser. We believe that death, and in particular the pain of death, is a necessary cleansing process before meeting the Maker of all things. I drugged him so he will neither move nor scream, but he will still feel everything."

Micah retched again, his eyes watering. What looked like a towel, in the semi-darkness, dropped next to him.

"Clean yourself and stand up."

Micah pulled himself up, his legs trembling. Everyone knew about Cleansers, though most hoped they were only legend, something to scare children into behaving well; perfect assassins who knew no mercy. His only option for now was to obey.

"Turn around."

Micah did so, reluctantly, guessing that once he saw this man’s face he would not be left to live. He stared in disbelief at Ben the janitor, except that even in this half-light, something was wrong with the way he held himself – like a panther ready to lash out at a moment’s notice. Micah also noticed the hands – podgy, yet expressive, fluid in motion. Not Ben, for sure.

"I will ask you a question. I will only ask you once. You will only give one answer. I will know if you are lying. If you lie to me, you go into the furnace. Alive. Nod if you understand me."

The words were flat, but had the same effect on Micah as a saw cutting into exposed bone. His legs shook, though he tried to hide it. He sweated as he looked at the "janitor", who stood statue-like. His mind was racing, but there were only two logical outcomes – either he refused to answer and would die now, or else he told the truth and would probably also die, though not immediately. Trying to lie to this Cleanser was not an option. He thought again of his dad, a war hero – what would he have said or done?

"Do you understand your options?"

Micah nodded. He had already guessed the question.

"Where is Sandy?"

He didn’t want to answer. He envisioned Rudi’s skeleton disintegrating to ash down below. A hand shot out and closed around his throat, lifting him off the floor and pinning him against the wall. The Cleanser’s other hand threw open the furnace lid. A blast of hot air and a blood-red glow flooded into the small dark space.

"I will allow you to scream." He moved Micah’s body with pathetic ease towards the opening.

"Wait!" Micah cried, despite knowing that whatever he said his fate might be the same. But he had to cling on. The Cleanser did not let him down, but brought Micah’s face closer to his own. Micah looked into those eyes and knew there was no way to lie to them.

"Kane’s office." The words came of their own accord, before Micah could stop them.

The Cleanser stared a little longer, then released him so that he fell to the floor. Micah felt disgusted, as if he’d just signed Sandy’s death warrant, and his own. In what he realized was probably a futile act, he kicked hard at the Cleanser’s leg behind the knee, thinking maybe he could escape and summon help. But the target blurred out of reach, and Micah’s groin exploded with pain. As he lay on the floor, trying to breathe in, the cold voice spoke close to his ear.

"Don’t."

Micah managed to take in a few straggling breaths.

"Get up. Make yourself presentable."

Micah did his best to compose himself. As he rose he sneaked a glance at his wristcom: 6:05. He prayed Louise was on time and had found he was missing.

"Listen carefully," the Cleanser said. "We take the service elevator on the left. It is twenty meters. We come out on level 200 and turn left. You approach the security guards at the office and tell them Louise sent you."

Micah’s wide eyes betrayed his surprise – this man knew his stuff.

"Then what?"

"Once inside the office you show me where she is."

Micah forced himself to look into the Cleanser’s eyes. "What if they don’t let me in?"

The unwavering black pupils answered the question for Micah.

"And me?" Micah said.

"If I have to kill you, I’ll make it quick."

Micah didn’t know whether the "íf" was honest or just to gain his compliance. This assassin exuded professionalism, or fanaticism, he didn’t know which. But there was integrity about him – he appeared to take no sadistic joy from killing. At least the vids had that part wrong. But Micah had made up his own mind. He wouldn’t stand by while Sandy was killed, even if it only meant delaying the inevitable. He brushed himself down.

"I’m ready."

Moments later they emerged, Micah first, followed a few feet behind by the innocuous figure of a hunched over janitor pushing his trolley stuffed with brooms, cloths and bottles of detergent. He told Micah that if he did anything out of the ordinary or tried to run, he’d be dead in a second. Micah didn’t doubt it.

As they waited for the service elevator, Antonia came around the corner. She stopped when she saw Micah, but the anger that had suddenly drawn like a curtain across her face melted as she saw Micah’s taut, resolute expression. She glanced at the janitor fiddling with his trolley, then walked towards them. Micah turned back to the elevator lamp – the lift was descending, but was still five floors above them. He didn’t want her caught up in this, and wouldn’t look at her. Don’t stop now. Walk on past! To his relief, just as she sauntered past, the lift arrived. He wondered if she would ask him why he was taking the service elevator, but instead she addressed the janitor.

"Hi there Pops, how you doing today?"

Without missing a beat, he answered, in a reasonable impression of Ben’s voice. "Why, fine, sweetheart, mighty nice of you to ask, but must be going now, one more floor to clean."

As Micah stepped inside the elevator, the Cleanser pushed the trolley in too, blocking Micah in, all the time watching his eyes. But she had already passed. The Cleanser closed the door and hit the button for floor 200.

Micah usually had a strong urge to speak in lifts, but he could find nothing to say as they swept upwards. The lift pinged and the door slid open.

"Remember my instructions. You go on ahead; I’ll be right behind you. But first, put this on. Lift your arms."

It was a black waist band that fit under Micah’s jacket. Micah had no idea what it was, but complied.

"If you want to live, don’t touch it."

Micah looked down briefly and then back to the Cleanser.

"Go. Now."

Micah walked slowly at first, then at a brisker pace. The creaking of the trolley wheels tracked behind him. He came around the corner to Sandy’s office, which acted as antechamber to Kane’s suite. Two Eden Security guards, not Chorazin, stood outside, fully armed. As he started to say he’d been asked to come here at six o’clock to meet with Agent Louise, one of the guards deftly pushed him face to the wall, a pistol against the nape of his neck. A firm nudge behind his legs knocked Micah to his knees. His hands went to the wall to maintain balance. While one guard held a gun on him, the other patted him down. When he got to the waistband, he patted it once and then stopped. He tried to say something, and then keeled over backwards. Micah heard a whoosh and as he turned he saw the second man, the one with the gun, crumpled on top of the first, a knife handle sticking out of his throat. Yellow gelatinous fluid bubbled around the blade – Micah guessed it stopped the blood spraying. The man’s eyes were wide open. The Cleanser was already there, next to Micah.

"Don’t move," he said. He removed the waistband. "Get up."

Micah tried, but the first man had fallen across his legs. Before he knew what was happening the Cleanser pulled the man off him, and was searching for a key card in his pocket. He held it out, but Micah was transfixed by the first man, not yet dead, eyes blinking fast, his body convulsing. The guard’s jaw moved as if he were trying to say something. Micah looked to the Cleanser.

"Contact poison," said the Cleanser. "Colombian kokai frog. Instant paralysis –his lungs cannot work anymore. He’ll be dead shortly. Open the door."

Micah took the key card but still couldn’t move his feet. He gaped at the dying man whose face was turning blue, his eyes screaming in silence for help.

With a muted crunch, the Cleanser’s right hand whipped out and snapped the man’s neck.

"Open the door," he repeated.

Micah obeyed, fumbling to get the key card in. At the third attempt he heard the soft magnetic click and the door slid open. The room was empty. Micah was followed by the Cleanser carrying one man across his shoulder. He had pushed the other one on top of the trolley and wheeled him in. He closed the door behind them and locked it, backed the trolley up against it, shoving the second corpse in front of the trolley. Micah drew away from the doors, and leant unsteadily against Sandy’s desk. He saw the letter opener lying there, and wondered if he could slip it inside his jacket.

"Don’t even think about it, Micah." The Cleanser stood up, and with a tearing motion, removed the sim-skin mask, so that he no longer looked like the janitor. For the first time Micah saw the lean, tan face underneath.

"Where?" The Cleanser ripped off the overalls revealing a black, one-piece jumpsuit underneath. He appeared unarmed. Micah was puzzled because he still appeared to be carrying body fat, but moved like a gymnast. The Cleanser raised an eyebrow. Micah nodded to the two doors that led to Kane’s suite. The Cleanser gestured to him to go first.

Micah pressed the gold door handles and opened the doors wide and walked in. At first he thought the Cleanser had stayed outside, but then he heard the soft click of the doors being closed, and saw him checking around the suite. After a moment, including a brief bathroom inspection, he came back to face Micah. Micah suddenly felt cold steel being pressed against his neck.

"Last chance."

Micah tried hard not to glance toward the bathroom. "I lied. She’s gone. You’ll never find her."

Micah had expected to feel the blade slice into his throat, to see those eyes flash in anger, but the Cleanser lowered the knife, and stood between Micah and the bathroom.

"Listen to me, Micah. I’m not here to –"

The Cleanser spun away from him as the bathroom mirror shattered outwards. A pulse bullet ricocheted off the Cleanser into Micah’s shoulder, sending him reeling backwards. Another shot fired but the Cleanser had vaulted out of the line of sight from the bathroom. Micah saw Sandy kneeling behind stalactites of glass, gun aimed outwards, her hand unsteady. Instinctively Micah crouched down on the carpet.

At the other end of the suite, the double doors burst open. A black-helmeted, body-armored female Chorazin agent hurtled through the air, rolled across the floor, slammed a round object onto the floor then sprung up, leveling a rifle at the Cleanser.

Two bullets from the Cleanser knocked the rifle out of her hands. He stood, legs splayed, rapid-firing his weapon, both arms locked out in front. Micah saw the agent driven back by repeated gunfire hitting exactly the same place on her helmet’s visor. A loud keening shriek erupted from the object on the floor, making Micah clasp his hands around his ears. He knew what it was – an audio grenade to make them all black out. He tried to hang on.

The Cleanser fired again and again. No matter where the agent ducked and dived, he always hit the same spot, denting the shaded visor. Micah glanced to Sandy, but like him, she was incapacitated by pain that felt like a needle piercing his eardrums. He turned back to the agent and saw a crack appear on the visor as she tried to regain her balance. She dived sideways and flung something in the Cleanser’s direction, but he launched himself upwards, still firing even in mid-air as he twisted out of the way of a stream of darts spitting across the room, impaling the wall behind him. The rising crescendo shattered the windows, as Micah rolled onto his back in agony, but still he watched through pain-slitted eyes.

The agent tried to protect her visor – now a spider web of fractures – with her forearm, but a bullet slammed into her elbow, flinging her arm to the side, as another punched into her visor. She somersaulted backwards, a bullet pounding into her back, sending her sprawling onto the floor. Micah’s eyesight began to blur. Sandy was already slumped in her hiding place. The Cleanser stepped toward the woman’s prone form, and aimed the weapon down towards her head. Micah lost consciousness.

◆◆◆

Louise waited, panting, but the kill-shot never came. One of the drill-darts had gotten through; it had just taken longer than normal to paralyse him. She stared up into the assassin’s eyes, knowing that he was using every ounce of will to pull the trigger, but it was too late. She yanked off the helmet, removed the protective earphones, and manoeuvred into a seated position. She kicked out hard at Gabriel’s stomach, and he toppled over backwards like a broken statue. Getting to her feet, she checked that Micah and Sandy were out cold, then knelt over the Cleanser, lifting his face towards hers.

"I know you can hear me, Brother Matthias, although you shouldn’t hear anything after that sonic grenade. Nice shooting by the way," she said, showing him the helmet visor. "One more and I’d be dead." She tossed it to the floor.

His lips twitched. She grabbed his jaw.

"No, no. Shhh. Don’t try to speak," she whispered. "I know what you want to say. That you came here to find Sandy, to protect her from the Alicians, not to kill her, and that there’s a double-agent in the Chorazin." She unpeeled her right hand glove. "Did you really think you could fool Sister Esma?" She smiled, forcing his mouth open with her forefinger and thumb. "Don’t worry, Sandy’s safe with me now. Relax, your part in this is over. Time to die." She found the false tooth at the back of his throat. She squeezed and snapped it open. His eyes widened a fraction. "Good to be awake when you die, that’s what you Cleansers say, isn’t it?" She let his head slip to the floor.

Four other Chorazin agents charged into the room. She stood up, facing them. ‘Medic, get a goddammed medic, fast,’ she screamed at them. "He’s taken poison!"

◆◆◆

Micah felt his face being slapped gently. He heard a female voice.

"Come on, Micah, wake up, there you go, only a flesh wound this time. Not bad for your first day. Found the girl, found the assassin – maybe we should hire you." She smiled, but Micah was in too much pain to return the favor. His ears rang.

He stared up into Louise’s face. "Sandy… alive?"

"In custody. We’ll protect her."

Micah was still trying to come round. "The Cleanser?"

Louise helped him sit up so he could see. The Cleanser lay prone, eyes and mouth open with a look of surprise – not pain or fear. His body was much thinner now, surrounded by a pool of pinkish water.

"Pretty good disguise, don’t you think?" she said. "Temporary extreme water retention. Intensely uncomfortable, but these Alicians, well, you know what fanatics will go through. At least now you do."

"You killed him?"

"We wanted to interrogate him, but he had a failsafe device. Died instantly. He couldn’t penetrate my armor, although the sonofabitch hit my visor, the weakest point, nine times before I dropped him.

"How did you know we were here?" Micah asked, wincing from the shoulder wound. Every movement felt like a knife cutting him open.

Louise smiled, and moved aside so he could see. "Your little friend told me, you know, the one you like to share coffee with."

Standing at the doorway was a white-faced Antonia.

"When she saw you with Ben, or whatever his real name was, she noticed something was wrong. So she called him Pops. Apparently the real Ben hated that word. When he didn’t react, well, things just fell into place."

Micah nodded towards Antonia. "Thanks." But as he said it, he remembered her simulacrum crying, reaching out for Katrina. He didn’t know how she read his face.

She spoke to Louise, her voice quiet. "May I leave?"

"I’m afraid you’re involved now, Miss Laschtiva, you’ll need to be processed. Agent Montaigue will handle you; we have several rooms set up for de-briefing."

Before she left, Antonia gave Micah a long, measuring look.

"Come on Micah," Louise said, helping him up. "You need debriefing too, I’m afraid. Vince will want to question you."

He struggled to his feet. He knew he should feel relieved, but something didn’t seem right. He was glad to be alive, but it was all a little too neat. He remembered the Cleanser had been about to say something to him before Louise had burst in, something important. Louise was acting as if everything had all been wrapped up nicely, but his intuition told him it was far from over.

His analytical mind kicked in as he was escorted groggily down the corridor, and he came to an irrevocable conclusion: Sandy was the key. She knew something, maybe didn’t even know she knew it, probably something Kane had known. Kane, Rudi, and the Cleanser – they’d all died to protect a piece of knowledge – he had no idea what. But it meant she was still in mortal danger. He wanted to tell Louise, but something held him back. He wasn’t even sure he could trust Vince. Still, he had to do something. Rudi’s landscape – he had to go back in. Somewhere in there was the answer. Rudi was smart enough to have left a clue, an insurance policy in case he was betrayed. Micah had to find it.

Chapter 18

Quarantine

Zack lowered his voice. "Don’t let the Skipper hear you talking like that."

"What seems to be the problem?" Blake strode in and stood behind them.

Zack winced, and sat back in his chair. "Too late," he muttered.

Kat turned to face Blake directly, her back to Eden vista’d by the external 3D cameras. "It’s perfect, Sir. Mountains, lakes, grass. No animals. Like renting an unfurnished apartment. We can move in tomorrow."

Blake looked beyond her, and uncorked a smile. Perfect indeed! At last mankind had the second chance it needed. Eden had been the right name after all. He itched to get out there, recalling running around his grandpa’s fields as a young boy, not a care in the world. He wanted that back so badly, not for him, but for everyone, so humanity could heal itself.

"Sir, don’t you think it’s just too perfect?" She peered around him. "Pierre, back me up here, what are the probabilities?"

Blake tore his eyes from the panoramic vista, towards Pierre. "Well, what does science have to say?"

Pierre touched a control and the data encircling his head collapsed like a waterfall that had just run out of juice. "Sir, there’s been a lot of debate on that since Prometheus first sent back images. Basically, we only have our solar system to go on; this is the first planet we’ve visited outside it. The Bayesians and the Frequentists have been arguing--"

"Pierre!" Kat pleaded.

He cleared his throat. "There’s… a lot of fundamental disagreement." He hit the control and retreated inside the chimney of data rising around him.

"Which is why we’re here," Blake said, turning back. "Sometimes you need a little faith, Kat."

"And the desert? The one that didn’t exist two years ago? And the message?"

His smile shortened. "We’ll find out soon enough." He stretched his gaze to the horizon east of the mountain range, and found a rust colored fringe. He hadn’t intended landing this close, but a thruster failure had careened them a thousand kilometers off course to this place, with the desert’s heat haze glistening a mere twenty kilometers away. He’d also seen one puzzling screen shot during the approach: a fuzzy picture of a broken-up structure, perhaps the remnants of a crashed spacecraft. Since Prometheus was on another continent, they’d all immediately thought it could be the missing ship, the Heracles. But it didn’t look right, and the Heracles’ telemetry had indicated it exploded near the nebula, five light years out from Eden. As for the message… None of them had any idea what it meant nor who could have sent it, but he refused to take it at face value. He pushed all of this to the back of his mind, unwilling to sour the moment.

He ached to explore the hazy mountains, rendered purplish by the afternoon rays of Eden’s blood orange sun. Yellow clouds the shape of cigars drifted across the sky. He could almost smell the coarse grass, feel it under his ship, beckoning.

Pierre stood up. "Sir, I’ve checked rad levels, atmosphere, temperature, meteo, and a host of other parameters. We’re good to go."

Blake and Pierre suited up and depressurized the outer airlock. The final hiss came, and he twisted the wheel-lock handle and shoved open the heavy outer door that had been sealed for more than three months. Gravity was five per cent less than on Earth, and he used the short auto-ladder to descend to Eden’s surface, two meters below.

He paused at the last rung, and then placed his right foot firmly on the scorched grass beneath. As he put his weight on his foot, the ground sank a little, and he was reminded of the good planting soil on his ancestral farm. He remembered rolling in it while mock-fighting his younger brother, snatched away from him later on by the enemy. He recalled watching his son Robert, just fourteen, grinning and freckled, sitting atop a huge combine harvester.

"Sir? It’s a momentous moment, I know."

Blake jogged his mind back into gear, brought down his other foot, and then took a few steps. Each pace away from the Lander etched its way into history – mankind’s new adventure, its new lease of life. Instantly he thought of his wife Glenda, imagining her waving him on. This planet will save her.

His visor shielded him from the glare of the mid-afternoon sun, a little more distant than Earth’s. He gazed across the plain, and was reminded of Africa’s Serengeti – without the animals or birds. No decent theory had been provided yet as to why Eden was devoid of animal life. Truth told, nobody important back on Earth cared. Kat was right, it was always better moving into an empty new home than having someone else’s furniture to contend with.

"Well, Skipper, what’s it look like from out there?" Zack’s voice boomed across the intercom.

Blake stared at the trees a few hundred meters away. "Pierre, are our visors working okay?"

Pierre looked up from the tripod of equipment he was setting up. "More or less. The onboard computer probably adjusted the colors to fit what it was expecting. There might be some auto-compensation in the helmets, too."

"Huh?" Zack said.

"What he means, Zack, is that the colors out here are stronger – the grass has a blue tinge, and the trees are a very dark shade of green. The sky itself is definitely purple, the clouds a striking yellow." Blake tried to ignore it. It was subtle, in any case, like a normal view through a tinted lens. Probably meant nothing. We’ll just have to get used to it, and even if we don’t our children will. He wanted to lift his visor, to see it with his own eyes.

He felt a slight giddiness, as if he’d just stood up suddenly after lying down. He glanced at his wristcom to verify that the oxygen pressure in his suit was normal. It was. He steadied his feet, feeling nausea wash over him, accompanied by a cold sweat on his palms. He recognized the symptoms right away: Deep Space Affective Disorder, the psychs called it. Pressure cooker syndrome was Zack’s label. The psychologist had warned them during training that arrival could be a powerful emotional event, and could affect their judgment after such a long space trip. Blake hadn’t taken it too seriously; or rather he thought he’d be watching for signs in others, not himself. He usually had his emotions tightly wrapped and under control, but right now he felt as if he was on a cliff edge.

"You okay, Boss?"

"Fine, Zack. Send Kat out here, too. Everything’s fine."

"Sir, I’m still testing," Pierre said.

"Carry on. Kat can join us."

Focus: that was the key, and action. Doing something decisive would chase it away. He knelt down on one knee, dug his gloved hand into the soil, scooped up a handful of Eden’s dirt, and let it run through his fingers, watching it fall, framed by the maroon sky. It seemed too soft, more like ash than hard peat that would yield crops. His middle finger grazed something hard. So, topsoil only. Nothing substantive would grow in this field.

The thought that he had never been able to bury his own son, crackled uninvited into his mind. He knew this should be a moment of exhilaration, an epiphany. But the old farm decimated by a firestorm, what was left of his brother coming back in a body bag, his son in Kurana Bay, all flooded back to him, a dark whirlpool in his mind.

He took some deep breaths, and turned around to stare at the Lander, instead of the landscape that was affecting his mood. He stood up. "We should get started, Pierre."

Pierre busied himself with his scanners and samplers. "I’ll just need a moment to get it calibrated, Sir."

Blake felt his heart beating strong in his carotid artery. Not fast, but like a distant hammer. He tried to calm himself by checking the grey hull of the Lander. It was a trick he’d learned long ago as a scuba diver: to counter the effects of nitrogen narcosis, concentrate on something, engage the brain in analyzing something concrete.

The Lander was in as good a shape as could be expected. He traced his hands along the atmospheric entry scorch marks near the base of the hull, like coal-black scars; bubbled in places, but no cuts in its metallic sheath. Kat joined them outside, jumping down most of the steps, vidding Eden’s landscape.

Zack cut in, the envy in his voice coming across the com system. "Hey, how is it out there, really?"

"Awesome. You’re missing out, big fella." she replied.

Blake was relieved to hear her humor had returned – Zack had quietly informed him of the desert in her dream. If she can be upbeat, then so the hell can I. He felt he should add something. "It’s mighty fine out here, Zack, mighty fine." But the words rang hollow.

Zack came back on-line. "Watch out for any snakes, or for that matter, naked babes bearing fruit. See any of the latter, just send them on in!"

Kat gave a dismissive wave back towards the Lander’s external vidcorder.

Blake smiled, but his creeping unease wouldn’t go away. All the instruments had shown it should be safe to take off their helmets. And God knew they needed to replenish their air supplies very soon. Pierre was still fiddling with the equipment. This was taking too long. They’d checked everything before coming out. The test should be just a final routine confirmation. His breathing sounded loud in his ears, reverberating in his helmet. "What do you say, Pierre?"

"Not yet, Sir," he answered without looking up. "I need another minute."

A minute passed. Five more dripped away. Blake circled the Lander three times. Still Pierre took more readings. Kat and Blake inspected the external transmitter recessed in the hull.

"Not good, Sir. The Trojan triggered an overload in the slipstream crystal diode. No comms with Earth unless we find a new one."

He nodded, and headed back over to Pierre, slight tremors in his right hand. Damn, not now.

"Well Pierre? And don’t ask me to wait another minute."

Pierre stopped hunching over his machine and stood up, visor-to-visor with him.

"Sir, there’s a small variance in the atmosphere I can’t account for. It didn’t show up from inside, but now we’re out here, the equipment is more accurate. There’s something in the biosphere I can’t interpret."

The words hung in the air inside Blake’s helmet and in the cockpit. Blake waited, knowing Zack would double-check Pierre’s readings relayed back to the cockpit.

"Skipper – he’s right. Don’t know what it is. It’s a trace element, less than a millionth, unknown on Earth. Inorganic, the computer reckons, possibly a metal, dense crystalline structure."

Blake’s jaw clenched. "Toxic? Chemically reactive? Inert?"

"Sir," Pierre said, "I don’t know. It seems inert, but the element, or material, doesn’t exist on Earth, so we’ll have to gather it in sufficient amount to study. But with half the computers still off-line, I’m not sure we can be precise about its effects. I’m sorry, Sir, we just don’t have the kit to do this properly. I’d need a mass spectrometer and a cache of software that’s been garbled by the virus. It needs genetic-impact testing."

Blake held up his hand. "What do you propose?"

"I can set up a nano-mesh filtration system after some basic testing here. In a few hours we can replenish our air supplies in safety. But we need to stay suited for the rest of the mission, Sir."

It was like being shot in the back. He stared at Pierre in disbelief, replaying the words, at the same time knowing it was the correct course of action. But he understood the deeper meaning: another mission in two years’ time to come back and determine what they were here to find out now – whether man could survive on Eden. Lab tests would be carried out back on Earth by scientists, but ever since the nannite virus, public trust of science wasn’t worth a cent. And the politics were desperate, funding for a fourth mission would never happen, the Alicians and Fundies would see to that. He knew all the protocols and procedures by heart, and they worked fine in a rational world, but back on Earth, things were unraveling. He remembered what the General had said. Bring back good news.

"Tests would ultimately need a human subject, right Pierre?"

"Skipper –" interjected Zack, before Pierre could reply.

"What we need right now, is a little experiment," Blake said, raising his hands to the seals on his helmet.

"Blake! No!" Zack shouted.

He released the hermetic band on his helmet, and slowly eased it off.

Kat and Pierre stared, transfixed.

Blake waited for something to happen. He was struck by the colors, now the visor’s auto-compensation was gone – the purple sky, the orange desert, small yellowish clouds, blue-green grass – definitely odd, reminding him of a Van Gogh. But he immediately felt calm. The tremors vanished. The theory was correct – decisive action cleared it like smelling salts.

"Might as well breathe in, Sir," Pierre said.

Blake realized he’d been holding his breath, and laughed, a little shakily, then took a cautious breath.

"Pierre, maybe you do have a sense of humor after all, buried under those equations." He inhaled and exhaled deeply several times. After three months in a tin can, as Zack called the Ulysses, the air tasted fresh. The tension trickled out of him, down into Eden’s soil. He turned to the cockpit vidcorder and gave Zack the thumbs up.

"Well Pierre, care to join me? It actually smells like fresh mown grass, a little sautéed by our engines. I can feel a small breeze on my face, and the warmth of Eden’s sun." He lifted his face toward Kantoka Minor, feeling another star’s rays warm his forehead. A smile flourished across his face. We could live here. This could really become home.

Pierre stepped back behind the testing machinery tripod. "Actually, Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea."

Blake’s sunny smile clouded over. He knew what was coming. Bold actions always had a price tag.

"I’m sorry, Sir. We’ll need to quarantine you outside the ship and see if there’s any reaction."

Blake took another breath. He felt fine, absolutely fine. But he nodded to Pierre. "You’re right. Still, we need to replenish our air supply for the trip home. You work on the nano-filter. You can co-ordinate with Zack." He saw Pierre nod, but look away. "What is it?"

Pierre studied his boots momentarily, and then spat it out. "Sir, it’s the trip home. There’s only one quarantine option. That’s stasis, Sir. The entire trip, barring emergencies."

Blake narrowed his gaze. His science officer was right again. But there was no way he would submit to stasis for the whole trip back.

"We’ll decide that later," he said. "We clearly have a new priority to analyze this element, and develop a filtration system."

He then addressed them all, re-asserting command before any doubt about his judgment could take seed.

"Okay, listen up everyone; this changes things. We now have several priorities. The original task of taking samples and determining the suitability of the biosphere, remains. We now have an important additional problem with this rogue element we’ve never seen before. It needs to be collected and analyzed. We also need to replenish the air stocks and clean out the oxygen strippers. This links to the first problem, because either we filter out this new element, or else we all become guinea pigs. We’ll never be allowed back on earth. They’ll probably divert us to Lunar Station Beta."

He stared beyond Kat and Pierre, to the desert. "The other priority is to identify the source of the message, find out who sent it and why, and use whatever material we find from that crash site to repair our comms system. Last, we need to find out more about this desert, where it’s come from, and whether it’s growing. That’s a challenging set of priorities, and we have four days to achieve them all. Pierre, you’re the best analyst – you stay here, around the ship; keep in line of sight with Zack, open comms at all times."

Pierre nodded to Blake, and then to Zack in the cockpit.

Blake turned to his comms officer. "Kat, I want you to forget all those dreams you’ve had about the desert."

"Zack told…?" She glanced accusingly towards the Lander.

"You and I are taking the skimmer direct to that crash site. The best way to get rid of your demons is to confront them."

Kat straightened, nodding.

"Now, even if I think that Kat’s nightmares are just that, given what has happened to us so far on this trip," he glanced at her, "I want each of us outside the ship armed at all times. Questions?"

He heard the breeze rustling the bushes nearby. It was a welcome relief from the silence. No birds, no animals, and he hadn’t seen any insects so far. He brushed it aside for later.

"Zack, you’re in command. Kat and I are leaving in the twenty minutes it’ll take to rig up the skimmer. We have about five hours of daylight left, and a round trip of three to four hours to the crash site. We’ll be out of comms range, so if we get stuck, or need to stay there for any reason, I’ll launch a green sonic flare at 8pm Ulysses time. Either team has a serious problem, they launch a red flare."

As Blake and Kat unloaded the land skimmer, a jet-powered hover-bike for two, Zack spoke to Blake on single channel.

"Skipper, you okay?"

Blake sighed. "I am now – wasn’t back then. You probably didn’t notice."

"Yeah, right."

Blake really wished Zack was mobile.

"Blake – remember she’s just a kid, okay? Go easy."

"Don’t worry, Zack – out here, we’re all rookies." After a few seconds he heard the line click back to open channel.

◆◆◆

Kat kept uncharacteristically quiet as Blake, in front of her, threaded the skimmer around the orange dunes at 150 kph. She was no stranger to speed: she’d been an astro-surfer before the War, falling to Earth from twenty kilometers up atop a hover-board. But she kept thinking she saw flecks of silver in the distance, hiding in the seamless orange carpet all around them. The plume of sand behind them would be visible from ten kilometers away, maybe more. She guessed the glints were tricks of her mind. She was reminded of a story her older sister, Angelica, had told her about surfing in Cape Town’s White Shark Alley, famed for its Great Whites, before oceanic poisoning wiped them out. She’d asked Angel, as she called her sister, what she would do if she saw a Great White coming toward her.

"That’s just it," she’d replied, "in the blue you won’t see one until after it’s taken a bite out of you, a leg usually. They detect you long before you see them, and then they come at you from behind or below, or from the side."

Kat stared around and held on. She knew the silver flashes she thought she saw were tricks of the mind because, like the Great White, the creature in her dreams would only be seen when it wanted to be seen. After a while, she closed her eyes, embracing the Skimmer’s vibration and rolling engine-whine. As the Captain leaned slightly to the left or the right to avoid an upcoming boulder, she leaned with him, eyes closed, putting all her trust in the driver.

She remembered being ten years old, riding Pacific breakers on the back of Angel’s long board, as her elder sister pulled them through a tube, Kat’s first time inside the thunderous roll of a crashing wave, stealing a half-second ahead of it to emerge free. Remembering that experience, her fears subsided. Let the sharks come. We’ll stay one step ahead of you. But just as she relaxed, she heard a voice inside her head. It made her tremble, sending a shiver down her spine. It sounded like Angel’s voice, uttering three words, and then it was gone.

"Kat, come quickly."

She held her breath for a moment. Had she really heard it or just imagined it? Angel was long dead, and she had no truck with any metaphysical life-after-death bullshit. But she was convinced that something had just communicated with her. Instinctively she knew it must be the sender of the message they’d received in orbit, warning them not to come. She spoke into the helmet microphone.

"Captain?"

Blake’s voice clicked on through the intercom. "Yes, Kat?"

"Can we go any faster?"

There was a pause, and then Kat felt a surge as they accelerated toward the top speed of 200kph.

With the helmet mike off, Kat said in a low voice. "I’m coming, whoever you are." As she watched the endless dunes and scattered, solitary boulders flash past against a deepening purple sky, she realized that right now she would have no way of knowing if she was dreaming or not.

Chapter 19

Debrief

Micah checked his wristcom: he’d been waiting two hours in the Optron Lab to be de-briefed by Vince, and to make matters worse, his computer privileges had been withdrawn. His computer and the gleaming Optron lay dormant. He knew the answers – and maybe the right questions, lay hidden inside the landscape somewhere. The Eden astronauts were in trouble, he could feel it in his stomach, but here he was killing time waiting for Vince, who was probably going to try and send him home now the assassin had been killed. Micah needed something to bargain with, but had no idea what. His foot swung underneath the chair, idly nudging a table leg.

He cast a glance over to Rudi’s desk. They hadn’t exactly been close, but he remembered when they’d joined the Eden Mission Project four years ago – the champagne, the speeches, the feeling of being part of something. Rudi’s empty desk resembled a marble grave.

He imagined the furnace, how close he’d come to ending up there, mingled with Rudi’s ashes. No one deserves that. Rudi’s chair was pulled out from his desk, as if he might return any minute. He walked over and pushed it underneath the desktop. It felt like sliding closed the lid of a coffin. He sat back down at his own desk.

The lab doors burst open. Vince marched in, yanked out Rudi’s chair unceremoniously, skidding it across the floor close to Micah, and sat with the back of the chair in front of him. Like the first cut of a surgeon, his voice sliced through the air. "When did you first suspect Rudi was a traitor?"

"Traitor? I never thought of him as –"

"Then catch up fast."

"I… I began to notice small things over the past few weeks, maybe a couple of months."

Vince rested his elbows atop the back of the chair, fingers interlaced. He stared, eyes burning across the silence between them.

Micah shifted position. "Well, he was a bit secretive, would stay late, said he had to work on something, but was pretty evasive. Sometimes I’d come in early and he’d been here two hours already."

Vince did a good impression of a waxwork statue.

Micah coughed. "About four weeks ago, I came in real early. Couldn’t sleep. Rudi was around, but not in the lab, I guess he’d gone for a coffee or something." He wished Vince would make a wisecrack, or shout, or something. "So, anyway, there was some print-out on his desk. Only it wasn’t ours."

"How so?"

"It just looked… different. It had a logo on it which wasn’t ours."

"Indus Valley Systems," Vince said. It didn’t sound like a question.

Micah coughed again. Vince strode over to the recycled water-cooler in the corner of the lab, and brought back a half-filled plastic cup.

"Thanks." Micah took several swigs.

"Who did you report it to?"

He shifted in his seat again. "I opened it. I supposed he’d borrowed it from another analyst, looking for new methods. It happens – there are only a hundred analysts like Rudi and me around, and sometimes we communicate, looking for new ideas.

"But this concerned Ulysses."

"Yes, at least our methods. I was a bit shocked, since it potentially compromised security. I noticed the Optron was set to my frequency, not his. I went looking for him, but didn’t find him till I got back. Rudi had logged into his own landscape and the document was gone." He gulped down the last sip of water.

"So you didn’t tell anyone."

He shook his head, and studied the bottom of his empty cup. "I figured he was fed up, had been talking out of line to an IVS analyst, that’s all. I mean we have all sorts of firewalls, there’s nothing serious he could have done alone..." You were way ahead of me, Rudi, let me believe I was the smarter analyst, got my guard down.

Vince stood. "We checked the furnace, but ash is ash. We assume two corpses were dumped in there in the last six hours."

"Ben… the janitor?"

"Cleansers don’t leave loose ends. You were lucky, Micah. If Louise hadn’t bumped into that girl, you and Sandy would be dead."

"And the other jan… I mean the Cleanser?"

"Cyanide pill. Dead, unfortunately."

It didn’t sound unfortunate.

"Louise is trying to find out his real identity, and which Alician Chapel he was operating from."

Micah glanced sideways.

Vince cocked his head. "Are you and Louise getting along okay?"

"Sure."

Vince sighed. "A word of warning, Micah. She’s dangerous. Very. Rough ride in the War, left her pretty jagged. You’re smart enough to have worked that out. Just remember what black widow spiders do with their mates."

Micah nodded, faking a worldly nonchalance.

Vince paused to let it sink in, then continued. "As of 09.00 today, a new link has been set up, using back-up optronics, two new boys, mil-tech. Probably don’t have your flair, certainly not Rudi’s, –"

Micah winced.

"– but they’ll get the basics done and keep out the hackers. They’re trying to establish contact now."

He was amazed how quickly a back-up crew had been brought in. But there was still no contact with the ship. "Ulysses – it’s past the nebula, where the Heracles disappeared."

"Correct. Hubble IV picked up a tracer two hours ago, two days old. That’s all we have for now. They should be on Eden." He brushed down his tunic, ready to leave.

He felt cast aside. Despite the danger of the past couple of days, he’d been more alive than since he could remember; since the War. He didn’t want to be dropped from the picture.

"What about me? What do I do now?"

Vince looked surprised. "Do? You go home, and you stay there. Haven’t you had enough adventure for a while? You’re not an agent, Micah – you’d just get in the way."

He sat up. Now or never. "There were simulacra in our landscapes."

Vince gave him a sideways look, and deposited a foot on the chair. "I’m listening."

He told Vince of the two figures, explained what they meant, or might mean. He didn’t mention the other one looked like Antonia – “just a girl, couldn’t see her too clearly”. Vince wanted to hand it over to the mil guys, but Micah said it wouldn’t work, each setting was tailored to a human reader – Micah and Rudi were two of the few who’d worked together enough to be able to read each others' environments, but to newcomers it would be a jumble of colors and shapes – they’d never find the simulacra."

Vince chewed his lip. "Alright, forty-eight hours, Micah, I’ll reinstate your privileges. Find anything, you call me first, understood?" He handed Micah a slip with a number on it.

Micah recalled a question that had been in the back of his mind. "What about IVS? Are they being investigated?"

Vince turned to him. "You haven’t seen the news?"

"Er… no."

"Biggest archaeological find since the pyramids?" Vince flexed his eyebrows. "Check the nets when you get home. We’re trying to investigate IVS, but this ship they’ve found in the Mariana Trench is over-shadowing everything, even Ulysses. IVS security’s closed up sphincter-tight. As for here, a new Eden Mission Management team came in at lunchtime, they’ve all passed screening, and we have thirty agents permanently in the building, which is pretty much in lockdown status, so Rudi’s route out to IVS or whoever it was is closed off." Vince glanced at his wristcom. "Go home, Micah." He turned to leave.

Micah shot to his feet. "If you find something – the missing data – Rudi will have encoded it – I could decode it for you."

Vince was half-way to the door. He sighed, turning around. "Look, I know you’re trying, and you mean well, so I’m going to give you some advice you’re probably not going to listen to. I ran the profile on you, so I’m going to tell you who you are, so that maybe, just maybe you can help yourself, though I doubt it."

Micah leaned backwards against the desk.

"You got fucked up by your father, Micah. You’re in his shadow. Daddy hero syndrome. We know all about him, what a prick he was to you and your family – heroes, always a black side, eh?"

Micah had thought it a million times, but never heard it from someone else.

"So you want to be a hero, too, maybe a different kind. Am I right?"

His throat locked tight.

"Well, let me save you the bother. He’s dead. You need him to recognize you, accept you, whatever, and it won’t happen, Micah, because… the sonofabitch is dead. So, step out of the shadow. He screwed up your life while he was alive, now you’re doing it for him." Vince spun around and headed out. "Get a life, Micah, your own."

Micah breathed hard. Dozens of buried memories resurrected themselves. All were between him and his father, all were unpleasant: the put-downs, the patronizing lectures, and the ever-present disappointment in his father’s tone. Micah’s fists squeezed hard. Uncorked anger rose inside him like bile.

Nobody, in all these years, even his sister, had ever validated him – not once – about his father. All the press, the vids, had nothing else to say but that he was the Great War hero who sacrificed everything for God and country, Colonel Victor Sanderson, the Gray Colonel… Micah remembered the storm shelter, his father labeling him a coward after the nuclear attack. He realized he was still trapped in that one, terrified, fifteen year old boy’s humiliating moment.

Without thinking, he grabbed the arms of his chair, raised it above his head, and with an anguished cry brought it crashing down on his computer. He raised it again, slamming it down even harder, denting the metal. He swept everything off the desk, sending tortured fragments clattering across the floor. Two guards rushed in, then grounded to a halt.

"Calm down, Son," one of them said.

Micah didn’t know what his face looked like, but they didn’t approach any closer. He cast aside the twisted chair and glared at them. "I’m nobody’s fucking son."

Vince re-entered, glaring at the mess around Micah’s feet. "Christ, do I have to get you escorted off the premises, or call a shrink? Forget the privileges, I’m bringing the mil in now."

"Wait." It had the ring of an order.

Vince threw him a sideways look. "Excuse me?"

"Just you and me, Vince."

Vince stood, legs splayed, folded his arms. "You’re shitting me, right?" He shook his head then gave a crisp command in Chorazin. The guards left.

Micah glared, not caring that his hands were shaking or that his chest heaved. "This isn’t about you, me or my father, right?" He didn’t wait for an answer. "It’s about them, right?" He pointed without looking at the astronaut poster.

Vince sighed. "Yes, Micah. But my patience is running low."

"We don’t have a clue what’s going on, do we?"

Vince said nothing.

"Well, I can maybe solve that, but you have to tell me what you know."

Vince frowned. "I don’t know what that doctor put in your booster, but I need to have a word with him. Look, Micah, if you have information, just give it to me."

Micah grabbed a handle on his desk and in one smooth movement dragged the top drawer out, placed it upside down on the table-top. He detached the small syringe filled with a gelatinous brown fluid taped at the back of the drawer. "I don’t have information, but I have a talent. You're the one with the information."

Vince glared at the syringe. "What is that?"

"How do you think we set up those landscapes in the first place? Lucidium; given to every certified analyst, but in short supply. We keep a spare for emergencies: inadvertent landscape erasure, accidents like that. Hallucinogenic, but mainly a mind enhancer. Our equivalent of a booster." He tore off the protective cap, pressed it to the side of his neck. It hissed. "Auto-sterilizing. Won’t take long."

His eyes rolled closed. He emptied his mind, the way he did before an Optronic landscape creation, imagining space, empty, dark, silent. He’d had to study with a Zen master in Palo Alto for six months to learn this trick of returning to what was called "Beginner’s Mind", necessary for optimization of the pattern-building talent he’d possessed since a child. As he captured the fleeting essence of silence, he pushed it out in all directions, like the wave front of a bubble, accelerating, leaving nothing at its centre as it travelled out into sheer black void. The anger, too, dissipated. He wasn’t sorry to see it go.

An image of Ulysses arose, first in orbit, then settled on the fertile planet. Immense silver ships on Earth floated up from the depths after centuries, breaking the surface of the oceans. Crystal threads entwined: the Alicians, the Chorazin, IVS, the last War, the discoveries since the war, all converged towards a distant blacker-than-black sun; whereas other strands – nuclear and nano-tech, solar system colonization efforts, and sub-sea habitation – hung in empty space like shredded wraiths. He tried to focus on the distant black sun, but as he approached, it moved away.

Something was missing. There weren’t enough pieces to this puzzle. Micah half-opened drug-heavy eyes. He spoke quietly, so as not to disturb his altered state.

"Something else… tell me."

Vince sounded far away, as if they both stood on two separate cliff-tops, a deep gorge between them. "Alright," Vince said, "I’ll humor you, Micah, as you seem to be over the edge anyway. But you repeat it to anyone, even Louise, and I’ll have you locked up for good. There was something else down there with the ship, protecting it. An unknown sea-creature. Nasty piece of work. It was recorded briefly before it destroyed the sub that first found the ship. It hasn’t been seen since. One of the scans of the creature included a flash spectrograph – showed a new element in its hide, metallic, not of Earth origin. If the graph isn’t fake, it means it could be alien."

"More…"

Vince sighed. "Shit. Okay. The ship is hard to date. But some bio-matter, probably decayed algae, must have gotten trapped inside when the ship arrived – a thousand years ago. And if this last piece gets repeated, Micah, I'll finish the Cleaner's job for him." He lowered his voice, "We may have found an identical ship in Qahuru, Central Australia, buried in the desert."

Micah sealed his eyes again, bringing down the shutters on the external world, and absorbed the new information. Images unfolded inside the bubble, and he watched, dispassionately. It wasn’t a sun after all; it was a writhing sphere of black larval insects, squirming, hungry, glinting in the backlight of Earth’s reflection, getting closer. A shining darkness.

He creaked open bloodshot eyes. His hands were puffy and stung – he assumed due to an interaction effect between the booster and the Lucidium. He felt weak in his legs. He realized he was shivering. But the Chorazin booster was making him come round much faster than last time he’d taken the drug.

Vince fetched him more water, which Micah downed in short, furtive sips.

"Your trip report, Micah?"

"First, you have to understand it’s conjecture – a projection. The drug-induced state helps to identify patterns, inter-relationships, increasingly implausible but limited by improbability mathematics. It’s… complicated."

"Indulge me."

"The human mind tends to think in single threads – and usually not in a straight line, at that. But we can also think laterally and, more important for understanding complex phenomena, in networks, in multiple dimensions. However, it’s hard for the unenhanced human brain. Some people have a natural ability for it. Good detectives have it, for example," he glanced at Vince. "But the drug can push us way beyond normal abilities. If used more than about once every six months it can fragment reality – you end up schizophrenic."

"What did you see?"

"It’s not just visual, not with me at least. I mean I see things, but the connections are felt more than seen. Like reading tarot cards – it’s the interpretation that matters. It doesn’t always make sense at the time. Like déjà vu, you know, you finally realize what some dream meant just after the real thing has happened. Not always helpful." Micah knew he was rambling, but he was avoiding what he was slowly becoming convinced of, that humanity was in terrible danger. The drug-induced intuitions in his mind began to take on the solidity of truth. God, I hope I’m wrong.

"Give me something, Micah."

Micah stood. "First, if we do make contact, and if there’s still time, we should tell them not to land on Eden; more of those creatures will be there."

As Micah continued to talk, he noticed Vince’s blue eyes take on a grey, leaden quality. Micah talked only for a couple of minutes; it was fading rapidly.

Vince rose. "But if you think there are a lot more of these ships and they come from Eden, and these creatures own the ships, what do they want, and why did they leave them here over a millennium ago? Need I remind you the Alicians seem intent on us not going to Eden, most likely sabotaging our ships en route. So if the ships are to take people to Eden, and the Alicians are somehow connected to them, why have the Alicians been blowing up our own ships trying to get there?"

Micah’s head throbbed, his eyesight a grainy black and white, a short-term after-effect. It was getting hard to think. "Don’t know. You’re right, it doesn’t hang together yet, but... we should act, somehow, warn the Ulysses crew, and maybe tell IVS and the Australians to be very careful."

"On what evidence? A drugged analyst’s speculation?" Vince shook his head. "Okay, wait here, I’ll make some calls."

While Vince was gone, Micah tried to regain the clarity he’d had when "under", but it was gone; the fragments didn’t connect. He picked up a holopad out of the debris of his desk and sketched a mind map, connecting the ships and the creatures to the Alicians and Eden. He joined the ships and the Alicians to Earth. He tried to figure it out: aliens bring ships to Earth a thousand years ago, meet Alicians, make some kind of deal, leave ships, go to Eden, wait there. Alicians try to stop us getting there. Ship found by IVS… He stared at it for five minutes, pen poised, then pushed the pad away.

He rubbed his eyes. He wanted to crack this one, and he knew why, aside from the obvious reasons. Lucidium was a difficult drug because it increased self-perception. But reluctantly, he admitted who he was trying to prove himself to. Maybe if he solved this one, helped humanity on the same scale as his father had done… Vince had been spot on.

Vince strode back into the room. "Didn’t go down too well. We need hard evidence." He glanced at his wristcom. "It’s late."

Micah stood, a little shaky. "Listen, Vince, I think I owe you –"

"Nothing. You’ve done your job; given me some leads even if they go nowhere right now."

Micah glanced toward the Optron. "Am I coming back?"

Vince nudged some of the fragments of the shattered terminal with his boot. "New computer will be here in the morning, Micah. Go home and get some rest, or else I’ll begin to think you look like shit all the time."

Chapter 20

Desert

Eden’s late afternoon sun strafed Blake and Kat, casting long shadows behind them as their skimmer wound through the dunes. After two hours of riding, Blake banked the skimmer in a tight arc, circling a bluff, conjuring up a swirl of fine sand. He skidded the vehicle to a halt on the summit’s bedrock. Kat was surprised – this flourish was like a surfer’s move. As soon as they touched ground, enveloped in a vortex of red sand, Blake leapt off, yanking a strip of clear plastic-looking material from a side compartment, and dashed toward the edge of the ridge. Kat stayed put, but armed her rifle, losing Blake for a moment in the temporary sirocco. Sand particles whipped against her visor. Blake returned, perched on the skimmer and waited till it settled.

Kat had no idea what was going on, but maintained her silence. She’d figure it out. The visibility returned, and she saw over the ridge to a huge bowl, more than a kilometer across. In the middle, some thirty meters below them, was the wreckage of a ship torn in half, definitely from Earth. She let out a sigh of relief. She surveyed the rest of the area, but detected nothing; no glints of silver.

"Okay, Kat," Blake said through the helmet intercom, "this is how it works. I get off and set up over there, where the plastic runner is lying crossways. You see it?"

She barely made out the cord laid out on the edge of the ridge. It was about as long as a grown man lying down, and finger-thick.

"Yes."

"Good. When I’m set up there, bring your viewer over and walk directly between here and the line, and lie down next to me so we can scout the ship. You got that, directly between the skimmer and the line. Stay within the line. Don’t touch it."

"Yes, Sir." She still didn’t understand, but it was a simple enough order to follow. Blake headed over and then lay down on the sand, propped up on his elbows, using a digi-viewer. Kat dismounted, retrieved her viewer from one of the skimmer pockets, and strode over next to him, her legs creaky after the long ride. Once down on the ground, she zoomed in on the wrecked ship.

Metallic objects and fragments, mainly silver and charcoal in color, lay scattered around the crash zone. The ship, like Ulysses, had been compartment-based; only one section had survived impact. The cockpit, or what was left of it, lay split in two as if a machete had cleaved open a coconut shell. The whole area reminded her of a junkyard.

The silence, after two hours of the skimmer’s constant humming, forced Kat to break the tension. She didn’t know why they’d stopped. She reckoned Blake was testing her; she hadn’t even worked out the test yet.

"Looks like they attempted a parachute landing," she ventured.

"Correct."

Okay; not on the wrong track yet. "Broke the cockpit clean in two. Not sure anyone would have survived. Must have come down pretty hard. Parachutes are usually only deployed for a sea-landing." She knew she was saying things Blake had already surmised, but the eeriness was getting to her. She stopped scanning for a while, and regarded Blake instead. Occasionally he focused on the other side of the ridge. Kat decided to check it out.

"Keep looking at the wreckage, Kat."

She tilted her viewer down. "Sir, what’s going on?"

"Why don’t you tell me?"

She had no clue. "Sir, I –"

"Tell me about your nightmares, particularly the recent one. All of it."

She bit her lip, clicking off the electronic imaging device, though she rested her head on her elbows as if still scanning. "They began about a month ago." She glanced sideways at Blake. He gave every appearance of still scanning and recording, and not paying attention. That made it easier.

"I was here, on Eden, being chased by something. Always the same, running back to the ship. Something terrifying was chasing me, and I had to get back. I had this feeling… like everything depended on it, not just me or the ship, but, well, everything." She glanced down at the glimmering sand. "Earth's survival."

"Continue."

She sucked in a breath. "Sometimes Zack was there, sometimes… it was someone else, I mean not from the crew, someone… who couldn’t be there."

"Someone back on Earth?"

With a pang that made her close his eyes, Kat recalled her dead sister.

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Go on."

"Then, when I was in stasis, for the first time ever, I actually saw it. I mean the thing that had been chasing me. Silver and black, looked like a giant locust. Scared the shit out of me, and… we were in a desert."

Blake remained silent.

"That’s it." Her mouth was dry.

Blake switched off the viewer, and put it down. "On your feet."

She got up, slower than Blake. They faced each other.

"Now tell me the rest, the part you haven’t told anyone else."

She fumbled with the viewer, glanced over to the skimmer, but Blake’s eyes fixed on her like meat hooks.

"I… It was nothing more a fleeting feeling, Sir, I’m really not sure I saw anything else."

"Listen, Kat. I believe there’s more to your nightmare than we know. I’m responsible for this mission, our safety, and whatever it means for Earth. You have to tell me all of it. It’s your duty, it’s that simple. Anyone in this crew would agree with me."

And there it was, she realized: he was right. Zack would agree. Zack probably would have already told Blake if he’d known. She took a breath.

"Right at the end just when it was upon me… it had Zack’s face." She stared straight into Blake’s scrutinizing eyes. Blake pursed his lips, then gave a solitary nod and bent down to pick up the cord, and headed back to the skimmer.

Kat remained where she was. "Sir, what’s going on?" With a sigh she trailed after him.

Blake talked as he packed things away. "First, we’ve been scanning the ship and its wreckage. Someone did survive, because equipment was moved around after the crash, and the signal not to land is coming from the single surviving structure."

She turned back towards the ridge, then faced Blake. "Where’s it from, though? It’s not the Heracles, that’s for sure."

"No, it isn’t. It never made it here, was blown up en route, or ghoster-attacked. But it never arrived." Blake finished stowing the gear. Although the sun shone directly into his eyes, it didn’t seem to faze him.

"This was an IVS ship. I saw the logo on a hull fragment, rusted like hell but there anyway. God knows how they did it, but they got a ship here without us knowing anything about it. That’s one discussion I’d like to have with the survivor."

"But how do you know anyone’s alive? The wreckage is at least a year old."

"Eleven months, to be precise, from the readings I took. And I know he or she is alive because whoever it is has been watching us from the other side of the ridge. Don’t turn your head."

She managed to stop just in time. "One survivor?"

"There’s a small burial mound west of the wreckage, and that’s a two-person craft."

Kat shoved her viewer back into its compartment. She wanted to kick the skimmer. She’d looked hard, but had seen so little of what mattered. She hated to ask, but decided to get it over with.

"And the cord?"

"Diffraction generator. Skimmer’s sensors picked up something moving – walking to be precise – a quarter of an hour ago. Whoever it is, is armed, most probably a pulse rifle, though the emissions are too weak to tell – their energy packs usually only last a year. Probably aimed at us as we speak. The cord creates a visual distortion. Anti-sniper device. Off-sets the perpendicular line of sight by a small angle, so that a good sniper will miss you by about a meter."

"So we were bait, seeing if he would fire?" Kat felt a shiver down her spine.

"He, or she, didn’t. We’ll meet this person, sooner or later. I doubt there are many callers. Might be hostile, but whoever is on the other side of the ridge is at least curious enough not to shoot us on sight." Blake mounted the skimmer.

Kat twisted to see the wreckage one more time, and then gazed across the ridge. Blake didn’t stop her this time. Whoever you are, we’re here. Come on down, let’s meet. She was relieved. If a human could survive here for eleven months, then maybe the monster wasn’t here. No monster, and Zack is just Zack. She straightened up, and in one smooth movement threw her leg over the skimmer, behind the Captain.

"Ready, Kat?"

"Yes, Sir,"

She wished she’d known Blake a long time ago. Her sister Angel and Blake would have got along just fine. Blake gunned the skimmer engine, and they catapulted off, skirting along the ridge, before veering down toward the IVS crash-site. Kat was reminded of sitting behind Angel in Bells’ Bay near Melbourne, when a giant wave would catch their board and thrust them forwards. No more than a kid, she’d shriek with excitement, never fear, as long as Angel was in front of her. She closed her eyes, recalling the taste and smell of biting sea-spray, imagining for the first time in a very long while that Angel was with her.

Chapter 21

Interrogation

Sandy perched with one heel on the lip of the chrome chair in the Spartan room. Its chalk-white walls and ceiling were almost low enough to make her stoop. Operating-theatre clean, and about as relaxing. It smelled like a hospital, but she was there for interrogation, an operation she knew the Chorazin carried out with surgical precision.

She’d been blindfolded on the way in – not that she wanted to know where this place was. She stared at the over-polished floor. Maybe things get bloody in here, she thought, so they keep it sterile. The only door was currently shut, no handle on the inside. She hadn’t heard such lack of sound since the temporary deafness after the first detonation. Strange to watch everyone running, screaming, and catching fire, with the sound turned down. She brought her knee closer to her chest.

She wondered why there was no one-way mirror. She’d seen the vids like everyone else. Chorazin didn’t stop at extracting confessions, or even at the truth, which was, sooner or later, whatever they wanted to hear. Instead they always extorted additional information – intimate details, inside the dark recesses of the mind, fears they could use in the future. Mental finger-printing one Vid had called it. Mind-rape was her label.

The idea was simple and ruthless. Since the 104th Amendment, all suspects could undergo – at Chorazin discretion – DPP: "Deep Psychological Profiling". It meant intense probing, uncovering traumatic detail, and scenario-immersion to see how likely you were to commit a crime. By the end, the Chorazin had two things – a pretty good idea of whether you would ever commit a crime, and the level of crime you were capable of, on a neat ten-point scale running from shoplifting to terrorism. They saw criminal behavior as a relative, rather than absolute, character trait.

It meant they ended up with some dirt on you, which acted as a deterrent. The 104th had been one of the most hotly-contested amendments this century. And yet within three years crime had dropped eighty per cent. Anyway, Sandy thought, I’ve got nothing to hide. Well, almost nothing.

She looked at her wrist again and cursed; they’d confiscated her wristcom, and there was no clock in the room. She was positive there were micro-monitors recording her every move. Her first two fingers rubbed together, longing for a cigarette between them. Manipulative bastards. At least when there’s a mirror you know where not to look, or where to scowl when you don’t care anymore. She wouldn’t have minded the opportunity to tidy up. But this was no time for one of her fleeting moments of femininity – she needed to play tough.

The door slid open – barely an audible swish – revealing a slim, bald-headed man who entered as the door sealed behind him. He occupied the steel-framed chair opposite her; no table between them. She guessed it was supposed to make her feel more vulnerable, naked, more inclined to talk. But she didn’t give a shit; especially after all she’d been through. She resisted the urge to put her knee down, and stared into his eyes; ocean blue, no flecks, just blue. She wondered how he got such clear irises; if they were indeed natural, or were cloned.

"May I call you Sandy?"

A crisp voice, she thought, well-spoken, honest-looking face – it all summed up bad news. This man’s whole demeanor purred "Trust me" from every pore. She tried to recall the name of the evil character from a book she’d read in her childhood, about a snake and a boy in a jungle.

"Call me what you like. What do I call you?"

"You can call me Vince. Just Vince."

She raised an eyebrow. "Are you just?" The instant riposte, as usual, wanting to see his reaction, his reflex. A smile evaporated just as it was arriving. Of course she knew he must have heard that before. In fact, she wondered if he’d set her up to see if she would rise to the bait. She matched his stare for a few moments. He held up two fingers about shoulder level, and then put them down again in his lap. She didn’t know what it meant, and had zero intention of asking. At least he had no holopad.

A knock on the door ushered in a brunette in a black pencil skirt and blouse with a cigarette pack. She gave one to Sandy, lit it for her, and left. All the time Sandy felt Vince’s eyes on her. She noted that he hadn’t answered her question. But she wasn’t the type to ask anything twice. People always heard, she had determined long ago. Always.

"Are you going to ask me all the shit again about Keiji’s murder? About what I saw, which was pretty much nothing. Why I hid?" She inhaled deeply, blowing out a long plume of smoke sideways, not at him. "That’s the way it always goes in the vids, isn’t it? Ask everything four times, story cohesion, all that bullshit?"

She watched him as he uncrossed one leg and crossed the other. Muscular thighs. Shit, she thought, as she flushed, I don’t believe this. What’s this crap I suddenly have for bald-headed, athletic, blue-eyed men? She wondered if he’d noticed; of course he had.

"No," Vince said. He spoke with an unexpected nonchalance. "As you say, that’s what they do in vids. In any case the Sensex cleared you three hours ago of being Mr. Kane’s murderer or an accomplice. According to your deposition you saw little, given your relative position to the killer."

Yeah, right, I was giving Keiji a blowjob under the desk when the killer walked right in.

"And you yourself were potentially a target, depending on what the killer thought you knew. But staying there all that time was a little extreme, don’t you think? The killer had made his getaway. You could have left."

Sandy crossed her legs, then changed the cross. His gaze didn’t falter. She looked around for an ashtray. She flicked a small head of ash onto the floor, and took another long drag.

"You know that blondie Chorazin is screwing Micah? I had a ringside seat. She’s kinky, you know. A bit out of his league." She watched for a reaction, a movement, a flicker of the eyes. Something; anything. Nothing. She pressed harder. "They must train you people pretty good not to react to shit like that. Must take stuff out of you, huh? You must lose something, you know, a piece of yourself."

Vince’s eyes intensified then broke her gaze. He stood up and walked around to the back of his chair. "Actually, it’s more like they put ‘stuff’ in."

She gave a short, hollow laugh. "Good grief, a piece of Chorazin philosophy! I’m honored." She took a last drag and dropped the cigarette on the floor, stubbing it out with her shoe. She ground it longer than necessary with her heel, not looking at the messy stain.

"Okay. Here goes," she said. "As I’m sure you’ve been informed, we were having an – er – intimate moment, when the killer arrived. Keiji had always wanted that particular little fantasy – anyway he got it, just in time, you might say. And in case you’re judging me, don’t. We had a relationship once, but it burned out years ago and he went back to his loving wife." She smiled, all sweetness. "So, anyway, lately he’d been asking me for one more fling for old time’s sake." She raked a hand through her hair, flashed her eyes. No reaction.

She continued. "And why not? He’s – he was – a model citizen. Just that age-old sad and pathetic story of lots of love for wife and kids, but a bit short on passion between the sheets. So, where was I?" She wanted to see if he would make some low remark, like "with your head between his thighs", but he said nothing. The lack of repartee made her decide he was professional at least. She cut to the chase.

"So anyway, the killer arrives, and Keiji says his name, and starts to get up, zipping up first, signaling me to stay there – as if I was going to jump up like some girl out of a cake –"

Vince raised an open hand. "Stop. You’ve changed your story. You said you didn’t know who it was. You lied to the Sensex?" He paused, and then smiled, and this time it hung around. "Ah – you knew the fellatio aspect could cover up an omission, because the Sensex would write off the electro-dermal variance as being due to embarrassment."

"Whatever. I know what I said. You want me to continue or not? Because this is important."

"It had better be, Sandy, because you’ve just earned some deep psy profiling, so you can never pull a stunt like that again."

She scowled at him, and held up two fingers, like he’d done earlier. Vince nodded once, to nobody in particular. The woman entered the room, and lit Sandy another cigarette. Sandy held out an empty palm, and gazed up at the woman. After a moment’s hesitation the woman placed the packet in Sandy’s hand, and left.

Sandy took another drag. "After all, I might not see these again for a while if I’m going for profiling?" She flashed a mock scared look at him, then leaned back on the hard chair.

"So the guy’s name is Archie. As Keiji went around the desk to greet and talk to him, Archie must’ve pulled a knife on him, because suddenly Keiji shouted 'No!' and then I heard this ugly sound, knife puncturing flesh – I’m sure you know the sound – then slurping back out again. Keiji gasped, grunted, then hit the floor." She took the cigarette out and bit at one of her cuticles, not looking at Vince. For a moment she was afraid she was going to well up. She’d already cried behind the mirror, when they zipped Keiji up in the body bag. She bit her finger hard. It worked. She noticed that Vince didn’t push her, even though she’d just announced the name of the killer.

"The rest is as I told it. I froze, held my breath. He walked back outside to my desk, and checked the vid-phone records to see who else Kane had phoned. Thank God he didn’t check the bathroom, where all my stuff was. Then he strolled out. I came out from under the desk and went to Keiji, but he was already dead. I waited a couple of minutes, grabbed my gear and hid. Now you know why, of course."

Vince nodded.

"So, thirty minutes later all hell breaks loose. Ten minutes later your friends arrived along with Eden Mission’s Head of Security."

Vince looked at her. "Archibald Vernt. The killer, apparently."

She looked at him quizzically. "Aren’t you supposed to jump up and say something like ‘Let’s go get him!’?"

"Don’t worry. As you would imagine, this conversation is being monitored. My colleagues are already tracking him down. He gave us his deposition this morning, but was called away on business this afternoon."

She fidgeted. "So, that’s why I stayed hidden. Archie, our very own darling Head of Security and hobbyist killer, was still in the building, monitoring all entries and exits. And then, while he was there in the office, with you really smart guys, incidentally, the news came in that I’d never left the building. Only he and I knew what that meant. So I stayed. I had no plan actually, the vids don’t usually get me this far. I didn’t want to speak his name until I knew I was seeing someone higher up the Chorazin food chain."

Vince stood and pressed a finger to his right ear. "It appears you may be right, Sandy. Mr. Vernt’s vidcom and wristcom have disappeared off the net, and his office doesn’t know where he is. Naturally it would have been more helpful if you had come forward earlier, but given the circumstances, I understand perfectly."

She wondered if she should tell him the rest. She didn’t even know what it meant. She felt those eyes probing her.

"Is there anything else?"

She shifted, knowing she was giving herself away. He sat down again.

"Yes. Well, maybe. When Keiji was stabbed, he fell facing where I was under the desk. I saw him die, and saw the murderer’s legs, behind him. I’ve never seen anyone die, not like that anyway." I’m sure you’ve seen many, though. "Thing is, he mouthed a word to me, just one word. At first I wasn’t sure, but I’ve thought it over and over, and I’m convinced of it. I thought it must be a joke, but that wasn’t his style, and – well, you’d know better than me – but I’m guessing most people’s last words aren’t very humorous."

"Tell me, Sandy."

"Not for the microphones. Just you."

He dragged his chair closer to her. She leaned forward as he inclined the side of his head towards her mouth. She inhaled his scent, felt his body heat. Her lips moved close to his ear. She whispered the word.

Vince told those outside to let her sleep, and to place her in a higher security wing. No one else was to talk to her till he was back. No one. Vince went to his office and logged onto the nets. He carried out various Rosetta searches relating to the word and then found what he was looking for. He left orders for Louise and others, and booked one of the Chorazin fast jets to Mumbai, the site of IVS HQ.

◆◆◆

Gabriel awoke to the sound of high-pitched buzzing. He instinctively cracked open the second false upper molar, and felt awareness and life course back into his system, courtesy of the synthetic adrenaline. He’d long ago replaced the standard Alician suicide pill with a neural and heart suppressant he’d acquired five years earlier from his Master in Tibet. It had slowed his heartbeat to once every two minutes, giving the semblance of death, simulating rigor mortis, leaving him in deep coma. During that time his body had reverted to what the ancients called tortoise breathing, exchanging air in his lungs at a very slow rate, just enough to prevent brain necrosis. Of course, Louise hadn’t known that when she’d cracked the tooth open.

He lay naked on a robotic autopsy table, cutting tools hovering above him on gleaming multi-jointed arms. The sound that had awoken him belonged to a circular skull-saw. His muscles were still stiff from the drug, but the counter-stim worked fast. As he tensed his muscles he realized he was restrained, presumably because the body had to be held in position against the motion of the autopsy blades. But the bonds weren’t strong – they weren’t meant for live patients.

The saw was so close it was out of focus. Ignoring cramps in his legs, he broke free from the lower restraints and pulled himself down the table just in time, slipping his torso and head underneath the chest harness. He rolled off the operating table, snapping off a robo-scalpel. The door to the oblong room burst open and a man rushed in. Gabriel launched the scalpel across the room straight into the man’s throat, spattering his white lab-coat with blood. The lab-assistant staggered forwards, two more sprays issuing in fast succession, his gurgling gasps failing as he toppled head-first into a growing pool of his blood.

A second man in a grey Chorazin uniform flew through the same door, pulse pistol blazing at where Gabriel had just been. The agent ducked down to see where Gabriel was, when the wheeled operating table suddenly shot towards him, scattering various razor sharp instruments in its wake, making him fall over backwards. Gabriel rammed the table into the agent’s neck just as he was trying to aim his pistol. Gabriel threw all his weight onto the table, sending the other end upwards beneath the agent’s chin, resulting in a crunching noise as the agent’s spine snapped. The agent slumped, eyes vacant.

Gabriel vaulted over the table and ran outside to the supervisory work station – the alarm was already sounding. From the console he saw it was 3am, so he had a few more seconds than usual due to lower night-time staffing. He guessed he was inside a Chorazin med facility, which would be underground. He switched off the cameras in the two rooms, locked the door to the corridor, and grabbed a fire extinguisher and a chair. Still naked, he stood on the chair and pushed open an air conditioning grill above the workstation. Placing the Halon gas fire extinguisher in the conduit, he tied the firing pin to the grill, re-sealed it, got down, and then knocked the chair over.

Retreating back inside the autopsy room, he stepped over the two bodies, ignoring the growing lake of blood, and picked up the pulse gun. He heard shouts. But they would be cautious – they could afford to be; where could he go? There were no windows, and no other exit beside the corridor now filling with agents. He noticed a square grill in the floor, about forty centimeters in diameter, evidently to collect blood and other bodily fluids. Gabriel figured it would go to an acid treatment bath somewhere below. He could distinguish the voices as they drew closer: short, clipped-speech commands: Chorazin, rather than normal security.

There was no way out – only the corridor or the grill. He looked around, controlling his breathing. Three. Three is always the key. Where is the third way out? He inspected the grill in the floor again.

Four Chorazin agents in battle gear, wearing gas-protective face masks, broke through into the lab. They saw the two bodies in the autopsy room, faces drenched with blood. The operating table was upside down in the middle of the room, which was otherwise clear. One agent detected the broken seal on the air conditioning grill above the supervisor’s workstation, and the knocked-over chair. While the other three covered for him, the agent pried the hatch open. White gas jetted towards him, knocking him to the floor, engulfing all four of them in a cloud of Halon.

As Gabriel hoped would happen, another agent fired defensively into the shaft, rupturing the extinguisher and causing a shock wave of decompressing Halon gas, enough to knock the other three agents off their feet. In the fog of the gas, they didn’t see the dead security guard leap to his feet. Gabriel, clad in the dead Chorazin guard’s uniform, seized one of the prone agents’ rifles from him whilst crushing the man’s windpipe with his knee. He fired point blank at the heads of the three others, then ripped off the first agent’s gas mask and took several deep breaths.

Smearing more blood down his right leg and face he limped unarmed down the corridor, still dressed in the Chorazin uniform, gesticulating and shouting for more guards, using perfect Chorazin-coded speech. "He’s still in there – five down already!"

Several Chorazin ran past him, but seconds later there was an explosion that shook the whole corridor – Gabriel had turned on the oxygen taps in the autopsy room and had left the pulse pistol on overload.

He staggered along the corridor, then darted into a laundry room, put on some dirty but serviceable clothes, and found a service lift going to the surface. Opening the hatch in its roof, he climbed the greasy wires, eight floors up to ground level.

It took an hour and a roundabout journey to arrive at one of his safe havens: a "cube" that some of the poorest lived in – a cell two-and-a-half meters long, wide and high, comprising a cot, sink and toilet, vid-player and stove. There were stacks of them a hundred high in various parts of the city; a good place to pick up fresh diseases, and an equally useful location to lie low for a while.

In his hideout he injected a Chorazin booster into his thigh, and sat back for a moment. The booster kicked in, and he let his head fall back to the pillow, feeling its soft embrace as he stared upwards to the Himalaya holo-vista. He had failed to recover Sandy and secure the password if she had it, but at least had identified the Chorazin double-agent. He hoped Louise hadn’t been able to debrief Sandy.

There was only one remaining option: the Alician chapter. He had to locate the true leader – the one that mattered, the one who belonged to the ancient sect of the Alician Protectors. Sister Esma. She must be cleansed.

Gabriel knew the chapter would have dispersed by now. But one thing would bring her out of the shadows – himself. At their last meeting she had wanted him dead. If he appeared again, she would want to be present to make sure the job was finished. But he probably wasn’t the first assassin to try to cleanse her. He went back to his basic training: never, ever underestimate your opponent. He wondered if the legends were true, and if so, how old she really was.

Chapter 22

Phoenix

Kat peeled herself off the skimmer, and surveyed the football-field size crash zone where the craft had landed hard and rent apart, disgorging equipment like a broken toy. Much of it was recognizable – a stasis pod, metallic boxes and cables, a flight seat, and a meter high cube which had to be an early prototype of the neutralino detonator. Definitely from Earth.

The dark matter engines had disintegrated, leaving only a vitrified double-cone imprint in sand turned to shadow glass. She stood on the edge of one of the circles, peering down into a frozen blackness, only guessing how many kilometers deep it went. It finally proved the theory about what would ever happen in a dark matter high energy crash. She shivered.

Blake took off his helmet and pointed toward the detonator. Kat envied him. She was tired of wearing her fishbowl, listening to her breathing.

Only the occasional rustling of a sheet of gauze-like material in the sporadic breeze told Kat that her external sound system was working; the desert was so quiet. She knelt down in front of the detonator and inspected it.

"Seems to be intact, Sir." It was disarmed, but several lights glowed dimly. An unusual box-like device was attached to the arming controls. Blake tapped it with his finger a few times.

"A remote triggering device?" Kat ventured.

He nodded.

She wondered why; it couldn’t launch anything from a planet’s surface, only from orbit. Unless it had been rigged as a weapon. She remembered the early trials in the Sahara desert. A quarter of that great desert was now glass. But whoever had set it up knew their stuff – it looked pretty tamper-proof.

She followed Blake over to the cockpit, the second largest surviving structure, lying on its side like a giant clam cracked in two. She bit her lip; no one should have survived. Rust encrusted the interior, the console areas were smashed. A faded brown stain marked one of the seats: dried blood – a lot of it. She moved aside to let Blake climb in; he was careful not to snag his suit on ragged edges of torn metal. He stood on the edge of one of the two chairs in the cockpit, and checked the two weapons lockers. Kat could see them too, both empty. He lowered himself into the comms console. She tried to see what was there, but there was only room for one person, so she had to wait.

Blake hauled himself back out from the wreckage, jumped back down to ground level, and dusted off his gloves. "Not much left, comms ripped out, the rest fried. Two pulse rifles missing, a pistol or two." He stepped back from the shattered cockpit.

"Sir – why’d they tried to land this way? And why is the ND here rather than in orbit. It can’t be used from here, except as a rather messy weapon."

Blake marched back to the skimmer, and retrieved his pulse pistol.

"Only questions here. Let’s check the main structure."

Kat noticed something else before she left. One of the braking harnesses for the pilot’s chair had been sliced through with a knife. Blake saw it too.

"Like I said, only questions here."

The remaining intact cylindrical module, the size of a bubble-train compartment, had a single airlock hatch at one end. Fragments of metal had been wedged underneath its sides to prevent it from rolling, though it would have taken a gale-force wind to upset it. Two oval plazglass portholes stared out from the giant carbon-wire can, too high for either Blake or Kat to see inside. The antenna on top of the module, undoubtedly the source of the "Do not land here" signal, was bent in a few places, but otherwise looked pretty serviceable.

At one end, the airlock had makeshift steps outside it, assembled out of old plastic food crates. Smiling at the thought of it, she wondered if they should knock. Blake fished around in the debris, and picked up a piece of shining metal the size of a hand, and a short stretch of piping split at one end. He pushed the two together, and gave Kat a half-smile.

"Old habits die hard," he said. He checked the direction of the sun – Kat presumed so his makeshift mirror wouldn’t reflect sunlight into the compartment – then lifted it up to one of the portholes and tilted it a few times.

"Nobody home." He walked around to the foot of the steps and ascended to the hand wheel on the airlock hatch. Kat flicked her pulse rifle on, the short low buzz it made not lost on Blake. The hand wheel twisted easily. He opened the door a fraction and paused. Nothing happened, so he opened it wide, having to step back to ground level to do so. There was another inner airlock door. He tried to see if it would open, though one door should always be sealed in an airlock system. Surprisingly, it did.

"Interesting," Kat said. "Whoever’s here doesn’t fear the biosphere as Pierre does, or has decided it’s harmless."

"Or else had no choice. But it does mean that what Pierre detected isn’t fatal to humans in the long term."

She ventured up a step.

"Wait outside till I check it first."

She complied, but her instinct told her the threat was not from whoever might still be around. The threat, if there were one, wasn’t human. Her dreams had rammed that home to her.

Blake disappeared inside for a minute then reappeared. "Okay, come in, and put something in the outer door to stop it from closing."

Kat found a small metal bar and propped it in the airlock entrance at the bottom and stepped inside.

She paused mid-step as she entered the main compartment. It was gloomy inside, but – she almost had to shake herself–someone had decorated it. The walls had been painted, and not bad a job. A vista of a russet-colored fortress on a hill against a twilight sky spread along one complete side of the rounded hull. Stars decorated the ceiling, which was the color of night, and on the other side the sun rose on an ornate pearl-white structure with four minarets, that looked oddly familiar. Dark-skinned figures knelt at the water’s edge in the sunrise part of the fresco. The two portholes each had an orange curtain, drawn back at the moment, but within the frescoes these would represent the sun, one setting, and one rising. Kat was impressed by the clever artistry, especially since the portholes faced the right way to catch morning and evening sun. She cocked her head at Blake, but he was already hunched over the lone computer terminal, oblivious to the artwork.

Kat spotted the comms device in a corner next to the single stasis pod serving as a cot. She stepped over several taped-over fissures in the hull of the pod, trying to ignore the frescoes. Who had done this? What type of astronaut would ornament his spacecraft? The answer came to her – he thinks of this as home. He’s not going anywhere, or has given up on a rescue attempt, and so he has adapted to this world, embellished his small shelter. Or his sarcophagus, she thought ruefully, were he to die here alone.

She inspected the comms unit, and her lips stretched into a smile. "Sir, this is in pretty good shape. If we could…" – she sought the right word, feeling like they were burglars – "… borrow some of this and hook it up to our system, we could contact Earth again."

Blake nodded, and then his eyes flashed to the doorway as a flood of sunlight rushed in, accompanied by the creaking of hinges on the rusted hatch. She’d heard no footsteps, and spun around awkwardly in the cramped cabin to see a silhouette: human at least, no suit either. Blake’s pistol was already drawn, but she left hers where it was as the man pulled the door closed behind him and she got a good look at him: a tanned, lean figure in khaki shorts and threadbare tee shirt, unshaven for a few days. He was shorter than both of them and had open sandals on his feet. He put his palms together in front of his chest like he was praying, and gave a short bow.

Before either of them could speak, the newcomer greeted them in a lilting, almost musical, voice. "Welcome to my home."

Indistani! She’d had several good Indian friends at the academy, before the reunification with Pakistan and Bangladesh after the War, so she recognized the accent well enough. She smiled at the man, and without thinking, being closer to the door than Blake, held out her gloved hand. After a heartbeat’s hesitation, the man stepped forward and took it, at first gingerly, then he shook it firmly, with both hands. Kat saw the man up close now, probably early thirties, with deep brown eyes, seemingly back-lit whites surrounding the irises. Kat turned to introduce Blake.

"My name is Katrina Beornwulf, and this is…"

Blake holstered his weapon, but left the securing clip undone – she didn’t doubt he could draw it fast if required.

"Captain Blake Alexander, Eden Mission, New World Alliance, Sir. And you are?"

The man considered Blake, then turned to Kat.

"Why are you wearing your helmet?"

Kat cast an ignored glance at Blake. The man continued in his Indistani-English accent. "The harm from this planet will not come from its atmosphere. Please, both of you sit down." He gestured to the makeshift bed. Kat again looked questioningly to Blake who, clearly having never encountered a protocol for this particular scenario, indicated to Kat to sit, but gave a firm shake of his head when Kat gestured with a finger to her helmet. Not surprised, she sat, as did Blake, though he remained at the edge of the cot, on his guard. The man opposite pulled up the cushion in front of the computer terminal.

"You know, after a hundred years of computers, even us Indians have nearly forgotten how to sit cross-legged on the floor." He beamed at them.

Kat smiled back, hoping to compensate for Blake’s iron regard. She guessed what he was thinking. It looked as if there had been a struggle in the cockpit, and one crew member was alive, the other dead, possibly killed before the crash. But she couldn’t believe this man a murderer, or even capable of killing; his whole demeanor was so gentle. No, she thought – genteel, that archaic word almost lost by its near irrelevance to modern Earth’s post-War manners, though she’d grown up in such a household in Oxford. She hadn’t missed either that he referred to himself as Indian and not Indistani, but then he didn’t fit the bill of a separatist either.

The man’s brow creased as he focused on Blake. "Please forgive me. I am somewhat unaccustomed to speaking. My name is Rashid. Rashid Vishnaru, from Trivandrum, Indistan. Or India, as I’m afraid I cannot help but think of it. I have been here for eleven months, after a one year voyage to get here."

Kat’s eyebrows lifted. A whole year! Three months had been bad enough.

"We alternated our time in stasis. You see it was a covert mission, and we did not have the best technology. Not the best at all, I’m afraid."

Kat wondered what he meant by that, but deemed it better not to speak unless the Captain spoke first. Blake, however, said nothing. Of course, she thought, this guy hasn’t seen anyone for a long time; he won’t need too much incentive to talk. But as if Rashid could hear her thoughts, he fell into a silence, and stared down.

After a long, awkward pause, Blake spoke. "What happened to your crewmate? Why did you crash-land here? And, in fact, what are you doing here at all?"

Rashid nodded three times, once for each question, still eyeing the floor. Then he took in a deep breath, and looked up to Blake, eyes steady.

"I have thought of this a lot – how to tell it. And I will, but first I must make some tea. You see I had been gone for two days already before I saw the trace of your craft amongst the stars. I made it back here just in time only by running for hours on end, like my old quadrathlon days." He smiled, flashing white teeth, jiggling his head sideways in that way Kat remembered her male Indian friends would do at the academy, confusing the hell out of their female admirers, as a "yes" was easily mistaken for a "no". Rashid got up and went to the third corner of the module, the first two occupied by the computer terminal and the comms set, to a compact sink unit and micro-fusion boiler. It instantly fired up and within thirty seconds he had poured boiling water into an authentic china teapot. Kat was amazed he’d been able to bring such a homely artefact on a deep-space mission.

Rashid paid diligent attention to everything he did, Kat noticed, wondering how she would have fared under such circumstances. She realized there must be an underlying discipline to this man, a strictness of routine to maintain some semblance of structure, to avoid one day simply waking up screaming and barking mad.

"You can take your helmet off, you know," he said, gesturing to Kat, and then looked to the Captain. "The complete biospheric analysis is there, filed under Eden Environment Analysis 12. It is a metal. One we do not have on Earth. Very hard, very tough, but inert – no, not inert - implacable, but no harm to you."

Kat stared at Blake, but his gaze remained implacable, too.

"Thanks," Blake said, "but we’ll have to get it checked out by our science officer, all the same."

Rashid set down the pot and picked up two cups. "A shame, I bet it is a long time since you had real tea, Katrina Beornwulf. You must miss it."

Against her own will, Kat’s memory called up the taste of steaming fresh brewed tea, her mouth salivating uselessly. She sighed. As an English girl in the USA she’d always been stupefied by the fact that no one in America really knew how to make a decent cup of tea: she’d decided years ago it must be due to some deeply ingrained post-colonial resentment. But Rashid clearly did.

"And you, Sir, you are the Captain. If I am not very mistaken, a man of action more than a man of words, a military man. So, not trusting me yet, you will also miss out on my wonderful Earl Grey chai." He put the second cup back. He made a decision, then set the teapot and one cup on the makeshift chair, and sat down, cross-legged on a home-made cushion on the floor.

"There," he said. "I have to wait a few minutes. As my father used to say, you can hurry neither good tea nor a good woman." His eyes gleamed.

Blake leant forward. "Your crewmate was killed before you crashed, wasn’t he, Rashid? Which can only mean –"

"Yes. I… killed him."

Kat drew back.

"But I am not a murderer." He clasped his hands together, took a breath. "We were only a month away from Eden. We were both to be awake for the final leg of the journey. A day after I came out of my stasis, I was working in the aft compartment, checking the medical kit, when Azil –" he glanced through the hull in the direction of the small burial mound outside "– he called to me and said: 'Hey! Will you come and look –’". He did not finish. Stopped, just like that, you see, in mid-sentence." He glanced from Blake to Kat. She sensed what was coming.

"So, this was very unusual," Rashid continued. "I was still carrying the medical kit as I walked through to find him standing in the middle of the cockpit, staring at a most beautiful vision. Azil turned to me, and a chill swept through my bones. I knew in an instant something was very wrong. Azil was no longer Azil. His face was feral, his muscles flexed. He looked first at me, then past me, to the weapons locker." Rashid, his eyes still far away, picked up the spoon, lifted the lid off the pot, gave the tea a single stir, shook the water off the spoon with a whip-like flourish, and replaced the lid. Blake remained mountain-still throughout, never taking his eyes off Rashid.

"During the War, I was a commando in the Indistani Special Services."

Blake’s head shifted, ever so slightly, and even though Rashid seemed to be staring into the past, not even looking in the direction of Blake, he appeared to detect it too. Peripheral vision. She’d heard that some commandos were trained in it so much they could never switch it off.

"Yes," continued Rashid, "I do not look like one now, nor act like one, nor do I care to kill anymore, but for my Mother country – well, I was younger then. And the enemy was so terrible." He picked up the pot and poured a small amount into the cracked blue and white cup. He swilled it around, warming the china. Kat wished she could smell the aroma.

"During that time, one of our men suddenly turned on us during a mission. At first we thought he was a traitor, but he became wild, like the stories we’d heard of ghosters, though we never saw any of those." Kat’s eyes flicked to Blake, but this time found no reaction in his captain’s tightly-wrapped stare.

"Later, after that man had been disabled, having killed half my platoon, we took him back. He’d been implanted, you see." He looked to Blake for a sign of recognition of this term, and Blake nodded. Kat had a fleeting vision of Zack going berserk in the cockpit, no doubt inspired by her last nightmare. She crushed the image. Rashid poured tea, the steaming liquid sloshing noisily into his cup.

"So, you see, this time I knew straight away what had happened to Azil. The contorted face, the hollow eyes. He recognized he had lost the element of surprise, and I was between him and the weapons locker. I had to act immediately, and turned to grab a pistol. But he was standing at the pilot’s console, and he flicked the control into manual and fired the starboard thrusters. The effect was devastating. The cockpit – in fact the whole ship – lurched and began to spin. I was thrown to the other side of the cockpit, pressed against the hull. He was reaching for the controls to start separating the ship. Of course at that speed, spinning like that, we would have disintegrated. He saw that I had no weapon and so for a few seconds ignored me, his obvious encoded goal being mission termination. I was still holding the medical kit when I remembered what was in it. I managed to grab the back of his seat and kicked the lock at its base. As the centripetal force swung his chair around to face me, my left hand struck out with the scalpel from the kit, slicing straight through his harness, puncturing his heart."

Rashid lifted the cup to his mouth, closed his eyes, savoured its scent, and then took a respectful sip.

After an audible, unassuming gulp, his eyes rejuvenated by the tea, Rashid pressed on. "But in those few seconds he had done a lot of damage. It took me two hours just to stabilize the ship, and we were now way off course. He had activated some kind of communications system virus, which sent a destruction message back to IVS, so they would think we had been lost."

"I thought of leaving Azil in space, but it was not his fault, and he deserved a proper burial, so I kept him in stasis. When I reached Eden, the angle of approach was too steep, but I had no back-up systems. I was down to manual control."

Blake spoke up. "You did a hell of a job landing in as few pieces as you did."

The creases in Rashid’s forehead vanished. "You are too kind, Sir. I had been aiming at a sea area, but hit turbulence that deflected me by one degree. Four of the eight chutes tore up on entry, and in the last minutes, as I saw this pristine world about to become my grave, my astro-engineering training saved me."

Kat and Blake’s eyes met while Rashid took another sip of tea; she had no idea how he had survived, and wondered if Pierre would have guessed.

"The stasis pod," Rashid said. "I remembered an old professor setting us an exam question to do with stasis and the so-called inertial dampening effect. It concerned the theoretical possibility of using a stasis field to counter the effects of severe acceleration, or in my case, deceleration. Well, I failed the question in the exam, but I had nothing else to lose, so I threw myself into a stasis pod having maximized its field strength. It did not completely work, but, well, you saw the cockpit and can imagine the impact stress."

Rashid leant back against the hull.

Blake stood up, and went over to the micro-kitchen, and picked up the second cup. He squatted down in front of Rashid and held it out. Rashid straightaway sat back up and filled it, eyes sparkling.

Blake clinked cups with Rashid.

Kat watched as Rashid’s eyes brimmed, and she found herself staring at Blake, this man who, just when she thought he’d understood him, completely surprised her.

"So," Blake said, "you aimed for the sea, and landed in a desert."

"Ah, well," Rashid said, re-filling his cup. "Not exactly. You see, when I landed, there was no desert here. There were trees, grass and a pristine lake a kilometer away. I used to swim in it, and the water kept me alive for months." He sipped again from his cup. ‘The desert came later."

She thought of their Lander. They had touched down close to the edge of the desert, but still in the bluish-green, bushy grassland. She pictured her nightmare – in it, the ship was definitely in the desert, surrounded by barren rocks. She could see and feel her feet pounding into the sandy ground in front of her, racing for Zack and the ship’s sanctuary, knowing that whatever was behind her, chasing her, would reach her first. How long, she wondered. How long have we got?

Chapter 23

Mumbai Tower

Vince stepped into the glass cylinder, a weapons detector at the foot of the IVS building, wondering if it would detect his DNA-masked subcutaneous knife. The glass door rotated closed behind him as he placed his feet on the footprints marked on the floor. He felt a tingling as waves of technology he wasn’t familiar with swept up and down his body. Outside, four Indistani guards watched him closely. He noticed the safety switches on their pulse rifles were in the "off" position, and their forefingers lazed above the triggers. He forced his breathing to appear normal, trusting in the principle that there were as many geniuses of subterfuge as there were of detection.

He faced the two buttons in front of him – one red, one green – ignoring the camera pointed at his face. After ten seconds, the green button lit up, and the glass door in front of him opened. He’d heard grim accounts of what happened if the red light came on. The tube wasn’t bullet-proof.

He stepped outside, poker-faced, knowing the security guards would misread it as Western arrogance, and so think him too stupid to be a serious threat. One of them frisked him and directed him to an elevator set apart from the others. Only inside the lift did he physically relax. Without looking down, he flexed his right forearm inside his black business suit – his Chorazin uniform would have invited more intrusive searches – to check the silicate stiletto glazed with sim-skin was still in place, hugging the contours of his arm, and still pliant. If he fully clenched his forearm for three seconds, the soft knife would detach, and the side currently touching his arm would solidify upon contact with the air, creating a sharp throwing weapon that would drop into his ready hand. He’d only had to use it in action once; it had taken two seconds for him to prime it and kill his surprised captor. He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary this time; one stiletto would not be nearly enough if things went wrong. Although not officially at war, he was deep inside hostile territory.

As the executive elevator rocketed upwards, he retraced his steps. He’d arrived an hour earlier, feeling relaxed, not like he’d just travelled inter-continentally in a sub-orbital jet. Using his secure vid-phone, he’d called a sleepy Louise to keep an eye on Micah. He’d watched for a reaction from her but got none. As long as she gets her job done.

Vince had entered the IVS structure at ground level – Mumbai had a relatively low rad-score, never successfully targeted by a nuclear weapon during the three years of the War. IVS HQ had used sophisticated guidance-corruption devices to send any inbound missiles into the sea, the mountains or, in a few ingenious cases, back to their point of origin. IVS had powerful friends and could call upon one of the largest surviving armed forces if needed; after all, IVS had offered refuge to the Indian government during the War.

The immense IVS building, a towering monument in grey steel and Prussian blue diamond-glass, was built in the crude shape of the deity Kali, the first two hundred floors layered like a pyramid and so resembling a skirt, a hundred and fifty more stories forming the torso, and thirty more spreading out like an expanded thorax, leading to the buttresses that jutted out like breasts, and finally a cylindrical top fifty floors high serving as the head. Most extraordinary, however, were the eight arm-like structures that stretched outwards and curved upwards to palms serving as take-off and landing pads, one and a half kilometers above ground level. It was the first time he’d seen it outside of the holos, and despite himself, it took his breath away.

The Kali Tower had caused a storm for many years before the war, in part because of its blatant Hindu origins in a Hindu-Muslim co-aligned country, but also because of its audacity. But after the War, especially with the destruction of the Taj Mahal and other sacred sites, it had become a symbol of Indistani resilience. To Vince, the building spoke of a force not to be trifled with – IVS were deadly serious about business.

The lift decelerated smoothly as it arrived at floor three hundred and eighty. He brushed aside a moment of nausea caused by the rapid ascent and drop in air pressure, and faced a long frosted-glass corridor. As he walked along it, he could see there were offices on the other sides of the mottled glass, but he couldn’t make out anything detailed. No one was in the corridor, so he walked towards the end, where a single door was ajar.

Once inside the voluminous empty office at the end of the "arm", he stared downwards. The view of old Bombay seethed below. He couldn’t make out individual people but could just make out buses, and ant-like columns of what must be the tundra-fuelled tuk-tuks. There were also sky-taxis buzzing around Kali’s skirt level. The rest of the buildings around the Tower were indiscriminate brown shapes stretching into the distance, all serving to emphasize by contrast the power of this place.

It was intended to be humbling. Not necessarily before IVS, but simply before whatever gods one believed in, or failing that, a stark reminder of one’s mortality and the fragility of existence. Nevertheless, he wondered at the civil engineering of the arm he stood in, defying gravity. He was also impressed that such a building had survived fifteen years without a single successful terrorist attack, when it was such an obvious target. He surmised it was because IVS was not a dictator but a protector to this city and its people, indeed the nation – IVS had achieved what the former Chinese work-focussed hegemony had never managed – the people here actually worshipped this place, after a fashion. How could a terrorist or foreign army even get close?

Some ten meters behind him a door opened with a small sucking sound. Vince didn’t turn, but used his ears and the warped reflections in the curved windows to discern a slim man entering the room, deferentially, as if entering a chapel. He’s not the one I need to talk to.

"Sir, I am afraid that the Board cannot see you at this time. As you will appreciate, recent events have become very demanding. I am certain you understand."

Vince stared outwards. They were being monitored for sure. It was all a show, to see how he would react. He suspected the man was holding his hands together in supplication, but the humility was a sham. Vince remained quiet. He heard the small man shuffle, and then issue a polite cough.

"Sir – did you hear me?"

"I hear only the truth." There, let them chew on that. He heard a sleeve rustling, indicating a small arm movement – no doubt the man was raising his hand to his ear to listen to an instruction relayed by a sub-dermal earpiece. Vince remained steadfast. The man coughed again.

"Sir, the IVS and the Chorazin have not had… an easy relationship in recent years."

Ah, thought Vince, through to the next level. Time to take command of this little charade.

"Not surprising, since very recently you had a man inside the Eden Mission, now dead incidentally, feeding you telemetry whilst giving us bogus information. An illegal act of immense proportions – at the least transgressing our national security, at most possibly an act of war."

As Vince anticipated, the man exited without another word, his departure punctuated by the dull click of the door’s magnetic seal. Vince closed his eyes and listened intently, hearing silence. When he opened his eyes, he was taken aback. A wiry man with a forehead that had seen too many frowns sat in an immaculate business suit at a desk in front of him, where there had been none before. He wasn’t looking in Vince’s direction, rather, out the window over Mumbai. Vince realized the glass had shifted back some four or five meters. The swarthy, none too healthy looking man smoked a cigarette, occasionally taking a long, deep inhalation. Now the glass wall separating them was gone, Vince smelled the menthol-scented nicotine. The ashtray was already half-full with stubs.

The man blew a trail of smoke coolly from lips that looked parched. Vince wondered how high up in IVS this man was. It was rumored that the Indistani President always consulted IVS before making key decisions. Could this be the man the President talked to? But looking at his casual, disregarding manner, the suit and his invisible office, Vince sensed that the President talked to someone further down the IVS food-chain.

When he spoke, still not looking at Vince, the man’s voice rasped the past lives of tens of thousands of cigarettes.

"It’s quite a cute trick, I know." He flicked his head backwards to the glass wall behind him. "Being invisible, able to disappear. Smoke and mirrors, you know." He didn’t smile at his own pun, Vince noticed.

"Holo-projectors and diamond-glass distortion effects," Vince said. "Impressive nonetheless."

"So, Vince, if I may call you that. What do you want exactly?" He took a deep, concentrated drag from his cigarette, its red embers flaring. Vince watched as the man focused on the exhausted stump, then stubbed it out firmly in the ashtray; the way a man might shoot a beloved but broken animal.

"Are you representing the Chorazin, the Government, the Eden Mission, or yourself here today?"

Vince couldn’t help but admire the casual address partnered with penetrating directness. Someone worthy to spar with.

"The telemetry and all of the above except the last."

The man took out a fresh cigarette from a gold recess in the desk.

"I don’t have the telemetry, and – no offence – you’re not high enough in the Chorazin to represent those three parties. Senator Josefsson was quite astonished to learn of your visit." He rolled the cigarette between thin, dextrous fingers, assessing it in some way Vince couldn’t fathom.

Vince knew that Josefsson was in IVS’ pocket – it was level ten knowledge in the Chorazin, and he was level twelve. He had to admit that he had not yet gone through any of the proper channels. But after what Sandy had told him, he had to risk it. Once the ship was open, he and his government would have no bargaining chips left. The Eden Mission needed the telemetry – if what Micah had said was true, the Ulysses was in danger, and here he was playing verbal poker with this oligarch. Vince couldn’t help but wonder if, for once, he was out of his class. Still, he had to play it through, raise the stakes, and get this man’s attention.

"You need the password to open the ship. You don’t have it, neither does Josefsson."

For the first time, Vince felt himself being surveyed by the smoker. He knew what he was thinking – that Vince had little to go on, nothing to bargain with.

"My dear man, we will simply go through all the words until we find the right one. It may take a few extra days, but we can wait."

Vince almost laughed at the tactics, those he himself might have used in such a situation, to force the other’s hand. He let a wan smile spread across his face, but said nothing.

"Well, there it is," said the man, "so nice of you to drop by." Vince heard the door behind him swish open and the sound of two heavies enter. The smoker flipped open a lighter, pressed a button, and a flame appeared.

It was now or never. Vince prayed the last intel from his dead former partner three days ago was right, and had been worth dying for. Instinctively Vince’s right hand formed into a loose fist. He felt the tightening of his skin against the hidden stiletto.

"There is, of course, the matter of the covert IVS mission to Eden. You know, the Phoenix." Vince had joined up the dots – Micah had been perplexed as to how IVS could have fed false data to the Eden Mission, since data from Heracles or Prometheus would have been easily recognizable. Vince’s former partner, Ralph, had transmitted two coded words before being terminated: Phoenix and Eden. Ralph used to say that Indistan was like a phoenix rising unstoppable from the ashes of the War, IVS its head.

The smoker’s nascent flame wavered, just out of reach of his cigarette. Releasing the button, the flame flickered and went out. He put the lighter on the table in front of him, let the unlit cigarette rest in the ashtray, and sat back. With a single finger raised, he stopped the advance of the two men. He peered at Vince through eyes outlined by crow’s feet, framed by well-groomed but greasy and lank brown hair. He let out a small chuckle. He stood up and walked over to the plazglass window looking down on Mumbai. He touched the glass with nicotine-stained fingertips.

Vince walked over and stood next to him. He imagined he could hear the guards’ muscles tensing behind him, but the smoker didn’t seem perturbed. They both gazed outwards.

"It’s a long way down, Chorazin-man." He turned to face Vince, who awaited the outcome, knowing that if the rest of the world found out IVS had sent a ship to Eden, it could trigger deep suspicion, enough to send their stock price into a tailspin. The mere hint of it would be damaging.

Vince had a reluctant admiration for this man – prepared to take huge decisions on his own, and wondered if he would be like him if things had been a little different. But he decided no, he was a field operative. A strategist yes, but when he killed, it was with his own hands. Not from a distance.

The man spoke to the window. "A trade. The password for the telemetry."

"And the rest?"

"There is no ‘rest’". If any material on a supposed IVS mission to Eden should surface, you will find yourself, and your compatriots in a very difficult, painful, and most likely irretrievable situation." He turned and fixed his gaze on Vince.

"This building is in the shape of Kali for a reason." He looked away again. "That’s the deal."

Vince nodded. "I accept. Where’s the telemetry?"

The smoker tapped open a drawer in the desk and handed Vince a crystal data-cube. Vince leaned forward and whispered the password.

The man perched on the edge of the desk, and raised an eyebrow. "You know if it doesn’t work you’ll be dead very soon?"

Vince grinned, nodded goodbye, and headed out. Just as he was leaving, he heard the man whisper, "Well I’ll be damned."

I’m sure you are already, Vince thought. But when you arrive in hell, they’ll probably put you in charge.

Thirty minutes later Vince was onboard the fast-jet, taking off. There was of course a risk that his jet would experience an accident, but he doubted it. The smoker would assume Vince had a dead-man switch somewhere who would release the information if he didn’t return in one piece. Besides, if IVS wanted him dead, it would take only seconds – which meant that the password had already worked.

As the jet soared above the Mumbai haze, he watched the Kali Tower glistening in the pre-sunset, rising above the evening clouds. He downloaded the crystal’s contents. Although he now allowed himself to feel his fatigue, he found the contents so interesting that he only slept the last hour of the flight. The final transmission from the Ulysses suggested a ghoster attack, but the later, non-interactive telemetry showed they had made it to Eden’s solar system. So, there was some hope, after all. He decided to give a copy to Micah, to see what he could make of it.

◆◆◆

Sanjay Shakirvasta waited until Vince was gone, then picked up his cigarette and lit it, flicking open the vidcom. "Happy now?"

A voice from the vidcom replied. "Hell, no. How’d they find out about the Phoenix?"

"No idea. I suspect it was a lucky guess, but if we get some silence for that telemetry, it’s a good deal. It won’t help them in any case."

"And the password. Sesame. I don’t fucking believe it!"

"Makes sense. This ship has been down there a long time, centuries at least. Entire cultures can rise and fall in that time. You need to use a word or phrase that gets into folk-lore, so it won’t be forgotten. It’s also the oldest trick in the conman’s book – hide something in plain sight. Does it work?"

There was a pause. He took another drag, listening to the crackling of the tobacco igniting and twisting in the frenzy of its own fire. He half-closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply, feeling the warm grey haze fill his expanding lungs.

"Not yet. They’re using a speech synthesizer to run through all manner of pronunciations, forty-three so far. Wait a minute... Holy shit! The hatch is opening."

"Do you see anything?"

There was no reply. He took one more drag. "Bill?" It was then he noticed that the vidcom was flashing purple, indicating a holo message.

"You’d better take a look yourself."

He snapped his finger and thumb, and the holo-vid flickered into view. It was not what he’d been expecting; possibly the last thing.

"Well, it seems I’m damned twice in one day." He leant back in his chair, and pressed another button. "Take the bomb off the Chorazin jet."

◆◆◆

Three thousand miles east, a previously un-openable hatch slid open.

The pewter-grey ship had the breadth of five football fields, and was ten storeys deep. The lifting had been effected by the latest Indonesian attack submarine, taking a full day to breach the surface.

The ship appeared to be circular, with triangular sections cut out of it. The only notable structure was something akin to a conning tower, but much larger, like a cylindrical four storey office block. There was a hatch at the tower’s base. The password had finally allowed fresh air to enter the dormant vessel.

Several IVS choppers had landed close to the conning tower, and Bill Torreanos with a handful of scientists, engineers, and demolition experts had been involved in trying to open the doors for two days. They’d tried everything from electronics to explosives and acid – but nothing dented, scratched or even warmed the metallic hull. After the IVS vid call, they tried the word "Sesame". The pronunciation which worked had been whispered, snake-like, with an emphasis on the "S’s", keeping the final "e" silent. Then the door issued a loud clunk and hiss before unlocking.

Out stepped Professor Kostakis and his assistant Jennifer, both looking rough as hell, and a little thinner than last time Bill had seen them, but otherwise unharmed. Kostakis, as usual, was beaming. He rushed to the camera relaying the vid-footage and began gesticulating and shouting.

"We can fly to Eden in this! We can fly to Eden! It’s a space-ship!"

◆◆◆

Shakirvasta collapsed the holo with his hand. He let his eyes drift out toward the sun’s tangerine rays streaming across the city. The windows automatically shifted their refraction to subdue the glare. He took a last drag and stubbed out the cigarette. He pressed a small button in the top of the smooth polished desk.

"Get me Josefsson."

"Yes, Sir… Sir, it’s five in the morning there."

He said nothing.

"Certainly, Sir, right away, Sir."

He stood up and paced while he waited for the call. They’d believed Kostakis dead. How had they gotten inside the ship? How had they survived? Of course these were secondary questions – Bill could deal with those. But Kostakis had said it was a space ship and could go to Eden. It was huge, capable of carrying the population of a small town. Word on the IVS defense net was that there were now estimated to be at least two similar ships found in other parts of the world. From the IVS perspective, this set the stage for complete share dominance, possibly leading to what they had dreamt of for a decade – a structural change that would leave IVS as supreme economic power for centuries to come.

It also meant they could cancel the construction of Phoenix 2 and the futile research on the mass transit Alcubierre drive which confounded IVS’ best astrophysicist and engineers. They also no longer needed to intercept Ulysses’ telemetry, which had been cut off in any case. Ulysses might well have made it. But if IVS could get to Eden and come back first using these ships… It was being first to return from Eden that really mattered.

But he never, ever, believed in a free lunch. Where had these ships come from, why were they here, and why appear now – the timing, the synchronicity, were too coincidental. And yet he knew his reservations would be overruled by others’ hope, optimism, and greed. He could see the media hype sweeping across a planet boiling with desperate people. IVS should surf on that tsunami of optimism. He reminded himself of an epithet he used when he had lectured at Harvard all those years ago: "He who hesitates is crushed underfoot by those who do not."

The call came in, a grating voice on the other end. "What in god’s name is worth waking me at five am on a Sunday?"

He knew how to hook people and reel them in.

"Senator, when you told me once you wanted to be President of the United States one day, how serious were you?"

Chapter 24

Bubble

It had been a long day. Micah was bone tired, and broody as hell; the booster was wearing off early, aggravated by Lucidium withdrawal symptoms. His mind swirled with dark thoughts, like sharks circling, hunting bait-fish. He headed toward one of the high speed bubbles that wormed out of his building, to start the trek home, then slowed; the back of his neck tingled. He turned around, sure someone was following him. But all his eyes met was a flood of flushed, rush hour faces, irritated he had blocked the flow, delaying them a few precious seconds. Unable to pick anyone out from the crowd, he carried on and squeezed into the lozenge-shaped bubble that would flush him and his fellow commuters down to Kaymar Nexus. Just as the doors were closing, someone slipped in behind him.

It was so packed he couldn’t turn around. Hardly anyone ever spoke on the bubbles. Dismal music played, mercifully drowned out by the whooshing and rattling of the mass transit system kids aptly called the pea-shooter. Several teenage commuters wore I-vids – opaque sunglasses cradling their eye sockets, evanescent light patterns occasionally leaking out – seeking refuge outside of the present.

He felt eyes burning into the back of his head. A synthetic, incomprehensible female voice blurted out the name of the next station. Micah decided he was getting off, no matter what. The noise whined down and they jolted to a stop, the doors opening a little too early so that the person behind him stepped out. Micah twisted to see a bedraggled Antonia standing on the platform, eyes edgy, in amongst passengers trying to board. With an effort he carved through them and disembarked from the bubble, whose doors zipped shut, as it catapulted down the tunnel to its next destination. The bubble’s wake blew her skirt around her legs. He tried not to look.

There she stood, the girl of his dreams, right in front of him on the platform with its ebbing wash of people. Four minutes max before the next one.

He framed her – this pocket of time with its vanishing possibilities – in his mind.

"What are you doing?" she asked, a frown appearing on her forehead, like corrugated sand patterns after the tide has retired.

"Stealing a perfect moment."

Her eyes glared distrust.

"In my profession," he said, "visual memory is enhanced. I can occasionally take a snapshot. It just seemed a perfect moment. They don’t come very often."

"Why stealing?"

Micah shrugged. "I didn’t have your permission." And you belong to Katrina. Patches of his recently-aired anger from his debrief with Vince hung like flotsam around him. It wouldn’t take much to set them off again.

"Why did you follow me?" he said. He still had a faint thread of hope, though his rational mind said he was wasting his time.

Her face flushed, her hands wrestling each other. "I came here to find out something."

He didn’t want to get angry with her – or did he? He wasn’t sure. So he let his analyst sense emerge, trumping his emotions, taking in the events so far, and her body language. He calculated what she must already know. She worked in comms as an analyst, and had access to the outgoing data-streams. Her job was checking their integrity, but that meant that there were few checks after she handled the data, so she had the perfect vantage point to find and then delete hidden messages. His assessment conclusion had negligible uncertainty.

"You came to ask me about the simulacra in the landscapes," he said.

"How did…? Wait – Vince doesn’t know, does he?" Her voice betrayed more than a hint of concern.

"Not about yours. Though he’ll figure it out soon enough."

She looked crestfallen. Micah was feeling fed up, anger at being rejected welled up inside him, heading for the surface. He went on the offensive.

"I saw Katrina’s simulacrum in Rudi’s landscape, and yours in mine. Rudi’s world is pretty ravaged. The Katrina simulacrum wasn’t in good shape." He noticed how she became increasingly motionless, holding herself together, barely breathing, not meeting his gaze. He had to be sure. "To be honest," he said, "I don’t think she will survive –"

"Stop! Stop it," she said, not yelling, which made it worse. "You’re hurting me!"

Micah recoiled. The words cut through him, snapping off his breath. The booster and Lucidium-fuelled angst deserted him, leaving him suspended like a surfer whose wave had just vanished into thin air. His bravado freefell. What the hell was I thinking! Now is no time to behave like a bastard; like my father.

She bit her lip, eyes swimming in salt water, but held his gaze, not caring.

"Micah, you have to help her. The real Kat, I mean. I keep having these terrible… She and I …" she choked off. He closed towards her cautiously, like a child who had hurt his sibling when playing rough, not meaning to cause real pain. He reached out and touched her arm, gesturing to some uncomfortable-looking fixed seats plastered with seedy holo-graffiti. He hoped they hadn’t been desecrated by the tramps who slept there. They sat down on the gaudy, unyielding plastic.

She sniffed tears away and stared at the swirling incandescent ads on the opposite wall. "We met at an international dignitaries’ function nine months ago – my uncle is the Slovakian ambassador – I’m not usually into girls, but she was so funny, in a dark sort of way. She stole a kiss from me. It changed my world."

Micah felt hollow. But he said nothing, accepting his retribution for how he’d just acted.

"Ever since, we’ve been seeing each other secretly, up until the launch. We signed a three-year pax agreement before she left orbit." She glanced at him sideways. "You’re okay, aren’t you, I mean with girl-girl… Oh, never mind. Anyway, about a week before we lost contact, the messages she’d been sending me via the simulacra stopped. But my simulacrum warned me that something was wrong, that someone was tracking them down. I didn’t know if it was you or Rudi. I was going to talk to Mr Kane. When he was murdered, I was desperate. I knew the danger had penetrated the Eden Mission staff. I didn’t know who to trust?"

"Did you tell Vince or Louise?" Micah’s voice sounded croaky, even to him.

She spat a mirthless laugh. "The Chorazin? They’re probably involved. And that Louise isn’t what she appears to be."

He cleared his throat. "Antonia, I’ll do my best to help you get back in contact with Katrina –"

"Kat, if you don’t mind."

"Okay, Kat – and I don’t mind at all," he lied, because this was hell. "But I’ll need your help tomorrow finding the simulacra, if they’re not already decompiled."

"Gladly, I want to do something!" Her face lit up. She pressed her hand on top of his. "I hoped you’d help. It means a lot to me." She retracted her hand. He stared at his own hand, making sure it didn’t follow hers. Commuters began clogging up the platform.

"One more thing, Antonia. Who made the simulacra? They’re not IVS are they?"

"God no! That would be a sackable offence, maybe even treason. Kat brought them in, actually. They’re MI9, believe it or not." She smiled. "I’m not meant to know of course, let alone tell anyone. To be honest I think it was that God-awful Uncle of hers, Lord Beornwulf – he wanted an independent way to keep tabs on her."

The first wisps of air ruffled her blouse as a bubble thrashed its way down the tube, its braking screech getting louder. He stood up. "Tomorrow, then."

She stayed seated as he turned towards the platform’s edge. He struggled not to look back. The bubble arrived, a popping sound as its doors opened. Boarding it, engulfed by the sweaty throng of other passengers, Micah caught a last glimpse of her, head hung down, as the bubble vomited out of the station.

He wondered how his father would have handled it. He’d probably have somehow seduced her away from Katrina – Kat – seeing their Lesbian affair as a challenge. Seduction had been his father’s other forte, so he’d heard. But it wouldn’t be his path. He recalled his mother sobbing alone at night, when he was too young to understand, but not too young to make the connection. Every hero has a dark side, Vince had said.

His stop arrived. As he and the anonymous crowd flooded out of the station into the constant warm breeze of Kaymar cavern, a flower-seller, who his mom always complained was ridiculously over-priced, called out to him and other passers-by. His father had always brought home red roses for Micah’s mom – afterwards. Micah bought white.

He paused on the moving walkways criss-crossing the underground habitat towers like an Escher sketch, the fake scarlet sunset putting him in a pensive mood. Vince had said Micah wanted to be a hero. He’d never admitted it before, because he hated his father’s hero status so much. But maybe he could be a different sort.

He’d been in close proximity to four people who had died in the space of two days. Something big was happening, involving the Ulysses, Alicians, and IVS, the last surviving Titan Corporation. Some very powerful forces didn’t want people to find out what was on Eden. Micah knew he didn’t fit the bill of being Chorazin agent or astronaut, but he had a talent for solving puzzles; and that was what this situation needed most – intelligence – rather than brawn or the normal brand of heroism.

When Vince had mentioned IVS finding a ship, Micah’s analyst sense had rung alarm bells. He’d been too preoccupied at the time to react, but now he realized it was a key piece of the jigsaw. He quickened his pace to get home to see the news.

He knew the four astronauts were in mortal danger, and if Eden failed, then Earth’s future was bleak at best. Suddenly it was all so shockingly real, like falling into ice cold water – the Prometheus, the Heracles, the Alicians, Kane, Rudi, Ben and the Cleanser. He shoved away all thoughts about his father, and wanting to be any kind of hero. This was much bigger than his petty baggage. He needed to help the Eden astronauts, and only someone on Earth could save them. He had to help unlock this puzzle before it was too late. The ship that had been found – that was the key – his intuition screamed it at him. He stopped dead when he saw a vidcast playing on a wall. Others had paused to read it too: Space ship found by IVS; fast-track mass transport to Eden awaits…

Micah didn’t hear the excited conversations around him. He tried to join up the pieces, but there was still not enough information. He’d need to study the nets, do some research at home. Yet he had the feeling things were accelerating, that there wasn’t much time left to solve this enigma. He walked faster and faster through the thinning rush hour crowds, his mind churning over the information he had, trying to make sense of it. By the time he reached home he was running.

Chapter 25

Sighting

Kat listened to Blake and Rashid trade information while the three of them sat inside the cramped, dimly lit remains of Rashid’s ship. Rashid was burning ylang-ylang incense, and though Kat couldn’t smell it because of her helmet, she followed the tendrils of smoke as they spiraled and congregated beneath the ceiling.

Rashid explained how he had survived there in terms of food and water. The latter was apparently safe to drink, and some of the bushes produced edible, bitter fruit, though it had taken several weeks of diarrhea for him to adapt. His ship had carried seeds, and he had got some basic vegetables growing by the time his ship supplies had run out. Everything here tasted slightly metallic, though, he said.

‘No grain, no wheat?’ Blake asked. Kat knew the Ulysses carried a range of basic grains to ensure that Eden could produce wheat or rice or astrasa.

‘No. It does not take, it will not grow here. It will need genetic adaptation I believe, if it will ever work at all.’

Not good, an Eden where Earth food doesn’t grow. She sized up Rashid’s meager, fat-free frame. And what does grow barely sustains.

In return, Blake filled Rashid in on the small advances made in terms of space travel in the intervening two years since Rashid had left Earth.

"It is something of a miracle that these technological discoveries have all been made so quickly," Rashid said, "almost as if God is helping us out, after a period of seemingly ignoring us."

Kat noted that Blake refused to be drawn into an ideological debate, though she suspected he had strong religious convictions. It was reasonable to talk about all of this, but it was also small talk, circling around the real issues, the threatening ones. She presumed Blake was gaining the measure of the man, letting Rashid relax, listening carefully to the answers, deciding how much to trust him, before he embarked on the really difficult subjects. To her, though, Rashid seemed eminently trustworthy.

Glancing at her air monitor on her wrist, she saw that she had a little over three hours left in the re-breather system, before recycling air would start to get problematic. It was close to two hours journey back to Ulysses, where she hoped Pierre had made some progress.

Blake noticed her glance, and changed tack. "Rashid. The message – I assume from you – told us not to land here. Why?"

Rashid clasped his hands together. For a moment he seemed agitated. His eyes darted around and seemed not to want to look at Blake or Kat, instead fixing on the faded painting of the Taj Mahal. Kat found it odd that Rashid found solace in a structure which had been wiped off the face of the planet over a decade ago.

"Yes, yes. It is indeed my message." His smile faltered. Kat’s instincts snapped online: something was wrong. Blake clearly detected it too; his posture shifting, more alert.

Rashid continued. "But now you are here, yes?"

Blake’s face hardened. "That’s not the point. You implied danger. Are we in danger? If the people of Earth come here, are they in danger, Rashid?"

Rashid got up and walked over to the airlock door, his back facing them. Kat and Blake glanced at each other. Blake’s hand was already moving toward his holster when Rashid whirled around, far quicker than Kat would have given him credit for, a pulse pistol in his hand.

"I’m so very sorry. We must wait. It… it will be here very soon."

She couldn’t believe it. She started to rise, but a throbbing in her head began, as if someone was banging a gong inside her brain. Her hands clamped to her helmet. She winced as the pounding escalated to a hammering. Through groggy eyes she saw Blake’s consternation, but there was nothing he could do, except get shot. She looked towards Rashid through watering eyes from the pain, but he paid her no attention, his pistol trained on Blake.

It felt like small volcanoes were erupting in the centre of her brain, then she heard a noise like a train, getting louder and louder. She cried out, not even hearing her own voice drowned in the relentless, increasing din ricocheting around her skull. She caught a last glimpse through wet, strained eyes, of Rashid and Blake facing each other, and then she keeled over. Lying shaking on the floor, jaw clenched in agony, her eyes fell on the porthole. Through a gap in its curtain, she saw a blood-red flash streak across the twilight sky – an emergency flare from Zack and Pierre. Her brain did the only sensible thing, and crashed into unconsciousness.

◆◆◆

Pierre stood on the top of a hillock, a kilometer from the ship, still in its line of sight, though the light was fading. He surveyed the landscape. He could see maybe ten miles of greyish greenery on one side like fields of lavender, and a vast expanse of desert on the other. It was good to be out of the spaceship after all those endless days cooped up in three small compartments. He altered the spectral filters on his helmet visor to detect anything unusual, something perhaps sticking out against the background. Nothing. He switched to infrared – too bright for the desert – and then ultraviolet. Zero – nul, he thought, in French – just unbroken landscape, bushes and trees. The quiet was disconcerting, as if the land itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. The lack of sound and activity reminded him of when he’d visited the now-petrified forest of Clamart, just outside Paris, where he’d played as a child before the War. Like most people, he had only returned there once, and not for long either.

He heard static on his com-link. "… can see something."

He’d forgotten Zack was seeing on a screen what he himself could see, remotely via the micro-camera mounted on his helmet.

"Say again, Zack?"

"Wait a sec; I’m replaying it here in the cockpit. There we go. Try UV again. It was right on the periphery, maybe why you didn’t see it. Your current nine o’clock."

Pierre turned to the left, scanning in that direction. He modified the filters again. There it was. A tall, thin object, a hundred meters away. He raised his binoculars but could see nothing through them. He squinted into the hazy distance, without glasses. The object was gone.

"Shit, Pierre. It was there and now it’s gone. What does that tell you?"

He didn’t like it either. But at the moment it told him very little: too many possibilities, too little data. However, he predicted exactly what it would mean to Zack.

Zack said it for both of them. "We’ve got company."

Pierre hadn’t got a good image of it. He looked again toward the spot and a few large bushes nearby. It had been close to one small tree, but taller than it by a third. He estimated it was three meters high. He hadn’t noticed head or limbs and the silhouette was dark, so it could have been mechanical.

"Pierre, get back here. But before you go, launch a red flare. I want Blake and Kat back here, a.s.a.p!"

"Zack, it – if it is indeed an it – will see the flare too."

"Damned right it will!"

Pierre didn’t see the logic in that, but agreed to alert the Captain at once. He knelt down and took off his backpack, laying his rifle on the floor. He hunted through the main compartment for the flare gun. He found it, but just as he was about to get up he noticed a long shadow on the ground in front of him.

"Pierre! Look out!" Zack yelled, but Pierre had already leapt sideways away from the shadow and rolled, coming up in a kneeling position with the flare gun pointing exactly at where the shadow must have come from. There was nothing there. His combat training cut in and he swiveled three-sixty degrees; his breath rasping inside his helmet. After a few half turns, he heard Zack’s voice again.

"Pierre – listen to me. It’s still around there, I’ve been watching with the viewer, but it moves so fast it’s difficult to get a fix on it. Fire the flare now, then pick up your rifle and head back toward the ship. And if I say run, run like hell."

Pierre did one more visual sweep. He still hadn’t got a good view of the thing, but it was twice his size, and could move very fast. Yet it was very quiet. Given its speed and apparently effortless movement, he guessed his chances of out-running it were minimal. He raised his arm and fired the flare, all the time circling, looking over his shoulder. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, each one like an attentive, nervous soldier.

For the next few minutes, Pierre half-walked, half-skidded down the escarpment, the ship still seven hundred meters away. He hadn’t turned around once; Zack was scouting for him. Pierre had left the larger bushes behind him, which meant that if the creature came out it would be easily seen. It also meant he had no cover. He’d been on safari in Tanzania once as a kid, and watched cheetahs hunt in the Ngorongoro Crater. They waited in the tall grass and rocks on the edge of open savannah, and right now he felt just like a Thomson’s gazelle cut off from the herd, alone and vulnerable.

Suddenly he felt a rush of blood to the back of his neck. He turned and saw a tall black shadow charging down the hill towards him. Without hesitation he raised his rifle and fired three shots at it. It didn’t even slow down.

Zack yelled down the comms: "RUN!"

Pierre discarded the pulse rifle and his backpack, and sprinted for the ship. His arms pumped fast as he tried to control his breathing, the way he’d learned at school, to stretch out the dash to the ship. Within a few seconds, he saw Zack limping at the Ulysses Lander entrance, hoisting a heavy weapon onto his shoulder and aiming towards him. He heard a sharp clicking noise behind him, then a bizarre, heavy-footed galloping noise, gaining steadily on him. Pierre lost control of his breathing, and ran faster than he ever thought possible.

◆◆◆

Blake sat, the pistol trained on him, but his weight was on his thighs, ready to spring up if Rashid took his eyes off him even for a moment. He didn’t. Blake didn’t know who he was angrier with – Rashid for betraying them or himself for being too slow to react at the critical moment. He regarded Kat’s crumpled body. At least she was alive. He’d also seen the flare, so he knew Zack and Pierre were in trouble. He had confidence in Zack’s abilities to deal with it in the short term.

"We trusted you," he said; although he knew he hadn’t really, not yet, he’d just let his guard down a little. But he saw it hit home. Rashid was flustered.

"You can still trust me, Captain. You will see, I just need you to not over-react when it arrives."

Blake decided another approach. He leant back, smiled, and put his hands behind his head, though his abdominals inside his suit were rigid, tensed like a spring to propel him upwards if Rashid reciprocated.

"Now, why on Earth would I over-react? It’s not as if you just overcame my corporal and had a pistol pointing at my chest, and were talking of an ‘it’ arriving without telling me what the hell ‘it’ is." He stopped smiling, and made his decision.

"To hell with this, Rashid. One of the mottos of my platoon was ‘Never be taken prisoner’. Part of our code. So if you’re going to shoot me, then go right ahead and shoot." He got up, calmly, as if going to take a walk. He bent over Kat, not approaching Rashid just two meters away.

"What did you do to her?’ Kat’s face twitched beneath her visor. He spoke quietly to Rashid. "What the hell is going on, Rashid? Talk to me."

Before Rashid could answer, the door opened, and a pulsing electric blue light washed into the room. Blake gaped as an oval object, half a meter in diameter, and about Rashid’s height, drifted into the compartment. Its surface at first reminded him of the purple and blue ripples sometimes seen on an oil film stretched across a circular wire frame. Rashid kept his pistol trained on him, his arm not quite steady.

To Blake, the intruder resembled a mirror, but with a fluidic surface, fractal images swirling, almost taking shape, but not quite. He was unable to focus properly on it. Around its circumference was what appeared to be a tube of gold-colored metal, about the same diameter as a handrail. It hung thirty centimeters above the floor, all the time emitting a faint sound of water trickling, like a small fountain. It stopped next to Rashid, and then oriented itself towards Kat. He realized this had to be alien in origin: not even IVS had anti-grav technology. The implications were overwhelming, but he pushed them aside for the moment, focusing on gathering information, and protecting Kat. But then he saw her body and face reflected in the object’s mirror surface.

Just as he reached for his pulse pistol, Rashid spoke up.

"Don’t. It won’t hurt her. It is trying to communicate with her."

Blake kept his hand on the butt of the pistol. "Did it make her black out?"

Rashid nodded. "It has already been in communication with Kat before, for some weeks now."

"Wait. You’re telling me this thing has been reaching across light years of space to my ship?" The nightmares! He glared at it, wondering if it had any defenses.

"Yes. Because she has a node. That is right, is it not?"

Blake flared. "How the hell do you know that? Not even my first officer…" He stopped. Could it be true – that this thing was interfacing with Kat’s internal multimedia bio-chip?

Rashid spoke as if reciting from a list. "Your first officer is named Zack. Broken right leg. Utters profanities far more than is necessary. Sits on the port side. Pierre is science officer, sits behind you."

Blake’s face didn’t hide his surprise or outrage. "How in hell’s name…?" He felt that his ship, his command had been violated. But as he was about to ask, he saw Rashid nod to the mirror-like object, which turned toward him. Dumbfounded, he saw on its surface a moving image of him and his crew as seen from Kat’s position in the Ulysses. He sat down, reeling from the security implications. The critical question was whether it was hostile or not. As if knowing that this question would arrive soonest, Rashid began to talk, his voice adopting its previous calm, amicable tone.

"I have asked it its name, but communication is very difficult. It does not speak and can only show pictures of what it has seen itself, or via someone or something it can communicate with. I noticed it, that is, it found me, when I was burying my colleague, Azil. It appeared at the top of the nearest dune, and my immediate reaction was to run inside, get out my rifle and shoot it."

"You missed?"

Rashid laughed, a little too loud. "Oh no, I never miss. But it was close – for me, that is. You see it looks like a mirror, and in many senses it is one. My high powered bullet ricocheted off it. So I tried the laser rifle. As I fired, it turned a fraction, and bounced the pulse straight back at a piece of wreckage just beside me, burning a hole right through it. It was our first meaningful communication, looking back on it. I communicated fear, and it taught me respect."

Blake studied Rashid’s eyes; he seemed to be telling the truth. Rashid had not actually lied about anything – yet.

"What about Kat? Why has it done this to her? What does it want?"

Rashid got to his feet. Blake wanted to floor him; Rashid seemed to understand that too, as he approached cautiously.

"I am human, like you," he said, eyes wide with almost religious fervor. "There is a great threat to all of us. But not from this." He indicated the alien mirror. "It has helped me survive, to stay alive, against…" He trailed off. Blake noticed him clenching and unclenching his fist, one of his own habits. His anger at Rashid checked itself. There was something about this man that made him difficult to dislike for very long. He was a tortured soul, a poet forced to be a commando and an astronaut. Blake had seen it before, men like this had been in his ranks during the war, but in his experience they never survived in battles, because they always ended up making the ultimate heroic sacrifice. So, Blake thought, I don’t need to kill you, your days are numbered. And then he wished he hadn’t thought it at all.

Rashid picked up again. "It helped me survive against… the others. There are beings here. Guardians. Tall, impervious to our weapons, very fast, very dangerous." His hands trembled. He laid his pistol on the floor. Despite Blake’s face of stone, Rashid gingerly laid a hand upon his shoulder, which tensed immediately. There were tears barely held back in Rashid’s eyes, and his voice was unsteady.

"They mean to kill us all, Captain Alexander. All of us. All humanity. Eden is a trap." He raised his hand to Blake’s other shoulder, gripping him hard, and stared wildly into Blake’s eyes. "We have to stop them. No matter what it takes. We have to stop them."

The mirror’s picture changed, and Blake was shown the enemy. His anger at Rashid dissolved. He recognized true evil when he saw it.

Chapter 26

Choices

Gabriel took a sling-jet, boarding as a business passenger – staff asked fewer questions of first class clients. His fake ret-scan passed flawlessly. The jet arrived early morning in Old Denver, slicing through anvil-shaped clouds, accompanied by lightning cords and strong winds which buffeted the twelve-seater.

A reliable source had told him Sister Esma was due to hold a Chapter meeting at noon. After a short deviation to pick up some gear, he located the once famous Country Club in the oldest part of town, more recently used as a school. The streets were deserted. This quarter of Denver was known for being ultra-religious, full of fanatics, so the Chorazin, civic police and all non-Fundie up-standing folk stayed away.

The dilapidated building, grey and crumbling with age, was no longer in use: all children in the area attended the huge state boarding schools further up in the low-rad Rockies. He entered via an unlocked side door.

Gabriel studied the dust on the furniture-less floor – he stroked some onto his finger and smelt it – synthetic, sprayed liberally to give the impression no one had been here for months. He scanned the interior until he discerned a faded symbol above a wooden floor-boarded stage – three outstretched olive branches, representing neo-fundamentalist aligned Islamic, Hindu and Judeo-Christian faiths. He scoped the floor again, and the beamed ceiling. He needed to get across without leaving any trace.

He fished in his rucksack for the two knife-hooks, then fastened a lanyard around each wrist. Crouching down, he sprung into the air, stabbing both blades into the first wooden beam with a resounding thunk. As soon as they penetrated the wood, he twisted the handles and microscopic barbs speared outwards from the blade. Gabriel hung there like a trapeze artist, swinging his legs. He twisted the right hand hilt the other way, and the knife released. He swung twice more, then pulled sharply on his left arm as he propelled forward and upward, twisting the hilt, releasing the second knife. A fraction of a second later his right hand stabbed its knife into the next beam, and continued, gathering speed as he’d seen macaques do in Uganda years ago.

When he arrived at the final beam next to the symbol, he stalled his swinging, and pressed on the two lower branches simultaneously with his feet. A click beneath him revealed the outline of a trap-door. He lifted his knees up to his chest and waited. As the door rose automatically, a crossbow bolt shot out firing straight ahead to where an uninitiated would have normally stood. It thudded into the wall beneath his feet. He angled himself, still hanging by his left arm, and wrestled the bolt out of the stone. It left a small hole, but there were others already there. He smeared as much of the surrounding chalk over it as he could, twisted his knife-hook and dropped down through the trap door onto the first rung of a spiral staircase.

He primed the bolt back into its firing mechanism, and descended into the darkness below. One way in, one way out: he felt like a man walking into a cage – but the bait was worth the price.

Depositing trip-sensors on the trap-door, he closed it after him, then waited at the bottom, kneeling on the damp concrete in the musty basement devoid of furniture or fittings – nowhere to hide. Pale light strobed through the floorboards above.

Ten o’clock– ample time to reflect, to purify his mind. Important to die with clear thoughts: he’d seen so many, almost everyone he’d cleansed, die screaming, pleading for their lives or wetting themselves with fear. He slowed his breathing, and slipped into a meditative trance.

He intended to consider the events of the past few days, but as he relaxed, his mind reached further back. He remembered playing with his sister so many years ago, back in the outskirts of Shannon, on the cliffs of Mohar. In his mind he saw the lush greens that were all but gone from that radioactive wasteland, the tragic remnant of the last major nuclear battle of the war – a jewel of an island raked and scorched by a desperate last venting of rage, an attempt at mutual annihilation. The only limiting factor that had stopped both sides unleashing their complete arsenal, had been the unanticipated EMP harmonic shockwave that destroyed all the missiles’ and air attack squadrons’ guidance systems. It had shut down both armies, even with their supposedly EMP-proof technology. If they’d have continued, the resulting fallout would have breached the Kudoly threshold, triggering a radiation spike, annihilating most living creatures on the planet within six months. Earth wouldn’t have recovered.

His mind travelled back to Jenny, his sister, to a time almost in their teens. She was on the swing in the garden. She cajoled him into pushing harder, and he’d worried she’d fall off. Each time she flew a little higher, she shrieked, and her shrill laughing scream merged with the labored creaking of the mechanical joints. He stopped pushing, and after she realized that no matter what she had said he would push no more, she let her head fall back, eyes closed, the sun on her face, waiting for the swing to drift to a stop. He watched her a long time until she came to rest.

"Why’d you stop pushing?" she asked, eyes still closed, head still back.

He was leaning on the swing-set frame. "I was worried you’d fly off and hurt yourself, stupid."

She opened her eyes and smiled at him in a way that made him uncomfortable.

"I’m invincible, Gabe. Don’t you know that?"

He didn’t reply. He envied her free spirit, compared to his own dark thoughts. But he worried he would hurt her in other ways. His body was undergoing changes and he found himself looking at his coquettish sister in ways he didn’t understand, and didn’t trust. Later, as his maturation took its course, he sought refuge from the onslaught of his hormones in other girls at school – his dark looks and somber moods found him no shortage of willing playmates.

Even at that early age, though, he’d become concerned about world affairs. While other kids talked about the latest music holos, he wanted to discuss politics. At home at supper time he listened to his father rant about the corrupt politicians and the religious clerics, how it was all going to hell, and how Jeannie and Joe Average would pay for it all, as always. His sister and mother managed to rise above it, but to Gabriel, the eldest, it all really mattered, so much so that it twisted his stomach, and people’s willful ignorance and lassitude made him ball his fists and occasionally punch them into doors, and later on, straight through them.

Gabriel surfaced from his reverie and checked his breathing. It was long, deep and smooth, his body perfectly still. Satisfied, he resumed his train of thought, moving forward to when war had loomed across their lives, three years later. He signed up, barely seventeen years old. After psychometric examination he was taken out of his platoon and trained by the fledgling Chorazin Corps – at first shock-troop tactics, later on, graduating to advanced psychological techniques. As the War got longer and dirtier, and the threat of protracted nuclear theater became more tangible, he was sent deep cover to infiltrate an Alician training center.

He remembered the school, hidden in the Nepalese foothills. Most of the students had been religious maniacs, as full of fervor as their minds were closed. They were used by the Alician order as martyrs: cannon-fodder, suicide bomber pawns laying out a carpet of blood following the Alician strategists’ goals. But Gabriel, like a few others, was seen as less dispensable, more useful than a simple weapon or bomb carrier whose sole aim was indiscriminate carnage. Gabriel undertook full Cleanser training, including Alician religious training and mind discipline techniques.

At first he only paid lip service to the teachers. But after six months without Chorazin contact, he realized he was on his own, for whatever reason – lost, forgotten, cut-off. His Alician watchers began to suspect his motives, so he threw himself into the training. He’d never swallowed the Alician hype, but he found peace in Cleansing. Both sides had trained him to kill, and he surrendered to it, becoming an adept assassin. His skills didn’t go unnoticed.

Just before the end of the War, he was sent to Tibet: he and nine other Cleansers, already blooded numerous times, were each to receive one-to-one instruction from a Master. It was an incredible honor. He’d never been so proud.

He met his Master, Cheveyo, and immediately recognized him as the most enlightened person he’d ever encountered. He worshipped the man, did everything he was asked, no matter how difficult, no matter how seemingly pointless, including standing naked, blindfolded atop a mountain overnight.

Then came the shock. Cheveyo took him on an arduous seven day trek into the mountains. After three days they descended inside a glacier, hacking through thick ice for hours in conditions of thirty below, with blinding winds so cold that any exposed flesh was frost-bitten in minutes. For a whole day they ferreted deeper into the glacier’s treacherous tunnels. They used head torches as there was no natural light, only the occasional muffled shade of blue, but eventually they arrived inside a gargantuan chamber. Gabriel recognized he was standing on something that was not ice – more like metal. In the distance he saw a squat tower. Shaking with cold and exhaustion, he was led by his Master to the tower’s foot and a large hatchway held open by a log of frozen, ancient wood.

The stench from the two rotting corpses made Gabriel recoil even though he should have been used to it. One of them he recognized: a former acolyte he had met a year earlier, whom he’d heard had been killed in training.

Cheveyo led him a short distance inside to what seemed to be a control room, and sat down cross-legged. Gabriel reciprocated so as not to be standing over his Master, who spoke as always: quiet, calm, authoritative. Gabriel listened, intuiting that his life depended on it.

"Before you now is a choice, Gabriel. Choice is man’s constant companion. Choices define who we are, what we are, how we live – and whether we continue to live."

The last part hung in the crisp air, within the small cloud of freezing mist that formed from his Master’s breath. Gabriel knew better than to interrupt.

"A thousand years ago, a small band of visitors came from another world. They are called Q’Roth." He never took his eyes off Gabriel. ‘They fed on many humans, though not the way most humans eat the meat of dead animals. They do not consume the flesh – they draw the neural energy, the bio-electric life force from their victims."

Gabriel stared downward. Only in the past decade had Eastern and Western medicines finally met on even ground, confirming with Western techniques the essential bioelectric meridians that Chinese doctors had charted for millennia. This had spawned new research directions into the neural energy signature of the human brain. Although electricity is electricity, as some physicists had put it, whether biological or chemically induced, there were subtle differences related to human, cetacean and primate consciousness. But it was hard to conceive that there were other beings out there, and that this was what nourished them.

"The Q’Roth curried favor with a group of humans they found useful, and set up an Order to await their return. They left ships, like this one here, behind them. They also left certain humans who they genetically altered. The genome persists in very few people. These people have become very powerful, physically and politically, through careful, deep, and very long-term strategies. They are the inner circle of the Alicians, called the Protectors, and they are the vassals of the Q’Roth. Most Alicians, even those higher up, do not realize who they really serve."

Cheveyo drew his Cleanser knife, and laid it before him, the blade pointing at Gabriel. "Even the name, Alicians, is far older than people know. The Protector Regent, their leader for six hundred years, was a genetically-enhanced woman named Alessia. The Q’Roth are dominated by a female queen, and so the Protectors have always been led by a female. This Alessia was formidable – it took five Master Sentinels to kill her, and she took four of them down with her in hand to hand combat. After this famous battle, the Protectors secretly adopted the name Alessians, in reverence to her."

He paused again. Gabriel appreciated the time to assimilate not the words, but their import. If this were true… He felt nauseous, trying to recall how many he’d cleansed for the Alicians, while supposedly working for the Chorazin. Now, to learn that all this time he’d been used by an alien race…

"The Q’Roth will return. Soon, maybe a decade from now. The inner circle of the Alicians, these Protectors, have been plotting for a millennium, and have become more active in the past hundred years. Many inventions, many discoveries are scheduled technology releases fostered by key Alicians to bring humanity closer to harvesting by the Q’Roth."

The pieces slotted together for Gabriel. Most Alicians appeared to be of the "robe-and-dagger" fanatic variety, but he’d also seen visitors to the training centre in sharp business suits, from one of the large Titan Corporations’ research agencies. He’d also been called upon to cleanse several scientists. The Alicians’ outward face was a façade, hiding their inner machinations.

Cheveyo continued. "They increase our internal discord, while avenues of science dangerous to the Q’Roth are blocked from us. The War was triggered by the Protectors, to bring the Alicians out of the shadows just beneath an unstoppable popular force, the Fundies who united Eastern and Western fundamentalist ideologies. And the War was halted by the Protectors at the last moment, to prevent catastrophic loss of the Q’Roth food source."

Cheveyo picked up the Cleanser’s knife. "I must ask you a question, Gabriel."

Gabriel’s eyes widened, lost on this sudden stormy sea of revelation, whose evidence he was sitting on, since this behemoth of a ship buried inside a glacier couldn’t have been created by man. He clung to his Master’s voice, the only lifeline he had left. The knife was there to delineate choices, he knew. If his answer was wrong or insufficient, he would join his two comrades at the entrance of the tower. His Master would report him as killed during training, and would not be questioned. Moreover, Gabriel knew that he could not physically overcome this man – despite being a good forty years younger – as numerous physical training bouts in recent weeks had made abundantly clear.

"Gabriel – what is the nature of fundamentalism? What choice characterizes it?"

Gabriel’s brow furrowed; such an abstract question, one he had never heard before. He had to think of the context his Master had used earlier, equating choice with life, and he clearly had to answer differently to the men lying on the floor, their throats bled dry.

An answer struck his mind, dredged up from the memory of a man he had killed – a famous Professor who had been unafraid to die, one of the very few. He had said it to Gabriel just before the cleansing. It now came back to haunt him, but it resonated with truth, a shocking truth. Gabriel didn’t hesitate. He trusted his Master, and if he gave him the wrong answer, then he was prepared to suffer the consequences.

"Fundamentalism values blind faith more than intelligence." He remembered the rest of it. "Faith: a blind, deaf and untouchable faith which will hold even in the face of clear counter-evidence."

"Those are not your words, Gabriel." Cheveyo rose effortlessly and walked around behind him.

Gabriel swallowed, feeling his Adam’s apple, wondering if it might be slit in two at any moment. "Fundamentalism is about controlling the masses, the herd," he said, hesitantly, and then he understood. "In this case, so the herd can be led to slaughter."

Cheveyo returned in front of Gabriel and sat down, placing the unsheathed knife between them. This time the hilt faced Gabriel. "The Q’Roth want people to leave this planet. We do not know why exactly, and we do not know where – yet – perhaps to their home planet."

Gabriel risked a question. "How do we know these things? Alicians are trained to resist torture."

"The Q’Roth have not been the only visitors to Earth. Another alien, a Ranger, crash-landed here a century after the Q’Roth scouting mission. My ancestors helped and nursed him back to health, although his physiology was more reptilian than human. He detected traces of the Q’Roth’s visit, and warned my forebears what was to come."

"From what he could communicate, the Q’Roth have a thousand year life cycle. When they are born, they are utterly savage, violent creatures. They need to feed quickly on sentient neural energy. It acts as a catalyst for their intellectual maturation." Cheveyo paused, looking downcast. "It is not so uncommon in nature, for hatchlings to feed on others so that they may have life." He raised his head again. "But this wanton culling will eradicate humanity – each Q’Roth will consume a hundred souls."

Gabriel realized how weary his Master was. But there was a further question he had to ask. His legs were numb from sitting on the glacial ice, but he ignored them. "Master, you said ‘we’. Who is this ‘we’?"

His Master nodded. "We are called Sentinels. We are very few, less than fifty now on this globe hurtling through space, its population oblivious to the raptors out there, and to the wolves dressed in robes at home. We are scattered, fragmented, no longer able to do anything of strategic significance. Once we were stronger, but violent struggles with the vassals of the Q’Roth over the centuries have exacted a heavy toll on our numbers. But we remember, we know and understand the threat, and we look for opportunities. A number of us are hidden within the Alician ranks themselves. And we look for new blood." He closed his eyes.

"My choice," Gabriel said, looking at the knife lying between them. It was an invitation – he could try and kill his Master, or he could join with him. He made no move. "The others – the two lying at the entrance. They did not… believe you?"

His Master, eyes still closed, in a move so fast it surprised Gabriel, sheathed the razor-sharp curved knife; it disappeared into the folds of his sleeve.

"They answered differently."

Gabriel opened his eyes in the dark, musty room – the trip-sensors had detected someone. He heard footsteps descending the spiral staircase. Instinctively he knew it was Sister Esma, and he was sure she was a vassal of the Q’Roth, one of the Protectors, possibly their Grand Mistress herself. If so, she would be very hard to kill, and at the least would almost certainly take him with her. Perhaps he could gain more useful information from her, or perhaps he should simply send her onwards, preemptively. Choices.

He sprang into a fighting stance. He saw two legs appear, stepping sedately down the last steps. If he was to kill her, it must be before she reached the bottom. He made his choice. His throwing knife pierced her chest up to its hilt just before her head appeared. There was a gurgling, and she toppled to the floor, head down. He listened for any further footsteps in case she was not alone, and then approached to turn her body over. Sister Esma smiled at him, her mouth leaking green bile.

"Matthias – or should I say Gabriel – I knew you would come."

His hands whipped around the back of her head and jaw and flicked to snap her neck, but there was no crunch, just a rubbery resistance. Her left hand shot upwards and closed around his throat. With one hand he tried to pry it loose, and with the other he twisted the knife sticking into her chest, but she kept smiling.

"My heart’s not there anymore, Gabriel. They moved it a long time ago."

Long fingernails pierced his neck, and he felt toxins surge into his bloodstream, a boiling flush washing through his skull, attacking his brain cells. Brown blotches appeared in front of his eyes like spats of mud. He punched her temple hard enough to smash a normal human skull, but it did no damage. His strength collapsed. He reached down to activate the small grenade strapped to his waist, to kill them both, but her free hand intercepted his with surprising speed. He let go of the hand locked around his neck, yanked out the knife in her chest, and attempted to slash her throat, but his arm seized up, the blade mere centimeters from her jugular.

She continued to hold him above her. His limbs were rigid, unresponsive, and his chest muscles ceased to perform their vital function. Paralyzed, and slowly asphyxiating, all he could do was watch her hideous smile.

Chapter 27

Q’Roth

Zack hurled the long range pulse rifle to the ground. He’d managed to hit the bastard square on eight times but it had no effect; the pulse beam reflected off it, hadn’t even slowed it down. So he switched to his favorite weapon, the one he’d used in Rome to face down a stealth jet – his ‘catapult’. He thanked God they’d let him bring it on the mission – it had taken all Blake’s military clout and rhetoric to get the bureaucrats to allow it onboard. But he’d rather go up against another stealth fighter than this. To make matters worse, his leg was sending tremors of agony up his spine. He’d jumped down the steps in his race to save Pierre, forgetting his leg was in a cast. But he dared not take a pain-tab – he needed crystal vision. He felt adrenaline flooding through him, just as it had in battle during the War. Adrenaline is colored brown, he’d always told his troops.

He hefted the field cannon onto his right shoulder. His left hand gripped the stabilizer on the main body, his right eye glued to the targetter. His right index finger stroked the trigger.

"Sonofabitch!" he murmured. "Run in a straight line God damn you!" He couldn’t lock onto the target, despite the creature’s size. The cannon had an auto-zoom for moving targets, with superimposed digital readouts of the distance between the creature and Pierre, and between Pierre and Zack. Using a sub-vocal interface he programmed four projectiles – the first an explosive warhead, the second an armor penetrator, the third another explosive device, the fourth a high yield explosive. The last was in case the first three failed – Pierre was already too close to the creature not to be caught in its blast.

Zack studied it while it was still out of range, tearing down the escarpment after Pierre. He tried to ignore what the creature looked like, because that just might make him turn, bolt the hatch and take off. Its grey-black sheen made it difficult to discern detail, and the setting sun was behind it. Still, its long, thin, rectangular shape and its angular, trapezoidal head made it look almost noble when it stood up. But when it ran, it resembled a giant deranged locust – if a locust could run that fast – body bent double and then stretched to maximum with its fore and hind legs lashing out, clawing into the terrain and projecting it forward in seemingly random darts, always closing on its target.

He counted six insect-like legs, the two middle ones folded into its body when it stood up. Each leg was long, thin, and serrated, rose-like thorns the length of a man’s hand travelling down the side of each lower leg. If it reached Pierre, it would shred him in seconds.

It dodged left or right more than twice a second, and was gaining on its prey. Zack was thankful at least that Pierre had stopped zigzagging. Smart kid, he thought, knows it’s not working anyway, because the thing is so damn manoeuvrable, and it makes it harder for me to zero it. Zack had been waiting for them to come into the optimal range of the cannon. An icon in his sight-glass switched from yellow to green for Pierre, and from red to yellow for the creature. Zack flexed his finger over the trigger, and breathed out slowly so his arm became rock steady: three hundred meters, the creature some thirty meters behind Pierre, closing fast.

He counted the creature’s zigs and zags, trying to guess which way it would go next. On intuition, he fired a shot to the right of Pierre – he doubted he would hit the creature; he was gauging the timing. He estimated the projectile took a full second to reach them. A huge boulder some way behind them exploded, sending rocks the size of footballs into the sky in all directions. Neither of them slowed down. Okay, we’re in business.

Zack knew there was only one way to hit it. He hoped it wasn’t that tactically smart – he would only get one shot at this. Two hundred and fifty meters; fifteen meters between them. He spoke to his microphone.

‘Pierre, when I say ‘now’, you hit the deck fast and stay down. Don’t be late.’

The silence from Pierre indicated to Zack his consent – at least he hoped it did. He could hear Pierre’s stuttering intakes of breath, could almost smell the panic. Hold it together just a little longer, Pierre.

He waited five more agonizing seconds until the separation reading said five meters. It was right behind Pierre, and began to rise up slightly, the two upper legs extending upwards and outwards, ready to slash.

Zack fired and shouted ‘NOW!’

He fired again.

He held his breath, finger poised on the trigger for the fourth, final shell.

◆◆◆

Blake watched the mirror in silence for ten minutes, jaw muscles tight throughout. He didn’t understand all he saw, but enough to appreciate the danger from these beasts – the locusts as Kat had called them. When they stood tall they were sleek monoliths, a diffuse black that made it difficult to focus on any detail. But he made out what might be eyes, though they looked more like blood-red gills, on either side of their heads, and a gash that was possibly a mouth. At first the mirror had shown him just one or at most two, at a distance, clearly on Eden. And then underground – he didn’t know where – he’d seen eggs, tens of thousands of them, laid out in neat rows.

The mirror showed him another place. Blake realized he was seeing a different planet, not empty like Eden, but teeming with life. He glanced at Rashid for verification. Rashid nodded, but the somber look in his eyes told him what was to come. An air-brushed violet sky speckled with silver dust hovered over a mercurial city, pastel hues rippling across tubular buildings, conduits, bridges – he wasn’t sure exactly what was what. Spider-like residents ambled about the city, drenched in fluorescent hues, on four nimble, hairy legs. He couldn’t make out heads. It was difficult to take it all in with the continual, hallucinogenic cascade of color.

Many mirrors like the one he was viewing now – some oval, some octagonal in shape, others triangular – hovered, interacting in some way with the spiders. Blake guessed the mirrors served the spiders, or at the least the two had a symbiotic relationship.

Occasionally the shifting sands of color subsided, to be followed by a spectacular reverse waterfall of fireworks into the sky, glowing lights creating night-time clouds of pulsing garnet and amethyst. Blake was mesmerized. The more vistas appeared, the more it was evident that this was a culture devoted to peace and art. Without having heard a word or explanation of anything, he instinctively appreciated this sublime race. But his stomach remained tense, ready for what was to come.

The scene switched back to the sky. Colossal grey ships sank like monstrous snowflakes down towards the mountains surrounding the rainbow city. The spiders and mirrors gathered and watched. Explosions shook the ground, pulverizing several of the city conduits. The ships’ doors opened and the beasts swarmed out in their thousands, some airborne in small ships. He decided Kat had been right after all calling them locusts. He saw close up, then from a distance, how they killed everything in their path.

Each time one of them took a spider, it hung on for a few seconds with its gash of a mouth, while the spider’s color drained away, then its lifeless corpse was discarded. Blake’s knuckles squeezed white, mainly because the spiders mounted no defense, and were slaughtered. Some of the mirrors were smashed by the beasts, many more shattered of their own accord, perhaps when their masters were killed – he didn’t know. The view switched to a faraway sweep of the city, grey and smoking, a black wraith of the beasts strangling and engulfing it like a cancer.

The last scene was of the ground, and then the planet itself, receding, viewed from space. Abruptly the mirror returned to its fluid, non-descript ‘face’, as Blake had come to think of it. But he found himself still staring. He closed his eyes and the images remained. He’d just watched genocide, an entire species eradicated. His thoughts turned to Earth, and anger rose inside him at the sheer stupidity, the futility of its internal wars, the squandered time, when there were such abominations out in space.

Rashid held out a cup of tea. Blake hadn’t noticed him making it. But as he reached for it, Rashid said, "No, it’s for her."

Kat was coming round, eyes scrunched against the light. Without hesitation, before Blake could stop her, she released the seals on her helmet, took it off, and dropped it next to where she lay. She propped herself up, took the tea, and gulped it down in seconds.

"Thanks," she coughed, wiping her mouth, and then turned to Blake.

"Sir," she said, eyes wide. "It’s been in my head. The mirror. It used my node, re-activated it, and communicated with me. Not for the first time, either. I think it’s been in my dreams, hiding in the back of my consciousness for some time, maybe a month. I guess I blacked out this time because of its proximity. The information rate was too intense. Then it slowed down."

Blake interrupted. "Why don’t you slow down yourself? Now you’ve taken your helmet off, I can see you’ve had a rough ride."

"Sir, my air was getting low, and…"

"It’s okay, Kat – bad air seems like the least of our problems right now. Can you talk to it?"

Her brow furrowed. "Not really, but it shows me things that trigger thoughts, sounds, even occasionally a word association. It spent a long time studying my memories, trying to understand me – us. But it’s very different."

Rashid spoke as if from a distance. "I envy you. It has been my companion here for nearly a year, and yet we have never been able to communicate – except that it has shown me images. Things that at first made me fear God had deserted us, then that there can be no God, and then, a deep hope that God was still investing in our survival."

Kat put the cup down and moved forward and patted Rashid on his leg. "It has wanted to communicate with you, Rashid. I don’t know whether it has emotions like us, but it somehow expressed –" she sought the right word "– concern. I think it likes you. It misses its master, that much I do know, and you’re the first being it’s related to for a very long time."

Rashid locked his gaze on the mirror for a moment, and then turned his back on them to pour some tea for Blake.

"So," Blake said, "what exactly did it communicate to you? From what I’ve seen, it comes from another planet that was attacked by these beasts. What else?" He understood enough about nodes from one of his nephews’ brief experiences to know that the images must already be fading in her mind. The intensity of nodal communication – basically direct-to-brain communication, by-passing the senses – offered perfect clarity at the time, but then ebbed rapidly, like waves lapping over dry sand. He had to get as much as possible from Kat while it was fresh.

She took a deep breath. "Their planet – there’s almost no audible language, so I don’t know its name – was culled by the Q’Roth – the beasts as you called them, locusts as I did. It happened almost a millennium ago. The Q’Roth are nomadic. They travel to distant worlds outside the Grid." Kat held up her hand to stall a question from Blake, and he decided to let it pass, noting a new confidence, an intensity in her that hadn’t been there before.

"They feed on other civilizations. They send advance scouts to select and cultivate candidate worlds – some to harvest, others to breed. Their life cycle is around a thousand years. They feed once a millennium in our terms, then they travel and explore new worlds for five centuries, and at last they finally breed. Shortly afterwards almost all of them die, leaving guardians to watch over the eggs for a further five centuries. When the eggs hatch, they need to feed. But they don’t eat flesh. What they need is to extract the life force, the bio-electricity, whatever you want to call it – the psychic energy out of living things. The more sophisticated, the more nourishing. Intelligent races, artistic ones, violent ones, it doesn’t matter – it’s the emotional and intellectual complexity they crave. It matures them, very rapidly, apparently. They need beings like… us." Kat stopped and stared downwards.

Blake knew the reality of it all was only now catching up with Kat. That was partly why nodes had been banned three years earlier, and surgically removed from anyone who had one. They allowed direct communication, whether from phones, computers or vids, to the mind. The attraction had been immediate, but very quickly had come the brain damage cases, the psychoses, the addictions, and the associated "detachment" murders, caused by a temporary suppression of emotional connection. A mother who interrupted her son in the middle of a node experience, might find herself being calmly strangled by him, while he was meanwhile enjoying a node-based vid or porn scene, or even exploring h-mails. The more the nodes were used, the more the user became detached from emotions and reality. Nodal schizophrenia, he recalled.

He hadn’t told the other crew members about it because the node had been rendered dormant. She’d suffered an astro-surfing accident that led to a steel plate being inserted in her brain only a week after the node was implanted. The node had unexpectedly bonded with the plate, and couldn’t be removed without killing her. He’d have to keep an eye on her from now on. He remembered he’d been given special suppressive medication for Kat, just in case, by a Chorazin agent the day before take-off. The agent had never said what it did exactly. Blake didn’t trust Chorazin, and had tossed it into a micro-furnace on Zeus I, right before departure.

He cut to the chase. ‘Kat, where are they in their cycle?’

She sighed. "I’m afraid they’re going to hatch soon, Sir. Then they’ll need to feed almost straight away."

"So, where are their ships? We could use the ND to take out a few."

"This is indeed the part that I have not understood," Rashid interjected, passing Blake his cup. "At first I was afraid that humanity would come here, and be fed upon. But then, I reasoned, it would simply take too long. It would be at least fifty years, shuttling people here in large transports of a few hundred at a time, if we could manage it at all, before we have an established community here."

Blake nodded. Parts of the puzzle were missing. He stared at Kat, whose eyes were clamped shut, clearly trying to remember.

"This was the hardest part of the communication – because of course the mirror hasn’t travelled to Earth. It followed the Q’Roth in a lone ship when they came here, waiting. It’s the last of his kind, I think. Its master severed their bond and ordered it to follow the Q’Roth, not for revenge, but to look for opportunities to help others in the future avoid the same calamity. But it thinks – if that’s the right word – that this time the Q’Roth are using a different strategy. Humanity will come to Eden, and in very large numbers, large enough for a preliminary feed. Then the Q’Roth will travel to Earth, enhanced and better able to fight, for the main feed."

"But where are these ships?" Blake asked, anger stoking up inside him: he needed a target to strike. "And who on Earth would be dumb enough to come here to…" Then he thought he almost understood. "Kat. You said cultivate. You said they sent advanced scouts to cultivate other planets. What did you mean?"

Rashid leant forward. But Kat’s face became confused, distressed, no longer able to recall the shared nodal vision. Her lips moved but no sound came out. She hung her head. Blake recognized the rapid post-nodal depression symptoms. He laid a hand on her shoulder. "It’s okay, Kat. Relax for now."

Exhausted by the experience, she lay back down, and quickly fell asleep.

The mirror sprang to life again. Blake and Rashid observed ten minutes of images, and diagrams. They appeared alien, but had an odd familiarity to Blake. At one stage he recognized the molecule plutonium and a fission reaction. There were also helical structures that could be alien DNA. Then it showed the ND device, sitting outside. Rashid stood up, agitated. Blake thought about it. It had not shown ships. It could not show Earth, since it had not been there. But it had shown clues, the missing links he hoped would enable Rashid to make the connection, while for him it hovered tantalizingly on the tip of his mental tongue.

"Rashid?"

Rashid tried to pace, but there was no room in this small cabin. He sat down again, his fingers agitated. "It is showing us, albeit in an alien tongue, schematics for the neutralino detonator, and also long range communications and surveillance concepts. It also showed more advanced technologies, nuclear weapons, and I believe I even saw the molecular structure for the nanovirus fractal genome that led to the banning of nanotechnology thirty years ago. It is trying to answer your question about cultivation, based on what it has gleaned from your colleague." His eyes blazed somewhere between excitement and shock at the revelation.

"In short, I believe it is saying that the Q’Roth, now that I know their name, have been seeding ideas into humanity, particularly over the last hundred years, guiding us to end up here. I have always marveled at the fortuitous discoveries that befell us recently. We find Eden, and then discover a miraculous new propulsion approach to bring it within reach. And yet other technological marvels – especially nuclear weapons, genetic engineering and nanotech, have become closed-off avenues, illegal or unable to attract research funding. In short, we have been channeled down a narrow scientific and technological tunnel that steers us to one place – Eden."

Blake felt like he’d just joined a chess match to find his opponent was one move from check mate. He suddenly remembered the red flare. "Rashid – we have to get back to my ship."

Rashid peered behind the curtain, and shook his head. "We must wait until morning. To go out at night will be too dangerous, and Earth needs us alive, to warn them. They must not come here."

Blake remained overwhelmed by the implications – that aliens had influenced human progress. He wondered if they had caused the last war; helped invent the atom bomb even. And then there was the War itself – as an army Commander he’d harbored the conviction more than once that it would go global, irrevocably destroying infrastructure that would plunge humanity into post-civilized chaos, famine, and disease, with massive loss of life. Each time, the leaders, or some battle or event somewhere had pulled them back from the brink. For the first time he wondered if it had all been carefully moderated. A hundred ideas threatened to overload his brain. He banged his fist hard on the small table, upsetting the two tea cups, splashing hot tea onto the floor.

He stood up. "You’re right. We sleep here." He looked down at Kat’s unconscious frame. "I’ll take first watch, you sleep now. First thing in the morning we’re taking your comms system apart, Rashid, and it’s coming back to our ship." He half-expected some kind of argument, but Rashid nodded his assent.

"I am joining you. If your comrades have indeed been attacked, you may need an extra pair of hands."

Blake cast him a hard look. He went to the hatch, and then turned around. "All right. But let’s get one thing straight. You don’t ever point a gun at me again unless you mean to fire it."

Without waiting for an answer, he stormed outside and yanked the hatch closed behind him. He knew his anger at Rashid was misplaced, but without warning, everything he believed in was in danger. He’d gone from elation at finding Eden, to realizing it was a malicious trap. He’d always fought for justice, and now he found himself, and humanity, in a much larger universe where the rule of the jungle applied.

He sat on the step and stared at the stars. Since a kid, they had been his constant companion, first his fantasy playground, and then his actual territory since graduating as an astronaut twenty years ago. Yet now he pondered how many of these twinkling lights harboured terrible enemies.

Here he was, his first night on another planet, under different stars, after three months of arduous travel. He scanned the sky, and tried to locate the constellation that shrouded Earth, but he couldn’t find it, and was too tired to search for long. Instead of jubilation at being there, finally on Eden, he felt the sky and the weight of Earth’s survival pressing down on him.

He recalled his wife saying he had such broad, strong shoulders that he could carry the world on them, and that someday he would. The thought of her drew a smile across his lips. "Well, we made it, Glenda. Not exactly textbook Eden, though." He resolved himself. He’d find a way, first to warn Earth, and then to do battle with these creatures.

The hatch opened and the mirror emerged. It paused briefly in front of him. He bristled, then barked at it, "Go check my men!" As an afterthought, he added, "Please. You’re here to help us apparently."

The mirror’s face flickered purple then became translucent, so all Blake could see was its outline, and through it the silhouettes of dunes and the stars. It drifted out into the desert night and was gone.

Blake sat alone for four hours, thinking about it all, but as usual, thinking late at night when tired got him nowhere. It would have to wait till morning. Rashid came out, looking like hell. He obviously hadn’t slept a wink.

"My shift, Sir."

Blake’s earlier anger had long since drained into the desert sand; he’d never been able to be cross with anyone for any length of time. Rising a little creakily, he nodded to Rashid, and went inside. He’d been getting cold in any case. He lay down on the still-warm cot of Rashid, seeing Kat had been made comfortable and remained fast asleep. He looked up to the ceiling, and for the first time noticed the artistry of the stars painted on the ceiling, recognizing Orion as it would be seen from Earth, and other constellations, and wondered if Rashid had done it all from memory.

He tried counting the stars to fall asleep, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t sleep because he still had no target, nothing to fight. And then it came to him – he’d been so focused on the ships, a typical military target, that he’d forgotten the other obvious target. The eggs – he had to find the eggs, and destroy them. He recalled that Q’Roth guardians watched over them. Fine – he’d find out what they were really made of.

While running through combat scenarios, he finally fell asleep.

◆◆◆

Zack watched Pierre dive just as the creature reared up behind him, its forelegs raised high. Smoke and flames erupted on its chest as the missile struck home. The creature staggered back but stayed upright, just as the second volley punched it off its feet amidst an explosion of white-hot flame. It disappeared behind the cloudburst of fire. Pierre crawled a few meters away, struggled to his feet and ran again, straight towards the ship. Zack watched, counting. All he could see now was Pierre and a column of curdling smoke behind him. He waited to see if the alien burst through the fire curtain, but nothing happened. Still he held the weapon, counting. He set the charge to detonate automatically at two hundred meters, and when he got to a count of twelve, he fired it ten degrees up into the air, then unshouldered the heavy weapon, letting it slump to the ground.

Although Pierre was out of blast range, the shock wave still knocked him off his feet, and pushed Zack backwards so that he stumbled on his gel-cast leg. As he was trying to stand up again, Pierre arrived, panting, and helped him up. Zack noticed Pierre’s face streaked with smoke and sweat, his hair matted, singed at the back.

‘Thanks… Zack. I… really… owe you one.’

Zack grimaced with the leg-pain. "More than one. Fetch me another pack of armored heads, and we’ll go see what’s left of that motherfucker."

When they arrived at the site where Zack had hit it, they couldn’t find the creature anywhere. They searched for half an hour. All they found were a few splotches and one small puddle of a thick blue-black oily liquid. Pierre took a sample. Zack surveyed the area.

"That’s one tough SOB."

"If we can make it bleed, then we can kill it."

Zack pointed to the small plastic packet in Pierre’s hands. "How’d you know that isn’t just monster poop you’ve got there?"

"Then at least we got its attention."

Zack laughed, and nodded to the ship. "It’s getting dark – I reckon it’ll come around quickly here. Let’s get back and seal up for the night."

Pierre picked up his own rifle.

"What about the Skipper and Kat? Do you think they saw the flare?"

Zack’s face darkened. He kicked at a rock with his good foot. "I’m betting they did, but they must have their hands full."

"Should we go look for them in the morning?"

Zack shook his head. "We have to stay with the ship. If we leave it, I have a bad feeling it won’t be here when we get back."

◆◆◆

Later that night, far away on the hilltop near where Pierre had first seen the Q’Roth, the mirror stood guard over the Ulysses Lander. It had never known emotions, but just once, briefly, its translucent face showed its master, with a body coloring that signified approval. After all this time, it was finally doing what its master had asked of it. And then it showed a Q’Roth dying – their one fatality during the assault on the mirror’s home planet, when a power plant exploded. The scene of the dying Q’Roth replayed a dozen times on the mirror’s surface before it became once again translucent and calm. The mirrors’ masters had been true pacifists, and had never programmed the emotion of revenge. But the mirror had been inside Kat’s mind. It didn’t fully understand primitive emotions – like anger – but it was a quick study.

Chapter 28

Tarpit

Micah ground his knuckles against puffy eyelids. He’d been working on the data cube for four hours straight, borrowing the newly-installed mil hardware. Initially he’d focused on the thirty minutes when the ghoster had awoken. There were no video images, just telemetry and voice comms, but it had been like listening to a museum-style radio show. He’d been surprised how much scarier it was not seeing any images. Just hearing the tension in Kat’s voice, contrasted with Blake’s raw control, Zack’s bravado and gung-ho swearing, and Pierre’s clinical matter-of-factness laced with fear – he felt like he knew them. But the ghoster’s screaming – he’d instinctively yanked his earphones out when he had first heard it.

The suppressed transmission had been confusing at the end, but it seemed that shortly before Kat tripped the comms virus, they killed the ghoster and the ND was still intact. Micah had pinpointed the time when Rudi had made the switch from real to synthetic IVS-supplied data feed, about two months into the trip. Very slick, he had to admit.

For the last hour he’d been looking at the end of the data cube’s storage. Luckily, after Ulysses had stopped transmitting. IVS had let it run and record anyway, in case it came back on-line. There was noise, just the electromagnetic radiation that’s ever-present in space. He’d always mocked the idea of silent space – silent to human ears of course, but on the "star waves," as he liked to call them, it was a cacophony of signals from stellar bodies and pulsars – a cosmic Babel.

He searched for Kat’s simulacrum, hoping it had been smart enough – and fast enough – to anticipate the Trojan Warp virus. The Alicians – he presumed they had installed the virus – had focused on human detection and response time. This meant that they could put in a more robust virus that chewed up software and really made it irreparable, but this took time. The simulacrum would only have had a couple of seconds, but it was intelligent and worked in micro-seconds. All Micah needed was a keystone – a password – a translation device to unlock the hidden data.

The door opened, and Louise strode in, her usual sleek black top and skirt, but her hair was down today. He wished it wasn’t. Since the previous evening with Antonia – even though she didn’t want him – he felt he couldn’t handle Louise anymore.

"Ah, you’re out now," she said.

He cast her a puzzled look.

"You were under before – that machine totally engrosses you, doesn’t it?"

"Immerses. We get immersed in it," he said, a little testy.

"Does it increase your grumpiness, too? Maybe you need some discipline, Micah?" She walked right up and leaned over him. "Maybe I should spank you over your desk?" Her glossed pink lips stretched into a smile.

He ignored the rush of blood to his groin, pushed his chair backwards and got up and walked away from her.

"Look, Louise, I’m sorry, this is really hard work, and it’s really urgent. I need to concentrate."

She stalked towards him, but not too close. The smile was gone, replaced by a harshness that made him remember she was Chorazin.

"Don’t apologize, Micah. It’s a sign of weakness. Do what you decide to do and swallow the consequences. Regret, guilt and sorrow – they’re all irrelevant. You do look like you need a break, though – or a diversion."

"I need a coffee, Louise. Really." He forced a smile. "I’m close, I can sense it." He tried to stare her down, like a cat and a mouse, but she was the cat.

"You want her, don’t you? Your coffee-mate."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s – she’s already seeing someone. She’s not interested in me."

"Someone working on the Project?"

"You could say that. Yes and no, actually." As soon as he’d said it, he knew it had been a mistake – he could see Louise latch onto it, like a bloodhound picking up a scent.

"Interesting," she said. "Do you love her?"

Micah flushed. He wanted to deny it: no reply meant it was true, and even he didn’t want to believe it, it made him such a fool aside from anything else. He’d made his mind up last night, but only with his brain he realized – his emotions lagged far behind.

She reached down and with both hands smoothed one of her stockings all the way up her leg. "Your loss. Do you have any idea what you’re giving up?"

He sensed he was almost off the hook. "I have an idea, Louise. That is, I have a good idea that I have no idea what I’m giving up, but it just won’t work. Sorry."

"Good. You’ve made a decision." She smoothed her skirt back down. "I’m going to send your girlfriend to you. Try to keep your mind on your work."

As she reached the exit, he called after. "Louise, the scars on your back. Are they what I think they are?"

She stopped at the door, her hand gripping its handle. She didn’t turn around.

"They used to queue up for me, you know." Her voice wavered. "All hard. I can still smell the stink of their sweat, anticipation, lust, even their guilt – a few of them, anyway. Each time one of them came inside me, I swore I’d kill a man for it, one day, somehow. I never pulled at the chains; wanted to be in good shape to escape later." She paused to inspect her wrists. "When the camp was raided by our side after I’d spent three months in the cages, they captured and rounded up thirty of them, to take them prisoner, interrogate them. I was being shuffled with a few other girls into the air ambulance. I snatched an assault rifle from a soldier who looked sorry for me." She paused and glanced over her shoulder. "He looked young and naïve – like you, Micah. I shot every one of them where it hurts most. Takes quite a while to die that way. Some of the soldiers tried to stop me at first, but the Colonel – a woman – she knew what had been going on there. She ordered her men back. Afterwards, she told me the only way to avoid criminal proceedings was to join the Chorazin. She was sure they’d have me. We took off, then she dropped a clean-up bomb, vaporized the whole base."

Micah hardly breathed. He stared at her back – part of him wanted to comfort her, but the sane part held him back.

"Did you get even? Have you killed enough men now?"

She turned to face him. Her eyes steeled. "Not even close."

Micah swallowed.

"You see, Micah, I saw men, and a few women, do unspeakable things during the War, and ever since. It’s human nature, just needs the right circumstances to bring it to the surface. They should all…" She bit her lip. "Micah, you’re only the second man to ever say ‘no’ to me. Interesting. Not sure how I feel about that." The door swung closed behind her.

Micah slumped into his chair; feeling way out of his depth. They should all… He thought of a dozen ways to end that sentence, none of them good. He shook himself, glad that she was Chorazin and not Alician.

His gaze drifted back to the gleaming Optron. He thought of Antonia, the astronauts, Vince, the ship and the sea creature he’d heard about on the net, and what he sensed was coming. He switched it to power-up again. He needed something far stronger, but decided an ultresso would have to do.

When he came back with his fifth ultresso of the day, Micah found Antonia sitting, hands atop her knees, waiting for him. She was dressed almost identically to Louise, which made him uncomfortable. He suppressed an image of her, instead of Louise, seducing him in the bathroom in Kane’s suite.

"Er, hi. You okay?" he asked. Her porcelain face looked ready to crack.

"Yes. Just… next time please could you pick up the phone and call me – don’t send that woman to come and find me."

He wondered what had happened, but judged she didn’t want to talk about it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know in any case.

"Sure. You need a coffee?"

"No. Look, I assumed you didn’t send a Chorazin agent to escort me here to have coffee." She trawled her hands through her hair. "Sorry. She just makes me uneasy, I don’t even know why. She looks at me so strangely." She’d been fidgeting with her hands, and promptly folded them, sitting up straight.

He walked up to her, and almost put his hand on her shoulder, but stopped just in time. "Listen," he said, "I have the telemetry from Ulysses – the real telemetry. I’ve been over and over it a dozen times. I think there may be messages in there hidden by Kat’s simulacrum, but I need a key to unlock them. A password, a clue – anything, really – I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. Did Kat give you any key word or phrase?"

She flared for a moment then stared toward the wall. Micah guessed it was because he had mentioned her lover’s name.

"I know it may be private, but it could be important…"

She shot to her feet, glaring at him with a face suddenly flushed red, hands on hips. She shouted. "You think I don’t know that?" She began pacing. "She’s up there, Micah, maybe dead, maybe alive. How can it not be important to me?"

Micah stepped back. "Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…"

"Do you love me?"

"What?" What the hell had Louise said?

The anger drained from her face.

She turned and paced again. "I’m sorry, Micah, it’s not you. It’s that woman. She said some things on the way down here. I knew it was lies – why does she do that? But it’s just that if you did – I couldn’t cope – I couldn’t work with you, but we need to, to help, maybe even save Kat and the others."

Micah’s face masked the tornado of thoughts in his mind. He nodded. He was still trying to process what had just happened, like taking a fast bend and finding a truck coming the other way in the middle of the road – swerving, just missing the fatal accident, and then driving back in the sunshine again. As if nothing had happened.

"It’s – it’s okay, Antonia. She’s just fucked up. I really like you – I mean, who wouldn’t." He searched for a cliché. "Maybe under different circumstances… but you’re with Kat, and I’m…" stop you idiot – you almost said with Louise. "Just trying to do my job, trying to help you. You and Kat. And the whole crew. And Earth."

He waited to see her reaction.

"Fucked up, eh?" she laughed, obviously not used to saying that word. "You’re right about that. I pity the poor schmuck who she is fucking, or fucking with." And as she laughed some more, Micah joined in, without really knowing why. He decided he maybe survived the truck, and was still alive in the car, driving along in the sunshine.

She approached him. "I’m sorry for doubting you." She reached forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She stayed there. "Micah," she said, locking his eyes. "May I ask you a favor?"

Anything. Everything. "Sure."

"Would you hold me for a moment? Just a moment. I really need a hug. Kat used to hug me so often."

Silently, they embraced, and he knew who she was thinking of, and he wished Kat could be here right now, and he could take her place on Eden, because the truck had got him after all.

Three hours and a sandwich later, and after at least a hundred ideas for passwords had gotten them nowhere, he noticed her necklace.

"A gift from Kat, just before she left: platinum, gold and silver. Quite unusual, especially since it looks like titanium."

Micah began typing at the console.

"What are you doing? Does my necklace mean anything?"

"We’ve been looking for a password, but truth is, I’m not sure how I would use a password in any case. But a digital password – that would give me something to look for – the numbers could signify a carrier wavelength."

"What numbers?" she said.

"Atomic weights. Antonia, of the three metals in your necklace. I need to go inside the DataStream again."

"I’d like to remain here, with you."

Micah looked at her. "Normally I go in alone."

She stared at him.

"Okay. Just please don’t touch anything, no matter what happens."

As he strapped into the Optron chair, she walked over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "Good luck Micah. And thanks for doing this. I know you’re doing your job, but I feel you’re becoming a true friend."

He made his face move into what he hoped resembled a smile, and then lay back and keyed in the command sequence. As he slipped into the DataStream vista, he called up a digi-wizard to enter the atomic weights and search for a construct that might use the base numbers. Within seconds, it appeared – a single silver strand twining around others in the distance.

He flew towards it. Although he’d programmed it to look a certain way, it seemed to have a life of its own. He followed the filament upwards, where it separated from the others. His mind surfed along it as it twisted and curved out into what seemed to be space. He noticed something up ahead, dissolving from out of the shadowy depths of a star-less void, a space that should have been unencoded, and therefore blank territory.

His heart rate ramped up as he realized this was way beyond the capabilities of Kat or the simulacrum – something, possibly alien, had embedded a transmission into the Ulysses data-streaming processing system. It showed up first as a dark planet eclipsing an orange sun. It grew larger, and he felt himself falling, then accelerating towards its hard, sheer black terrain. He tried to slow down but couldn’t. He’d never programmed gravity, and to his knowledge no one ever had – this shouldn’t be happening. He began to panic. He imaged the emergency bail-out signal to stop the Optron session but nothing happened. He flailed his arms and legs, uselessly, as he tumbled. The dark, solid planet tore towards him at terrifying speed, and despite it all being illusory, he did what any normal person would do, and screamed.

Chapter 29

Whispers

Vince piloted the Chorazin hover-jet, Louise by his side, as they sailed over dust towns in what used to be Virginia, on the way to New Washington. Vince had always found it ironic that after the War, the key cities, the ones most irradiated, had never been completely abandoned – rather, new versions were grafted onto the original cities’ outskirts. It seemed unthinkable to Americans that the seat of power could exist anywhere else. New York was different – completely decimated, the ground turned to black glass in the worst bombing in the War outside of Central Asia and Western Europe. Vince was a New Yorker.

Seeing the ghost towns triggered reflections about the War. An airbase outside New York – his brother had been stationed there – had been the US home for the infamous World Alliance’s Deathwatch drones – autonomous stealth aircraft able to reach tactical targets anywhere in the world and deliver an atomic payload. Way better than suicide pilots, they’d been used to quell numerous uprisings, and to seek and destroy terrorist cells. Prior to the War, the drones had facilitated an unprecedented decade of peace; not a single War nor government overthrown. The world united in its fight against impending environmental collapse, building underground cities following the 2038 heat excursion, and accelerating the World Alliance Space Program, trying to crack warp drive theory to find a second home. The Golden Age.

He veered the aircraft around a slim tornado stretching from the gloomy carpet of cumulus down to the tan desert floor. This area was prone to ‘whispers’, sudden vortices spearing to the ground below, sucking sand and dust back up into the billowing clouds. There were no people around to be harmed – it was fifty degrees Celsius down in the desert, but they made a pilot’s job challenging; one reason he guessed Louise was quiet, letting him concentrate. He should have had it on auto, since the onboard computer could anticipate and react quicker, but they both knew what happened if you relied too much on automation.

Like the Deathwatch drones. He recalled how the fledgling World Alliance became complacent, ignoring warnings. They mistook overt peace and opulence for the real thing. The terrorist cells and groups moved deeper into the undergrowth, biding their time. Anti-government factions waited until they had the key tactical advantage: they learned how to hack through the Deathwatch’s firewalls, convincing their AI units that the enemy had annihilated their sovereign races, so the drones started laying waste to their home countries in retribution. In the US, the first twelve nukes detonated were American origin. It took three days to even work out who the enemy was.

More whispers lay ahead, a lattice of lethal natural power.

"We could go above cloud," Louise offered.

Vince retracted the wings by half, and accelerated, slaloming a pathway through whipcords of extreme turbulence. She didn’t complain. They broke through, the desert succumbing to scrub land. Cracks in the sky appeared, brutal sunlight lancing down on Dalgleish, one of a string of new frontier towns for displaced Irish, most of whom had emigrated to the US after Ireland had become too rad-saturated for any clean-up to have an effect. Vince respected these Fringers – they’d turned down opportunities to live in the new cities or underground, choosing instead the toughest areas, trying to recreate the emerald isle they’d lost. Doomed to failure in his view, but they were proud folk; their sacrifice had ended the War. He’d seen it the final weeks; it was where he’d learned his greatest lesson about leadership.

The Deathwatch drones were eliminated in the first month of the War, and counter-warfare developed based on focused EMP satellite beams. After almost three years of ‘traditional’ non-nuclear warfare, save a few sporadic volleys which penetrated satellite-based detection grids, a new delivery system emerged. The ‘fly-drones’ were so-called because they flew like insects, in sporadic fractal patterns, continually changing direction. New stealth tech gave them a basic immunity to the satellite EMP beams. They took longer to arrive but were much harder to shoot down. Their guidance systems were genetically engineered, and a typical drone’s propulsion chassis could push fifteen gee’s as it ricocheted towards its goal.

Their target had been the fledgling peace talks in Orleans; there was so much distrust on either side that face-to-face talks had become the only option. The French militia, in Operation Hailstorm, launched three hundred suicide pilots in stealth jets to detonate as close to the drones as possible. Still half of them got through, but the delegates escaped to their next rendezvous in Galway, Ireland. As peace was finally being hammered out, the drones attacked, coming in from all sides. The only way to stop the drones was to detonate nuclear warheads in advance – a nuclear firebreak – taking out the drones before they homed in; the ‘mushroom curtain’ as it was later dubbed. The final wave of drones required so many counter-nukes that a powerful EMP harmonic wave was created, shutting down all drones and aircraft alike over a five thousand mile radius, switching off war machines from Western Asia to the Eastern American seaboard. Once War had been stopped, few had the stomach to start it up again; all sides were losing. Peace, which had been hanging by its fingernails over a cliff, gained a foothold.

The Irish premier had given the order for the nuclear curtain, and seen it through, enveloping three separate waves of drones. Forty-five per cent of Ireland was engulfed in flame that raged for weeks. The day after peace accords were signed, three weeks later, she put a bullet through her head, her home town and family having been nuked by her signature. Vince had been impressed. He’d thought political accountability to be a lost art.

The ground below transitioned from fringe-towns to the city’s sprawling edge. They overflew one of the Goliath-like Fabricators, a massive mobile factory constructed before the War, capable of building small towns in less than a year; the pinnacle of the Recycling Age. He banked the aircraft to circle it, taking a better look. In the past decade since the War they’d been a Godsend; luckily only one of the thirty originals had been destroyed – no government had the resources to build new ones. He glanced at Louise, but she was absorbed, watching the towering ‘dung beetle’ as kids called them, as it crawled glacially over virgin terrain and deposited squat homes, roads, sewers and other infrastructure in its wake. Vince felt a rare spark of optimism. He levelled out and headed towards the nest of skyscrapers on the shimmering horizon.

He reflected on humanity’s moral balance sheet during times of war – ineptitude, betrayal, cowardice on the one hand, and self-sacrifice, bravery, and leadership on the other. He knew that at the heart of the Chorazin was a ruthless professionalism, borne of a mission to ensure that the scales never again tipped far enough backwards to allow humanity to destroy itself. Nobody liked the Chorazin, but most were privately glad it was there. That made perfect sense to Vince. He couldn’t see how it could be any other way – people needed protecting from others – and from themselves.

A holo appeared in the middle of the cockpit asking for a security code. Louise tapped in a response, and it dissolved. Several towers glinted in the distance.

Vince chose a flight corridor over the craters where the Pentagon and the White House had once sat. Most avoided this route, but Vince swore never to forget why his mission mattered. He swooped over the renewed suburb of Maryland, the only surviving original district. No one could stay there for more than a month at a time, due to the radiation, despite advances in medical counter-measures and massive shielding around the worst areas. So people worked a month on, two weeks off, out in the country, such as it was, or by the bleached sea. The rich lived most of the year in Africa, relatively untouched by nuclear weapons, and the super-rich and super-powerful lazed in the famed Oasis Hotels in the Antarctic.

The looming towers brought his mind back to the present mission, and to Louise. He’d never known her so quiet.

"How’s it going with Micah?"

He noticed her almost shift position, restrain it, then shift anyway. The complex games we play.

"He’s getting there. Says he can extract more information from the data cube. I’m not sure how, and neither is he, but he’s proven resourceful."

Vince banked the aircraft towards the localizer and ceded control to the onboard computer.

"Are you two – getting on?" The dashboard flowed green, signaling it was now on auto-pilot and had captured the approach glide path.

She folded her hands in her lap. "You mean like we used to?"

Vince heard a tinge of bitterness. She’d never forgiven him."It’s been a long time, Louise. But yes, like that."

"You usually don’t take an interest in my methods, just my results."

He checked the docking doors were opening, and then turned to her.

"The stakes are high this time. Micah seems to be a key. I don’t–"

"Want him damaged."

"Exactly."

"You want me to stop fucking him?"

"I want you to stop fucking with him."

"Already done on both counts."

The hangar doors clanked shut behind them and the craft landed. The engines powered down.

She folded her arms. "Anything else?"

He studied her, remembering the good times, before he’d seen the chasm inside her, a sloping, bottomless pit where nothing other than increasingly violent sex could ever find a foothold.

"Are you okay, Louise?"

She threw her head back and laughed. "Like you give a shit?"

He did, unfortunately, and raised his voice. "I’ll be more precise. Are you okay with the Mission?"

Her face tightened. "You mean fighting the bad guys, and all that?" She shrugged. "Gets me out of bed."

She made to release her seat buckle, but Vince placed his hand over hers. "Answer the question, Louise. This is me you’re talking to."

She pivoted toward him, brought her face close enough to smell her scent. "Do you think we’re making any difference, Vince? Does the bad ever stop? We kill people we define as bad, but for who? Can you name me one of our chiefs you’d trust your life with? A President who isn’t corrupt or slave to shady business interests?" She removed his hand, snapped open the buckle, flinging the belt aside so that it rattled against the door.

He tried again. "You know that if we stop for just one day the Alicians – "

"The Alicians, what? At least they have an agenda, they’re unified."

Vince didn’t know what perturbed him most – what she’d just said, or that she’d said it so openly. He gripped her wrist hard. "If you were anyone else I’d take you down for profiling, right now."

She smiled, easing back in her chair. "You’re still sexy when you’re angry, you know."

His shoulders tensed; he wanted to slap her face to make her snap out of it. "This is serious, Louise."

She gave him a look he hadn’t seen in a long time. "You do care, don’t you? I thought you’d buried it – us – years ago."

Vince cursed and let go of her wrist.

"Vince, listen to me, just once. Just listen. Is humanity really worth saving? I mean think about it. If there were an alien race out there, what would they think of us? We kill and wage war on each other, love and torture each other in equal measure. If there was some kind of galactic society, what would they do if they found us?" She touched his hand. "Do you ever just wonder if we’re too fucked up to merit survival as a species?"

Vince heard her, but he wasn’t listening. He was there to do his job, and he did it well. Until now, so did she. He retracted his hand.

She sighed. She kicked open the door and leapt out.

He watched her go inside, and wondered whether, if he’d have kept their relationship going, she’d have stayed on the rails longer. Truth was she was scarred too badly to ever heal. He’d read her profile years ago – she’d been a ‘giver’ before the War, a teacher for Christ’s sake out in the Congo. In the early days he’d seen some of that re-surface, but now all he saw was a woman with the goodness ground out of her. Working for the Chorazin allowed her to vent her anger, but it wasn’t ever going to be enough. He’d have to watch her closely.

As he jumped down from the flyer he recalled one of the Chorazin guidelines about not having relationships with another agent, for the simple reason you might have to kill said agent one day. He stopped in his tracks, remembering the day his father made him – at age thirteen – shoot his own horse after it broke its leg during a cross-country tournament. "Why does it have to be me?" he’d pleaded. "You love him," his father had replied, "so you have to be the one to put him out of his pain." Vince could still see those great wild eyes as he pressed the large bore gun to his horse’s temple, stroking his sweaty mane with his other hand, pulling the trigger. The recoil broke his wrist, but something shattered deeper inside him. He’d killed a lot of people in his time, but he wasn’t sure he could kill Louise.

"Are you coming or not?" she shouted, holding a door open.

He followed her inside. Time to talk with Senator Josefsson and see what he was really up to.

Chapter 30

Final Mission

"He’s awake."

Gabriel heard the words as if through a thick block of ice. He felt as if his outer layer of skin was frozen, as if he was back inside the glacier. He tried to move, but although he could sense his body, it wouldn’t respond to his commands. He managed to blink – nothing else worked. He couldn’t move his head. All he could see was the ceiling above him – luminous white and non-descript. The sharp tang of disinfectant invaded his nostrils. He heard two voices in the room, one male, and one female. They were close, and from the lack of echoes he knew the room was small, probably an operating theatre: the table he was on was metallic and hard, with several creases and a footrest, so it could tilt in different planes.

The ceiling dazzled him. He felt no pain, but he was light-headed and nauseous. So, he surmised, they had probably not only drugged him so he couldn’t move, but maybe they had already performed some sort of surgery.

A face loomed: Sister Esma. From his vantage point, the shadows accentuated her harsh features – the long, hooked nose, high cheekbones, and thick but not pretty lips. Eyes like black holes, not caring what they consume.

"Hello, Gabriel O’Donnell. That is your real name, isn’t it? So glad you could join us."

He noticed a slight yellowing of her incisors, and there was the smell of something rancid on her breath, like rotting onions. He began inwardly counting his own breaths, to distance himself from her. She was no doubt there to torture him.

"We have been watching you for some time. You seemed too good to be true: top of your class, ruthless with no trace of malice, obedient, fervently religious. A flawless performance."

She moved out of view. He heard metallic stilettos strut around the room. He’d lost his count. The drugs made it difficult. He started again.

"But then two months ago, your Master, Cheveyo, disappeared."

Gabriel ceased counting. She’d stopped moving and talking. Why did she pause? What was the other person in the room doing? Whoever it was, their breathing was slow, concentrated, yet deadened, so he or she was not facing him. The other person was studying something, but what? Was she looking at it too? Then he realized – they probably had him in a psy-net, watching changes in breathing rate, electro-dermal response – the full gamut of advanced lie detection parameters. He began counting his breaths again, trying to keep them smooth, to subdue the reactions. But whatever drug they had given him was making him emotionally labile. He could feel himself over-reacting, on the verge of panic, which he hadn’t experienced for a decade, though he’d seen enough of it in his victims’ pleading faces.

"We have since determined Cheveyo is one of the last Sentinels. We exterminated most of them over the centuries. You were his disciple, his protégé. He told you about the ships, didn’t he?" She hovered close to his face, leering.

"No – he did more than that, didn’t he? He showed you a ship! You have been inside one!" She moved away again and laughed. "Such irony! And such control, Gabriel, you hid all this so well!"

Gabriel’s heart rate increased. He wanted to distance himself from the emotions, but it didn’t work. He fought to concentrate on a deep meditation exercise that would transport him into the recesses of his mind.

"He’s using the distance technique." A man’s voice.

She appeared above him again, and showed him a scalpel. It disappeared from view and then Gabriel felt searing, blinding pain in his left hand. His breath sputtered. He could not flinch, cry out, or even move his lips, but the pain skewered up through his arm into his head, behind his eyes. She held up his bloodied little finger, severed from his left hand, and waved it in front of his eyes.

"No, Gabriel, that won’t do at all." A drop of blood from his finger dripped into his left eye, so that half his vision turned scarlet, hot pain drenching his eyeball.

"Next time you try that, I’ll cut off something a little more personal."

His mind reeled with the pain and the frustration, anger and fear; unaccustomed emotions. For the first time in many, many years, he wanted to run, or curl up and hide. He tried to focus on the small filaments of anger lurking in his fear. If he couldn’t find his usual dispassionate equanimity, anger was preferable to despair.

"Now, Gabriel, we all know how brave you are. And this must be very distressing for you because we’ve injected you with negative emotion-enhancers, so I know you’re afraid right now. But, you see, I need you alive." She rested her head on her elbow placed on his chest. "Personally, I’d enjoy killing you slowly, here and now. But business comes first. There is one last task we need you to fulfill."

She disappeared from his vision again. Gabriel managed to breathe more slowly. He had to concentrate on her voice, because otherwise the pain in his hand was too much. He had to play this out: the emotional rollercoaster and the blinding pain would pass, one way or another.

"Now, Gabriel, I know what you’re thinking. That you will not do one last mission for us. That you would die first, sabotage the mission, kill me, etcetera. But, you know, you will carry out my command, even though it will kill you and many others."

He heard the rolling of small wheels, and then a vid screen appeared above him. It was playing a news pod. He saw a ship, like he’d seen years ago, but in water, the pictures taken from above.

"You see, you’ll do it, because if you don’t, we’ll kill her." The vid changed to a scene with a small crowd gathering around an open hatchway. A young female came into the frame, next to a large-girth man who talked and gesticulated with uncommon exuberance. The scene froze and zoomed in on the girl’s face. Gabriel’s breath halted, as if he was seeing a ghost – because it couldn’t be her. She was dead. She’d been in Dublin when three nukes detonated above the emerald city, flattening it before sucking out the oxygen into a huge firestorm. No one had survived in a twenty mile radius.

"It was filmed yesterday. You know her, of course, though you probably haven’t seen her for years. Possibly believed she was dead. Please breathe, Gabriel." She scratched the stump where his little finger should have been, causing him to intake a sharp, jagged breath.

"That’s better. Now, where was I? Ah yes, we were monitoring information from this site, and came across her genetic analysis, taken to confirm that both of them were human – since she and the Professor stepped out of something more sublime than human artistry could ever hope to construct – and you’ll never guess what, Gabriel. That’s right; she’s your little sister. Jennifer, isn’t it?"

Gabriel could only stare at the picture. He’d been sure she was dead, but it was definitely her. Not-quite-blonde, mousy disheveled hair, her slight ski-jump nose which she used to say saved her having to give the world the finger all the time, and the bottle green eyes that rarely looked forward, even now, because she never trusted anyone, except him and their father. He couldn’t help but notice she looked more cynical than when he’d last seen her ten years ago. And, as if to confirm it all, the necklace was still there, the one he’d bought for her fifteenth birthday. He could see the two gold links he’d inserted in the otherwise silver chain after he’d broken it during one of their last, terrible rows at the beginning of the War. He didn’t know how she’d survived – she must have got warning and escaped before the missiles detonated. And afterwards, straight after Dublin and the wiping out of his entire family – or so he had thought – he had gone into deep cover. If she had tried to find him, if she’d looked, she would have found no trace of him either.

He forgot the pain in his left hand. A tear built up, and even though he knew it was partly drug-induced, he didn’t care. She was the only person who had ever elicited tears from him. For a split second a tsunami of remorse threatened to rise up and engulf him – a crucifixion of angst for the lost time they would never recover, for the life he had chosen, believing her dead and so having nothing to live for. A chasm of regret opened up in front of him, beckoning. But he re-directed his thoughts – she was alive, that was all that mattered.

He knew Sister Esma had him. He would, as she had said, do whatever she asked, to keep his sister alive, though he wouldn’t see her again.

"Touching. Reunions can be so tearful. But we haven’t much time. Our schedule has been moved forwards by unexpected events, mainly caused by the Eden Mission. It seems the Ulysses made it to Eden after all. We cannot let them send a message back to Earth, and since we can no longer stop them sending a message, we have to make sure no one will be there at the receiving end." She shoved the video monitor aside and leaned over him again. "Which is why we need you to blow up their headquarters." She swept out of view again.

Gabriel’s mind raced – could he do it – could he make that trade? But he already knew he would. Of course they could kill his sister anyway, but if he was out for even a few hours, he could try to safeguard her.

She returned with a short needle and thrust it into his jaw; tiny stabs of pins and needles ensued, then fire, and then numbness. His jaw loosened.

"Some good news and some bad news, Gabriel. The good news is we inserted something into your skull. A chemical device with a twenty-four hour deteriorating casing around it. There is no way to remove it or stop it from releasing acid directly into your brain – such a death will be quite ugly, I can assure you, so it is best all round if you are in the building when you destroy it. The bad news is, I’m afraid, that we inserted it twenty-one hours ago."

She leant over him again. "I’ve released your mouth so you can say yes or no. And if you spit at me I will claw out your left eye with my bare fingers. So, what is it going to be Gabriel? The Eden Mission or your sister?"

Gabriel swallowed a few times, trying to lubricate his throat. There was something he wanted to know, a suspicion he harboured. "What about Micah?"

Sister Esma eyed him, her voice level. "What about him?"

Her look and tone confirmed it. He’d been tracking Micah’s progress via a bug in his Optron lab, wondering how Micah had been able to fathom so much of the Alician strategy in only a matter of days. "We know about the intelligence levels, Esma, how humanity is only Level Three; why we’re fit for culling by your masters, the Q’Roth."

Her face was stone.

"He’s Level Four, isn’t he? Must have slipped through your net. You’ve been killing off nascent next-evolutionists for the past two centuries, whenever you detect them – if you can’t recruit them. If a Ranger came now, he’d stop you and the Q’Roth, stop the invasion, because humanity is on the verge of elevation. We’d be protected –"

Her eyes leapt across the room to her colleague, who Gabriel heard stand up – of course, the man probably hadn’t known any of this. Sister Esma’s right hand whipped out. A flash of silver left her palm, and Gabriel heard the sound of flesh puncturing, followed by a jugular squirt of blood, a groan and gurgling, and a body slumping to the floor. She turned her face back to him. "Now look what you’ve made me do. He was really quite useful."

"Micah doesn’t know, does he?"

She leaned forward. "Micah is in a coma, and I’m going to make sure he never comes out of it." She leant back. "Now, there’s no more time for this, particularly for you. And if you contact the Chorazin, I’ll visit your sister myself, is that clear?"

Gabriel let it go.

"It’s over, Gabriel. The ships will all be found shortly, and it will begin. You and your Sentinels have lost our little silent war. Your generation, so to speak, had its chance, but you squandered it. The Alicians will breed a new era of humanity, on a new planet. Earth’s days are numbered, and mankind will be slaughtered, except for the Alicians. But if you do this for me, we will take Jennifer with us. That is a promise, Gabriel. So, what is it going to be?"

Gabriel closed his eyes. Forgive me, Jenny.

"Yes."

She injected something into his neck. "I must leave now. We won’t be seeing each other again. The package you’ll be needing is in the adjacent room. We’re fifteen kilometers from the Eden Mission complex. This room is wired for an explosion in ten minutes." She held up his dead finger, in a small transparent plastic bag, for him to see. "A memento." The clacking of her stilettos diminished as she passed through successive sets of double doors.

Gabriel thought about his sister, and how to protect her. There was only person he could trust. His muscles tingled, slowly re-awakening, returning to his control. Within five minutes he rolled off the table and dropped onto all fours. He bandaged his left hand using sim-skin from a med-kit they had left behind, located the package, and staggered out of the room. Two minutes later he heard the explosion behind him. It was a good decoy for him, as it would distract Chorazin away from the Eden Mission itself. He had little time, but there was one thing he needed to do first. He headed to the nearest Net outlet.

◆◆◆

Professor Dimitri Kostakis, with his uniquely persuasive personality, convinced IVS to allow him and his assistant, Jennifer, to be part of the study team for the ship, mainly on the grounds that they already had several days head-start on understanding its controls.

Jennifer adopted a low profile. Dimitri had explained how, when they had been attacked by the creature – which he now described as some kind of prehistoric hammerhead shark – they had dropped to the foot of the ship. He had then used the limited power and maneuverability left to traverse one of the sides, where they had found a large flooded open hatchway that led to a chamber where there was air. After they had entered, the hatchway had closed and would not open again, so they had left the capsule and entered the ship. He had no explanation as to why they had no decompression sickness symptoms.

Jennifer had played along with the story, nodding appropriately, adding small details that made the story seem true, whilst leaving the broad brush strokes to Kostakis, so the focus remained on him, and she seemed merely the dumb, not quite pretty assistant.

The truth was they had no idea what had happened: she had been about to jettison the escape hatch when a sharp, rising white noise had made her black out. They’d awoken inside the sphere in a chamber filled with air. As for the hammerhead shark, she knew it was no such thing, and probably as much a relic of Earth as this ship. It had to have been the one to drag them into the ship’s hold, for no reason she could even guess at. But she didn’t want to be interrogated, mind-probed, or profiled – and her lover’s story, which was, in true Dimitri form, just about what everyone wanted to hear, was preventing that, for now, at least.

Dimitri’s enthusiasm and brilliance soon had the IVS scientists trusting him as part of the technical team, if not its scientific guru. What they had found out so far was that it was indeed a space-faring vessel with massive storage and accommodation space. The controls consisted of some kind of three-dimensional holographic projection of space, with a means to enter co-ordinates plus a time reference. This seemed obvious to her, since stars and planets in the galaxy are in continual, if slow, relative motion. They had not yet figured out how to use this temporally-stamped destination entry system, and it was here that Dimitri’s rare grasp of what Einstein’s relativity theory really meant, in practical terms, stood him in good stead with the rest of the scientists. There were also what she guessed were start and stop controls. It was ridiculously easy, aside from figuring out the digital sequence and numerical language, and the temporal referencing system.

But she couldn’t believe people who could build such a ship would have made it so simple. Or were all the science fiction books and vids written by tech-junkies, and was this ship exactly how starships would one day be built? Space-flight for dummies? Her instincts rejected it. Something was very wrong. We’re the dummies.

"Eureka! I’ve got it, I’ve found it!" Dimitri exclaimed, one of the few who could get away with using Archimedes’ catch-phrase. Her spirits lifted – she still loved it when his sheer genius broke through. She crossed over to him, as did several others, to the console where he and several IVS scientists and technicians had been working for hours. But before she arrived he was surrounded by people, and was too short to see over their shoulders. She didn’t have to wait too long, however.

"Jennifer! Jennifer! Where is my wonderful assistant – you must see this!" The small crowd parted to let her through – they all knew her by now, guessing she was his muse. She smiled coyly, buoyed by his loyalty to her. A technician dutifully gave up his seat, and she sat down as Dimitri explained and expounded, expanding his entourage. She watched more than listened, his wild arms flying about in Mediterranean style, his eyes dancing like the child he was, a child of this universe, discovering its treasures while others went about their mundane existences.

He had worked out the digital sequence, not a simple binary code, but a cube-based numeric, a natural logarithm to the power of three rather than two. He said he’d noticed some figures on the console that were, he believed, also cube roots. She saw it now, too, but surveyed the faces around her as she always did, as his protector, to gauge their reaction. The technicians were impressed – those few who followed it only mildly less than those that did not understand, but all were nevertheless carried along by his wild and chaotic explanation. One of them, the IVS team leader, spoke up.

"We’d have spotted it sooner or later, but it might have taken days or even weeks. Well done, Professor." She saw in his eyes no jealousy – that was Dimitri’s unique survival trait, to be smarter than everyone else in the room and have them thank him for it without envy.

Without warning he pulled her towards him and gave her a bear hug. She succumbed, wishing they were alone, that he would really love her as much as his work, his discoveries. But she understood the checks and balances of their relationship. When he released her she gave him a private wink of pleasures to come – she always rewarded his genius, and his loyalty to her. Besides, one of the female technicians – Italian by the look of her – was young and pretty enough to catch his eye. Jennifer had seen her occasionally staring at him with saucer-shaped eyes when she thought no one was looking, and wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

Four hours later they got the holo-projection to function. She watched closely. Although Dimitri and the other IVS engineers were working it out, it still seemed rather too easy for her, as if the ship itself was trying to help them learn. She wanted to discuss this with him privately, but there was no ‘private’ while the whole team, including him, pored over the console, making small discoveries every thirty minutes. By ten pm they had achieved something truly remarkable – they had accessed the ship’s navigational star-charts and had plotted, in three dimensions, a course between Earth and Eden. Mercifully, the ship had added the required temporal parameters automatically. Champagne corks had popped at that point, and they were all but worshipping her Professor.

She was tired, and during the hubbub, she spoke into his ear that she would be waiting for him in their cabin – one of several hastily installed affairs, an all-terrain tent, inside the ship itself to save time going to and from the surrounding vessels. "Don’t be long," she said, and headed off. She left the ship’s top control tower floor and descended to find their temporary lodging. They were on a different floor from the others, as they were the only "couple" onboard, so there would be no disturbance. She stripped off and walked naked to the portable bathroom cubicle and stood under the small rain-shower until it ran cold. She cleaned her teeth, chewing the brush as she always did, rather than brushing normally.

She came back to the tent and opened a small personal backpack she’d retrieved from their original IVS ship the day before. She pulled out a burgundy silk negligee and matching panties and put them on. She knew her legs were too short to be particularly attractive, but rather than cover them up, the lingerie she wore for such occasions simply re-directed the eye further up her body, to her hopefully more enticing assets. She lay belly-down on the futon, and adjusted the negligee to give Dimitri an appealing view when he arrived. She planned to stay awake until he arrived, but she was exhausted, and it was so quiet…

She watched a school of hammerhead sharks swimming far below her. As she dove closer to them, she noticed they had insect-like arms. They were playing with something which was thrashing around, caught between them. Blood swirled in the water. She heard someone call out her name, his voice gurgling. Except this person shouted "Jenny," and she never let anyone call her that: it had been reserved for someone very precious. The sound kept repeating, and she began weeping; her brother Gabriel was being torn apart by the hammerheads. She tried to swim downwards, but one of the creatures held her back. She thrashed to get free, and then the creature shouted her name, "Jennifer!"

She woke with a start, tangled in the folds of her nightdress and in the confused arms of her lover.

"My love – are you alright? A nightmare, just a nightmare."

She looked at him, her face streaked with tears, her voice shaky. "Hold me," she murmured.

She never dreamt. Ever. She curled up inside Dimitri’s strong, warm arms, trembling, eyes closed, reaching back towards the dream that had receded into the depths. She called out again and again in her mind to her long lost brother, all the while clutching the locket on the necklace that she never took off.

Chapter 31

Hohash

The mirror travelled in long undulating arcs, weaving between the dune tops, as Eden’s mid-morning tangerine sun reached its summit. Blake wound the skimmer alongside, twenty meters to its left, never letting it out of his sight. He hadn’t decided if this alien artifact was good or evil; only that it held valuable information on what awaited mankind in the galaxy.

Rashid sat behind him, Kat – unconscious – strapped in at the rear, all of them helmeted to allow communications as the wind whipped by. Kat had blacked out shortly before leaving, he presumed due to the mirror again. But he couldn’t delay their departure, especially after the flare the previous evening. The mirror matched Blake’s every turn or change in velocity. The journey was becoming hypnotic, and he hadn’t had much sleep. He needed a distraction, or else he might just slam straight into a dune.

"Rashid, mind if I ask you some questions?"

"Not at all, I still have eleven months of conversing to catch up on."

"Right. First, how come those creatures – the ones you say you’ve seen – let you live? And keep your antenna?"

"A good question. I have only seen one of them a handful of times – or perhaps I saw a different one each time. In any case, I was far away and, well…"

"Well what?"

"Well, an old Irish friend of mine once said, if you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it. So I applied the reverse."

"You mean you saw where it was and never went back there."

"Exactly."

The wind continued to strafe past them, a distant roar in Blake’s helmet.

Rashid spoke up. "Commander, did you ever do something, even by accident, and then worry it might have triggered a catastrophe?"

Blake came out of a long bank a little early. He wondered if Rashid was trying to throw him off the scent. "No. Others might disagree. You?"

"Well, not yet. But, you see, you asked me a question yesterday I have not yet answered."

Blake saw a glint of reflected copper – the Lander – a few minutes away. "The desert wasn’t here before. You mean you think you caused it?"

Rashid cleared his throat. "No, no. It’s just that when the desert arrived, one of the creatures came to investigate. That was when I rigged the neutralino detonator. If it goes off, it will increase the desertification rate a hundred-fold. This whole continent will become a desert within weeks." He added, in a quieter voice. "I keep a remote trigger with me at all times."

"What do you think caused the desert?"

"I do not know." His voice was subdued.

"Your ship, the Phoenix, is the epicenter, isn’t it Rashid?"

Rashid’s voice rose in register. "Believe me, Commander, I have carried out every scientific analysis I could, and have no explanation."

But still, your ship is ground zero for the desert. "How fast is it spreading?"

Rashid’s voice softened again. "In a year, this entire continent will be desert."

Inside his helmet, Blake bit his lip. The bad news was stacking up: barren soil, hostile aliens, desertification...

The skimmer skipped over the threshold of the desert, small grey-green bushes appearing around them like splashes of spring rain. Blake examined the onboard navigation chart from yesterday – the desert had moved closer to the ship, around thirty meters. He switched back to the more immediate threat – the creatures.

"Rashid, how would they know that you’d rigged the ND to explode, or even know what it is or what it would do to the desert – and why would they care?"

"The first is a most interesting tactical question, is it not? How they would know? But that is almost certainly a mere matter of technology, a trick once understood, soon taken for granted. The second question you raise is the one I believe to be of strategic importance – why would they care?"

They drew closer to the Ulysses. Blake recognized the signs of an explosion on the hillside – a small impact crater, a medium-sized area denuded of bushes, leaving only scorched trees. He gunned the skimmer’s engine. A green light flickered on the skimmer console. About time, Blake said to himself.

"Zack, do you read me?" But even as he spoke he saw the tell-tale flash of a ground-to-air missile being launched – it raced toward him then veered to the right. The mirror!

"Zack – it’s friendly, dammit!" He pulled hard on the skimmer to shear away from the missile that had locked onto the mirror’s image, since it had no heat signature. In the last fraction of a second the mirror dove low enough to scrape the desert floor, sending a stream of sand up into the sky. The missile missed it by centimeters and slammed into a dune behind it. A mushroom of sand skewed upwards, momentarily blocking out the sun. There was no explosion: Blake guessed Zack had fired an armour penetrator, to avoid damaging the skimmer. He racked through the gears to slow down, Rashid sliding into his back as they decelerated hard. The mirror sped off and vanished into the hills.

"Blake – Skipper, can you hear me!" Zack hobbled towards them, using the long range pulse rifle as a makeshift crutch.

Blake drove the vehicle towards Zack, skittering to a stall, and then unsealed his helmet visor as the vehicle stabilized and powered down. "Some welcome, old friend. What was that for?"

Zack reddened. "Well, you weren’t answering the radio, and from here it looked like you were being chased by that thing."

Pierre approached, and Blake got the impression he hadn’t shared Zack’s opinion.

"Who the hell is this?" Zack looked Rashid up and down, noting the helmet Rashid had just taken off. "Jeez – don’t tell me IVS got here first!"

"Introductions later – first, help him with Kat."

But Zack was already there, catching her limp frame, trying to carry her and balance on his gel-cast leg at the same time. Pierre took her from him and rushed towards the Lander. Blake took off his helmet. It was good to be back to his ship. He eased off his ride, and faced Zack. "Tell me about the flare."

◆◆◆

Kat’s head still swam from the mirror communication; she felt like her brain was full of drunken bees.

"Kat?" Blake said, close to her face, locking her eyes onto his own.

She realized she should respond. She tried at first to signal using the colors, and then remembered how to talk. "Yes, Captain. I’m a little out of it. I’ve been… somewhere else."

"What the hell’s been going on? Is she okay?" Zack asked.

"Will be," Blake replied. "Long story." He nodded his head toward Rashid. "Very long."

She saw Zack squint at her first, then look to Rashid. Zack was gripping the rifle firmly – and then she saw that Blake detected Zack’s distrust of Rashid. She was paying more attention to body and eye movements than speech. Her perception had been altered; not surprising, she thought, after where she’d just been.

"It’s okay, Zack." Blake said.

Kat listened to the introductions, the words flowing around her like a choppy sea. She heard the contours of each speaker, the rise and fall of the tone, the timbre, and read the emotions underneath all of it. The fear, the aggression, the concern, underlying all of their speech was like ribbons of color. But they were individually tempered by more subtle hues: honesty and scientific objectivity in both Rashid and Pierre, the tight control-maintenance of Blake, Zack’s tough-image exterior that belied his compassionate nature. She focused on Zack’s speech. There was something else there, something that didn’t belong. She felt like she was watching a foreign vid with alien subtitles. However, the talk of the creature and its attack on Pierre made her snap back into focus on the words, the content.

She sat up sharply. "Now. I have to talk right now."

"Okay, Kat. Go ahead. The rest can wait," Blake said.

No trace of irritation in Blake’s voice, she noticed. Good. She saw Pierre get up and activate a recording device. She began.

"Okay – this is going to be a little muddled – I’d ask you not to interrupt if possible, otherwise I might lose track."

"Go ahead Kat, we’re listening." It was Zack. Something she meant to remember about Zack; too late – already gone.

"Recording," Pierre said.

She took a deep breath, and reached back into her mind. "I was on the home planet of the… Our-shee-wan; Ourshiwann … best pronunciation I can give – their mouths are different to ours and they have no tongue. They don’t really use sounds at all, but they have a name in case visitors – I’ll explain later – come by. I – I know, because, you see, I was one of them for a while."

"What?"

"Later Zack," Blake said, raising a hand.

"I had four legs, like two of you have seen, no head, and no eyes as such. The senses are around the circumference of the body and the top. We – they – see, or perceive is probably better, three-sixty degrees around them, like a sphere. They communicate in colors that make soft watery sounds." She glanced from Pierre to Rashid.

"It’s so beautiful. For a while I was still thinking that way, that’s why I’ve not been saying much." And as if by stating it, she somehow catalysed it back into her forebrain: her vision shifted, colors swimming around them all, rainbow hues, including some colors she knew she shouldn’t be able to see. Rashid radiated mauve warmth at her, like a cloud; Blake’s earnest face was haloed by a shimmering vermillion shroud, more metallic in tone.

She concentrated. "Listen, all of you. We’re not alone. We’re on the galactic rim, but there are many other intelligent species out there. I mean hundreds, closer in towards the hub of the galaxy."

"You mean you saw them, as well as the spider creatures?" Blake’s voice had a sharp edge – it conjured up jagged, stark colors compared to the soft, undulating pastels of where she had been, and would have been considered rude there. But she knew Blake was merely probing to get the information out correctly.

"No. But – you see, I was inside their heads. I had images – in fact yes, I believe I ‘saw’ some of them, but not first hand. They send their Hohash out in small ships –"

"Hohash – the mirrors?" Blake again. The others were letting him alone interrupt. Kat nodded quickly, feeling nauseous.

"Yes – the mirrors – they sent them out, so they could bring back images when they return. There is something called the Grid. It spans a sixth of the galaxy – not the very centre where stellar density is too strong, but an inner ring, where dark matter density is highest." She was relieved she could remember it, but knew it would fade fast.

"The Grid is a three dimensional matrix, toroidal in shape, like a doughnut, used for superluminal inter-stellar transport. Nodes on the Grid are located near inhabited worlds. Thousands of worlds, Sir. And..."

They all stared at her, tongues of inquisitive purple leather snaking towards her. She shuddered. "Sir – some of them are way, way ahead of us. I mean completely beyond our league."

She felt an inner panic pushing upwards in her throat. Before, when she had been part of the Ourshiwann, their maturity, objectivity and passivity had protected her from the emotional impact of what they themselves had found out. Now, a wave of dread threatened to paralyze her. It was a slippery color infinitely darker than black, threatening to suck her downwards.

A rapier of red cut through. "Kat, listen to me. You’re a soldier. Tell us all of it, no matter how bad it seems to you."

She clung to Blake’s voice, and decided to do just that – tell it without pausing to think of the ramifications.

"Within the grid there is an order to things, has been for a very long time, maybe a million years. There’s a hierarchy, a sophisticated set of laws and allowable interactions. And a kind of policing agency – Rangers. There are nineteen levels in the hierarchy, but the Rangers only operate within the boundaries of the Grid, and we’re way outside it – too expensive to travel so far from the Grid, too uninteresting to bother. Also, they only protect Level Five and above; Level Four species are borderline, and will only be protected if a sponsor race can be arranged. The Ourshiwann were considered Level Four pending a status upgrade to five, but didn’t want to leave their home planet and move inside the Grid area. They also refused sponsorship from a couple of nasty races. The Q’Roth – the ones hiding somewhere on Eden – are Level Six, predatory by nature, and culled the Ourshiwann before they could gain Level Five status." She paused.

Pierre spoke, a smooth grey ceramic sheet – but something else under the surface: darker, moving fast, insect-like.

"Kat. What level do you think we would be?"

Kat saw a harmonic rippling across all their colors – it was the question they all now shared.

She cleared her throat. "Three."

Zack slumped back in his seat, a smear of brown arriving then disappearing. "That figures."

She sensed the colors heating up, becoming agitated. But she had to get it all out. "That means… it means that the Q’Roth have a right to hunt us. We don’t even have the right of appeal which the spiders rejected. It means other species have a right to enslave us or consume us as they see fit. We’re effectively seen as animals – for the Q’Roth we’re vermin at worst, food at best." Storm-clouds of rusted grey and violet rain swam around her. She closed her eyes. "The Q’Roth also pass through different stages in their thousand year life cycle. At first, when they hatch, they’re primitive, predatory pack creatures, relying on a basic feeding instinct. Not food as such, but – sentience, in a way; a kind of emotional and intellectual electro-potential. In Grid Society it’s effectively a classified drug. Frowned upon by higher races, but accepted for lower ones as a catalyst for maturation, or elevation as they call it."

"Once they’ve fed, they change, and go through an intense period, five centuries long; a phase of blinding artistic and technological creativity. But the Q’Roth are mostly valued as soldiers in Grid Society. That’s what earns them Level Six status. They mate once, and then most die, leaving their eggs and a handful of guardians. They mean to feed on humanity, to extract the bio-electric energy."

Silence swept into the cabin. She paused to let it sink in, and dared to open her eyes again. The evanescent colored fresco, this mode of perception, was fading. She wasn’t sad to lose it, and examined her colleagues in grainy sepia. Rashid was sitting on the floor, head down, in a loose lotus position – trying to accept the bad news with equanimity. Zack was tight-lipped, looking out toward the desert, seeking out the enemy, no doubt worried about his family back on Earth. Pierre was looking down. Kat couldn’t read his thoughts or emotions, but his body language was compressed, she presumed trying to rationalize it all, but struggling to do so. Only Blake was facing her, glaring. Her brow widened with shock: he was angry.

"Anything else, Corporal?" The words came out like the unfurling of a whip.

Kat swallowed, and wondered if she, the messenger, was about to be proverbially shot. "No, Sir – well, some fragments, but nothing that makes much sense at the moment."

Blake stood up. "Now, listen up, all of you. What Kat has just told us is pretty grim. I have no doubt that she has told us exactly what she saw – what was imparted by the mirror – this… Hohash."

She relaxed a little.

"Now, it may be true, it may not. The reality on the ground, here and now, is that we know there are creatures out there that are hostile and damned difficult to kill. There are eggs somewhere on Eden that could be a serious threat to humanity if more of us come here or, God forbid, if the Q’Roth make it to Earth."

"So, we have four goals. First, we must re-establish comms with Earth, let them know we’re alive, and what we’ve found out. Second, we need to gather and take back some proof, because no matter how real this is to us, you all know how difficult it will be to accept without hard evidence back on Earth. Third, we need to determine if the eggs are here, and if we can destroy them before they hatch. Fourth," and he looked around the room, "Fourth, we need to go home."

Kat felt Blake’s words wrench her out of her own growing despair, like a glowing silver lifeline hauling her out of a dark pit. Zack and Rashid stood up, followed by Pierre. Kat scrambled to her feet as Blake’s gaze met hers, and then the others, one by one.

"Listen, all of you," Blake continued, quieter. "Let’s just consider, for one moment, that everything Kat has seen is true. That we’re insignificant in this so-called hierarchy – prey, if you will." All eyes were on him.

"Well damn them!" He slammed a closed fist against the side of the hull, its dull thud reverberating around them. "This level three species is not going to lie back and take it. We will fight, and we will survive."

A grin crept across Zack’s face. "Amen, Skipper."

Rashid nodded and gave a loose salute to Blake. Pierre followed suit, Kat too. She held it for a long time.

As the others left the compartment to make preparations for their tasks, Blake and Kat were left alone. She was trembling.

"Sir, there was something else."

He approached her, eyes sharp. "Tell me."

She took a deep breath. "The only way the Hohash could let me see these things was to connect with its master’s memories. Well – you see… I was there when the Q’Roth came. The spiders knew they were coming, and had decided as a group – as a people – to retain their pacifist mode of life through to the end, though it meant they would all die. They had no space-ships themselves, since they never travelled – the Hohash did it for them. They’d resigned themselves to their fate, very much in control of their emotions you see." Kat folded her arms tight around her. "But when it happened – the carnage, the pain – some of them wavered – including the one I was ‘inside’ – that’s why he disobeyed his society’s agreement and sent his Hohash out into space."

Her legs shook, threatening to give way. "I – the spider – ran. I ran for my life, when others stood tall and were slaughtered. I knew it would do no good, and I was not alone to run, but suddenly I couldn’t accept this fate, neither mine nor that of my species. So I ran in blind fear and one of them chased me. It caught me and slashed at me, cutting my hind legs from under me, then its mouth bore down on me, sucking my life force away." Her eyes brimmed with the memory of it, but she sniffed the tears back. "Captain – I was killed. I bloody-well died with it. I shared its terror, its grief for its kind."

Blake steadied her, hands on her shoulders. "Kat," he said, "every soldier in battle goes through what you’ve been through – maybe not as far, for sure. But you’re through it, and you’re alive. And you’ll fight when the time comes. These spiders – noble creatures for sure – while I can respect their culture and their choice not to fight, it won’t be our way, I can assure you."

She nodded, and steadied herself.

Blake reached into a pocket in his jumpsuit with his right hand. "Zack told me to give you this when you really needed it." He pulled out a crumpled, folded piece of paper. "Someone gave it to him on Zeus. Said it was to be opened in your darkest moment. He wouldn’t tell me who, but he left it with me."

She stared at it. "What is it?"

"I don’t open other people’s mail, Kat."

Her lungs seemed too full to breathe except in shallow gasps. "Read it out to me. Please."

Blake unfolded it, and read out loud. "Let me see. It says – To Kat– I promise –" He paused, shifted uneasily, and cleared his throat. "I promise I will wait for you, no matter what, no matter how long. All my love. And then it’s signed – Antonia."

She gaped at the piece of paper, and then took it gingerly, as if it might break or crumble into dust. Blake left her alone. She sat down, cradling the note in her hands. Zack had written something on the outside in his large scrawl: Happiness is knowing that someone, somewhere, really gives a shit.

◆◆◆

A kilometer away, the solitary Hohash hovered on top of an outcrop, still tuned into Kat’s mind. It felt her emotional response – this grieving. It let go of her mind and displayed on its mirror face a churning sea storm, an image borrowed from a painting stored as a memory in Kat’s mind years ago. In this image, the mirror stood alone on a small vessel, strapped to the helm, thrashed in all directions by the ravages of the maelstrom, whipped by wind, shaken by thunderclaps. Other boats were also caught in the storm, tossed by the mammoth waves. The mirror, via this image, was finally able to express its anguish at its masters’ and comrades’ annihilation.

The storm image raged on for some time. Abruptly the storm pacified, the sea calmed, and the sky cleared. In the image, the Hohash was still on the inundated boat. None other had survived. Beneath the boat, dark shark-shapes circled. But deeper still in the water, on the seabed itself, there were glints of reflected, fractured, mirrored sunlight.

The image on its surface evaporated. The Hohash set off at a fast pace. Like the crew on Ulysses, it also now had tasks to accomplish, and time was running out. After nearly a millennium of biding its time, it knew everything would come to a head, one way or another, in the next few days. And in the brief connection between Kat and Blake, it had absorbed something new, energising – a hitherto alien construct – this time it would find a way to fight back.

Chapter 32

Louise

Vince tried again, but Louise wasn’t answering, and her signal had gone off the secure nets. Technically she was AWOL, which meant he should have reported it three hours ago. But this wasn’t the first time.

He stood legs astride for balance in the sky-taxi, surveying New LA below. His wristcom pulsed – the fulsome face of his superior officer at Chorazin HQ appeared, looking even less happy than usual. Vince kept his poker face; he’d give her more time. But not much.

"Vince, check Channel 49."

Vince tapped the console and up popped the broadcast.

"Idiot!" This was the only word Vince uttered during the transmission. He watched Senator Josefsson live across America and God alone knew where else as he announced two things. First, the fact that Earth had less than ten years before undergoing a significant, fatal climate shift, a global increase of thirty degrees Celsius. Second, how the recently discovered ships – two more like the one IVS had discovered had been "found" – could take people directly to Eden. He talked about how America, a nation of pioneers that had lost its way, should take the ultimate step and colonise Eden, in partnership with its high-tech Indistani colleagues. Vince wanted to switch it off, but had to see it through. Afterwards, the voice of his superior cut through again.

"Did you know he would do this?"

Vince recalled his and Louise’s meeting with Josefsson yesterday. He’d left early, left them alone. She would have got under Josefsson’s skin, possibly in more ways than one; he was the type to brag to try and get her into the sack. She should have seen this coming.

"Had I known, I would have stopped him." He’d have to deal with Louise later.

"Recommendation?" His boss growled.

"It’s too late to sanction him now, verbally or otherwise – if anything happens to him it will only convince people more. Containment, maybe some of the details. Consequences – what it would mean to move to Eden so suddenly. All the research that’s been going on at PsyTech since we first found out about the climate time-bomb. Contingency plans. Smearing Josefsson for what he clearly is – a reckless self-serving hypocrite who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about people, only his career." Vince smiled. "Or maybe putting him on the first ship."

"Ah, that’s something we hadn’t thought of; has a certain appeal."

Vince looked down through the brown haze over the sun-baked city of New LA, imagining it emptying as millions across America tried to leave. And then he imagined an extra thirty degrees, or at least tried to. It wasn’t pretty.

"We need something else, Vince. Something on Eden. Did you know there is now a desert there?"

"Since when?"

"First spotted a month ago, but they thought it was a malfunction – you know the pictures aren’t always that reliable. Yesterday it was confirmed. Growing at quite a rate."

"Sir – I’m guessing IVS must have the same data – yet Josefsson spoke anyway."

"We all know the senator is in their pocket – we believe they may have primed him, but possibly he went off early, so to speak."

"I’m on my way back to Eden Mission now. I’ll see what they are making of the desert issue."

The wristcom cleared.

He called Louise: unavailable. "Louise – it’s Vince, call me after you’ve seen Josefsson’s speech on the Nets." He saw the Eden building approach, and considered Louise’s recent behaviour. She usually came through. Still... He sent a coded message to a level ten colleague, Abrahams, to check on Micah at Chorazin-Med. He had a feeling she would show up there sooner or later.

The Eden Mission Complex loomed in front of him. "Take us down to street level," he instructed the sky taxi computer.

◆◆◆

Antonia shifted in the chrome chair, her composure faltering.

"So, he just slipped into a coma?" Louise said, continuing the questioning. "How could you tell?" She scraped a chair across the room and sat astride it, leaning forwards on its chrome back. Antonia stared back at her.

"I couldn’t at first, but you know, or maybe you don’t, that when analysts use the Optron their bodies remain tense. His just went limp."

Louise stifled a yawn. "I’m told that can be quite upsetting." She got up and walked over to Micah’s comatose body, and ran her hand down the length of the various drips and devices feeding into and out of him. She stood right next to Antonia, who turned to see Micah. As soon as she did so, Louise first put her hand on Antonia’s shoulder, then brushed the back of her hand against her chin and cheek.

"I can see why he likes you."

Antonia blushed, looked away and made to get up, but Louise’s hand pressed down firmly on her shoulder. Antonia folded her hands in her lap. Louise walked around right in front of her and lifted her chin.

"Do you care for him?"

Antonia’s mouth opened, and then closed. "What… what do you mean?"

Louise let go and walked to her chair, and rested her buttocks against the back of it. "It’s a simple question, Antonia. You’ve known him for some time, you met him on the bubble platform the other night, and now, here you are, at his bedside."

"I – how do you know I – we – we met accidentally on the platform. Anyway, I was just…" she stopped, not wishing to divulge her relationship with Kat. "What does this have to do with anything?"

"People don’t just slip into a coma, Antonia. Perhaps you did something to him. Lover’s tiff, perhaps?"

Antonia shot to her feet and headed to the holo-window. She tried to recover herself. "This is ridiculous, Louise. Micah and I are just colleagues. I was trying to help recover data from Ulysses. Micah works in telemetry and I work in data processing. It just seemed logical." She remained facing away from Louise.

"You’re one poor liar, my girl. You know he’s in love with you, don’t you?"

Antonia tensed, and blinked hard. She spun to face Louise, eyes glaring. "No he isn’t! Where are you going with all of this?"

Louise remained poker-faced. "He says you have another lover, Antonia. You know how pliable men are after they’ve come. Does this lover want Micah in a coma?"

Antonia’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes flicked for a moment towards Micah, shocked that he had told Louise, of all people… and slept with her! She stood up. "Stop this right now. You can’t just question me like this." She picked up her bag, "I’m leaving." But she didn’t.

Louise smiled. "Actually, I can interrogate you anyway I like. Let’s see. I’m Chorazin. A key person in my investigation is in a coma for no good reason, and you were the only person with him at the time. In fact my boss would probably reprimand me for not putting you in a holding cell and having you deep-profiled. So, Antonia, you have to give me a reason. A piece of information that will keep me, and my boss, happy for the moment. What were you and Micah doing, what is your relationship with our sleepy friend there, and who exactly is your lover? And you have to give me these three bits of information straight away, or I will arrest you and you’ll spend the next three days in an uncomfortable cell. By the time your Ambassador father finds out, you’ll be a wreck, and believe me, the Chorazin have impunity."

Antonia lowered herself back into her chair, clutching her bag, and stared at the floor. She didn’t doubt this woman – and she didn’t want to go to a cell – she’d be useless to anyone she cared about once inside one. She weighed everything up.

"My lover is Katrina Beornwulf, the Ulysses astronaut. I believed Micah could find a way to contact her and the others. I wanted to help. Micah and I are colleagues, that’s all. Just before he went into the coma, he seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough."

Louise walked over to her, and knelt down before her lowered head and spoke close to her defeated face. "There, that wasn’t too hard, really, was it?" She walked back to the chair and pushed it against the wall. "Micah’s not a bad fuck actually. Inexperienced, but a quick study." She turned to see Antonia’s bewildered face. "Don’t leave town." She walked out.

Antonia stared after her, then at Micah’s almost lifeless body. She raised a hand to her throat, closed her eyes, then leant forward onto her knees, and buried her face in her hands.

◆◆◆

Sister Esma continued the dispatch of orders on the vidcom using a secure line. The chess pieces are all in place. Endgame.

"It has begun… We must move quickly... How fast can the remaining ships be found? Use discovery protocol beta, I believe an MIT scientist is working in the area, he would be a suitable candidate. It must be handled very carefully. Scripts will arrive within the hour for synchronized transmission across G-Net by Fundamentalist leaders. We have rehearsed for this moment for many, many years. The people must be persuaded the ships are gifts from their one true God, whichever one applies to the local population. The ships’ apparent simplicity will assist credibility of the message... The message will be a strong trigger – fear, anger and outrage at suppression of information will do the rest. The ships will only take at most a few percent of the population in the first volley, but that will be enough, and the political turmoil left behind, fuelled by tens of millions who will want to go but have to wait, and possibly die, will deliver us the power we have waited for… After? I will tell you in good time. Information is earned, revealed only when needed."

The vidcom cleared.

After, she thought. After the feeding on Eden, and the harvesting here, we – the Inner Circle alone – will be elevated, and will travel to the Grid. Those of us touched by these Gods, those of us who have borne their genetic gifts – the insights, strength, and above all the longevity, want nothing more.

She leaned back in her chair, clasping her hands behind her skull. Galileo, my dear man, you should have listened to me. If you had, then you could have seen with your own eyes what your brilliance had only just managed to grasp – not just the non-Euclidean solar system, but the rest of the galaxy. And Amadeus – at least we will take your music with us, though you chose to remain so finitely mortal. She thought of the people she had known over the past six centuries. Most she despised – her perspective was so different that she no longer thought of herself as human, and found humans – earthlings as she had started to call them, hopelessly bound to this doomed planet – their pitiful, short lives and limited vision, their petty selfishness. Humanity left alone would never rise above itself. There had even been a time when she had questioned the Q’Roth-Alician pact, but the longer she trod the Earth the more she knew the inevitable choice was between culling most and upgrading a few, or culling all.

There had of course been some exceptional men and women – a few. She and others had tried to turn them, most without success. Still – there were five hundred like her, a few even older, roaming the world. They controlled humanity, misguided it, kept it off-balance, bringing it to ripeness for the return of the Q’Roth. Soon – very soon – almost no time at all, this narcissistic civilization would be eradicated, and they, the five hundred who knew what was coming, plus another five thousand promising Alicians, would have their own ships and a passport to the Grid. A new existence and legitimacy as a sponsored Level Five species. The hierarchy they had heard about would know this new humanity for the first time and would respect it: our next stage of evolution.

The vidcom buzzed, the code indicating her favorite protégé. "Report."

"Micah is in a coma. Antonia doesn’t know anything. I’m on my way back to Chorazin HQ. I have a bunch of calls from Vince, which I’m about to take –"

"Don’t. I have a mission for you."

"My absence will already have been noticed. If I don’t turn up soon –"

"I said I have a mission for you." Sister Esma waited. Anyone else would have apologized profusely for making her repeat herself, but Louise was special, and her silence was sufficient. "It has begun, Louise. I have instructions for you which must be passed face to face. Then you must return and kill Micah." This time the silence which followed was not acceptable. "Is there a problem, Louise?"

"No. I’ll be there in ten minutes." The vidcom cleared.

Sister Esma looked wistfully over to a wall where an unknown original by Leonardo hung, secret, beautiful. "And you, too, will come with us when we leave." The drawing showed two people, her and another, standing next to a large grey-black insect-like creature, upright, nearly twice as tall as its human companions. Such stark, uncompromising beauty.

She switched on the vidcom again. After a few seconds a hooded face appeared; silent, tranquil, eyes unseen.

"Start the beacon. Wake them."

The hooded figure nodded, and then cut the transmission.

It was an irony that she and her Alician flock were actually saving humanity: at least the Q’Roth had offered a lifeline, preserving a portion of mankind, allowing it to evolve to its next generation. Other races who stumbled upon Earth might prove less generous. But she had no sympathetic pretensions. The Q’Roth genetic alterations gave their human followers razor sharp clarity over what some would call ethics, and what later historians would call ecological necessity. Survival of the fittest, she had once argued with Darwin. At least he had finally understood, if only for the animal kingdom.

She activated a mosaic of viewscreens showing major channels all over the world, and waited for the announcements. She could feel the tapestry of the maneuvers and manipulations of a millennium coming together. Finally, all the loose ends had been accounted for. It was not unlike a Da Vinci, she mused – a vivid painting that would flow inexorably from the brushes of the Q’Roth and Alician Protectorate, bright swathes of red on Earth’s dusty brown canvas. It was a painting she intended to see once, and then cast aside forever. Perhaps Mozart’s Requiem would be fitting music for the end of the world. She began to hum Dies Irae, recalling its first performance in Vienna.

PART THREE

BATTLE FOR EDEN

Chapter 33

Final Request

Gabriel gained entry to the Vidsex parlor. He quickly strapped in, inserted his own data crystal, logged on and accessed the net, and faced the redhead again. He spoke with urgency.

"I will be dead within two hours. Sister Esma and her cohorts, maybe the Q’Roth themselves, are finally moving. Louise is the Chorazin double agent."

The redhead morphed into an old man who nevertheless stood lightning rod straight. "It pains me to hear that you are departing this life. But I have also learned they are on the move, and so am I, too."

His normally lake-like composure swirled with emotional riptides from the Alician drug. He found it difficult to focus on strategy; he would very shortly no longer be part of it. "I have a final request."

"Speak and I will grant it."

Gabriel swallowed. "I have discovered that my sister – Jennifer – is alive. You’ve no doubt seen the vids of the ship in the Pacific. She’s the Professor’s assistant. You may have noticed a family resemblance."

There was a pause. "I will protect her. I was planning to go there next. Now, prepare yourself. Gabriel – whatsoever remains of us after, will meet again."

Gabriel bowed to the figure. His Sentinel master bowed lower. He broke the connection, tore off the temple electrodes, and crushed the crystal underfoot.

He had been preparing for death for the past seven years. Each evening he contemplated the void, to the point where his ego dissolved and all that was left was space, and the intangible sense of something else that remained: spirit, that which was there before he was born.

He had always believed that nothing immortal could have a start – if it did there would be an end too, so whatever would be there after death must have been there before birth, and the ego, all the worries and joys, the personality, was just clothing used for the journey before the return to the nakedness of death. Every morning he had also meditated and acted as if this were his last day on earth.

Despite the clarity such meditation had delivered him these past seven years, he couldn’t quiet his soul. There was something in the back of his mind that stirred restlessly.

Finding out that his sister was still alive had unleashed a shockwave of inner turmoil and remorse, amplified by the emotion-enhancer Sister Esma had pumped into him. Futile thoughts arose of lost time, and a different life he could have had, with his sister, or even a family of his own. He had spent most of his adult life invisible to society – no one would weep for him, or even know he was gone. He tried to observe these feelings in a detached way. He dared not let them surface fully now, or else they would overwhelm him: he would crack, his resolve would splinter and he would be useless to himself, to Jenny, and his whole chosen way of life would be negated. He did not relish the idea of being cast into the wilderness at the moment of death – he’d seen it all too often.

Taking a deep breath, he held it for a minute, breathed out slowly, then held his lungs still and empty. His mind cleared. Nothing mattered anymore except the mission. He picked up his bulky bag and headed for the exit. But the aching inside remained, even if subdued. As he moved toward the transit level, he realized there was one thing he could do to assuage this sudden longing, but it was a ridiculous idea – there was neither time nor opportunity.

As he approached the Eden Mission service tunnel, his mind switched into killing mode, as he began to plan how to destroy the building completely, calculating how many guards and others it would take. For the first time in his vocation, he searched for the minimum kill ratio. Now that he was busy again, the inner voice silenced. The brief Mayfly fluttering of his ego had ended, accepting his fate, his choices. When he came to the first guard, the blade of his right hand whipped against the man’s carotid artery, spiking the guard’s blood pressure and knocking him unconscious, rather than crushing it and causing massive brain hemorrhage. He even protected the man’s head as he slumped to the ground. Gabriel felt as if a legion of the people he’d cleansed over the years stood behind him, watching, curious, but also anxious to meet him on the other side. He checked his wristcom. Sixty minutes left on this world, in this skin. He moved forward quickly.

◆◆◆

Sandy came in to pick up her things – she’d been given two week’s leave, on account of everything that had happened to her. She had a small list, but once she arrived, she screwed it up and threw it in the bin. She hadn’t come here for things – she’d come to say goodbye.

Before discharging her, the Chorazin psych had warned her she was off-balance; the trauma of the last two days had raked over old scars, unleashing depression. Too right, and then some. The stiff but well-meaning psych had pulled her old files, and given her a fatherly lecture about not getting suicidal again, like the time she’d lost her brother Jake in a car crash on his twenty-first. She’d been driving.

The shrink had shaken her hand and given her some pills to take. They currently inhabited New LA’s sewage system.

Sandy felt unclean, like she had black, oily poison lining her gut; everyone she’d ever cared about died violently. She wanted to vomit it up out of her, but it clung to her insides like tar. It made her think of cutting herself again, but that had been a former life, and she didn’t want to restart that particular addiction. Anyway, she reminded herself, she wasn’t unique – everyone on the planet had lost loved ones violently in the War. She tried to mentally kick herself, to snap out of it. Easier said than done.

She’d had it with the Eden Mission; Kane had been the only reason she’d stayed all these years. She had no idea where to go next, but had made up her mind: she’d leave town. Start over somewhere. Anywhere. Maybe Russia. She spoke Russian, and no one knew her there. But first, she had to say goodbye. She placed her hands on the door handles, took a breath, and entered the office.

The conservative teak furniture was still pretty much where it had been. She went into Kane’s office, closed the doors behind her, and strode straight to his desk. She traced a finger over the inner edge. She steeled herself, and turned towards the bathroom, her prison for two days, and looked straight into the dark eyes of the man she’d shot at two days ago.

"You!" She glanced from him to the inner door. He walked over to it and turned the key. She silently cursed Keiji’s desire for antique locking devices. Well, at least the assassin hadn’t shot her yet. She opted as usual for bravado.

"Come to finish the job? I thought that bitch did you in?"

He stared at her, looked her up and down, taking his time about it, she noticed. He was stripped to the waist, wearing only a pair of tight-fitting black trousers. She couldn’t help but notice the menagerie of scars on his upper body. She wondered what the lower half looked like, then mentally pinched herself; the psych had been right, but unbalanced didn’t quite cover it. Her dark impulses drove her forward.

"Strong and silent type, eh?"

He strode across to her. She smelt his sweat – it wasn’t distasteful. With a shock she realized he’d be about the same build and age her brother might be now, if…

"I was trying to save you, Sandy. Louise is the killer."

She gave out a sharp laugh. "You’re Alician, a Cleanser, remember, one of the bad guys."

He returned to the bathroom, fiddling with some kind of device, a green glass cube the size of her daddy’s old footstool. She made out the word ‘Hextrite’ in red lettering on the side. She’d seen enough war-vids to know it was an ultra-powerful explosive, the type that produced a vertical compression shockwave, perfect for collapsing a building while leaving surrounding ones intact.

"Christ, you don’t do anything by half measures, do you?"

Still, he made no reply. She went to the door, but the key was missing.

"So, you’re going to blow up the building? And take me with it? Or am I coming with you."

"I’m not leaving."

Shit. Despite her mounting fear, her mouth continued on autopilot, with no navigation. "Look. If you’re the good guy, let me go."

He fished in his pocket briefly, and tossed her the key. She snatched it in mid air, and looked at the door. Her mind said "Run, you idiot!" But she remained. He punched a code into a small keypad and then sat cross-legged on the floor.

"There’s an implant in my head. In twenty minutes it will release a violent toxin into my brain and I will die, painfully."

He locked eyes with hers. The effect on Sandy was like being struck by two jet-black lasers. The only men she’d ever been able to love had been completely convinced of what they were about – her father, her brother, Kane; no one else ever measured up. They’d all given her a reason to live. She studied him.

"I haven’t made love to a woman for seven years. I have no children to leave behind. I never expected to have any. I’m not exactly a family man." He made an attempt to smile. She could tell he didn’t get much practice.

"Is this an Alician chat-up line?"

"I’m not an Alician; they’re my enemy." He balanced the backs of his hands on his knees in a meditative pose. "Their inner circle are genetically advanced."

She wasn’t surprised; it fit, since they’d eluded capture for a decade, not one ever brought to justice. Genetics had been banned, but that never stopped anybody. She wondered why he was telling her this.

"Three years ago I was infused with an experimental metagenic virus. It doesn’t affect me, but my children, if I had any, would be advanced, developing rapidly, becoming as strong as the Alicians."

An explosion deep down in the building shook the room, sounding like a bomb had gone off underwater. The fire alarms shrieked. Sprinklers showered them with a fine mist of cool water. She realized he’d set off a smaller device to evacuate the building. He was an assassin, not a mass murderer. Her feet still didn’t budge.

"Go," he said. "Take Kane’s emergency drop lift, it’s still there. It will get you fifty meters underground in ninety seconds. Then just head away from it in any direction."

But she couldn’t. Stupid bitch, she thought to herself. They die violently, remember? But the irony made some kind of sense to her. This was the kind of pill she needed: serious psychological – and probably terminal – detox. As her decision firmed, all the self-loathing and depression fled like the people pouring out of the building six hundred meters below. Poison needed an anti-toxin; she needed a reason to live. She approached him.

"You finished with that thing?"

He nodded.

"Good – so how long have we got?"

◆◆◆

Vince entered the building just as the explosion shook the floor. He made it inside seconds before the waterfall of glass shards from way above. Panic-stricken people streamed out of every orifice, like termites leaving a collapsing hill. He had to fight against a tide of them to get through the atrium to the central elevators. Of course they’d been inactivated; or rather they would only come down, and not go back up. He knew this bomb must be a diversion. Somebody was still up there.

He came back outside and used his wristcom – "It’s Vince – I need a heli-jet with a high entry boarder, and a heat sensor, ASAP. Eden Mission – just head for the smoking building – I’ll be on the K-level heli-pad." He checked to see if Louise had called back – but there was nothing, no message even. Dammit, Louise! He coded a single word message to Abrahams – Careful. He charged up the stairs two at a time, dodging the bewildered people cascading down the stairwells.

◆◆◆

Sandy could tell he was close to orgasm, but she herself couldn’t make it. Damn – I thought performance pressure was a man’s problem! But she savored the passion, knowing she would relish the bruises tomorrow, as he consistently slammed her back against the wall, his hands cradling her buttocks, her legs wrapped around his waist. She’d all but given up, was about to focus on his orgasm, when she opened her eyes and saw, over his shoulder, Vince’s slim, sweat-drenched figure dash into the room. Against her better judgment, and without her consent, her body started to wrack itself. Vince lowered his weapon, and perched on Kane’s desk, waiting. Bastard, she thought, but she began to come, as did the assassin. She grabbed his face and pressed her mouth hard on his, wrestling with his tongue as their bodies collided, her contractions squeezing hard around him, before he shuddered and slowed down. He remained inside her as he recovered his breathing, and his black eyes burrowed into hers.

"Thank you," he said.

She saw his eyes focus inwards. He lowered her legs to the floor, her dress dropping back down, supporting her still-trembling body. He snatched the locket from around his neck and placed it in her open hand, sealed her fingers around it. She saw Vince move toward them, pistol raised. And then, without warning, the assassin’s face hardened, and his breathing froze. Eyes wide, he fell backwards, as if in slow motion, and crashed to the floor. She remained at the wall, arms at her chest, clutching the locket, as his rigid body convulsed on the floor. A sickly black and purple bruising erupted around his face, thickened blood dripping from his mouth, nose, eyes and ears. His body shook several more times and then froze. She didn’t look away; but she bit down on her knuckle till it bled.

Vince stood over his body. "Fast-acting toxin. Looks like metracide alpha. It’ll corrode his entire…" He glanced up at Sandy. "Never mind. Nothing I can do."

She remained where she was, as Vince moved over to the cubic bomb.

"Jesus!" He grabbed her wrist and wrenched her away from the scene. Her legs were too weak to run, so he stopped and heaved her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. She didn’t resist. Her body went limp as they hurtled through the corridors. Smashed windows revealed a narrow, five meter long air bridge to the side entrance of the heli-jet, hovering still as a humming bird, six hundred meters above the ground. She closed her eyes as Vince sprinted across it with her still on his shoulder. She opened them again as she was thrown into a seat. Vince yelled at the pilot. "Ditch the bridge, leave now!"

She watched the world fall away from her through the porthole window as the heli-jet plunged in reverse mode. The Eden Mission building shimmered and buckled, a shock wave rippling down its upper glass exterior before thousands of windows shattered, and a colossal burst of flame swallowed the tower. Glass spattered in all directions like hail. The heli-jet reared up and began to spin, dropping like a stone towards the ground, until the pilot regained control and veered away between two other skyscrapers.

She noticed Vince staring at her, concerned, but also glancing at her bloody right fist, where she still held the locket. She drew her knees up to her chest, her feet on her seat edge, and folded her arms around her shins. She wasn’t going to give it to him. He got up, took off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders, then sat back down opposite her, and gazed out of the window. She hadn’t even realized she was shivering; her body felt numb. Her mouth, her constant companion, was silent. She realized something.

Her voice sounded husky, even to her. "What was his name?"

Vince turned back to her, his eyes measuring, judging probably. She didn’t care.

"Gabriel O’Donnell, according to the DNA scan we took last time."

She closed her eyes, one hand drawing the jacket closer around her, the other hand, still clutching the locket, on her belly. From deep inside her, lost in the chopper’s whirring, she whispered to the sky above her. "I hope you find peace, Gabriel O’Donnell." She had the feeling the world around her was unraveling. Say hi to Jake for me. Maybe I’ll see him sooner than planned.

Chapter 34

Eggs

"You think he’s hiding something?"

"That wasn’t what I was saying, Sir." Pierre wished he hadn’t started this.

"But your data show the desert began when Rashid landed. His ship the Phoenix appears to be ground zero." Blake folded his arms.

Pierre had to admit he didn’t have a good explanation – yet. But he could feel he was close to working out the puzzle of the desert, and maybe of Eden itself.

"I need more time, Sir. There may be another cause, or his landing may have –"

"Time’s a luxury we don’t have. He’s hiding something, Pierre. I’m going to question him."

He found himself blocking Blake’s exit. He held his ground. "Let me talk with him first – scientist to scientist." He saw Blake was about to say No. "Fifteen minutes, Sir, that’s all I’ll need."

Blake’s eyes narrowed, then he checked his wristcom and headed back to the cockpit.

Pierre let out a long breath, and then descended the ladder to Eden’s grassy surface. The tide of emerald green light that flooded over the pre-dawn land nearly made him miss the final rung. The jewel-like blaze tumbled over the mountains in the direction they called east, splashed over the desert and the Lander ship before shifting to aquamarine. Just as his eyes adjusted to the soothing color, a blood-orange dawn burst forth.

"Now, that was cool," Kat said, momentarily rising from her lightweight field chair – she’d been studying a pad. "Is that normal?"

"Yes," Rashid said, as if he’d just witnessed a holy apparition. "It lasts only ten seconds, but it takes my breath away every time I see it."

Pierre surveyed the scene. Kat had a pulse rifle next to her, and on her lap a graphite pad the size of a dinner plate serving as a radar monitor with a half-kilometer range. She faced the hill to the North, the direction the Q’Roth guardian had come from before. Rashid sat cross-legged on a cushion from one of the bunks, facing Eden’s sun. Weaponless, he looked serene, a neo-native of Eden. The nearest scrub-like bushes to the ship were fifteen meters away, cadaver-grey in the first kindling of dawn.

The daylight warmed his mood. Dawn occurred faster than on Earth, the night-day cycle being twenty-two hours. There’d been no sighting of the guardian during the night. Kat and Rashid had spent hours late into the evening trying to make the comms system work, but there was a scattering effect on Eden – they could contact the remote link on the Ulysses mother-ship still in orbit, but nothing beyond – the compressed radio pulse simply dispersed, like a drop of oil hitting water, once it left Eden’s neighborhood. They would have to try from space itself, or at least from a high orbit.

That had left the tricky question of whether Ulysses’ life support system would work for five people instead of four. He’d established that Eden’s atmosphere was benign – whatever the additional element in the Eden biosphere, it was inert and could be extracted by Ulysses’ nano-mesh filtration system. But the ghoster attack had wrecked the spare capacity of the air processing system. Blake had pressed him on the matter the previous evening in private.

"Sir, we could take five – but if anything goes wrong or breaks down, the situation will become critical for all of us in a matter of hours."

"What about putting Rashid in stasis? I seem to remember you considered quarantining me in stasis for the return trip."

Pierre swallowed. "I’ve reconsidered that, Sir. Trouble is, the stasis pods have all been configured for our individual physiologies, and the software to adapt to someone new was deleted by the virus."

"So, one of us goes into stasis instead of Rashid. You volunteering?"

Pierre studied the floor.

"I thought not. Find another solution, Lieutenant, that’s an order."

Pierre remembered his current mission – he’d already lost five minutes.

"Rashid," he said, "Good morning – can we recap from last night’s discussion?"

Rashid nodded, but less enthusiastic than a minute ago. Pierre didn’t blame him; they’d got nowhere discussing it into the early hours; he’d felt like they’d been knocking their heads uselessly against a dam. He sensed Blake was right, though, that Rashid had a clue buried inside him, probably not one Rashid consciously recognized – at least he preferred that explanation than that it was outright deception.

Pierre began where they’d left off. "The Q’Roth – let’s assume that’s what they are called – don’t like to set foot in the desert. The desert wasn’t here when you arrived, whereupon it spread fast, and is continuing to do so."

Rashid stared towards the desert.

He continued. "From the samples I took yesterday, the desert is the residue of a wave front that is consuming everything in its path. Furthermore – and this is the difficult part, it appears to devour everything at an equal rate, irrespective of density or molecular construction – rock, grass, bush, soil, leading to a perfectly circular desert."

Rashid nodded slowly. "Yes. Something does not make sense, and I have been unable to work out what, even after all this time."

Pierre recalled how his father, fingering his grey beard, used to set puzzles at the dinner table, testing him. Pierre rarely solved them, and even when he did, there would be some rebuke about how long it had taken. Nevertheless, he considered that this form of mild dinner-time torment might tease out the answer here. He took on his father’s airs and graces, a little unnerved how easily they came to him.

"Rashid – when faced with a conundrum, it is usually because a piece of information is wrong, or missing, or because an assumption is incorrect."

Kat, who had remained disinterested until now, cocked her head, and stared at Pierre. He wasn’t sure, but Pierre thought he detected a wry smile. Rashid maintained his orientation to the desert, washed in ruby light.

"Rashid – I believe that if you can give me the missing information, then I can make the correct inference." He gambled. "Rashid – you’re hiding something from us, aren’t you?"

Rashid rocked himself upwards first into a squatting position, then stood up and bent double, palms on the ground, then flexed upwards, very straight like a soldier on parade, and turned to face Pierre square. He spoke nervously.

"It should not have mattered. Such a small amount."

Pierre kept his face serious, and his mouth shut. He did not meet Kat’s gaze. The dam cracked.

"You see," Rashid said, "we had many months in the craft, and before I had been assigned to the Phoenix, I was working on an important exobiological study." He paced around in a slow circle, hands behind his back, addressing the bushes and rocks as much as Pierre and Kat.

Pierre noticed that Rashid’s hair was looking ragged. He clearly hadn’t slept. Guilt. He cast his mind back to the leading edge of that research field a few years ago. A comet had been intercepted by and they’d found something… Merde!

"Proto-matter," he said, incredulous. "You brought proto-matter here?"

Rashid halted mid-step, nodded once, and then continued his circle, quickening his pace. His hands wrestled behind his back.

Kat piped up, glancing from one to the other. "Dumb question time. Proto-matter?"

Rashid turned to her, eyes suddenly bright, and began gesticulating. "It is the clay, the building blocks, the very stuff of stars! It is the beginning of everything!"

Pierre cut in. "And extremely reactive. And normally never let out of a sealed laboratory environment. How did you get it past IVS bio-screening? I’m assuming they didn’t know you took it on board."

"A space-ship is also a contained environment," Rashid emphasized, using his hands to make the shape of a ball. "And – if you must know – it was in a ceramic capsule in my teapot."

Kat laughed, but Pierre couldn’t believe it; it was so irresponsible. "Rashid – what happened – I don’t believe you let it loose here intentionally."

Rashid squatted on the dusty ground. "That is the problem, the conundrum as you put it. I do not understand it. I finished my experiment five months before we arrived, and I successfully oxidized all of the proto-matter. The lab equipment on the Phoenix was first class, and it was still contained. Until…"

Pierre held onto his patience – though he’d lost track of time. He hoped Blake wouldn’t come out to interrogate Rashid right now, or the information might retreat again.

"… Azil attacked me. When he sent the Phoenix into a spin, many things were loose and the reacted proto-matter container was smashed. But still – it was completely oxidized – an inert dust, it should not have reacted with anything."

Pierre examined him. He knew Rashid was, like himself, an avid scientist, and that his feelings of guilt had blinded him to the obvious. He chose not to corral him towards the answer like his father would have done – he wanted to help him arrive. This was no game or after-dinner lesson now, the stakes were far higher.

"Rashid," he spoke softly, "it didn’t have to react with anything, did it?"

Still Rashid could not cross the inferential chasm which Pierre had already vaulted. Kat chipped in.

"If it wasn’t reactive, Pierre, how could it cause a desert?"

He turned to her. "Where does the desert come from?"

She shrugged.

"Look around you, what do you see?"

Without looking around, she answered matter of fact. "Trees, rocks, grass, bushes, lakes in the distance, and an orange desert. And a side of you I’ve not seen before."

Pierre cleared his throat. "What do you see, Rashid?"

Rashid surveyed the terrain.

"I see a virgin world with no animals – I see a land that looks fertile but is sterile. It should be our new home but it is not – it is alien. It is – a fiction."

How apt, he thought. Rashid had finally accepted what he must have unconsciously suspected for months. But Kat stood up, annoyed, propping the rifle against the chair.

"A fiction? Come on guys. Can I please join the party? What on earth’s that supposed to mean?"

Pierre’s legs felt weak; he’d just discovered what he was standing on, what this planet was. "It means," he said, "that this world has been created – most likely terraformed by the Q’Roth. Made to look like Earth – like Earth was."

Her voice lost its edge. "But why?"

Rashid sagged. "A trap. A beautiful snare. A whole planet used as a lure."

She focused on Pierre. "And the desert? How does that fit in?"

He said nothing, letting Rashid answer – he needed the catharsis after such a long time in denial. Rashid dug his hand into the soil, lifted it up, and spoke as it fell through his fingers. "My proto-matter was inert. It could not cause a reaction. But it could act as a catalyst. When I crashed here, the dust was scattered. One of the first things I did was to bury Azil. His body decaying, with even microscopic amounts of the dust as a catalyst, must have triggered a terraforming reversal or breakdown – a cascade effect dissolving the terraformed matter back into its original state. It means Eden was a dead world centuries ago, a barren desert planet."

Pierre watched Rashid’s downcast face: he’d lost so much. It was a wonder he’d survived at all. "You shouldn’t feel bad, Rashid. It’s the one piece of hard evidence that must by now be visible all the way back to Hubble IV. People will start questioning this planet’s true nature. After all, little point leaving one desertified planet for another. I’m also betting it saved your life."

Rashid regarded him quizzically, and then his brow broadened, another piece of the puzzle locking into place. "The eggs. Yes! The Q’Roth do not wish to risk contamination. They do not know if it is inert or not, only that it should not be here. Perhaps they are merely guardians, not scientists. They avoid the desert."

Pierre observed the cloud lift from Rashid, not unlike the transformation of the dawn minutes earlier. But the moment was jarred as out of the corner of his eye he saw Blake leap down the steps from the Lander as Zack, behind, tossed the shoulder cannon down to him. Blake mounted the weapon and aimed it at Kat. "Get down!" he bellowed.

Kat froze, but Rashid rugby-tackled her from the side, allowing Blake to fire.

Pierre didn’t bother to check what he knew must be there; instead he dove for Kat’s pulse rifle. He rolled and came up into a kneeling position to see their nemesis – the one that had chased him – at the edge of the scrub. He flicked the rifle into free-flow and held the trigger, squirting a jet of white-hot laser at the guardian, twenty meters away. Another solid pulse burst joined Pierre’s – Zack’s he presumed. The frenzied roar of the weapons made him crouch closer to the ground. He pulled harder on the trigger.

The creature had been stopped by the blinding ionized jets, but didn’t disintegrate as it should do, its roar drowned in the grinding din, four of its six legs or arms flailing at them. Zack’s beam tracked upwards, finding its vocal system, and the roar stalled. The pulse rifles began to overload, their jets stuttering. Blake’s shoulder cannon charges pounded into its chest again and again, blasting them all with scalding shock waves that blew Pierre’s hair back. He locked his knees into place with a determined fear – to turn and run would be fatal. He held on for another few seconds till the creature, shrouded in sheets of flame and billowing smoke, its skin glowing red hot, turned and galloped back up the hill.

"Cease-fire!" Blake commanded, and the noise stopped abruptly, leaving a ringing in Pierre’s ears. Bushes all around them were either blackened or on fire. His skin tingled from the charged ozone all round them, feeling as if ants were crawling over his flesh. He lowered the rifle, careful not to touch the sizzling muzzle; the entire cartridge was spent. He got up and walked over to help Kat and Rashid up. Zack, clutching the ladder rungs with one hand to stabilize him, checked all around them with the heat-sensing binoculars. "Clear, Skip, it’s heading back up the hill, moving damned quick, too."

Kat shot Blake an embarrassed look. But Pierre had been senior officer outside; he knew what was coming.

"So, Pierre," – Blake’s voice was barbed wire – "tell me you weren’t discussing the weather."

"No, Sir. We’ve worked it out. It’s cleared up now." He gave a slight nod of his head towards Rashid, to convey that Rashid was not a risk to them. He felt Blake’s stare for a while. Blake then addressed Kat.

"Corporal – the radar was on, wasn’t it?"

She looked accusingly at the monitor; Pierre worried she might put her foot through it. "Definitely."

Blake shook his head. "Zack, stay out here and keep watch." He paused, glancing at Pierre. "And Zack – issue Rashid with a pulse rifle. I want this scrub cleared another thirty meters from the ship, so we have a few more seconds’ reaction time."

Kat butted in. "What if it attacks at night? If our radar can’t see it…"

Blake held up a hand. "Change in tactics. We’re not waiting for it, or them, to come here anymore. We’re going on the offensive. Pierre, you’re with me." He climbed the steps and disappeared into the ship.

◆◆◆

Pierre trudged along after Blake, his sweat absorbed by the chameleon all-terrain suit, his back-pack jiggling around on his back despite having pulled the straps tight as they’d go without chafing his armpits. They jogged their way up the escarpment in the tepid afternoon sun. He kept having to look down to ensure he didn’t trip over the small rocks peppering the grassy hill; which meant he had less time to scan for the creature. Each time one of the black-leaved trees loomed ahead he cocked his head sideways a moment to check nothing was hiding behind it, although the trunks were not really wide enough, and the trees themselves were barely taller than he was. They looked like beech. The artistry was impressive, even if something had gone awry with the color rendering; he had no doubt anymore that the Q’Roth had visited Earth at some point in the past. He shivered inside his suit as a bead of sweat evaded the absorbent lining and coasted down his spine.

His breathing was labored keeping up with Blake; he realized he should have exercised more during the twelve-week trip, as Blake had done. Blake was pulling away again. Pierre nudged up a gear, pushing his front thighs down harder to lengthen his pace.

The five of them had all agreed they needed to take back tangible proof to Earth. The only discussion, such as it was before Blake made the executive decision, was what constituted evidence. Blake and Zack had already pre-agreed it, Pierre was certain. Although the others said it was too dangerous, Blake’s final argument – that it would have to be something clear enough to convince himself if he were back on Earth – had won the "debate."

Pierre hadn’t treasure-hunted eggs since a kid, but there had been no three-meter tall guardians before, and this felt more like Russian roulette. Rashid and Kat had taken the skimmer to go back and rig the Phoenix neutralino detonator with a 12 hour silent timer, to accelerate the desertification process, since its effects would be visible to Hubble IV – so that even if something happened to all of them, the people back on Earth would hold back from approaching the planet.

Pierre tried to ease the tension out of his shoulders, but it was difficult: last time, he’d been sprinting down it in high gear in the opposite direction, as if he’d been immersed in Kat’s nightmare. Still, the logic was clear – Blake believed they were near the eggs. Otherwise, they would have been left alone by the guardian. Pierre must have been very close, causing the guardian to come out to kill him.

He was impressed by Blake’s stamina as they breached the tree-line. He just kept going, not pausing or looking around while on the move, not even stopping to wipe off the sweat. He never tripped, although he didn’t seem to watch the terrain.

They’d taken a circuitous route, in order to approach the position where Pierre had been attacked from the rear, rather than taking a direct assault, and had reached the upper escarpment. Blake slowed to a halt, slung off his backpack, wiped his brow and pulled out his flask of water. Pierre caught him up and slumped to the ground, retrieving his own water container.

"Five minutes," Blake said, remaining standing, hands on his waist as he scanned the horizon.

Pierre winced. His thighs reprimanded him for the relentless pace of the past hour’s trek. As he placed his backpack on the ground, he noticed Blake glance at it.

"I see you’ve slung your knife commando style, like Zack."

Pierre recalled the ghoster encounter. "Well, I wouldn’t be much of a scientist if I didn’t learn anything, would I?"

"You think only scientists learn? Military engagements are the toughest teacher there is, and you only get one shot, sometimes not even get that."

He sighed. That wasn’t what I meant. Can’t you see when I’m trying to build a bridge?

"So tell me, Pierre, have you learned anything from its blood yet?"

He took a swig of tepid water before answering. He wanted more, but resisted.

"Nothing conclusive: hyper-dense molecular structure – the Lander auto-lab is still trying to break down its genetic code. Not from Earth, though. Its DNA, if that’s even what it is, is very different."

Blake smiled. "Well, that’s a relief, I suppose."

Pierre was always a little nervous when Blake smiled at him. For one thing he wasn’t used to it, and for another, it usually preceded something ominous.

"You trust Rashid, Pierre?" Blake’s eyes bore into him.

There was no way to lie, but this time he didn’t have to. "I trust him enough to take him back with us, if that’s what you mean." He wasn’t going to pretend this was idle banter, and knew that Rashid’s life – or to be more precise his ticket home – hung in the balance.

Blake spared a little water onto his self-cleaning kerchief and wiped his forehead with it, then the back of his neck. "Still, he concealed quite a few things from us. Not to mention he pulled a pistol on me."

He wanted to head this off straight away, and took a gamble. "Sir, we all hide things, don’t we?"

Blake’s hand slowed down a moment, before slipping the kerchief back into a pocket.

Pierre pressed on. "I wasn’t there when you were in the remains of his ship, but my understanding is that he was ensuring you heard the truth – as he believed it to be – from the Hohash. He probably thought that if he didn’t have you under a pistol, you’d have blasted it as soon as it came within view."

Blake remained poker-faced. "You like him, don’t you? More your kind than I am, I mean – or Zack for that matter."

Pierre cringed inside – he hated this type of discussion. No logic – all gut feeling and impressions. "Sir – all I know is that he would be the first one to volunteer to remain here if we decided only four could go."

"I’ll remember that." Blake closed his flask tight, stashed it in his backpack, and picked up his weapon. "Shall we, Lieutenant?"

Pierre got to his feet, suppressing aches he hoped would disappear after ten paces, only to resurface more assiduously the next time they stopped.

They lay prone on a ridge, surveying the area below where he’d been earlier, and where the guardian had first been sighted.

"What’s our plan exactly, Sir?"

Blake put his binoculars down and gave him a smile that seemed genuine this time. "Zack’s going to get its attention, and then we’re going into its lair."

He regretted asking.

Ten minutes later, Zack charged up the escarpment on the skimmer, yelling as he came. Pierre strained to hear the words in the breezeless air, and then didn’t bother, as they were more color than content, the word "motherfucker" serving as the general refrain. "Why does he do that?"

Blake was tracking it all through his binoculars. "I remember a cadet asking him that very question, so I’ll tell you what Zack told him. He said the difference between a yell and a scream is simply a matter of who starts first, you or the enemy."

Pierre dismissed the idea as the sort of nonsense you tell cadets to make them trust you. He scanned to see where the guardian would come from. Blake spotted it first.

"Two o’clock, three bushes in a triangle, a small tree to the right." Blake said quietly, then with a flick of the microphone, "Zack – he’s in your ten o’clock."

They watched as Zack headed right for the creature. Pierre actually thought he was going to ram it, but a second before contact, Zack flipped the skimmer one-eighty, catching the guardian in a focused jet stream, and accelerated away in the opposite direction. It followed in hot pursuit. God, it was fast!

"Not so smart," Blake said. "Let’s go."

They stole down the hill using as much boulder and tree cover as possible. In two minutes they reached the place where the Q’Roth had emerged. A gaping hole loomed before their feet: a downward channel about a meter wide, and three high, descending into darkness; a ramp to hell, Pierre thought. Blake pulled out his torch and fixed it to his rifle. Pierre copied him, with less practised movements, and followed him inside.

As they jogged through the channel that was far taller than they needed, it only reminded Pierre of their size relative to the creature. The passageway was clearly not natural – the walls smooth, uniform, and dry. There was a strange smell of rancid citrus fruit. Worse was the noise their footfalls made, echoing both backwards and forwards into the tunnel. If there was another guardian inside… He gripped his rifle tighter, and checked he could reach the knife handle in his backpack.

It felt like venturing down the esophagus of some sleeping leviathan. They continued two full minutes descending into the hill at a steep incline – it was going to be tricky getting out of there – it wouldn’t be a fast exit. The thought occurred to him that Blake might be on some kind of one-way ticket, armed with as many explosives as he could carry. Pierre didn’t want to think that he might end here, inside an alien burrow. He tried to concentrate, praying for an end to this nightmarish corridor that was playing havoc with his nerves, and hoping that Zack was still infuriating – and therefore occupying – the creature.

Blake skidded to a stop in front of Pierre and held out his arm. Pierre managed to stop just in time, on the edge of a precipice, as they entered a cathedral-like chamber. Sharp cracks stabbed the silence, as small rocks they had just pushed over the edge tumbled to the bottom, landing within a couple of seconds. Tardy, deeper echoes told him the vastness of this subterranean cavity, the torch beams dissipating hopelessly in the dark void. Blake put down his rifle and extracted a stubby pistol from his backpack. He lifted his arm and fired a magnesium spike flare upwards into the middle of the cavern. It found purchase in the massive domed ceiling, illuminating the cavern in a ghoulish twilight.

Pierre looked down below, across the plain stretching out before them. "Eggs," he said, a hollow feeling in his stomach; eggs, as far as he could see. But they had been cruelly misled by the Hohash image. It was almost a joke. Steal an egg, they’d decided. As if they could put one in their rucksacks. Pierre recalled that when Blake had seen the Hohash image, there had been no frame of reference. He gazed at the nearest row. Each egg was twice the height and width of a man.

He switched into scientist mode, to allay the welling-up of fear. He cleared his throat. "They must hatch fully grown. Makes ecological sense for a predator."

Blake crouched on the solid-rock floor, and tossed a pebble over the side of the small cliff. He pulled out a navcon from his backpack and swept the surrounding area, before the light from the flare dimmed. When it sputtered and died, it felt worse to Pierre – not seeing the silent arrays of eggs, yet knowing they were there.

"The navcon has ninety-five per cent of the image," Blake said.

They both retrieved and donned their goggles, and switched off their torches, plunging themselves into abyssal darkness. Pierre flicked a switch on his goggles and instantly could see pretty much what he’d been able to see in the fullness of the flare a minute before, whichever way he moved or turned his head. Pierre recalled this gadget had come close to getting the Nobel Tech prize. He reckoned it should have won.

He activated his transponder, so the navcon could map their relative positions and overlay them onto the recorded scene, stopping them from bumping into each other. Peering over the edge again, he saw the eggs – large and rugged-looking, sitting upright. Of course he was seeing where they were, and was assuming – hoping – that nothing was moving down there.

Pierre heard Blake remove his goggles briefly, so he did too, flicking his torch on.

"Motion sensor," Blake said, lobbing a small device back into the tunnel behind them. He then took out a self-burying eye-bolt, placed it on the rocky floor, touched the two-second primer, and stood back. With a sound like an underwater gunshot, it fired itself into the stone with a reassuring thud. He attached the auto-feed wire system to the eyebolt via a karabiner and replaced his goggles.

"Wait twenty seconds, then follow."

He swung himself smoothly over the edge and abseiled down.

Pierre counted to twenty, attached his own auto-descent system to the wire, and replaced his goggles. He backed toward the edge. He thought he heard something, a distant rumbling, coming from the entrance. Uselessly, he looked toward it, but of course the goggles could show no movement. He leant back, bent his knees, and kicked off, propelling himself away and down the cliff-face.

A shrill electronic whine, rising in tone, made him misjudge his descent, and his knees smashed into the cliff face, stinging with pain – the motion detector had sensed something approaching, fast. The whine was drowned out by the creature’s roar, and it felt to Pierre as if the whole chamber vibrated. He pressed the freefall button on his harness and dropped faster, but was suddenly yanked upwards. Pebble-sized rocks pummeled his head and shoulders.

"Cut the line!" Blake shouted from below.

In disbelief Pierre looked upward and saw nothing, then raked his goggles down and managed to switch on his torch – the creature was hauling him up. He could see its trapezoidal head, the blood red breathing slits writhing on its black-blue face. The creature’s roar made Pierre’s hands freeze, clinging to the cord.

"Pierre! CUT – THE – LINE!"

He rose rapidly in jerks, a meter at a time, the creature’s forelegs feverishly pulling up the line, like a spider reeling in a fly. Pierre could hardly breathe, as his right hand flailed behind him groping for the knife. His head bashed against the cliff face knocking his torch from his left hand as he tried to protect himself. He knew he had only a few more seconds. His outstretched right hand fingers brushed across the hilt and he gripped it with all his might. Another yank pulled him up almost to the ledge. With a yell not far short of a scream, he whipped the knife above his head and severed the line, feeling a gust of air as a claw lashed past his face. He freefell, hurling the knife sideways so he could lock his elbows around his neck and head, the creature’s howl of fury chasing him as he tumbled into the darkness below.

Chapter 35

Confession

Micah forced apart leaden eye-lids. It felt like prizing open an old, soil-encrusted coffin, from the inside. For a moment he thought he was suffering déjà vu – he expected to find Louise leaning over him, and Vince there as well. But instead he looked up into the doe-brown eyes of Antonia. Their gaze locked for a moment as he detected a flicker of passion, and he dared to wish… But she pulled away and slapped his face. Hard.

"He’s awake," she stated, her voice taut.

Micah felt four individual fingerprints stinging his cheek. He tried to sit up but his muscles weren’t talking to him. For the second time in a week he momentarily feared he’d become paralyzed. But he tried to calm himself – Antonia wouldn’t be so harsh on him if he was. He could no longer see her, but another body, plumper and with features that should ideally be kept in the dark, loomed into view. Must be the nurse. She muttered in a Spanish dialect he didn’t recognize, and fiddled with tubes he guessed were connected to him, moving her garish moon-face closer to his. He tried unsuccessfully to shrink into the pillow.

"You wake now?"

Micah always wondered why people said such obvious things. He decided he was too vulnerable not to humor her. "Yes."

She smiled, though he wished she would stop, at least with those teeth.

"You hungry?"

Micah thought about it. "No. How long?"

The face pulled back. She inspected the drips. "I get doctor, he explain everything. Eh! Que pasa? What that doing there? Bien, doctor must have reason." She seemed to be talking to herself. She leaned conspiratorially closer, her breath causing Micah to suspend respiration, and whispered louder than most people talked. "She mad with you." And like a sped-up eclipse she receded, revealing normality again.

I already worked that one out. He was about to sigh with relief when Antonia appeared above him. It didn’t help that he felt drunk, tense and sentimental all at the same time – he wondered what they were pumping into him. Then he remembered – the booster – it had worn off. What had the doc said? Depression, emotional rollercoaster, best if you lay low for a couple of days, stay away from sharp objects and people you love…

"Antonia… Don’t hit me again," he said, meaning it. Her face hovered, as stern as she could muster, he guessed.

"Slap. I slapped you. Hit and slap are different. Trust me."

He did. "Why? I mean why did you slap me?"

She shook her head in disgust and strode out of is line of sight. He heard a few steps and then nothing.

"Antonia – are you still there?" Silence. Micah could hear his heart pounding of its own accord, the faint sound of air conditioning, and a bubble from one of the many drips that were stopping him from feeling hungry and, he imagined, suppressing the pain. He couldn’t quite remember how he got there, wherever "there" was. But the Antonia situation seemed more pressing. His thinking was confused, like an old style radio receiver that couldn’t quite tune in.

"You and Louise. You’ve been – fucking. That’s the word she used."

Shit! He knew the only way out was full disclosure. Well, partial disclosure at least. His head was swimming. He hadn’t felt this bad since the morning after he turned eighteen. But as well as the physical withdrawal – like his insides had been raked out, mashed, and then glued back in – his emotions were haywire. He was brimming with self-doubt and self-loathing in equal measure, his life amounting to a heap of pathos. And a cliff-drop of sadness – he’d not felt this way since his sister Cindy, his only real childhood companion, was killed, and he stood at the funeral without a coffin, as she’d been ashed… His mind was all over the place. His head wasn’t swimming, it was drowning. He tried to focus, to reach the surface. What had Antonia asked him? It wouldn’t be good to lose track now. Thankfully, he remembered.

"Actually, she kind of…" he knew it was going to sound lame."She kind of pushed me into it. She’s quite forceful, in the physical way, too." His brain succeeded in applying brakes to his mouth. He stared up at the ceiling. Maybe it would conveniently collapse right now. He imagined her face appearing there, moments before he experienced the difference between hit and slap. But her voice speared towards him from across the room.

"So, you’re telling me now she raped you? That’s just another sick male fantasy, Micah. You disgust me!" Her heels clopped over to his bedside, her face swinging into view – eyes hard, nostrils flaring.

"She knows about me and Kat, Micah. You told her I had a lover – well, I don’t know how much you told her, but she forced it out of me. I trusted you, took you into my confidence, and you led that – that Chorazin bitch – to my deepest secret. What were you thinking?"

Good question. He tried to distance himself from this – he’d crossed a line, more than one, screwed up. But more importantly, he’d hurt her. His intestines wrapped themselves into a tourniquet. He didn’t know what to say, but decided platitudes were better than nothing.

"I’m sorry. Believe me, Antonia." He meant it. He wanted to wake up again, somewhere, anywhere else, with the past few days erased.

She scrutinized him, then vanished from view again. "She threatened me with interrogation – deep profiling." Her shrill voice filled the small room. "She could put me in prison – you know how they work. And you placed me in that position. All so you could… so you could… fuck… that whore!"

The fact that he was sure she never swore was acid on the blade. He somehow knew she was not looking at him. A swell of remorse swept through him. This was booster-withdrawal-aided, but knowing that didn’t help matters. But a part of him mounted a silent defense – he had been seduced by Louise, and he loved Antonia, yet she didn’t love him. But another part of him, a cooler, more collected part – the analyst – asked himself why he had told Louise?

"Micah, I only told you because of Kat. I thought you agreed to help her, to help us?"

He gave up his internal self-defense. Somewhere in the back of his mind he saw his father shaking his head in dismay, disappointed with him yet again. Everything that had happened over the last few days surfed over him; the booster wasn’t there anymore to buoy his confidence. His lips began to tremble so he forced them together. He felt a stinging in his eyes. Not now, he thought, that’s the last thing I need, but the emotional storm sought release. He squeezed them shut, too late.

"She’s up there, Micah!" she continued, in full flow. "Light years away, risking her life for all of us, and you don’t – you don’t give a shit! This isn’t a game you know."

He heard her approach. He wished his neck would damn well respond, so she wouldn’t see the tear burning a trail down his cheek. He sensed her standing right next to him. All he could hear was his own jagged breathing.

A cool finger touched his cheek. He felt the wetness between his face and her, a kind of amniotic connection. He squeezed his lips tight, his eyes still closed – if he opened them now, and saw sympathy or even empathy… He never wanted her to see him like this, like the small boy his father still taunted him from his grave that he would always be.

Cotton wool dabbed at his face, his eyes. The transitory vortex of self-pity and angst blew itself out, and he regained at least a fumbling control of his breathing. Sniffing once, he opened his eyelids, still wet from the inside, fearing what he might see. But her face had mollified. He saw a degree of confusion there, but at least the anger was gone.

"I’m – so – sorry, Antonia." The words came out naked. His own voice sounded foreign, the analyst switched off. "You have no idea. No idea what I’ve been through these past few days. And I’m trying, trying really hard," he sniffed again, and she dabbed at his cheek, "to save them all. And I would never – ever, do anything to hurt you. As for Louise – I honestly wish none of it had happened. It was you, Antonia, I –"

Another voice cut across the room. "Well, well, finally woken up, I see."

Micah stopped dead. Antonia whirled out of view.

"Why are you wearing that? Where’s the doctor?" Antonia was shouting.

There was a dull sound followed by a rustling.

Micah frowned. "Antonia?"

Louise loomed into view, a deadly calm expression that outdid Antonia’s stern look any day of the year.

"What have you done to her?" Micah tried again to move, but nothing happened. "You men are so dreadfully predictable, so pathetic. She doesn’t love you, Micah." Louise flickered a smile. "Don’t worry; your platonic friend is just KO’d for a short while. She was beginning to sound whiny, don’t you think?" Louise perched herself on the bed next to him. "The question is whether to let her wake up or not." She paused to allow it to sink in. "And that depends on you, Micah. You see, I’m willing to make you a deal. Your life for hers."

Micah gaped at her. ‘W-what do you mean? Why would you kill either of us? You’re Chorazin… we’re on the same side. Vince –"

The suddenness of the fist rocketing into his solar plexus was almost as much a shock as the blinding pain that occurred a second later. He couldn’t breathe for a good twenty seconds, even as the nausea churned deep in his gut. At last he sucked in some air, as if through a straw.

"Vince isn’t here. As for the Chorazin, you could say I just tendered my resignation. I’m playing for the winning side."

Although she glared down at him, there was still something, Micah thought, a strand of possible redemption in her eyes. "Then why," he rasped, "why did you, you know…? I thought you –"

Her face hardened. "You thought what, Micah? Don’t think you know me. You haven’t even scratched the surface. Vince and I were an item for two years, but he barely understands what I’m capable of."

Micah didn’t doubt it. He recalled Rudi’s devastated Optron landscape, wondering if that was what it was like inside her, ruined beyond redemption.

"First things first," she resumed, "do you love the Slovakian waif lying unconscious on the floor?" She arched her eyebrows as she waited for the answer.

Micah was nonplussed. Could she be jealous? Ridiculous. Idle curiosity? He did his best to nod in the affirmative. He coughed, at long last getting serious air back into his lungs.

"I want to hear you say it, Micah, loud and clear."

"Why? What does it –?"

"Just between you and me."

Micah swallowed. He’d been on the point of confessing to Antonia when Louise arrived, though he had not been sure the words would ever have come out. Perhaps it would be good to say it to someone. Anyway, Antonia was knocked out on the floor…

"Okay. Yes, I love her. I’ve loved her from the first day I saw her."

"And yet you are going to try and re-unite her with her astronaut girlfriend?"

He scrutinized Louise. He didn’t know what game this was, but he saw no other option for now than to play along. She’s probably going to kill me anyway.

"Yes. I – I know she loves her, not me. I... I want... Well, I know you won’t understand, Louise, but if she’s happy and I’m not, then it’s better than nothing." It sounded pretty sad even to him.

"I’ll give you this, Micah, of all the losers I’ve met in my time, you have to be the most self-acknowledging of them all. A shame. I had my eye on you, you know. Thought you showed promise, that maybe we could save you. Would have been a lot of work, but… Never mind, your choice."

He detected a shift – whatever the something he’d seen in her regard for him before, was gone. She placed a thumb and forefinger on either side of his neck.

"Here’s the deal. You tell me what you found out during your Optron run of Rudi’s data crystal, and then I kill you. But she gets to wake up."

He looked at her incredulously. It was one thing to think someone might kill you but quite another to hear it from them, so cold, so matter-of-fact. But he recognized she was serious; he’d seen that look in the assassin’s eyes too. Her right hand closed around his throat, thumb on one carotid artery, fingers on the other. Her other hand brought a pulse pistol into his line of sight as she waved it in what was presumably Antonia’s prone direction.

"How do I know –?"

"That I won’t kill her afterwards? Well, I’ve been undercover long enough, I’ve enjoyed my – sabbatical, let’s say – at the Chorazin, but the agenda is moving faster now, and I’ve been recalled. Frankly, your little friend is inconsequential, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, or in this case, won’t get her killed. It’s just between you and me, Micah. I like to make my business personal."

Micah knew he’d die, but he could save Antonia. It was something. "Okay," he said, voice firm.

"I want all of it, Micah. You lie for an instant, I’ll kill you both, her first. And I’ll see it if you’re holding out on me."

Micah did his best to nod. Since waking he’d been aware that something had been downloaded into his brain during the Optron accident. It hung in his mind like a wrapped parcel waiting for him to access it, and he had the feeling it wasn’t good news. Shutting out the external world, he switched into recall mode. He let the words pour out.

"When I crashed in Rudi’s landscape, I blacked out, but it downloaded memories that weren’t mine; I still don’t know how… I saw partly through the data-stream hidden by the Kat simulacrum before it was destroyed by the virus, partly through Kat’s own eyes, and also through something else’s the rest of the time, what or who I have no idea. I witnessed the ghoster attack from the cockpit screens, which is where Kat was at the time, and her actions, which triggered the comms virus. I also saw what I believe was one of her nightmares, but it was very clear – she was being chased by a blue-black creature, a giant insect with six legs." Micah felt Louise’s hand on his neck flex when he mentioned the creature. "Then she woke up, and I saw Zack through Kat’s eyes, and then Pierre." He paused. So much had been downloaded. This was way beyond Rudi’s expertise, or anyone else’s.

"Resume," she said, flat.

He realized she was encoding it in her memory, word for word, maybe even the intonation – he’d seen the technique before, some analysts could do it – so she could relay it later. He continued; he couldn’t afford to interrupt the flow. "Then, there was something else. It was very different, and I don’t think it was seen by the crew, but by someone, or something more like – well, not human, at any rate." He flicked open his eyes to look at her, but she was just staring at him, and for the first time she looked somehow alien to him – or rather, she was looking at him as if he were an inferior being. He felt a chill run through him, as he grasped the truth about Louise. Her hand twitched, reminding him of the deal. He closed his eyes.

"It was somewhere else. I mean not Earth, nor Eden. This set of images had been lodged in the datastream before it finally disappeared, before the Kat simulacrum was disaggregated by the virus. It was a city – a beautiful city, with spider-like creatures…"

Micah re-counted the whole scene of the destruction of the planet, and then the scenes of the eggs and the two guardians on Eden. He stopped.

"Anything else?" Again, a flat, distant tone. "Anything else?" she repeated, squeezing his neck so that he felt a throb of blood pressure in his skull.

Micah thought about the old story he’d heard when he was a kid – A Thousand and One Arabian nights – but he had nothing more to tell, and Louise only wanted facts, not stories. "That’s it."

She stood, fishing for something from a black doctor’s bag, while one hand remained on his throat. Micah knew he had very little time. Since witnessing the creatures and the other-planet incursion, he’d been trying to put all the pieces together: the ships, the creatures, the Alicians. He had to ask. A name had been encoded in the message.

"These creatures – the Q’Roth –"

Her hand tightened around his throat. "Don’t speak their name, Micah."

He coughed. "They’re on Eden, but they’re coming here, aren’t they?"

She produced a syringe filled with a blue liquid, and spoke while she inspected it, tapping it with her second finger. "Some people go to Eden; there is a first feed – a booster if you like, and then they come here for the main course." She stabbed the syringe into one of the drips above his head, her thumb poised on the plunger. "They’re going to eradicate this pitiful, fatally flawed species, and crush this planet – but the best, with humanity’s weaknesses genetically ironed out of us, will survive, start afresh. No more wars, Micah, no more injustice and corruption, no more hurting each other or our new planet."

She gave him one last look. Then she closed up like a fan. "Goodbye, Micah. This won’t hurt, you’ll just go to sleep and not wake up. But if you make a sound, I’ll crush your vagus nerve and leave you to asphyxiate slowly."

Micah wondered what he should think about in his last few seconds of life.

He heard a loud popping sound. Hot blood rained down on him, a deep cavity appearing in the centre of Louise’s forehead. He watched with a mixture of shock, revulsion and morbid fascination as she continued to stand for a second, a coin-sized cauterized hole above her right eyebrow, so that he could see charred brain matter inside, the smell of barbecued flesh assaulting his nostrils. She slumped out of his line of sight. He coughed as some of her blood trickled down his throat, and squinted painfully as more of it seeped into his eyes.

Vince, panting, appeared over him, sweat on his forehead.

"Christ that was close. I damn near ran all the way from the set-down point, once I found what she’d left of Abrahams. Had to down three of our own to get through the false security ring she’d placed around this ward." He caught his breath. "You okay, Micah?" Vince wiped most of the blood out of Micah’s eyes with a piece of bed-linen.

"You killed her?" Micah said, still trying to come to terms with what had just happened. It was yet another obvious statement, but he needed to have it confirmed.

Vince paused and looked down at her, as if surprised at what he’d just done. "Reflex," he said. "No time to think about it. She was about to kill you, and believe me the girl would have been next." Vince tugged some of the tubes out of Micah’s arm. He barely felt the pain.

"One of these drips is a neuro-muscular blocker – shouldn’t be here – no doubt Louise inserted it yesterday – that’s why you can’t move."

Micah looked up at Vince, trying to gain his attention. "Vince – she wasn’t going to kill Antonia – she knocked her out, so she didn’t hear any of the stuff I got from the datastream."

Vince shook his head. "Antonia wasn’t knocked out, Micah. Louise used a curare-based stun needle on her – she’s been paralyzed but conscious the whole time. Believe me; she was going to be killed straight after you."

Micah’s mouth opened. Then it closed.

"I’ll bring her round in a moment," Vince said. He moved close to Micah and whispered. "She must really like you, kid, looks like she was so worried about you she’s been crying."

Micah nodded absently. His head felt heavy. Vince injected him with something and he immediately felt his muscles again. Vince helped him up into a sitting position.

"Stay there. Don’t move." Vince pulled Louise’s body to one side. He seemed to Micah to feel no remorse about killing her, but he decided, with Vince, you’d never know. Two more agents appeared at the door. Vince nodded to where Louise lay,

"Take her for autopsy straight away." As they manhandled her body, he added, "Hey – take it easy with her, for Christ’s sake."

Micah observed the scene, surreal to him, as Louise’s blood-drenched form, so full of life a minute ago, now a flaccid corpse, was hefted out of the room.

Vince stooped over Antonia, now in a chair facing Micah, and gave her an injection. Micah could see her half-glazed eyes, her face immobile and soft, no muscle tone. But her cheeks were stained. She stared in his direction. Micah didn’t utter a word. He’d said more than enough already. Besides, he had no idea what she was thinking. But while everything else was being cleaned up around them, she never once broke his gaze.

Chapter 36

Sentinels

It had been a bloody day. Sentinel Master Cheveyo and his small team had racked up a death toll of twenty-six in the past twelve hours since he’d spoken to Gabriel – to secure transport, steal IVS identities and a nuke, and gain access to the IVS-found ship. They’d also cornered, questioned and then executed one of the Alician Inner Circle. The interrogation hadn’t lasted long – the woman had almost wanted to tell Cheveyo how he and the rest of an inferior humanity would perish. He now understood the Alician-Q’Roth strategy. He did not know how many Q’Roth ships there were, but he was going to make sure at least one of them didn’t return.

Cheveyo came from an Order that had been in existence almost as long as the Alicians, since the time a reptile-like Ranger had crash-landed in the Himalayas. Wounded, he’d been rescued by the local tribes-people who worshipped all manner of animal gods. The Ranger later led them to the Q’Roth ship hidden beneath the glacier, where he knew he could get supplies to repair his own small craft. He – or she – took pity on the people of a doomed planet, and helped them understand the storm that was coming. The one thing the Ranger had impressed upon the original ten Order members, nine hundred years ago, was that when the Q’Roth came, it would be fast, the onslaught relentless.

He and Ramires, his last disciple, had replaced the Chief and First Officer of an IVS cargo ship laden with supplies. They stood on the bridge, Cheveyo at the helm, although the vessel was automatically piloted. They had just left the safety of Truk Lagoon, a natural shelter against the typhoon which had been hampering efforts to get near the Q’Roth ship, but was now dying down. Heavy rain pattered the ceiling as their jetfoil skirted over giant, lumbering waves to reach the site by nightfall.

Ramires interrupted his teacher’s reflections. "Master, do you – "

"Do not call me that – not here."

Ramires, fifty years Cheveyo’s junior, nodded at once, respectfully. "I understand the plan only to a point. We can board the Q’Roth ship – but the key – we do not have the key."

Cheveyo watched the rolling of the horizon, the spray spattering the bridge windshield, and found it calming. "The key will arrive. They want the ships to go to Eden – they serve no purpose if they remain here."

"I see," Ramires said, though Cheveyo detected the hint of doubt. That was good. He had never wanted acolytes to follow every word – that was the Alician way. A blindly obedient mind was useless to the Sentinels.

"Our paths must separate: you will head back to your part of the world, to the ship that was found yesterday."

Ramires was about to protest, but Cheveyo held up a hand. "We are very few now. I do not know if any other cells of the Order have survived the recent Alician purge."

Ramires frowned. "But what if –"

"What if?" Cheveyo rounded on him. "Have you learned nothing from me all these years? What if? That is the realm where resolve founders on the rocks." He handed Ramires a flight chip and a metallic object that looked like a thin metallic torch.

"Your apprenticeship is over. When we dock, take the IVS jet back to Manila, steal another and fly direct to Cocos. From there you are on your own. Board the ship by whatever means possible, and ensure it is appropriately loaded."

Ramires stared at the thin metal cylinder cradled in his hands. He bowed deeply. Cheveyo knew Ramires’ apprenticeship was ending prematurely – in truth he was not ready. But they were out of time.

The resurrected ship reared up on the horizon, growing larger as they crested each Pacific swell. Cheveyo had been inside one beneath the glacier, but had never seen one in its massive entirety. Charcoal in color, it looked like a metal cake with triangular portions missing, a tower extruding upwards from its middle. He did a quick mental calculation of how many people it could carry, and didn’t like the number. The huge, matt object had a distinct ‘other-ness’ about it, as if superimposed digitally onto the seascape. Barely moving despite the weather, and with the sun behind it, it resembled a barren volcanic island. The waves lashed against it, as if nature abhorred this harbinger of Earth’s destruction. As they grew nearer, he noticed that no sea-birds landed on it, or even approached it, instead remaining in flight or resting on the dwarfed flotilla of IVS ships rocking slowly in the Q’Roth ship’s shade. He was reminded of something his Master had once told him: nature’s instincts are less easily fooled than human intelligence.

The disconcerting aspect was that eighty per cent of the ship was still underwater. He presumed this vessel was identical on the inside to the one he had explored numerous times over the years since a child. He closed his eyes and visualized the conning tower, containing several rooms that controlled the ship, with a surrounding spiral ramp accessing all levels except a central core beneath the tower. This area was believed to house the engine that no one except the Ranger had ever seen.

Each of the seven main levels of the ship beneath tower level had a ceiling four meters high, forming a honeycomb of interconnecting rooms of various shapes and sizes. One of his childhood friends had gotten lost in the ship under the glacier; it had taken three days for the Order to find him, perished from hypothermia.

He now knew it would take people to Eden, but return full of strengthened Q’Roth. For a moment he wondered if people would really board such a behemoth – it was like persuading sardines to climb into a tin can. But rumours already abounded that people were flocking to the new-found ship encrusted in one of the Willow Pattern Mountains of Guilin, China, and another in Central Australia. The promise of Eden, and the current plight of humanity, had worn people to the point they could overcome their better judgment and see salvation in a vessel so hideously bleak.

As the autopilot steered them towards the docking barge adjoining the ship, they were boarded by officials to have their papers and cargo checked. Ramires turned to his Master of the past fifteen years, his face locked down to show none of the emotions Cheveyo knew churned on the inside.

"Die well," was all Ramires said, the obligatory Sentinel farewell, and without awaiting a reply he left to find the small boat that would take him to the IVS command ship.

Cheveyo smiled as he watched his last surviving student leave. I was wrong about you, Ramires; your apprenticeship is over. Live well. It would be good if at least one of the Order survives.

◆◆◆

Jennifer squatted on her haunches in the makeshift bedroom she shared onboard the Q’Roth ship with Dimitri. Alone, having just finished an advanced karate kata, sweat glistened on her brow, the breezeless air clinging to her skin. She never showed this side of her character to Dimitri. She paused before the final kata in the series, recalling a conversation with him.

"I love the way you outsmart people, Jennifer – you see through the words to what they are really thinking, and you cut them up marvellously. Even people who are more intelligent than you" – she’d inwardly winced – "you outsmart, staying several steps ahead of them. It really annoys them!"

Yes, she’d thought at the time, that’s why I never get invited to parties, and have almost no friends. But she recalled the rest.

"I have had beautiful girlfriends, models… But I prefer you, your mind – and of course I love your physical assets, but it’s your mind I love. That will never fade."

She stood motionless remembering how she had felt: getting what she had wanted, but with barbs attached. Was she that unattractive? She launched into the seventh and final kata with renewed energy, finishing with a heartfelt kiai shout that managed to dredge an echo from the dank, dark walls.

She headed for the makeshift shower in the room next door, walking along the ship's floor that was the same mottled grey as the walls, and was like dead skin to the touch. The walls seemed to suck in sound. Although space heaters had been installed on two floors to house the thirty or so engineers and scientists working aboard the ship, as well as aircon units to protect the bio-computers they were using to understand how the vessel worked, nothing seemed to allay the relentless cold. The lack of corners anywhere on this ship, giving all the rooms an oval feel, made it seem like an insect’s lair; or maybe a nest. She turned the shower to very hot, scalding the sweat from her body.

She dried off and donned a purple IVS jumpsuit, and went to find Dimitri. But as she neared what had been designated the main control room in the tower, she heard raised voices. Not listening to the words, instead she searched for Dimitri’s signature Greek accent. Sure enough she found it – his was the only voice that remained quiet, though she was sure he was infuriating the other engineers. She peeked into the room.

"Hell, Kostakis," Hendriks, the Chief IVS Engineer, shouted. "For the love of God, we can’t just throw the damned switch! We don’t have a clue what will happen. The simulations –"

"Simulations?" Kostakis threw the straight-standing, balding man an incredulous look. "Simulations you say? Listen to yourself. You might as well run a sex-vid – it would just as likely be a reliable simulation of this ship’s engines! We have not even found the engines yet." He fingered his goatee, shaking his head in dismay. "Hendriks, my dear fellow, do you know the difference between an engineer and a scientist?"

"You mean besides the fat salary and the female students?"

Hendriks had clearly had enough, Jennifer thought, as she edged into the room – when people get really angry, that’s when they speak their mind. She watched the two men hold their ground in the face-off, six other engineers around them trying their best to melt into the background.

Dimitri bridled at the insult. He smiled broadly. "Yes, besides those things and other… perks." He paused to let the reversal take its full effect. "It’s that you engineers approximate, that’s all you ever do, and you always stay within your limited paradigm. You never try to understand anything first, or embrace something truly new – something alien!"

Hendriks thwacked his hand down on a small metallic table. "Well, the way I heard it most scientists believe in data, analysis and prudence – you want to switch this thing on and that’s your whole fucking experimental paradigm – trial and error – a bit of adventure! Crap! You want the glory without the hard work, and that’s the approach of a charlatan, not a scientist!"

Jennifer darted towards them as Dimitri’s bulk closed on Hendriks – she’d never seen him violent, but no one ever talked to him that way either.

"Gentlemen – please." She parked herself between them with her small frame and muscular arms. "If I may suggest, it seems to me we need some division of labour here. We have to get the engine online and figure out the navigation system before we try to go anywhere, to see exactly where we’ll end up, whether we’ll hit any stars en route, and to know how to get back."

Neither of them looked down at her; they stood like two boxers before the first round, anxious to throw the first punch. Hendriks broke gaze first. "Ging, Wu, Araceli: you work with the Professor on the Nav system. I want a protocol by nightfall, not a fucking roulette system. Garrett, Cintati, Sokolov: you’re with me."

Jennifer lowered her arms, and turned to her lover, his barrel chest heaving. She could see he’d been bruised this time. After a few seconds, he stopped glaring in Hendriks’ direction and at last seemed to notice her. His face metamorphosed. He beamed at her, holding out his arms. "Thank you, my dear Jennifer. What would I do without you?"

She took his hands in hers, and started walking towards the navigational console. As she led him there, she caught a glimpse of an older man who had been standing just outside the room. He turned away, helping another three men lift a large crate onto a levi panel, maneuvering it down to a lower level. She noticed that despite his age, he seemed to be stronger than the young men. Something about them wasn’t right – but it would have to wait.

Two hours later, an uneasy truce hovered in the control room. Slow but measured progress was being gained by both teams, and a light chatter permeated the room, signifying a cessation of hostilities. Jennifer decided to see where the men with the crate had gone. She hadn’t felt like asking Hendriks.

Descending to the foot of the tower, to what appeared to be a smaller control room whose function they had yet to ascertain, she walked in alone, wrapping herself in the silence, wondering how long this vessel had lain at the bottom of the ocean, empty, waiting. The engineers had had a real hard time dating it, since nothing stuck to it, and they couldn’t even dent the metal. On being pressed, one of the engineers had stated that it was somewhere between a thousand and a hundred thousand years old; that was the best he could tell.

The absolute quiet she reveled in was punctured by the sound of fast, furtive footsteps. She remained still in the darkness as three people in rain gear slipped past the entrance heading down to the next level. She waited ten seconds and then sidled out quietly to follow the trio at a distance.

She was surprised how quickly they moved. She was tempted to try and catch up but her wartime instincts stopped her – it could be a trap – they were probably waiting quietly to see if anyone followed. She froze and held her breath, and began counting. When she got to thirty, the muffled sound of steps on the ramp below her resumed, descending further. Only when she reached sixty did she breathe in, slowly. Adrenaline surged, reminding her of the hide-and-seek med-evac runs she’d made in the ruins of radioactive Dublin, evading hunter-seeker robots.

The idea of going to get help surfaced and then submerged, partly because she knew she would lose them if she did that, but mainly because she never relied on anyone, not even Dimitri, not since she’d lost her family to the War.

She ran her hand over her right trouser pocket – the small stiletto knife she always carried was still there. Taking off her shoes, she continued barefoot. The floor in the second main level was clammy. A sheath covered all the metallic floors, walls and ceilings, like transparent linoleum. It gave everyone the creeps.

At the bottom, she saw the three figures receding into darkness across a vast chamber the size of a football field. The illumination was sporadic, cones of mustard light cascading downwards every ten meters. Jennifer knew she could follow them as long as she stayed about fifty meters behind, keeping between the circles of light on the floor. After a few minutes, she saw them approaching the opposite wall. Squinting in the half-light, she tried to see where they were going, wishing she had night goggles. As far as she could remember from her brief and futile foraging excursions when trapped inside the ship before it surfaced, there was only a blank wall. She struggled to see them at all, then realized they had vanished.

When she arrived at the wall, she looked for an opening, a crack, anything – but the wall and floor were seamless like the rest of the ship, as if the vessel had been hewn out of one piece of metal – or grown in some way. But where did they go? There was only one thing for it, she decided. She went to knock on the wall – and nearly stumbled straight through the holographic image as her hand disappeared. As she stared at her arm cut off at the elbow, someone grabbed her wrist and yanked her through the illusion – despite herself she shut her eyes and tensed up. She hit the ground hard and found herself staring up at the three people she had seen earlier, but they looked different now, standing proud, haughty, and it came to her instantly – Alicians.

"It’s her," a woman said, her voice scornful. "The one they told us about."

Jennifer didn’t like the sound of that. She’d seen enough in the War to recognize killers. She made as if to get up, in a way that would allow someone to kick her if they wanted to, and at the same time eased the stiletto out of her pocket. She hoped they would want to inflict pain before shooting her, or else she was dead meat. Looking small and defenseless had its peculiar advantages, she had learned since being bullied at school – it brought out the worst in people, they just couldn’t let an opportunity go by to kick someone when they were down.

"Kill her," the woman said, accompanied by, as she’d suspected, a boot aimed at her face. Jennifer ducked back down and the foot met not her face, but the stiletto, which pierced the heel up to the ankle as cleanly as a syringe. Jennifer hoped the scream that followed was loud enough to attract attention. She launched herself upwards and head-butted one of the two men in the groin just as he drew a pulse pistol. He made a deep grunting noise as he toppled onto her. She hadn’t anticipated it well enough, and his weight collapsed onto her, pinning her down. Even as she wrestled for his pistol, another foot kicked it aside.

"I said kill her!" The woman’s voice was shrill and full of rage. Jennifer considered her options and decided there was none other than dying. She heard three rapid swishes and then several heavy thuds, and what sounded like liquid squirting and then trickling onto the floor. Suddenly the weight of the man on top of her was removed, and blood gushed over her torso. Her hand was next to the head of the woman, its eyes frozen in shock. Two other heads lay on the floor, eyes gawping, mouths agape. The only man standing was the old man she had seen earlier. He didn’t look at her. He scanned the room. An electric blue sword-length blade hung from his left hand, a torch from his right.

He flicked something on the hilt and the blade disappeared. She stared up at him. "Nice weapon." She glanced at her stiletto, protruding out of the dead woman’s boot. "Wanna trade?"

"Get up, Jennifer, time to go."

She struggled to her feet, almost slipping in the blood. "Everyone seems to know me, but I don’t know anyone. It’s like being at a surprise party, only the surprises aren’t very pleasant."

He knelt over the dead woman and snatched an ankh pendant from around her neck.

"Souvenir?" Jennifer asked. "Trophy?" She retrieved her stiletto, with a slurping sound.

"I bring bad news."

She managed one laugh. "Bad news? You mean this is good?"

His glare silenced her mocking tone.

"Gabriel sent me. He is dead."

Jennifer staggered, almost tripping over one of the heads. "What? He’s… What are you talking about? And what do you know about my brother?" Visions from the previous night’s nightmare re-surfaced.

"He’s gone, Jennifer. I spoke to him yesterday, but Alicians – like these – killed him."

She balled her fists, sensed the blood rushing to her head. "Why are you doing this? Who the fuck are you, anyway? My brother died in the War years ago. He was a hero, he was –"

"Grimelda."

She paled. "What… what did you say?" her voice was uneven, her legs weakened beneath her.

"He told me that he once called you by that name, to annoy you. It usually worked. You broke his nose on the lake with an oar. He said he never told anyone you did it. He sent me to look out for you."

Her body trembled. She felt herself lose control, the rage boiling inside her. "Liar!" she screamed at him. "Bastard liar!" She lunged at him with the stiletto. He caught her hand in a vice-like grip and pinned it in mid air, centimeters from his neck, his eyes stone calm. With her other hand, and then her feet and her knee she attacked him, landing hefty blows that would have brought anyone else to the floor in agony. But he stood, taking it until her wrath wore itself out. He shook her by her arm.

"He only found out you were alive yesterday. He loved you. You were the only one he ever loved."

She was silent except for her serrated breath, her head bowed. He still held her stiletto hand. She let the stiletto fall. He released her, and she sank to the floor, head clasped in her hands.

"People are coming from the tower," he said. "We will talk more later. Gabriel had a mission. The war is not finished against his enemies – our enemies. You will see me again." He let go of her hand and vanished through the holographic wall.

She was drenched in someone else’s blood. Dimitri’s voice boomed out, calling for her, frantically shouting her name. She listened to him call her name several more times before she got up and walked through the holo-wall.

"Over here!" She brushed away tears, not caring that she smeared blood in their place. "I’m over here!"

Later, alone in their cabin, she told Dimitri everything. He implored her to leave the ship, but she refused. It was two in the morning and she was still wide awake. Dimitri was dog-tired, but refused to sleep.

She felt as if she’d just noticed she’d lost a limb. The worst thing was, if that man was telling the truth, and if Gabriel had only found out she was alive before he – died – then he would have been as warped as she was now. All that lost time they could have had together.

She had often thought their relationship mirrored that between Caligula and his sister – without the incest – a blood-bond intensity that surpassed any other relationship. She closed her eyes and tried to feel his presence, but couldn’t. It was like a sound you didn’t notice until it was switched off. All these years she had drawn confidence from him, maybe because at some unconscious level she knew he was still alive, and now he was gone.

Dimitri, his eyelids bloodhound heavy, stirred and squeezed her again, his bear-like paws wrapped around her unresponsive body. It didn’t comfort her, but maybe, she thought, it was stopping her going over the edge. But it wasn’t – she grasped that it was actually holding her back from dealing with this. She pretended to sleep, and sure enough, a few minutes later Dimitri began to snore. She eased herself from his loosened grip and slipped outside their tent.

She went to the lower control room, inhaling deeply the moist air. Now at least she could be alone with her thoughts. And with her brother. She sat on the cold floor and fingered her necklace. She didn’t need to look at the picture inside of her brother – she knew every line and hollow of his face. "Gabriel," she said, "I never told you how –." Her neck prickled. She sprang to her feet.

"You!" It was the old man, right behind her. She hadn’t heard him enter, and had just suddenly become aware he was there – she had a suspicion it was only because he’d allowed her to. Although she didn’t trust him, she wanted to know more about him, and her brother. Anything he could tell her would be hard currency.

He squatted, tracing a circle on the floor with the hilt of his nano-sword – she’d thought they were an old War-myth – etching a pattern on the surface that was like a tarpaulin stretched taut.

She squatted too, studying his features: grey hair, clear complexion, white moustache and beard, and sandalwood eyes – she hadn’t noticed until now. They accented his composure. No matter what this man did on the outside, she knew he inhabited the eye of the storm on the inside. But she wanted information, facts to paint over the vacuum of ten years of lost connection with Gabriel.

"My name is Cheveyo."

"You trained my brother, didn’t you?"

"My best pupil."

"Assassin?"

"Cleanser."

She was both stunned and proud – it was rumoured only one in twenty survived the training. "Many enemies?" She didn’t take her eyes off him for even a moment.

"One snake, many heads."

She made an effort to play out this game – using statements, not questions – to be equals. He was not her teacher. And she had the feeling he would only accept fiercely independent-minded students in any case.

"But the snake is still alive."

He carried on drawing patterns.

She felt a new sense of purpose – Gabriel was back somewhere in her universe again, part of her life, defining her as he used to. All the past ten years: of failed Chorazin entrance, of being a student biding her time – squandering it – loving a man but having to hide part of herself – the real her – to keep Dimitri – all this suddenly dropped from her, like cinders.

"Who do I kill?" she said, cold-blooded, slipping effortlessly back into Dublin gang-mode.

He met her eyes head on. "You think you are smarter than you are. That is a danger."

She bristled. "I am smart! It’s not just my studies. I saw you earlier. You didn’t look right, something was out of place."

"You think you notice things others do not."

She wanted to get up; her thighs hurt, but she knew that would somehow be defeat. She was in some kind of interview, and if she failed, this man, the one link to her brother, would be gone. But she knew she was smarter than other people.

"I see things others don’t."

The reply was instant, which annoyed her, because she was stuck following his script, which wasn’t how it usually went.

"All others? The men I was with, for example?"

She was about to snort with contempt, and say well, of bloody course! Then it dawned on her that she had been tricked.

"Ah," he said, "progress. What really happened this afternoon, Jennifer?"

She concentrated, suppressing the burning sensation in her thighs. She had missed something – no – she had been misdirected. She’d focused on him alone, not the others. But they were normal – weren’t they? Just some guys lifting a crate. The crate - what was in the crate? It crystallized in her mind.

"You’ve loaded a nuke on board!"

He rose as easily as if gravity was suddenly working in reverse, but did not extend a hand to help her up as she followed suit. He put his hand under her chin, and held it there. "What was I doing just now?"

Instinctively her head tried to move downwards to see what he had drawn, but the hand under her chin was iron.

"Nothing I do is without purpose, Jennifer. Nothing anyone does is without meaning. You must observe, and you must perceive – foreground, background, the threads between. You do see more than others, but your ghosts get in the way." He let go of her chin. For once, she knew she’d met more than her match.

She had to redeem herself. "How long have we got?"

"Where would you like to go?"

"That little time, eh?" She pursed her lips for a moment. "To the snake’s lair."

She grinned – it was the sort of game she and Gabriel would have played – should have played, together. He had been playing without her for a decade, but now she would finish his hand. He would watch from somewhere, maybe applaud. God, how she’d missed him!

Cheveyo flicked his eyes downwards. She looked at the pattern he had been drawing. It was a kind of insect, one she couldn’t identify, and next to it the ankh.

"The enemy." She understood; it all fitted together. "The owners – the true passengers of this ship."

"You are indeed smart. Gabriel told me that once – intuitive almost to the point of prescient. But knowledge divorced from action is academic. Are you ready?" He held up the metal ankh taken from the dead woman’s neck. He walked over to the console. "The people upstairs would not have been able to start the engines. They do not have the key. Besides, upstairs may control navigation, but here is the real control room. If I activate the engines from here, the destination is already pre-set." He held the ankh above a groove in the console. He waited for her reply.

"Shouldn’t we wake the others first?"

"What do you think they will do?"

The engineers would take control and delay launch. "Dimitri was right, after all?"

Cheveyo laid a hand lightly on her shoulder. "Professor Kostakis is usually right, even when he doesn’t know it. That’s why he loves you – your certitude. In fact he has it, after a fashion, but despite what that man said, Kostakis is a scientist, and is bound by a scientific approach. It sometimes slows him down from his true destiny."

Jennifer wondered how and why this man knew so much about Dimitri as well as Gabriel – the only two men she’d ever loved.

"It is time," he said.

She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry. Still he held the key, waiting.

"We’re going to Eden, aren’t we?" She struggled to believe it.

He smiled. "You are ready. Take a deep breath." He offered her his hand. As she took it, he dropped the key into the slot.

Chapter 37

Detonation

"We must go faster!" Rashid shouted through the helmet intercom system. Kat was already edgy enough. They had only just out-run the last shock wave, which had sent a mushroom of scorched sand high into the Eden sky, but they knew another worse one would soon come, as the neutralino detonator unleashed a series of discharges, each more powerful than its predecessor. Sweat trickled into her eyes as she swerved the skimmer around boulders at top speed. Her forearms and shoulders ached, but she continued to follow the Hohash mirror, twenty meters ahead, as it threaded an optimal escape route through the terrain – it meant she could drive as fast as her reactions permitted. A click interrupted her as Rashid activated the comms-link.

"Fifteen seconds until the next pulse. This one will send out high energy radiation. We must find shelter – the large boulder up ahead and to the right – stop on the leeward side."

Kat braced her arms and back, and let go of the throttle, triggering a descending high-pitched engine whine, shoving Rashid’s body forward onto her as they slowed down markedly. She veered the skimmer in a steep turn to the right. The mirror also turned, marking a wider arc. As she swerved the skimmer in a final tight twist toward the opposite side of the boulder, she caught sight of the pre-flash of white and purple, back where the Phoenix had been. She ploughed the skimmer over the sand like a surf board, as it juddered to a stop, but she misjudged it, and they bounced off a small dune hidden behind the boulder, knocking them both to the ground as the skimmer skittered away, sputtering to a halt.

"Right against the rock. Cover your eyes!" Rashid shouted.

Kat had no trouble complying, scrambling toward the boulder’s sheltering stone face. She curled up on her knees, face down, forearms across her visor, trying to bury her head in the sandy floor, to save her retinas from melting.

A hissing roar rose to an ear-splitting crescendo, even through her helmet. Kat knew it was the sound of the sand vitrifying and splintering, sending deadly shards up into the air. It was followed, not like last time by a sonic boom, but by a screeching that made Kat imagine banshees hurtling over them at great speed. Part of her wanted to take a look – she’d seen remote images of a neutralino detonation, but they’d always been optically filtered. Apparently, so a few now-blind people had said, it was one of the most spectacular sights ever, since it ionized the air and everything in its reach, casting out a luminous rainbow of metallic hues whipping like laser-wire through any unfortunate atmosphere in its wake – a scouring aurora borealis at ground level.

She recalled that the first ‘small’ test detonation six years ago in Alaska had not been sufficiently far away from population centers, and hundreds of Eskimos had gone blind. The scientists had also failed to predict the amplification effect underground, as the detonation had collapsed subterranean habitats hundreds of miles away. As the static-charged wind battered against her suit, she squeezed her eyes shut further. She recalled how they’d got into this.

They’d been heading out to the Phoenix, and were only ten minutes away from it when she’d copped a blinding migraine. Within seconds she brought the skimmer to a halt, and staggered off, unable to see. She fell to her knees and could barely hear Rashid’s increasingly alarmed questions. Then she saw what the Hohash was transmitting to her through her node.

"Rashid! There’s another ship next to yours."

"From Earth?"

She saw a small black ship, insect-like in shape with a large glass canopy in front, on six spindly legs. A single Q’Roth guardian emerged, carrying a long pole with a small box at one end – presumably a weapon.

"No – Q’Roth." It was hard to talk; the transmission hammered inside her skull.

"Kat, you must tell me everything you see. Everything!"

She narrated the scene as the Q’Roth walked – no crawled, or whatever – around the site, and then entered the single surviving module – Rashid’s home. The view shifted to the ND device and a digital display with three green lights shifting to reds. A figure of six-zero appeared, then it read five-nine, then five-eight…

Rashid pulled Kat to her feet and steered her over to the skimmer. Her headache vanished and her vision returned.

"Kat – listen to me – I have no idea how, but the Hohash has activated the detonation sequence. We have only fifty seconds before the initial discharge. Are you fit to drive? I have never driven a vehicle like this."

She drove for her life. The first, tightly-focused detonation had merely been felt as a pressure wave behind them. She managed to control the skimmer and surf it out.

But since then, despite the increasing distance they put between themselves and ground zero, they had already taken shelter twice behind a land mass to avoid being shredded by the sand-blast effect, or microwaves from a cocktail of lethal radiation.

Kat had not only received visual images from the Hohash, however. Just before it disconnected from her, there had been a fleeting emotional burst. It had wanted revenge, to kill a Q’Roth, a slayer of its masters. Having seen the guardian’s ship, undoubtedly armed, she was glad the mirror hadn’t wasted the one device they had which could destroy one of the aliens. Up to now, it seemed to her the Q’Roth had been ignoring Rashid and the Ulysses, probably out of contempt – they weren’t worth bothering with. That had changed now. They’d gotten the guardians’ attention.

Rashid tapped her on the shoulder. It had passed – until the next one. She got up and witnessed the desert dunes to the sides of the boulder, shimmering like glass blisters. Behind them, back toward what had been Rashid’s camp, a corona of sky around the boulder flickered a halo of violets and deep blues, as if somewhere in the distance hell was throwing a party. She had a bad feeling this particular party was just beginning. But she knew they were past the worst of it; they could outrun it now, and it wouldn’t reach the Lander. Lifting her visor, she gathered some saliva and spat onto the desert floor. It sizzled. "Let’s get out of here."

◆◆◆

Blake stared upward at Pierre being reeled in by the Q’Roth warrior.

"Pierre! CUT – THE - LINE!" He fired his second flare, as Pierre managed to slice through the taut wire. The flare stuck in the rocks just below the creature, so it wouldn’t be able to see them unless it jumped down. Blake prayed it couldn’t fly. He ran towards Pierre to try and break his fall but he didn’t make it. As Pierre hit the ground he crashed straight through it.

"Pierre!" Blake ran toward the hole, but the entire chamber shook, and he was knocked off his feet. The shaking was severe – it reminded him of the San Fran quake of ‘34, the mother of all US earthquakes, the one that finally had brought down New Bay Bridge. He rolled away from the cliff bottom just in time as rocks tumbled down. The noise rose to the point he couldn’t distinguish anything. In the last moments of the light, several eggs toppled over and rocks from the domed ceiling crashed to the floor. A second before the light failed, he saw an overhang that looked as solid as anything could be. He dove underneath it, tucking into the crash position with hands clasped over his head. The bone-shaking continued for another minute. He knew this wasn’t a Q’Roth protection system – it clearly endangered the eggs.

At last it ceased. Coughing from all the dust, he realized it was either a nuclear device or the neutralino detonator had gone off early; if Kat and Rashid had been in the vicinity… He had to focus on his and Pierre’s survival now, and the reason they had come here – to steal an egg – though he clearly had to re-think that strategy.

He crawled out from the overhang as the avalanche of rocks eased off. His vid imprint of the chamber was useless, so he fired the third of his four flares, set to low-burn, into the domed ceiling far above him. In the granite twilight it offered, he craned his neck and strained his eyes towards the ledge, but couldn’t find the creature. He stumbled over loose rocks to where the hole had been. It had narrowed in the quake.

He froze as he recognized something a few meters away, buried under a large rock – the creature, refreshingly immobile, and in a mangled posture, like a nightmarish cubist painting. Maintaining a safe distance, he shone his torch on it. A large pool of the blue-black fluid they assumed earlier was its blood gathered about its head.

"Mortal. Well that’s good news. Stay dead, you sonofabitch!"

He stumbled through the debris and the snowstorm of dust that smelt like coal falling all around, returning to the hole that the ND-induced earthquake had sealed to a crack no more than a fist wide.

"Pierre, can you hear me? Pierre!" He waited. He thought he heard something, but it was difficult to tell. At last the rocks settled through the chamber. After a few moments he heard a voice, depressingly far away.

"C-Captain! I’m down here – my leg’s broken in at least two places, but I’m alive. It’s not a compound break, but some internal bleeding. I’ve travelled pretty far, quite a ride. I believe this was a passage once, very steep. Can you hear me?"

Hell! There’s no way I can get to him through solid rock. "Yes Pierre – I can hear you, but you sound distant. Have you taken the trimorph?" He thought he heard a shaky laugh.

"Very much so."

Blake was grateful these latest drugs didn’t impair mental functioning like the old pain-killers, though the initial shock-negating euphoric effects had evidently kicked-in.

"Is there light down there – can you see anything?" There was no reply. Blake worried he might have blacked out. "Pierre – can you hear me?"

"Yes. Yes, I hear you. Some light. The passage carries on down from here. Can you get a rope to me? The hole might just let it fall down to where I can reach it."

Blake had to decide whether to tell Pierre the truth or not. "Pierre – do you see another passage, another way up?"

Again a pause. "Hole closed up?"

Blake remembered who he was dealing with, and respected Pierre’s intelligence. He shouted back down the crack. "Afraid so."

"How’s our alien friend up there. Maybe you’d better get out of the chamber."

"Dead, as far as I can see." Blake looked around. Several eggs had been smashed. An odor like rotting salmon reached him.

"Captain. There’s only one way out here. The passage going further down – that’s where the light is coming from. I think I’ll check it out, while I can still crawl."

Blake’s heart was thumping. ‘Pierre – wait.’ He fought hard to think of a solution, but knew there was nothing he could do, at least not alone. He heard a clicking noise from across the chamber. The ceiling light was beginning to fade, so he couldn’t see what it was. "Pierre – just wait there a few minutes – I need to go check something out."

"Sure."

Blake guessed that the trimorph was not completely blocking the pain. That meant Pierre was trying to occupy himself to take his mind off it. But Blake needed to know this place was secure so he could come back with help. He moved over to one of the taller-than-him ruddy-brown eggs and inspected it. There was an intermittent vibration, and a dull scraping noise. The shell wall was opaque, but Blake’s torchlight highlighted dark blue veins the size of his forearm just beneath its thick gnarled surface. The egg shivered again. Almost hatching time. He walked over to one of the eggs smashed by ceiling debris. The remnants of the egg revealed the crushed body of a fully-formed Q’Roth – there were some minor differences to the guardians, but it was obviously mature enough to hatch. He and the others, especially Pierre, were almost out of time. He jogged back to the gap, careful not to trip on the loose rocks.

"Pierre – you still there?"

A small, hollow laugh. "I went for a stroll but I’m back again."

Blake guessed Pierre had taken the entire trimorph dose. He decided to give him the whole picture. "The hole is almost sealed, and it’s solid rock – I’m not sure we can get through it with the tools we have here. And the eggs – they’re close to hatching." Blake bit his lip during the inevitable pause.

"What’s the bad news?"

Blake stared up the cliff face and vidded it, just before the light sputtered out. He put the goggles back on.

"Sir – I’m going to see where the light goes. The ND – I’m guessing it went off – the desert will grow really fast now. You should get off Eden while you can, and warn Earth from orbit." His voice sounded far away, weak.

Blake looked down at the small fissure, and felt a sharp pang in his chest. His right hand began to tremble. He made a fist with it and squeezed it hard with his other hand. Shit! Don’t make me do this! Various scenes flashed through his mind – his last encounters with the General; his private parting with his sick wife Glenda; the speech he’d made before departing Zeus I. So many reasons to do as Pierre had stated: the mission; mission before men, his creed since he’d enlisted. And he’d never once failed in his duty before – never. But the memory that kept intruding was of his dead son, Robert, the last time he’d seen him alive, back on the ranch, laughing in the sunshine atop a combine harvester, and then lying dead in a pool of blood in Kurana Bay. He’d always feared the day would come when he could no longer make the necessary sacrifices. He recalled the General’s words about why he’d been picked to lead the Ulysses. But then he remembered his mentor’s earlier advice at his wedding, to consider the options and then follow his heart. Blake made up his mind. His right hand stilled. He bent forward and bellowed through the crack.

"Pierre! You listen to me, real good. Are you listening?"

An uncertain "Yes, Sir," filtered through the gap.

"I’m not leaving Eden without you. Do you understand?"

"Sir – nice of you to offer, but we both know –"

"Have you ever, ever known me to lie?"

Silence.

"So, you go down that passage, you follow the light, and look for another way out. But if there’s nothing, you crawl your ass back to where you are now in six hours. Have you got that?"

"Oui… Yes, Sir." Pierre’s voice was taut.

"One more thing. I’m going to drop my trimorph kit through the crack and see if it gets to you. I just need to wrap it in something to make it roll better. I’ll stick a strobe on it to help you find it." After a minute he had arranged the small package and dropped it through the hole.

"Okay, it’s on its way." Blake waited. He heard the first few bounces then it was quiet.

"I see it… Merde!" Pierre laughed. ‘It’s bounced right down the passage toward the light."

"Well, you now have some motivation to crawl in that direction. You’d better get going."

"Yes, Sir… And thank you, Captain."

Blake stood up. "Thank me later. Get going." He looked round through the vid-vision goggles, then down at the hole, and sighed. Probably two meters of solid rock, he thought, and a whole host of hungry Q’Roth stirring in their eggs, and a near-radioactive desert heading this way. And if he’s bleeding internally he’ll go into shock, lose consciousness and die. And I may have just lost Kat, too…

But as he began climbing the ledge, he thought of his promise to Pierre. Had he made it in the heat of the moment? Would Zack persuade him that the mission – that warning Earth – was the priority? Would Kat, if still alive? He realized they wouldn’t – if he said they must leave, they would follow his orders; and if he said they wouldn’t leave without Pierre, they’d stay. He knew what their preference would be. He prayed that Glenda, and the General would understand the choice he’d just made.

But the one whose comprehension mattered most, was Robert. He paused on the rock face. "Sorry, Son, duty’s second now. A little late for you, I know." He took a breath and resumed, climbing faster.

As he neared the top, clambering upwards more by feel than using the navcon imaging system which was now hopelessly incorrect, he imagined being court-martialed for jeopardizing the mission. He almost laughed at himself. Why on Earth – no, why in hell was he worrying about a court-martial? He’d most probably be dead in the next twelve hours.

Chapter 38

Kidnap

Micah and Sandy killed time in an anonymous beige waiting room, failing to find a comfortable position on the worn leather chairs lining two of the walls. An old-style wooden ceiling fan creaked just fast enough that he couldn’t be sure how many blades it had. In the high-ceilinged room, it failed to stir the air with conviction, serving little useful function other than distraction.

Sandy had chosen a seat on the opposite wall from Micah. He welcomed the space. He and Antonia had been separated several hours earlier, and he’d debriefed Vince on what Louise had confirmed about the ships – the coming invasion. Despite a muted shouting match behind closed doors between Vince and a doctor, Micah had been given a second booster. Micah hadn’t protested; after what he’d seen via the Optron, a small risk of long-term infertility paled insignificantly against the prospect of an imminent invasion – he needed to be working at full capacity if he was to survive.

Sandy was oddly quiet – he didn’t know her that well, but enough to recognize that some extreme event had come to pass. For the first hour she’d been wearing a ragged dress, then she’d left for half an hour and come back in a hospital gown, and then an hour ago they had given her some Chorazin clothes. Unfortunately, the sight of a woman in Chorazin uniform reminded him of Louise. He hadn’t dealt with any of the conflicting emotions about her sudden death – shock, grief, anger, loss, and hate – but the over-riding emotion was relief. He’d stepped briefly onto a roller-coaster without any safety nets, and was lucky to still be breathing.

Two other issues swamped his mind: the Antonia situation – or, rather, non-situation – and the revelation that the Eden Mission building was now a heap of charred rubble and glass.

The booster had helped him straighten his thoughts, but he needed to talk to Vince, who’d promised he’d be back in an hour, four hours ago.

Sandy spoke up, without looking at him, eyes staring straight ahead at the wall.

"Did you know Gabriel?"

He thought at first she meant someone at work. Then it dawned on him, because he’d overheard Vince use that name. "The Cleanser?"

She nodded.

He shifted in his seat. "Well, not really. I mean the time I spent with him wasn’t exactly social, if you know what I mean."

She didn’t smile or nod, just sat, leaning forward, hands on her knees, eyes fixed on the blank wall. A nurse came in and knelt down beside her. She whispered some things that Micah couldn’t hear, mainly because they were in Spanish, which Sandy evidently spoke fluently. The nurse handed her a small folded slip of paper and put her hand on her shoulder. Sandy whispered, graçias as the nurse rose and left.

Micah decided to risk the question. "What’s going on, Sandy? If you don’t mind me asking."

"I know he wasn’t obviously a good man – you know, assassin, and all that. But did you feel he was – that he followed a code, that he had…" She swallowed. "Honor?"

Micah sensed the need in her questioning. "Well, he was professional, that’s for sure. He was a Cleanser – it’s the toughest training system in the world, so I’m told – well, by the vids, you know – but I suppose, yes – he seemed highly disciplined. I knew that whatever he said he would do. He had complete control over me to be honest, and I don’t think he could have done that if he wasn’t completely in command of himself." Micah leant back. This was all a little weird. He’d seen Gabriel in action, and it still made his blood run cold.

Sandy stood up and walked to his side of the room and sat down, a few seats away, and stared at him. He noticed her eyes lacked the full-on self-confidence he had seen there before.

"I’m carrying his child, Micah. He made me pregnant this morning, just before he died."

Micah was glad he hadn’t been drinking anything – he would have choked. Once he got over the shock, his first instinct was to ask her if she would have an abortion; the current laws would grant it in a second, as they would assume it was non-consensual. He realized that she had placed him, for whatever reason, in the role of judge and jury, right here, right now. She locked him there in that gaze, demanding an answer. Somewhere inside his brain, the booster-energized neurons connected in a way that enabled him to see what she needed to hear.

"You cared for him, didn’t you? I mean, in that moment?"

She lowered her gaze. "Can you care for someone you’ve just met who was trying to kill you a couple of days ago?"

His mind instantly switched to Louise, then he backed up – Sandy probably didn’t even know Louise was dead. But it was ironic – he and Sandy, right now at any rate, had a lot in common.

She continued. "There seemed such sadness in him. He took lives, I know, but … Oh, I don’t know Micah. It’s stupid. Forget it."

Micah stood up and walked over to her chair, then squatted in front of her, his face level with hers. The words came out of their own accord.

"You could keep it, you know. It would be like a second chance for him."

Her eyes tore at his, and for a brief moment he glimpsed beneath the front to the vulnerable person hidden beneath. He wondered if he should try and hug her or place his hand on hers – he had so little experience. He thought she might cry, but instead she sniffed, nodded, pulled her knees up to her chest, and cradled her shins. He got up and sat on the chair next to her, staring at the opposite wall.

Neither of them said another word.

Micah listened to the rhythmic swishing of the fan to subdue the clamouring thoughts of the impending Q’Roth invasion, and drifted off, oblivious to the fact that Sandy’s sleepy head rested on his shoulder.

Micah’s consciousness flicked on at the sound of harsh footsteps approaching. He glanced at his wristcom – two more hours had passed. Sandy was already awake. Vince strode in carrying a backpack and a small black book – an actual book. Micah detected a momentary hesitation in Vince’s step as he saw him and Sandy side by side, but had no clue as to whether Vince thought this was good or bad. Nor did Vince start with an apology for being six hours late.

"We need another Optron, Micah. Where can we find one?"

He pondered for a moment, his head still clearing. "NLA Tech – they have one. It’s more experimental, but it works on the same principles. MIT’s is better but further away."

Vince lifted his wristcom to his mouth – "NLA Tech – twenty minutes, tell them to get it ready… Well, wake them up then!"

He turned to Micah and tossed him the backpack.

"Put these on."

Micah opened the bag to see it contained a grey Chorazin uniform. He nearly dropped it onto the floor. Then he just shrugged. Why not? He stood up and was about to head for the door when Vince stopped him.

"Change here, we don’t have time. She’s seen you before and I’m not interested."

Micah frowned but shifted to the side of the room to change, as Vince turned to Sandy, who had not even acknowledged him yet.

Vince said something to her in Spanish. Micah wondered if he was the only person in NLA who didn’t speak Spanish.

He saw her face raise, defiant. "Si,’ she said. It was clear to Micah that Vince didn’t approve, but he nodded acceptance, and held out his hand to ask her to stand up. Micah was fumbling with his new underwear, and just at the critical moment, they both turned to him, and watched inappropriately, Sandy folding her arms, head cocked to one side.

"Is the booster working properly?"

"I’m not sure," Vince replied. "That doctor was disagreeable. He may have slipped him a placebo."

Micah, underpants now in place, snapped back at them. "Pack it in, will you?"

Once dressed, Vince gestured for Sandy to stand next to Micah, while he began searching for something on his wristcom.

Sandy leaned over to Micah, and whispered. "Such a fuss over a little thing."

He gave a short laugh. "Glad to see you’re feeling better. And yes, the booster is working fine, thank you very much."

"Don’t hit on pregnant women, Micah. Bad form."

"Okay you two.’ Vince broke in, "Put both your hands on this book and repeat after me."

"What?" Micah said. "You’re not serious!"

Vince’s poker face invalidated Micah’s remark. "Listen up, both of you. Louise was an Alician agent. I have a serious security breach, and since most of my people reported to her directly, I’m swearing you both in. The few people I do still trust are carrying out more demanding orders, if it makes you feel better. And before you ask, you have no choice, I’ve been granted additional temporary powers under the National Security rules."

Micah fidgeted, while Sandy stood resolute, accepting it already. A thought occurred to him. "Did you swear in Antonia too?"

"Not a placebo after all," Sandy murmured.

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"What’s her mission?"

"Not your concern. Now, may we proceed? There’s a matter of some urgency to take care of."

Micah knew he had some bargaining power. It was probably his last opportunity, and he needed to put something right. He straightened up.

"I want my father’s jacket."

Vince flared. "Now it’s you who can’t be fucking serious. Stop screwing around and get on with it."

Micah folded his arms. "You need me, or we wouldn’t be here. And you need me much more than you realize. What’s more, you need me voluntarily, for due process I suppose. I want the jacket."

"Do you have any idea how difficult that’s going to be?" Vince’s forearm muscles flexed.

"Definitely not a placebo." Sandy said. "And Vince – do you know how beautiful you are when you’re angry?"

"Christ!" Vince closed on Micah. "Why? Why is it so important – or are you just trying to screw me over here?"

Micah stood his ground. "Because – and it’s not the booster, Sandy – it’s because I never got a chance to understand my father, nor him me. We parted on bad terms – shitty terms if you must know – and he’s long dead now. So, when I die in the next few days, which is pretty much my conclusion on the future for all of us, I want his jacket, the only meaningful part of him I have left, on my back."

Sandy’s hand moved to touch Micah’s. She jutted her chin at Vince. "Do it, Vince. Impress me."

Vince clenched his teeth, turned, and kicked a metal stool right across the room, clanging noisily against the wall. A nurse appeared at the doorway, but evacuated after a withering look from Vince. He put his hands on his hips, breathed out heavily, and then smoothed down his Chorazin tunic, and lifted his wristcom to his mouth. While he spoke he glared into Micah’s eyes.

"It’s Vince… Get me the Secretary of State... You heard me… Yes, now… Well, interrupt him."

While they waited, Micah felt another presence in the room. He knew it was in his head, but it didn’t matter. Maybe somewhere he’d at last gotten his father’s attention and approval. It was ironic, just as apocalypse was approaching, he felt for the first time he knew who he was, and that his life was coming together. Better late than never.

"Yes Mr. Secretary, good evening... Yes, I realize that, Sir... I completely understand, Mr. Secretary. It is indeed, Sir, an urgent matter of national security…" he glanced at Micah. "In fact, Sir, we’re talking global security…"

It was midnight by the time they arrived at the NLA Tech lab. Three sullen-looking technicians awaited their arrival. Micah now understood why he and Sandy had been given the uniforms. If they’d been civilians, cooperation would have been anything but civil. Instead, Micah found he could simply give orders, and the techs complied, albeit with mutterings trailing after them. Luckily, Professor Partridge, the Head NLA analyst, was on leave, since he knew Micah and would have blown his cover. As it was, the technicians, once they started following his orders, began to be more than a little curious about how a Chorazin agent knew so much about an Optron.

Vince returned. "Are we ready?"

Micah played the role. "Yes, Sir!"

"Ok, everybody non-Chorazin out. Now."

There were half-hearted complaints and warnings about this not being a toy, etc., but Micah reckoned they wanted out as soon as possible anyway.

Vince turned to Micah. "Your jacket is en route."

Micah nodded. "What are we waiting for now?"

"We’re bringing someone in. You are going to link with him so that he sees what you saw."

Micah’s eyes widened. "Wait a minute. You can’t do that! Is he an analyst? If not it could fry his brain!"

But even as they spoke, two Chorazin agents bustled in, pushing past Sandy, dragging a handcuffed, hooded man. They deposited him on a chair and pulled the hood off. He was gagged and unconscious. Micah recognized him. His mouth dropped open.

"Good God! That’s Senator Josefsson! Vince, you’re out of your mind!"

"Perhaps," Vince said, his composure unruffled. "But this senatorial sonofabitch has stirred up a real hornet’s nest, and if what you told me is true, we have to try and get people’s attention, so they understand what’s really going on."

"I won’t do it. It would be the equivalent of torture!"

Vince moved very close to Micah’s face. "Listen to me carefully, Micah. He knows who kidnapped him. If you don’t convince him, then either we let him go and we’ll be arrested for treason shortly afterwards, or I kill him. Which option do you prefer?"

He couldn’t believe he’d been manipulated again by Vince. His intense unease about using an Optron on a civilian – a Senator, no less – alchemised into anger. "You set me up! You knew I’d have no choice, you bastard."

"Your choice of words is a little rich, coming from someone who’s only just re-discovered his father."

Before he realized he was even doing it, Micah threw a punch at Vince, but Vince caught it inches from his own face, not even flinching in the process. He spoke quietly in Micah’s face, while Micah’s chest heaved. "We’re wasting time. You told me an invasion is coming. The world is defenseless and not even aware of the danger because we have no credible mouthpiece. Now, either you were bull-shitting me, or else the ends certainly justify the means. Your Dad was a fucking hero, not a comic book one, a real one who got the job done by doing what mattered. Now I can’t make you do this. So you decide what type of man you are."

Micah’s nostrils flared, he pulled back his fist. In his mind, his father stood behind Vince, waiting to see what he would do. Would he run away, or see it through. Micah faced off Vince for ten seconds then glanced over to Sandy. She nodded to him, biting her lower lip. He walked over to the Senator.

"Can we at least untie him and wake him? I need to ask him some medical questions in any case."

"No. We untie him afterward. Make your best medical guesses. Get on with it."

Micah managed to make the link, so Josefsson saw, or rather, experienced the downloaded scenes from the Ulysses, including the strange transmission from somewhere else – Eden, and another planet conquered by the Q’Roth, he guessed. Luckily Josefsson was a wily politician – it meant his intellectual faculties were resilient enough to withstand the process. They woke him up and untied him. He was helped off the Optron chair into a seat facing Vince. He came back to his senses with a vengeance.

"Vince! You motherfucking asshole! You did this to me! I’ll see to it that they throw away the key and leave you to rot in some shit-hole cell in Salvador."

"Undoubtedly, Senator, but first, there is the matter of world security."

Sandy fetched the Senator a glass of water. He drank greedily, not caring that half of it spilled down his tux. He slammed down the glass afterward, cracking it. You mean that 'show’ I just witnessed? What sort of brainwashing techniques have you people been cooking up, eh?"

Micah moved between Josefsson and Vince. "Sir, it’s no hoax or show. What you saw happened. And the fate of that planet is the fate of Earth unless we act quickly."

Josefsson snorted. But as he downed a second glass refilled by Sandy, Micah could tell that although he was trying to deny it, it was sinking in. The Optron after all fed impulses straight into the cortex – no mediation – it was direct, untarnished communication. It had the ring of truth.

Micah continued. "Senator, Sir, these ships popping up all over the planet – they’re programmed to go to Eden. When people get there they’ll be slaughtered. Then the aliens will come here and finish the job. They’ll harvest the human race."

Vince took up the lead. "And you, Sir, have been pushing people into those ships. The first is already missing, but in the past twelve hours a further fifteen ships have been discovered around the globe, and they keep finding more. Terribly convenient, isn’t it?"

Josefsson pursed his lips, his bushy eyebrows meshing above bleary eyes.

Vince drove onward. "There is also a conspiracy on Earth – the Alicians are involved. Probably not all of them, but the aliens couldn’t do all this on their own. And Louise – my assistant you met yesterday – she was one of those conspirators. She was killed earlier today. The preliminary examination of her corpse revealed genetic alteration beyond anything our scientists can manage." He pushed her med-pad across the table.

The revelation about Louise clearly had an effect. Still, his anger was evident. "What the hell exactly is it you want of me?"

Vince nodded to Sandy, who had been primed for this moment.

"Senator Josefsson. You’ve already spoken to the people once. Speak again. Tell them of the danger. And explain to the President – and to IVS – what they are up against. And even call on the Fundie leaders."

Josefsson squeezed his large hand around the empty glass. "But even if I do what you say, there’s no proof. You can’t link the whole nation up to that God-damned machine! A pronouncement like that will ruin me, and we’ll probably fail in the process."

"But Sir, so many of the people trust you," Sandy said, holding eye contact, "like I do. You speak to the people, for the people. And if they do listen, then you will be the one that saved humanity from a disaster of biblical proportions."

It moved more smoothly from that point. Thirty minutes later the Senator was en route back to his office, scheduled for a network-wide announcement at 08:00, followed by a meeting with the President.

Vince, Sandy and Micah headed back to Chorazin HQ, where they could get some sleep. Micah had finally got his Dad’s jacket back. The ice between him and Vince had thawed, but only a little.

"Do you think he’ll do it?" Micah asked.

"Oh, yes, he’ll do it. But the question is whether he was right about not being listened to. And even if he is, will it be fast enough to prevent a substantial exodus?"

Micah winced. Vince needed to know the whole content of the message.

"Vince," he said reluctantly, "there was something mathematical in the transmission."

"Mathematical? An equation?"

"Exactly. Or more like a geometric plane, but one I recognized immediately from my math theory. Only a mathematics-trained person would see it, or its relevance."

"You’re being obscure, Micah. What was the message?"

"I believe it was from the alien race, or their messenger. It was an exponential expression."

Sandy spoke up. "Micah, we’re all tired. Speak English, please."

"Okay. Well, we think in linear terms, when we think of time."

"Please, Micah, no Einstein at 2am!" Sandy implored.

"No – don’t worry. It’s just that nature itself often works in logarithms, exponential – that is, accelerating – events. Think of a baby for example – oops – well, anyway, the rate of cell growth is exponential, otherwise how could a single ovum and sperm produce anything in nine months."

Vince sighed. "Your point, Micah?"

"The point is that these ships have been here for a very long time. Alicians have been steering us toward this point. The rate of convenient discoveries themselves has been increasing, including the rather obvious one yesterday that miraculously allowed scientists to locate these ships. Everything is accelerating towards the end. The equation is represented by a theory known as catastrophe theory, with a definable end point."

"The end being invasion," Vince said.

"But we’ve got a chance now, don’t we?" said Sandy. "Tomorrow, or rather later today, the Senator will go public, and –"

Vince broke in, his eyes set. "Micah’s right, Sandy. Even if Josefsson does a perfect job, the political process will be slow. And we’re still not sure we can defend against an invasion force if it comes. You said it was mathematical. That means you could use the equation to predict how long we’ve got."

Micah leant back against the wall of the Chorazin vehicle. "I was afraid you were going to ask that. Yes, that’s why the transmission held the equation. Whoever or whatever sent it understands the planning, the timing of the planned Q’Roth incursion. It wants us to be able to react before it’s too late. So I’ve been plugging events into the equation, doing a rough calculation in my head. The booster helped, as I can visualize more clearly the slope of the catastrophe curve we’re riding, so to speak."

"How many weeks do we have left, Micah?"

"Three days. Maybe less."

All three of them sat quietly for a while. It was Vince that finally spoke.

"We need a contingency plan."

"What sort?" Micah asked.

Vince spoke into his wristcom. "I want a jet to Cocos Island, fuelled and ready for three passengers when we arrive at CHQ in ten minutes."

Sandy spoke sleepily. "A last beach holiday before the invasion? Vince, you really know how to treat a girl."

Micah ignored the sarcasm. "What’s in Cocos?"

The corners of Vince’s mouth lifted a fraction. "A ship."

Chapter 39

Sabotage

Kat squatted on her haunches, watching things go from bad to worse outside the Lander. Zack kicked at a large stone with his good leg. “We can’t leave him there, Skipper”, he muttered. Kat noted that Rashid faced away from them – it wasn’t his call, and he’d accept whatever decision was made.

“Well,” Blake said, “just before I arrived, I believe you were asking a pertinent question, Zack.”

Zack raised his eyebrows.

“Why haven’t they blasted us to ashes already? I saw thousands    of eggs down there. Most of them about to hatch. I think they’ve been ignoring us so we can be bioelectric food or whatever for the first hatchlings. My guess, however, is that just recently we’ve pissed them off enough that they’ve decided to get rid of us. I am certain there are other Guardians on Eden – I can’t believe there are only two of them for a whole species. Probably a network of egg-nests all over the planet, like this one.’

Rashid pitched in, “This has also been my suspicion.”

“Which means our days are numbered,” Zack said.

“More like hours, old friend. We took out one of them with the ND – but that was it, we’ve nothing left that’s going to be much of a threat, especially if they have airborne ships here.” He nodded to Kat and Rashid. “Prepare the ship ready to leave.”

Kat waited for Zack to speak, but he said nothing. Rashid looked downward. So she seized the initiative. “What about Pierre? We can’t –”

“I’m not leaving him behind,” Blake stated. “Now, get the ship ready. Move to it!”

Kat hesitated, and then drifted toward the ship’s ladder. As she reached the first step she noticed that Zack hadn’t budged. Good – Zack’ll talk some sense into him! Rashid came over to her and tried to usher her up the first rung, but she planted her feet firmly, listening.

“I won’t do it, Skipper,” Zack said, quiet but deep. “Ain’t going    to leave you two here to die – to be vaporized or carved up by those motherfuckers.”

“Zack,” Blake dropped his voice, “you know you have to go. We must get a message back home. Things are coming to a head, I can feel it. There’s not much time.”

Kat strained to hear what Zack said next.

“But for him? You’ve left men behind before. It seems like there’s nothing you can do. You’re throwing your life away. Hell – ask Pierre, he’d tell you himself!”

“He already did. I can’t explain it. I’ve made my decision. There’s a chance, a slim one. And you’re right – I’ve left plenty of men behind before. I’d like to say I remember all their faces. Truth is I don’t.”

Zack lifted and then pile-drove the butt of his pulse rifle into the ground.

“Then we’ll wait for you. You try and get him out. We’ll wait. Hell, I can even take off and land one more time if necessary.”

“But you can’t go into orbit and come back. You need to send the message, hit the ND and get the hell out of here. That’s an order, Zack.”

Zack raised his voice. “You give me just one good reason why I should follow that order. Just one. You can’t court-martial me out here, and I’m your only goddammed pilot.”

Blake looked up to the sky, bit his lip, then took a step toward Zack, and whispered something in his ear.  Blake moved away afterwards,  but Zack stayed where he was, ear cocked, as if the words Blake had whispered still echoed inside his head. Suddenly, Zack whirled around and came up behind Kat and Rashid.

“What are you two still doing here? Captain gave an order. We’re leaving.” Kat and Rashid parted leaving the ladder open as Zack limped towards it, seized the rails and heaved himself upwards, clanging the rifle on every rung. Kat glanced back at Blake, but his back was turned. Rashid again put his arm on her shoulder, and this time she climbed into the ship.

Kat found the cockpit oppressively quiet. Blake’s seat was empty, with Rashid perched at Pierre’s science console. Blake had taken an assortment of weapons and supplies outside – they could last a month at most, if he and Pierre were really careful. If Pierre wasn’t already dead. If several miracles intervened. Fuck this plan!

Blake’s voice crackled through from outside via com-link. “Okay – good luck all of you. Tell them… tell them everything.”

The screen showed Blake moving away from the ship’s lift-off zone. Her stomach felt like a tightening knot. She couldn’t contain it any longer. “Zack, we can’t leave them here!”

Zack threw switches, tapped at touchpads. Low, grinding whistles slowly ascended their scales. Hydraulics hissed and clamps thudded, adding percussion to the orchestral tuning that signified the pre-flight engine warm-up.

“Zack. What did he say to you to make you leave him here?”

“Back off, Kat. Don’t push me.”

But she felt like her stomach was in freefall. Blake had been her anchor throughout this mission, and she realized for the first time that she had some undefined feelings for Pierre. She searched for something to stall Zack. She found it. It was dirty, below the belt, but once they took off, that was it. No turning back.

“What are you going to tell his wife, Zack?”

Rashid gaped at her. Zack’s hand froze above a switch. She saw his huge shoulders heave up and down several times. Suddenly Zack’s harnesses flew open and he launched himself upwards and swung around to her position. Kat hit her own harness release and was half-way up as she met Zack’s left hand. It swatted her back down and pinned her against the seat. She saw feral, white rage in Zack’s eyes, as his right hand found her throat. Yet she was defiant. Her voice croaked. “How long do you think we’re going to last without him? We haven’t even taken off yet, and we’re literally at each other’s throats. Earth has its message. The ND and the desert are as plain as Jupiter’s red dot. He needs us. They both do!” Her words choked off as she ran out of breath.

Zack’s hand eased off.

She coughed, massaging her trachea, getting some oxygen back into her lungs. As soon as she could, she continued.

“He needs you, Zack. Now more than ever.” She stopped there. There was nothing more to say. She didn’t know what Zack might do next; maybe kick her off the spaceship.

Zack manoeuvred himself back into his seat. His fingers lingered on a panel above him that glowed red.

“Rashid – check your instruments. See any problems?”

Rashid called up various displays. “Oh. Yes. The solenoid is –”

“Fried. Abort take-off. Do you concur?”

Rashid nodded vigorously. “Most definitely, I concur. Take-off would be fatal, I am afraid.”

Kat watched, confused, as Zack and Rashid powered everything down. She coughed. “Zack… So… we’re not taking off?”

He kept his back to her. “Not unless you want to become a human meteorite. Go outside and start setting up a defence perimeter. Rashid – you go explain to Blake we’re stuck here for at least six or seven hours. That’s how long it’ll take to fix it. I suppose it’s lucky for us it’s one of the few parts we carry a spare for. Kat made it outside in record time. Blake ran over to her.

“What the hell happened? There had better be a damned good reason!”

Rashid dropped down the ladder. “Captain, the solenoid in the thruster power centre fused – we would not have been able to dock or achieve a stable orbit. Luckily the pre-flight checks found it.”

“Dammit! But it was fine earlier.” Blake turned away to look at the hill-top, toward the cave.

She scrutinized Rashid, but he avoided her gaze, and spoke to Blake. “There must have been a power surge as we started up,” Rashid said. “These things happen, and your ship took quite a few knocks on landing.”

During that last sentence she thought, but couldn’t be sure, that Rashid’s left eye twitched. But at that moment, Zack emerged from the ship hefting a toolbox down to the ground.

“We’re here another six hours at least, Skip. Why don’t you take Kat with you while Rashid and I finish the repairs? We don’t need her here.”

Blake gave his friend a measured, questioning stare. “You’ll be pretty vulnerable out here.”

“You mean it’ll be safer inside the cave?”

Blake managed a thread of a smile. “Point taken. You want Kat here and Rashid comes with me?”

Kat’s eyes flicked sideways to Zack, but he replied directly to the open toolbox, where he fished for all manner of tools.

“No, Skip. Too much testosterone for my liking. She’s developed the killer instinct. Might come in handy where you’re headed.”

Zack stooped under the Lander’s hull, reaching towards an underside hatch. When Kat turned back to Blake, she encountered a penetrating stare, as if Blake hadn’t really looked at her, hadn’t noticed her, for a long time.

Blake said quietly, “What was that all about?”

She shrugged. She didn’t feel like talking.

“Okay, Kat. Bring an extra rifle and your night goggles. I’ve already got the explosives over there in the bushes.”

She walked to the ship to get her gear together, not once looking   in Zack’s direction. Just before departing with Blake, she noticed the ground was redder, and the bushes were fewer. The desert had arrived.

Zack and Rashid removed the plating, after twenty minutes of difficult coaxing, revealing the brown carbonized solenoid. “Hot damn!” Zack said. “Well, I guess I’ll leave the rest to you, Rashid. I’m gonna’ go patrol the perimeter.”

“Zack, you honour me with your faith in my maintenance aptitudes. But I would indeed benefit from your assistance.”

Zack, though, was already heading away from him, limping badly, using the pulse rifle as a crutch again.

“Nonsense, Rashid,” he said, without turning around, “you’ll do just fine. Besides, we had a saying back in the War – he who breaks it, fixes it.” Zack drifted away, whistling tunelessly.

Rashid dared say no more, and focused on the rather tricky job of repairing his handiwork.

◆◆◆

Deep below the surface, Pierre had reached the bottom of the steeply sloping corridor, carved through solid rock, leaving a scalloped effect on smooth walls. He’d found Blake’s trimorph kit, and tucked it into a side- pocket for near-term use. But he was mesmerized by a dark blue metallic console, its stand extruding upwards from the floor like a plant’s stem. Small lights sparkled across its flat, translucent upper surface. He heaved himself up to see the controls. It was obviously built for a Q’Roth, as it was so tall; he felt like a small child trying to gain access to an adult’s kitchen table.

The controls on its upper surface were large, and he had no clue how to activate any of them, or even if they were controls at all. Some looked like baroque joysticks, with spindles jutting out in shards; others were like oval pushbuttons pulsing with a dark backlight. The whole console was the colour of deep ocean water. The centre-piece was a large vertical control resembling a double-stacked punch-ball – the type a four-handed boxer might use. Pierre decided not to touch it. There were recesses that looked as if the Q’Roth “feet” or hands, from what Pierre had seen of them, could fit into them.

But it was the displays that interested him. He wasn’t sure, but one of them appeared to show a cross-section of Eden, from the external crust to the centre of the planet. Thin lines, like tendrils, drilled down from the surface to the central molten core. About half were light blue, the others a ruddy brown.

“I’m betting you’re the terraformer control panel,” he said to the display. He then noticed another display to the left, on the far side of this inner cave. He dragged his self-splinted leg – he’d used a strut from his backpack – over towards it, grimacing with every step, and studied a mosaic displaying thousands of tiny silver beads winking in unison. Here and there were a few blobs of red. He presumed it was a health monitor for the egg chamber lying a hundred metres or so above him. There was also a thick horizontal line underneath the bead layer that was silver along almost its entire length, except for the very end.

“Egg timer; almost cooked.” And with the weight of that thought, the dull throbbing from his leg washed over him, and he crumpled to the floor, moaning with pain. He rolled over onto his back, and lay there panting through gritted teeth. He glanced at his wristcom. Three hours since his fall, so three hours left before Blake returned. He had zero idea how he would climb the corridor, or even get upright again. Ideally he should wait and conserve the trimorph, but he was worried he would black out, and if that happened he would die there for sure.

Taking out the small canister, he broke the seal roughly, held it to his mouth and inhaled. Immediately his head felt lighter, as if on a soft silk cushion, as the pain flushed away. It was tempting to lie there. His leg, which had felt a moment earlier as if there were ground glass inside it, began to feel like warm cotton wool, but he heard a beating noise deep inside his body. It was the pain, held at bay for now; it would return soon enough. He propped himself up against a wall, careful not to injure his broken leg further, now that pain receptors could no longer warn him.

He stared back to the corridor where he had entered. From his current perspective, he noticed two things. First, another corridor leading upwards – so, there was another route down there. But it was the second structure that captured his attention: a large church-like door made of a slate-grey metal. He had a sneaking idea of what lay behind the door. He had to make his choice quickly – he could go back up ‘his’ corridor or he could take the new one, or he could try and see what lay behind the door. He recalled how his mother chided him when he was younger and first accidentally created nitroglycerine, blowing up their garden shed. “Curiosity killed the cat!“ she’d said. He never really understood that quaint aphorism until now. Heady from the trimorph, he tried his best to put on a Cheshire cat grin, and crawled towards the large metallic door.

When he got there, he pulled out a phial from his jacket, containing what looked like a swirling liquid of iron filings. They shimmered in the dim lighting from the console. “Hope you were right about these, Dad.” He took out a syringe and extracted a thimbleful and injected it into his neck. An ice-burn feeling shot from his throat to his head for ten seconds before dissipating, and his vision blurred temporarily. He was glad he’d just taken trimorph.

While his head was clear, he unholstered his pulse pistol and discarded the pulse charge from the handle, inserting the half-full phial in its place. He snapped the handle closed and switched the pistol mode to “Monopulse”. One shot. He took a few deep breaths. “Okay,” he said aloud, “time to make some new friends.” He activated a pad on the side of the wall next to him, and the door slid open revealing a cavern.

On the floor in front of him was possibly the last thing he expected to see: a human skeleton, and a date etched into the ground: 1756 anno domini. He shook his head in disbelief – someone had arrived here more than three hundred years earlier. In the distance, as a backdrop, was the largest ship Pierre had ever seen. But the skeleton’s left arm pointed to  a much smaller craft, green in colour, and in front of it stood a Hohash; except it wasn’t the same one they’d met earlier. Pierre lowered the pistol and slid to a seated position, back against the door, as the pain reasserted itself. “Papa,” he said, “you really should see this.”

Chapter 40

Warriors

Rashid hung underneath Eden’s rocket boosters via a trapeze system of uncomfortable wires, occasionally pausing to wipe the sweat off his brow. He’d been working for three hours straight. It was dark, and the halogen lights necessary to see the wiring detail basted him as if he was on a rotisserie. He thought Zack would have come over to check how he was doing, or even to help him but, truth was, he had no idea of Zack’s whereabouts. Rashid was lit up like a Christmas tree right now, just in case any Q’Roth guardian happened to be passing by and wanted some target practice. Maybe that was it, he thought, perhaps Zack was using him as bait. It made sense, but it would be nice to know, to be asked, even. Enough – work! Undo what your momentary caprice has done. Having scolded himself, and wiped his brow one more time, he carried on with renewed fervor.

An hour later, he finished the job and re-sealed the external plate. As he disentangled himself from the trapeze harnesses, he became aware of another presence.

"Zack! Is that you?" He couldn’t turn his head yet in the right direction. "If you want an apology please don’t resort to scaring me – just ask!" There was no reply. He got his legs free, and twisted his torso and legs out of the wires. "It’s finished, you know." He fumbled and dropped his torch. Rashid was limber, but after so much time in a contorted position, he had difficulty getting to the ground and then upright. He fell out of the trapeze, hit the ground hard, and groped for the torch, crawling out from under the ship. He caught a glimpse of something golden. He clambered to his feet, and saw that it was the Hohash, standing upright, a few inches from the ground, a short distance away, facing him. Zack stepped down gingerly from the ship.

"I thought you were outside," Rashid said, more than a little worried.

"Getting some sleep. You woke me."

Rashid doubted both these statements, but did not pursue it. "Look, over there."

Zack pointed a substantially larger flashlight. "Ah, your friend is back." And then, it seemed to Rashid in jest, Zack continued, addressing the Mirror. "No ND’s here – up there!" Zack grinned, pointing the flashlight upward. Rashid didn’t appreciate the humour. Of all the crew members he’d like to be left alone with, Zack was last on the list.

Rashid saw something stir in the mirror. He was seeing a world, Eden, with their side in the night time. "Look!" he said.

"I see it." Zack replied, in a measured tone.

Rashid saw Eden getting larger, very rapidly, so that now it filled the whole of the mirror.

"Rashid!" shouted Zack.

"Yes, I’m watching," he said, a little irritated.

He suddenly felt Zack’s hand clamp down on his shoulder. "No – up there!"

Confused, Rashid tore his eyes away from the mirror and followed Zack’s other hand to see a huge silhouette of waxing darkness etching itself into the sky, first rippling, and then blotting out the stars. Zack limped back to the space-ship entrance and clambered up the ladder. Rashid followed, chased by a bow wave of wind crushing down on him. Zack plucked Rashid’s relatively lightweight frame inside as he slammed his fist on the button to emergency-seal the door.

The thunderclap arrived less than a second later, rocking the ship. Rashid was sure it would roll over, or worse, be crushed underneath the descending craft. But the sonic booms and after-shocks abruptly ceased. They both lay inside the airlock, Zack gasping from the effort and the pain in his leg. His cast had split open. He swore continuously until he had managed to wrench it off.

"Is that wise?" Rashid asked, but got no reply. "Thank you, in any case," he added, still on the floor, "you just saved my life."

"Help me up, then," Zack groaned, searching for his pulse rifle, "my leg’s suing for divorce right now."

Rashid maneuvered himself under Zack’s shoulder, steering his heavy form past the weapons and spacesuit rack into the cockpit. The screen showed swirling clouds of dust. Zack groped inside a compartment and stuck a low-dose trimorph patch on the side of his neck, while Rashid switched screen views to check to the rear, but all around them it was the same. He left it on front view, which was where the radar showed the ship had actually landed, about half a kilometer away, in the forested area. Several minutes later, the dust cloud settled.

"Where have the stars gone?" Rashid said. Although he knew the answer, he couldn’t believe how tall and wide this ship was. Yet the evidence was there: it occluded nearly a fifth of their forward view. He glanced back at Zack, but found he had his elbow over his eyes, his jaw clenched closed.

Rashid went to get another trimorph capsule from the med-cabinet.

"You need to take more – "

"No," said Zack, breathlessly, "can’t fly with that stuff."

Rashid hated to watch people suffer needlessly; he’d seen too much during the War. Real pain twisted people, and too often soldiers avoided painkillers only to die shortly afterwards anyway, no longer themselves.

"But you cannot fly if unconscious, or in agony." Rashid said, as he considered administering the dose anyway – Zack was in no state to resist. Rashid was beginning to respect Zack, even if he didn’t like him.

"I know my limits," said Zack. "Any more and I’ll be more liability than help. But you do the extra-vehicular stuff from now on. And no more fun and games, Rashid."

"Agreed. I will go and investigate."

"Wait. Listen up. While you fixed your own sabotage, I rigged up the micro-fusion reactor." He pulled out a black makeshift pushbutton ensemble with a key inserted. Rashid backed away from the detonator.

"You’re a soldier, right?" Zack sputtered. "You damn well know what to do if we’re caught here. We take out as many as possible when they come out of the cave, or," he jabbed a finger toward the viewscreen, "off that ship!"

Rashid abhorred the very idea of suicide, even if for a greater cause – his native land suffered a plague of it just before the War. But he knew Zack was right, even if he doubted whether he could activate it. He didn’t want to waste effort arguing right now, so he took the small metal box.

Zack’s breath was ragged. He gripped Rashid’s arm hard. "Turn the key; lift the lid; press the button; instantaneous; one-kilometer range around the Lander." His face contorted with pain, eyes rolling up under barely opened eyelids. Then he slumped again, exhausted, his chest heaving. His arm let Rashid go.

Rashid noticed a glistening trail of blood trickling down Zack’s leg. He traced it to a bloody piece of white bone protruding through the side of Zack’s upper right thigh. He made sure Zack was firmly in the seat, with his head on the head-rest, then he picked up a large dose trimorph ampoule, snapped it open and whisked it under Zack’s nose. After a few seconds, his body went completely slack.

It took twenty minutes and all of Rashid’s field-medic training to retract the shard of bone back under the skin, plaster the hole with anti-septic sim-skin, and splint the entire leg. There was little else he could do, except haul Zack’s bulk to a cot and activate a stasis field.

He felt as if he was back in the war he had thought long behind him. He stared at Zack’s bulky features under the already-frosting glass.

"Sleep well. I cannot yet call you friend, but if I activate this button, we will have plenty of time to get to know each other in the after-life." He walked to the weapons rack and put a pistol in his belt, two grenades in his jacket, and slung a pulse rifle over his shoulder. Night goggles hung around his neck.

As he opened the hatch, he added to himself. "Why does everyone forget that I am a pilot, too?" But he knew that tonight different services were required. He had been a commando before, holed up in the Nepalese highlands. It was not a skill one forgot, no matter how he’d tried. Sealing the hatch behind him, he slipped silently into the night, heading toward the large Q’Roth ship.

◆◆◆

Kat was jittery, and for good reason. As she circled the perimeter of the vast egg chamber, with Blake far away on the other side walking in the opposite direction, not a minute went by without a cracking sound shattering the pregnant silence. They had no idea how quickly these eggs hatched, and whether or not they would emerge ready for fighting, but both knew they were on borrowed time.

Blake’s voice cut through on the radio. "Anything, Kat?"

She turned towards where she thought he was, eight hundred meters away on the other side of the chamber. They were both searching for another way down to where Pierre lay. They had decided that it seemed logical, or at least plausible, that there would be more than one way out of the cave, and more than one way down to whatever was below. They’d already confirmed that the direct route Pierre had fallen through was impassable, even for the Q’Roth. Blake had used a special long-lasting magnesium white flare, impaled in the centre of the domed chamber some fifty meters above them, to give a basic low level lighting, preventing them from stumbling over rocks every other step. The relentless maze of upright eggs, each one three meters high, trickled piano-like arpeggios down her spine.

"Nothing yet, Sir."

"Okay, keep moving. If there’s another entrance it’s bound to be on the perimeter. And keep your eyes open. If you see one hatching, do what I plan to do – discharge your entire pulse rifle into it and run like hell."

"I read you loud and clear, Sir." She wondered if Blake was trying to comfort her. They’d discussed the possibility of trying to trigger a massive cave in, but their small charges wouldn’t be nearly enough. They also considered trying to blow up a few eggs, but since they estimated there were close to half a million in this chamber alone, that would also be futile. Blake had rigged most of the explosives up to the single entrance tunnel they had found so far, which might stop the young Q’Roth getting out for at least a short time. But they knew that everything they had thought of so far was like building kids’ sandcastles and moats to stop an oncoming tide. When these creatures started hatching, they would be unstoppable.

Something snagged her attention. One of the eggs looked different. She realized it was because there was light reflecting from it. Not daylight as such, but a pale, cyan, electric glow. She heard a low hum, looked behind her toward the outer wall, and saw a Q’Roth scout ship enter the chamber. She crouched, her back to one of the eggs, and watched, careful not to move.

It was not a big craft. It resembled a giant fly, with two oval-shaped glass bubbles at the front for a cockpit, and small, mobile turrets on each underside. After the front end, the rest of the craft tapered to a point several meters behind, like a helicopter. The craft had six jointed legs that cushioned its landing as it settled onto the rock floor. Two Q’Roth stood in the front part of the ship. Kat saw how much like insects they were, their abdomens consisting of ribbed circular sections that looked very tough – and their legs were barbed. But the trapezoidal heads with their blood red slits on either side rendered them demonic.

She called to Blake before the ship had fully powered down.

"Captain," she shouted in her loudest whisper, in case their sensors could pick her up. "A small ship’s arrived just thirty meters from my position. Do you see it?" The engines were almost quiet, and there was a hiss as the two glass-like domes, each sheltering a Q’Roth guardian, unsealed and retracted. "Radio silence!" she barked, before Blake had a chance to reply. Muting the radio, she hid behind the egg.

She had no idea what sensory capacities the Q’Roth had, but she was betting they could see in the dark, probably by infra-red or some kind of sonar – there had been no natural or artificial lighting in here, so clearly there was no need for light, even for the hatchlings. She also suspected they had advanced motion detectors like many evolved predators, so she remained very still, out of their line of sight, her right hand on the pulse rifle trigger, the left on the grenade pin. She closed her eyes, trying to listen. It sounded as if they were moving toward the centre of the chamber, scampering softly through the egg rows, muffled drum beats of claws on rocky ground.

A series of fast clicks came in a short burst. Simultaneously she felt the vibration of her wristcom. With minimal body movement, she turned her left wrist towards her face, and touched a small button once, for back-lit illumination. She read the message in red LED: Stay down. Have found second corridor to lower level. Try to get back to ship alone. Kat pressed the acknowledge key.

Just as she was deciding what to do, a bone-thumping crack knocked her forward, nearly making her drop the rifle; the egg she was leaning on was starting to hatch. But the two guardians were still not far enough away. Reluctantly she sat back against the splintering shell, pressing her weight against it, digging her heels into the ground. The Q’Roth footfalls paused. She held her breath, then mouthed "Shit!" as she realized they had changed direction and were heading her way.

Her palms were clammy; she hoped they couldn’t smell her sweat, her fear. Still she hadn’t moved, and wasn’t yet in their line of sight. Her breathing came in short rasps, high up in her chest – she tried to slow it down, but had no effect. Her hands began to shake. At that point she felt her wristcom vibrate again. She risked a glance at it. It said simply: Cover your ears. Kat stared at it, then, just in time, clapped her hands over her ears as an explosion at the far side of the chamber punched its way across the cave. She guessed Blake had just sealed the other entrance. Echoes reverberated half a dozen times all around her. She took her hands off her ears to crawl around the other side of the egg, seeing both Q’Roth, only five meters away, stood up on their two hind legs, facing the direction of the explosion. From her perspective they looked like deformed, giant locusts. She watched as they dropped down and galloped back to their craft, zig-zagging past several eggs with astonishing speed and precision. Within a matter of seconds they were onboard. The engines powered up and the craft lifted off, soaring across the egg-field towards Blake.

Her shakes increased. She had to get moving, but before she could get up the next egg crack not only threw her away from the egg, but cut her as well. She stared in disbelief at the dark blood oozing from her thigh, and then gaped at the egg shell – what was left of it. A full third had come free, and two praying mantis-like legs were hanging outside of the shell – one of them had a spray of her blood on its barbed edge.

She felt paralyzed as the young Q’Roth, almost full size from what she could see, writhed inside, cutting itself free of an inner mucous membrane with thick blue fibres, like giant veins. For a moment it stopped moving, and Kat pushed herself away on hands and buttocks – it was staring at her. It cocked its head, and the two sets of three slits on either side of its face glowed. Her hands reached for the rifle but, aghast, she saw it was at the foot of the egg. The creature turned its head, followed her gaze, and then in a split second one of its free legs stamped down on the rifle, pulverizing it.

A bead of cold sweat ran down her back. The moment she had dreaded had arrived. The nightmare, all those times on the ship, was finally real, and there was nothing she could do, absolutely nothing. The creature lifted its head and emitted a piercing high-pitched whine, as it kicked another part of the shell away. Kat found herself on her feet, running full-out toward the second entrance, ricocheting off several eggs that had also started vibrating. She didn’t look back. She had no need. She knew it would chase her all the way back to the ship. She ran blindly through this second, wider entrance tunnel, guided up its slope by faint starlight at the other end. She pulled out the two grenades with both hands. Without breaking step, she put them to her mouth, bit down on the pins and yanked them out, then tossed the grenades over her shoulders, leaving them to tumble back down into the burrow. She spat the pins out into the night air.

The shock wave from the two detonations caught her just as she reached the cave exit, throwing her off her feet. Coughing, sprawled on the ground, she donned the night goggles, which cast everything in a ghostly green. She tried to listen above her own hammering heart. And then she heard the unmistakable sound of relentless, galloping footfalls echoing up from the soot-black corridor. She grunted as she launched herself upright and ran downhill at top speed, dodging between bushes and rocks like a wild animal. She prayed that Zack would be there to save her, although in the nightmare Zack was always too late. And for the first time, she remembered something she had forgotten about every single nightmare on her trip to Eden – a small but now significant detail; they had all taken place at night.

Chapter 41

Night Flight

Micah hardly slept on the four hour diversion to Cocos Island, near Honduras. He watched Sandy occasionally emit small snuffling noises, her nose twitching, cat-like. He envied how some people could doze so soundly, anywhere, anytime. Even Vince indulged in power-napping on and off, interspersed with a range of calls – none of which Micah had been party to. For several of them Vince had switched to Spanish, and for one in particular, he had used an Eastern European dialect.

But he must have dozed off for at least a short time because he was woken by a vid-call to Vince. Half-awake, curled up in an executive jet sleeper seat, cranking open his eyelids a fraction, he saw Vince turn away across the aisle and whisper, "What do you mean her corpse is missing?"

Micah revisited what he had experienced during his access to the data crystal. It was still confusing, and he had the feeling that this was due to the involvement of a second alien intelligence. But it was slowly becoming clearer, like frosted ice melting. Something from the destroyed spider race was left over, still active. That could mean an important ally, if communication could be established. But whatever it was, it probably resided on Eden, and it would take months to get to it. Unless…

He tried to figure out the logic of the ships. They were on Earth, empty for a millennium, undoubtedly destined for Eden. And then what? Would they come back? With new passengers? It didn’t quite make sense to him. But then, why should alien sense make human sense? The counteraction needed was either to keep the ships here in the first place, or else to make sure they didn’t come back. His intuition told him that the heart of the problem lay on Eden, where the astronauts were. There were only four of them, but maybe they were still alive, maybe they could help. He wondered if they knew what was going on; had more of the pieces to the puzzle. But there had been no communication now for a week. Although the Eden Mission complex had been destroyed, other deep space tracking stations would have picked up transmissions had any arrived, and it would have been all over the nets.

Vince looked up from his wristcom, and sat up sharp. "Three of the ships have left, the one in the Pacific, one in China, and one in Australia."

"Already? But how?" Micah couldn’t believe, despite his predictions, that things were now moving so quickly.

Vince flicked a switch on his seat and a rippling holonet unfurled from the ceiling. Seconds later, as Sandy stirred from her slumber; all three of them watched a WNN reporter describe the event with – for once – adjectives and superlatives that barely did it justice. One second the ship was there, and the next – it was as if it had been edited out of the picture. There was suddenly a Biblical-style basin in the ocean where the ship had been – no take off or ascent – it had simply disappeared, whereupon the waves crashed into the chasm left in its wake, and the aerial video picture rocked so much it was difficult to see anything, except several IVS ships foundering like toys in a child’s bath when the plug had been pulled.

The scene moved to another reporter interviewing one of the land-based IVS scientists, who admitted they still knew almost nothing about the ship, or how it worked, or how to activate it. The vid cut to the first reporter, and to a clip of the MIT scientist, Professor Klebensky – a well-known rival of Professor Kostakis – who had discovered how to locate the alien ships all over the world only a day ago, via a satellite-based spectrographic sweep for the ship’s unique metallic molecular signature. The reporter stated that he had been found dead in his apartment an hour ago, with no further details available. The image switched again to two dozen other ship sites worldwide. Security had been intensified due to the flocking of tens of thousands people all around them, spurred onwards by Fundie leaders worldwide proclaiming that God’s transport to Eden had finally arrived, with an added incentive in the message that the ships could carry only so many people – first come, first served.

Josefsson’s speech played out next, followed by a clearly well-rehearsed counterpoint from the Fundies – the Alicians never broadcast themselves – who proclaimed that this was nothing more than US imperialism all over again, trying to stake a claim to Eden first.

Micah sighed. "We under-estimated them. They were already prepared."

Sandy rubbed her eyes. "Of course they’re prepared Micah – from what you and Vince have told me, they’ve had a few centuries to make all sorts of contingency plans."

"She’s right," Vince said in a low voice, "and for over fifty years people have learned to distrust politicians, especially American ones. Did you notice anything about the ships’ locations?" Vince rewound the news vid to the world map WNN had displayed for a few seconds showing the location of the ships.

Micah stared at the picture. "Good grief!"

"What?" Sandy asked. "Looks pretty random to me – nicely dispersed around the globe."

"No," said Micah. "They’re all in rad-green or yellow zones. That means –"

"It means," interjected Vince, clicking off the screen, "that the Alicians supporting these Q’Roth have been orchestrating world politics and pulling strings for a very long time, even within the military, probably on both sides during the last War."

Micah pulled himself upright in the chair. He felt like a novice up against a chess grand master. "So, what do we do?" His fingers tugged absently at his hair; to have come this far, even through a nuclear war, only to end up as growth hormones for an alien race.

"Time for a shift of tactics," Vince said. "Micah, IVS have analysts, don’t they?"

"Er, sure. Including one of ours until recently." He wished he hadn’t said it. He found it hard to believe Rudi’s demise had been just a few days ago.

"Good." Vince was already typing using a holo-keyboard. "I’m going to send IVS all your data – with the key – so they can see what you and Josefsson saw."

Sandy spoke up. "I thought IVS was the enemy?"

"We only have one enemy right now," Vince said. 'The aliens, together with the Alicians working for them. IVS are lean and pretty powerful – wolves – and they’re not subject to the bureaucracy of political machinery. Besides, they’ve been trying to claim patent rights over the ships, all of them. They’ll never win that of course, but the legal process could maybe stop any more ships from leaving, or letting people enter them."

For the next half an hour, Micah and Vince worked together to download and transmit the datastream via satellite to IVS. Minutes after the first compressed data-packet had been transmitted Vince got a call from IVS in Mumbai. He put it on speaker, so they could all hear the gravelly voice at the other end.

"What game are you playing now, Vince? And what on earth did you do to my Senator?"

"No time for fencing I’m afraid," Vince replied. "Get the data to an analyst who knows what he’s doing, fast, and then see what he says. It’s the data you gave to me two days ago – check the parameters, there’s been no tampering, it just needed an analyst with the key to find the hidden data-stream. And remember what IVS said during the War about the best motivation to build a team." Vince cut off the call.

Sandy raised an eyebrow.

"Common enemy," Vince said.

The auto-pilot’s synthetic female voice instructed them to take their seats for landing. Micah wondered if anything they did now was simply already way too late. The enemy’s last pieces were locking into place. Check-mate was almost upon them, maybe already here. He felt a chill, and zipped up his jacket.

Chapter 42

Mongolia

Sister Esma breathed in the chill, Mongolian mountain air in the last surviving cold patch on the planet, in a room that barely kept out the sub-zero winds and blinding snow. Not even the Alician scientists had predicted this strange weather phenomenon, an ice blue eye in the swirling inferno which slow-baked Earth.

She’d spent fifty years in Tibet a long time ago, and had learned the secrets of slowing and deepening her breath, even of creating heat through special breath-hold techniques. Each lean outbreath produced its own fleeting fog, which she studied as if it were an ice-sculpture. The art of patience, she had learned centuries ago, was not in doing nothing, but rather rested in finding natural art in the smallest details or events, no matter how evanescent. It was also in counting down, measuring the progress, even if glacial, to an anticipated event. She had been counting her outbreaths, and had reached three hundred after three hours. It was time to wake them, time for humanity to meet its nemesis. Eleven of her most trusted, scattered around the globe, were about to play out a similar ritual.

While she was wrapped in furs, the frail-looking, head-shaved man in front of her wore only a simple robe. Although he had only arrived ten minutes ago, he was already shivering violently. But the pale light in his eyes and their religious fervor were unmistakable. She drew a stretched sliver of the rarefied air into her lungs and spoke forcefully, shattering the silence.

"Do you make this sacrifice willingly?" It was hardly a question – rather, the beginning of a brief and terminal ceremony.

He bowed deeply. She nodded to the two other men in the room. "Bind him."

He did not resist as they tied his wrists behind his back, and shackled his legs with a heavy chain. His eyes radiated uncompromising faith, and an unspoken promise that the chains were not necessary, that he was a willing sacrifice.

Sister Esma knew better. "Proceed. Your time of glory is at hand."

The two thick-set, oily-skinned men each lit a flaming torch, and lifted up the dust-ridden carpet to reveal an oak trapdoor. They strained to heave it up, their groans under its weight competing with the screeching of its age-rusted hinges. They propped it open and led the man down the steps. Sister Esma followed.

The undulating, narrow passage was redolent with an ancient odor of decay, mingled with the acrid smoke from the flaming oil torches, casting hideous shadows on the crudely carved tunnel walls. The young man did not falter, but his two guards walked nervously. You should indeed be afraid, Sister Esma thought. She pulled out the deep blue diamond-shaped amulet that had been inside her clothing since Alessia herself had passed it to her five hundred years ago. It shone dully, and she bathed in its warmth – it had never felt old, or cold, and now seemed to glow in anticipation, as if it knew.

After a ten minute descent, the close air felt warmer, and Sister Esma saw flecks of sweat on the guard’s faces in the flickering flame-light. They stopped at a landing before an oval metallic door. Although everything else about the tunnel reeked of centuries lost, the door had no rust or other signs of corrosion or age.

"Aside!" she commanded, and all three made way for her. She pressed her amulet into a central, diamond-shaped recess. This time there was no creaking of hinges, it withdrew soundlessly into a recess on one side, with only a faint hissing of equalizing air pressure, and the crackling of the torches as they found a fresher supply of oxygen.

"Follow," she said, and walked into the dimly-lit, circular chamber, some fifty meters across and ten meters high at its apex.

The guards scanned the area apprehensively, no doubt trying to figure where the grey, morgue-like light was coming from, but soon all eyes were on a central pedestal, surrounded by a circular stone plinth some ten meters in diameter. On the pedestal stood a three meter high egg. It was russet in color, but not smooth – blue veins wormed around its opaque external surface.

"Douse the torches." She pointed to a small stone font full of black water. The guards hesitated, both glancing back to the dark corridor behind them, knowing that once wet, the torches could not be re-lit.

"Now!" she said. Failing to obey Sister Esma was always fatal, so they both sidled up to the font and thrust in the torches, which sputtered and hissed, then expired. The robed acolyte swayed faintly, muttering indecipherable prayers. He had that beatific expression, Sister Esma considered, of one who was about to meet his maker, though without having fully appreciated the travel costs.

She recited a litany in a long-forgotten tongue, her accent thick, the syllables guttural. The guards shifted nervously. Abruptly she stopped, and prostrated herself three times in front of the egg. She stood up, glowing with pride, and approached the acolyte.

"Do not be afraid. Your sacrifice will free this Soldier of God, and you will shine in the afterlife, a saint, never forgotten." Her thin lips sketched a smile.

He bowed in return. She pulled out a small push-button device, flourished her long fingers with their black-painted nails, and pressed down with her thumb. A humming started, rising in pitch, ascending to a high squeal. The two guards placed calloused hands over their ears. After a full minute the crescendo broke. Silence flooded back into the chamber, punctuated only by the guards’ heavy breathing.

She led the acolyte to the smaller pedestal in front of the egg, and tied a rope securely to the shackles around his feet. She turned him to face the egg. Even as she glided back to the edge of the plinth, the first intense crack fractured the dense air, its echo catapulting around the chamber, causing both guards, and even the acolyte this time, to flinch. The guards turned toward each other, whispering, but Sister Esma paid no attention. As the second crack shattered a lower part of the egg, the acolyte turned round briefly to Esma, who nodded calmly.

The third crack revealed a black serrated leg, with a main joint half way along its two meter length. It lashed out and harpooned the young man’s right thigh. He screamed as the creature dragged him closer. The young man fell and again turned to Esma, wide-eyed. Only his faith, now punctured by doubt, kept him from screaming again. A nice touch, she thought – she hadn’t actually expected such ardor.

She remained serene while one of the guards ran forward and fished out a torch, trying haplessly to light it. The other glanced to and fro between the egg and the corridor behind them. He bolted for the corridor. A fourth crack disintegrated most of the front part of the shell, revealing the creature’s dark, blue-black head. It had two pairs of three diagonal slits on each side of its face, sweating a viscous, scarlet fluid. The top of the head curved smoothly upwards at the edges, ending in two points at either side, as wide as its shoulder-sections. The lower edges of its head tapered down toward the neck, giving it the overall shape of a rectangle that had been stretched down at the middle, like the silhouette of an open book. She smiled. Such noble symmetry.

The creature’s head rolled back and emitted a deafening, high-pitched roar, and one of its middle legs seized the stiff, simpering body of the acolyte, another leg easily slashing the rope that secured him. It looked at first as though the head collapsed backward, but in fact a huge mouth had opened below the slits, and gaped wide revealing pitiless blackness inside. The acolyte’s head was thrust into the yawning hole. As the creature’s jaws clamped down on the acolyte’s cranium, a terrible sucking noise reverberated across the chamber. The wretch’s body kicked and thrashed violently, held in an immovable vice-like grip, and then went limp as a rag doll. The guard who had been trying to light the torch, gave up and, whimpering, crawled over to Esma, kneeling before her, his head on the floor protected by his arms.

The creature, with a single swing of its powerful neck, tossed the spent corpse aside and burst from the remains of the egg, roaring. In one bound it leapt down before Esma, towering a good meter above her. She did not flinch, but held up her amulet before the young hatchling. She made a sharp clicking noise with her tongue, and pointed to the quivering object at her feet.

The second guard ran blindly through the coal-black twisting passage, arms out-stretched in front of his face. He heard his colleague’s blood-curdling single scream. Then he heard a strange distant galloping sound, getting louder, closer. He sprinted as fast as he could, bouncing bloodily off endless, catacomb-dark corridor walls, unseeing eyes wide with fear.

Chapter 43

Cocos

Micah and Sandy lay flaked out against curiously cool plazsteel crates at the side of a makeshift airfield. It was only 8am and Micah was already sweating. He glanced at his wristcom which displayed the temperature as forty degrees Celsius with eighty per cent humidity. They both observed Vince, twenty meters away, stripped to the waist, glistening with transblock, wearing baseball cap and shades. He shouted into his wristcom, and barked orders to scurrying Chorazin and assorted military personnel. Helicopters and small swing-jets landed every fifteen minutes, some discharging cargo, some picking up crates like the ones they had been told by Vince to stay with. At least someone had lent Micah and Sandy a couple of baseball hats to shield themselves from the scorching sun.

Micah glanced down at his forearms, the first streams of sweat forming in this natural sauna. He hoped they would be somewhere else, at least properly shaded, by midday, preferably by 9 am.

"He’s quite sexy, don’t you think?" Sandy quipped, "All that testosterone barely under control? We need a man with balls right now. A man of action, instinct. He seems to qualify."

Micah never understood – and guessed he never would – what turned women on and off; to him it was all a lottery with infinitesimal odds of winning.

He shrugged. "If you say so. I’m not sure about the ‘barely', though. He always seems to be completely under control. Even now he’s just using the form of anger to achieve results."

"Have you forgotten about her yet?" Sandy’s non-sequitur came unwelcome at him, "You know, that bitch, Louise."

Micah levered himself up, hobbled and hopped a few paces on the blisteringly hot sand, gazing out over to the dazzling, choppy sea, and the horizon blurred by heat haze from the runway tarmac. He found a cool patch in the shade of one of the crates, and stopped. "Yes and no." He didn’t want to go there. "You forgotten Gabriel?"

She took it in her stride. "Unlikely. He left me a going-away present." She tapped her belly with an index finger. "Still, according to you, I won’t get to open it."

He had nothing to say to that. But her banter was preferable to imminent reality.

She nodded in Vince’s direction. "Do you know what muscle-man over there has planned?"

Micah could feel the booster in him demanding action of some sort. So he raised his eyebrows then strode over towards Vince, standing at the water’s edge. It was like taking a stroll in a frying pan. He tried not to run, and mercifully a small crystal clear cool wave washed over his toes. As he neared Vince he slowed down. Vince was giving an Oscar-winning impression of anger.

"Well, then I expect we’ll both see each other there shortly!" He snapped off the call, shot a glance at Micah, and added "asshole" to his wristcom. "They won’t give me high-end nukes. Needs to go through congress for fuck’s sake, and the President is out of reach. Sonofabitch!"

Micah flinched. "Nukes? You want to take nukes to Eden?"

Vince stopped perusing the various transport operations, and walked up close to Micah. He removed his sunglasses, his blue eyes blazing into the back of Micah’s skull.

"Sure – I thought you were with the plan. Nuke them before they arrive here. Got a better idea? If so, I’d like to hear it."

Micah faltered. "I just thought… you know, we were going to go on a rescue mission or something."

Vince cracked sweating knuckles. His face was somber, but all the same, Micah was sure he was laughing at him.

"You mean rescue the four astronauts, and bring them back so they can get killed on Earth rather than on Eden. Remind me, what’s your job title again?"

Micah realized that although he’d been chewing it over for hours, the result wasn’t up to much. Still, nukes? "Maybe there’s some other way," he said weakly.

"Well, if there is, I’m all ears. But you said we had at most days. We don’t even know how long these ships take to get there. So maybe by the time we arrive they’ll all be gone. But if not, I intend to give them a New York handshake."

Micah felt dazed. Before, he’d played the Delphian messenger predicting imminent doom and calamity. Yet at this moment, as it became reality, he found it difficult to accept, and even harder to respond appropriately. He reckoned this was the Alician and alien gambit all along. Humanity would simply not react fast enough. And Sandy was right – they needed someone ballsy to get a fight going.

"I’m coming with you," he launched, expecting an argument.

"Of course you are. And so is she." Vince nodded to Sandy.

Micah was surprised. "You’re taking a pregnant woman?"

"She’ll be safer with us." Vince replaced his sunglasses and turned back to supervise the others.

"Where’s Antonia?" it came out of the blue, from undefined emotions, but Micah was worried he’d never see her again. Vince, without turning, plucked a sat-phone from his belt and tossed it over his shoulder to Micah. "For Christ’s sake, call her – hit star and then ‘3’. But make it quick, we’re leaving."

"We know how to take off?" asked Micah, only just catching the phone with slippery hands.

"IVS came through – the ship they ‘lost’ had stealth cameras throughout, hooked up to an external relay and satellite telemetry, so they could analyze everything back in Mumbai with only a few seconds delay. They saw how it was launched, and sent a schematic of the key we need, on a secure net feed. It’s being replicated onboard the ship right now."

Micah was surprised. "Why are IVS suddenly being so cooperative?"

Vince lifted his cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "You know, I asked them that. They said it had something to do with suppressed news in some remote village in Outer Mongolia. A massacre of some sort by a wild creature; same again in Venezuela, similar story in Transylvania – that’s where Antonia is, by the way."

Micah grimaced.

Vince shouted to him while still using his hands to direct people. "They’re here, Micah. They’re already fucking here, some of them at least, and IVS are shit-scared about it, as we all should be. So, make the goddammed call, because with or without you we’re leaving."

Micah walked ankle-deep into the water. He got straight through to her.

"Hello?" she said. He paused, momentarily tongue-tied by the sound of her voice. He had no idea what he wanted to say. Well, that was a lie; of course, he knew exactly what he wanted to say. He just had no idea what he would actually say.

"It’s me, Micah."

"Oh, Micah. Thank God you’re still alive."

Micah’s eyes closed in relief that she wasn’t mad at him.

"It’s chaos here, Micah. We’re holding back thousands of people trying to board one of the ships. I’ve seen one of them Micah, the creatures, from a V-jet in the mountains – a half-dozen or so of them are loose here. They’re unstoppable, and they just keep feeding on people, sucking the life out of them, ignoring everything else. The Alicians have spread rumours that Earth isn’t safe anymore, that devils have arrived to cleanse Earth, and the ships are the only escape. Listen – it’s really bad here – I have to go. Take… take care, and… Micah?"

He could hear only her words; all other sound around him disappeared. "Yes?"

"I’m sorry I doubted you. And thanks. For saving my life. Vince said you’re going to Eden – is it true?"

"Yes." He swallowed. I love you. "I’m going to find Katrina, make sure she’s safe. We’ll bring her back, I promise."

It was hard to hear the sounds at the other end of the line. Sea-water lapped around his feet. Vince appeared and snatched the sat-phone from him.

"Antonia, this is Vince, we’ve got to leave right now. Good luck, and whatever happens, don’t get on that ship!" He clicked it off and stormed away.

A gentler hand touched his shoulder."Micah, it’s time," Sandy said, her voice softer than he’d ever heard it. He let her lead him to the heli-jet.

Micah stared out the window and saw the crates they had been sitting on hanging from another chopper a hundred meters away. He shouted over the din of the rotors.

"What’s in those crates we were sitting on?"

Vince grinned. "Level-two nukes. Secret Chorazin supply. Not grade-one, but close. Smaller, easier to deploy. Less range, but they’ll reduce anything within the blast zone to molecules of hydrogen and oxygen, and then burn very brightly."

"Good," Micah said. "Let’s toast the mother-fuckers."

Vince and Sandy exchanged glances.

Fifteen minutes later they saw the ship, floating in the ocean. Micah couldn’t believe how vast it was. And then he recalled what Vince had said, that some of the aliens were already here. He spoke to Vince.

"What other weapons do we have?"

Vince leant forward and patted him on the shoulder. "Glad to have you back on board, Micah. As well as twelve tactical nukes we have air-to-ground fusion missiles, and around a dozen swing-wing and VTOL jets already onboard, tooled up."

Micah noticed that for the first time Sandy was sitting between him and Vince, whereas up till now she’d kept Micah between them. Figures, he thought to himself. The world’s ending, and I’m going to be left with my mother, if I’m lucky. But he laughed at himself. All these years he’d always felt sorry for himself. Never really even saw it. That’s one of the things his Dad could never tolerate.

Sandy passed him something. "You nearly left this behind, Micah."

It was the jacket. Despite the heat outside, he put it on.

Vince slapped a hand on Micah’s shoulder. "It’s a good fit."

◆◆◆

Vince checked that everything for living had been placed inside on the second main deck, including makeshift sleeping tents, as well as kitchen and chemical bathroom arrangements, and three International Rescue Packets, as large as old train freight containers, usually reserved for rescue missions for flood and disaster-hit provinces. But his priority had been the military hardware on the first deck, which now resembled a weaponry convention, or possibly a future war museum.

The mil-support had found a way to open a larger hatch on this upper deck just underneath the conning tower, allowing them to lower helicopters and the VTOL aircraft inside. Stealth fighter aircraft sat waiting, like birds of prey.

In the larger upper control room in the conning tower, a nav and comms hardware console had also been installed, set back a few meters from the Q’Roth machinery, so that two military controllers could co-ordinate sorties once they landed, via multi-band radar units to be deployed outside the tower once they arrived. Vince and the military Commander Enrique Vasquez, a tall, one-armed man with a shock of short-cropped white hair and oil-black eyes that dared anyone to stare at his sleeved stump, had both agreed that they would need to ‘hit the ground running’ once they arrived, though neither knew how long that would be. Vince was playing the hunch that these ships in some way moved infinitely faster than their own space-craft. When anyone asked, he replied ‘a matter of days’. He was guessing of course, but he understood the importance of authority and morale.

He’d been speaking on and off with the Chorazin chief scientist assigned – a real pain in the ass named Gorman – who kept saying he had no idea how it worked, how long the trip would take, the dangers of acceleration and deceleration effects, etc. In short, he said they might all die as soon as they figured out how to start the engines, or whatever powered the ship. In the end Vince offered him a trip back to Cocos. The scientist squirmed a little but remained on board.

Vince had at least been able to download advanced news bulletins that announced strange disturbances in six different locations worldwide, sparking worldwide panic. Seven ships had disappeared so far, including one near Beijing with fifty thousand Fundies aboard, and another one in Brazil, similarly stocked with human cargo. Antonia with her Balkan political connections through her father and his Chorazin men there had managed to keep the Fundies out, but blood had already been spilt. IVS had seized control of another ship buried in Rajasthan’s northern desert, and were stockpiling food and weapons, guarded by their own elite paramilitary security force. Josefsson was using his political muscle to good effect, but the Senate was divided and the President wavering. Now that one or two pictures of the aliens had hit the nets, more politicians were lining up behind Josefsson.

But there had been a complete news blackout in Central Australia after a ship that had disappeared near Ayers Rock had apparently returned six hours later. Qahuru, the capital of Central Australia, a desert that had been reclaimed following the irradiation of both East and West coasts during the War, had gone eerily quiet, despite its million-strong population.

Vince balked at the news. He knew the Alician bastards had played a cool, calculated game, and all the cards were stacked against humanity. The United Nations had been disgraced and abandoned twenty years ago, and since then there had never been anything approaching a world federating organization capable of orchestrating a concerted response to a global threat – the New World Alliance was a bureaucratic sham. We’ve been reduced to tribes. Worse still, after the nanovirus epidemic and then the nuclear holocaust, national governments were extremely reluctant to use dwindling supplies of the latter, and the former had all been dismantled years ago, so Earth’s defenses were feeble. Even the orbital satellite high-powered laser system was useless, as it was intended for rogue meteorites that might one day approach from outside, not an enemy who could simply materialize in the heart of a city. Vince had to admit that mankind was in no state to stage a decent fight.

His bosses had their hands tied up with politics, but at least now he’d been granted temporary authority to act as a relatively free agent and coordinate whatever resources he could muster. As well as five military flight teams and support personnel, he had a small staff from the remnants of the Eden Mission to try to rewire, or whatever the equivalent was in alien terms, the automatic guidance system, based on the downloads IVS had received from Kostakis’ team before they’d disappeared. The steps they made were shared instantaneously with IVS, Josefsson and Antonia. Vince grit his teeth at the bitter irony that his most critical allies were now a handful of civilians he had only met this week, a self-serving politician, and the most ruthless commercial corporation that ever existed.

He flipped open a small radio that broadcast to the whole ship via an installed public address system in the tower and levels one and two.

"Okay, people, what say we leave?" As he snapped it shut, a klaxon blared out inside the ship. Vince beckoned to Sandy and Micah to follow him, as people started running around, and hatches snuffed out the external noise of the sea.

"Come on," Vince said. They made their way to the second, lower control room, which they now knew to be the real control hub. Vince nodded to Vasquez, positioned at the main console. A military corporal gave a stiff salute to Vince, ignoring Micah and Sandy despite their uniforms. Vince appreciated that the man could tell the difference.

"All ready here, Sir," he said.

Vince saluted back. Like many Chorazin, he had been in the army in the last war, and had no problem in either giving orders to military, nor, for that matter, having them carried out respectfully. He picked up a microphone, and switched it on. "Okay, everybody, we’re initiating take-off. I suggest you hang on to something." He looked over to the anxious-looking Corporal who held the metal ankh key.

"Do it," Vince ordered.

The man held his breath, and then dropped the key into the slot.

Nothing happened. They waited. He looked nervously at Vince.

"Again."

He tried several times – he pressed it, jabbed at it, and added some creative permutations, all of which had no effect.

"Damn!" Vince picked up the microphone. "Okay, people, stand down. We have a minor technical problem."

He turned, sighing, to the scientist, Gorman. "Any ideas? And saying I told you so is seriously not an option right now."

Gorman shifted from one foot to the other. "We made the key based on appearances, because all we had was a brief shot of what it looked like. But it might need to be a specific material, or have a magnetic code, or a host of other things."

"And I don’t suppose you’d have any idea where I can get one?" Vince asked, laconically.

But before the scientist could try to figure out a suitable reply, someone else spoke in a Mexican accent from the shadows at the back of the room.

'You need this," the man said.

They all turned to see a tanned mid-twenties man with black moustache and pony-tail. He wore a standard khaki military uniform, but one without any insignia. He was holding up a grey-blue ankh key. He was also wet through. Nobody had noticed him until now.

The Corporal and two other service-men both leveled pistols at the man, who did not flinch, staring at Vince.

"Who the hell are you? And how did you get onboard?"

"Does it matter? Here is the key you need. I had to kill a lot of Alicians to get it. We can chat later. We must go. Now."

"What’s the sudden hurry?" Vince feigned nonchalance.

"Check your perimeter sensors."

"Watch him," Vince instructed the Corporal. "If he moves, make sure he doesn’t again." He turned to another console on which several Chorazin screens were mounted. An officer began searching different external camera angles, and then halted. "What the …?" the ensign said. But Vince knew what it was, and it was swimming fast toward them, curving through the water like a shark. He turned to the wet-through man.

"Can it open the hatches?"

"You bet. It’s called a Q’Roth. You’re in its ship."

"Okay. You can explain – later." Vince picked up the microphone. "Everyone – dress rehearsal over – hold onto something."

He walked over to Ramires and snatched the key from his hand.

He strode back to the main console and slammed it into the recess. As he did so, everything froze and became mercurial. Shades of silver tinged every facet of the equipment, every line and crack of every face, the eyes, the pores, all their clothes and every surface. He had the feeling that they were outside of time while the universe moved beneath them, or rather moved outside the ship.

Vince didn’t breathe – it wasn’t that he couldn’t, but his brain told him it would be a really bad idea.

Chapter 44

Nightmare Run

Jennifer sucked air into her aching lungs. The fear of breathing in liquid vanished, or, rather, was overcome by the desperate need to inhale anything. Despite a faint sensation of vapor entering her lungs, which she decided was probably psychosomatic, the dread of drowning in liquid mercury proved erroneous. Even so, she bent forward to regain her breath. She heard coughing down below.

Within two minutes Dimitri swept into the control room along with several other technicians, half of them still dressed in their sleepwear.

"How long?" she croaked in Dimitri’s direction. He looked at his chronometer, and shook his head. "According to my watch, no time has passed, but we cannot rely on anything mechanical, since all movement froze. I had the definite sense of suspension of time, like being encased in glass. My thoughts simply paused. A fascinating sensation!"

Jennifer could see his excitement, while everyone else appeared closer to panic or nausea. Still, the others were all engineers and scientists driven by curiosity, and soon were poring over the monitors, and the recess that held the key.

She walked right up to Dimitri so only he could hear. "Were we really in some kind of liquid?"

"I do not know." He beamed. "This is such an adventure! A liquid would make sense, as it is irrepressible, so it would be a good dampener for any accelerative or decelerative effects, but there is no trace of residue. I think perhaps it was a perceptual illusion, a side-effect of the mode of transit itself."

She nodded. Then she remembered her companion. "Er… Dimitri – this is Cheveyo – he’s the one who saved me from the Alicians. He had the key.’ She turned to the Sentinel Master. "Cheveyo, have you actually travelled in one of these before?"

The man she addressed seemed to be listening for something. Finally he spoke, as much to himself as to them.

"Good. We may yet have enough time." He raised his voice, attracting all within listening range. "The aliens who built this ship – the Q’Roth – have not yet awoken, but they will. When they do they will storm the ship and kill everyone aboard. We cannot stop them entering. If we try to hide outside they will hunt us down. Once they have feasted on us and drained our energy, they will fill this vessel with newly hatched Q’Roth and make the trip back to Earth, to harvest the population. There are some fifty ships on Earth like this one. Each one can transport a hundred thousand Q’Roth. Each Q’Roth will extract the bio-electric life energy of hundreds of humans, and live from it for a thousand years. All humanity will be consumed."

The full stop after his last word was like a silence grenade. Many mouths hung open, and all smiles at having survived the transit vanished. Even Dimitri gaped at him. Jennifer spoke first. "Tell us what to do."

"Try again," Hendriks said, as Dimitri and the makeshift crew attempted to send them back to Earth. The key went back into the recess but nothing happened. There were mutterings and more than a few moans from the now-dressed crew; all thirty people who had been onboard squeezed into the smaller control room.

Eventually Cheveyo spoke, unperturbed. "It is as we believed. Long ago, one of my predecessors took a ship but never returned. We assume there is one key for coming here, and another for the return journey."

Jennifer studied Cheveyo. At the moment, she assumed, only the two of them knew there were nukes on board. He had clearly come here with a more or less empty ship, depriving the Q’Roth of a food supply, and was going to blow up the ship before it could be boarded, or, more likely she realized, just as it filled up with Q’Roth. His implacable gaze met hers. It seemed only minutes ago that she had agreed on a pact with him to replace Gabriel on this mission, but now it meant her own and her lover’s death. There had to be another solution.

Dimitri perked up. "I refuse to believe these ships can only go to these two locations. It’s absurd!"

Cheveyo nodded. His strangely accented voice radiated throughout the packed room. "I agree. But no one has ever been able to unravel the guidance system or its controls."

"We should go outside." Jennifer’s small voice, in contrast, flew through the room like an arrow vanishing into bushes, not finding any target. Only someone else’s authority could enable it to stick.

"She is right," Cheveyo said. "Here, we are corralled sheep awaiting slaughter. Out there we stand some chance."

Jennifer doubted he believed that, and wondered what game he was playing. But she knew that if they all stayed, they would die, and morale was free-falling into the abyss by the minute.

Some of the men began nodding, agreeing with Cheveyo, forgetting who had suggested it first. Jennifer was used to it, and right now didn’t particularly care. Urgent discussions and plans unfurled, and three groups were quickly formed, under Cheveyo’s implicit authority.

"The engineering team must stay here with the Professor to work on the guidance system. I need a volunteer – you," he pointed to a man who Jennifer had not seen before; she was certain he wasn’t a technician. "Take four people and move some of the larger crates outside to create an external perimeter and defensive position."

Jennifer was impressed – he had a confederate onboard, who was now being instructed to prepare the nuclear devices. At least, she thought, he’s off-loading them, so there is a small chance we can escape if we can find out how to operate the ship.

As Cheveyo reeled out instructions, she noticed how no one saw fit to interrupt, or to question the orders’ logic. They just needed someone to take charge. Right now, any plan would do.

He continued. "Last, I need five volunteers to come with myself and Jennifer to search for the Eden astronauts."

Gasps of surprise echoed around the room. Things had happened so quickly, that even Jennifer had not been thinking of any humans already there. She quickly assessed the odds of finding them as negligible, but had to admire the skill of this man, for the mere mention of the Ulysses crew, a team of military men, had an almost instant effect on the people – they now had hope and purpose – paper-thin if any of them thought about it, but, she witnessed, they didn’t, and it was enough to galvanize them into action.

Volunteers stepped forward from the ranks quickly. Jennifer instinctively picked out the young attractive woman who’d been eyeing Dimitri – Sophia her name badge said – to come with Cheveyo’s team. She didn’t feel like leaving her behind, just in case.

The planning was minimal and simplistic in reality, but it kept the pack from panicking and running off blindly in all directions. People formed the three groups, some already heading toward the lower levels to get to the ground access. The only problem for Jennifer was that Dimitri had been designated to stay inside. Before she had time to talk to her lover privately, Cheveyo pulled her to one side.

"You must leave him. He has the mind of a genius – maybe he can unlock the ship’s secrets. Your immediate path lies with me. If the enemy still sleeps, there is a chance we can inflict harm while they remain vulnerable. Besides, if you want you can run back here and be in time to die with him."

She glared at him but then realized he wasn’t being sarcastic – just matter-of-fact. She walked up to Dimitri and leant forward, whispering in his ear.

"If they come, I’ll be here. Please find the riddle of these scrolls; I know you can do it."

She kissed him gently on the cheek. But he pulled her towards him and embraced her openly in front of everyone. His big arms almost crushed her and conversation around them slowed. Polite coughing ensued. She closed her eyes, memorizing the feel of his skin, his still-sleepy smell, the pulse in his neck under her palm. Abruptly he let her go, and the full weight of his colossal intellect turned and hammered down on the instruments in front of him. She gazed at him a moment, remembering the first time she’d seen him lecture, and savoured the moment.

Cheveyo turned to leave, and she and five others followed him out of the room, the noise returning behind them like an onrushing tide. They headed wordlessly down the spiral walkway, following Cheveyo, to what end Jennifer didn’t know. As they neared the lower exit, she clutched the locket with her right hand and intoned inside her mind, watch over us, Gabe.

✽ ✽ ✽

Rashid was half way up a small tree, at the edge of the forest which the ship had all but flattened. He surveyed the behemoth through night goggles, but with no obvious heat signature, it wasn’t possible to discern much detail – cold hard metal, no obvious openings or suggestions of where a door could be. After half an hour of observation, out of desperation, he fired a red flare above the craft to illuminate it. A couple of minutes later, with the parachuted incendiary spiralling down, he saw a crack open in one of the places he thought the door should most logically be, at the base in the middle of one of the ship’s sides. He had to lean forward precariously on the edge of the branch to aim his pulse rifle. He still did not know what might come out, human or Q’Roth. As his finger hovered over the trigger, the branch creaked, then cracked and snapped beneath him, and in that instant, the rifle fired. As he fell forwards and down, a tougher branch slammed into his head and shoulder. He landed on his back on soft, mossy ground, blood oozing from his nose. He felt as if someone had just punched him in the face.

"By all the Gods, this is not the time for such foolish accidents!" He sat for a while, gingerly pinching the cartilage at the top of his nose to stem the flow, and then tried to mop up the blood with his kerchief. Struggling to his feet, he wanted to know if he had hit anyone when the rifle had fired, but if the occupants were Q’Roth, he decided he had better get back to the ship. He jogged slowly; his vision kept blurring from the semi-concussive blow. He knew he must be in shock from the fall, and would have to rouse Zack. Things were going downhill rapidly. He ploughed his way through the trees, stumbling occasionally, to the edge of the desert that had now encompassed the Lander. It was then that he realized the fusion detonator had fallen out of his jacket, and must be lying at the bottom of the tree.

◆◆◆

Kat ran despite the pain in her lungs, but she was losing her bearings – yet her only hope was to get to the Lander. Then a red flare lit up the night sky, and she saw the Lander glint beneath it. Thanks Zack! You’re a bloody marvel!

She ran in fast but long strides toward the flare, like in her marathon days. She needed to pace herself and not become short of breath when close to the ship. At least out here with the low level heat signature of the vegetation, and now with the flare itself, she could see better with the night goggles so she didn’t trip over small rocks or bushes.

The unmistakable sound of a pulse rifle crackled in the distance ahead of her. She hoped Zack and Rashid weren’t under attack. A second later, coming from some way behind her, she heard the pounding thuds of the young Q’Roth. It had obviously stopped when it had come out of the cave, probably getting its own bearings on this new planet, lending Kat a precious head start; but now it had resumed the hunt. Kat shifted gear to a sprint. She ran as fast as she could, ripping past rocks and shrubs, twigs and leaves whipping her face and outstretched arms, stinging her flesh. She knew from her nightmare that even though she thought this was her top speed, she could, and would, run faster before it was over.

She launched her last parachute flare so as to light up her way, not even stopping to do it, and tossed the small flare gun aside. She’d already shed most of her gear in order to run faster. A branch she hadn’t seen clipped her night vision goggles and knocked them off her head. She kept running. She could hear the pounding on the ground less than thirty meters behind – it reminded her of the sound of a train: steady, rhythmic, a confident predator running down its prey, patient enough to wait for her to slip, slow down or make a mistake, or simply for the difference in their speed to close the gap. Kat pumped her arms harder.

Unlike her nightmare, she found she could channel her fear. She darted onwards, grazing bushes and dodging rocks by miniscule margins. She knew the creature was a matter of meters behind her now, as she glimpsed the top of the Lander up ahead – that meant the shrubbery would disappear and it would be open savannah in a few seconds. Mouth open and drawn back, eyes wide, arms pistoning furiously, she girded herself for the last sprint, thigh muscles burning, chest expanded, trying to take in more air to propel herself further, knowing that this would be the Q’Roth’s chance to accelerate too. She might just make it. Be there, Zack!

◆◆◆

Rashid lurched groggily around the cockpit. He activated the stasis re-animation sequence, but it would take another five minutes for Zack to come around, unless the pain woke him first. The perimeter radar showed a group converging on the Lander, obviously coming from the ship. He knew Zack must have a back-up detonator for the fusion reactor, but he had no idea where it was.

"Wake up, my friend, I hate to admit it, but I need you!" Rashid realized that having found companions after eleven solitary months, he didn’t want to die alone.

He sealed the airlock and prepped the engines, though he saw it would be another ten minutes before lift-off was possible.

He was staring at the viewscreen facing the forest and the ship, trying to see the first signs of the advancing group, when the perimeter alarm went off a second time. The display showed two new figures moving fast towards the Lander, not coming from the newly arrived ship, but from the hills. With a sickening feeling in his stomach, he realized it was a chase scenario – a hunt. It had to be Kat or Blake, with a predator clearly gaining ground. He searched the cockpit and the second module frantically, but there were no heavy weapons left – the ‘cannon’ was depleted, and Blake had taken the smaller rocket launcher.

For a moment he considered staying put, but dismissed the idea – it was not in his nature to desert a comrade. In any case, he doubted it would take the Q’Roth long to break in or disable the ship. He figured he might as well die doing something his ancestors would be proud of. Grabbing his pulse rifle, he checked the magazine was fully charged, and headed for the airlock. He kicked the emergency release and leapt through the hatch, coming down faster than planned, landing heavily at the bottom of the stairs. He knew the knock he had taken in the tree was still affecting him, but he had to try to save whoever was coming. He then heard Kat yell a single word, "Zack!" A shout not far short of a scream.

Rashid knelt down to get a more steady aim, and then observed the scene unfold in slow motion. The flare was nearly down, casting a macabre light on the rapidly approaching figures. He could half-see Kat’s face as she tore free from the bushes into the stretch of desert between her and the Lander, straining with every step, contorted whether through fear of imminent death, or pain from the exertion – or both. The creature was just behind her. Rashid saw the raw power in the beast, never before having seen one hunt. Even as he raised his rifle, he knew he had no clear shot, and they were too close together for him to use the rifle in free-flow mode. He watched helplessly as one of the creature’s legs spread out sideways and then swept at Kat’s back leg. Her forward momentum propelled her headlong through the night air, before she crashed down into the dust like a wounded gazelle brought down by a lion.

He fired two rounds as the creature pinned her down with one of its claws. He fired again three times in quick succession, barely gaining its attention. Kat struggled desperately to get free, while the creature pressed her into the ground. A shrill shriek burst forth as the creature raised two of its legs into the air, and Rashid knew it was about to take her life. He fired one more time before the rifle was knocked out of his hands and he was thrown to the floor. He looked up to see a short girl, a fierce look in her eyes. Confused, he turned back towards Kat to see another figure run towards the creature, shouting a warrior’s death-cry and brandishing a blade of blue fire.

Rashid watched the man – suicidal it seemed – leap from the ground as the creature swung its two raised legs at him. The man rolled in mid-air, and Rashid could not tell if the legs hit him or not, but as he landed in the dust behind the creature, it was stilled. Its legs wavered once, twice, and then its legs buckled as it split clean in two, the top half falling backwards, the front half crashing over Kat.

Rashid jumped to his feet, following the girl, who was already sprinting toward the scene. She ran to the man in the dust, he ran to Kat. Three other men followed Rashid and, as he arrived, helped him heave the steaming, stinking carcass of black intestines and dark blue blood off her back. Without turning her over, Rashid knelt and patted her hard on the cheek.

"Kat, Kat! Can you hear me?"

She groaned, and appeared at best half-conscious. Rashid checked her back and neck for any obvious breakages but found none. "Support her head and get her back to our ship!" he shouted to the other two men. They hesitated.

"Now!" he shouted, and they jerked into action, lifting Kat carefully. Rashid glanced over to the girl kneeling next to the other man, who was sitting up, carrying a short silver cylinder. Rashid recognized the tell-tale electric blue of a nano-blade before it vanished into its sheath, as the girl helped the man get up. Blood was weeping from a line of six gashes across his stomach where the claws had caught him.

Rashid intercepted them. "You are a Sentinel, aren’t you?"

The man spoke with obvious difficulty. "How do you… know of us?"

Rashid considered his priorities. He turned and jogged to catch up the other men and Kat. As he reached the hatch, Kat was coming round.

"You’re alive! Kat, you survived your nightmare." He laid a hand on her shoulder. She looked like she’d just aged ten years.

She stirred. "Rashid!" she panted, "Nobody’s more surprised than me. But I feel like a house fell on me. What happened? Where’s Zack? He killed it, right?"

"Later." He checked her over, seeing if she could get up. With some effort, she spread her feet and stood on her own. She stared toward the mass of the creature some twenty meters away, but said nothing.

The girl and the man arrived, as did one more man and a woman. Rashid felt the warrior’s eyes boring into him, but it was the girl that spoke.

"Sorry I pushed you by the way, but I didn’t want you to shoot our stunt-man here. My name’s Jennifer."

Rashid looked her up and down. "I’m Rashid. You pack quite a punch. But… you came in the ship? The Q’Roth ship?"

She nodded. "There’s about thirty of us. But what about you? You’re not one of the Ulysses astronauts. Where are the others?"

Before he could think of where to start, Kat piped up. "Rashid. I need to talk to you a moment – alone."

He crouched down, noting the hooded look in her eyes.

She did her best to whisper. "The Q’Roth will be coming, Rashid. That wasn’t a guardian – that was a newborn. They’ll flood down this hill. We have to take off."

He stared at her, and then up towards the hill, then addressed Jennifer.

"I’m afraid we are all in terrible danger. The hatching has started. There are likely to be thousands like that one coming this way very soon." He glanced at the warrior. "Even your nano-sword will not help us this time."

"What are we supposed to do?" said the young woman who had stayed in the background until now, a trace of an Italian accent. "We can’t take off! Let us come with you!"

Before Rashid could answer, Jennifer cut in. "Sophia, they can’t take us. It’s a four-man craft, at best, if I’m not mistaken. We should go back to the ship and make a stand there."

Sophia turned on her. "You gotta’ be crazy! We’re – what did he say?" She pointed to Cheveyo, "corralled sheep! You can go and get eaten with your boyfriend if you like. This ship could damn well try and take us!"

Rashid smelled rising panic in the air. These people, he realized, were not trained astronauts or military, they were civilians. With alarm he noticed the woman was armed with a pistol. Without warning, it was out and she was waving it around.

"Listen, I’m not going to die on this fucking planet. I’m getting on board, and anyone tries to stop me is cooked meat". She backed nervously toward the steps.

Rashid noticed that the warrior was too far from her to do anything, and was bleeding heavily in any case. As she reached the bottom rung of the ladder, still aiming the gun at them, a hand dropped down from inside the ship, and pressed something silver onto her neck. Her body sagged and her eyes rolled upwards. The hand from the ship caught her neck and held her, and a strained voice shouted. "Well for Christ’s sake somebody take her, she ain’t as light as she looks."

Rashid turned to Kat. Sure enough, just after two men took her slack, anaesthetized body, Zack showed himself.

"Anyone like to tell me what the hell is going on?"

Before they could answer, the long range perimeter alarm sounded off. It rose in pitch, indicating multiple incursions.

Rashid took control. "Prepare for take-off, Zack – they’re coming." He turned to the others. "I’m sorry. We can take one, no more, or else we cannot lift off."

Jennifer spoke for all of them. "We understand. Take her." She pointed to Sophia. "I for one don’t want to be caught while trying to carry that bitch’s body on my back, and try as I might, I can’t quite bring myself to leave her as a distracting morsel to slow them down."

Rashid nodded. "Good luck." The small group turned to leave, breaking into a jog, led by the warrior, evidently in severe pain. Together with Kat he hoisted Sophia onto the ship.

"For the record," Zack said, "she’s with you guys, ‘cause my wife don’t tolerate any hanky-panky. And you both look like shit, by the way." He dragged his bad leg off to the cockpit.

Rashid was relieved once they retracted the ladder and sealed the hatch. They dumped the girl in a stasis pod and he activated it, then he joined Kat in the cockpit where Zack was already strapped into Blake’s seat, shivering, a side-effect of rapid stasis exit, and no doubt the pain in his leg. Zack shrugged, and held up an empty trimorph phial.

"Don’t feel a thing. Come on, Rashid – let’s see if you can really fly."

"Stasis, my friend."

"After take-off, not before," he retorted.

Rashid sighed, and strapped in, trying hard to ignore the perimeter alarm, which instead of individual beeps was now a steadily rising whine.

Zack addressed Kat. "Blake and Pierre?"

Rashid, sitting in Zack’s usual seat, turned around as the engines started their pre-burn. Kat shook her head once. "They’re in the cavern, but by now hundreds of Q’Roth have hatched."

Zack stared resolutely at the control panel in front of him, his jaw set.

Rashid needed to focus on their imminent plight. "How close are they, and how many?" he said to Kat, who was studying the perimeter radar screen. It was still not yet light enough to see very far, although dawn was approaching.

"At least a hundred, maybe more… the first ones are just about to arrive."

"Then to hell with the pre-checks, we go now!" Rashid waited a fraction of a second to see if Zack objected, but Zack pushed back in his chair and folded his arms.

"You’re in the chair," Zack said.

Rashid punched a final key sequence and the roar of the thrusters shook the entire ship. At the same time, there was a loud bang as the first Q’Roth hit the side of the ship.

As he eased forward on the engine throttle, Zack shouted above the din in the cockpit. "Toast them, Rashid. A spin take-off should do the trick."

Rashid bit his lip and rammed the engines full throttle, thrusting him back into his seat as they tore away from the ground, then squeezed a side-bar on the joy-stick, causing the Lander to rotate as it ascended. It was a well-known illegal war maneuver, spreading a curtain of flame over a hundred meter diameter beneath them, and scorching their hull. At least this may give our new friends a little time. But as they struggled to take off, feeling Eden’s gravity pulling at them, he thought of Blake and Pierre being consumed by these monsters. He heard a roaring scream and felt a clunk as something tore off the side of the ship, and they catapulted upwards. Now he had to focus on only one thing – warn Earth. He glanced over to Zack, who was drifting in and out of consciousness, having far exceeded the safe trimorph dosage.

"Should we put Zack into the stasis chamber?" Kat asked.

"No – I may still need his advice while I’m trying to dock with only one thruster." He concentrated on the nav track to find the orbiter, and noticed a new alarm on the central pilot’s panel. The young Q’Roth who had tried to hitch a lift had inflicted damage before being incinerated.

Kat spoke as Eden fell away beneath them, and the grav unit kicked in to dampen the acceleration effect. "Rashid, the thought that Zack would be there ready to save me; it somehow kept my fear from overwhelming me. But in fact he wasn’t there for me."

"That is the beauty of friendship, the beauty of faith, of hope."

"But –"

"You’re alive. Without that trust in him, you would not be. That’s what matters: the bonds between us. That is what makes us strong. Now, we’ve little time. Go and prepare a stim for Zack."

She complained. "But that’s dangerous, he –"

"The Q’Roth damaged the last maneuvering thruster when we took off. I’m not sure we can dock without it. The stim, please."

As Kat unstrapped and headed back to the second compartment, Rashid thought to himself, looking over to Zack’s unconscious frame. In fact, my large friend, it is time to see if you can really fly as well as I have heard.

Chapter 45

Plan B

Micah fell to his knees and dry-retched as the pseudo-liquid evaporated. He gasped several times and coughed so hard he could feel the bronchioles straining in his lungs. But he was relieved – he’d been sure he would drown. He noticed that only three men remained upright, Vince, Commander Vasquez and the new arrival. Everyone else was bent double, or on all fours. Vince still had a gun pointing at the drenched man.

"Name?" Vince demanded.

Micah was impressed that Vince spoke so clearly, as if unaffected by the transfer.

"Ramires," the man said, "I knew Ralph. A good man, and a former partner of yours, I believe. Very clever, managed to infiltrate the Alicians. He died uncovering the secret of that key."

Vince’s trigger finger flexed. "For all I know, you killed him."

Micah got to his feet, though his throat still stung from the coughing. All eyes that weren’t still watering were on the face-off. Ramires was equivocal, a non-mocking smile spread under his black moustache.

"If that’s what you believe then pull the trigger. Otherwise we had better get moving. And I could do with some dry clothes."

Vince’s pulse pistol remained fixed on its target, his arm steady. "Where are we?"

"You know where we are. They will come. Soon."

Micah moved over next to Sandy. He thought about trying to intervene, but she put a steadying hand on his elbow.

Vince lowered the weapon, and picked up the microphone to the PA system. As he clicked it on, there was a brief whine to gain everyone’s attention.

"Okay – Listen everybody. We’re on Eden. We’re here to stop an invasion. Centre of Ops is tower level four. We have five airborne units prepped, so we spread out in cardinal directions, one stays here in reserve. I’m handing over detailed military operations to Colonel Vasquez."

He passed the microphone to the Colonel, who set about issuing crisp orders as if he’d been born doing it. In amongst them, he sent an orderly to find some dry fatigues for Ramires. Vince walked over to Micah and Sandy.

"The rest is up to the military guys for now, you two need to stay out of their way. Vasquez is a good tactician – my CO in Black Ops more than once in the War."

Sandy cocked her head at Vince. "You’re actually going to take orders from someone? This I have to see."

"Dream on. I’m still in charge overall, but he’ll get them on the move – he’s more up to speed on the hardware and mil-ops than I am. But we need to work on Plan B."

"How to get home?" Sandy asked, momentarily distracted by Ramires unceremoniously stripping naked on the other side of the room.

But before Vince could answer, Micah surprised himself and them by answering.

"No. How to escape from both Earth and Eden." As soon as he’d said it, he wished he hadn’t, because he knew it was right. It was booster-enhanced lucidity, enabling him to make an inferential leap. But he needed to unpack it.

"Look, Vince, Sandy, we’re stuck in the Alician’s game, and they’ve been moving our pieces for centuries. What are our real chances of winning or even surviving? Earth is going to be in dire straits, maybe doomed." His gut tightened, as if only now catching up with where his mind was headed. He rushed on, needing to get it all out while he had the mental clarity. "And Eden is a trap, a Q’Roth nest. We have to get off their chessboard." Something from his last Optron experience surfaced. There had been a presence there – alien – but not malevolent. And then the realization shook him: the Q’Roth – this wasn’t the first time; humanity was just next on their list. Which meant… "Another planet! There must be other planets. We have to find one!"

Vince stared at him hard, and then turned to Ramires.

"Is there somewhere else?"

Ramires paused as he buckled his belt. "Rumor has it. But we have no maps, if that’s what you mean. We also understand from our one off-worlder encounter centuries ago that it is a vastly advanced place near the inner ring of the galaxy."

"Meaning?" Vince asked.

Ramires put his tunic and jacket on, and zipped it up. "You eat meat, I presume. Many do because it comes from animals that we consider unintelligent."

Micah had understood this implicitly during the Optron feedback from the alien presence. He jumped in. "You mean that there are intelligences vastly superior to our own, so we’d be in serious danger."

Ramires’ nod was solemn. "We have never had a credible ‘Plan B’ as you call it, not for centuries."

"Great," Vince said flatly.

Micah stared hard at the ground, concentrating. Suddenly his mind broke through.

"That’s it! Of course!"

Vince folded his arms.

Micah beamed. "We need to find a planet the Q’Roth have already been to, one they’ve already… harvested."

Sandy butted in. "But Micah, there won’t be much left of it, will there?"

"Doesn’t matter. It’ll probably be deserted, but it will be safe. The Q’Roth would have no reason to go back, and other races won’t be interested."

They all stared at Micah for a while, before Vince cleared his throat and spoke.

"Well, Micah, as plan B’s go, it’s a long way from what I’d hoped for, but at the moment I don’t have a better one. You work out a way to find such a planet. Vasquez and I are going to introduce the locals to hell while we can. Ramires, care to join?" He and Ramires walked over to Colonel Vasquez.

Sandy stared at Micah. "You know, a few days ago when you breezed into my office demanding to see Kane, I thought you were a complete nerd."

He dared a smile. "And now?"

She grinned. "Well, let’s just say I think I’ve seriously underrated how useful nerds can be." She touched his shoulder, her smile fading. "Find a way to this other planet, Micah. I have a bad feeling we’re going to need it."

He needed more time to think. There was still more information embedded in the Optron message, he was sure of it, and location would be an obvious thing to encode; he just needed to find a way to decrypt it. He glanced at the Q’Roth controls and displays around them – probably the location of former vanquished planets was sitting in a navigational database in that very room, but it could take weeks to begin to understand their technology and how to search it.

He turned and gazed out the porthole at the night sky, abruptly flooded with stark halogen lights as the bay doors opened, and the first jets rolled out, wings already folded down. These men are sharp. He heard the first engine winding up.

As the glaring lights revealed trees, rocks, bushes and grass, he had a hard time believing it was Eden; it looked so much like Earth. He surreptitiously pinched his left arm with his right hand.

Sandy stood next to him. "I don’t blame you. But we’re not going to wake up."

He watched the jets lift off vertically, one by one, hover for a moment, then pitch their noses down and race forward, piercing the night-time shroud at the edge of the lights’ range. He wondered how many would return. We’re desperate, fighting for our very survival, the right to live. Then he corrected himself – rights are irrelevant out here. That’s one of the lessons we have to grasp on this steep learning curve, if we don’t fall right off it. He turned to Sandy.

"We haven’t been awake for centuries," he said. "That’s the problem. And now it’s too late."

An hour later, as his gaze followed one of the last aircraft disappearing into the pre-dawn sky, he noticed an oddly-shaped mountain. He hadn’t been able to see it before, but now its silhouette was just visible as the first inkling of sunlight edged its way down the mountain’s side. He recognized it – he’d seen it in the datastream, from the other side of the desert. Whoever – or whatever – had encoded the hidden Optron message could be there, and maybe the Ulysses crew too, if they had survived. He made up his mind, and turned around to Vince and Vasquez, locked in discussion with the last of the pilots.

His words scythed through the chatter in the room, with a conviction he’d never felt before. "Vince. Colonel Vasquez, I need a plane and a pilot. Right now."

All eyes in the room fell on him, and all conversation ceased.

"Plan B," he said.

Sandy arched an eyebrow. "That jacket really does suit you, Micah."

◆◆◆

Jennifer and the others heard the roar of the Lander as it took off, three hundred meters behind them. She glanced over her shoulder to see it streaking into the dawn sky. They were making good progress but Cheveyo was clearly on his last legs, though he uttered no complaint. Abruptly he stopped, and collapsed into a seated position against a tree trunk.

"You – all of you," he gasped, "go back to the ship – Jennifer, I need a word."

The others looked at him and then at her. She could tell they didn’t want to leave him but they didn’t want to die either. She turned to the rest of them. "Go – I’ll catch you up."

One of the men hesitated while the others turned and ran towards the ship. She made a mental note to remember his face – someone a little braver than the rest.

'What about –" he began, pointing at Cheveyo.

"Just go," Jennifer replied. "Tell them we need to leave imminently. GO!"

He nodded and ran to catch up the others. She knelt beside Cheveyo and inspected his wound. It exuded a sickly green puss, the blood congealing into a jelly-like substance.

"Their blood is poisonous – when I cut the creature in half, some drops sprayed into the gashes it carved into me. Very careless – I must be getting old."

She saw him try to smile. "Is there anything I –"

"No – I have very little time. There are things you must know." He moved his closed left fist over to her hand and opened it. She saw a metallic object, and recognized it as an ankh symbol, but with a different hue – a lighter aquamarine – to the one that had brought them here. She took it.

"I removed it from the creature’s chest. They are somehow born with them, so any one of them can launch the ship for the return journey. You must take the ship back to Ireland, if your man has unlocked the navigational secrets. Ireland is still radioactive, which means the Q’Roth will not want to land there; they are newborn, after all, and no creature is impervious to sub-atomic radiation. Coordinate an exodus from there: collect as many people as you can. Then leave Earth and don’t look back. Head to the stars." He coughed more blood, but was too weak to move. She wiped it from his lips with her sleeve.

He continued, and she read the urgency of death in his eyes. "Tell Yori – the man who will be the last one waiting for my return, to set a three-minute timer to detonate the devices here on Eden, and that I am gone. He is preparing the nuclear devices even as we speak. He will follow your orders from now on."

A dark wave of pain crawled across his face. She’d seen a lot of fatal wounds in Dublin – he should be dead already.

"Listen carefully," he croaked. "The Alician inner circle has for centuries controlled scientific advances for their own purposes; releasing certain inventions, drawing us down blind alleys for things we should have invented; releasing diseases, starting wars. They also experimented with genetic engineering."

"You must save your breath –"

"This is not a history lesson! We, too, performed limited genetic manipulation – only a few individuals – to upset the Alician timetable. Some of humanity’s geniuses have been our greatest work. Kostakis."

She recoiled. "Dimitri? He’s been altered?'

Cheveyo’s body convulsed. He ground his teeth against the pain. Then his chest locked, and she knew he could no longer breathe in. Even in the darkness she could see the blue tinge of hypoxia setting in. He spoke fast, the energy failing in his last words.

"Keep him alive, Jennifer. And you, you stay too much in the shadows. Now is your time. Hendriks will try to take control of the ship, but he is not a leader, and will vacillate. You must take charge. Take the data crystal from my neck, and the nano-sword." There was no breath left. He mouthed his last words silently. "You said you wanted it."

His eyes glazed, and his neck went slack.

She reached forward and closed his eyes. "And I was just getting to like you. Do you know how rare that is?" She took a deep breath. "Tell Gabriel I miss him, but I’m still in the fight." She snatched the data crystal from his neck, grabbed the nano-sword, and sprinted toward the ship.

Chapter 46

Eagle Down

Blake knelt by the opening of the crevasse, its entrance plunging into darkness. He hoped it led to Pierre; if not, he’d thrown his life away for nothing. He prayed the explosion he’d rigged at the chamber entrance had enabled Kat to make her getaway, that she at least would make it back to the Lander, and they could warn Earth – if there was still time. For him there was only one way out, but he waited. She had said the Q’Roth had a small craft – that would give them a huge advantage; he suspected it was armed and would take out their Lander once outside.

He hefted the compact rocket launcher, the one Zack had nicknamed "shotgun", onto his shoulder, flicking a switch to arm the heat seeking missile. The targetter picked out a small craft zipping across the tops of the eggs, several of which were splintering and beginning to hatch. He was unable to make out much detail, as the mosquito-like craft was still several hundred meters away. He had only one shot – he and Zack had cooked up a ‘dirty’ bomb, taking out half the missile fuel and replacing it with rocket fuel. It would act like a Molotov cocktail, but burn much hotter. He waited until the craft was level with him, and fired.

The missile streaked cross the cavern towards its target, but was intercepted. It must have been a young Q’Roth, just hatched. Their reactions and co-ordination must far exceed humans, he thought, as it leapt up right in front of the small ship and took most of the missile’s blast force. The cavern exploded with light, making him squint and raise his forearm in front of his eyes, the incandescent body of the newborn Q’Roth hurtling to the ground like a meteorite. He was as shocked as he was impressed: these Q’Roth were going to be powerful infantry if that act was anything to judge by. He didn’t relish the thought of fighting them on an open battlefield.

The sharp sound of a high pitched engine announced the craft as it accelerated through the curtain of flame engulfing the Q’Roth martyr and a handful of nearby eggs. It was heading straight toward him. Blake tossed the empty weapon to the floor, unshouldering his pulse rifle which he gripped in both hands in front of him, and stared at the gaping hole before him. He drew in a deep breath, and then leapt into its yawning mouth.

He hit the ground, rolled, and launched into a sprint, bouncing off the walls of the steep winding tunnel; each time he fell he managed to roll and come up running, continuing downwards. There was no choice: relentless stamping thuds echoed behind him. He had the impression it was only one, as if that made a difference. The creature could obviously run down this tunnel fluidly. If he fell and paused too long it would be on him. He realized that for the first time in his career, he truly understood what ‘retreat’ really meant – he’d usually been distanced, the strategist giving orders. Despite his many combat years, fear threatened to make him stumble. But he kept Pierre in his mind – that was his mission now, to save him. The fact that he was leading the Q’Roth down to him was secondary. First, however, he had to get out of the damned tunnel.

He rounded a bend at high speed, to find that the tunnel split into two. Just as he was thinking "which way?" Pierre shouted a single word.

"Left!"

Blake veered left without slowing down, grazing the wall with his shoulder, pushing off it with the butt of his rifle. A few seconds later he noticed that the tunnel was getting lighter, which meant he was approaching an opening. Blake focused on the ground five meters in front of him, as he’d been trained to do years before, anticipating every bump and rock. His fleeting hope that the creature would turn right was crushed as the creature roared, in the same corridor and just seconds behind.

The tunnel widened into a small room, the outstretched body of Pierre lying prone and facing him, a pulse pistol in one hand, the other hand supporting it. That won’t even slow it down! But it was too late, the slope left no way for Blake to decelerate even if he’d wanted to. Pierre didn’t budge an inch as Blake ran straight towards him and leapt into the air, diving over his body towards the wall behind. As he flew through the air, he primed his rifle and tucked his head down for a crash-roll. He hit the ground hard, heard Pierre’s gun go off, and rolled up into a braced position, his back slamming into the wall, rifle ready to fire.

As he levelled his weapon, the creature was already hurtling towards him, two legs outstretched – he didn’t even have time to look at Pierre. Blake kicked off with his left foot and dived right, as the Q’Roth sailed into the wall. Its body pounded the solid rock like a battering ram, sounding like a tank smashing into a cliff face. Blake fired four times before he realized the unthinkable – it was already dead. He stared in disbelief. His pulse shots had hardly made a mark on it, but he watched as the creature’s exterior crumbled and bubbled. In seconds, the smooth, laminated skin became corrugated, rotting flesh. He dashed over to Pierre, who had his head propped against the opposite wall. He was staring at his pistol, breathing hard, in bad shape.

Pierre spoke in pain-spiked gasps. "Glad… just one… shot."

Blake squatted down in front of him. He lifted the pistol from Pierre’s yielding hand, and opened it to reveal the empty glass chamber. He looked back over to the Q’Roth, a putrid smell like burning flesh exuding from the imploding corpse.

"Nannites?" Blake said. "But how? Our ship was screened completely before we left." But it didn’t matter – it was good news: nannites were extremely effective against the warriors. Problem was, Earth had banned them years ago.

Pierre’s breathing grew more labored. He lifted a hand and pointed to his head.

Blake shook his head. "Inside you? Your blood?"

Pierre nodded.

Blake thought about it for a moment, trying to remember the details of nannite-human contact. "But you should be dead. In fact you should be – well, like that.’ He pointed to the rotting corpse, then changed tack. "Okay, you can explain later. Can you stand?"

Pierre barely nodded, and Blake took one arm and lifted him onto his feet, keeping Pierre’s arm around his own shoulder.

"Which way?"

Pierre pointed down a short tunnel to the right, then back to the warrior. "Sir… metal object… on its chest… important."

Blake propped Pierre against the wall, and walked cautiously over to the corpse. Blake took out one of his small knives and carefully pried a small blue ankh symbol off the fizzing mass, not wanting to touch any of it. He took out a cloth and wrapped it up, then discarded the nannite contaminated knife, its blade already browning with rust.

"Got it."

"Surprised you… came back." He began coughing.

"Save your breath, Pierre. I came to rescue you, that’s all, but I need you conscious, ideally with an idea of how to get us the hell out of here."

Pierre coughed again, a trickle of blood issuing from the corner of his mouth. "Take the little one," he said, and then slumped unconscious. Blake struggled under Pierre’s full weight, unsure what he meant, until he turned the corner and saw the vast cavern in front of them, and the massive metal ship. He then saw the much smaller jade green ship, saucer-shaped, its hatch open. But the human skeleton stopped him in his tracks.

He lay Pierre on the ground, and bent down to inspect it, finding a small dust-covered journal next to the body. There was an ankh symbol on the front cover. He picked up the book, read the last entry, and noted the date. He could scarcely believe it: three centuries of a silent war with the Alicians, the "vassals of the Q’Roth". He wanted to find the nearest Alician and tear him apart with his bare hands. He raised his rifle, flicked it into free-flow mode, and aimed at the larger ship in the distance. But while his finger hovered in front of the trigger, he thought of Glenda: she’d always said that anger was the last resort of an unintelligent man. He didn’t fire. She still needed him, was depending on him; they all were back on Earth. Right now they needed him to think.

He submerged his anger, and focused on strategy. The Alicians and Q’Roth had clearly been planning and orchestrating humanity’s demise for a very long time. Could he and others really derail their plans? He recalled what General Kilaney, had told him one day: "Toughest lesson to learn for a man like you, Blake, is when to retreat and re-group, because one day you’ll face a choice between fighting to the bitter end, or retreating but surviving to fight again another day."

A rumbling noise, like the sound of hundreds of horses galloping, intruded on his thoughts. He heaved Pierre onto his shoulders and headed for the open hatchway of the green ship.

◆◆◆

Micah wasn’t used to flying in a military jet, and several times thought he was going to throw up onto the back of the pilot’s seat in front of him. They raced over Eden’s terrain, skimming above hills and forests in a cloudless dawn sky. They’d checked a relief holo-map relayed by one of the reconnaissance sorties. Micah had recognized some of the features. There was the desert that had clearly expanded on a massive scale, and there had obviously been some type of explosion or earthquake – possibly both – that had altered the topography. Vasquez told Micah he suspected it was due to a high energy detonation, judging from the concentric rings in the silicated central part of the desert. It crossed his mind that the Eden Lander had blown up. But Vasquez said it resembled the aftermath of a neutralino explosion, though it made no sense for them to have brought the ND down from orbit. Micah guessed it must have been the IVS ship they’d figured had come to Eden.

He had déjà vu, as if he’d been here before; the Optron message had evidently lodged the information in his subconscious, though he had no idea how. He was sure they were near to where the Eden crew should be. They flew a spiral search pattern from the foot of the small mountain, around eighty kilometers from their own ship. They got a radio message from Vince.

"This is Base. We just picked up an orbital signal. The Ulysses mother ship is still up there, and the Eden Lander is en route. We’re trying to establish contact. Eagle Three has detected an enemy ship three hundred klicks south. We need all fighters back here."

Before Micah could speak, he heard a click and the pilot’s answer.

"Roger that, returning home."

In that moment Micah caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye just as they began a hard bank to the left – a glimpse of black: it looked like the conning tower of another ship as it encountered the first rays of Eden’s sun. Micah spoke to the pilot. "Hey, I just saw something back there. I think it was another –"

"Hold on!" the pilot shouted, banking hard the other way; the violent maneuver slammed Micah’s helmet into the plazglass canopy. Shrill alarms erupted in the cockpit, clanging loudly. He was trying to figure out what was going on when the pilot came on line.

"Command – Eagle Five is under fire, repeat we’re under fire!"

Micah tried to turn around to see what was behind them. An electric blue arc swept narrowly above his head. The jet jerked down so hard that Micah momentarily lost his breath, his internal organs pushed upwards by the G-force. They passed over a clearing and a chill ran down his spine: a mass of blue-black animals charged towards where he thought he’d seen another ship. As he and the pilot raced thirty meters overhead he caught more details of the creatures, several hundred of them, in the dim light. Some of the creatures, without breaking step, rotated their heads upwards towards him; instinctively he wanted the pilot to go higher.

The jet banked left and then right, heading away from the ship, and accelerated forward so fast that Micah’s cheeks and brow were sucked backwards. The pilot wheeled and rolled the ship as Micah tried to stay in one piece, the deadly blue arc getting closer with each sweep, homing in on them.

A sizzling slash of electric blue fizzed through the cockpit in front of Micah. The pilot’s body transformed into a flaming corpse. Micah panicked as the jet pitched downwards, a forest looming ahead. His hands groped around his seat, desperately seeking the eject lever. Just as the jet began a somersault, he found it and pulled hard. There was a roar of noise as his head was squeezed down by the sudden wind, pile-driving his head into his shoulders. He gripped the edges of the seat as he shot upwards, and then sickeningly downwards, cart-wheeling through a dizzying alternating vista of trees and sky, until the parachute opened and his chair righted itself. He watched as another blue arc sliced through the jet, cleaving it in two. It disintegrated into myriad fireballs hurtling into the forest.

He rocked under the parachute, and caught sight of the Q’Roth ship passing overhead – resembling a helicopter but moving parallel with him. He was close to the tree-line and made the decision. He had no idea where the courage came from – he just knew he had only seconds to escape. He held his breath and thumped the parachute release buckle on his chest strap, and launched himself towards the tree canopy.

◆◆◆

Kat’s face was incredulous. "Are you seeing what I’m seeing?"

Rashid re-checked his instruments. "It cannot be! There are low level fighter jets down there!"

"I’m picking up radio transmissions," she said, "but they’re still garbled. Probably short-wave radio, or XHF – military!"

Although Kat was still shaken-up from the chase, she worked furiously on the comms console to try and break through. "Come on!" she said, punching the panel with her fist. "I can’t make it out, Rashid, but I heard something, and I’d swear it was English." She glanced over at Zack who still hadn’t come round despite the stims injected into him five minutes earlier. Please, wake up Zack!

"We must dock," Rashid said. "Then we will have more chance of communicating from orbit."

"How long till then?"

"Fifteen minutes," Rashid said, but Kat could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

She was staring at her comms screen when black dots began to appear. She tried to speak to Rashid but her own voice sounded far away. She shouted, louder, as her vision blackened, and all the noise in the cockpit became muffled. She heard a faint voice, that of Rashid, as if from another room, growing fainter.

"Kat! Can you hear me?"

She had the sensation of floating, barely aware of her body. She realized it must be the node, but it felt different this time. Rashid’s voice was gone, but another voice, somehow familiar, was growing louder. What was it saying? She tried to figure it out. Then it cleared.

"Open your eyes!"

Yes, she thought, my eyes are closed. With a supreme effort of will she opened her eyes, and saw not Rashid, but Blake. The image was very clear – Blake was standing in front of her and Pierre lay unconscious, in odd surroundings. He was talking directly to her.

"… hope you can hear me, there’s not much time. Kat – repeat this to Rashid and Zack. I’m communicating through a Hohash connection. I can see through your eyes, and you’re seeing via the Hohash; it’s here in this craft. Pierre and I are both alive. We’re in a spider ship. You must tell Earth that invasion is imminent. Nano-weapons and nukes are the only defense – I know we have almost none of the former and the latter doesn’t help Earth either, but it’s that or nothing. Stay in orbit for now, this place is swarming with Q’Roth. Tell them Kat. And tell Zack Omega Kappa. Repeat it all now, say it out loud so Rashid can hear!"

She recited everything to Rashid, dully, listlessly, like a poem she didn’t understand. Blake nodded throughout, and at the end seemed to relax. Then he said he was going to break the connection. Kat didn’t react, just continued to float. She closed her eyes again, and began to fall, hearing a noise like an aircraft landing on her head.

She snapped awake, gasping for breath, standing straight up, nearly hitting the ceiling. "Bloody hell, that was weird!" She leant against the bulkhead behind her console, her head throbbing, her body tingling all over.

"Easy, my friend," Rashid said, re-taking the pilot’s chair. "Calm yourself. That was quite an experience you just had. You saw Blake, did you not?"

She felt as if she’d been possessed. It reminded her of some of the bad trips she’d initially had with the node. "Yes. Blake, and Pierre too, unconscious. Looked in pretty bad shape." She dropped back down into her chair.

"They were in some kind of ship, a small one. And – oh shit, I remember now. There was a human skeleton there, laid out on the floor, and…" She appreciated the value of the detached node state, as the scene flooded back to her.

Zack coughed and swiveled his chair around to face Kat.

"Goddammed difficult to get any sleep around here. I’ve been listening, Kat, most of it, anyways. What was the rest?"

She was relieved to have Zack back. "I could also see past Blake outside the ship. There were Q’Roth, hundreds of them, streaming past. A few were trying to break in."

She watched the blood flow back into Zack’s face, the former sleepy facial tone setting into an iron-hard grimace. With a grunt he heaved himself out of the Captain’s chair, poised above Rashid.

"Out," he commanded.

"Zack," Rashid protested, "you are not fit, and the maneuvering thruster is damaged… We could all die!"

"Then we die. This is taking too fucking long. You’re an okay pilot, but this is war. I’m going to show you emergency docking like you’ve never seen before."

Rashid acquiesced under Zack’s intense stare. Zack fell into the chair, and strapped himself in. "Hang on to something, this is going to be rough."

Rashid got in Blake’s chair just in time. Kat felt herself thrust backwards as Zack fired the engines at full power. After a minute of fast, silent running, automatic collision warnings began to shriek. Zack’s good foot permanently disabled the auditory alarm system. He shrugged. "It was getting on my nerves."

Kat trusted Zack, but as they spotted the bright dot that was the mother ship, and it quickly mushroomed in size before her eyes, she began to wonder just how late he would leave it to apply the brakes.

◆◆◆

Jennifer ran all the way, thinking of her new mission and mantle passed onto her by Cheveyo: return to Earth, pick up people, and head to the stars. Everything was moving so quickly, she felt breathless. Was the demise of Earth so likely, resistance so futile now that the only recourse was escape? She had only met Cheveyo yesterday, she realized, and her world was already spinning out of control. And yet she’d seen a Q’Roth warrior, traveled in their ship to Eden in the blink of an eye – they were clearly way ahead technologically, and they had the Alicians on their side, presumably ready to tear Earth down from within. She needed Dimitri’s counsel, to anchor her. He would know what to do – especially now she had learned that he’d been genetically advanced. But Cheveyo had told her that she was the one to lead. He clearly had more faith in her than she did.

She arrived at the four-crate perimeter to see a lone figure there. "Yori – Cheveyo is dead," she said, short of breath. "Do we have radio link to the control room?"

The scarecrow-thin Japanese looked at her suspiciously, then, seeing the nanosword tucked in her belt, appeared to come to a decision. He nodded, holding up a small hand-held device. She took it, and pressed the call button, causing a brief crackle.

"Hello? This is Jennifer. Hand me over to…" she paused as she thought about it. "Give me Hendriks, quickly."

A gruff voice came on at the other end of the line. "Come inside, we’ll close –"

"Listen to me very carefully," she interrupted, almost shouting. "They’re coming. Now. Have you figured out the navigation system?"

"Well, yes, in a limited way. For Earth at least, we can select destinations, roughly."

"Set it for Ireland, Dublin if possible."

"But Dublin –"

"Is irradiated, I know, but it means they won’t follow us there. Set it now. We’re timing the nukes to go off in three minutes." She nodded to Yori, who pulled out a pad and started tapping into it.

"I’m coming up with the key to start the engines."

"Nukes? Now you just wait a goddamned minute!" Hendriks shouted.

Yori showed her the pad.

"The nukes are set, Hendriks, and they can’t be unset. Fix coordinates for Dublin. Do it or we all die! And close the outer doors, I don’t want to take back any uninvited guests!"

She clicked off the transmitter, turned to Yori, and they bolted inside, seconds before the doors began to close. She wondered if they could reach the control room, seven floors up and inside the central part of the ship, in three minutes, when Yori headed left towards an electric buggy.

"One of the engineers brought it along," he said, with a wafer-thin smile.

As they jumped inside, the tires screeched and they sprang forward, zipping across the lower floor towards the ramp. They careened up the spiral walkway at speed, so she had to hang on for fear of being thrown out, with one hand clutching the ankh. Yori at one point grabbed her waist to haul her inside. Abruptly they shrieked to a halt. Hendriks, along with some other men, stood in her path.

She noticed some kind of artifact that looked like a large antique mirror, now propped up against the wall. Kostakis was staring at it, and then turned to catch her eye. He flicked his head with an expression of concern toward Hendriks and his men.

"Who put you in charge?" Hendriks demanded.

She knew she had to do this right. She thought of Cheveyo. What would he do?

"Listen, there’s two minutes till the nukes go off. I have the key to get us out of here."

Hendriks unfolded his arms and wagged his finger close to her face. "Who gave you the right? Give me the key!" He spat the words.

"Stand down, Hendriks. I called you just now because you’re a man of decision and logic. Don’t prove me wrong."

A man called out from behind Hendriks. "Sir, there’s something approaching us on our perimeter radar."

Jennifer held her ground. Blink, you bastard. Still he blocked her path.

"Sir," the radar operator said. "There’s one ahead of the rest. It’s… he’s human, Sir, no doubt about it. The others aren’t, and are closing fast."

Shit!

Hendriks’ lips warped into a crooked smile. She noticed her new associate, Yori, draw away from her, leaving her standing alone.

"So," Hendriks said, "you want us to leave him to die here? Playing Miss God today, are we?"

She stopped trying to play Cheveyo – he’d told her it was her time, so she had to be herself. "Listen, you idiot, if we wait, they’ll get in, and we’ll all die!"

Hendriks spoke to the two heavy-set engineers next to him. "Hold her, and take the key. Open the –"

He didn’t finish the sentence. As the two men went to grab Jennifer, she reached for the nanosword to find it was gone. She stared in disbelief as a blue line sliced through Hendriks’ neck. His eyes registered surprise, then his head toppled forward off his collapsing body.

Everyone froze, staring from Hendriks’ cauterized headless corpse to the young Japanese man holding the nanosword, its blue blade pulsing. "Your instructions, Jennifer?" Yori said.

She swallowed. Hendriks’ two men retreated inside the room. She called over to the radar operator. "Will he make it? How close behind are they?"

"He’s ninety seconds away but they’re closing on him, and the doors open and close on a thirty-second cycle."

Everyone stared in her direction, while she focused only on Dimitri, who was looking at her as if he had just worked out that he did not really know her at all. She realized the feeling was mutual, given what Cheveyo had just told her. She parked it.

"Do you trust me, Dimitri?"

"With my life," he answered.

She threw the key across the room to him. "Everyone take a deep breath." She nodded to Dimitri. "Do it."

◆◆◆

Micah sprinted for the ship, trying to ignore the pain in his legs and lungs. The creatures weren’t that far behind – he didn’t know exactly how far, and he didn’t want to know. He had a gash across his face and his left arm was badly sprained, but he’d been lucky with the fall.

Through the trees he caught tantalizing glimpses of the huge black metallic ship in the early sunlight, and at one point saw the huge open doors at its base. His heart raced, and he ran faster – he was going to make it! He didn’t shout, he was too breathless from running. He reached the edge and burst through a thick patch of bushes, the monstrous ship looming up in front of him. But the doors were sealed.

"No! No! Wait, wait for me, damn you!" he yelled, and sprinted across the last hundred meters of the clearing towards the towering ship. He heard a rumbling sound. "God, no, please God, no, don’t do this to me!" But half way across, there was an ear-splitting thunderclap and he was whisked off his feet, sucked towards where the ship had been a second before.

He landed on the hard ground in a sirocco of dust, and then the roar of wind and random static discharges dissipated. He looked up, and struggled to his feet. He could hear a growing noise, a stampede in the bushes behind him, and then a shrill screaming of alien rage. He glared up at the empty sky in disbelief. "Bastards! You fucking bastards!" He stared around as if drunk. It was then he noticed the nuclear devices. He ran over to one and read the digital timer: fifty-eight seconds. He wanted to punch the sky, but all he could do was squat down, put his fingers in his hair and pull hard. "Fuck! Oh fuck!" He looked back to where he had come from, and saw the leaders of the herd of Q’Roth burst into the clearing behind him. He turned and ran blindly into the sliver of forest at the other side of the clearing, toward the desert, sweat streaming down his face and back.

Chapter 47

Battle for Eden

Blake recoiled into a defensive stance as a young Q’Roth warrior whip-lashed two legs, praying-mantis-style, at one of the craft’s port-holes. But the thud sounded distant, and the ship did not rock, nor was the window even scratched. Blake forced himself to relax. The freshly-hatched Q’Roth from the upper cavern had tried to break inside, but Blake had sealed the hatch after he’d brought the skeleton in – he didn’t know why, he just didn’t want to leave it where it had been in this God-forsaken place.

Since entering the single-room, saucer-shaped ship, the trickle of warriors had grown into a stampede of thousands pouring past like horizontal metallic rain with claws. The young Q’Roth raced along like pack-animals driven by the need for food, following their instincts towards the huge underground ship he knew would take them to Earth, where they would feed.

After enabling him to contact Kat and the others, the Hohash had remained inert. Blake therefore tried to read the faint ink on the parchment journal written by the dead man. Thankfully, he had written in English – even if it was a little archaic. Blake presumed he had churned out the whole thing in the last days of his life.

It confirmed most of what he already knew about the Q’Roth. The man had belonged to a sect calling themselves "Sentinels", and had travelled there alone in one of the large ships. What had stunned Blake had been the apparent instantaneity of the voyage.

"Copernicus was right, after all. The stars slid beneath me as I was bathed in a silver liquid that left no trace. I have spent the past twelve days traversing Hades, seeing not another soul, except when I see myself in a mirror which shows me horrors worse than I can imagine. I have tried to break the devil’s eggs, but I grow weak and cannot inflict even a scratch on their surface. Alessia was indeed evil to deal with these creatures. I have seen one, atop the hill. My only solace as death approaches is that I will not see one again. It is difficult not to feel that we are doomed to feed these monsters, and that God has forsaken us. I pray that when the time comes, there are those who can rise above our petty human failings and unite to defeat such a gruesome enemy."

Blake closed the book, and held his thoughts silent for a moment, in memory of this Sentinel, yet another fallen unknown soldier.

Pierre had been right about the terraforming, because according to the journal, when the Sentinel had arrived in 1756, the volcanic land was still settling, with violent purple dust storms, and no vegetation. It meant no food and, more importantly, water too alkaline to drink, so the man had died as soon as his supplies ran out. He’d had neither a way to take the large ship back to Earth, nor a way to open the Hohash craft. This raised the question for Blake of how Pierre got it open.

The new information Blake got from the journal concerned the secret order known then as the Pentangle of Alessia, and the conflict between them and the Sentinels. Blake had to stop reading several times, as the impact of the brief journal weighed heavy upon him – the discovery of a secret war enduring for centuries, the plotting to sell out Earth as a bio-electric supply – it was unbearable. He gazed at the skeleton, wondering how many Sentinels had met equally unknown, unacknowledged fates – and wondered if any still lived.

Pierre stirred, his eyes flickering open. Blake sat on his haunches next to him. "Pierre, can you hear me?"

Pierre grunted, and then coughed, holding his arms over his chest and ribs to limit the pain.

"Pierre – how did you get in, and how do we get out of here?" He propped Pierre up against the inner wall.

Pierre looked out of the window. Blake followed his gaze – the number of Q’Roth ebbed, and the stragglers no longer seemed interested in them, probably for fear of being left behind.

"They can’t get in," Pierre said. "The spiders, the masters of the Hohash mirrors, were cleverer than believed."

Blake nodded, but added "What’s going on, Pierre. You never avoid direct questions. Tell me, before you…" Blake didn’t want to finish sentence. He had committed himself to saving Pierre, but he seemed in bad shape, and now he assumed they would both die, joining the Sentinel on the floor.

Pierre tried a short laugh; blood spilled from his lips. Blake noticed how cherry red it was – highly oxygenated. But that didn’t make sense; it was as if Pierre was healing.

Pierre confirmed his supposition straight away. "I’m not going to die, Sir. And I’ll tell you everything now. It won’t take long, and then I’ll see if I can get us out of here. You remember my father? You said you met him. You clearly didn’t like him – why?"

"Listen Pierre, this isn’t the time –"

"Yes it is. It’s important – and in fact we do have time. When I first arrived, I tripped a power-up signal. The ship has been dormant for five hundred years, it will take a while to come back on-line, so we’re not going anywhere until it activates."

Blake shot Pierre a hard look, and then nodded. "Alright. Aside from being arrogant, thinking that he was better than everyone else – smarter – your father blocked us from doing genetic engineering research. The enemy had ghosters and we had nothing, and people like your father used fear, bigotry and sanctimonious arguments that left us at a disadvantage when it came to genetically-engineered enemies."

Pierre nodded. "What if I told you he did perform genetic engineering experiments, and was successful?"

Blake steepled his fingers. "Well, to be honest, I’d find it pretty hard…" Then it hit him, from the inside, as if he’d always known it. "You?"

"You’re looking at one of his experiments," he said, with more than a hint of bitterness.

He noticed Pierre had omitted the word "successful," and the tone implied the reverse. Blake understood – he would never for a moment have wanted a father like Pierre’s – an obsessive workaholic scientist, rudimentary on the emotional scale. There would be little chance to be seen as ‘successful’ in such a parent’s judgment.

He searched Pierre’s eyes, to see if he was telling the truth. But it all fell into place: the scientific brilliance at such a young age; the dispassionate nature that signaled a lack of empathy, a well-known side-effect from early genetic manipulations; the fact that Pierre had been close to death, yet seemed to be getting stronger. And of course the ability to store nannites in his body without being devoured by them from the inside. He remembered the argument he’d had with Pierre’s father all those years ago at a military science convention. The man’s passionate defense of a moratorium on genetic engineering – it had all been a smoke-screen protecting his own experiments.

Pierre pressed on. "I didn’t know why I’d been genetically changed until after my father was assassinated. After the funeral, a man introduced himself to me – he said he was a Sentinel, and had known my father for years. He told me about the Alicians’ genetic experiments, and that my father was involved in counter-warfare, working for the Sentinels. His violent opposition to "genning" was to keep the Alicians from finding out about the real work going on."

Blake studied Pierre. He saw him very differently now. Perhaps this was why he’d never liked him – there was something of a ghoster in Pierre, something unnatural – that was unfair, but maybe somehow he’d registered it at an unconscious level.

"My father completed a dozen experiments. I don’t know who the people were, but they’re out there. We’ll live longer, be brighter, and our immune system is reinforced by nannites hidden in the endorphin system. They’re undetectable except via nannite probes, themselves illegal."

Blake didn’t like finding this out about Pierre. It felt like he’d had a spy aboard his ship.

"So, what was your real mission?" he said, coolly.

"To be honest, there wasn’t one. The Sentinel never made contact again. I asked my mother before she died, and… she didn’t actually deny anything, just told me that my father had done everything to protect me, including keeping me in the dark about certain things. After her funeral, I signed up for the Eden Mission. I’m still a scientist at heart, Captain, and… a soldier."

Blake was reassured by that last word – he hoped Pierre was telling the truth. Time to get back on track, he decided, just as a low humming began, and a soft shimmer of light emanated from the ceiling.

"So how did you get in, and how do we leave?"

Pierre smiled. "The Hohash let me in. One of them was down here when I arrived. It showed me a set of movements on the pad outside and the door slid open. It then activated the ship and awoke its compatriots, and then left."

"Its com… How many are there? Where did they go?"

"There were five, and they all left except this one. They can communicate with each other, it seems. I don’t think the Q’Roth ever got into the ship."

"So, how do we leave?"

"Where do you want to go, Sir?"

"Outside first," he said, pointing upwards, "then back to Earth to join the fight."

The ship rocked, and there was a dull rumbling from outside. Blake walked carefully over to the viewport. "It’s gone – the ship is gone! Back to Earth?"

The corners of Pierre’s mouth dipped. "Afraid so. It seems the idea is that people come here first, so the Q’Roth get stronger before the major onslaught, but I think everything has gone off early – their plans have been upset by our arrival, and possibly on Earth, too – so they’ll go there direct in any case."

Pierre’s brow furrowed. "I expect that’s why they elicited the help of the Alicians – the Q’Roth work on longer timescales, and with most of them in hibernation, they don’t react well to last-minute changes. The Alicians could help with precision timing, and adapt to developments. Yet they always had a back-up plan. That’s why there are some ships already on Eden as well as on Earth. Still, it means they’ll be weaker to begin with, which could be an advantage. But this ship we’re in is more of a scout ship – I’m not sure it can move as fast or as far as the Q’Roth ones."

"I’m guessing no weapons, either?"

Pierre shook his head. Blake recognized a despairing look in Pierre’s eye.

"You don’t think Earth is going to make it, do you?"

Pierre winced. "Well, Sir, when I studied the Q'Roth panels in the antechamber, I found one indicating other nests on the planet—sixty in total. So how shall I put this? The soldier in me wants to go back and fight. The genned scientist in me, however, thinks that all the bravado in the world won’t make any difference."

Blake folded his arms, tight-lipped, as Pierre continued. "This is a tactical situation, Sir. So, you tell me – when you’re caught between an inner enemy wrecking your infrastructure and destroying morale, and an outer enemy who has superior weaponry and infantry – because we both know that’s what it will come down to – what do you do?" Pierre held up a hand to stop Blake interrupting. "If you say we go out in a blaze of glory, I will gladly follow your orders, but what if there’s nothing left after that blaze? Is that sound tactics?"

Reluctantly, Blake knew General Kilaney would agree.

"Also, Sir, as for Eden – I checked their terraforming control system. The terraforming is pretty unstable – it was never meant to be anything other than cosmetic. The degradation has already begun, particularly with the arrival of the desert, itself accelerated yesterday by the ND explosion. A few years, maybe less, and this whole planet will revert to barren rock."

The mirror flushed in a rainbow swirl of reds and greens, and the craft lifted gently off the cavern floor. Blake’s vision diffused, as if everything he could see, including Pierre and his own reflection, was coming apart, de-molecularizing, until there remained only a swirling soup of particles and a rushing sound like a waterfall. Abruptly, all the particles slammed back together into place, and Blake found himself in the craft, above ground outside, under the morning sky.

They hovered, noiselessly. Blake turned back to Pierre, who was trying to stand. "Are you okay? Did it understand me?"

"Wow, Sir. That was… incredible!" Pierre’s eyes shone, despondency replaced by wonder. "Do you realize what just happened?"

Blake stood his ground, waiting for the answer to his second question. He caught Pierre’s eye.

"Sorry, Sir, I don’t know. I think the mirrors are trying to understand us. You pointed – I think they understand colors and movements better than words. I’m not sure they can process sound."

Blake was about to try something, when he spotted a lone human figure from out of the viewport, running full pelt, leaving a sliver of trees for the open desert.

"Who the hell…?" But then he saw why he was running so fast: a herd of Q’Roth, less than thirty meters behind, were gaining on him.

"Christ! We have to help him!" Before Blake could do anything, a fast jet came straight at them and launched an air-to-air missile. Blake instinctively dove away from the viewport, and a fraction of a second later the craft leapt sideways to dodge the missile.

He struggled to his feet. There were no chairs or consoles in the craft, little if anything to hang onto. There were a few handles and green vine-like wires hanging from the ceiling, but no furniture.

"You okay, Pierre? That was close – and if I’m not mistaken, friendly fire!" But as he turned he saw Pierre had been thrown sideways against the bulkhead, and was unconscious.

The jet banked and dipped to strafe the chasing Q’Roth with low level attack fire. Although it knocked down twenty or so, the others just leaped over them, continuing the chase. After a tight loop the jet made a second pass and launched two cluster bombs that soaked the Q’Roth in a deluge of white-hot flaming napalm. Blake held his breath, only to see most of them galloping out unscathed.

"Sweet Mother!"

The jet then left the scene – Blake assumed it was low on fuel, knowing it was the right tactical decision, but one the man below would have a hard time understanding, now only twenty meters in front of the Q’Roth front line. The man was tiring, struggling, and occasionally stumbling in the sand.

Blake turned to the mirror, and pointed to the figure outside, jabbing his finger at it. He then ran to the door and pointed at that too. The craft spun around as the door opened. He was nearly thrown out by the centripetal force, but managed just in time to grab one of the green "vines" hanging from the ceiling. He remembered these craft were built for the mirrors, who had independent mobility. He glanced over his shoulder to check that Pierre hadn’t rolled towards the open hatch.

As the craft stopped spinning Blake caught sight of the man.

"Get inside!" he shouted.

The young man gaped, and then with a desperate grunt darted over to the hatch and launched himself in, clutching Blake’s forearm. Once he was inside, Blake signaled with his two palms to the mirror to close the door.

"N-nuke!" the man gasped, pointing behind him. "Detonating… Now!"

Blake swiveled back to the mirror and threw both arms out in the opposite direction to where the young man had been pointing, and was thrown backwards as the ship accelerated away. Three seconds later all three of them were hurtled to the back of the craft, pinned there as the ship shifted into high gear to outrace the nuclear blast-wave, catapulting them upwards. He blacked out.

◆◆◆

Vince piloted the lead Sarth missile at a distance, using a virtual immersion "head-can" as the mil called it, bulleting across the desert. While he remained back at base, the neural interface allowed him to steer the C6-laden dart just above the dune-tops, caressing Eden’s skin, zeroing in on the latest Earth-origin Q’Roth ship arrival. A black scab formed on the horizon. He clicked on zoom.

The swollen image resembled an animal carcass engulfed by ants. "Damn, too late – again," he muttered, knowing Vasquez and the controllers back at base could hear every word. Not that it was necessary – they saw everything via the slave screens. He was pissed off – each time a ship landed full of human cargo, the Q’Roth began harvesting within minutes. He zoomed in further. People flooded out of the ship, dazed and bewildered, then fought to get back inside, eyes and mouths wide in panic, scrambling over each other upon seeing the Q’Roth warriors swarming towards them. He zoomed out, suppressing a well of anger.

He rapped a control to relay coordinates to two tandem missiles, and the pair of piloted F-39s trailing behind with their nuclear payload. He signaled the attack pattern to the base controller with a single word: "Delta". The "D" stood for destroy – he judged it was too late to save the people; instead he had to make sure the ship didn’t take this particular Q’Roth hive back to Earth. A letter flashed in his left field of vision, "‘S", meaning Save. This was the third time Vasquez had disagreed with him. Okay, Vince thought, we’ll try it your way. He ramped up the acceleration for all three missiles, scratching across Eden’s flesh.

His recon system auto-zoomed onto four smaller Q’Roth ships buzzing like flies around the feed – he’d seen similar ones around the last ship too. A blue band slashed in front of him, missing him by meters. He sent a command to stutter his engine thrust, making it harder for the Q’Roth to get a fix on him. His vision auto-compensated – but that was because he was there virtually – the F-39 pilots couldn’t use this trick, so he had to take out the smaller ships. But there were four of them, and he only had three missiles. As if on cue, they lifted off, accelerating towards him in a square defense pattern. He picked the nearest one and went to maximum speed, transmitting the command "frag-mode", as he spiraled through blue beams latticing the sky. He pummeled into his target too fast to make out any expression of the Q’Roth pilot.

His vision leapt to the second missile, scorching in from the East. He dipped low to avoid a web of azure fire. He saw that his first missile had found its target – a plume of flame billowed mid-air, the wreckage of the Q’Roth vessel fire-balling to the ground. Better, some of the explosive fragments had scraped another one, not destroying it, but sending it to the ground like a swatted fly. He swerved his missile to the right, attracting another ship away from the transport, breaking their defense formation.

His vision snapped to the third missile – the second must have been hit. He shrugged it off; he’d distracted the ships, allowing the two fighters to roar in from the West ten meters above ground. He watched their high-energy pulse lasers strafe the rear edge of Q’Roth warriors, slicing a hundred out of existence like a razor clearing stubble.

The remaining two Q’Roth ships disengaged from Vince’s missile and pursued the fighters. Vince was about to take one of them out when he spotted the source of this particular Q’Roth horde. A steady stream of warriors hemorrhaged from their underground nest into Eden’s noon sky faster than blood from a slashed artery. He didn’t give it a moment’s thought: he broke off his pursuit and swung the missile full throttle into the cave’s mouth.

He saw white. He tore off the head-can – no more missiles.

"Christ, Vince," Vasquez shouted, "you just sentenced those pilots to death!"

Vince muscled past Vasquez to the screens relaying video from the two fighters. Most of the people on the Q’Roth transport were already dead, thousands of Q’Roth warriors scurrying over the mound of corpses to get inside the ship, to head toward Earth. A screen relaying live video from the first pilot blanked. Vince snatched the microphone from the military controller handling the second fighter.

"Take out the ship – do it now, you’re dead anyway!"

Vasquez pushed next to him, seizing the microphone, but offered no counter-command. They watched the screen in silence as the fighter banked hard enough to make the controller flinch. The transport grew large in front of them as the jet aimed straight for the main hatch, a red light indicating the nuke was about to detonate. The screen flashed white.

"Yeah, I know," Vince pre-empted Vasquez, "another hero. You should be proud. Medals all around later. How many Eagles left from the second wing?"

Vasquez’s lips squeezed to a white line. "Four."

Vince eyed him, recognizing the look. '‘Want me to fly one? I can, you know. I’m a bit rusty, but –'’

Vasquez grimaced. "What are your orders?"

Vince scanned the intel around him. Three quarters of their screens were blank; almost all of their info-drones shot out of the sky. He tapped a control and the holomap folded out in front of him, revealing Eden’s major continent in beige relief. Blue flags highlighted Q’Roth nests, yellow ones transports arrived from Earth, and red ones transports that had arrived with human freight, swapped for Q’Roth warriors, and vanished back to Earth. Too much red! The inbound ships had been programmed to land on top of nests.

Vasquez nodded towards the Southern section. "Turnaround time’s getting quicker. They know we’re here so they’re boarding fast as they can. Latest one was thirty minutes."

He made up his mind. "Change of strategy. We nuke them as soon as they arrive." Vince spoke to the map, pointing. "We send our fighters to these blue flags – we know transports are going to arrive there soon. If the fighters get there before the transports, they nuke the nests. If the transports arrive, they nuke them too." He held up a hand, raising his voice, shouting so everyone in the room was clear. "The fighters go in hot, nukes armed, so if they’re shot down, they detonate; if not, they bomb the ships as soon as they find them."

Vasquez blanched. "What about the people on board? We’re soldiers for God’s sake, not butchers."

Vince rounded on him, ignoring the fact that Vasquez was a head taller. "Your job is to protect humanity, contain the threat on Eden, maximize survival back on Earth. We can’t help the people here, they’re dead either way. Give the command!"

Vasquez faced off Vince. "We’ll meet in hell, for sure, Vince."

Vince didn’t blink. "I have a condo there waiting for me. You’re welcome for tea. Now give the fucking order, Colonel."

Vasquez bristled. He nodded to the controllers.

◆◆◆

Blake awoke first, rubbing his head where it had slammed into the saucer's hull. It was getting dark, so they’d all been out for at least eight hours. He shook himself, furious for the loss of time, but he guessed none of them had slept much in the past forty-eight hours. He glanced at Pierre and the young man's unconscious frames; they looked restful. The lad reminded him of his son who would have been about the same age had he lived. Well, Robert, I finally put men before mission. Despite the grogginess, calmness swept over him. He went straight to the viewport. The ship floated a good ten kilometers above Eden’s surface, where an ugly, broiling smoke-grey mushroom illuminated the charred landscape.

Blake regarded the volume of the nuclear mushroom since detonation, and judged it to have been either a large nuclear warhead or perhaps a cluster of devices. It would leave a scar on this part of the planet, not to mention significant fallout. He couldn’t help feel sick at heart at the thought of how quickly humanity had left its ugly trademark signature on Eden – no matter that it was in self-defense.

He heard the young man awaken, and helped him to his feet. Pierre lay unconscious in the corner, and Blake decided to let him wake up in his own good time. The young man looked bedraggled, but he held out his quaking hand towards him. Blake took it firmly.

"Captain Alexander!" the young man said. "My name’s Micah Sanderson. Sir, it’s an honor. You’ve no idea. You’ve always been one of my heroes, Sir, but now – well, you can imagine, no one comes close anymore. Thanks for saving me back there."

Blake smiled, putting his other hand around their handshake, the way he’d learned in Africa a long time ago. "You’re welcome, Son, most welcome." As he stared at Micah, Blake had the feeling he looked familiar, as if they had met before. He brushed it aside, it was so unlikely.

Pierre woke up, and massaged the bruise on the back of his head. "I dreamt there was a nuclear detonation." He glanced at the others, and frowned. "Not a dream then."

Blake and Micah squatted down to help Pierre into a seated position. The mirror interrupted them – it flashed a few times, settled, faced Blake, then revealed a bald-headed man, intense eyes, staring at all of them.

"That’s Vince, Sir,’ Micah whispered quickly, "He’s leading the… er… rescue mission."

Blake stood up and turned directly to face the figure in the mirror. "You must be Vince."

Vince stared back. "You have the advantage, Sir. No – wait – I take it back. You’re Captain Blake Alexander. I’m very pleased, not to say relieved, to see you alive, Captain. And… I see we have a mutual acquaintance."

At that point another face, tear-stained and female, pushed its way into the frame. "Micah? Micah! Oh, thank God! I said I’d cut his balls off if you were killed, and he just ignored me!"

Blake’s head pivoted for an instant to raise an eyebrow at Micah. "Ma’am, he’s fine, but I need to talk to the one in charge, please."

Blushing, she scuttled out of the picture again, muttering something none of them could hear.

"Vince, are you in contact with Earth?"

"That’s a little complicated, but essentially, yes. Your crew on the Ulysses were to send a message, but of course it would take days to reach Earth. However, it appears one of these mirror contraptions travelled back on a ship to Ireland, led by a girl and a professor, and we’ve been in contact for the past few hours, connecting via them. It’s not pretty back there, Captain, and it’s been a hell of a day. A total of thirty ships have left Earth for Eden, most people boarding them to escape the Q’Roth already on the loose since yesterday– the Alician propaganda machine has been running flawlessly. We’ve had jets scan a three-thousand mile radius over the past few hours, and seen the carnage left from twelve of the ships – hundreds of thousands of human corpses, limited firefights, and nineteen ships already headed back to Earth. It’s chaos back home, nearly a million Q’Roth are on the rampage, and that’s the ones we know about. As you can imagine, communications are a mess. At least five governments in desperation launched a nuke each, but they killed more humans than Q’Roth. The Chorazin and IVS are trying to make firebreaks around Q’Roth zones using small-yield fusion bombs, but more ships keep landing, avoiding the irradiated areas. As for us, we’re pretty much out of hardware and ordnance here."

Blake interjected. "Nannites – they’re susceptible to nannite attack."

Vince shook his head. "Alicians took out the few remaining nannite med and mil research centers in the first wave of coordinated attacks early this morning."

Blake squeezed his fists hard enough that the fingernails dug into his flesh. So much had happened, so fast. But he was thankful for the way this man was delivering the news – not letting his emotions get in the way. It helped – he shut down his own feelings and reactions, knowing he had to remain in control.

"Thank you, Vince. I’d like to talk to my First Officer. Can you connect us?"

Vince turned to someone off-screen, and a voice came on against a background of crackling static.

"Blake! Is that really you? My God, Kat, Rashid and I thought you were buried up to your eye-balls in Q’Roth soup!"

Blake knew he needed to stay cold at this point – Zack was the only person there who could make him emotional, if he let him. He hoped Zack would understand.

"Major, did you expedite Omega Kappa?"

There was a pause. "Affirmative, Sir, via a coded transmission through Vince’s mirror – Kat worked out how to do it. We just need co-ordinates."

Blake looked down to Pierre.

"New York," Pierre answered, softly.

Blake stared at his science officer for a moment, considering the larger picture. He reflected that military ops always relied crucially on intelligence, and right now he had the best intelligence the world had to offer sitting before him. He turned back to the mirror scene.

"Zack – New York."

He heard a low whistle. "Okay, Skipper, if you say so. I’ll get on it straight away and await further instructions. It’s sure good to hear your voice again. Zack out."

Vince had only been half-listening during this brief exchange, talking quietly with someone off-screen. Blake assumed he was getting reports from the jets carrying out recon or battle ops. Vince, hearing Zack sign off, turned to give Blake his full attention again.

"May I ask – Omega Kappa?"

"We take care of our own," Blake said. "It’ll be a rendezvous point for the evacuation in North America – New York is still irradiated so the Q’Roth will avoid it."

Vince nodded. "Family." He looked sideways again.

Blake noticed that Vince wasn’t calling him "Sir" anymore – the question of who was actually in charge here was still undetermined.

"What’s the status of your operations?" Blake asked.

"All Q’Roth ships are now outbound. We don’t think any more ships are incoming – the ruse is undone, though it may be too late. Here, we’ve launched all of our nukes and managed to disable six ships and four nests, but that seems to have precipitated a mass excursion to Earth. Some other ships might be arriving on the other side of the planet, out of our recon range."

"Has an international war council been convened?"

Vince shook his head. Blake knew what that meant. The Alician strategy was not merely technological but political – lack of trust after the last war left Earth divided and conquerable.

Blake made his mind up. "How many mirrors do you have?"

Vince frowned. "There are three here, they arrived a few hours ago. Why?"

"Take them back to Earth – to New York. Can you navigate these ships?"

Vince nodded. "The ship in Ireland learned enough, so they can instruct us via the mirrors."

Blake nodded. "We have the ignition key, we’ll bring it to you. Send word ahead to anyone trustworthy for immediate evacuation and command personnel extraction. When you’re there try to raise any other ships not under Q’Roth or Alician control. If you find any, the mirrors go to them – it will be the only way we can communicate." He glanced at Pierre. "Then, if it looks like we’re losing, we all come back here and go – elsewhere. This planet is unstable – it will revert to desert in a few years according to my science officer, and could well be the next stop of the Q’Roth once they finish up on Earth and realize some of us have escaped."

Blake could hear mutterings behind Vince. Pierre was right; fighting might only delay the inevitable. They needed a back-up survival plan – leave, in order to avoid letting all humanity perish.

Vince nodded once. "Yes, Sir. We’ll have our last two fighters back here in twenty minutes – I’ll re-route one to fly near your location so you can follow it. I presume you’re coming back with us?"

"My crew and I are staying here. That way my science officer can work on our destination, and I can co-ordinate operations from Eden orbit. Micah will rejoin you."

Vince looked satisfied in more ways than one. "Understood, though you might wish to discuss the destination with Micah – he has an idea." He broke the transmission link.

Blake turned to Micah. "Where should we go?"

Micah walked up to the Hohash and ran his fingers over its smooth outer edge. Blake was surprised: it had never occurred to him to touch this alien artifact.

Micah looked mesmerized. "Can this communicate?"

Blake was intrigued. "Yes, in a manner of speaking, with one of my officers."

"Katrina," Micah said.

It sounded more like a statement rather than a question. "How did you know?"

Micah shrugged, and turned to face Blake. "Lucky guess. I need to talk with her before I go back."

Chapter 48

Omega Kappa

General William Kilaney coughed and spat blood for the third time. The lieutenant who never left his side offered him her kerchief. He accepted it, nodding a thank you. She opened her other hand, three trimorph capsules in her palm. He shook his head, and leaned forward in his bridge command chair, staring into Zeus I’s viewscreen.

"Is the next batch ready?" he bellowed to his Tactical Officer.

"Thirty seconds, Sir."

Kilaney grimaced, counting eight mushroom clouds churning over former North American cities. He’d advised the President against the Tac-Nuke general order, but it was done now, and she wasn’t around anymore to worry about it – High Command had been taken out as soon as a Q’Roth ship had landed at Napa. It was his game now, and he preferred a rifle to a shotgun.

"New targets?" He suspected the answer, but wanted to fire the orbital missiles on fresh ships, rather than areas where the Q’Roth had already begun their cull.

"Negative, Sir. Still holding at fifty-five Q’Roth ships, based on our joint intel with IVS."

"Fire when ready. Usual protocol – target the most recently landed ship not issuing Micah’s code."

He wondered how long it would be before the enemy attacked his operation on Zeus I. He’d already destroyed five Q’Roth ships, though the human toll had been extensive – the Q’Roth always landed in densely populated areas. He reminded himself of his mission – to firefight the enemy, giving the four refugee-laden ships enough time for their escape. He turned to his lieutenant. "Get me the IVS CIC – what’s his name again?" He disliked having to deal with that infamous magnate, but War had taught him long ago that the enemy of your enemy was an ally, at least during battle.

"Shakirvasta, Sir. Coming through on Line 1."

Kilaney spun his chair to face a vid-screen. It crackled, then out of the scribbled fuzz a man appeared, seated behind a plush desk, somehow looking disheveled yet composed, a lighted cigarette poised in each hand.

"General, so good to see you’re still in the game."

Kilaney heard a shrill klaxon, indicating six missiles had just fired from Zeus I towards their next target – that’s how many it took, and they had to strike at exactly the same moment to penetrate the Q’Roth ships’ hulls. "What’s your status?" he barked.

Shakirvasta took a considered drag, exhaling before he spoke. "Not particularly good. We’ve lost a million infantry in the last hour. Frankly, all they do is slow the enemy down, and not by much."

Kilaney winced – how could Shakirvasta state it so coldly? At least the man had a cool head.

"General, we’re witnessing a change in Q’Roth tactics. The ones who have tapped sufficient human sentience are becoming more strategic, liquidating the few military bases not already sabotaged by the Alicians."

Kilaney thumped a fist on the arm of his chair. "What about the Brazilians, and the Indonesian Navy? We lost contact with them half an hour ago."

Kilaney saw the screen image jump, knocking ash off Shakirvasta’s nearly-depleted cigarette. Shakirvasta glanced at something off-screen, then his eyes flicked back to Kilaney.

"There’s another type of Q’Roth ship, as we suspected, a medium-sized destroyer, skimming our oceans, dropping hunter depth charges. They’re working from the bottom up. Efficient, I must say." He discarded his used cigarette, and without looking, supplanted it with a fresh one. "That disposed of the Indonesian Navy, and I’m sorry to say the Brazilian air force has been neutralized."

Kilaney sank back in his chair. "What – all of it?"

The image jumped again, and Kilaney thought he heard someone shouting the words “Now, Sir, please!” Shakirvasta nodded, whether to Kilaney or the man shouting, took a final drag and stubbed out his cigarette, replacing the unlit one in a gold case. He looked naked without his cigarettes.

"There are some smaller craft as well, using some kind of beamed weapon. Very maneuverable, unfortunately; they sliced through the Brazilian fighters easily as a hand through a holo."

"Sir," the Tactical Officer called out, "Sir, we’re detecting an unidentified vessel approaching fast from low orbit."

Shakirvasta cut in, rising from his chair, hands planted on his desk. "General, sounds like you have company. I’m afraid we’re dealing with adult Q’Roth now. I have to go. I’m in the Tower, and, well as you’re about to see, it’s time to leave. The game’s over, General. I’m instructing our ship to depart for Eden to join Blake and the others while it still can. I suggest you do the same. Good luck." Someone grabbed Shakirvasta’s arm and he disappeared from the screen.

Kilaney watched, and then understood. Behind where Shakirvasta had been sitting, the sky shifted violently. Mountain tops slid into view, followed by the tops of more mortal skyscrapers, then the bustling city beneath: the Mumbai Tower was falling.

He’d realized a day ago they could not win this battle, but now the full impact of the loss of his world seeped through him like bitter poison. He gathered himself. "Hostile on viewer."

The vessel resembled a giant mechanical crab, vectoring towards them at terrific closing speed, grappling arms extended. "Fire at the damned thing as soon as it’s in range. Everything we’ve got!" He turned to his aide. "Get me Micah."

The lieutenant blurred into motion. "Just audio, Sir."

He coughed again, this time using his uniform sleeve. The attack ship erupted in a billowing white-hot cloud of flame, quickly snuffed out of existence, revealing the target completely unscathed, tearing towards them.

"Micah, things are going bad. Looks like I won’t be making it. Tell Blake… tell him it’s lost here. The four ships must leave now, that’s an order. We’ll fight here to the end, but –"

A spider-web of lightning crackled across the Ops room, as the space station shook, throwing him out of his chair. The room darkened except for the strobe of electrical discharges sizzling plastic, ozone and charred human flesh into a pungent acrid cocktail. It stung his eyes, and left a taste like rust in his mouth. He coughed heavily, but stayed down till the emergency relays kicked in. As the fizzing sputtered to a stop and a pale light flickered on, he got halfway up to find his lieutenant’s half-burnt face next to him. A single trimorph capsule nestled in her lifeless palm. He swallowed it, closing her eyes.

Breathing through the folded kerchief, he squinted through layers of smoke and flame-licked shadows. He was the only one left alive. With a metallic snap, fire-suppressant gas jetted from the ceiling, cooling the air and dousing the flames, evacuating the smoke through vents. He staggered back into his chair.

He heard thumping, hammering noises getting closer. We’ve been boarded. He reached for his pistol but it had been knocked onto the floor somewhere, buried in the debris. Four Q’Roth warriors thundered into the room, circling him. He stood, as upright as he could manage. They didn’t approach.

"What in hell’s name are you waiting for?" He shook his head, and spat blood on the floor. He wiped his lips on the kerchief, then dropped it next to his lieutenant’s twisted body. His left ring finger slipped inside the pin of the high-yield grenade strapped to his waist for this eventuality, and with his other hand he slammed the Zeus I auto-destruct control. It had a thirty second timer, but he had no intention of staying around that long.

He realized he’d spent too many years as a General, sitting in a chair, sending soldiers to their deaths, the last four years steadily rotting from cancer. Life had been crap in recent memory, but death would give something back to him – he’d die as a soldier, on his feet. "You’re coming with me, boys." He pulled out the pin and charged at the nearest warrior.

◆◆◆

Micah sat facing one of the Hohash mirrors. He felt he’d aged ten years over the past three days. The bad news on the nets had just kept getting worse, and now there was no news, the airwaves transmitting a static far worse than silence or screaming. He’d waited an hour since the General had been cut off. Zeus Orbital had fallen from the sky like a blazing meteorite.

The massive ship doors closed as they readied for the trip back to Eden. Four ships – that was all – his in New York, captained by Vince, one in Dublin run by a young girl and a professor, one near Mumbai run by IVS, and one in the Andes, led by Senator Josefsson. Twelve thousand people, out of four billion.

Initially, Blake and Vince had been worried that they would have people banging and clinging onto the hulls as they left, but few made it to the irradiated evacuation sites. The Q’Roth easily shot down most transports trying to get there. After initial nuclear attacks, the Alician High Guard had seen to it that Earth’s diminished nuclear arsenals were incapacitated, and eradicated nano-tech facilities. An estimated five million Q’Roth were scattered over the globe, each one killing several hundred people a day. Locusts, Micah thought. They’ll leave nothing, and then set the world alight, ready for future terraforming – re-cycling the planet.

He knew the most powerful weapon against humanity had been the confusion caused by the reversal from unbridled hope of instant transport to Eden, to nightmarish reports of rampaging alien monsters, and then to terrifying global carnage. Everything had happened so quickly. Many survivors still had no idea what was going on – it was blind panic. And it had all been planned that way. Most people were easy targets, some found in churches or subterranean habitats, others fled to the hills, a few even sought refuge underwater, which didn’t stop the Q’Roth – they turned out to be amphibious and fast swimmers.

A small number of human stragglers might survive for a week or so, but the Q’Roth would eventually track them down – they perceived human bio-energy the same way sharks could smell blood over large distances. Other animals were left untouched, except the rare remaining dolphins and whales, whose bio-electric energy also seemed to be refined enough for the Q’Roth menu. People could hide in irradiated areas for a few weeks, but then the rad-poisoning would finish them off. It was over. Endgame. Time for a few pieces to escape from the chessboard.

He held up a picture of Blake, and the mirror instantly came to life, revealing the off-world leader’s gaunt face. Micah had already given him the bad news about General Kilaney.

"We have as many as are coming. We have as much food and medical supplies as we could gather, plus generators, some livestock – pretty much the manifest you asked for. There’s really nothing more we can do here." He hated saying that – he sounded like a politician.

"Thank you, Micah. We’ll see you all soon."

The connection broke. Blake’s face had seemed to brighten, obviously relieved that he would see his wife again. It hit Micah how ironic it was that he’d been rescued by Blake – again. He wondered if he would ever tell him what he’d known of his son, Robert, before they were captured and held at Kurana Bay. He remembered, a lifetime ago it seemed, being bundled into the chopper by Zack and Blake with the others during the rescue that night. When the news had come out, and there was no mention of Blake’s son, Micah’s analytic skills did the math – if Blake didn’t want it known, Micah wasn’t going to be the one to go public on it. He and Robert had been the only two from their group taken to Kurana Bay, dumped with other captives, so it had been easy to keep it quiet. Someday, though, he’d raise the subject with Blake. Maybe.

Sandy entered the room, interrupting his reverie. "Micah, you have a visitor." She escorted a strained-looking Antonia.

"Hello, Micah," she said tentatively.

He flashed a weak smile. They’d seen each other a few times since she arrived yesterday evening, but since then they’d avoided each other. He knew why she was there. He picked up a picture of Kat, and the mirror flashed various colors before her taut face appeared. We’re all ageing too fast. He gestured for Antonia to sit down as he left his seat facing the mirror. Antonia paused as she passed Micah, her hand touched his arm, and she kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you. For everything," she said, softly.

He nodded stiffly and headed to the door where Sandy was waiting, without a glance backwards. Sandy hooked his arm in hers and they walked out of the room.

"I hear you located the planet?"

Micah shrugged. "It was a team effort – Kostakis had worked out the nav system, and Kat had access to the Hohash. The coordinates were in the data stream, I just couldn’t find the temporal reference, and then it hit me."

Sandy cocked an eyebrow.

"When I was using the Optron to analyze that data stream, just before I went into a coma, I was falling towards a planet. I know now it was the spider planet. But no one ever programmed gravity into an Optronic environment, I mean not real gravity. So I worked out the gravitic constant for the planet and –"

"That was the temporal reference."

He smiled. "Kostakis ran it through the nav system and sure enough it indicated a planet at those coordinates. Since then, the mirrors have shown us images – five hundred years old, of course, but there should be water, and topsoil. The inhabitants didn’t put up a fight, so there was little destruction, and no reason to terraform the planet after the culling. It’ll take two or three weeks to get there, though, even with these ships."

She stopped him, faced him. "Nice work, Micah."

He looked her in the eye, then shrugged again.

"You’re not wearing your father’s jacket."

"No. Pierre wanted it to extract the nannites – Vince has him working on a weapon, just in case we run into the Q’Roth again, or they come looking for us."

She looked at him sideways.

"Okay," he said. "I let it go. There’ve been a lot of things I’ve let go of in the past few days. It was my father’s jacket, not mine."

"I’d say he’d be proud to have you wear it."

Micah shrugged, and smiled. "I know. Really."

"Come on," she said, linking arms again, "I know a feisty old lady who’s been raising merry hell about not being able to see you!"

Micah rolled his eyes, and a smile bubbled up from the depths. She held his arm tightly as they walked along the corridor

Chapter 49

Exodus

Blake had all the Hohash mirrors synchronized, as he prepared to give the final orders. All twelve-thousand people drew together in the four ships to see and hear, via holo-screens, the words of the man who’d shouldered the responsibility for the decision to desert Earth. At the allotted time, silence fell across Eden, interrupted by a few baleful cries of infants and the whimpers of distressed pets. Josefsson had wanted to address the gathering, but Vince dissuaded him. Blake hated giving speeches, but the Eden Mission shrink, Carlson, had insisted it was necessary for morale before they set off. Blake was thankful that Micah had helped him prepare it.

He waited a few moments, with eyes firmly shut as if in prayer, and then broke the hush in a loud and clear voice. "We leave now, with heavy hearts, knowing all is lost for Earth, and that even as we say farewell to Eden, the final embers of our civilization are being extinguished. We could stay and fight – and die with our compatriots, our fellow men and women, friends and lost loved ones. The angels would applaud – and weep at our sacrifice."

He raised his voice. "But it would be foolish, the end of humanity. We are now the last hope of the human race, a small flame taken from those dying embers that will evade the Q’Roth, and seek to burn brightly elsewhere." He paused, letting it sink in.

"We’ve learned a very hard lesson these past days. We won’t be so easily surprised or betrayed in the future. We’ll seek knowledge, allies, find a new home, and raise a stronger human race, one fit to meet with our galactic cousins on equal terms. This will be a hard, long road. But the fact that we have escaped at all, shows our worth. I want each and every one of you to recognize that worth. If ever you have doubts, or become dismayed, or second-guess this decision today, know this – that as the last people on Earth die out in the next few days and weeks, they will have only one hope as the light fades from their eyes – that some will escape – that we will escape, and will carry on the human race. And…" he paused – he had been debating whether to say it or not, but felt he had to – it was part of his own humanity. "And that one day, we will track down the Alicians who betrayed us, and avenge our fallen loved ones, and perhaps in a little less than a millennium, we will search for and find the next generation of Q’Roth nests and exterminate this galactic plague of locusts." Throughout all four ships, thunderous clapping and foot stomping erupted, together with a murmur rising towards a cheer. Before it reached its crescendo, Blake held up his hand, and the clamor abated.

"We must be careful. We must never again make the mistake of hubris, of arrogance, of not thinking ahead. We must be strong and wise, but also clever and cunning. We will never forget our heritage, where we came from. Nor will we allow ourselves to be absorbed by other species, to disappear. We are Humanity, and we owe it to the people we have left behind, all those who have been slaughtered these past few days, to make that name a proud one in this galaxy. So I say this to you all – and it is not a lie or a politician’s ploy – I say it because I mean it, and I believe it. This is not the end – this is a beginning. Now, everyone, prepare for transit. Our path awaits us"

Blake met Micah on his way to the Control Room. "How’d I do Micah?"

Micah grinned. "You’re a natural; Josefsson looked worried."

Blake smiled. "I’ve heard a lot about you, Micah, these past few days. You seem to have a gift for seeing things, how they unfold. Are you worried?"

Micah’s grin stalled. He was glad Sandy wasn’t around to hear what he was going to say. "We’ve done all we can; each captain has a separate flight plan, unknown to the others, and the routes aren’t direct, so even if we’re followed, it won’t be obvious where we’re headed."

"I hear a ‘but’ coming."

Micah laid a hand on a Q’Roth control panel. "The threat won’t come from the Q’Roth. They’ve fed, why should they care if a few of us escape? The Alicians, though, they will care. We’d be like poor relations to them – an embarrassment."

Blake pondered for a while. "Micah, you’re an analyst, so I want your prediction that they’ll come after us, and not give up till they find us. What are the odds?"

Micah matched Blake’s level gaze. "More than fifty per cent. We haven’t seen the last of them."

Blake nodded, heavily. "One more thing, Micah. I want you to work with me. I want you on my team."

Micah couldn’t speak for a moment. His mind flashed back to the poster of the four astronauts in his old office. "Of course, Sir. Er... Captain. What do I call you, actually?"

"You’re a civilian, so ‘Blake’ will do fine." His smile widened. "But then ‘Sir’ sounds fine, too, now that you mention it."

Five minutes later, Blake gave the final order, and four massive ships vanished from Eden’s surface, abandoning Eden and Earth, and the last struggling human survivors, soon to be eradicated. There had only been one logical direction for the four ship captains – Blake, Vince, Rashid and Jennifer: the spider world. Perhaps there they could learn more before they headed towards the Grid Society Kat had spoken of – going straight to the Grid itself might well be suicide, as that was almost certainly where the Alicians would be headed. The Hohash mirrors had conveyed to Kat that the Q’Roth were nomadic, and would continue out into the spiral reaches rather than back toward the Grid or the spider world.

He had given a rousing speech because it had been desperately necessary for morale, but he was a military commander and, like Micah, had grave doubts concerning their survival prospects, even in the first year. But he didn’t think he had lied – it was a beginning, another chance.

The air around him snapped into a silvery liquid, as one more thought lodged into his mind, hanging on a gossamer thread. Eden. Twice now mankind had fallen from Eden. Once by their own natures, and now tricked by others. He wondered if there was indeed a third chance, or if the real lesson was that there was no such place as Eden, and wanting it, dreaming of it, only made humans weaker. But even time-frozen in a mercurial sea, he could feel his wife Glenda’s hand in his – he’d reached out for her just as he’d given the command. For him at least, Eden was there in those two hands touching. So, while everyone else was just barely holding their breath, praying for the transit to end, Blake could have remained like that for a very long time.

◆◆◆

Sister Esma looked up from the star charts laid before her. "I see you are up – is that wise? The genetic re-sequencing is quite fragile in the first few days. The cerebral DNA was barely sufficient. How much do you remember?"

"Everything. Absolutely everything. Anyway, I had to get up out of that ward – I never cared for hospitals – I died in one recently."

Sister Esma studied her protégé. The Q’Roth surgeon had said there might be side effects. "Some humans have gotten away," she said. "We did not predict that. The fighting on Eden was also unanticipated, though the Q’Roth losses were negligible. They are, after all, a collective species. The nourishment here on Earth has been very strong for them – the anxiety levels of the population were at fever pitch, making the bio-energy more powerful than they could have wished for."

There was no reply, despite a lengthy pause. Sister Esma continued. "We’re heading for the Outer Grid tomorrow. It will take more than thirty transits, and we need to recharge after each one, so it will take four weeks in total. We will be sponsored by the Q’Roth for Level Five status, and will be allowed limited Grid access. We will be given a new planet, and we will found a new civilization."

Still no reply. Sister Esma waited, patiently. Clearly something was troubling the younger one. Eventually, she spoke.

"What about those who… killed me. Did they escape?"

Sister Esma let out a short, single laugh.

"My dear Louise, you will live a thousand years. They are Level Three. They will not survive long. What does it matter? Billions have died here in the last four days."

"I understand that – and I am grateful that you regenerated me. It’s just – personal. They killed me. I would like to repay the experience. And if – I say only if – they somehow survived – they could become a nuisance to our new civilization."

Sister Esma stared out over the floor of the cavernous ship, housing the five hundred Inner Circle and another five thousand shortly to be genned, the next evolution of humanity that would amount to something significant, taking its rightful place amongst its galactic peers. She knew, however, that there was a possibility that Louise was right, even if her motivations were personal. But Louise’s judgment was clearly clouded – the genning hadn’t worked fully, or else hadn’t settled yet. Sister Esma knew what that meant, though she did not allow her face to betray her thoughts. "What do you propose?"

"That I take one of the long-range Q’Roth attack ships, and four nukes. One for each ship they stole."

"Alone?"

Louise’s lips broadened. "A small crew – a young man and woman should do."

"Very well. Pick two consorts and I will speak to them before you leave. The Q’Roth have given us four Hunter Class ships – you may take one. We will be able to track you and communicate between transits, unless you fall too far behind, and we will give you our flight plan." Sister Esma smiled, knowing the last part was a lie – it would be too risky. "You will have two weeks, three at most to rejoin us. Do not be late."

Louise nodded and left. Sister Esma watched her stride away. A shame. She made her decision in an instant, and called over one of her most trusted. "I want you to insert this into the engine core of the long range attack ship chosen by Louise."

The man looked at the glass phial she had handed him, and his brow furrowed.

"Nannites? But within a few weeks they will degrade the…" His words dried up under her arctic glare. "Of course, Excellency." He shuffled off.

She cast her gleaming, seven hundred-year old eyes over her people, the next generation of Humanity, the apogee of man’s intellectual abilities shorn of all weaknesses and social inhibitions. How wise they had been, all those centuries ago, to throw in their lot with the pure and vigorous Q’Roth, ascending the evolutionary ladder. Nothing could stop them now from assuming their rightful role in the galaxy, not as feeble, erratic human clowns, but as a new race of masterful Alicians.

Two Q’Roth joined her and gave her the news. She picked up a microphone. A shrill whine made all stop what they were doing and turn to their leader, flanked by the magnificent warriors.

"I have great news. Earth is finished, the old humanity is no more. Shortly, all life will be extinguished." Cheers erupted from all around her, and a chant began: "Alessia, Alessia…" She beamed, letting the mantra rise, then held up a hand.

"From this day on, we are all Alicians. This is our time. Prepare yourselves, we leave in one hour. The galaxy awaits us."

Chapter 50

Epilogue

The Ranger closed down his recording system. His hooked claw stroked his Bartran slave-mind’s back ridges. He watched Exa-Grid Spiral 4A Mono-System 82435 Sol 3 on the multi-view screen, all life eradicated. Species 195 Q’Roth had moved on. The Bartran purred.

This had been a routine covert inspection, following the filing of a complaint after a previous incursion. Species 195 had followed protocol, although they should have filed in advance for sponsoring a new species, and the atomic and nanotech capability of the indigenous species had not been entered on the original incursion manifest. The sponsored escapees would behave according to the dictates of their Q’Roth benefactors, but the other refugees were an unquantified variable.

His claw slid into a hole on the Bartran’s back, and the purring ceased instantly. He thought – encode message to Ranger Grid Sub-Commander 423. The Bartran’s mind became fluid, stretching across the galaxy. The Ranger began:

ENCODE: UNSPONSORED SPECIES: UNCONTAINED: GRIDBOUND: ORIGIN SPIRAL 4A: IDENT HUMAN: TRANSPORT SP195 SHIPS [4]: PREPARE COUNTER-MEASURES PROTOCOL 32E:

GSC 423 ACKNOWLEDGED – COUNTER-MEASURES INITIATED:

REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS:

…PURSUE:

The Ranger removed his claw, and tapped twice on the sticky console. His ship vanished.

Continue reading the series:

Eden’s Trial – where humanity must come to terms with its place in the galactic order. Facing a terrible judgement, the remnants of humanity must risk everything for the very right to exist…

Eden’s Revenge – Qorall, an invader from another galaxy, threatens the galactic order. Beneath humanity’s new home lies a key to stopping him. But humanity’s old enemies are out for vengeance at any cost…

Eden’s Endgame – Superior races are falling one by one in the relentless galactic war. The only solution is a dormant weapon, one that almost destroyed the galaxy millions of years ago…

Available in paperback and Ebook from all major retailers
www.barrykirwan.com

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all my fellow Parisian writers for their critique and support over the years, in particular Chris Vanier and Dimitri Keramitas who have been with me throughout this journey, as well as Jen Dick, Laurel Zuckerman, and Mary Ellen Gallagher. Thanks also to my pre-readers for their unstinting encouragement and enthusiasm for the novel.

Last, but not least, I’d like to thank all my avid readers and reviewers everywhere, without whom this would have been a novel, not a series. You supplied me with the fuel to see this journey to its end.

EDEN'S TRIAL

THE EDEN PARADOX SERIES

The Eden Paradox

Eden’s Trial

Eden’s Revenge

Eden’s Endgame

Praise for the book and the series:

"A science fiction thriller with terrific images and revelations." SF author Gary Gibson

"It's hard to put down this book, but at the same time you don't want to race ahead but instead savour the complexities of personalities and the well-crafted story line. There are new worlds and new enemies entwined with the main characters nearly as closely as their lovers. I can't wait for the next journey alongside the Eden pathway!" Lydia Manx, Piker Press.

Top Amazon and Goodreads reviews:

"Riveting plot, compelling characters - delivered everything I hoped it would."

"Brilliant, imaginative, original."

"Book two continues the success of its predecessor."

"Fascinating, fantastical science fiction. Deeper than anything I've ever read in this genre."

"Incredible alien races and intense pacing. Buckle up for the ride of your life!"

EDEN’S TRIAL

Copyright © 2012 Barry Kirwan. All rights reserved.

Original cover artwork by John Harris

2nd edition published 2019

1st edition published 2012

© Barry Kirwan
www.barrykirwan.com

This novel is entirely the product of the author’s imagination and intended to be
fictional. All content, including people, names, and events, whether real or
imagined, are used fictitiously. No part of this book or artwork may be
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, the only
exception being brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

for Sheila

PART ONE

ATTACK ON OURSHIWANN

Prologue

General William Kilaney awoke, disappointed to find he was still alive. He tried to raise his head, but a metal rod pressed the back of his skull, forcing his gaze to the floor. He knew this interrogator’s trick – bend the body as a prelude to breaking the spirit. He willed his arms and legs to tug against the restraints, but whatever had stunned him on the space station had his limbs locked down cold. He’d seen his crew killed, and he had no false hopes about his own fate. He listened to his captor’s footsteps. He had a hunch who it was.

“Why am I here, Sister Esma? That is you, isn’t it?” The Alician High Priestess herself. He prayed the four transports off Earth had escaped. He’d told Micah to leave, just before they’d lost communications. If the ships hadn’t left in time, it had all been for nothing.

“If you’re after their flight plan, I never saw it. Torture me if you like, but it won’t get you anywhere.” It should be over quicker if he pushed her, if she lived up to the reputation she’d gained during the four-day assault on Earth.

He heard a faucet, the rinsing of hands: blood, he imagined, probably his own. Steel boots clacked across the metal floor towards him. He glimpsed them underneath drug-heavy eyelids: blue flow-metal with steel stilettos. So, not above vanity. Life held so few surprises.

Icy water drenched his head and neck. He gasped, shaking off as much as he could, squeezing it out of his eyes.

“Your battle tactics were quite unorthodox, General.”

Her voice carried all the arrogance he’d imagined from the leader of the terrorist sect who’d plagued Earth for the last decade. But he allowed himself a smile.

“Gave your Q’Roth locust friends a run for their money, did we?” While the rest of the world had been frozen by fear and panic, his forces had accounted for a quarter of a million Q’Roth dead in five separate hits. It paled in comparison to humanity being all but wiped out, but it was something.  He’d put up a fight and – he hoped – four ships had escaped with their precious human cargo.

“What do you want, Esma?”

Her cool fingertips anchored themselves on the back of his neck. Pain punched through his head as something was wrenched from the base of his skull. He blinked hard. A wave of nausea gripped him, then flattened out, dissipating. The skin on his hands and feet prickled as his muscle control returned. He flexed stiff fingers. Curiosity got the better of him. “What was that?”

“A device to download your recent memories, in case you were lying about their flight plan.”

They made it. He hadn’t admitted how much he’d needed to hear this sliver of good news, and let out a long breath. He hadn’t been lying about not knowing their destination. When Micah had almost told him, he’d cut him off immediately. Twelve thousand had escaped. He drew comfort from that. But he’d been in pain from cancer for years. Truth was, he couldn’t face any more.

“You have what you want. Let’s get it over with, shall we?” He waited. She reminded him of a cat playing with a mouse.

“The Q’Roth Supreme Commander wants you.”

Kilaney wished he’d gone down with his men; he’d damned well tried to. “For torture or a light snack?”

She snorted. “You should have worked it out by now, General. They do not eat human flesh – they feed on bio-psychic energy. It is a critical part of their maturation process. But to answer your question, neither. She wishes to recruit you.” Esma sounded bemused.

He laughed; life held a few surprises after all. “Let me get this straight: I just nuked five of her ships and she wants to offer me a job?”

“She said you showed potential. The Q’Roth are consummate soldiers, like you, General. They respect your tactical ability.”

The disdain in her voice didn’t go amiss. He knew now, between the Q’Roth aliens and the genetically-altered Alicians, who his worst enemy was.

“Well, Esma, I’m Stage Four. The cancer’s all that’s holding this sad bag of bones together. Can’t blow my nose without a transfusion. I have a couple of weeks, max. Anyhow, not sure it would look good on my resume.” He wanted this over. He’d done his part.

“They can cure your cancer, extend your lifetime by decades.”

She said it matter-of-fact, and he realised she wasn’t lying. They could cure cancer. He felt as if she’d kicked him in the stomach. The disease had eaten away at him for four years, robbing him of everything he once was. Being offered a cure now was the worst torture he could imagine. He clamped his lips.

Her voice became earnest. “You have seen the Q’Roth in action, but that is nothing compared to what they can do. All you have witnessed are freshly hatched warriors – newborns, primal rage instilled into their genes. But now they have fed, they will mature into the most potent armed force you could envisage. They are the foot-soldiers of the galaxy, General, respected by hundreds of races.”

And feared by most of them, he supposed. But despite himself he had been impressed. He’d seen them tear down a whole planet in a matter of days: shock troops, destroying infrastructure in the first wave, dismantling communications, reacting so damned fast to every counter-measure; all of this immediately after being hatched. He jammed his lips tighter and thought of his wife, taken by cancer four years earlier, of the thousands of soldiers who’d served under him over the years, all killed in the last days’ carnage. All except Blake.

“General,” she continued, pacing in front of him, “A war is coming. Not like the one you have just fought and lost, barely a campaign in Q’Roth terms. The Commander assures me it poses a threat to hundreds of races, maybe even the galaxy itself. She is interested in the creative tactics you demonstrated. She feels they could be developed. You are a soldier, General, and –”

He had to stop this. “The answer’s ‘no’, Esma. That’s final. Now, I’ve shown you respect, you show me some.”

The boots disappeared from view. Involuntarily, he tensed. A section of the metal floor beneath him receded to reveal a window. The sight unpeeling before him snatched his breath away. Earth hung below, a dull orange ball speckled with boiling clouds and glowing embers where the nukes had gouged his planet’s flesh. Even the oceans had taken on a sickened pallor.

His muscles fought against the restraints. He was furious to have even listened to her poison. Eden, he reminded himself. This had all been about Eden, and where there’s the promise of paradise, there’s always a snake.

“One day they’ll find you, Esma; Blake, Micah and the others. And when they do, they’ll kill you like a rabid dog.”

She walked in front of him, so that her boots appeared to be standing on top of Earth. Her tone sharpened. “A task force is already hunting them down and will destroy them. But even if they do escape, General, humanity will perish.” She bent forward, her cheek level with his. “Do you know why?”

He preferred it this way, niceties and bullshit expended.

She whispered. “If humanity escapes – a very small if – they will undo themselves.” She stood up, grinding her heel against the glass, as if she was stubbing out his native North America. “It is only a matter of time before your valiant refugees do something wrong, and are cut down like the weeds they are. Galactic Society values intelligence above all else, General. I do not mean the odd genius here and there, but coherent intelligence at the species level. Now, does that description fit humanity’s resumé?”

He bristled. “If we’d known there was sentient life out there – especially a society – it could have changed everything.”

She tapped her toes on the glass. “I told them you would say ‘no’.”

He was about to respond when he noticed something. It was as if the world was changing colour, morphing into grey sepia. “What’s happening, Esma?”

“The Q’Roth have finished. They do not believe in leaving loose ends. It is one of the galactic rules. After an incursion, the planet’s atmosphere is removed. It is for the best, especially following nuclear detonations on this scale.”

His eyes widened as whirlpools of smoke, like massive hurricanes, mushroomed around the globe. Glittering nuclear sparks snuffed out one by one, deprived of oxygen. The last whorls of atmosphere lost cohesion and flashed into space in a series of bursts that pricked his retinas. When the blotches in his vision faded, he saw Earth as no one ever had, as no one ever should. The oceans had boiled off into space, leaving smooth basins bordered by stark continental ridges. The planet was barren, dark, moon-like. Earth was… he didn’t even want to think the word.

“Earth must lay fallow for ten thousand years. No race will be allowed into this system during that period. Which is why humanity never encountered anyone from Grid Society – Mars was also culled, not that long ago by Galactic standards. The ban on entering the sector was lifted only a thousand years ago, and the Q’Roth were first to stake a claim on Earth.”

He heard a click, and the metal rod behind his head eased back. He raised his chin despite the stiffness in his neck, and stared at his captor. She was tall and long-necked, wearing a simple grey robe with the hood down. Her skin was pale, framed by jet black hair pulled back into a tightly braided ponytail. Broad, menacing eyes stabbed down at him over a hooked nose.

She spoke slowly. “You should thank me, General. You should actually thank all Alicians.”

The conviction in her voice almost made him retch. He tried to gather enough saliva for the only fitting response he could think of, but his mouth was dry. He watched her strut in front of him. What he wouldn’t give right now for a grenade.

“The Q’Roth first visited Earth a millennium ago on a scouting mission. Their intent was to return and harvest all of humanity, after their long hibernation period. But they needed an ally to fine-tune the attack nearer their waking period. They found my ancestor, Alessia, and the Alician order was born. The Q’Roth re-engineered a few of us, and then left. We have patiently awaited their return, and now we will have a new home, taking our place amongst Grid Society. We are humanity’s evolution, General.”

He took one last look at Earth, then faced her, speaking on behalf of his dead world. “You’re an abomination, Esma, and Alicians are humanity’s bastards. What’s to stop the Q’Roth feeding on you and your sect, now you’ve helped them?”

She looked away. “We have an agreement, a contract, you might say.”

He scrutinised her – there was something she didn’t want to admit, a secret too important to confess even to a dying man. He shrugged. “Watch out for the small print, Esma. In my experience, deals with the devil go south sooner rather than later.”

A bell chimed somewhere deep in the ship, and she glanced at her wristcom.

“Your time is up, General. As you do not wish to come with us, I am going to send you home.” She touched a panel and a glistening shroud ballooned around him. The glass beneath his feet slid away. His feet didn’t fall, supported by some kind of force-field. But a savage, biting cold gripped his soles, coiling around his ankles, drilling into his bones. He cried out with pain.

“It will actually feel warmer outside, believe it or not. Right now the field in contact with your feet is conducting your body heat to the outer hull, which is in darkness, fractionally above absolute zero.”

A steady hiss forewarned him of the dizziness he began to feel. His thighs and arms struggled against the restraints, trying to lift his feet. Her voice sounded fuzzy.

“You see, General, even if humanity escapes, the only way they can hope to survive is to evolve beyond what they are. And the sad truth is that humanity would choose to die as they are, rather than evolve.”

His eyes fogged as their water vapour evaporated. He closed his mouth. She touched another panel and his leg and arm straps released. He fell forward, the skin of his palms and outstretched fingers welding to the freezing layer separating him from hard vacuum.

His body wracked with shivering, knocking his teeth together. When he spoke, it sounded like he was underwater. He shouted to compensate. “They’ll… survive.” His arms were numb. Through slitted eyes he watched his hands turn a sickly wax colour. His breath ran out, his throat asteroid-dry. He hunted the last oxygen molecules inside his shroud. Her voice was distant, fading.

“I can see why the Commander was interested in you. Goodbye, General. Oh, and a word of advice: do not hold your breath.”

Out of the corner of a frosting eye, he saw her hand, as if in slow motion, move to activate another control. He had no doubt what it would do. The force-field cracked apart beneath him like an eggshell.

As he tumbled into space, he knew he had only a few remaining seconds of consciousness. As the residual air in his lungs expanded to bursting, he let out a space-silent yell of rage. He squeezed his eyes shut to protect them as long as he could, suppressing needle-like jabs as nitrogen flashed out of his bloodstream into his joints, competing with the grinding ache from his bloating limbs. The naked glare of the sun slammed into him, searing his face like a whip with each turn of his somersault. None of it mattered anymore. His body convulsed, venting blood at every orifice. He choked off the idea that she might be right about humanity. Instead, he willed his last thought out into the void: Prove her wrong, Blake. You and Micah can do this. Wherever you are, for God’s sake, prove –

Chapter 1

Umbilical

Luke touched the sonic syringe to his neck. He hesitated, knowing there would be no turning back – one way or the other he’d be dead in twelve hours. He took a breath and drove his thumb down, feeling the click followed by a small hiss as the neurotransmitters surged into his carotid.

A flush crawled across his face, followed by tingling, then scalding. He doubled over. Within seconds his respiration and heart rate slowed. His senses sharpened. He could easily read the writing on his desk on the other side of the room. Muted conversations in adjacent quarters amplified, allowing him to hear their dreary banter. For the first time, Luke detected the deep, leopard-like purr of the engines in the bowels of the gargantuan Q’Roth vessel, as its human hijackers mustered power for the final transit through deep space to their new home. He knew his role well enough, and accepted it:  to see that humanity never made it to their precious new world.

He marvelled at the Q’Roth technology, then grimaced at the thought of the three thousand undeserving passengers who had stolen aboard this ship instead of accepting their fate back on obliterated Earth. Most humans talked of the Q’Roth invasion – but to him and other Alicians it had meant liberation, after centuries of living in the shadows, hiding genetic advances from their inferior human cousins. Mankind had squandered its chances. Time for an upgrade.

He zeroed in on a man walking beyond the curtained doorway. Luke inhaled the pungent odour of this passer-by who hadn’t showered. He cracked his knuckles. Two weeks pretending to be one of them, letting them think they’d escaped.

He picked up the blue stiletto, a Q’Roth ceremonial dagger, a gift from Sister Esma herself. Surprisingly light. Yet nothing on Earth had been able to bend, break or melt Q’Roth metal, except a nuke. A thousand years old, and still micron-sharp. He cocked an ear at a measured gait nearing his doorway. As it slowed, his fingers coiled around the hilt. The curtain rustled open and he launched the blade. A hand, moving so fast that only Luke in his newfound heightened state could have seen it, caught the knife in mid-air.

“I see you’ve taken your accelerator dose, too,” Luke said, grinning.

Saul raked the curtain closed and tossed the stiletto back to him, glaring at the thin red line drawn across his palm. Blood threatened, then retreated, leaving no trace. “And if I hadn’t?”

Luke’s smile faded. “I got carried away. It won’t happen again.”

“Don’t ever stoop to their level.”

Luke bowed his head. He needed to redeem himself with Saul, one of the Inner Circle. Despite looking just a few years older, Saul had survived the Purge, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the Alician Order had been hunted down, tortured and executed under the pretence of the great witch hunt – in the silent Alician war against the now-defunct Sentinels. Just thinking about it made Luke want to tear the head off the first human he encountered. But such emotional recklessness was unbecoming. Strategy and patience, he reminded himself, citing two of the most vaunted Alician maxims. He swallowed his anger, alchemising it into cold-blooded purpose: why kill a few when we can kill them all?

Luke cleared his throat. “What about the other three ships?”

Saul drew his pulse pistol, checking the charge. “Decapitation strategy – we take out Blake, their leader, and all those aboard this ship. Louise will take care of the others.”

Luke nodded. “Good enough for me.” He’d only met Louise once, and had decided there and then that it was true what they said – the female of the species was deadliest, especially after her recent Q’Roth DNA transfusion, which had apparently honed her aggressive instincts.

He shifted on his feet. “I want to be the one to kill Micah.” He sheathed the stiletto. His eyes blazed. “Of all the parasites on this ship, his death deserves personal attention. If it weren’t for him, none would have escaped.”

Saul holstered his pistol. “The kill is yours. I’ve seen the roster. He should be outside with us later today. Just don’t underestimate him. Remember, Louise herself failed last time. Let’s go, it’s time to keep up our side of the bargain.”

Luke felt powerful, like a jaguar on the hunt, every muscle, every cell’s DNA united in single purpose. They slipped out of the room, disappearing into the hordes of human prey infesting the corridors.

◆◆◆

Micah scanned the pasty, sun-starved faces around him while he sat in one of the ship’s dozen grimy canteens. Yellow light seeped out of the walls and ceilings, highlighting every crease of worry. Nothing could hide the stooped postures of a people whose backs had been broken by unimaginable loss – the near extinction of the entire human race.

He stared into his daily bowl of brown, nucleic phyto-soup – Sandy called it gloop – and stirred it absent-mindedly. Four sticky nondescript globs in his slurry-like food made him think of their four stolen Q’Roth transports, holding the last remnants of humanity within their hulking interiors. The four captains, Blake, Vince, Rashid and Jennifer, each took a disguised route – in case the Q’Roth tried to finish the job of genocide – to a new planet everyone hoped they could call home. But he couldn’t eat, despite the rumblings in his stomach. He felt like he was at a perpetual funeral, though it was two weeks since they’d escaped. Each time he tried to eat he imagined all the dead back on Earth who couldn’t. Survivor’s guilt, he knew, though having a name for it didn’t help. His stomach seemed to understand, like a family friend at a funeral patting him on the shoulder, unable to offer any words that could make a difference. He laid the spoon down and tuned in to a conversation at a nearby table, two men with their backs to him muttering their grievances.

“So, anyway, this planet, whose whereabouts they won’t even tell us, what the hell do they actually know about it? I mean, all they know is it’s out there somewhere, right? Don’t know shit about it otherwise, how could they?” The man poked the air with a knot of stale bread. “Like, is it really empty? Who’s to say the Q’Roth ain’t waiting for us right there, eh? I bet they don’t even know if it has water, food, or breathable air for God’s sake. And, it could be really hot or cold. I’m telling you, nobody knows shit about this planet.”

Micah shut his voice out, letting the sound of cheap cutlery on plastic tables drown it, along with the other muted, Spartan conversations that hung listlessly in the stuffy, catacomb-like ship, their temporary sanctuary. Still, the thought that they were drifting in uncharted space, with smouldering Earth far behind them, did nothing to whet his appetite.

He’d noticed how people clung to their meagre possessions, no matter how basic or common-place, and if they met someone who was miraculously from the same town, they became instant life-long friends. In the ‘evenings’, people gathered around anyone who had music or a vid-player; the lack of sound on the ship reinforced how much everyone had lost, how many human voices had been silenced. For Micah, who like most had escaped with his skin and little else, the sheer rootlessness of it all created its own chasm of nausea inside his guts. He interlaced his fingers and rested his brow against them.

Many complained of space sickness, though the doctors argued there was no reason for it – no vibration, no sudden movements, and certainly no pitching and yawing. He suspected nevertheless that the term was apt – people were literally sick of space, there was no ground, no earth beneath them, just a heartless vacuum.

He searched for something positive. Looking around him, at least people’s clothes weren’t ragged – it had only been a couple of weeks – but he noticed how most were starting to wear any old thing, as if nothing mattered. Black was the favoured colour, only adding to the morgue-like atmosphere in this behemoth of a ship, with its bottle-green walls that felt like dead skin to the touch. The ship, after all, belonged to their enemy.

“Not hungry?” Sandy dropped down into the seat opposite him, having already started her bowl.

He shook his head.

She soaked up her own steaming mush with a chunk of black, vat-produced, rye bread, eating with gusto. He watched, fascinated. He slumped back in one of the ubiquitous white gel-form chairs. Thank God you’re here, Sandy.

“It’ll probably end up on the cockpit shield like last time,” he said. “Want it?” He nudged the dish across the metal table. “Eating for two, after all.”

She launched a glare from beneath her pine-coloured fringe, conjuring in his mind a wild cat staring through jungle bushes – not a predator as such, but lethal when cornered. He decided not to say any more on the subject. Anyway, he guessed no one would suspect yet – she still looked as fit as a Tycho marathon-runner.

“Hope he appreciates this, one day,” she said frowning, pulling the dish towards her, lobbing rye meteorites into the primal, hyper-nutritional sludge.

“He?” Micah raised his eyebrows, but she ignored him. Watching carefully, he noticed she had to make an effort to swallow; and then he knew she hated it as much as he did. She was simply determined to put on a good show. It was due to her proper upbringing, he knew she would say, and she would be right – if only everyone onboard could make such an effort.

A gruff voice intruded. “Hey, ain’t you the sonofabitch who got us into this mess?”

Micah twisted around to see two men, the closest with a face as scarred as a strip-mined asteroid. The second was bear-like, stubby features shrouded in muddy brown hair and a straggling beard. They looked like cloudpunks – which meant trouble, since they could no longer get their drugs or kicks playing dodgem on high-alt jet-bikes. Shoulders hunched like jackals, the type who would only attack weaker prey. It was obvious who they were addressing.

Micah turned back to Sandy. Her right hand had dipped beneath the table. She had a wry smile on her face, he assumed because she was aiming a pulse pistol at the nearest man’s groin. Micah had the stun-pen in his pocket, but decided to leave it there – for now. He scraped his chair back, and rose to face the two ration-hollowed men towering over him. The smell of the nearest one’s breath almost made him sit back down.

“I’m Micah Sanderson, and, well, technically I got you out of a mess.” He tried to control his breathing, to appear calm, congenial even. His pulse pistol was in a locker four levels down, and these men were bone-breakers. He wasn’t sure the stun-pen would take them both out.

“Shouldn’t you be a little taller, less scrawny?” The closest one jabbed a finger into Micah’s sternum.

“With a decent haircut!” spat the second, smirking.

Micah kept his arms loose by his sides. He noticed several other people rise from their seats. This could get ugly. Ignoring the second man, he stared the first straight in the eye. “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” A leer scrawled across his bony face. “What do I want? From our resident hero?” He turned momentarily to his comrade.

Micah saw the opportunity to strike – Zack had been giving him combat training – but let it pass. He’d always seen violence as the very last resort, usually so late it just underlined failure.

The man’s unshaven face loomed close. He whispered loud enough so everyone could hear. “I want to knock a piece off the prick who made us all run away when we should’ve stayed and fought those mother-fucking locusts.” Spittle decorated his lower lip. “You know, the asshole who has us cooped up in this garbage can flying to some Godforsaken planet where we’ll starve to death or tear each other to pieces.”

Micah stood his ground, guessing he was likely to be hit pretty soon. He continued to stare into the man’s hungry eyes, the bloodlust welling up inside them. Micah didn’t blink. Neither did the man.

“Try to leave his brain intact,” Sandy said, still sitting.

“H-hey, Lady,” the second man stuttered, clearly less accustomed to public speaking than his colleague. “S-stay out of it.”

“No, seriously, his brain is what saved us. Might come in useful. The rest, well… He’s pretty skinny, won’t be much of a fight.”

Micah struggled not to blink. He wanted to offer this man some mouthwash. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed an old woman walk up to the pair of them. Now what?

“Excuse me,” she said, in an old lady’s voice that could only belong to an ex-teacher. She tugged the man’s arm. His brow creased. Micah suppressed an urge to smile.

“I said, excuse me!”

The man pursed his lips. “What? Go away, old woman!”

“I’m not that old! Look at me, young man!”

The man growled and whirled to face the diminutive octogenarian whose head barely reached his chest. “What the hell do you want, lady?”

Micah blinked several times in relief.

The old woman beckoned the man closer with a bony finger. He sighed and bent forward. She slapped his face with surprising speed and force. He stumbled backwards a step, more shocked by the act than from any real pain. He looked around him, then advanced on her, fist raised. “Why you old –”

A cracking noise announced an upturned table as Sandy sprung to the man’s side, pulse pistol nuzzling his neck. Only the man’s eyes moved, swivelling between the pistol’s barrel and Sandy. His buddy made to move towards his friend, but two other men barred his way. Several others circled around him. Micah noticed three had picked up knives from the tables.

Sandy primed the pulse-laser weapon, causing it to emit its unmistakable hum. “This respectable lady is trying to teach you a lesson, one you can learn from. I, on the other hand, specialise in lessons you personally won’t learn anything from, though others might.”

He drew away from her gun. “Aw, C’mon, I wasn’t actually going to –”

“I don’t doubt it, not enough balls, but you’re going to apologise anyway.” She advanced, pressing the nozzle deeper into his neck.

“Sorry,” he said, to the elderly woman. The pistol edged forward a few millimetres. “Ma’am,” he finished.

The old lady nodded, chin up, somehow appearing taller than the man dwarfing her.

“Apology accepted, I’m sure. Now, you should go back to your room, young man. A cold shower and a shave will remind you not to bite the hand that feeds you, or in this case, protects you.”

Sandy retracted the gun. The man stepped away, ready to leave, then paused, turning back to Micah, the fire extinguished in his eyes.

“One thing, Mister Sanderson. Next time we face the Q’Roth or some other enemy, do we stand? Or do we run, and keep on running?”

All eyes fell on Micah. He wanted to swallow but thought better of it. It was a good question, and ultimately it would be up to Blake and the others, not just him. But he had to answer, right now. He knew the correct answer, the logical one to ensure humanity’s survival. But he’d learned the hard way that it’s not always wise to be logical in public. Reluctantly, he imagined how his dead father would have replied. He cleared his throat, stood tall, made his chest proud, and addressed everyone present. “We stand, and we fight,” he said. “But next time we make sure it’s on even terms.”

The man nodded. “Then I’ll be there fighting alongside you.” He and his friend left. A few of the people who’d rallied round Micah briefly met his eyes, then either sat back down or went about their business. The old lady patted Sandy on the arm. “Nice pistol, I don’t suppose I can have one?” She cackled her way out of the canteen without waiting for an answer.

Micah restored the table, sighing at the puddle of gloop on the floor, but a couple shooed him away as he went to clear it up. He slumped back into his chair, facing Sandy, who had regained her seat, acting as if nothing had happened. He leaned forward, whispering. “Can we eat somewhere else tomorrow?”

Her eyes, the colour of hazelnut but sharp like a hawk’s, offered him no quarter.

“No, Micah. From now on we eat here every day.”

Two new steaming bowls appeared before them.

“So, Mister Sanderson,” she launched, after thanking the young man who had set down the bowls before them, “is humanity still worth saving?”

He scooped up a large dollop of synthetic algae. His eyes swept around the room, and he saw the people there differently: subdued, yes, but strong and ready to fight, whether despite, or because of, their grief. He blew across the top of the spoon, to dispel the odour as much as to cool the soup. A smile spread across his lips. “Sure.” He took a breath and opened his mouth. His wristcom buzzed twice. He didn’t need to read the message. The fracas had almost made him forget what he had to do today. He lowered the spoon back into the bowl, and stood up. “Saved by the bell – it’s time.”

She gripped his sleeve as he passed her, stopping him momentarily. “Good luck, Micah.”

It always unnerved him whenever Sandy was sincere. He preferred her legendary sarcasm any day of the week, but especially today.

Micah threaded his way across the camp-site on the fourth level, as large as ten football fields. He skirted around each tent’s territorial markers of straggled possessions and chem-dry laundry hanging on makeshift lines. He averted his eyes, not wanting to get stuck in conversation with anyone about the inevitable, heavy questions to which he had no answers, much less what these people needed more than anything: concrete hope.

He reached the central spiral ramp. A solitary soldier who looked too young to be in uniform saluted him, and Micah dipped his head in response. It was sad that soldiers had to be posted to control access, but at least they needed only one – humanity’s remnants hadn’t descended too far out of control yet.

He’d gotten used to military deference. He was only twenty-five and had no rank or military background. But he’d been granted military status by virtue of being the one who had discovered the human race’s fate early, uncovering the Alician plot – their millennium-old collusion with the Q’Roth – so helping a sprinkling of humanity to escape the Q’Roth cull.

At first he’d been embarrassed whenever soldiers, some quite high-ranking as far as he could tell, saluted him. He’d even tried saluting back, until Zack had one day told him not to, saying his hand was clearly non-military issue. Besides, Zack had pointed out, just because the soldiers were offering him respect, they didn’t necessarily need it back.

Micah had never understood the military.

He strode down the wide, coiling slope, towards base level, the artificial gravity pulling him softly forwards, making him feel lighter. He knew it wasn’t real, but it lifted his mood anyway.

At the bottom of the ramp he met a group of heavily-armed soldiers, deep in discussion. The only words he caught were “more nukes” and “seen off the bastards”. It was a familiar military refrain: if only we’d had more weapons. The armed forces, what was left of them, had a hard time accepting that they’d been defeated by strategy and intelligence, and not just by bigger weapons. Still, he envied their disciplined lives: it would keep them from going off the rails long before everyone else. But he also knew that if the new planet didn’t work out, and they were all confined to this ship for months or longer, then these stalwart soldiers could end up shooting people to maintain ‘civil order’.

They turned to salute him. One, a major from the look of it, addressed him. “Good evening, Sir.”

Micah knew he had to respond in some way. “Good evening, Major, evening men,” he ventured, drawing inspiration from war vids he’d watched as a kid, before he’d learned to really hate war for what it was, having been taken prisoner just before the end of WWIII. Was it only ten years ago? He remembered hearing the cries at night from the wounded, the screams of his buddies being tortured... He applied mental brakes, backed out of that particular cul-de-sac, and re-focused. The major clearly had something on his mind, so Micah waited.

“Sir,” the major said, “I had the great honour of serving with your father, the Gray Colonel, during the War.”

Micah’s guts turned to lead. He’d forgotten how much he loathed that particular label. They’d even buried his father – the great war hero – in a grey coffin. He dredged up a smile from somewhere, praying it looked half-real.

The major beamed. “Well, Sir, I just wanted to say it’s an honour to serve again with a Sanderson. You did us proud on Eden, Sir. And, if I might add, the Gray Colonel’s jacket fits you well.”

He had to get out of this fast. He stood to what he presumed was attention, and violated Zack’s directive, giving the major the best salute he could offer. “Thank you, Major. But without the military,” he added, making eye contact with each of the men, “none of us would have gotten out of there alive.” He offered his hand to the Major, who shook it with a bone-cracking grip. Micah managed not to wince.

As soon as he’d rounded the corner, he leaned against the wall and hung his head. I’m not up to this. This damned jacket, he thought, glancing down at his father’s grey Air Force tunic, which he’d donned en route from the canteen. He’d put it on for a special purpose. Oh well, he thought, let’s get this done.

He pushed off from the wall and marched forward, fixing on the hangar in the distance, not stopping to speak with anyone. He zoomed in on Zack – easily distinguishable from a hundred meters away – his gleaming, black, bald pate and gorilla-like frame somehow moving with the quiet, uncompromising ease of a sumo wrestler. His head turned this way and that every now and again, his gaze hawk-like never missing a trick. Micah always relaxed around Zack, though no one under Zack’s command ever did. He quickened his pace.

“Hey, buddy, how’s it goin?” Zack’s voice boomed across the hangar. A few soldiers – this was a strictly military zone – stopped to see who had arrived, and to whom their commander would be so cordial. He paused just short of Zack’s reach. Zack’s bushy eyebrows knitted together, and he folded his ebony forearms. “Need a stim?” Zack said quietly.

Micah shook his head.

“Well, okay then, there she is,” Zack said, pointing to the sleek, blinding white, Moonwalker-class fighter, a mid-range, one man space-jet. Its delta wings ear-marked it as a hybrid, able to operate in atmosphere as well as in space. Micah’s throat went dry, and his stomach shrivelled. As a kid he’d dreamt about being an astronaut, but he’d never imagined how disorienting it could be in a small spacecraft, let alone the space-sickness: in the past week he’d thrown up during every single training session. This was the first time he’d be going out on his own in a Moonwalker, having been in a two-man Skyhawk until now.

He braced himself. “Is she – it’s always a she, right?”

Zack grinned. “Because you’re inside her, Micah.”

“Okay, okay. Is she, er … loaded?”

Zack’s grin stalled. He approached and planted a heavy hand on Micah’s shoulder. “She’s ready, kid. Now, go do what you have to do.”

Micah swallowed. He turned towards the craft, then paused, but Zack answered before he could launch the question.

“Blake’s already out there, putting your training buddies Luke and Saul through their paces. I’ll be on open-link comms. There’ll be a bunch watching remotely on level eight, but they won’t have comms with you.”

As Micah marched to the ladder, a private handed him his flight suit, and saluted him. He took off his father’s jacket and passed it to him. The guy received it like it was precious, and almost bowed. Micah made sure he didn’t react, and then stepped into the cobalt-coloured, one-piece space-suit, zipped it up and activated the auto-seals. It sucked closed around him, making him feel like a vacuum-packed slice of soy-beef. He bent over to pick up his helmet. It was then he realised there was no sound. Everyone had stopped working and was watching. He strode over to the black torpedo slung under the port wing and laid a gloved hand on it. “Safe trip,” he whispered. He donned his helmet, and clambered up the short steps into the cockpit. Once seated, the chair automatically hugged the contours of his body. The transparent forward shield slid into place, cocooning him in silence. The fluidic metal dashboard lit up, casting a sapphire glow around him. Now, for the first time since waking, he really thought about the package he would soon be firing deep into space.

“Ease off the aft port thrusters,” Blake said.

Micah marvelled at how Blake never lost patience with him, only raising his voice if Micah was about to crash into the mother ship, or over-compensate with thrusters until his own craft entered a ‘tumble’, an uncontrolled spin ending with the pilot’s intestines serving as interior decor. He couldn’t see Blake’s Moonwalker – he didn’t blame him, best not to get too close. Micah wasn’t adept at this, but Blake had insisted he train to be a Captain, to develop the physical skills to match his analytic ones: the trappings of leadership are important. At least, he thought, Luke and Saul are out of harm’s way, on a recon mission.

He complied with Blake’s monotone instructions, though it was all so damned counter-intuitive. None of his years of gaming and holo-sims when he’d been a kid had prepared him for the reality of flying in a straight line when there was simply no measurable gravity in any direction. Pick a star, he thought, focus. He selected one, and the oscillations gradually came under control. Micah was an Optron analyst, and Zack, the best pilot left alive, confided in him that this was his biggest problem – these craft had to be flown by feel. If you tried to think about it too much, he’d said, your brain was going to explode, sooner or later.

He relaxed a little, and maintained a straight line for twenty seconds without any appreciable yaw or wavering. For the first time, he saw Blake’s craft pull up beside him, three wing-widths to starboard.

“Keep your eyes fixed on whatever star you’re looking at, Micah.”

He nodded inside his helmet and looked at the tiny speck of light in amongst the carpet of stars draped around them. He’d only realised after leaving Earth and Eden just how dark space was. But for the first time he felt in control of the ship. His shoulders dropped.

“You’ve got it,” Blake reassured him.

Zack’s voice cut in. “Hey, you’ve made me a rich man, Micah, you just wrecked the sweepstakes’ prediction back here! They were sure you’d puke again!”

He smiled, but it didn’t last. It was now or never; he couldn’t do this unless he was in control of the craft. “Which way is Earth, Commander?”

“You’re pointing in her direction, as far as we can tell after fifteen fractal transits.”

Blake’s gravel-like voice fit the occasion. Micah flicked up the lid covering the red push-button on the joystick. He paused.

“You have to say something first, Micah, some words,” Sandy said.

He was taken aback, hearing Sandy. But then he remembered Zack had wanted to train her in battle comms, on account of the cutting edge in her voice.

“We’ve split the comms links,” she said. “Blake is going to give a eulogy for everyone else, relayed to level eight. This line is just you and me. No one else can hear. No one alive, that is.”

This time, her tone had none of its usual acid-coating. He wished she’d known his mother. There: he’d been avoiding that word all day. The image of his Mom rose up in his mind, triggering a cascade of scenes and emotions, from his early childhood, to three days ago, when she’d slipped away from him in the hospital wing on the fifth level, with an air of serenity, knowing she would at last join her long-dead husband.

Micah had managed to rescue her in the last days of the Q’Roth onslaught, but she’d been wounded, and she was just too old, the doctor had said. Micah had another opinion, however, as his Mom had always been so strong: she’d survived just long enough to see that her son was safe, and then, resources depleted, and too plain tired to countenance another adventure, she’d finally let go of life.

She’d had one last request: she didn’t want to be buried on the new planet. She wanted to go home. He’d protested that it was impossible, but she’d gripped his wrist with withered yet firm fingers, and said “you’ll find a way.” It was the last coherent thing she’d uttered.

She hadn’t been alone in this request. Many had been fatally wounded in the exodus, and seventy-four on Blake’s ship had perished in the past two weeks since departing Eden. The Chief Medical Officer had been having a hard time determining what to do with the cadavers – all freezer storage was reserved for food and med-supplies, and the few relatives onboard had railed at the thought of their loved ones’ bodies simply being dumped in space. So they’d cremated all the bodies, and placed the ashes in a torpedo casing, which he now aimed towards a dying planet God alone knew how many light years away. It would probably never get there, of course, instead winding up in some star’s gravity well. But it was the best they could offer, a symbolic gesture.

Somewhere in the main ship behind them, a gathering of relations and friends was taking place, and various priests, rabbis and mullahs were casting prayers over these souls who had almost, but not quite, made it.

He realised he’d been silent for a while. He cleared his throat, his right hand locked around the joystick. “Sandy, I’ve never told anyone this before. When I was born, it was during one of the last outbreaks of the nannite plague. The hospital was infected and, well, my Mom was locked in with everyone else, under quarantine. In two days almost three hundred people died. When they pulled me out of her, they left the placenta attached, kept me incubated, as independent from the external environment as possible. Everything was contaminated, you see. So they cut the umbilical very late.” He coughed. “My father used to joke that that was why I was such a mommy’s boy, never able to break the ties with her. Truth is –“

“Incoming! Break off Micah, now!” Zack shouted.

He was trying to process what Zack could mean, but he’d been trained to react first and think about it afterwards when a CO yelled at him. He yanked the joystick hard to port as his right foot rammed the main thruster pedal. The move spun him around one-eighty degrees and displaced him fifty metres. He watched in disbelief as a white missile tore past him. Blake’s craft lurched around and streaked behind him, in hot pursuit.

“Can he make it?” Micah asked, guessing the target was the mother ship.

“If anyone can, he’ll do it,” Zack said. “Micah, listen, I don’t know who fired – Luke or Saul. Maybe they’re both in on this. They’re headed your way. No one comes past you. Arm both your… damn!”

“I know,” Micah said. He had one live and one empty torpedo – well, not entirely empty. He knew better than to ask questions of Zack, as he’d be helping Blake take out the missile, relaying nav data and time to impact.

“Micah, listen, it’s Sandy, all hell’s breaking loose back here.”

“Has Blake reached it yet?” He strained his eyesight looking for any telltale movement of Saul and Luke ahead of him. His radar showed no signals, so they must have switched off their transponders and employed stealth mode.

There was a pause. “No – it’s going to be tight. He’s already pushed eight G’s just to track it. We’ve just found two dead soldiers in armaments, and two nukes missing.”

Great, he thought, they have live missiles instead of dummies. “Shut the hangar doors, Sandy. Those Q’Roth ships are tough bastards. At least one survived a nuke attack, remember?”

“The doors are jammed open, and the two spare Moonwalkers have been disabled. They planned ahead.”

“Move the ship, then!”

“You know we can’t move between jumps, not for another four hours, not until the engines are recharged.”

Micah knew that and more. He guessed what Sandy and everyone else would be thinking: Alicians. It meant they had at least one, probably two, and maybe more Alician spies aboard, with a simple objective. He flicked up the protective cover on the live torpedo, and nudged the joystick forward.

“Sandy, I’m going to need to concentrate for a while.”

“Okay, Micah, good lu–”

“Micah. What are you planning exactly?”

“Hello, Saul.” He’d hoped it would be Luke; Saul was the better pilot. He wondered why they hadn’t fired the other nuke. How long had it been now? Thirty seconds? No detonation yet. Maybe Blake had made it, and wing-tipped it off course.

“Why, Saul?”

Luke answered, his voice higher-pitched than Saul’s. “Loose ends, Micah, an intelligent race doesn’t leave any. You’re smart enough to do the math. Intelligence. That’s what counts in the galaxy. Only the clever survive, and Alicians are more intelligent, so humanity loses. Again.”

The blood rose into Micah’s head, but he knew he had to stay carb-steel cold. A message flashed up on his screen. Missile diverted and destroyed.

“Seems our flight instructor is as good as his reputation, eh Micah? But he can’t stop a second one, he’s too close to the ship now, and his fuel will be low after that little sprint.”

“Micah, missile disabled,” Zack cut in, “but Blake’s now way over the other side of the ship. What’s your situation?”

Micah was surprised – whatever he answered to Zack, Saul and Luke would hear. Zack must know that. He decided to play along. “On intercept. I can maybe take out one – but I don’t know who has the nuke. Instructions?”

“Take out Saul.”

Now he was perplexed. With their transponders de-activated, he wouldn’t know which craft was Saul’s unless he was close enough to see into the cockpit. What was Zack up to? But more importantly what would Saul and Luke do next? He had to outflank two Alicians – humans genetically altered with Q’Roth DNA. Ideally, they’d want to get closer, just to make sure with their last nuke. They could split in two directions, giving them a 50:50 chance – no, Alicians wouldn’t trust to luck. So, they would take him out first, together. And both were better pilots than he was. How could he take down even one of them?

“Micah, Blake here, don’t respond. I’m on a split channel, so Luke and Saul can’t hear me. Set your starboard weapon to heat-seek, and disable its proximity protection. Then key in TX-24-03-64-2.”

He tapped the code into the fluidic keyboard; it felt like pressing down on liquid mercury. Even as he wondered what the code was, Blake filled him in, audible through his helmet’s left-ear speaker.

“It’s Saul’s training mission log from yesterday. Your missile targeting device has a fast-acting neural net. When you fire it will recognise Saul’s piloting characteristics from his evasive manoeuvres and lock onto him. Okay, no more time, move to intercept. You’ll only get one shot. Wind up your engine to max, but apply the forward thrusters in reverse. You’ll black out when you release them and catapult forward, but it means their missiles won’t be able to get a target lock. You can do this, Micah.”

He swallowed. Blake had saved his life twice before, he reminded himself, so why not a third time? He tapped the required console symbols, then jammed his foot on the left pedal till it reached the floor. The Moonwalker stuttered and vibrated with a teeth-juddering intensity, then settled down and pitched forward, gathering speed despite the brakes being full-on.

“Micah, you’re no match for either one of us, let alone two. This is suicide,” Saul said.

“Bring it on, Micah, this is going to be like an old-fashioned turkey shoot,” Luke added.

Good, while you keep talking, I know you’re not firing. He understood what Zack was doing. By saying take out Saul, he was trying to throw them off-balance, to break their teamwork rhythm. He had to join Zack’s game.

“Maybe so, Saul, but you’re coming with me.” There, that should do it. There was an odds-on chance Saul held the nuke, being the better pilot – unless they’d already thought of that.

Blake’s voice cut in. “I said full throttle, Micah, hit the turbo.”

He prodded the dashboard in front of him. A shrill whining noise made him check where the ejector release was, in case the ship tore itself apart. After three seconds of banshee vibrations, his ship accelerated, pressing him deeper into the warm embrace of his gel-seat. His eyes blurred with the accelerative pressure. He remembered his training, and tapped the right side of his joystick to switch to computer-audio, since he couldn’t read any of the data.

“Four hundred, four-fifty, five-sixty...”

His eyes re-focused. ‘… stabilising eight hundred kph.’

He silenced voice-comp and punched up the radar onto the plazshield: two green blobs appeared a hundred and eighty klicks ahead of him, closing. They were moving at a slower speed. They could have accelerated too, but since the torpedoes couldn’t lock on at closing speeds in excess of fifteen hundred klicks, it was clear they wanted to kill him first.

“Micah, get ready to release the live one. When I say ‘now’, fire it and then cut the brakes.”

Fuck! If it doesn’t lock onto one of them, it’ll track me, and I’m dead: I can’t outrun a torpedo.

“Micah,” Zack said. “Soon as you’ve taken out Saul, pivot and pursue Luke. Blake’s re-fuelled, he’ll be there soon.”

He watched the radar – they both accelerated towards him, but one edged forward – that must be Luke.

“Now!” Blake shouted.

Micah squeezed the missile release and then flicked the brakes off. He cried out as he was engulfed by the chair, his eyes rammed backwards into their sockets. His tongue retracted and his cheeks tried to shear away from his skull. His chest felt as if a space-craft had landed on it. He heard a shrieking alarm, recognising it as the warning for pushing G’s way beyond pilot tolerance, half a second before his brain switched off.

“… up, Micah, WAKE UP!” Sandy screamed at him.

He opened his eyes, then shook his head. “I’m… I’m back online. What happened? How long –“

“Thirty seconds. One ship is down, you’re chasing the other one.”

His head was still reeling. “Which one?”

“Hey, Micah, just me and you, now, pal, see if you can catch me before I take out the trash.”

Micah scrutinised the radar screen – Luke was ahead, but not by much. Why hadn’t he fired yet? And where were Zack and Blake? He shoved hard on the joystick, exceeding recommended maximum tolerance.

His head raced. Saul was gone, but Saul would have had a missile lock alarm seconds before Micah’s missile hit him, so if Saul had had the nuke aboard, he’d have launched it; so Luke must have it.

“Micah, this is Blake. I’m on intercept, but I need two minutes. Distract Luke if you can. He won’t fire until he’s in the red zone.”

He figured it out. The first nuke they had launched long range, using the element of surprise, not counting on Blake’s reactions and pilot skills. But by now Zack must have assembled targeting scanners and pulse lasers from the open Hangar. Once Luke launched the missile, it would fly a straight course, and maybe, just maybe, Zack could shoot it down. But if Luke got close enough, then it wouldn’t matter, the blast would cripple or destroy the ship.

He was able to close the gap because Luke wasn’t flying in a straight line, as otherwise Zack could target him. Micah tried to distract him.

“Hey, Luke. Why didn’t you just detonate the nukes inside the ship?”

Luke snorted. “You missed a lecture, buddy. The nukes each have a lockout: they need command codes from Blake and Zack to activate them. Otherwise, they make a mess, but don’t detonate.”

Nearly in range. He capitalised on his own intrigue to try to stall Luke. “Then how –?”

“Out on recon we exceeded Zack’s surveillance range. We uploaded an attack simulation, convinced the nuke’s tactical computers that the hierarchy had been destroyed, and the mother ship re-taken by the enemy. The two ships had no option but to verify against each other, then they disabled the lockouts. Some of my handiwork, actually. Fear is always the key, Micah, even with computers. So, you want to see a nuclear blast at close range?”

Micah had already had a ring-side seat, twice. He picked out the blue-hot engine ahead of him jumping around like a frantic mosquito, and just as hard to swat. But the pattern wasn’t random – it never was with people, genetically upgraded or not. He switched into Optron analyst mode and did the calcs. Luke’s erratic pattern would defeat normal targeting scanners, and Blake was going to be thirty seconds too late. He made his decision. He tapped several rapid commands into the console and then let his mind follow the movements, tracing the zigs and zags in a mental 4-D grid. His breathing slowed as he tracked Luke, using the part of the mind known as the reptilian brain, homing on his prey the way a cheetah runs down a gazelle. All his fears, his inhibitions were suppressed, and now that he had a target, flying to hit it was much easier than navigating open space.

‘Hey, Micah, you been practicing?’ Luke said.

Micah didn’t – couldn’t – respond, his left brain was disabled, his right brain reflexes completely in charge. He was closing fast.

‘Hey! Micah, I’m going to fire, man, if you get any closer!’

Micah deployed the fast landing grapple, a metre-long metallic hook designed to catch a braking line if hot-landing in the hangar. He inverted his Moonwalker and flicked his joystick down. There was a deafening grating noise, like trucks colliding, as his Moonwalker slammed into Luke’s undercarriage, the grapple penetrating Luke’s hull.

“What the fuck?” Luke shouted.

Micah had to do it now. He tapped a single command and his torpedo – with the ashes of his mother and seventy-three others aboard – fired, still locked down to the wing of his craft. He set the port thrusters on full so that the two bound craft careened to the right, slewing away from the ship at a right angle. “Goodbye, Luke.”

Micah punched the eject button.

He catapulted away, spinning like a drunken gyroscope. He caught flashes of the pirouetting ensemble as Luke tried hopelessly to bring the two shackled ships under control. Micah counted down. Two. One. Goodbye Mom.

The darkness of space flashed brilliant white as the torpedo’s ion engine cut in and instantly overloaded, igniting the entire fuel cell. The incandescence wasn’t nuclear – if it had been, then he knew he wouldn’t be scrunching his eyes closed with pain – he’d be vaporised. Luke hadn’t reached the red zone, and he hadn’t detonated. It was over.

Micah did a rough calculation of which way he’d been facing when he’d ejected. Figures, he thought, as he carried on spinning at speed, further away from the Mother-Ship.

Chapter 2

Premonition

The nausea had mostly passed. Micah knew he was flying at almost the same velocity with which the ejector seat had propelled him half an hour ago, but he had no real sense of motion, since relative to the stars he wasn’t moving at all. At least he’d been able to apply his suit’s micro-thrusters to stop the spinning and tumbling; dying alone in space would be bad enough, he didn’t need to suffer it watching his last moments through a vomit-encrusted visor.

He recalled one of Zack’s flying lessons, maybe a week ago…

“Space has no compassion,” Zack said, lecturing him and the other trainees, leaning forward on sturdy black forearms, wiry eyebrows meshed together beneath a shiny bald pate. “It ain’t like the sea – there you have a chance, you can trust in Lady Luck if all else fails. Ain’t so with space – you always need a Plan A, definitely a Plan B, all the way up to Plan F. That’s the one you apply when all hell breaks loose and you find yourself shouting… Well, I don’t need to spell it out, do I? Oh, and I shouldn’t have to say this either, but I will: never, ever, abandon your craft. Chances you’ll be found are?”

“Zero,” they replied, in chorus.

Never, ever leave your craft. A simple enough, intuitive rule. Try as he might, though, Micah couldn’t figure out what better course of action he could have taken – he’d already be dead. They’d all be dead. He changed tack mentally, wondering if it would make any difference to his velocity or detectability if he adopted some position or other – foetal, maybe, or star-shaped. He considered his life so far: unhappy childhood, brooding adolescence, the usual teenage angst with girls which had endured longer than most. He’d spent his life wanting to be somewhere else – away from his father, away from his job, not living with his Mom in their pokey flat. He’d always wanted to be an astronaut…

He raised his arm to view the data screen. Five minutes of air left. His long-range comms antennae had been ripped off his suit during ejection, so he couldn’t even talk to anyone – Sandy, for example – in his last moments. Better for them, he supposed. He wondered what it would be like, asphyxiating – would he thrash around, try to take his helmet off? And then after dying, there was death itself. He’d always assumed it was like switching off a computer, an easy perspective to take when you’re young and figure you’ve got another fifty years to come up with something better. He felt a shiver run down his spine as the full weight of death closed in on him. He imagined Death’s bony fingers sinking into his flesh. He shuddered. “Well, Mum, looks like we’re going to have a family reunion after all.”

“Micah, you dumb sonofabitch, what did I tell you to never, ever do?”

Micah stared wildly in his field of vision, then powered his suit thrusters just enough to turn him around. Zack was floating towards him, tethered to his Skyhawk by a gossamer thread, carrying a white cylinder.

“Don’t move, buddy.” Zack’s suit thrusters puffed wisps of evanescent air just in front of Micah. Zack flourished a hose and clamped it onto a valve on Micah’s suit, and he immediately tasted fresh, cool air. He inhaled deeply.

“Zack, how’d you find me?”

Zack pressed auto-reel and they were gently tugged back toward the ship.

“What, you think I let rookies out here without emergency tracers in their suits?” He laughed so hard it steamed up his visor, misting his black features, but not his grinning white teeth.

“Christ, Zack! I thought…” He tried to punch Zack’s arm, but in space, he realised, while there’s no compassion, anger has no purchase either.

The massive black ship loomed before them as they approached at speed. Etched out in space, visible only because it obscured the stars behind, it created a towering, disc-like shadow as they approached side-on. The four-storey conning tower had the only windows on the entire vessel, glowing green oblong slits decorating its circumference. It protruded like a lighthouse, a head with menacing jade eyes craning upwards from the dish-like vessel. Zack accelerated and skated over the seamless, featureless hull that extended like a vast metal desert. Once they’d passed the tower, complete darkness flooded in, black as the tar-pits on Jupiter’s Io. Micah could no longer see the vessel’s surface beneath him, just the far edge where pin-prick stars re-asserted themselves.

Zack swooped over the rim and gravity-surfed down past the ship’s seven floors and then dipped down to the underbelly, skimming back towards the ship’s centre.

“Invert, see?” Zack said, not missing the chance to reinforce a valuable lesson in space-flight, namely to try to remember which way was up when you were coming back to the mother ship. He flicked the gyro-ball once with his left hand and rolled the Skyhawk. His right hand remained stable, cradling the joystick. Up ahead, a wash of yellow light spilled into space from the open hangar. Zack slowed down, and Micah could make out the other three Moonwalkers and soldiers milling about in the harsh lighting. He squinted, his vision night-adapted. He held his breath as the Skyhawk slinked through the shimmering force-field that nobody understood, which allowed them to go on recon missions without decompressing the entire ship and voiding everyone in the process. They slid smoothly to a halt, clamping into place with a welcome clunk. He breathed a sigh of relief as the plazshield above his head slid open again.

Blake was waiting for them as they disembarked. So were most of the soldiers and pilots.

“Not bad flying back there, Mr. Sanderson.” Blake handed Micah a small pair of silver wings. “You earned them today, son.” Zack started clapping, triggering a small round of applause and whistles.

Micah felt his cheeks redden, and nodded to his tall commander-in-chief, the man who led their small fleet of human refugees. Blake’s ruddy hair framed a gaunt face, pock-marked from some battle or other during the third World War, which only served to emphasise his right to lead based on his extensive experience. “Thank you, Sir.”

“Follow me.” Blake turned and strode towards the briefing room. Micah got a congratulatory thwack on the shoulder from Zack, but otherwise he said nothing. As they headed away from the dissipating throng, he noticed an orderly cleaning up bloodstains on the hangar floor. So, he thought, they’ve been busy here too. He turned to Zack, who held up four fingers as they walked. Micah felt dazed. So, there had been six Alician spies onboard, and no one had guessed; two of them had been working right under Blake and Zack’s noses.

The three of them sat down in the cramped, soundproof briefing room. Blake didn’t waste any time getting to the point.

“Micah, in three hours we make the final transit to Ourshiwann. Vince and Jennifer’s ships have both made contact in the last few hours via the Hohash – we’re converging from our different routes, so the Hohash devices are in range again.”

“And Rashid’s ship?”

Blake pursed his lips. “We’ve heard nothing from the fourth ship. Nothing from Rashid, Pierre, or Kat. Since only you and Pierre could hold all the disguised flight plans in your heads, I need you to run through them.”

Micah sat back – this was going to be tough, and he already felt wasted. “You mean right now?”

Zack answered. “Has to be, Micah, we gotta know if something’s happened. If the Q’Roth tracked us somehow, or even our Alician pals… At the least, we can prep the Moonwalkers, go in guns blazing when we arrive.”

Micah’s shoulders ached. He got off the chair and pulled off his boots. He lowered himself into a half-lotus position, his sacrum wedged against the wall. The mental gymnastics he was about to undergo required physical props, in particular a straight and alert spine. Blake and Zack, out of politeness, squatted down next to him. He closed his eyes and began the breathing routine, imagining the void, just as he’d been taught back in Palo Alto by the Zen master who trained all Optron analysts. It wasn’t so hard, given where he’d been just twenty minutes ago. It took five minutes before he could dredge up the package he’d stored in his mind two weeks earlier.

As a kid he’d always been good with numbers. But it was only when his teachers found he could visualise and multiply three-dimensional matrices that he was assigned more specialised schooling, first in mental imagery, then harmonic cipher-coding, and finally Optron reading. There had never been anything physical or medical done to alter his brain, excepting some specialised drugs, but it had altered the way he thought. Stuff often ran through his head of its own volition, processing, thinking sideways, looking for patterns and scavenging for resonances in events and data. Most of the time he could ignore it, pushing it backwards, downwards, like a radio you’re not really listening to, playing somewhere in the house. But for now, he’d achieved complete inner silence.

He was ready. The rest of the world outside was blocked out, a vast emptiness. A red, cube-shaped package hovered in the middle of a starless night. Micah visualised the mnemonic ciphers and the package unfolded into the three-dimensional space in his mind. The fractal pattern he’d encoded took shape. It was a puzzle, four coloured snake-like tubes zig-zagging away from one blue-green ball in space and converging on another dusty brown one. He picked out the blue tube – their own ship – and counted the transits, the number of times the line changed tack. Then he counted the transits for the pink line, Rashid’s ship. His head began to throb hard. A drip of sweat ran down his back. He didn’t need to count again. Micah visualised the locking cipher and let the puzzle implode, after which it was swallowed up and bound once more inside the red cube. He observed his breathing for a few minutes, then creaked his eyes open. As he’d expected, everything around him, Blake and Zack included, was in sepia, but he knew it was a temporary side effect. It would pass quicker than the headache.

He heard his own voice as if from far away, his flat, analyst voice. “Same number of transits. Route longer. Some transits pushed engines. Longer recharge times. A day, maybe two, behind us.”

Blake and Zack got up, helping Micah stand atop stiff legs. “Thank you, Micah.”

“I’ll prep a third of the squadron in any case,” Zack said, “just to be sure, and have a couple of sling-jets on hot standby.”

Micah didn’t want to hear this. He wanted it to be over. At the same time he knew these two were right, which was why they were in charge. Blake spoke softly. “Micah, go get some rest.”

He didn’t need to be told twice.

When he reached his quarters after taking a needle-shower, he brushed aside the crinkled beige curtain not quite covering the oval doorway, and found Sandy cross-legged on the mat inside, a bottle of wine and two clean glasses next to her.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Micah, or anything else.” She raised an eyebrow. “You look like hell, you know that?”

He shrugged, too tired to think of a witty reply.

“It’s the three week anniversary of this little fella” – she patted her belly – “being conceived, and his father being blown to smithereens by the Alicians.”

He sat down next to her, did the honours, and poured the wine. He read the label. “Cabernet Sauvignon, 2032 – was that a good year?”

She clinked glasses. “Year I was born, which means it’s a classic.” Her face lit up with a broad, infectious smile.

He stared into the burgundy coloured liquid. His mind instantly did the math; Sandy was thirty-three.

She took a sip. “What’s up? And don’t say ‘Oh, nothing really’, Micah, I know you too well.”

He took a long slug of wine, then another. It felt good, warming his throat. “Rashid’s ship is late.”

“That’s reasonable isn’t it? Didn’t they take the longest route?”

He put down the glass. “Blake asked me to run the numbers again, and yes, it’s reasonable, the numbers look… okay.”

Sandy parked her own glass. “But numbers can lie, can’t they?”

“Actually, no, they never lie, that’s why I like them. It’s just that, as an Optron reader, you deal with them so much that every now and again you get to glance behind them. You don’t quite see what’s there, you just know that, well, the numbers are hiding something.”

Sandy topped up his glass. “So, what do you think, Q’Roth or Alicians?”

He picked up his glass, swirled the wine around, the way his father used to, he realised – and it no longer mattered. “The Q’Roth aren’t like us. They’ve had their feed. I’m not sure they care what happens to us anymore. They’re nomadic, they’ll just move on.”

“Alicians, then, our treacherous, genetically-enhanced, bastard cousins. Super.”

They sat in silence, then Sandy raised her glass. “Well then, drink up, Micah. It may be a while before we can do this again.” She tilted her head back and drained her glass.

Sandy was wearing her hair tied back today. He’d never seen her with her hair like that before, revealing how much her face was like a ‘vee’ from her temples to her chin. Her saucer-like eyes, which missed nothing, more than compensated. But in his mind, still in its post-analysis lucid state, a connection began to form. He took another sip, hoping it would go away. But as he savoured the wine, a different face he hadn’t thought about for two weeks entered his mind: a striking, beautiful blonde with a ponytail. He gulped down more wine. He’d heard a disturbing report from Vince, just before they departed Eden, that Louise’s corpse had gone missing, right before the end. She’d almost killed all of them, back on Earth. He really hoped she was dead. But the face stubbornly remained, no longer hiding behind the numbers. He felt a chill skitter down his spine. He held out his glass to Sandy.

“Say when,” she said, pouring the wine.

Micah said nothing.

Chapter 3

Pietro

Rashid rammed the ankh key into the slot for the third time, but it was no use, the ship refused to move. He and two other crew members huddled in the mould-coloured control room whose curved walls made him feel like he was trapped inside the labyrinthine intestines of some giant monstrous being: dead, just not yet digested. They tried to make the Q’Roth vessel controls work, but everything was inert. Rashid bit hard on his lower lip. They’d already executed twelve perfect jumps, with the required twenty-four-hour intervals to recharge the engines. Something else was wrong, and meanwhile, they dangled in space like bait on a hook.

He’d planned to move closer to the storm-shrouded planet Pierre and Katrina were surveying in the Hohash scout vessel, when he discovered the mother ship had slipped into sleep mode. At least the two thousand human refugees aboard were unaware of their predicament – tensions since they’d fled a burning Earth two weeks ago had meant he might just as well have a manifest of gunpowder rather than people, a tinderbox ready to ignite at the mere hint of a spark. He glanced at Axel and Sofia, but their furrowed brows, reflected in the jungle green lighting from the consoles, told him they were just as confused and apprehensive. He hoped his own concern was better masked than theirs. On impulse, and because they’d exhausted all other options, he kicked the stand of the extruded grey console with his boot, which did nothing whatsoever for the controls. However, a voice lanced across the room from behind him.

“Engine trouble?”

He spun around to see the upper half of a woman, honey-blonde hair strained back in a ponytail, rending her eyes – which could otherwise have been considered beautiful – too elfin-like to trust. Her crystal-clear image, sliced off at the waist, stared back at him with an equivocal expression, hovering in the middle of the room. A hologram, he assumed, though not like any he’d ever seen, and without any obvious source of projection.

“I wish to speak to Vince. Or Micah. Or even the legendary Blake Alexander.”

Rashid jutted his chin at the seated woman. “All dead, killed on Eden,” he lied. “And – you must excuse me – but we have not been introduced.”

A smile flickered like a nascent flame and was gone. “Louise.”

He narrowed his eyes. He’d heard enough about Louise – an Alician assassin – from Micah and Vince – to presume that he, his ship and its two thousand frightened souls were in grave trouble. Yet she was supposed to be dead. He decided not to question the obvious, but she must have read his expression.

“Vince gave me a headache, but I’m all better now,” she said, mock sweetness.

He knew Vince had in fact put a hole clean through her skull. He brushed it aside: it didn’t matter how she was here. He rebuffed the idea of asking the clichéd question of what she wanted. As he suspected, he didn’t have to wait for her to get to the point.

“I’ve taken remote control of your ship. Perhaps that possibility didn’t occur to you when you stole it?”

He grimaced. Of course it had, which is why each of the four ships fleeing Earth and Eden had taken separate, fractally-coded pathways to the Ourshiwann home world, transiting to distant jump points, only entering each destination just before the next jump. He glanced over to the empty wall-space where the Hohash mirror-device normally resided. Pierre and Katrina had taken it to the nearby planet, looking for water. It meant he had no way to communicate with the other ships to warn them. Still, at least Pierre and Katrina might survive.

He suppressed his mounting curiosity at how this holographic projection could transmit both ways, if indeed, he wondered, it was a hologram. She looked real enough to touch, except for the obvious fact that the lower half of her body was missing. If she can interact with me – if she can hear my voice and see my actions, maybe this hologram can sense and transmit pain back to the real Louise…

She stifled a yawn. “Give me the coordinates of your final destination and you may live. If not, I will jump your ship into this system’s star.”

Rashid heard Sofia gasp and Axel take a step backwards. Sofia, a dark-skinned woman in her thirties who he’d been getting to know in the two weeks since leaving Eden, touched his arm. “Rashid –”

He tensed his body, standing to attention, and faced Louise. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

Louise didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she interlocked her fingers and flexed them outwards. The bone-cracking noise whipped across the control room.

She smiled. “Rashid, is it?”

He nodded, not blinking. He remembered learning as a Rajasthani child how to catch a cobra, or at least to judge when one was going to spit venom. At age nine he’d lost his best friend in that deadly village game. He wondered if there was some way to grab this cobra’s throat before she could strike.

“Well, I’m not after you, or your sorry baggage.” She waved a hand dismissively. “I’m after Vince and Micah. They killed me, and I need –” she leaned forward, “really, I need, to repay the privilege.” She reclined, folding her arms. “Give me your flight plan and I’ll leave you with one jump possibility, following which your ship’s navigation database will corrupt. There’s a planet nearby with oxygen, though it’s a tad heavy on sulphur. You might survive, after a fashion.”

He heard Axel hovering near the doorway, and he understood. The young engineer had married only three weeks ago and knew where he wanted to be when… Rashid shut out everything except the cobra. “Give us some time to decide, I need to consult with other members of the crew and the council,” he ventured, guessing it would make no difference.

Louise shook her head once. “No, Rashid. You’re Captain, so it’s not a democracy. You have one minute before you get to see the inside of a star.”

Rashid knew it was probably futile, but he’d kick himself if he didn’t at least try. He reached over his shoulder with his right hand, felt inside the back of his collar, and found what he was looking for. In one smooth flowing movement he hurled the stiletto straight at, and through, Louise’s left eye. The knife lodged into the far wall with a thwack. At his side, Sofia gulped.

“Nice aim,” said Louise. She hadn’t even blinked. “Fifty-five seconds.”

He pursed his lips, then moved to the back of the control room. “Move aside,” he said, brushing Axel out of the way so he could access the navigation console. “You’re dismissed ensign.”

‘But Sir, I –’

Rashid seized him by the shoulders, and spoke softly. “Go to her. Now.” He pushed so that Axel half-stumbled backwards, then turned and darted out onto the central ramp. Rashid tapped in a flight plan. Sofia shadowed him, peering over his shoulder as he stooped over the displays and controls. He heard her soft intake of breath as she recognised the decoy flight plan Pierre had created just before he had left. She clutched his forearm as he typed. His fingers chopped at the keyboard as if he was entering their death sentence. She whispered into his ear, her voice unsteady. “You’re doing the right thing.”

He’d have preferred it if she’d started clawing at him, begging him not to lie to Louise. He punched in the transmit command and walked back towards the hologram, steady, setting his jaw. “It is done.”

Louise studied something outside the hologram frame. “I’d warn you that if it’s a trick, I’ll be back.” She cocked her head, elfin eyes gleaming. “But there’s no point, is there, Rashid? Well, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you. Say goodbye to your girlfriend.” The hologram dissolved into granules of flickering violet, then vanished.

He knew it would be fast. He met Sofia’s wide, frightened eyes. He reached out to her, stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. Everything froze, and shifted into the familiar mercurial shades that meant that the ship, together with him, Sofia, his crew, and its precious goods – a quarter of surviving humanity – had just jumped.

Rashid had no illusions about the colour he would see next, but its brightness was beyond anything he could ever have imagined.

◆◆◆

“Don’t think I’ll be sending any postcards,” Kat said.

Pierre allowed himself an evanescent smile, not on account of Kat’s sardonic wit, but because it meant she was relaxed with him. He valued the friendship that was coming like spring, after a bone-chilling winter, even if she’d never shown any warmth to him in the prior three months travelling from Earth to Eden. No matter that she loved Antonia, either. Sex was as over-rated as companionship was under-rated, in his opinion. He wondered what might grab her attention. Humour wasn’t his strong suit.

“Not human-sustainable in the long term. At least there’s some water, if we can filter out all the chemicals. Also, the day-night temperature cycle would severely challenge human endurance.” He cut himself off. She looked bored. He tried another approach.

“We haven’t named it.” There, that was better. Yet again, he was painfully aware of how his father’s genetic experimentation on him as a child had instilled scientific brilliance, at the cost of basic social aptitudes. It had made for a lonely life so far.

Kat swivelled her closely-cropped, raven-haired head from the displays, and cast a look at him as if she’d just noticed he was there. She was short and of slight build, with a constant edginess about her, as if she trusted no one. Her pale blue eyes were almost grey, and she had a habit of looking people in the eye for a split-second, drawing her assessment, and then looking away. But this time her eyes lingered. Pierre shifted in his seat as her stare penetrated through to the back of his skull; he’d never believed the expression ‘see right through you’ could be taken literally until he met Kat. He cleared his throat and gazed resolutely through the portal, out into the toxic vermillion funk masquerading as this planet’s excuse for an atmosphere, hoping the stars would soon re-appear to distract them both.

“Pietro,” she said, finally. “That’s what we should call it: stone – rock – you.”

He’d been called a cold fish enough times in his life, but her sarcastic tone and crooked smile anaesthetised the insult, the net effect being the verbal equivalent of a friendly punch on the arm, rather than a nasty jab. She was playing with him, he guessed, because he was no threat to her or Antonia.

They had left Rashid and the other two thousand refugees on the Q’Roth transport ship in order to inspect the planet, the only one they’d encountered since leaving Eden, just to check if it was habitable, a back up in case Ourshiwann wasn’t viable. They’d taken with them the ship’s Hohash, one of five surviving alien artefacts – and their only ally – found on Eden. The Hohash resembled an upright, art-deco mirror with an oval gold frame, like he’d seen once as a teenager in the holo-museum in Reims. The memory tripped him up as surely as an astro-blader hitting an updraft. Reims, Europe, Earth itself, was gone, scoured clean by the Q’Roth, sucking the bioelectricity out of all living mammals, leaving empty, flaccid husks behind.

He felt a connection with the Hohash, the last remnants of the spider world harvested by the Q’Roth a thousand years before they raked across Earth. The Hohash were unique, like him. As far as he knew he was the only non-Alician genetically altered human left, genned for intelligence. He usually hid how fast he thought, though it had come in handy back on Eden. He guessed the Hohash too, must feel lonely. Only Kat could communicate with them, after a fashion, courtesy of the play-node embedded in her cortex. The Hohash had sensors far beyond human technology, which was why he’d brought it along. Rashid had protested at first – as far as their overly-polite captain could complain about anything – but Pierre had persuaded him there was little danger, and they’d only be gone a few hours. Besides, they hadn’t heard from any of the other three ships, each equipped with their own Hohash, for over a week. Evidently the Hohash had limited range.

He registered a mental shiver. It had only been twelve days since they’d left Earth and Eden. It was just possible that some humans were still fighting – or more likely hiding – from the Q’Roth. But the probability was vanishingly small. The purge had been so efficient, so relentless and swift. Earth was most likely desolate, destroyed, devoid of life.

Pierre bent his mind back to the task. The Hohash sensors had explored the planet far quicker than he’d imagined possible, relaying the information back to Kat. But it had not been good news. They wouldn’t last a week on this planet – Pietro. It felt good to have a planet named after him, he decided, even a dud one.

The claret-coloured clouds faded as black night sluiced in around them, the stars glinting all around; they were back in space. He felt a thrill run through him: an astronaut, the best job conceivable for an astrophysicist. He let himself imagine he and Kat were explorers on a months-long mission, just them on this small ship. A rare warmth suffused his lean frame. Yet as he turned to face Kat, he watched a frown form on her face, then morph into a grimace of shock. He glanced down at his instruments but saw nothing to be alarmed about.

“Something’s happened,” she whispered. Her face blanched, eyes distant as if seeing outside the ship.

He looked over his shoulder to the Hohash, whose fluid mirror surface showed a zoomed-in picture of the neighbouring sun. A flare gushed upwards from the corona, like a wave slapping against rocks, then subsided again. He knew the Hohash was tied into the ship’s external sensors, and that they were watching something in real-time, but he didn’t know what. Kat shrieked with such ferocity that he leapt out of his chair and rushed toward her, just in time to catch her collapsing body. He lowered her twitching, unconscious frame to the floor. Worse than her tremors was the stillness which followed as she lay listless as a corpse. He checked her vitals, and the diagnosis emerged soon enough – coma. He leaned over her. “Stay with me, Kat.” He glanced at the Hohash, but its mirror surface no longer rippled, instead registering only a dull, charcoal-coloured fog.

For the next hour he steered the craft back to the rendezvous coordinates, but he already had a bad feeling about what he would find. When he arrived, he decided it would have been preferable to find wreckage, rather than nothing at all. The absence of data left too many uncertainties. He wondered how much longer the air would last in their small craft.

After a day spent loitering in space waiting to see if the ship returned, with the air beginning to taste of stale mushrooms, Kat still in a coma, and the Hohash inert, he powered up the engines and directed the ship back to Pietro. I hope I was wrong about surviving only a week. He recalled what Zack had said about him once, not that long ago: “When it comes to facts and figures, Pierre’s never wrong.” He gunned the engines. Every rule has an exception, his father had told him, more than once. He prayed his father was right.

◆◆◆

Ukrull, a reptilian Ranger under instructions from Grid Central, who had observed the Q’Roth culling of Earth as per galactic protocol, had tagged undetected behind the Q’Roth hunter-seeker warship, until the Alician female calling herself Louise located a ship containing a reasonable number of the species calling itself human. Cloaking his ship with a spatial harmonic offset, Ukrull tuned in to the communication exchange between the two ships. It was depressingly primitive, involving serial rather than parallel processing, brimming with redundancy, and inefficient far beyond the point of irritation. All of this meant that monitoring the exchange required almost none of his attention. Of more concern was the Bartran slave-mind humming quietly to his right. Ukrull had been mind-plexing through his former colleague Shatrall’s database on this erratic race calling itself humanity, and the claustrophobic yet unusually diverse biospheric habitat they called Earth. He noted a passing similarity to the Bartran’s exo-skeletal appearance with an Earth-based creature called an armadillo.

A thousand Grid-standard angts – or nine hundred Earth years – earlier, Shatrall had experienced a gravitational shear-front caused by an unscheduled neutron star burst during a long-distance spatial jump. It had caused him to crash-land on this remote planet in a region the inhabitants called Tibet. The indigenous people had saved Shatrall after the crash, pulling him from the burning wreckage. Luckily, further contact had been minimal, and a rescue transport arrived within a few days, though the encounter had sparked a small religious sect, as was frequently the case with unofficial intrusions into nascent civilizations. Sentinels, they had called themselves, according to Shatrall’s somewhat patchy logs.

Ukrull nudged the Bartran, but it maintained its stiff, vibrating posture. Sliding his claw into the recess in the Bartran’s armoured back, he found the centre of focus of the creature’s mind, in the control room on the transport ship, focusing on a single male biped. Ukrull hissed at what he perceived: A blood debt! Was it possible? Yet the genetic marker was there, corroborated in a natshuul by the ship’s archives. He growled.

He composed an urgent message requesting instructions from his station master, but no sooner had he transmitted, than an alarm signalled a jump initiation on the Q’Roth transport. Ukrull’s octospheric brain unleashed a cyclone of commands through his neural interface: raising his ship’s shields to maximum, interrogating the transport ship’s coordinates; calculating an intercept point inside the local star, initiating the extraction protocol for the single entity with the genetic marker, and then firing the engines to maximum. As his ship catapulted towards the system’s sun, at the same moment as the Q’Roth transport vanished towards its doom, Ukrull realised he would arrive one natshuul later than required. He hoped this human species was more resilient than it appeared.

Chapter 4

Eden Council

Micah ruffled the towel over his wiry black hair and then evaluated the effect in the aluminium mirror: as usual it was no different than before he’d entered the field-shower. One good thing about his run-of-the-mill features was that over the past few weeks, while everyone around him gradually became more unkempt, dishevelled, and rough around the edges, due to the absence of life’s usual little luxuries and fancy toiletries, he stayed exactly the same. But there was a family resemblance he’d rather not see in his reflection.

He’d never liked his father, and could never even in his thoughts think of him as ‘Dad’. As Vince had remarked back on Earth, every hero has a dark side. He stared deep into his seemingly bottomless brown eyes, the main family trait. “Well, father, now Mom’s with you, you’d better behave at last.”

An impatient knock on the frosted door reminded him of the queue waiting outside. He wrapped the towel around his waist and bustled through the disgruntled line, avoiding direct eye contact, as everyone else did, in the status-levelling conditions onboard the ship nobody cared to name. No problem, he thought – now we’ve landed, we’ll leave these leviathan ships behind soon enough, and get out into the fresh air of Ourshiwann. He’d heard that atmospheric testing had shown it was safe to go outside; the military were probably already out there. He quickened his pace.

The kelp-green walls sucked in sound. Initially he’d found it peaceful after the inescapable noise of city life back on Earth. That was until, like many others, he’d had recurring nightmares about waking up to find himself alone, deserted in the warren-like ship. He’d be running, lost forever inside the belly of the Q’Roth transport, slipping and sliding in the sweat the ship’s walls exuded every twelve hours. The scientists said it was harmless, and it got sucked back into the walls within an hour, but still… He reached his small quarters and pulled closed the curtain that didn’t quite fit. The lack of privacy did nothing for his insomnia. Still, having landed, having escaped the Q’Roth and the Alicians, he couldn’t help but feel upbeat, like those rare Sundays his parents had taken him to Venice beach before the War. He grinned.

He laid out his crumpled clothes on the cot and sprayed them with Bio-Revite. Thank goodness someone had had the presence of mind to stock it before they’d quit Earth. Washing clothes regularly was out of the question until they found a stable water supply. He glanced at the label – maximum seven days use before washing. He shook the can and sprayed his clothes a second time.

Micah arrived late at the meeting. He wanted to sit next to Sandy, but on the one side sat Vince, uncompromising and tightly-wrapped, his bald head inclined back as he surveyed the gathering like a hilltop lion checking out the other animals on the savannah below. On the other side Ramires perched on the edge of his seat, as if about to get up and leave. He was the last living Sentinel – slick with sinewy muscles like a free-climber, his whole life dedicated to fighting a secret war against the Alicians. The black-haired Mexican had permanent six o’clock shadow under a thin moustache, and hooded eyes: whenever he looked into them, Micah wondered how many had seen nothing else after that face.

He gazed around the ivy-green oblong room situated in the ship’s conning tower. It was one of only three rooms that possessed windows – four oval portals, one on each side, letting violet light stream in above their heads. He wasn’t sure where the polished oak board-room table and straight-backed chairs had come from, guessing they had travelled along with the former IVS Chief Exec Shakirvasta, together with, so he’d heard, a container-full of tobacco. This well-groomed, lank-haired and oil-skinned mogul, one of the most powerful people on former Earth, should have been on Rashid’s missing ship, but he’d joined Blake’s instead, no doubt to build alliances during the voyage here.

Here, he thought: Ourshiwann, another planet, and not empty like Eden. He corrected himself – Eden had never been empty, instead proving to be a terraformed trap, its subterranean caverns brimming with Q’Roth hatchlings.

But it had been a relief to arrive on Ourshiwann. He longed to set foot outside where there was no roof above his head, to tread on firm ground that didn’t ooze green mucus, making his shoes slurp when he walked, even if every photo he’d seen so far suggested this planet was barren. The ground looked arid, scattered bushes so dry they made eucalyptus look lush. He was no farmer, but he questioned if any of the crops they had brought would grow here.

Then there was the sky. Completely cloudless, it changed air-brushed colours at least four times a day, lending a surreal touch to the place, as if they were trapped inside a featureless painting. But he knew they had to make it work here, with no idea of where other habitable worlds might lie. Besides, another few months and they’d run out of food completely. Then it would get really ugly.

He drew himself back to the present. Blake looked up, noticing him, and flicked his eyes to the empty seat to his left. Zack already occupied the seat on the right, propping himself up on his dark forearms. Micah couldn’t help but turn around to see if Blake had been indicating the spare chair to someone behind him, but there was no one else standing. He skirted around the table, all eyes following him, and sat next to Blake. The only limelight he craved was the glow of a computer screen. He did his best to merge with the chair.

Blake rapped the table top three times with his bare knuckles. “Let’s get started.”

He noticed how Blake’s gravel-like voice drew everyone’s attention. He considered his own voice, how uncommanding it was, inviting interruption.

“I declare the first meeting of the Eden Council open.”

There were murmurs of surprise. The immaculately manicured Senator Josefsson, in a dark suit and tie no less, cleared his throat. He brushed a strand of his wavy greying hair that hadn’t been out of place back to where it had been all along. “Excuse me, Commander, did you say Eden? Was that a joke? If so it was in remarkably poor taste.” His mature good looks, hollowed out by three weeks of emergency rations, made him look like a well-groomed predator.

Micah regarded the only other suit around the table, the mogul Shakirvasta. The Indistani didn’t miss a beat. He already knew – he and Blake must have planned this.

“So we never forget,” Blake replied. “Eden was our name, not the Q’Roth name for that planet. We considered ‘War Council’, but there are mostly civilians on this planet now.”

Josefsson’s nose twitched. “And who is ‘we’ exactly?”

“Fair point,” Blake replied. “From now on, ‘we’ are this council. All significant decisions will be made here.”

A diminutive, mousy-haired girl with a ski-jump nose and bottle-green eyes joined in from the corner of the table. Micah hadn’t actually met her yet, but he knew she must be Jennifer, with the burly, bearded Greek genius, Professor Dimitri Kostakis beside her. Funny, he thought, they didn’t look like lovers.

“I’m not sure democracy is what we need right now,” she said, her voice slightly too loud, not quite steady. Brave, but inexperienced, thought Micah.

She continued, manufacturing self-confidence along the way. “The Q’Roth may still be hunting us, or the Alicians. After all, we’re still missing our fourth ship.”

The room temperature plummeted. All eyes shifted to Blake – this is what everyone wanted to discuss, but no one wanted to raise. Micah peered past Blake and Zack to Antonia, whose lover Katrina was on the missing ship. Looking at her porcelain, ballerina’s face, strafed his heart again. She didn’t meet his gaze. Just as well; his feelings for her were a one-way street, but he couldn’t seem to dodge the oncoming traffic. He leaned back heavily against his chair-rest, finding Sandy’s level gaze upon him. He almost missed what Blake was saying.

“– remain at war, for the foreseeable future. But we have other pressing matters to attend to. Mr. Carlson?”

A man Micah didn’t know rose heavily, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Carlson had greasy hair, a straggly beard and a paunch shrivelled by rations. He leaned on the table, using plump fists for support, his forearms like two masts supporting a burgeoning sail-like chest. “My name is Julian Carlson, I am – that is, I was – Eden Mission’s chief psychologist.”

Micah noticed Zack fold his bushy black arms, and detected an almost subliminal snort. Blake remained steadfast.

“At Commander Blake’s request, I’ve been taking stock of what you might call the collective state of our people on this new world since we arrived.” He looked at each face, one by one, all around the table. Micah somehow felt at ease with this man, though he hated shrinks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, three words sum up that state: shock, grief, and displacement. Most are still deep in denial. That’s the easy one, relatively speaking. Now that we’ve arrived and, well, this planet is not quite what we had all hoped for, anger will follow shortly, then depression. We’ve already had fourteen suicides in the past two weeks, the most recent two since we arrived here two days ago. Some of you are military, trained to be resilient. Most people we saved are not. They are trying to come to terms with –”

“Please, spare us the lecture, Mr. Carlson,” Shakirvasta said, leaning forward in his collarless, jet-black suit. “None of us here are blind or inept. Your point?”

Carlson glanced from the Indistani to Blake, then continued, his voice less blustery, the wind knocked out of his sails. “They need a home, security and stability, and most of all, leadership.” He sank back down into his chair.

Vince’s voice sliced across the room before anyone else could react. “The first three are luxuries they can’t afford. We’re sitting ducks here. The Q’Roth know the whereabouts of this planet, and we stole four of their transports, which undoubtedly have transponders hidden aboard. They might just decide to have an after-dinner snack, or clean their plates. The only reason we’re not yet dead is that they don’t know that we know of this place.” His eyes burned like a gas flame.

In the past month, Micah had come to admire Vince’s directness.

Blake nodded, holding up a hand before anyone else could chime in. “Which is why we’re here. We have several priorities, and we need to assign teams to execute them.”

“And who exactly put you in charge?” Josefsson jabbed a chiselled fore-finger in Blake’s direction. “You got us here, and we’re thankful, but we need a government here on this God-forsaken planet!” He spread his hands, his eyes hawking for support around the table. Vultures like company, Micah reflected.

He expected Zack to spring to Blake’s defence. But it was Shakirvasta who attracted attention by tapping a platinum cigarette box on the table, extracting a smokeless filter-tip. He lit it with restrained grace. He inhaled, eyes closed, then exhaled a halo of heat haze into the air. Micah smiled at the theatrics.

“My dear Senator,” Shakirvasta addressed Josefsson, “I ran the only Titan corporation that survived the Third World War, so permit me a small indulgence in thinking I know when to opt for military rather than democratic control of a situation. There will be a government – the roots of it are here today – but right now, we need fast and precise decision-making that won’t be second-guessed. And I believe that when Mr Carlson spoke of leadership, he meant our good Commander here, not a hastily-concocted committee to lead our people into a race between famine and annihilation, with a dead heat as the most likely outcome.”

Micah was impressed. This scenario had been well-prepared by Blake and Shakirvasta. Blake was known as a leader and a man of action, but Micah hadn’t figured him for political acumen, particularly in this case – he had the feeling Blake disliked everything Shakirvasta stood for.

Josefsson masked his indignation with a cough, and appeared to have enough political savvy to realise he’d over-reached. He shot Shakirvasta a searing glare before continuing. “I see. Then I bow to your judgement, this time. So, Commander, what are your instructions to us humble citizens of this new planet, whose name I have difficulty pronouncing?”

Blake folded his hands into a steeple, surveying everyone over the summit.  “Our – she – wan. Ourshiwann. Don’t anyone forget, they lost more than we did. None of them survived their Q’Roth incursion.”

Micah knew Blake had witnessed the invasion of Ourshiwann, via the Hohash who replayed the events when it first made contact with Kat on Eden. Apparently Blake had been moved close to tears at the razing of this pacifist spider-world. Micah privately wondered if they were really all dead. Spiders lay eggs…

Blake stood up. “Currently, we have four sling-jets scouting the entire region, looking for any signs of life, food and shelter. We have four teams on the ground in the nearby spider city, making sure it’s secure. Half of our scientists are already exploring soil-crop compatibility here on Ourshiwann, the other half on better weapons delivery systems in case the Q’Roth or our Alician cousins come looking for us. An engineering team from Jennifer’s ship is trying to determine if there is a transponder in the Q’Roth ships, though progress is slow, since we still can’t cut through Q’Roth metal. The remaining military are helping keep order inside the ships, which isn’t easy, and frankly not what they’re trained for.” He paused, and then perused every face around the table – Micah felt he was being enlisted.

“Out there is a lost civilisation, a depleted one, but possibly far in advance of our own. Our good fortune today is that the spiders didn’t fight back, so there was little collateral damage to their infrastructure. We know that in a straight fight with the Q’Roth, and even the Alicians…” Blake paused, appearing to chew on the next part, and then spat it out. “We’ll lose. That’s an honest tactical assessment, and you all know it, though it doesn’t go outside these walls. So, ladies and gentlemen, I’m allocating resources here, that is, you people, to seek advantages from the deceased spider race, to learn from what we don’t know, to give us an edge, even if it’s just an outside chance.”

Micah hadn’t realised how much he’d needed to hear this bleak evaluation, and some of the tension locked up in his chest eased off. Blake was a good leader, he thought, decisive and smart too, unafraid to face reality. During the past few weeks when nobody had dared state their situation so candidly, fear had lurked in the shadows, draining his own and everyone else’s energy and morale. But now it was out in the open, they could work on it, fight it, and fight together.

Vince leaned forward on honed forearms. “With due respect, Commander, this is no time for pussy-talk. Most likely assessment is the Alicians or Q’Roth or both intercepted Rashid’s ship and either destroyed it or culled its passengers and crew. Pisses me off as much as any of you, I had twenty of my best people on that ship, but we have to move on fast. They will find us. It’s a question of when, and most likely when is soon, in the next few days. The only priority is security, because we are so very not secure right now. Three days, people, and all of us could be taken out like that.” He snapped his forefinger and thumb together.

Blake waited, as if counting to ten. He continued. “Vince, Ramires – you’ll work with Zack on new defences and weapons. Try communicating with the Hohash – we could do with finding another of their phase-shifting scout ships if there are any left intact. Micah, Sandy, Professor Kostakis, and Jennifer – I need you to organise teams to explore the Ourshiwann city to see what we can use from there – including the possibility of shelter and… somewhere to hide. I don’t think anyone sleeps easy in these Q’Roth slime-buckets.”

Whispers started in several quarters around the table. Blake slammed his fist down hard on the table, stunning everyone into silence. He glared at it a while. “I’ll be damned if we perish here!” He uncurled his fist. “Now, food. It’s still a priority. We have three months to find new food sources or reap a harvest. Otherwise the Alicians don’t need to lift a finger, we’ll starve to death. Senator Josefsson, Mr Shakirvasta, Antonia – I’d like you to work with Carlson on organising a social infrastructure that will keep all our people from going over the edge – dealing with lodging, food allocation, and tasks to keep people busy, as well as medical issues, and grievances, of which there’ll be plenty. Questions?”

Micah raised an eyebrow. Blake didn’t miss it. “Mr. Sanderson, you have something to add?”

He reddened. “Rashid’s ship,” he said. “I know maybe it’s gone, but we don’t know for sure. Are we going to look for it?”

Blake spoke in a quieter voice. “Needle in a haystack, son, and we have no way to look for them. The codes in your head only give vectors, not distances travelled – we’d never find them. There are three empty chairs waiting for Rashid, Pierre and Kat in this council as soon as they arrive.”

Micah watched Antonia’s face turn to desert rock, bereft of hope. It summed up everything – they’d all been through too much, and the three-week trip had only served to make tensions chronic. The psychologist hadn’t just been talking about the other people in the ships – he’d been talking about everyone, including all the people here in this room, even the military. Micah knew all too well how easy it was to let despair subdue action. Reluctantly he recalled one of his father’s famous aphorisms – when you hit rock bottom, kick hard. He shot to his feet. “Well, what are we waiting for?” He strode around the table and grabbed Sandy’s hand, to the sound of scraping chairs.

Out in the corridor, as they waited for Jennifer and Kostakis, Sandy tugged his wrist. “Was that balls or bravado back there?”

“My Dad, I guess. Hated him all my life, even after he was killed in the War, but these days he seems to be the only role model that matches up to these shitty situations.”

She cocked an eyebrow, a wan smile spreading across her lips. “Must be balls then. I’m told they’re hereditary.”

Micah was relieved to see Jennifer and Kostakis heading their way, which would save him from any further repartee with Sandy; it was a game he always lost. But as the scientist couple approached, his eye was caught by Antonia heading in the opposite direction. She didn’t look his way. He felt a squeeze on his elbow from Sandy.

“That’s the trouble with balls,” she said. “No intelligence.”

Micah glanced down at her belly, concealing the foetus growing inside her, the legacy of her fleeting encounter with the legendary Alician assassin Gabriel. He caught Sandy’s eye and raised an eyebrow.

Her grin shrank to a pencil-thin line. “Don’t even think about saying it.”

He shrugged, and held out his hand as Professor Kostakis’ beaming, curly-haired, goatee-bearded face loomed in front of him.

◆◆◆

Blake asked Zack to stay behind for a few minutes. Once the room had emptied and the door sealed, cocooning them in the gloomy, dank silence that pervaded the Q’Roth ships, Zack finally spoke.

“Don’t know if you feel out of your depth, Skip, but I sure as hell do. Meetings? Fucking meetings with civilians? Glad you took charge back there. Vince was –”

“Vince is right. Listen, Zack…” But the words wouldn’t come.

“I’m listening, boss. You got a burr up your ass, you need to spit it out.” He frowned. “Well, you know what I mean.”

“Doesn’t go any further.”

Zack clasped his hands behind his bald pate, leaning back. “Never does. You got an attack of the maybe’s again, huh? S’bin a long time. Hey, let’s go, you know I love this game. Bring it on!”

Blake nodded, the corners of his mouth lifting. “Okay. Maybe we should have stayed and fought till the end.”

“Yeah, dead is so cool.” Zack rolled his eyes.

“Okay then. Maybe you’re right, I shouldn’t be leading this… whatever it is.”

“So we’ll throw an election once this is no longer a military situation. Come to think of it, we can also throw a serious party. Is this the best you got?”

Blake hung his head, and spoke to the floor. “Glenda’s getting worse. Cancer’s eating her insides. The trip was really bad for her. Don’t know how long she can hold on. Maybe I –”

Zack unlocked his fingers and stood up, then leant forward, inches from Blake’s face. “Maybe you should make her fucking proud and give her the chance to die in peace rather than having the top of her head lobbed off and her brain sucked dry by a three-metre-tall locust!”

“Christ, Zack!”

“We done here, boss? We good now? ‘Cos I got stuff to do, you know.”

Blake nodded, and Zack loped out the door. “Thanks, Zack,” he said, as he levered himself up. He heard Zack shout from down the corridor. “Don’t mention it!” Blake allowed a smile. “You know me too well, old friend. What in hell’s name would I do without you?”

◆◆◆

Rashid awoke in darkness, unable to move or feel his limbs. The last thing he could remember was glimpsing the inside of a star, so he knew he should be dead; only the physical discomfort convinced him otherwise.

“Hello? Is anybody there?” There was no echo, so he knew he was in a confined area. He tried to move his fingers, but all he could sense was a tingling that he guessed was his hands. It reminded him of when he’d crash-landed on Eden a year ago: a stasis field. But then, he thought, he should neither be conscious nor able to speak. He heard movement, and for the first time he smelt something odd, like the drying, rotting seaweed he’d kicked around barefoot as a kid on his holidays in Goa. A rhythmic, clomping, dragging noise approached. His heart accelerated. He tensed, his head at least, which seemed to be out of the stasis field. In the unremitting darkness, Rashid perceived someone or something very close – a foul breath of rancid algae washed into his nostrils.

“Sarowan,” it grumbled, a voice like rocks grinding, making Rashid flinch. Sarowan. The word resonated inside Rashid’s skull. Rashid was born of a secret and all-but defunct clan called Sarowan, a clan of the Sentinels…

“You, Sarowan,” the voice repeated.

The voice hurt his ears. Sarowan… But how could anyone know that? Unless… He had always believed the legends a childish myth. He’d not had time to think about it since leaving Eden, but the stories of his ancestors in Tibet saving an alien creature, calling itself a Ranger…

He understood it was asking him a question, awaiting a response. No point in hiding it anymore. “Yes, I am Sarowan. My ancestors –”

“Saved Ranger. Saved Shatrall. Before. Now save you. Blood debt paid.”

Rashid stopped breathing as the enormity hit him. This Ranger had pulled him out of the ship and the star – before everyone else was incinerated.

“The others?” He had to be sure.

“Gone.”

His mind raced: Sofia dead, two thousand people – all dead, erased by Louise, and her ship was still hunting Blake and the others.

He tried to swallow. No saliva. “Where am I?”

“Others close. Find you soon.”

He heard a dragging sound, like someone lugging a sack of potatoes across the floor, and the thuddish clomp of a foot, or claw. “Wait! You must help us. Please. Louise will find us sooner or later. You could stop her!” He tried in vain to make his limbs move.

The dragging paused. “Not help. Observe. Your species survive or die.”

He remembered from his Sarowan upbringing that this was supposedly the Rangers’ creed – a kind of Darwinian non-interference. He resigned himself. “Then at least let me see you. Turn on the lights so I can see the creature my ancestors saved nine hundred years ago.”

The Ranger made a strange, descending hissing sound, which Rashid interpreted as a sigh. “Lights already on. Apologies. Was late.”

Chapter 5

First Contact

The Hohash’s golden, oval frame lay inert, propped against the wall, its flow-mirror surface dark and still. Pierre walked over to it. “Wake up, damn you!” He punched its rounded edge, sending a reverberating twang around the seven-metre wide wok-shaped Hohash craft. He’d already tried numerous times to rouse Kat, who lay curled up in the recovery position like a sleeping puppy. To his chagrin, the dormant Hohash rose from the floor and buzzed back into life. He stepped backwards, just as it swooped towards him, stopping centimetres from his face. He stood his ground. “Sorry,” he said, unsure why he’d bothered, since by all accounts these alien artefacts didn’t understand human speech.

Now that he’d gotten its attention, he wasn’t sure what to do. He’d spent the last three hours attempting to land on Pietro, but a sulphur hurricane engulfed the planet’s only continent, causing him to abort atmospheric entry, as well as to seriously downgrade his earlier assessment of its habitability. He’d dawdled long enough above the planet’s toxic ocean to extract oxygen through the ship’s filters before retreating back out into space.

“It shouldn’t end like this,” he said.

The Hohash’s mirror surface flickered into a ruby background, purple splinters of broken glass spattered across it. Pierre almost laughed, since the display mimicked his own bleak feelings perfectly. Then his brow widened – he understood. He remembered the time Kat had been immersed in communication with the Hohash on Eden, how she’d explained later that she had seen colours reflecting her emotions.

It was worth a try. He forced a smile. The Hohash image barely changed, except the splash became luminous and seemed to lift away from the surface. At first Pierre thought his premise wasn’t correct. Then he realised his smile was only skin deep. He closed his eyes and thought back to his childhood, trawling for one of the rare memories of his father that he still treasured, before he’d become one of the latter’s illegal genetic test subjects. His papa, in his Sunday best, pushed Pierre on the garden swing, while his maman, in a floral wrap, clapped in time with the upswings. The sun beat down on his boyish face, the hinges creaking and straining at each shove in the small of his back. He inhaled the smell of fresh-mown grass, and pumped his legs higher and higher, Earth’s comforting gravity tugging him backwards.

He opened his eyes. The Hohash showed him lush greens, a gentle breeze brushing across a field of tall grass. He smiled, and this time an orange light bathed the synthetic scene.

“Nice to see you two getting along.”

He turned to see Kat rubbing her eyes, propping herself up on her elbows. He rushed towards her. “Are you –”

“Okay, yes. Feel like my head has been used as a zero-G hockey puck, though. Our friend there was in communication with me after…” She stopped, and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest.

Pierre crouched next to her. He wanted to take her hand, tell her it was all okay and, he realized, a whole lot more. He glanced back at the Hohash; steel-grey rain beat down on the grass, dissolving it.

“Tell me what you remember, Kat.”

She rested her brow on her knees, muffling her voice. “Dead. They’re all dead, Pierre. They jumped into the star. I saw it happen.”

Pierre felt dizzy, as if his legs might cave in and sat down beside her. “All those people. Rashid. All… I don’t suppose it was an accident. If whoever attacked somehow retrieved the flight plan, the destination…” He let his head tip back against the metal hull. “And us? Then we are, as they say, really screwed.”

She lifted her head, placing her chin on her knees, and uttered a short dry laugh. “That’s unlike you, Pierre, you’re normally the logical optimist.”

He shrugged. He pictured the faces of Rashid, of others on board he could recall. He’d been there with them just yesterday. His scientific mind intruded, demanding more data on how it had happened – whether it had been a mistake, an attack, or sabotage. But his emotional mind gained a rare upper hand; two thousand people had just been vaporised, and he and Kat were almost certainly without hope.

The Hohash glided towards them silently, its flow-surface dark as a lithium mine-shaft. Pierre felt crushed; they’d already been through so much the past few weeks. He thought of Blake and Zack. What would those two do right now? They wouldn’t give up, of course, but what would they actually do?

Kat sat up, leaning her head against the bulkhead. “The planet?”

“It’s uninhabitable right now. Sulphur storm.”

She sniffed. “Figures. And our friend here can’t contact his pals?”

“Apparently not. I guess their communication only works over a certain range, they must be too far away.”

Kat ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair. “Right now, Blake would say, Options, people?”

He nodded. “Yes, he would, but I’m not sure he’d get too many answers. Let’s see, we’re in a short-range craft that can’t make long-range jumps like the Q’Roth vessels. We’ve little in the way of food, water for a while, and oxygen for a few days.” And no one will ever find us.

He studied her profile, her dark hair cresting a boyish face. Without thinking about it, his eyes traced the contours of her body.

“Uh-oh.” Kat said.

“What?” He followed her gaze to the Hohash, which was still relaying his emotions. Pierre reddened when he saw the display’s crimson and purple loops which somehow conveyed a mixture of tenderness and eroticism.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Don’t be. The Hohash never lies, you know. Any last requests?” She gave him a crooked smile.

His flush got worse. He stumbled for words. “Antonia –”

“Would understand if you just wanted a kiss.”

Pierre frowned, trying to balance the equation when Kat’s face appeared between him and the Hohash. Warm, moist lips met his. At first he held back, trying to remember a blog he’d read years ago that had rules on how to be a good kisser. But she clearly knew, and so he let himself be sucked into the embrace, amidst flashes of yellow and scarlet emanating from the Hohash. Blood rushed into his head and groin, and his hands fumbled towards her; he wanted to touch her, but didn’t know how. Finally he worked up the courage to trace a shaky hand over the contour of her breast. She gently pushed herself back from him. He let go, his breathing ragged.

She sat cross-legged in front of him, calming her breathing. “All those months on the Ulysses, travelling to Eden, you never said anything.”

He stared at the floor.

“Must have been tough.” She looked sideways, then got to her feet.

“Pierre, you’re probably the cleverest human left alive. There must be an option. Think, it’s what you do best.”

His head was still swirling. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and imagined himself back in his father’s musty, book-filled study. Every evening after dinner, a form of ritualistic torture used to take place where his father tested him mercilessly with logical and mathematical puzzles. In his mind he wrote down in white chalk the predicates of their predicament, and its assumptions.  He wrote down we are alone, and then paused. He flicked his eyes open.

“Kat, do you know prime numbers?”

“Of course, but… Oh, I see. You think it’s a way of signifying we’re intelligent, a sort of universal distress code?”

He nodded quickly. “We need the Hohash to broadcast prime numbers and our relative position in this star system.”

“To whom, exactly?”

“Anyone that’s out there, Kat,” Pierre said, energized by the idea.

“That’s a pretty long shot. Still…” Kat knelt in front of the Hohash and pointed an index finger to her temple. Instantly she slipped into a trance-like state. Pierre got up and paced behind her, waiting for her to ‘return’.

She opened her eyes. “It’s transmitting, broad spectrum. Anyone within ten light years should pick it up. I also encoded the emotion distress into the signal.”

“Are you sure that was wise, it might summon a predator of some kind.”

Kat cast him a sceptical look.

“Okay, beggars can’t be choosers.”

She sat down cross-legged again. “I guess all we can do now is wait.” She patted the empty floor-space next to her with a palm. Pierre felt nervous; the kiss had already thrown him off-balance. He sat, the left side of his body touching hers.

“Pierre, was there anyone back home for you? You know, someone special?”

He felt his throat choke up. He shook his head. Please, don’t. He clenched a fist behind his back.

She smiled. “You know, once, somewhere, sometime?” She paused, her smile faltering. “I mean, once, you know… right?”

He tried to focus on his breathing; he felt he was made of glass. All the rationalisations he’d built up inside himself over the years came tumbling down, amounting to nothing. He didn’t dare look at the Hohash. But she did.

“Oh my,” she said.

He thought the compassion in her voice would shatter him for sure. But instead he felt her hand caress his cheek, with a tenderness he didn’t know she was capable of. He’d never felt so vulnerable. She kissed his neck, then parted his lips with her tongue. He heard the unzipping of her overall, and his hands managed to help her peel the ensemble off her shoulders down to her waist. She jumped up, and for a hellish moment he thought she’d stopped again. But she winked at him and pulled the suit off completely, underwear too. She stood naked above him, and then knelt down in front of him. She took his hands and placed them on her breasts, while her lips locked onto his. She slid his suit zipper all the way down to his crotch, where she gripped him hard, making him cry out. With the other hand she pushed him back down against the floor. He gasped as she mounted him, her mouth still welded to his, and twenty-nine years of mental discipline and programming finally fused.

Pierre felt the air getting thicker with overuse, yet his mind was curiously calm. The Hohash displayed an emerald sea under an air-brushed magenta sky. Kat lay next to him, her head resting on his hairless chest. He could have reflected on a wasted life, on all the potential loves he could have had, now he knew what he’d been missing. Instead, he chose to dwell on the moment they’d just shared.

“Thank you,” he said, with more gratitude than if he’d just received the Nobel Prize.

She tapped his chest with her fingers. “Just don’t tell my girlfriend, okay? And I’m still pretty much a girl-girl. Don’t go ego-hyping on me.”

Always the inquisitive one, he decided for once not to ask why she’d made love with him, and just accepted it. He thought about his parents. His father had sacrificed him to research, and his mother had consented, though she’d been upset about it. For one thing, the genetic tampering had made him sterile, so his line would end with him. He wondered if his father, when he’d been bleeding to death on that conference podium, shot by an Alician assassin, had maybe, just for a moment, had an inkling of regret about what he had done to his own son. For the first time in his adult life, Pierre didn’t completely reject the hypothesis.

The Hohash began pulsing increasingly frequent random shades of colour. They hastily dressed while shielding their eyes from the rainbow light’s intensity.

“What now?” Kat said.

Pierre guessed what it was – a response. The flashing stopped, and the Hohash mirror surface turned to a swirling cloud of grey. An indistinct figure appeared in the middle, as if walking towards them. He watched in fascination as it clarified – it reminded him of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, a dog-like creature in a ceremonial head-dress of golds, blues and blacks. As the picture crystallised into vid-screen clarity, they gaped at the figure, who gave the definite impression of staring back at them.

“Hello?” he tried.

“No sound, remember?” Kat said.

He wondered what to do. The creature stared at them, waiting, and Pierre didn’t know how long it would wait. He gestured to the creature, first with his hands, to come towards them, then, seeing no reaction, closed his hands around his throat, as if choking, trying to communicate they were running out of air. The figure disappeared, and the Hohash face re-adjusted to its habitual mirror surface.

“Well,” Kat said, “not too bad given our extensive experience with first contact situations.”

Pierre slumped. “Merde! This is hopeless. I’ve always wondered why in all the sci-fi vids the whole universe speaks English, or else there’s a handy universal translator somewhere.”

“Lazy scriptwriters. Anyway, maybe it understood. Hey, we just found another race. You’re a scientist, you should be ecstatic.”

He smiled warmly. “Give this scientist a break, he’s just discovered the opposite sex!” But his grin ran out of fuel. “We could try the planet again, at least gather some more oxygen.”

“Maybe we could use the bathroom there. I’ve heard sulphur exfoliates pretty well.”

He took her hand. “Kat, I’m really glad –”

The ship jolted hard to one side, and they both sprawled to the far wall. Pierre had the wind knocked out of him, and struggled into a crouching position. Kat had already sprung to her feet when they both heard a loud thunk from above. He looked out though the normally black portal and glimpsed the silver underbelly of a vessel attached to them.

“Oh fuck!” Kat shouted.

At first he didn’t realise why she’d said it, until he noticed his feet and ankles were wet. A warm, transparent liquid trickled, then gushed into their craft, jetting through the air vents. Scrambling to his feet, he sloshed his way over to the environmental controls. Kat beat him to it, and slammed her fist down on it, but the console was dead. He stared in disbelief towards the four upper vents, out of arms’ reach, through which the pink water surged.

“It doesn’t make sense!” he said. The noise of their own personal waterfall made it hard to concentrate.

“They’re going to bloody drown us,” Kat shouted, as she waded over to the inert Hohash.

“But why?” Pierre was trying to think, but the fluid was already knee-deep. “Suits! We need to put the suits on!” she yelled, already tugging the two EVA suits from their holding rack. Pierre grabbed one and tried to don it. With only one leg in, he lost his footing and fell over, so that the liquid poured into his suit, dragging him down. Kat’s hand hauled him up by the collar, and he managed to regain his footing. She already had both legs in hers and zipped it up to her neck, then helped him into his. The fluid was now waist-level. His suit had half-filled with the stuff, which he knew would be a real hazard if he didn’t remain upright.

They both snapped on their helmets moments before the fluid reached their necks. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, as the whole ship flooded to the ceiling, leaving no trace of air. The gushing noise shut off. He heard only his laboured breathing, and the occasional creak from the ship’s hull. He switched on his intercom.

“You okay?”

Her breathing sounded scratchy, but he sensed she was more pissed off than scared. “Bastards! Just when you think it can’t get any worse.”

He nodded inside his helmet. Then he noticed the single red light flashing on the inside of his faceplate. He knew what it meant: his suit’s air cylinder was almost empty. He remembered he hadn’t had time to replenish his suit’s systems since his last sortie on Pietro.

She caught sight of his warning light. “Is that what I think it is?”

He laid his hand on her shoulder. “How’s yours?”

“About twenty minutes. Look, isn’t there some way we can shunt air from my system to yours?”

He shook his head. He saw another red dot flash, meaning his air was almost gone. He had maybe twenty seconds.

“Listen, Kat –”

“Dammit, Pierre, I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t want to watch you asphyxiate in front of me, you got that?”

Pierre stared at her. He thought of the last hour. Any last requests, she’d said. He couldn’t have wished for more. His eyes etched every contour of her face. He sucked in one last breath, feeling the canister’s resistance telling him he was out of time. “You won’t have to, Katrina. This’ll be quicker.”

Pierre raised his hands to his helmet, and flicked open the seals.

Chapter 6

Ghost Town

Micah and his three companions stood atop the jagged, wind-carved ridge, scanning the pale ruins of the spider city in the basin below, cradled by beige bluffs and cliffs. What was left of the hexagon-shaped city had been bleached white. Blake had said that in the Hohash rendition of events, there had been vivid colours just before the Q’Roth invasion. The colour had faded because the spiders had been slaughtered. Nothing remained of them, except the few Hohash mirror-like artefacts which had once served the spiders, and now cohabited enigmatically with humanity’s refugees – the rest of the Hohash had self-destructed when their masters died.

He could barely feel the tangerine sun even now where it hung at noon under a mauve sky. A silver moon, mountainous rather than cratered, and twice the size of Earth’s, dawdled near the horizon.

Inwardly, he sagged – could this really become our home? His former excitement at being on another planet had quickly waned in the bleak landscape and coolness of the sun. Yet he knew it was the only option at the moment. Try to make this work, he told himself.

The city resembled a giant tray of upside-down crockery which someone had dropped, shattering pieces whilst retaining the original pattern. The area around the city, in contrast, was luminous: quartz in the sand and rock, Kostakis had suggested. All except three of the city’s Moorish spires had broken, snapped in two like sticks of white candy. The resultant image was of a skeleton picked clean by vultures, its bones cracked open by hyenas to extract the marrow.

He tried not to think of Earth’s demise. Lately he’d been dreaming of people he’d known, mainly from work or the few stores he used to visit. They never said anything, just watched him with a deadly earnestness, waiting to see whether humanity would survive or not. The way they looked at him made him feel responsible, yet he didn’t know what he could do. He shivered. So many people had nightmares these days, that no one ever asked anyone else if they’d had a good night’s sleep.

“Magnificent!” Kostakis bellowed, spreading his arms wide. “An archaeological treasure. A gold mine!”

Micah was searching for a different, more tragic word. It ailed him to be reminded how weak and defenceless humanity was – the spider race was obviously vastly superior, yet they’d been culled as easily as a harvester reaps wheat.

“So sad,” Sandy said.

Thank God you’re here, Sandy! Micah knew why he needed her around: she centred him. He’d had leadership thrust upon him, and without her grainy black and white vision, her seeing-it-for-what-it-was counsel, he’d be like a man cast adrift in an asteroid belt. He turned to face the others. His analyst-trained mind clicked in for a few moments as he considered the best way to lead this team. Know your people, he’d read recently in a flash-book lent him by Blake. Sandy wasn’t a problem – they’d both worked together for Eden Mission back on Earth, albeit in different areas, and had been thrown together by events.

Kostakis, the hefty Greek professor whose dual reputations for being a genius and a philanderer had rivalled each other on the gossip nets back on Earth, seemed paradoxically selfless. Micah guessed the goatee-bearded scientist had been so long at the top of his scientific game in the field of Gaiatics – the study of Earth as an organism – that he didn’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore. His approach to everything, in stark contrast to Sandy’s, was optimistic to the point of being puppyish. Yet like almost everyone else here on Ourshiwann, he’d lost all his family members and friends. Micah presumed he was one of those rare people who found light even in the dark. Or maybe this was heaven for a scientist, every sunrise bringing a plethora of discoveries to ponder.

Jen – he’d heard Kostakis call her that – was a different story. Her physical shape – a slightly dumpy mousy blonde with a tendency to show her cleavage more than most women did, and bright green eyes that spent a lot of time looking sideways at people when they weren’t looking back – belied the facts. She’d come through when Earth had most needed it – she’d commandeered a Q’Roth ship, and nuked a legion of Q’Roth warriors during the final retreat. There was also a nasty rumour that she’d killed a man named Hendriks with her nanosword – the like of which no one except Ramires had ever seen – in order to enforce a command decision on Eden. Given that she’d rescued a quarter of the population, Blake had understandably given her a command role. And if there was going to be a battle, Micah knew which side he wanted Jen on. He had a hunch that someone like Jen could make a difference.

His eyes re-focused – the analysis had only taken a matter of seconds. He cleared his throat. “Our mission is recon. A platoon of Blake’s men did a basic security sweep this morning – no life signs. Our job is to look for advantages – water, food, shelter, weapons.” He felt more upbeat now he was taking command. “So, let’s go down and explore an alien city! Jen, you’re sure you can drive that thing?” He jabbed a thumb at the all-terrain eight-wheeler behind them.

“It’s Jennifer to you. No problem, just make sure your head-strap is tight.”

Frowning, he approached the muscle-bound hummer ‘rhino’. He clambered up into the front passenger seat. Jennifer gave him a look but said nothing. Kostakis seemed happy enough to sit in the back next to Sandy.

Jennifer shoved her foot down and the vehicle raced toward the precipice. Micah fumbled to get the Velcro belt fastened across his forehead just as the ridge’s edge in front of him disappeared, and all he saw was the city and the sky. The vertigo was heightened by the insane engine scream as the wheels spun in mid-air. A sickening feeling in his stomach barely had time to register before a bone-cracking jolt pounded his coccyx and spine as they hit the incline. A whirlwind of dust and rocks hurtled past at a sixty degree angle. His seat juddered too much to even think about shouting Jesus Christ, slow the fuck down, for fear of shattering his teeth. In a minute that felt like ten, they skidded onto level ground, tearing at a muscle in his neck as Jennifer swerved the vehicle to a screeching halt. Pebbles peppered the back of the hummer. The rhino purred.

He tried to calm his breathing, unclipped the headrest and turned around to Sandy. The last thing they needed was for her to have a miscarriage, not that anyone except him and Vince knew about her pregnancy.

“Are you okay?”

Jennifer cut in. “Of course she and Dimitri are both okay. Inertial dampers work in the back, in case of med-evac, but not up front. Wanna trade places with Dimitri?”

Sandy gave the barest of nods to indicate she was fine. Micah shook his head. He stared across the flat plain, the city glinting in the distance. “Let’s go,” he said, then added, remembering a line from an ancient Western vid his father used to watch, “we’re burning daylight.” Given the twenty hour day-night cycle here, it seemed appropriate.

They skirted the perimeter for an hour trying to find a way in that wasn’t blocked by fallen spires and debris. They stopped at a juncture where, as usual, oak-tree sized chunks of snapped white columns barred their way. “This’ll have to do.”

“Finally,” Jennifer muttered, cutting the engine.

Micah knew he was in charge, but Jennifer unnerved him. She’d been captain of one of the four ships; he hadn’t. He recalled another tactic from Blake’s manual: pre-emptive strike coupled with evade. “I suggest we split into pairs, and meet back here in two hours.”

“Are we done?” Jennifer said.

He cleared his throat. “Sandy and I will take the left side, it’s West I think, and you and the Professor –”

“– will see you in two hours,” Jennifer said, disappearing out of her side door to the ground below. “Don’t be late, and don’t forget your VHF radio,” she shouted, not turning back. Kostakis popped the side door and leapt out, loping after her.

Sandy grinned at Micah from the rear-view mirror. “That went pretty well, don’t you think?”

He noticed Jennifer had taken the ignition keycard with her. Yep, real smooth.

◆◆◆

Jen felt she’d been superimposed onto a cartoon alien world. So clean: no dust, no decay, and no bodies. It was so different to how Dublin had been, both times: the first, after it had been nuked in WWIII; and the second, after the Q’Roth had counter-attacked, just before she’d stocked her ship with its human cargo. Carnage, charred buildings and corpses whose smell she could never forget, and dust she didn’t want to ingest because of what, or who, it might contain. The anger simmered inside her, stoked up recently after she’d found out that her brother Gabriel, whom she’d thought dead since the end of the War ten years earlier, had been alive all that time, only to be murdered by the Alicians days before the invasion.

Images from WWIII popped uninvited into her mind like holo-spam – her time in the gangs after the sacking of Dublin and most of the Eastern coastline, running guerrilla incursions against the enemy. She’d learned to trust her colleagues with her life, up until she discovered her team leader had been collaborating, leading them on doomed raids. That had been the first time she really felt she’d killed someone – because it had been personal – even if she’d rewired a drone to do it for her.

She gnawed on a knuckle, remembering why she was here. She wanted to crack an Alician neck, but that wasn’t likely. The Alicians or Q’Roth could arrive in space and eliminate mankind from a safe distance, without warning. That was what rankled her most, their casual brutality. She needed to find a new weapon, one that would surprise the Alicians; something to even the odds. She kicked a piece of debris, sending it skittering into a plaza. Where would she find a weapon here, on a planet of pacifists who’d made no attempt to save themselves? She should be with Vince and Ramires, not out here looking for hidey-holes.

She observed the alien landscape with a cool disinterest as she and her lover stalked their way past bland buildings interspersed with coiling paths and plazas, some square, others round. They came across starfish-like mounds, wide as houses and raised at the middle, and every fifty metres or so stretched diamond-shaped structures pointing to the sky. None of these had any obvious access or purpose as far as she could fathom. The city had obviously been planned according to a complex mathematical topographical construct, but she’d need to survey it from above to work it out. There was little decoration except an off-white shuriken motif, three concentric circles with sharp barbs peeling off the central disk, tattooed on every structure. She noticed that they were all slightly different, in the number of barbs, or their length or angle. Numbers or names. Dimitri carried a small omni-recorder, so they’d be able to download the data later and review it.

“Nothing higher than two storeys,” she said, to break the silence.

“Yes,” Dimitri said, “but look closer: no brickwork, it’s made of extruded material, the same density all the way through.” He squatted down and hefted a piece of rubble as white on the inside as on the outside. “This piece has been lying here for a thousand years, yet there’s no sign of decay. It’s as if it was broken off yesterday!”

Some part of her scientific mind wanted to be as enthralled as Dimitri, caught up in discovery, but her guard was up. She had no explanation as to why there were no signs of spider carcasses, dust, or of broken Hohash mirrors. She found herself staring into the dark shadows, half-expecting to see a giant furry spider-leg protruding. Her mother’s side of the family had always been a little ‘touched’, seeing ghosts, reading Tarot cards and the like. And here was a ghost town, a whole race slaughtered in a matter of hours. The fact it had been a thousand years ago didn’t dampen her sixth sense’s acuity. She walked on.

She had to admit the architecture was elegant: coiling ramps instead of steps, and low buildings so the sky loomed large. After ten minutes, she’d seen roads that were flat and open, and others that fed into smooth glossy tunnels passing between the ubiquitous buildings she assumed were dwelling places. She’d half-expected to see massive webs, but of course these creatures could simply have looked like spiders, rather than being similar to arachnids back on Earth. They stopped in a plaza with a set of poles around ten metres high, spaced evenly apart by about a metre. Jen glanced sideways at Dimitri, but he shrugged – a gesture she’d never seen Dimitri use before. He laughed in response to her surprise.

“Maybe they’re for spider gymnastics,” he said.

“Trust a Greek to suggest an Olympic function.” Jen replied, trying to disguise her lack of enthusiasm.

“Do you realise,” he said, casting his gaze panoramically around the square, “how fabulous it is to know that there is so much here I do not understand?”

She stared at him, remembering the first time she’d seen him lecture in a vast auditorium. His energy, his zeal for knowledge, had hooked her from the start. She pointed to an oval doorway into one of the buildings. Her foreboding had passed.

“Time to increase our ignorance,” she said.

They stepped inside. Darkness enfolded her. She held her breath and slipped her right hand into a pocket, gripping the smooth nanosword hilt. As she passed through the squat, round portal, she had to duck her head. The short tube opened up into a kidney-shaped room, about five metres across, with four metal hoops suspended from the ceiling. It was light inside, though there were no windows – somehow the opaque walls transmitted light from outside.

She couldn’t tell where the walls and ceiling and floor ended – the room had the appearance of having been blown like a glass bubble. She had a hunch, though she couldn’t explain why, that it was a bedroom, or some form of restorative room. She turned around to see Dimitri enter and straighten up.

“Fantastic! I do believe all their buildings are extruded or grown from the same material. Very impressive, very practical! Imagine the durability, the low maintenance!”

She nodded, then turned and took the access tube to a larger room, twice the size of the first. Six squat, metre-wide circular tables formed a ring. Each table or stool, made of the same bland white, non-reflective material, contained a central funnel heading underground. She drifted a finger across the nearest table – it looked smooth but was sticky to the touch, like brushed steel. She knew it meant the material was molecularly complex. She’d read back on Earth about a new research project into organic polymers with DNA-like coding, the idea being you could grow objects based on an inherent memory structure. The theory was, she recalled, that if you could do this, then objects and even buildings would retain their shape longer, since they ‘remembered’ what they should look like. She reckoned the spiders had mastered it.

“Polyphasic mnemonic plastics,” she offered.

“Exactly! That’s why I love you my darling! So clever, so quick, and so concise!” He reached over and took her hand, gently spinning her into an embrace as if they were on a dance-floor. She’d always been surprised that someone so large could dance so well. He kissed her fully. She opened her mouth to his, in case his tongue wanted to enter – maybe sex would be a good idea, she thought, a tonic for her dark mood. But no. He was overwhelmed by his first love, scientific curiosity. She envied him.

He drew back, beaming, still holding her hand. “So, my love, what are you thinking? Social? Dining function? Both?”

She peered into one of the downward channels. “Let’s not forget defecation; they must have been quite intimate.” They laughed. It felt good. She thought she’d forgotten how.

In the rooms they decided were bedrooms, Jen and Dimitri saw an oval, Hohash-shaped recess in the wall, underscoring the symbiotic relationship between the spiders and their mirror-shaped vassals.

“Their lifestyle must have been simple yet graceful,” Dimitri said. “No artefacts, none of the paraphernalia to be found in any normal human’s home, and no decoration; almost Greek in a way.” He nudged her. She laughed with him, recalling their hot nights in his Spartan but airy apartment in Santorini, high above the waves.

They drifted through numerous open spaces and found more of the stools or tables with funnels, forming concentric rings or intersecting hoops. The sun had dipped in the sky, and cast long shadows across the open plaza. She glanced at her wristcom; it had been an hour already. She knew she should really check in with Micah, but he hadn’t called, and she didn’t feel like making the first move.

This is all very fascinating, she thought, but not why we’re here.

A soft breeze triggered goose bumps on her neck. Instinctively, her guard rose again, the way it used to whenever an enemy drone had tried to sneak up on her team. She knew her period of respite was over. Her muscles flexed.

She turned the corner and stopped dead. Her hand slid into her pocket to draw out the nanosword.

Dimitri, taking one last backward glance at a particularly beautiful plaza with spiral ramps coiling up to a raised dais, bumped into her. As soon as he saw it, he jumped in front of her. Gallant, she thought, but unnecessary, and in any case she was the one with tempered combat skills. The nanosword was drawn, its barely visible electric blue blade humming softly. Muscles prepped, she glared through half-closed eyelids at the perfectly still Q’Roth warrior a few metres away.

“A statue!” Kostakis said, strolling up towards it, as if it was a bust of some long-forgotten Greek athlete. “Remarkably detailed.”

Her instincts went into overdrive as he placed a finger on the marble white warrior sculpture’s hipbone, level with Dimitri’s chest. She held herself back in a semi-crouch, ready to spring, in case – by whatever means – it came to life. She watched with that hyper-alert detached battle sense, born from witnessing too many friends and lovers slain at close hand, while Dimitri traced the statue’s contours with a finger. He’d never seen them in action, up close, as she had. When humanity had made its final retreat from Earth to Eden, she’d learned how quick and deadly they were, impervious to anything except the weapon she held in her hand. Or nukes. She’d detonated one in the last throes of battle on Earth, taking out at least a legion of the motherfuckers as they’d homed in on the human bio-signs.

Seeing it in alien white marble, rather than its blue-black metallic skin, made it only slightly less scary. Its trapezoidal head reminded her of a hammerhead, six gill-like slits that were sensors of some kind, a gash she knew to be its mouth, and six legs with downward-curving serrated thorns running along their spines. Most people described them as similar to a praying mantis, but she knew a better comparison: the mantis shrimp, a tropical armoured shellfish that shredded its prey with talons not unlike those she was staring at right now.

She’d witnessed a swathe of Q’Roth who’d raked through the last vestiges of humanity fleeing for her ship just before she quit Earth. They’d hacked men, women and children down, reaping their crop, their slit-like mouths opening wide before clamping down on their prey’s heads, extracting the bio-electricity they’d come to Earth to feed upon. Part of their maturation process. Remembering the gurgling sound as each human was drained made bile rise up in her throat.

Dimitri withdrew his hand suddenly with an intake of breath. “So sharp!” He sucked at the vermillion blood oozing from a fingertip that had grazed one of the hooked barbs on a middle leg.

Jen didn’t get it. “Why would the spiders build a statue of a mortal enemy, by all accounts a galactic predator?” It didn’t make sense. “Stand back, Dimitri.”

He turned towards her, the finger still in his mouth, accentuating the question mark framed by his eyebrows.

“I don’t think it’s a statue.” She ramped up the power on the hilt of the nanosword and approached the monstrous effigy. She raised the sword kendo style, and with a kiai shout not far from a scream – pure bloodlust rising from the pit of her stomach – she leapt into the air and used her falling weight to drive the blade diagonally from the warrior’s right shoulder, carving through all the way to its left hip. Stinging sparks needle-showered her as the Q’Roth soldier split asunder. In the heat of her bloodlust she mistimed it, and the upper half toppled toward her, its petrified claws spearing towards her head. Dimitri’s arm swung around her waist and yanked her aside. She had the presence of mind to retract the nano-blade into its hilt with a flick of her thumb as the warrior’s torso and upper legs thudded into the dust.

She lay panting on the ground, cradled by Dimitri, a serrated claw centimetres from her face. “Thanks,” she coughed. “It would have been stupid to have been killed by a dead one.” She felt Gabriel’s presence, which seemed reasonable, given how close to death she’d just come. Sorry big brother, got carried away, won’t happen again.

She felt the storm of anger inside her ebb, though she knew it would reclaim her soon.

“Good God,” Dimitri said, as they got to their feet and inspected the sliced mannequin. Jen saw what she had expected. Where she had cut, there was a neat cross-section of Q’Roth anatomy: solidified intestines, vessels, and assorted organs.

Dimitri knelt down to study the creature’s ceramic insides.

Jen stayed back. She noticed three cubic devices embedded in the ground, spaced equidistant around the Q’Roth warrior. A smile edged across her face. Finally … a weapon.

◆◆◆

Micah had to sit down. The high levels of oxygen made him dizzy. Sandy’s lips were cherry red, and he knew his must be too. The buildings, the broken spires – everything was brighter, sharper, due to the combination of a higher partial pressure of oxygen and a lower overall atmospheric pressure. He wondered how long it would take to adapt to the sickly sweet Ourshiwann cocktail of oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and a few other gaseous compounds they hadn’t yet identified. The smell reminded him of cloves, but an environmental scientist back on his ship had said it was an effect of the adaptation process – there was no real smell in the arid air. At least the rad-levels were exceptionally low, suggesting the spider race had developed more subtle energy sources.

His heart sank again. After their near-complete demise at the hands of the Q’Roth, he’d had plenty of time to ponder mankind’s fragile destiny during his journey to Ourshiwann. By all accounts, based on what Kat had learned from her sessions with the Hohash, humanity was hopelessly beneath the high standards of galactic civilisation and technology, and – the bit he hated and feared most – the intelligence of the rest of the galaxy. Humanity was Level Three, and the scale apparently went all the way up to nineteen. The upper echelons in the galaxy would no doubt consider humans the way Micah considered insects back on Earth. Mankind had only escaped attention so far because the galaxy was so vast, and Earth was in a backwater, off the beaten track.

Humanity had escaped, but it was, so to speak, out of the thermo-cook and into the fusion-stove. Being an analyst, he’d run a hundred mental simulations, using a technique called cascading event tree analysis. He started from their flight from Eden to Ourshiwann – and considered potential events which could yet happen, with probabilities based on a range of mathematical distributions. At each ‘node’ in the tree, when an event happened, the result could either be success or failure. The trouble was, even when he postulated unlikely successes – miracles almost, like finding a friendly race who could communicate with them – the failures soon followed in multitudes. All his scenarios ended up with humanity either being enslaved, or becoming some alien race’s tasty meal. A third typical endgame involved everyone starving to death while killing each other in an anarchic civil war. They were like toddlers stumbling along the San Francisco jetway in the dark: no handy guide-palms, no star charts, no idea how to communicate – that was it, he thought, no idea – no idea what was out here: we’re naked, defenceless, and dumb.

What made it worse was that few others seemed to dwell on it. Cognitive dissonance. They lived in the immediate present, thinking about water, washing, and food. They were uncomfortable, sure, but as Carlson had put it, in deep denial. He imagined humanity as a fly caught in a spider’s web, preening itself and wondering where its next meal would come from, even as its devourer approached.

He shuddered. The air temperature was lower than on over-heated Earth. Though he knew he’d acclimatise, he adjusted the temperature control on the cuff of his all-terrain jumpsuit. Immediately the incipient chill was chased away, and with it some of his morose state.

“No skeletons, no cadavers, no remains whatsoever,” Sandy said.

It had been bugging him too, since the Q’Roth only fed on bioelectric energy, not flesh. Either the spiders had decayed completely, or… He had no inkling what the ‘or’ could be. He recalled how elephants, before they’d been extinguished during the third world war, used to scatter and crush the bones of fallen comrades, so that for centuries there had been myths of secret elephant graveyards. But there was no life here except maybe some insects and a few tiny rodents; no one to remove the skeletons or carcasses of the fallen spiders. It would have been useful to know more about them, he was sure.

“Maybe there are siroccos here, and the ruins have been scoured clean,” he ventured.

“Almost no dust, no sand even in the city. Doesn’t that mean wind and storms are unlikely?”

He shrugged. “We need to get underground. Up here seems to be just dwellings. The food and waste systems, maybe their entire industry, might be down below.”

“Why not somewhere else, in another city?”

“Doesn’t fit. Everything here speaks of simplicity and efficiency. And there’s no obvious transport infrastructure. No, the answers are beneath our feet.”

“Silly me, I forgot my bucket and spade.” Sandy plonked herself down, next to him, and lay her head on his shoulder. He managed a smile, but she was right, they were getting nowhere. “You okay?” he asked.

“Just light-headed. Wondering what this new air is doing for Junior.”

“You should tell one of the doctors, you know.”

“Already did.”

“Oh.” He stared towards the other side of the plaza. “You and Vince getting on okay?” Her head shifted on his shoulder, then re-settled.

“Blake’s a good man, don’t you think? I mean a real leader.”

Micah glossed over the change of subject. “Yes. This council idea, though. Not sure about Shakirvasta and Josefsson. They’re a bit too…” He couldn’t find the right word.

“Raptors,” she said. “I’ve worked for enough in my time. Josefsson’s blunt, but resilient and persuasive; born into power, a Dynastic politician. However, our Indistani mogul is so sharp you could cut yourself on him.”

“He supported Blake.”

She snorted. “He’s biding his time, playing the long game. Bastard will probably dance on our graves.” She nudged his shoulder. “Don’t get on his wrong side, Micah.”

Graves. What did the spiders do with their dead? He stared into the distance, through one of the glossy cylindrical tunnels. “Hey, we’ve never been into one of those.”

Sandy lifted her head. “They’re empty, just conduits. We can see straight through them.”

But Micah was on his feet, marching towards the nearest channel. He stood at the entrance. It was like looking down the polished barrel of a rifle. He stepped inside, crouching, and walked a few paces. “I guess you’re right. It’s just a –” He didn’t finish his sentence. He fell straight through the floor.

“Micah? Micah! Are you alright?”

He groaned, flat on his back. Getting up seemed like an idea that needed maturing before enacting. “Yes. Hurt my foot, but otherwise…” He got into a seated position without too much pain and rubbed his right ankle. It wasn’t a big drop, but it wouldn’t be easy getting back up. He fished the radio out from his knapsack. No signal. “Sandy,” he shouted, “I’m going to toss the VHF radio up to you. It doesn’t work down here. Call one of the mil crew on channel sixteen, tell them to bring some rope. Don’t come any closer, or we’ll both be trapped and no one will find us.” He hobbled on his good foot, then lobbed the radio in an arc towards the smooth ceiling two metres above him. He sighed with relief when it passed straight through what must have been a hologram, or maybe just a clever passive optical illusion.

“Okay, got it. It’s still working. I’ll get out of the tunnel and radio for help.”

Micah scanned the area around him. He was in a wide chamber, three metres high, with evenly-spaced femur-shaped pillars rising up from a dirty brown screed floor to a ceiling that stretched away in all directions, gloomy sepia lighting yielding to obsidian darkness within ten metres in any direction. Clusters of vine-green pipes hung like hospital drips from the ceiling, funnelling into rust-coloured boxes the size of a hover-car. He limped over to the nearest. It had two portholes, so he peered through one. It contained a mustardy liquid. Shifting around to the other porthole he saw a darker, oily liquid. Micah did the math: food and waste, most likely recycling. Ourshiwann plumbing and nourishment. The question would be whether the food component was edible and nutritional for humans.

He limped back to the place where he had fallen through. He wondered how the spiders got in and out. Then a thought struck him – they could have hidden down here, when they were attacked. He whirled around, spooked, imagining one of the spiders lurking in the shadows. His logical mind tried to dismiss this as irrational, but he felt sure he was being watched.

“Sandy!” he shouted. “Sandy?” No answer. He heard a shuffling to his left. He fumbled for his pulse pistol but couldn’t find it – it must have fallen out of his holster when he fell. He couldn’t see it anywhere. “Who’s there?” he said, immediately feeling like a soon-to-be dead schmuck in a cheap retro-slasher vid. Anyway, he thought, the spider race wouldn’t know English or possibly any spoken language, since from all accounts their communication was entirely visual.

But he did get an answer, a lilting human voice. “Micah, is that you?”

Micah stared, open-mouthed. Rashid walked hesitantly towards him into the light, and almost tripped over a pipe. Micah realised that he couldn’t see. Then, as Rashid’s face came into view under one of the light sources, Micah saw why.

“Micah,” Sandy yelled from above, “are you okay? They’re on their way. And Jennifer and Dimitri called, they’ve found something... Micah, are you okay? Is everything alright?”

No, he thought, staring into Rashid’s haunted, scorched face. We’re a long way from alright. “Call Blake,” he shouted. “Tell him…” Tell him what? Here’s Rashid, alone, blind, without his ship, without two thousand people including Pierre and Kat. Vince had been right all along.

“Tell him to send a sling-jet. I’ve found Rashid.”

Sandy didn’t answer. He wasn’t surprised. Despite himself, the analyst part of his brain kicked in with this fresh piece of data, another possible event in his mental simulation confirmed. Micah didn’t need to run the calcs to know their outlook had just gotten a whole lot worse.

Chapter 7

Subterfuge

Louise paced like a caged lion at the Holoseum sensing an approaching kill. But a nagging doubt kept rearing its ugly head. Since being shot in the back of the head back on Earth by her former partner and lover Vince, she’d been consumed by thoughts of revenge. However, the Q’Roth re-generation procedure had changed her. She could feel it, like quicksilver running in her veins. She’d gained a reputation as a ruthless killer long ago, but there had always been some warmth buried deep inside, embers somewhere of the fresh young teacher she’d been before the War and its endless killing. Now it was as if those embers had been snuffed out, leaving only burnt charcoal.

Each day it bothered her a little less. She had a suspicion Sister Esma may have asked the Q’Roth psychosurgeons to do some special ‘rework’ on her, to keep her on track so she finished the job. Alternatively, they’d had to use too much Q’Roth DNA to replace parts of her cortex blown out by Vince’s pulse bullet. Either way, she didn’t like it. She’d always been her own boss, in charge of herself. Louise had no qualms about following dark pathways, as long as it was her choice.

She watched her two fellow Alicians, staring rapt at their consoles – possibly more in order that they didn’t have to face her, rather than because they were busy. Fine, let them sweat. She stared first at the Norwegian male, Jarvik, the original blond Aryan poster-soldier, muscles semi-flexed, proud cheekbones and a wide brow – she would have him again tonight, with or without Hannah this time. Her eyes flicked in the willowy Brit’s direction. Unlike Jarvik’s glacier-cool stability, Hannah was jittery as a sparrow, her straggly ginger hair swishing from side to side as she worked at her console. Louise decided she’d have them both tonight: she’d begun to doubt Hannah’s loyalty, and had learned long ago how to unmask deception and betrayal during sex.

“Update,” she barked, knowing Hannah would react first.

“We’ve isolated two trails, but haven’t been able to find the third, even though we’re scanning vast sectors of space. They appear to be using random jumps. We don’t even know if they mean to converge somewhere. Their pattern is erratic. Maybe they’re desperate, running blind.”

Nothing new, she thought, Hannah was the least incisive of the two. She waited.

Jarvik spoke. “As yet we discern no strategy. However, we may have underestimated them.”

Louise joined him at his console, a dull grey and blue affair rising from the floor with an angled flat-top luminous touch-screen. What she saw at first made no sense, but then her genetic recoding shifted up a gear, and she realised what the swirling data clouds meant. She’d learned, as they all had, not to try to translate this understanding back into human terms – that only led to confusion and migraines. Instead, she yielded to her Q’Roth DNA re-wiring, intuiting the data. Jarvik was right. She perceived a fractal pattern, too random to be accidentally plotted by humans. So, they weren’t running blind, nor were they executing a search pattern – they’d known where they were going all along. But how was that possible?

She tried to recall the last moments before Vince had shot her in the head – the bullet had passed through her right hippocampus, so no amount of Q’Roth regeneration miracles could replace the memories he’d scorched. She’d been interrogating Micah, that much she recalled. He’d been telling her something, something key. But as she pressed at the gap left by Vince’s pulse bullet, there was just a hole.

“Theorise.” She waited, although she suspected the answer herself.

Already standing a head above her, Jarvik raised himself a little taller. “We assumed they knew nothing of the location of habitable planets. This hypothesis seemed confirmed when we intercepted the first ship close to a highly unstable sulphur-based world. Yet their apparently random movements are in fact synchronised. They are disguising their way to a rendezvous planet.”

Five metres away, Hannah’s slender, pretty face, with sharp eyes topped by a furrowed brow, reflected the jungle green data from her console display. She needed to stand on a small platform to operate the Q’Roth work-station. Abruptly she threw her head back and then launched her riposte. “They’re low-grade humans – they have no star charts, and the Q’Roth transport ship’s navigational databases are encrypted in Q’Roth Largyl 6. How could they possibly know of the existence of a habitable planet?” She folded her arms, careful to glare only at Jarvik.

Louise held up her hand. “Enough. It doesn’t matter how. The data are clear enough for anyone with Level Five intelligence to see. Hannah, correlate the information you have with the Q’Roth star-chart and Jarvik’s analysis, and pinpoint their destination. I believe you’ll find it’s the most recent planet culled by the Q’Roth, a millennium ago. Somehow they’ve divulged it from one of the ship’s Nav databases.” Micah. “When it’s confirmed, plot a course.” Her eyes stayed fixed on Hannah, daring her to voice objections about uncertainties, probabilities, or unsolvable goal projections. To her satisfaction, Hannah merely nodded and returned to her screen.

Jarvik didn’t gloat or show even a trace of smugness. How nice it is to work with an advanced race, she mused. “Follow me,” she said, heading to the small spiral walkway which connected all five decks of the Q’Roth hunter-destroyer class warship, shaped like a squatting crab, its six extendable legs like claws. They walked in silence to the next high-ceilinged level. Jarvik hesitated momentarily as they passed her bedchamber. She continued down, leaving the living quarters and medical area, Jarvik tagging behind, to the engine compartment. Rather than being noisy, this part of the ship sucked in sound. Louise felt as if her head was underwater. She knew it was a side-effect of the pseudo-singularity system that created time-space pressure differentials, allowing them to ‘jump’ across light years of space. One of the enhanced techs had tried for a while to explain before they’d left Earth, but had ended up shrugging and walking off, pointing with his index finger towards his head.

This gesture was something all recently-genned Alicians had grudgingly taken to doing – the genetic enhancement didn’t kick in overnight. The surgery and biochemical alterations would be followed over the next thirty to a hundred years by corresponding natural growth and changes in the brain, courtesy of a new gland inserted just in front of the pituitary, hooked across the corpus callosum, beginning the neural bridging of the normally separated left and right hemispheres of the human brain. The gland, and the hormone it secreted, followed a biorhythmic cycle, and would finish the work the surgery started, leading to a new, upgraded brain structure with vastly superior neuro-transmitters. So, whenever an Alician only half-understood something, or intuited it but could not yet verbalise it, they would point to their heads as if to say not cooked yet.

Louise led Jarvik towards an area reserved for martial training. His brow furrowed as he glanced toward the tough tatami covering the floor in the corner of the engine room. She knew why – he had never come close to winning a practice bout with her in hand-to-hand combat, and still carried recent bruises. Then he stared at her, his hard blue eyes unwavering. She pointed to a leg-width conduit which ran up one wall behind the training mat. He studied the unremarkable pipe-work.

“I don’t –”. He stopped. Something had happened. Jarvik stepped onto the mat within arm’s reach of the alien pipe, staring at it.

He remained there nearly three minutes. His physique reminded her of Michelangelo’s David. Then it happened again. For the first time since she’d met him, she saw on his sculpted face the brow-widening of uncertainty, a lack of complete conviction. His lower lip dropped a full centimetre.

Jarvik’s gaze dipped to the floor, as he calculated the implications of the spasmodic dark flushes whose shadow he’d seen in the tube, like swirling iron filings. He faced Louise, composure restored, but darkened by his inference. “Nannites. We have been sabotaged. We do not have the tools onboard to extract them, though the humans might. We have maybe a week before the engines fail catastrophically and the hull is compromised.”

She nodded. She hadn’t thought it would be so soon, or so catastrophic, wondering if the nannites were meant to be there as some kind of engine upgrade. But Jarvik was never wrong about engines. It meant they had no chance to go back and retrace their steps and find the other Alicians – even if the route Sister Esma had given her was correct, which she now doubted.

“Our beloved leader, Sister Esma, has given us a one-way ticket.” She raised her voice to prevent the ether from sucking the volume out of her words. “Now we too, as well as our inferior cousins, need to find that planet.”

“Do we continue with our mission to eradicate humanity?”

“Do you follow me or Sister Esma?”

Jarvik answered without hesitation. “You are my leader. I serve you.”

Good, she thought, as otherwise I’d have to kill you right now. She considered Hannah, and estimated that she too would prefer not to be on a one-way suicide mission, though more out of survival interest than allegiance to anyone.

“Go back to the bridge,” she said. “I believe our mission parameters have just broadened. I will join you shortly.”

Once Jarvik had left, Louise walked to a sealed room on the same level. She keyed in an access code and stepped inside the purple-lit compartment, locking the door behind her. Her fingers traced the edge of a vat, as she listened to the susurration of minute bubbles popping at the surface of the green liquid. Peering in, she could just make out the features. “Nearly done,” she remarked.

She’d had to sleep with the genetic engineer to get him to install it before she quit Earth, and hoped she’d never need it. But Sister Esma had lied to her. For Louise it wasn’t an issue of betrayal – such pointless and narcissistic emotions were beneath Alicians – she could see Sister Esma’s logic. What mattered more in Alician mores was cunning, thinking ahead, and ultimately survival, and Louise had those in spades – Sister Esma had taught her well.

◆◆◆

Blake stood outside his command tent listening to the flapping of the beige canvas in the afternoon breeze. The dry air tasted sweet. He’d awakened to find his skin cold, though not enough to make him shiver. The temperature ranged between twenty-three Celsius at noon and twelve at night. They’d been lucky to find the climate so hospitable, though of course there might be substantial seasonal variations.

The extra oxygen made everything appear sharper – one of the doctors had said they would adapt within a couple of weeks. The mountains some twenty kilometres away glared purple, though at dawn they glowed green. He knew they would ebb with an ocean blue tinge before nightfall. He longed for clouds – the shifting palette of sky colours was a constant reminder of how alien this place was.

He wondered why the water kept running from the mountains, with no obvious source like rain. The Professor had suggested that millennia ago the spider race must have attained weather control, though he had no idea how.

He watched the dust-trails from vehicles he’d sent out to the city, twenty kilometres away. The visibility was crystal; he hardly needed the field holo-map to track their progress. He shaded his eyes from the sun with a saluting hand – it was duller than Earth’s sun, but doctors had nevertheless warned of cataracts – and gazed upwards into the aquamarine sky. He imagined the Q’Roth ships arriving one evening above the city. The spiders had put up no defence, culled as easy as seals used to be on Earth before they became extinct, along with hundreds of other species, in what had been labelled the decimation, after the radioactive fallout from the Third World War. He wondered what the spider race must have thought in those last moments. Only Kat had glimpsed their emotional state, via her nodal connection to the Hohash mirrors.

He didn’t agree with pacifism – he was a soldier through and through – but he had to admit that due to that innate trait, the spiders’ world had been left in a habitable state. “Thank you,” he said, nodding toward the city that stood like a mausoleum, likely to become humanity’s refuge.

His eyes flicked downwards. A slim figure in the distance climbed the escarpment towards him with a measured, ballerina-like gait. He lowered his hand, and went back inside his tent, planting himself on the field chair behind his rusting iron desk. The inner darkness that had momentarily left him when he’d stepped outside returned as steadily as the black-rain fallout he’d experienced a decade earlier in France. His platoon had been caught in the penumbra between two aerial detonations, one over Paris, the other over Reims. He thought he’d never be able to wash off the cloying ash. Since then he’d always showered longer than necessary.

Although the weight of the remnants of humanity rested on his shoulders right now, far worse was the meeting earlier that morning with the doctor and his wife, Glenda. The physician had cleared his throat and then announced that there was no more chemo, and that they did not have the right facilities to administer and control it anyway. Before he’d been able to protest, Glenda had asked “How long?”, as if she was inquiring as to the price of a loaf of bread.

Blake had found that the tearing feeling in his chest had no verbal counterpart, so he’d simply held her. Eventually, she pulled away, her eyes steeling into his. “Will you do three things for me?” she asked.

He nodded without hesitation.

“First,” she said, “don’t grieve for me until I am gone. I need to see the man I love, clear and strong. That will help me more than you can imagine. Second, make me proud. Pour your energies into saving humanity, no matter what it takes. Third, my love, I –’

Antonia entered his tent.

“Sorry to disturb you commander; I was going to knock, but…”

“Canvas, I know. Please, sit down.” He straightened his battle tunic. Since he’d taken command he’d found people more comforted seeing him in his khaki military uniform than in his astronaut jumpsuit. “Your report.”

Poised as ever, her two-tone blonde-brown hair in an immaculate bun, she nodded. He noted that she wasn’t taken aback by his perfunctory style. Good, he didn’t want to have to wet-nurse anyone.

“It’s pretty messy, Sir.” She leaned forward and produced a piece of flimsy – washable paper-film – with carefully hand-written notes on it. He had rarely seen such clear writing, almost a lost art these days. As she leaned forward to read from the sheet, he noticed the shadows around her eyes: she’d been working hard. Humanity’s fate didn’t rest on his shoulders alone.

She tapped the flimsy with a forefinger. “First, food. People are surviving, but stocks are getting low, much worse than we thought. We have maybe six weeks left, eight if we decrease rations. But that might trigger panic and worse, fuel a black market in stolen rations that’s already gaining a foothold on at least one of the ships. Water is okay, thank goodness, plenty of streams criss-crossing the mountains. There’s also a large underwater river heading directly into the city.” She looked up from the flimsy. When Blake remained poker-faced, she continued. “Next, shelter. People…” She sat back, folding her arms. “People absolutely hate those ships, Sir. They’re spooked by them: the dim light, the clammy walls, every surface feeling like dead flesh. And they’re a constant reminder of the Q’Roth invaders, of what happened back on Earth.”

He nodded. He noticed her left hand was shaking slightly. She bit her lip.

“Third…” Her hands dropped into her lap. “Sir, I don’t know what I’m doing. Is any of this helping? Surely there’s someone more qualified –”

Blake brought his fist down hard on the table. The dull thud of flesh against metal made her flinch. A wave of pressure swelled in his chest, rising into his neck. It’s not about her, he reminded himself. Nevertheless he stood up, and stared hard at her. She looked bewildered, caught off guard. Flustered, she stood up in return.

“I’m… I’m sorry, I…” She turned toward the exit, fumbling with the chair as her boot entangled itself in one of the legs.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He used his cutting voice, the one his soldiers dreaded. She stopped, and half-turned back to him. “I thought… I thought you were dismissing me.”

He took a deep breath. His mind was full of Glenda, him standing over her grave on this godforsaken world in a few weeks’ time. He ground his teeth, and then recalled his first and second promise to her. He leaned forwards, fingertips on the desk, and visualised Glenda fifteen years ago, laughing with him on the rocky, windswept shore of Rapa Nui. The surge in his chest ebbed, though he knew it was only a temporary respite. Breathing out slowly, he spoke with a softness usually reserved for Glenda alone, but his eyes cored into Antonia’s.

“What’s the first thing on your mind, Antonia? Really, the first thing.”

The frown on her face morphed into horrified recognition. She shook her head. “Don’t do this, Sir, please.”

“Answer me!”

Her eyes brimmed, her face flushing red with emotion: anger, he hoped. She faced him. “Alright, Sir, you want it, you can have it. Kat! Every second, every face I see having lost someone, I see her. She may already be dead, she may be asphyxiating somewhere, dying. That’s what’s in my head every waking moment, Sir, and I’m not sleeping much right now, Sir.”

Despite her quivering frame, she had the dignity to flick away a tear and glare straight back at him. He sat down, then gestured for her to take her seat. She perched on its edge, still ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

“A wise woman once told me,” he began, placing his hand on a holo-frame of Glenda in healthier days, “that we act only according to two drives: love and fear. It sounds trite, but the longer I walk this… The longer I live, the more I realise it’s true. Most people here are driven by fear. They’re the ones that people like you and me need to protect. You’re driven by love. I know that for a fact, you’ve just made it perfectly clear. That qualifies you for the job. Period.” He paused, letting it sink in. “One more thing, then we close the subject.”

She met his eyes head on, defiant. Good, he thought, you’ll need it.

“Kat’s still alive, Antonia. I would know if she and Pierre were gone. I’m not just saying that, you’re just going to have to trust me, and yourself.”

She slapped her hand down on the table. “That’s not nearly good enough, Sir. I need more than platitudes. Frankly I expect more than that from you of all people.” Her chest heaved, but she no longer trembled.

Blake studied Glenda’s picture, and spoke softly to it. “When people under my command die, I see their faces. At night, in dreams, or I think I see them in the crowds around me, then I realise it’s someone else.” He focused back on Antonia. “Always. No exceptions. Ever. And I haven’t seen or dreamt of Kat or Pierre these past two weeks.” He waited, watching her composure reassert itself. After a long silence, she nodded. She placed an index finger on the flimsy and took in a fulsome breath.

“Clothes,” she said, clearing her throat. “We need to find or plant crops that can produce fibres, or else in about a year we’ll all be naked.”

Blake’s face cracked a smile, despite himself. His grin infected Antonia, too. She let out a single nervous laugh, like the first person giggling at a rather flat party.

“You can imagine what Josefsson said to that, Sir.”

He shook his head. “Are those two helping you, by the way, our good Senator, and Mr. Shakirvasta?”

Antonia rolled her eyes. “Oh, absolutely. Josefsson’s preparing a manifesto, you know, for the upcoming elections?”

He raised an eyebrow.

She continued. “And as for Mr. Shakirvasta – what is his first name, by the way, no one seems to know? Well, I’m not sure what he’s up to. Erecting Chinese walls I think. I swear that man can see around corners. You should watch him – but you know that already, don’t you? That’s why you put him on the council, better close and visible than underground, as my father used to say.”

“Your father was a wise man.” He folded his fingers into a steeple. “Antonia, we’re moving people out of the ships. I want you to join Micah and Sandy today to determine living quarters and arrangements. I’ll take a look at the rest of your notes and assign others to look after the issues you’ve raised.”

Antonia’s eyes widened. “But I thought the military were checking the city?”

He nodded. “They check to see if it’s secure. I want you to check if it’s habitable, capable of becoming a place people can call home. Where they can live out their lives, and…” He thought of Glenda’s third wish, but he couldn’t say it.

She nodded slowly, though he sensed some hesitation. Zack had already told him about some earlier argument between her, Micah and Kat, back on Eden, right before leaving. He waited for her counter-suggestion.

“Maybe Josefsson or –”

“Josefsson will certainly take the credit, but a man with manicured hands doesn’t get them dirty willingly. Do you have a problem working with Micah or Sandy?”

She tilted her chin upwards, just a fraction, then shook her head vehemently.

“No, of course not. I’ll take the next transport to the city, Sir.” She stood, waited to see if there was anything else, and then picked up the flimsy, rolled it carefully, and handed it to him. As she left, he noticed her step was a fraction lighter.

Blake spoke to the rippling canvas door and the empty tent. “A month or two working with Josefsson and Shakirvasta, Antonia, and you’ll become a much better liar.”

“Nobody had time to scream.” Rashid’s voice was bereft of hope, like a rain-swept funeral at sea.

Blake felt his stomach churn while Rashid recounted what had happened on his ship, as best he could. Unlike the other Council members gathered, he stared straight into Rashid’s coal-black eye sockets. He imagined two thousand eyes peering silently from the void through Rashid’s space-like portals. Rashid trembled once or twice as if crying, but no salt water emerged – the tear ducts had been cauterised.

Blake recalled what Vince had told him earlier about Louise…

“No one else would work with her. She was so Goddammed fast, way too brutal for even the tough guys, never took prisoners. During the War, she earned a reputation. She was behind enemy lines, tracking down a renegade who’d stolen a nuke, holed up in a village in the Thai foothills. While the generals were debating who to send in, she ashed the place with a fire-stormer. All that was left was human barbecue and the bomb, its plaz casing still intact, a charred corpse next to it, a bony hand fried to the detonator controls. You see my point? Louise selected that weapon because she knew the intensity would blind him so he couldn’t set the sequence. She just shrugged off the two hundred villagers who got toasted as collateral. After that little episode they nicknamed her ‘the baker’, though nobody said it within earshot of Louise, let alone to her face. Whatever her mission was, Blake, she got it done. She doesn’t care about collateral. So, if she’s after us…”

Rashid finished. His head made those small movements Blake knew well from numerous nuclear-flash-blinded soldiers, trying to hear the reactions of the people seated around him.

Zack split the graveyard silence. “Vince, I thought you said you killed that bitch.”

Vince bristled, but Micah answered. “Trust me, Zack, part of her brain rained down on me in that hospital bed when Vince blew a hole in her head.”

“Then how in the hell –”

Blake raised his hand. “It doesn’t matter how. She’s after us, and she’s tooled up to take us down.”

Vince folded his arms. “Maybe not all of us. You and me, Micah, for sure. And maybe your good self, Commander Alexander.”

Ramires, who till now had remained a silent observer at the Ourshiwann council meetings, spoke up. “I doubt very much this is a private vendetta. They know we escaped. The Alicians want to eradicate humanity. This is a clean-up job.”

Zack ran a hand over his near-bald pate. “We should send a ship to find Pierre and Kat. Maybe they’re still alive.”

Blake’s fingers riffed once on the table, then he addressed Rashid. “Could we launch a rescue mission, Rashid?”

Rashid tilted his head again, listening hard, trying to pinpoint the exact location of each speaker. “No, we most certainly cannot. Without the navigational log, showing how much distance was covered in each leg, we would never find it again. I am sorry.”

Blake stood up. “We need to get everyone out of the ships. We’re moving into the city. It’s the only option: not enough tents, and no other natural shelter. Senator Josefsson, I’d like you to orchestrate the operation.” He watched Josefsson hesitate, and moved on before the senator could work out the angles. “I’ve already sent Antonia to the city where Micah, Sandy and several teams are determining habitation options. Professor Kostakis and Jennifer are also down there. They believe they may have found a weapon. Mr Shakirvasta, pick three engineering teams and try to find and disable the ships’ transponders. Vince, Zack, Ramires, you’re with me. Battle plan time. Let’s get to it everybody.”

Everyone rose except Rashid, who remained rooted to the spot. Blake headed toward him but Zack arrived first.

“Come on buddy, you’re with me.” Zack led him out of the room, nodding back to Blake that he’d catch him later.

Vince spoke as soon as it was just him, Blake and Ramires. “What’s your real plan?”

Blake eyed them both. Vince’s steel blue eyes were always head on, like a samurai’s. But he thought Ramires’ fresh-mown stubble fringed with his moustache concealed a wry smile. Blake realised he was too used to military, the chain of command, not being second-guessed. These men were laser-sharp. But he had to stay in charge. “You tell me.”

Vince nodded, with a twitch of his mouth indicating he knew all too well the little tricks Blake was trying to play. His voice was firm and clear. “Plan A: we stay here with the ships as bait. If she gets close enough we take her ship down; we have two short-range tactical nukes left, but no delivery system other than a couple of sling jets – we need her to land, or at least enter the atmosphere, or come to our ships. Maybe some of us go down with her, but the city will survive. Plan B, to be executed in parallel: we find another one of those Hohash craft that Pierre and Kat were on, and materialise onboard her ship with a nuke. It’s another sacrificial plan, with Zack the best option as pilot. If you’ve got a Plan C, I’m interested to hear it.” Vince folded his arms.

Ramires pitched his head forward like a boxer just before a fight. “I’ll take Plan A.”

“You know how to set tactical nukes?” Blake asked.

Ramires’ wry grin reappeared. “Not my first time, Commander.”

These men aren’t just sharp, Blake thought, they’re serrated. But he still had an ace. “Good. We’re on the same wavelength. There is a plan C, but I warn you now, Vince, you’re not going to like it.”

Sonja heard Zack’s heavy footfalls approaching the cramped Q’Roth ‘grotto’, as he liked to call their allocated room. She glanced in the dented tin wall mirror to check she looked presentable. She hoped her boisterous black afro compensated for the hunger rings around her eyes; she gave most of her food share to Zack and their two children, and wore baggy clothes to conceal her lean frame.

Their address was 43 Beta West, deck seven in the twelfth ring from the central ramp that spiralled its way to the ship’s control room. It wasn’t home, but she tried to pretend. She and their two boys stood behind the meal simmering in two pots on a makeshift stove they had loan of one night in three. She’d spent half the morning begging and borrowing the ingredients. But as Zack entered, she could tell that the smell of coriander and lemon beef substitute, one of his favourites, barely registered against his sombre mood. Another wasted effort. Zack had no stomach or taste for food these days. Nothing she did reached him. She braved a smile. That was when she caught sight of the man behind her husband.

She froze as she saw the stranger’s wounds, resisting the urge to gather her kids behind her.

“Hun, this is Rashid. Look after him while I’m gone.”

She gaped at Zack, who’d turned on his heels, ready to leave. He hadn’t kissed her, had hardly even looked at her. It had been getting steadily worse since they’d left Eden, and he refused to even talk about it, just brooded all the time. “Wait, Zack… What... where are you going?”

“Gotta go kill an Alician bitch.”

He disappeared, leaving the tan-skinned Rashid standing alone in the middle of the room, his black curling hair grown wild. Sonja walked over, reached out towards him, touched his bare arm. It felt cool, unlike Zack’s steam-pipe forearms.

“I am most sorry for this imposition,” he said. “I had thought he was taking me to a medical facility.”

Sonja inspected his eye sockets; she’d seen worse, but only once. “Kind of. I used to be a nurse, well, paramedic actually. May I?”

Rashid’s head jiggled sideways. Zack had talked to her before about Rashid, so she knew this odd motion, a natural habit from his native India, signified a yes. Her fingers scouted his face. He flinched once, then acquiesced, keeping his head steady. She ignored her two children who hung at her waist gaping upwards at Rashid’s face. Her fingers skated over the holes where his eyes should have been.

“Peter, fetch me the flashlight, please.” The torch nudged her hip seconds later. She brought it up to Rashid’s face, inspecting the cavities. “Minimal scarring, nerves cleanly cauterised.” She switched off the light. “Whoever did this work on you did a hell of a job. Who was it?”

Rashid sighed. “That is a long story. May I sit down?”

She glanced around. “Of course you can, how rude of me. But we don’t have chairs, I’m afraid.”

“That is good, they are bad for the spine, you know.” His beaming smile disavowed her of any residual repulsion over the way he looked. He dropped down fluidly into a cross-legged sitting position. He held out his two hands in the vague direction of her two children, and they each gingerly took one, all the time staring wide-eyed at Rashid’s cavernous face.

Sonja stared at Rashid. Her kids never reached out to strangers. There was something about this man, a quality of openness and honesty that led her, and apparently her kids, too, to trust him. She ran her fingers through her thick black curls, coiling her hair around her fingers. Zack, what the hell are you doing?

Zack loped through the corridors like a giant rat who’d had enough of the maze he’d been cooped up in. The flashbacks to the Thai jungle during the War were getting worse. For the first time in ten years he could remember fragments, snippets of detail about what happened after his platoon was wiped out, when he’d been declared missing in action for ten days. He still couldn’t recall much detail, a few faces he didn’t know, a weird-looking lab, and the Eiffel fucking tower of all things. None of it made any sense.

There’d been a theory on the Ulysses that one of its crew had been implanted with a killer psychosis by the Alicians, one that could be activated by some special code. He knew he was the only remaining suspect, and he didn’t care much for the way that Carlson, the resident shrink, kept looking at him, searching all the time for tell-tale signs. He knew he was being shitty to Sonja, but inside he was unravelling, barely in command.

He sensed something malevolent deep inside, watching and waiting for some signal. He needed to keep his distance from Sonja and the kids, to protect them – he felt unsafe, as if he might go off the rails at any time. He’d heard Rashid tell the story of what these implants could do to people, instantly transforming them into rabid killers. Once Louise was out of the way, he decided, he’d submit to Carlson to get the thing out of his head, no matter what it took, or how long.

Zack reached the bay doors that led him out of the ship. He hadn’t meant to leave; he was supposed to join Blake and the others. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths of crisp air. He shrugged, feeling better already. It’s nothing, he thought, just deep trauma. Loads of War-vets have nightmares. He headed back inside, jogging up the central ramp to find the board room. But he slowed down as the face of a blonde woman flickered into his mind, hanging there for a second, as if staring at him, saying something he couldn’t quite catch. He’d heard Louise described often enough to guess it was her. Yet it felt like a memory, as if he’d actually met her in that lab somewhere near Chiang Rai. There’d been something else, too, a strange sing-song voice.

Thick fog billowed into his mind, dampening the image, as if his brain was trying to recall a holo-mail that it had never intended to send. Zack struggled first to remember the face, then to hold on to what he was forgetting. It slipped away as surely as a dream upon waking. When the mist in his mind evaporated he found himself standing on the ramp, leaning his head against the slimy wall, wondering what he was doing there. He couldn’t remember. He’d just left Rashid with Sonja; that was the last thing he could recall. He was late for a meeting with Blake and the others, that much he knew for sure.

Zack set off at a jog up the ramp, picking up speed, feeling better than he had in weeks. He’d apologise to Sonja later. He’d tell her he’d see Carlson; that would cheer her up. But later. First he and the others had to rid themselves of Louise. He’d never killed a woman before; he hoped they could do it at a distance. Idly, he wondered what she looked like, then dismissed the idea – best not to think about it.

He arrived, a little out of breath, facing Blake and the others. “So, what did I miss? Are we on Plan C yet?”

◆◆◆

Hannah whispered to Jarvik, as quiet as autumn leaves rustling in the wind. “We need to strike first. She’ll kill us both sooner or later. You know I’m right.”

Jarvik’s hand snapped around her throat, muscles firm. “Maybe just you, Hannah.” He glared at her, then let go. He sensed the tension in his own shoulders, and his features felt leaden – this mission had not exactly been the brave new world he’d been expecting. And he’d seen the nannites. The three of them would perish soon one way or another unless they found the planet and their inferior cousins. Right now he needed Louise, because she was above all a survivor. “She’s too strong, too fast,” he said.

“Then talk to them, the humans – you’re taking the stealth-pod down to the planet when we arrive. Talk to them. Tell them… tell them we can be reasonable.”

Hannah’s eyes had that cornered animal look, like a goat he’d once seen being led to the slaughter. She made to speak, but Jarvik cast a look that stopped her dead. “No, Hannah. We see this through. We didn’t sign up with the Alicians to behave like normal humans, divided and rife with corruption.” He continued, pre-empting the riposte he knew she would launch. “And yes, even if our Grand-Mistress, Sister Esma means us to die, then we die for the cause.”

Hannah glowered. She held her head up, tossing her copper hair back. “Alright. We do it your way, for Sister Esma, for the cause.”

Jarvik’s eyes tracked her as she strode back to her own console. Now he had two women he needed to watch very carefully.

Chapter 8

Ossyrians

Pierre felt the warm liquid spill through his helmet seal, flushing down into his suit. Lifting the helmet a few centimetres with both hands, he took one last deep breath, and saw Kat’s shocked features, but he also detected something like pride in her eyes. It was enough. He lifted off the helmet, the warm liquid swirling around his head like a hot, wet towel, and let it drop behind him. It sank to the floor with a small clunk. He kept his eyes closed, holding his breath even as the lighter-than-water fluid assaulted his nostrils. He forced open his eyes, expecting the fluid to sting, but if anything, it was soothing. Everything was slightly out of focus, tinged pink. Kat gripped his shoulders.

He felt the tug of anoxia beginning in his lungs, sucking in and down on his diaphragm, begging him to breathe in, unaware of the consequences. A couple of bubbles escaped his nostrils, letting the liquid rise higher into his nasal cavity, making him blink. He heard a swishing noise. Kat released him and took a slow-motion step backwards. Something was behind him. With difficulty, trying not to fall over in his last seconds, he turned around. He was so startled he almost breathed in, there and then, face-to-face with an upright-standing dog in an Egyptian pharaoh’s head-dress, with its alternating horizontal bars of gold and blue, shrouding a strong black collie-like face with silver eyes.

Pierre’s mouth opened a fraction and the fluid lost no time in entering, tasting of nothing, fizzy on his tongue. The creature in front of him seized his arms, and he felt something punch him very hard in the stomach, evacuating all remaining air from him in one large, noisy gurgle. He doubled over in pain. The creature wrenched him upwards, causing him at last to inhale.

The liquid charged into his lungs, cool as menthol, numbing his throat. An instant urge to cough and splutter vanished, like a sneeze that threatens but never arrives. He assumed it must be some kind of anaesthetic, but then with a shock realised he no longer felt the pressure to breathe in. The creature held onto his wrists, and placed another limb on his stomach, pushing gentler this time. Pierre understood – it was telling him to breathe the fluid. What the hell. He tried it. He pulled in his stomach and raised his diaphragm to expel some of the liquid, then – and it required conscious effort – reversed the movements to inhale it, as reluctantly as if sucking in acid through a straw.

He tried it a few times, and amazement surpassed his fear. He guessed it was a hyper-oxygenated fluid of some kind. It made a low squirting sound each time he breathed, but, if anything, he could breathe slower than with normal air. The creature released him, and he turned around to show Kat he was alright.

But she wasn’t. She had a pulse rifle aimed at the creature. Pierre held up his hand. He tried to talk, but could only gurgle. He laid a hand on the barrel of the rifle, gently pushing it downwards. Eventually she let it fall, and he found her arms wrapped around him, her helmet pressing uncomfortably against his face. She squeezed him so tight he found it hard to breathe again.

Pierre cradled Kat in his arms on a curved bench of indeterminate material: it looked metallic but felt like sitting on dry moss. The undersized conical room reminded him of a tepee, inside all white and smooth, the bench running around three quarters of its perimeter. Light emanated from the walls, the air still. Air. It was good to breathe normal air again. The worst part had been getting Kat’s helmet off when her supply ran out. That hadn’t been pretty, even if she’d seen him breathe the liquid. In the end, as she’d stood holding her breath, stiff as a man on the gallows waiting for the drop, he’d kissed her, held her tight, and persuaded her mouth to accept a little of the fluid from his own. And then she’d thrashed violently, convulsing almost, lacerating his left cheek in the process with a fingernail, though there was no trace of it now.

“Why do you suppose they did that?” Her voice had that post-traumatic forced calmness.

“I don’t know.”

“You always know, Pierre, you’re just too bloody shy.” She pinched his arm, making him wince.

He decided she was right, but it wasn’t modesty; rather, years of being tested by his father, and being verbally eviscerated if his suppositions contained the merest hint of a flaw. But Kat wasn’t his father, and he had a reasonable hunch. “I believe it was medical, a way of de-contaminating us.”

Kat levered herself into a sitting position, so she could see him. “What, we’re unclean?”

“Well, no … and yes. We carry microbes around with us, we shed skin daily, and we perspire all the time. That could be lethal to an alien species.”

Kat puckered her nose. “Hmm. Always thought it would be some weird coloured light or something, the way we used to irradiate food.”

“A liquid makes sense: invasive, sterilising, and it can get inside the body, with the advantage of a higher osmotic pressure than air – more penetrating.”

She fell quiet and closed her eyes. He studied her face, her pert nose, thin pale lips that he now knew served equally well for pleasure or verbal abuse, dark eyebrows under a narrow brow. A fallen angel. Born into an elite rich man’s world, got fed up with it, and spurned it all. He wondered what had really made her leave her uncle’s Eldorado Island – a man-made atoll rising up from one of the sunken Maldivian islets.

There had been years of speculation and gossip, but neither Kat nor her uncle had ever deigned to answer even the most oblique question on the subject of her abrupt, self-imposed exile. He had the feeling she’d never tell him, no matter how close they got. Then he realised that he had it the wrong way around: she’d never tell him now because they were close. Something she was ashamed of, then, or else she thought he’d think less of her. Victims always feel guilty, his mother had told him on one of his own particularly bad days.

An opening in the wall irised out of nowhere, shaping itself into an oval doorway truncated at the floor, revealing one of the dog-like creatures. For the first time he got a decent look, without the fluid distorting his vision. The creature was tall, elegant, like a regal, upstanding dog. Its black head – he couldn’t ignore the snout – was still haloed by the head-dress which framed it. He remembered seeing pictures of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamen, and the dog-like god Anubis; there was a striking similarity, and he immediately wondered if these creatures had visited Earth – Egypt to be precise – millennia ago. The creature wore a brilliant white tunic, and something resembling a skirt, with a rectangular piece of white material hanging down in front and back to below the knee line, revealing muscular black legs coated with a sheen of fur. He noted the powerful ribcage underneath the clothing. Two long arms hung down reaching the creature’s hips, ending in closed silver hands, each with two opposable thumbs and three fingers. He saw cloven, dark feet, fringed with fine black fuzz. But he was drawn back upwards to its eyes. They glistened silver. He was mesmerised by the kaleidoscopic patterns rippling across the eyes’ surface, small columns like skyscrapers rising and falling, geometric shapes evanescing out of the background only to be superimposed by others.

“I think it’s trying to communicate,” Kat said.

Pierre realised it had not heard them speak, since they had not been able to in the fluid. “Hello,” he said, instantly feeling moronic, but he had to start somewhere. Even if they understood nothing, they would realise that vocalisation was the principal modality for communicating.

“We are called humans, from a planet called Earth. We –”

The creature’s jaws opened, revealing not teeth, but a mesh of blue and mauve fibres that grew taut as the open jaw reached its full extension. A blast of noise, a psychedelic choir of a thousand fingernails scraping down blackboards, made Pierre and Kat double over, hands plastered over their ears.

“STOP! Stop it, damn you!” Kat yelled through the din. Abruptly the noise ceased, replaced by the two of them gasping for breath.

The creature exited, the doorway popping seamlessly out of existence behind it.

Kat slumped against the supple wall. “Brilliant. Perfect.”

He eased himself down next to her, his ears ringing after the auditory storm. “This is going to be a lot harder than I’d ever imagined.”

“There, there,” she said in a mocking tone, recovering, and pulled his head toward her. She kissed him, then manoeuvred him downwards so his head lay on her thigh. She stroked his temple. “Anyway, look on the bright side. At least they haven’t cooked us yet.”

“Maybe he was just trying to say ‘hello’ back.”

“He?”

“Yes… Er…”

Kat sighed. “God, even the smart ones are really dumb, aren’t they?”

Pierre bristled. “Well, the musculature, the ribcage, the –”

“Eight nipples?” Kat shook her head. “This is why I sleep with girls: men always miss the important details. She’s a bitch, Pierre, and I mean that in the technical, anatomical sense.”

Pierre decided to stay quiet.

“She’s kind of cute, actually. Nice skirt, don’t you think?”

He glanced at her in disbelief, just as she punched his shoulder.

“I’m kidding, lighten up, Pierre. Anyway, any ideas?”

He closed his eyes and tried to think. Then he smelt something sweet, like caramel. He tried to open his eyes but they stayed shut. He heard a distant voice, someone shouting. He felt a light touch, as if someone was nudging him gently. He strained to hear what the high-pitched voice was saying, something like “Wake up, Pierre!” But warmth suffused his body, and even a brief stinging sensation on his face failed to stop him from being sucked downwards into the depths of slumber.

Pierre jerked awake, finding himself stretched out on one of the benches in a much larger room, still conical in shape. Kat had her back to him, her arms folded from the looks of it, as she stood, legs splayed, in front of the Hohash. He made to get up, and found his strength was gone. He gasped with effort, just to sit up. Kat turned around, but didn’t approach him.

“What happened?” he asked.

She surveyed him for a moment. “They took you. You’ve been gone for two days, judging from my body clock.”

He stared at her. Two whole days? But where, and to do what? And why was she being so distant with him? He tried to play it cool. “They drugged me somehow. But not you?”

She shook her head and turned back toward the Hohash. Her body was tense. He had the unnerving feeling she didn’t want to look at him.

He pressed his hands down on the bench, trying to sit up straight. His head still felt fuzzy, as if filled with soggy cotton wool, stuffed with needles that pricked the inside of his skull if he moved too fast. She turned to face him again. He noticed she wasn’t just folding her arms, she was holding herself, as if afraid. He wanted to get up and embrace her but he knew he would fall over before reaching her, and probably throw up into the bargain. Why was she behaving like this? Had he done something, said something in his sleep? He had no recollection whatsoever, but he believed her when she said he’d been missing for two days.

A popping sound announced the entrance of the dog-like creature. He watched as it glided towards Kat and the Hohash. It – he decided he had to deal with it as an ‘it’ rather than a ‘she’, for now at least – gestured for Kat to sit on the bench next to Pierre. She did so, just out of his reach.

The creature stretched out an arm, and touched the inert Hohash. It sprang to life, hovering ten centimetres off the floor, its transparent surface flooding with liquid crystal hues of silvers, blues, and purples. It glided over towards Pierre and Kat.

“Showtime,” Kat said. Without turning her head to face him, her hand slid across the bench towards his. He took it, and she clasped his outstretched hand, squeezing it tight. He looked once at her tight-lipped profile, then turned to the Hohash. Its cloud-like surface condensed to show a blue-green Earth, viewed from space – evidently before the nuclear War had browned it. A shimmering sphere approached, dangling above the planet like an old-style Christmas tree bauble. A tiny triangular section detached itself from the sphere and plunged towards the planet. It fell through the clouds towards a sandy, desert-like region fringed by turquoise sea. He’d already guessed its destination.

Pierre watched as the tetrahedron-shaped craft landed, but was taken aback as some people moved into the frame, showing by perspective how huge the craft was.

“Pyramid,” Kat announced.

He nodded. As the dust settled, dark-skinned men in flowing beige robes ventured towards the centre of one of the sides of the metallic pyramid. A hatch opened midway, and a ramp extended, descending to the dusty ground. Three of the dog-like species, wearing golden garments, all having the kinds of head-dress their current companion wore, walked down to meet the humans with a smooth, regal gait.

The men bowed long and low before the creatures, the one in front holding out a scroll. The vantage point shifted – he had no idea how this scene had been recorded – and one of the dog-aliens unrolled it. Pierre and Kat saw a close-up of writing on the parchment. “Looks like hieratic,” he said, “with some hieroglyphs thrown in.”

The view changed, revealing a village of dying people, corpses rotting in the streets. The aliens were tending to them, using some device or other to spray a fine mist over all, both living and dead. The scene shifted again, and now the same village had people bustling about their business, children running around barefoot, and what appeared to be a camel market.

“They’re doctors of some sort,” he said. “At least they appear to give medical help.”

“I already worked out they are medical wizards, Pierre. Just wasn’t sure if they were good or evil.”

He wondered what she meant, what evidence she had, but he didn’t want to miss anything. The Hohash showed vistas from other worlds where, again, these aliens aided creatures beset by large-scale diseases and plagues. He was impressed.

“I think we’re lucky these aliens found us.”

“Could be worse, I suppose.”

Pierre tore his eyes away to stare at her for a moment. She glanced at him for a fraction of a second, and he thought he saw something – fear, repulsion, maybe – then she nodded to the Hohash. “Look, we were filmed.”

He turned back to see him and Kat making love. He reddened. “Oh,” was all he managed to say. He’d never been good with porn; too embarrassing, too alien, he thought – until now. He was distracted by their alien escort who moved next to the Hohash, and then aimed an arm at Kat. A fluorescent, pulsing yellow light emanated from its wrist bracelet, and shone at her belly for several seconds. Kat didn’t seem to notice.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Making notes,” she replied flatly.

He wondered what was going on. Why didn’t she see the beam?

The alien looked at him. He stared deep into its silver eyes, seeing shapes arise from their fluidic surface and then sink back again, so fast it was almost a blur. “Ossyrians,” he said, unsure of where the word had come from.

“What?”

“These creatures. They’re called Ossyrians. They’re a race of doctors; their sole purpose is to help eradicate disease and suffering. We’re on the Ossyrian Space Vessel ‘Mercy’, well that’s the nearest word in our language.” He put his hand to his temple. “Don’t even ask me how I know.”

“I already know how you know,” she said, standing up.

He looked at her nonplussed.

“Show him,” she said, addressing the alien, who eyed her with a calm grace. She pointed to the mirror, then to Pierre, jabbing a finger at his head. She shouted at the alien. “I said fucking show him, you bitch!”

Pierre waited, uncomprehending at first, as the Hohash stopped transmitting scenes, and its surface became completely flat, and mirror-like. He gaped at his own reflection and slumped back down onto the bench.

“Exactly,” Kat said, as Pierre stared straight into the reflection of his rippling, silver eyes.

Chapter 9

City of Hope

Asteady chill breeze scoured the valley. It funnelled past the three megalithic Q’Roth ships that occupied the plateau, and down into the vast caldera that cradled the ancient spider city. The wind hastened the human chain filing downwards to Esperantia, as the city had recently been christened. A lucky few rode in vehicles. Most trudged along on foot, accompanied periodically by lev-panels – oblong metallic flatbeds piled high with possessions and provisions. Few took the time to glance backward at the grey hulking space-ships, their homes for the past month.

The straggling procession was subdued. A few families chattered quietly, most were silent, as if treading through a cemetery. Everyone by now knew the fate of the original owners of this world. Even the priests, rabbis, and mullahs were unusually reflective, heads tilted downwards, eyes fixed on their thoughts. It was hard to reconcile all that had happened with the idea of an omnipotent or forgiving deity who had humanity as its priority.

Yet the underlying mood, Carlson noted, wasn’t one of defeat and despair, nor even retribution. He detected an appetite for hope, and occasionally tested it via conversations with people on the march. An innate resilience was overtaking the usual survivor guilt: he had no other word for it than spirit. After his forty-five years on Earth, and most of his adult life spent decrying the politics, the greed, and the social malaise of the twenty-first century, he found he was actually uplifted by the reactions he saw around him. The imminent future was certainly bleak, and no one could even countenance long term visions of life here, say, in five years time, much less longer time-frames. Yet those on this short exodus clearly felt a sense of purpose, and the human convoy suffered little of the griping and wailing he’d anticipated.

He halted to rest a while. His feet were sore after two hours of solid walking. He wandered over to a large lev-panel goods transporter, loaded high with the paraphernalia of people’s meagre belongings. A cluster of twenty or so people had laid out some field chairs in the cool peach light of the afternoon sun. He parked his ample behind on the edge of the panel, suspended a convenient height from the crusty, sand-coloured ground with its straggling veins of amethyst and silver-hued sediment. A ragged, dusty man next to him offered an open bottle of water. Carlson stared at it a moment – the man had already drunk from it, possibly others too. Back home – not that there was a back home anymore – he would have politely refused. Instead, he reached out and grasped the neck of the bottle. The man’s irises were a dull grey, but the pupils were sharp as disks. Carlson nodded a thank you, and raised the bottle’s lip to his own, closing his eyes as the refreshing water flooded into his mouth and washed down his throat.

He returned the bottle to its owner, smiled at the man, then gazed towards the city, still a white blur, some ten kilometres away. He pulled out his imaging binoculars, and ramped up the magnification, seeing beyond the stretched millipede of people drifting towards their new lodging. There were few defining features in the city: a spattering of ivory spires poking up like blades of wheat, but generally it was a humble-looking place, its small white domes, ramps and squares reminding him of a Turkish village he’d visited as a boy on holiday in Cyprus.

The vision jarred as a small hand clamped around his binoculars.

“Natasha, no! Leave the man alone!” A portly, head-scarfed woman swaddled in flowing cloth of varying shades of grey and black hurried over toward the tugging waif, who stared up at him with shiny coal eyes. He held on for a while, but her insistence won him over, and he relinquished them to her. This world will be yours, he thought. Our generation screwed everything up, we had our chance and we blew it. The young girl ducked away, clutching her prize, eluding her mother’s outstretched arms. Several other children leapt to their feet to chase her, so they, too, could spy on their future playground. Carlson smiled and shrugged as the woman stooped next to him, hands on her thighs, panting.

“She’ll be the death of me, that one,” she said.

He begged to differ. “She’ll make you proud one day.”

The other man held out a small plastic box containing bite-size pistachio-flavoured pastries so sugary Carlson almost didn’t need to grasp one as it clung to his fingers and thumb. He bit into it slowly, relishing each layer’s treasure of nectar. He closed his eyes and savoured it, not chewing, just squeezing it with his tongue and upper palate till it melted completely, the warm honey trickling down his throat, reminding him of childhood family get-togethers eating home-made cakes of dried fruit and marzipan. He thought of all the things that used to make him happy back on Earth, or so he had believed, in his former, tightly-wrapped life. Baggage and bad habits: so much to get rid of, to let go of. He licked his fingers and with the inner grunt he’d become accustomed to in middle age, got to his feet, nodded ‘good day’ to the others, and set off on his pilgrimage towards the city of hope. His feet no longer felt tired, or perhaps he just didn’t notice.

◆◆◆

Blake ignored the coiling snakes of smoke spreading inside his tent. He watched Shakirvasta tap the end of his cigarette, flicking a centimetre of ash onto the rock floor. He inhaled long and full one last time, then stubbed it out into a gold-plated portable ash-tray he’d brought along to the meeting.

“So good of you to tolerate my one bad habit, especially given your wife’s condition.”

Blake knew this was just the opening volley. The thought flickered in his mind as to how Shakirvasta had found actual cigarettes, since they’d been banned on Earth for the last twenty years, but he focused on the single agenda item. “The transponders. Have you located them?”

Shakirvasta paused, eyeing him, then nodded. “Not that we can reach them. They’re behind several metres of Q’Roth engine shielding.”

“So why is it taking so long for Louise or the Q’Roth to find us?”

Shakirvasta absently pulled out another pack of cigarettes, extracting one deftly into his left hand. “She may be here already,” he said, as if discussing a visiting aunt. He tapped the end of the cigarette three times on the packet. “It’s the Hohash we have to thank. They’ve been masking our signals, including the ships’ transponder signatures, so all anyone else’s sensors will see is a world as dead as it has been for the past millennium, unless they actually visually inspect this planet up close. The Hohash, it appears, can manipulate carrier signals over a broad EM spectrum. Quite impressive. If we were back on Earth I’d be launching half a dozen patents right now. Communications was my business, you know.”

Blake’s fingers rapped the desk. “Rashid’s ship – the Hohash wasn’t on it when Louise found them.”

“No.” He lit the cigarette with an ornate Mont Blanc lighter made of black lacquer, with gold insets. “Which brings me to a point I’d like to raise.”

Blake leaned back in his chair. He felt tired, but was in no mood to show it. “Go on.”

“We need to give Jennifer a node, so she can communicate with the Hohash.”

Blake kept his brow smooth and decided to hear him out.

“Women fare better than men with nodes – less post-op psychoses. And it has to be someone younger, say, than you or I, for the neural integration to work, not forgetting the delicate brain surgery. And preferably someone on our new Council, don’t you think?”

Blake stared at this ex-mogul. He knew not to trust him, but it was hard to see the angle he was setting up. Kat was gone, and so there was no direct communication with their one and only ally. It made sense to give someone else a node. But he knew he had to find the edges of this particular negotiation landscape. “What about Sandy, or Antonia?”

“Ah, yes … Sandy.” He inhaled and then blew out a perfect ring. “Pregnant you know. The temporary pituitary effects from the node could affect the embryo’s growth rate.”

Blake hid his surprise; he hadn’t known about Sandy. “Antonia, then.”

The smoker stared at his cigarette, as if studying a jewel. “Not as robust as Jennifer. Your son had a node didn’t he? So you are aware of the dangers.”

Blake prevented his fingers from tensing, though his thighs locked rigid at the mention of his dead son, Robert. He resisted asking how this man knew so much about his family. Shakirvasta, after all, had said he was in the business of communications, not necessarily technological communications. “We should let Carlson decide which of the two of them is best.”

“Exactly what I thought.” Shakirvasta produced a flimsy from his business suit jacket. “Here is his recommendation. I like to think ahead, you see. It saves you time.” He held out the translucent sheet, as if dealing the winning card in a high-stakes poker game, one where he could equally afford to win or lose.

Blake snatched it, without glancing at it. His gut told him not to trust this man. Earlier he’d made a political choice, but politics wasn’t his strong suit. He knew Shakirvasta would out-manoeuvre him in the long run, maybe sooner. “I’ll consider it.” He stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Shakirvasta. Now, if you’d excuse me I have –”

“One last thing, Commander, of some importance.”

“Yes?”

Shakirvasta stubbed out his cigarette and pocketed the self-cleaning ashtray. “This may be a little sensitive,” he said, “so please hear me out. I say this not as your friend – because we both know that will never be the case – but certainly not as your enemy either.”

Blake’s breathing slowed. This man made his flesh crawl. “Spit it out.”

Shakirvasta stood. “Your wife – I understand she is stage four, and the doctors have given up on her. She has one month to live.”

Blake walked around the desk, muscles taut.

Shakirvasta spoke quickly. “I never travel without my physician – I would not survive long without him. He can give your wife six more months, Commander. I guarantee it. Not cure her. Her pain level won’t get any worse. Six months longer, though. Half a year, Commander.”

Blake’s stomach muscles were iron, his breathing silent. Part of him wanted to tear this man’s throat out. He knew instinctively he was evil, manipulative in the extreme, playing for his own ends, whatever they might be. Even Glenda had said that if he was going to play politics, then it was a short haul flight to spying and assassination. She’d mentioned Shakirvasta by way of a palpable example. Blake remembered his father telling him that if he ever met the devil, he should kill him before he had a chance to speak. But if there was a remote chance Shakirvasta was telling the truth…

“In exchange for what?”

“Nothing. You saved us, all of us. Consider it repaying a debt. I always repay mine.” He nodded to Blake and turned and headed for the canvas door. He paused there, without turning back. “I’ll send my good doctor along in the morning. If you don’t want him to see your wife, simply send him away.” He left, the wind masking the sound of the man’s footsteps heading down the gravel pathway.

Blake sat back onto the edge of the desk. He heard a canvas zip rake open behind him.

“Want me to kill him, boss?” Zack crawled through the aperture, then stood up, dusting himself off.

“No, Zack. Anyhow, assassination would be more up Vince’s or Ramires’ street than yours.” He turned around to face the only man he trusted.

Zack beamed. “Got nothing against a little job enlargement, you know.” He parked his large frame in Blake’s chair, saluting lazily as he did so. “Sorry, but I was squatting out there trying to listen, and my thighs ain’t like they used to be. What was that all about anyway?”

Blake reached over to a drawer, leaning over the desk, and pulled out a metal flask and two tumblers. He sloshed amber liquid into the glasses. “He was clearing the way for a later assault. He may be one of the most ruthless businessmen ever, but underneath, he operates according to a code.”

“So are we celebrating, or do you just need a drink?” Zack heaved his boots onto the desk.

“Both. But mainly we’re toasting Glenda having six more months to live.”

They clinked glasses.

“I’ll drink to that, Chief, but why in hell do you believe him?”

“Because, Zack, I know for sure he’ll make me pay for it later.” He downed it in one, the single malt searing his throat. He smacked the glass onto the desk top. As he screwed the top back on the flask, he wondered what Shakirvasta was really up to. He couldn’t see the plot, but he was sure there was one. He hoped the real price of this deal, when it finally arrived, wouldn’t be too high.

◆◆◆

“I’m telling you she likes you, Vince.” Ramires locked the last strap into place.

“And so what?” Vince started to push the crate towards the ramp, but it wouldn’t budge. He spied some troops lounging near the exit. “Hey, you guys, picnic’s over. Sweat time.” He drew back as six burly soldiers loped over to the single black crate. “Control room, make it snappy!”

One of the men put his hands on his hips. “You’re shitting us, right? That’s nine floors up! Where’s the fuckin’ lev?”

Vince grinned. “Gone with the convoy to Esperantia. Just put your back into it, like Tarzan there,” he pointed to a muscular rookie who was already shouldering the crate. “Off you go, boys.”

Ramires joined Vince’s supervisory distance. “You think this’ll work?”

Vince waited until the men and the crate had turned the corner as they shoved it up the ramp, sure that the grunting and cursing would drown out his answer.

“She’s too smart.”

“Plan B then?”

“Maybe. But I have a feeling it’s going to end up Plan C, like Blake said. Just me and her. My penance for not spotting her as an Alician all those years.”

“You weren’t to know, they’re pretty good at deep cover.”

Vince rounded on Ramires. “What the hell would you know? You Sentinels spend half your lives in a Tibetan cave meditating, playing with your chi, or whatever it is you do. I know women, and Louise and I were screwing each others’ brains out for two years, and still I didn’t see it!” He kicked the wall hard with the toe of his boot.

Ramires held up his hand. “Calm down. You need to breathe out more, you know. What’s gotten into you?”

Vince spat on the floor. He sighed. “The feeling’s mutual; tell Sandy that, afterwards. Then you can have her. Don’t think I haven’t seen you look.”

Ramires lifted an eyebrow. “If Plan A works, I won’t be around.”

Vince’s face grew sterner than normal. “Louise’ll take one of us with her for sure, probably both of us. I just wish we had a few more plans up our sleeve. I was her mentor, she was the best I’d ever seen.” He wiped a thin layer of sweat from his brow. “Let’s go check our gift, make sure the grunts haven’t screwed up the detonators.”

The soldiers shoving their atomic load breached the control room. Five of them collapsed, chests heaving, sweating profusely, using any remaining breath to utter curses involving family members, reproductive acts and female dogs, in various permutations. The sixth soldier leaned over the crate, feigning exhaustion. As he mopped his forehead with his sleeve, he fished out a slim coin-size disk from his chest pocket, and dropped it through a slat on one of the crate’s sides. He coughed to mask the tiny clink as the magnetic transponder attached itself to the side of the nuclear weapon. Then Jarvik sank to the floor like the others, and practised a few profanities of his own.

◆◆◆

Sandy swallowed it. She screwed up her face as if she’d just drunk pure lemon juice. “That’s got to be an acquired taste.” She took a swig of water to wash it down.

“The meds say it’s fine, a balanced mix of proteins and nutrients.” Antonia sat on the rounded edge of a squat table fabricated from the white material the spiders used for everything. Her hands rested on its edge, legs idly swinging back and forth like two pendula. She cocked her head to one side. “How’s Micah?”

Sandy had been waiting for this all morning. “You couldn’t handle it, Antonia.”

Her legs stopped. “What does that mean?”

Sandy sealed the lid on the tank. She grimaced; the pungent yellow liquid it contained was likely to become their staple food supply for years to come. “Look, you’re neither blind nor stupid. You know how he feels about you. And he knows how you feel about Kat. Christ, we all do. And you’re hurting right now, and you’re tempted to turn to Micah as a friend, but it’ll fuck him up really bad.”

Antonia drew her feet up onto the table, and sat cross-legged. “So I should stay away from him?”

Sandy walked right up to her, placed a hand on her shoulder. “No, Antonia, you should sleep with him.”

“What?”

“Look, I’ve been with a lot of men, so I know what it’s like in their heads. Mostly it’s like staying in a one star hotel – pretty basic: bed, wash basin, can of beer, holo-sports channel if you’re lucky, toilet down the hall. What I’m saying is that even when men appear complicated and sensitive, they’re not, not deep down. So, just sleep with him, it’ll make him stupidly happy for a day or two and you’ll be comforted. And don’t tell me you’re not a little bit interested, either. I’m betting Kat was your first bi experience after a string of boyfriends, right?”

Antonia flushed. She nudged herself off the table, her boots landing on the ground with a loud slap. “And what happens when Kat returns?”

Sandy sighed. If, for Christ’s sake, and it’s a hell of an if! “He’ll be cut up, for sure, and you’ll go back to Kat, but at least he won’t screw himself up over what he never had. Sadder but wiser. More cynical.” The way I like them, she thought. Like Vince.

The radio crackled on the floor. “The first batch has arrived,” Micah said.

“You go, Antonia, I’m not finished here.” She picked up the radio. “We’re on our way.”

Antonia folded her arms. “I’m not taking your advice. I won’t sleep with him.”

“Fine. Don’t fuck him. Just don’t fuck with his head, either.” She watched Antonia whirl around and march towards the rope ladder to ground level. She shook her head. Why are we all so stupid? Even when we’re all about to die, nobody sees straight!

She picked up the radio and stared at it. She’d heard the rumours about the tactics to take out Louise. About Plan C. She tapped the radio transmit button. “Micah, it’s Sandy … Antonia’s on her way … Her idea, not mine … Can you get a private message to Vince? … Yeah? … Okay. I need to see him tonight … What? … I need to make love with him … Yes, you heard me, Micah.”

As she carried on testing and tasting the vile slurry, she couldn’t help grinning. Stupid to the end, she thought. No hope whatsoever.

◆◆◆

“I should have been at the meeting.” Jen wrenched the last root out of the ground. She dragged a forearm across her brow, erasing the beads of sweat as efficiently as a windscreen wiper eradicating drizzle.

Dimitri observed her every movement, wondering where the transformation would end, how far it would go.  Jen no longer exhibited any pretensions of being coyly demure. Instead, Jen – or Jennifer as he now thought of her – had metamorphosed into something approaching an Amazonian soldier. If that had been it, he could have accepted it. After all, it wasn’t unattractive, and the smell of her sweat had always served as an allure for him. But there was more, a growing insidious undercurrent. He’d seen it before in other aggressive women once or twice, and had always steered away from them.

But the context before had been academic, literally, in various real and virtual universities where he’d lectured. Women with ambition – alpha females, as he thought of them – who employed sex and sly vindictiveness in equal measure to get ahead. Not content with merely stepping on others in their path, they ground them into dust, so there was zero chance of come-back. The casualties and collateral damage had often amounted to nothing more than bruised egos, a few ruined careers or truncated research avenues and, in one case, a botched suicide attempt. Now, however, the stakes were of a different order of magnitude. Worse still, he knew what drove her: not some petty desire to be first or some past incident she would never allow to repeat itself. Instead, it was the memory of her murdered brother Gabriel. She wanted revenge, and it made her blood run lava hot – or cold as glacier water, he couldn’t decide. He watched her biceps flex rigid as she dragged the last component of the weapon – her ‘little surprise’ for Louise, as she kept calling it – into place.

Dimitri guessed he would lose her soon. Not due to love waning or dying, as it always did sooner or later in his experience, but because he knew where she was heading, and where she’d come from – too much loss and too much pain, and she needed someone to blame. Right now she thought killing Louise would be enough, but he knew otherwise. If they defeated Louise, she’d quickly turn against the real failure which, in her mind, had caused the loss of her family – humanity’s weakness, as she saw it. She’d already been talking these past days about how dumb humanity had been not to see it all coming, and how it had to gear up in order to survive. Her talk lately had reminded him of his study of the early Fundie movement, before the Third World War, how its ideas had seduced so many. His father, years ago, had urged him to study history, saying that science without an understanding of history is like cleverness without a conscience. For the first time he appreciated this pearl of wisdom.

He predicted Jennifer’s final destination, and he knew he would sooner or later have to stand in her path and oppose her. For the first time in his life, he lacked the conviction that he would win. He parked it. First they had a more classic, rather than social, battle to fight.

He returned to his own work, complete as it could be, and tugged at his goatee. They’d synthesised a macabre weapon, with an almost biblical signature, and Jennifer was itching to use it.

“After all,” she said, hands on her square hips, “I’m a captain, I led one of those ships and saved two thousand people. They shouldn’t have held the meeting without me.”

He didn’t know what to say. His former, legendary eloquence deserted him. Maybe it had been cremated amongst Earth’s embers; so much loss – his mother, his brothers, and countless nephews and nieces. But they never discussed it, he and Jennifer. Her loss, as she perceived it, was greater. She’d trade Gabriel’s life for the rest of humanity’s – including his own – in an instant.

“I should have been consulted in the battle planning, not left out in the field.”

In an effort to maintain a connection with her, he issued forth what she wanted, needed, to hear. “But Jen, this is the key weapon. Louise will be ready for nukes. She’ll expect them, and will have planned counter-measures. Faced with a more powerful adversary, surprise is the only real tactical advantage.”

She gave the barest of nods. She obviously thought she’d outgrown him, he supposed, no longer needed him. There was still a lingering respect for him, though he suspected it was out of habit. More and more it was as if he hadn’t spoken, as if he’d become background music. He had no doubt as to whose counsel she was listening.

“It’s a question of leadership,” she said, facing him, she above him, lecturing her once tutor, guru, professor, lover.

It always is.

“I mean Blake, well, he’s a true hero of course.” She tested the ground with the toes of a boot.

How Shakespearean, he thought. We come here not to praise Caesar…

“But, well, we need someone with – I don’t know how else to say it – that killer instinct. Obviously Blake can kill – has killed many, in battle. But as a soldier. We need someone more –”

More what, he wondered? What do we need more than a hero?

She continued: “Sharper, politically astute, a real strategist. Someone who can lead without weapons. Someone with a social vision.”

Her words became more direct, less hypothetical. She was convincing herself, building an argument until it resonated with truth. He knew this path so very, very well.

“Someone like –”

“Shakirvasta.” Dimitri couldn’t resist supplanting the conclusion. He prayed for her to laugh, or shout, to say how preposterous it was. But instead she stared at him, as if she had just noticed him for the first time in hours.

“Exactly!” She beamed. “Back on Eden, Cheveyo was right about you, the genetic engineering really works, doesn’t it! No one else but you can see.”

Oh yes, he thought, scaffolding a smile, I see perfectly these days, no longer lost in the haze of a woman’s scent or my own accolades. No one sees clearer, sharper, than a blind man who recovers his sight.

“But we should keep this to ourselves,” she said, her enthusiasm re-kindled. “When the time is right, after the battle…”

He didn’t hear the rest, didn’t need to. Having worked at the frontier of oceanographic geo-engineering for two decades, he’d crossed paths with Shakirvasta’s Titan Corporation more than once. He knew the man to be a ruthless tyrant whose methods bordered on criminal. Right now, Shakirvasta, the CEO of the most powerful company Earth had ever seen, was keeping a low profile, biding his time. But his true colours would come out, sooner or later.

“Let’s tell Vince Plan C is ready,” he said. She bounced over to him, a vestige of Jen re-emerging as she threw her arms around him. He lifted her easily off the ground so that she clung to him, and he clasped her tight. It took every molecule of his will to finally let her go. Louise, attack now, please, right now, while she is still mine.

The radio shrieked its brief whistle, and Jen eased out of his grip, and snatched the radio from her waist pouch. “Yes?” she said, turning away from him. “Understood. We’ll be ready.” She clicked off the radio, slotting it back into place. She spoke to the violet, early evening sky. “She’s here.”

Chapter 10

First Strike

Louise awoke with a start. As she’d done since the labour camp in Thailand during WWIII, she sprung immediately out of bed. She manoeuvred into a face-down dog-stretch on all fours, exhaling as she pushed her pelvis back and up into the air, straightening out her arms and shoulders, locking her elbows and knees, elongating her spine. Her forehead rested on the floor. When her lungs were empty, she waited a while. She then inhaled and flipped up into her customary three-minute handstand, heels resting lightly against the wall, staring upside-down towards her empty cot. She’d slept alone, not caring what the other two got up to, whether making love or plotting against her.

Blood pumped into her head, smothering the embers of sleep, but not the nightmare that had woken her. She ignored the ritual nagging of her biceps, and let the dream remnants drift back into her consciousness: the Chorazin Medical facility back in New LA; Micah just out of his coma; Antonia paralysed on the floor; somebody behind her with a gun; a click, and time slowing, the sound of a pulse-charged round scorching its way out of the pistol’s barrel, roaring like a runaway train toward the back of her head. She turned, with difficulty, and the scene shifted: she and Vince making love furiously in his office, him slamming into her, she face-down over his desk. Again, she craned her neck to see his face, and the scene morphed into a place she didn’t recognise: a deep purple sky cleaved in two, a blood red gash allowing millions of insect-like creatures – Q’Roth, she now realised – to rain down onto a fluorescent rainbow-coloured city. Someone held her hand, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the scene as the plague of armoured, metallic blue-black locusts feasted on the spiders, bleaching the city in minutes. An oval object tore up the hill towards her vantage point. She squeezed the hand she knew could only belong to Vince, but she could not otherwise move. As the object arrived it slowed in front of her. A mirror. She saw first Vince’s reflection, his brazen blue eyes level as always, then her own – but she was Q’Roth, her trapezoidal matt black head punctuated only by the three diagonal vermillion slits on each cheek. Her mouth opened impossibly wide – the way a Great White shark’s double-jointed jaws unhinge – and she emitted a grinding howl, shattering the mirror, thrusting her back into the waking world.

She lowered her legs, controlled and straight, down to the floor, waited ten seconds, then stood, her breathing rate only marginally above normal. Why Vince? He killed me! She slipped off her sleep-wear and strode naked into the needle shower. Without hesitation she set it to ice cold.

The water chilled her skin first to tingling, then to numbness. Images surfaced of her and Vince in happier times. Partners in every sense of the word. More than once she’d come close to renouncing her Alician heritage and going completely over to his side. But instead her life had ricocheted down a dark alley, after a messy operation in Moscow, where she’d been – what had he called it? – over-enthusiastic. He’d defended her tactics to their Chief, but he’d never treated her the same way afterwards. They got assigned different partners for six months, and after that got to work together again, but… She should have said something, healed it, but she never did. Too bad. She increased the water pressure till she started to shiver.

And now the Alicians had also abandoned her. She felt she was walking a tightrope across a chasm, unconvinced the rope would make it all the way to the other side. She focused, then leaned her head backwards, the shards of glacial water peppering her face, cleansing her resolve. Vince. He was the key. She’d deal with him and no one else. She had to admit it would be good to see him again, assuming she could repress the reflex urge to shoot him dead on sight. She shut off the water and grabbed the towel, drying herself roughly. She wrapped it around her and held herself for a moment, closing her eyes. She didn’t know what she’d say when she saw him. Didn’t know if – how – she’d tell him about the ship she’d vaporised. She’d have to be in a position of power, or the others would kill her in an instant. One way or another, blood was likely to spill today – it was up to Blake and the others how much. She donned her black Alician battle uniform. She caught herself smiling; it would be good to see him again. After all, they’d both killed so many people; what’s a little murder between friends?

Louise occupied the only chair on the bridge of the hunter-destroyer vessel – the Q’Roth never sat, so had no use for seats, but she’d had it installed. It emphasised her position over the other two, standing a few metres behind her at their consoles. She surveyed the images and holostreams of data cascading a few metres in front of her. A waterfall of shiny black figures tumbled against a mustard background, the alphabet unmistakeably Q’Roth, like Chinese calligraphy but with much more attitude: curling blade-like serifs, serrated and hooked with spiked barbs. She understood most of it.

When Sister Esma and the Q’Roth had re-animated her, too much of her original brain matter had been blown away by Vince, so they’d had to install some of the Q’Roth variety. She was a hybrid. She felt no different, except her bloodlust was keener than most Alicians. Compassion seemed like an outrageous concept – only the fittest should rule, the rest should perish or serve in utter obedience. She couldn’t remember if she’d felt the same way before Vince’s bullet. She considered her lover a moment – he had always been a ruthless bastard in humanity’s terms. Like her he had no time for weakness, instead crushing it underfoot. That was why she could deal with him.

“What do you see, Hannah?” she said, not turning around.

There was a pause before Hannah answered, like a child answering a test, Louise thought, uncertain of either the answer or the consequences of an insufficient response.

“I see all three ships, but one of the transponders has been de-activated. The other two are faint, as if something is masking them”

She waited, but nothing more followed. “When I ask what you see, Hannah, I don’t just mean what you perceive with your eyes. What do you understand of their strategy? What do you recommend?”

Hannah coughed. “They must have realised there are transponders and located them. But they’ve only had time to disable one of them. The one with the nuclear device on board. So… I recommend we jump the other two ships into the sun and attack the third ship.”

Louise stood up. You’ll be first to go, she thought, you’re not worthy to carry our new genes. She turned. “And what do you see, Jarvik?” She was glad to have him back onboard – the fact that he had been to the surface and back so quickly meant he would have had no time to upset her plans. There was no way she’d have let Hannah go to the surface.

He lifted his chin and spoke to the datastream. “I see a recursive tracker algorithm encoded into the two surviving transponders.”

Hannah’s eyes flashed accusingly to the holostream and her own data screen; she’d missed the encrypted information.

“I see a trap,” Jarvik continued. “The moment we activate the two other ships, the third will have our transponder code, and no doubt will jump to our position and detonate.” He paused, but Louise remained still, not even nodding agreement with his assessment. He continued. “I propose we use the transponder I planted on the nuclear device to transport it to their new home, the city, and detonate it there.”

Louise allowed the shadow of a smile across her face. It was certainly tempting. The humans’ intentions were clearly aggressive, extreme, desperate. It would be … just. But she had no time for such archaic concepts. There was no right and wrong. There was simply what was. All that mattered in the end was always who survived, and who would rule. Nevertheless, she was impressed that the humans had been relatively ingenious. She’d have to find out later who had engineered this little ruse – maybe someone to recruit, to replace Hannah.

She returned to her seat, facing forward again. “Hannah, let’s see if you can redeem yourself with something a little less taxing. Is life on the planet sustainable?”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice groping for sounder footing. “They’ve found a food source, and water is plentiful.”

Louise ran her fingers through her thick blonde hair. “Jarvik, what do we do after we’ve destroyed them all?” She heard an intake of breath, then – rare for him, perhaps even a first – hesitation.

“Perhaps I spoke rashly,” he said.

She waited. It wasn’t enough for her to be leader; she needed them to understand that she was literally their superior. That was the essence of command.

Hannah got there first. “What would you suggest?”

Louise leaned back against the chair. “We need them alive, for now. But if we ask anything from a position of weakness, they will subdue us, and kill us eventually. First we have to break them. Sister Esma used to say there were two rules of negotiation. The first rule is to avoid asking anything from an enemy. The second rule is that if you do have to ask for something, make sure your enemy is on his knees when you do so.”

She raised herself again from the chair, and strode back to the central console midway between Jarvik and Hannah. “Time to educate them in the meaning of the word strategy.”

◆◆◆

Micah studied the screens in front of him in the Mobile Command Centre, the MCC as everyone called it: a high-tech truck crammed with advanced surveillance gear, most of which he’d never even heard of. It was parked in the open plain, midway between the Q’Roth ships and the city. The stealth vehicle dampened all external emissions including bio-thermal signatures, employing chameleon-ware camouflage, so it was virtually invisible to the naked eye – unless you knew where to look. Micah had no illusions, though, and doubted it would fool Q’Roth sensor technology for a second. He despaired of the military’s blind obsession with techware solutions but, then again, he had no better idea.

He stared at the central array in front of him, a flat screen with scratchy images darting and flashing, making him squint. A greasy-haired young military tech guy fussed over the controls, triple-checking everything. Micah had no intention of distracting him: he’d never used a military Optron before, let alone a field model.

Micah had been an Optron reader for the past five years back on Earth. The virtual reality immersion kit had enabled him to surf the high density data-cores slipstreaming back from space missions such as Blake and Zack’s Ulysses trip to Eden, checking vital telemetry as well as comms. But it was art as well as science. All Optron ‘readers’ created their own Optron landscapes for data encoding, surveillance and interrogation. Only one in a hundred could do it, and as little as one in a hundred thousand could do it well. He didn’t feel particularly clever, it was just the way his brain was wired. What he had always loved, however, and what more than compensated for the occasional blinding migraines, was surfing the data, flying over surrealistic terrains of metallic hues and textures, spying occasional animals representing semi-intelligent sub-routines. But this, he reminded himself, this method he was about to try, he’d never done before.

He’d met military Optron readers once or twice at conventions, and one guy, Hal, had talked about it briefly while they were all getting drunk in Patti’s bar in underground Sylmar. He hadn’t known at the time if Hal had just been bull-shitting or not. Hal had said that after unmanned aerial vehicles and drones in the early part of the century, whereby remote-control surveillance and weapons platforms could be flown pilot-less into enemy territory, came the next generation. Initially these had used micro-cameras – same idea, just smaller and so even harder to detect. But this still only amounted to what was known as tele-presence: someone far away looking at a camera or vid-shot taken somewhere else. It never had the same level of rapport as being there, and so the understanding, the awareness and the reflexes were all a little off.

As Optron technology developed out of the necessity both to handle ultra-high bandwidth telemetry, and still make human sense of it, the military seized the opportunity to advance their deep cover surveillance capability. Essentially, a cluster of self-organising micro-units were fired into enemy territory and acted as a dispersed neural net. An Optron reader could then ‘join up the dots’, fusing the signals into a data landscape much as in a conventional Optron session. The technique had helped turn the tide in several pitched battles in the last weeks of the War. The only downside, Hal had said, was that it had fried the brains of a dozen or so readers on the way.

Micah ran a finger around the collar of his jumpsuit. It felt decidedly stuffy in the MCC, despite the aircon. He’d never ‘flown’ a military Optron, and hadn’t been trained for it. He began to wonder why he’d suggested it in the first place.

Colonel Enrique Vasquez, whom he’d met in Cocos and travelled with to Eden, hovered behind his right shoulder. The military commander had a shock of white cropped hair cresting a high brow. That was the second thing anyone noticed about him, the first being the missing right arm. Once Vasquez’s teal-coloured eyes locked onto somebody, though, that person never once glanced at the missing limb.

“It’s time,” Vasquez said. “The Optronic micro-clusters were sent up an hour ago, they’ll have dispersed in spatial orbit by now.”

Micah picked up the plastic glass of chilled water, gulped it down, then glanced around at Sandy, Jennifer, and Antonia. Sandy winked at him, Jennifer glared, and Antonia found something excruciatingly interesting on the opposite wall. Business as usual. Shakirvasta was also supposed to be there, but hadn’t arrived. Maybe he has more sense. He picked up the black skull-cap with wires trailing out of it, and weighed it in his hands. “I’ve never worn one of these before,” he said, casually, as if talking about a new style of hat. This could turn my brain into mush.

Vasquez laid his surviving hand on his shoulder. “Vince told me you’re the best Optron reader alive, Mr. Sanderson.”

The only one alive, Micah thought, and used to a civilian Optron with the full suite of protective cut-outs and safeguards. But this is mil-tech; they don’t care about a few brain deaths on the road to victory.

Jennifer chipped in behind him. “For God’s sake, put it on, Micah. We need the intel, or else we’re all dead anyway. We need to know where her ship is, how many are onboard, what their tactical situation is. Otherwise she’s going to wipe us out.”

We don’t actually know that. Maybe Louise just wants me and Vince. Louise may be Alician, but she has her own agenda; always had, always will. As Micah eased on the clammy black rubber headpiece, Sandy joined in.

“Commander, it is only his brain that can be fried, isn’t it? I mean, the rest will remain, er, serviceable, won’t it?”

Before Vasquez had a chance to answer, if indeed he ever intended to, Antonia rushed over, stooped down towards Micah, and pressed a moist kiss on his cheek, then retreated just as quickly. A deep blush crawled across his face. He decided he’d better not dwell on it, and pulled the headpiece tight over his scalp, then flicked up a thumb. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Vasquez leaned over so only Micah could hear. “There may be some pain: sharp, pricking sensations. Try not to cry out, it’s bad form in front of the ladies.”

He sincerely hoped Vasquez was attempting humour.

The Colonel straightened up, cleared his throat, and spoke louder. “You’ll be less immersed than you’re used to, so you can talk to us occasionally if the need arises. We’ll be watching the data streams and holo-images you construe with the Optronic software. Remember, a lot of what you see will be in space. That can be pretty disorienting. Keep a mental foothold on Ourshiwann, or else you’ll lose your bearings. If you need to exit at any time, just say the word ‘Exit’ and we’ll cut you loose.”

He nodded. He thought about the hundreds of times he’d ‘gone under’ back on Earth, surfing data landscapes and telemetry from the Ulysses, as well as the earlier Prometheus and Heracles missions to Eden. He remembered however his last few trips: Rudi’s nightmarish digi-world, and the encounter with an alien intelligence – which he now knew to have been the Hohash – buried in the data slipstream. That last little spin on the Optron had put him in a coma.

The tech guy touched a pad, and first the skull-cap, then something inside Micah’s head, began to hum. His vision turned grainy, then black and white, then black. Anaesthetized needles extended from the headband and burrowed into his skull – at least that’s what it felt like. He could still sense his own body, and knew it was tense, muscles flexed, jaw clenched. Then, abruptly, the pain ceased, and the floor fell away and he dropped into cold dark space.

He landed on a clammy floor with a squelching thump. It was just like the material on Q’Roth ships. He felt a little dizzy, but staggered to his feet. Something wasn’t right: no stars, definitely no planet – nothing. He searched in every direction, but all was black. “Exit,” he said, loud and clear. He tried it again, shouting the word. Now why am I not surprised that didn’t work? A clacking noise approached from behind him, but whichever way he turned, it was always behind, and getting closer. Eventually he stopped turning. I’m in someone else’s game. The other player halted just behind him. He thought of all the voices he could hear next, thousands of them. All of them would be welcome except one.

“Hello, Micah,” Louise said. “You’re looking well.”

◆◆◆

Shakirvasta burst into the MCC. Sandy had never seen him panting for breath before, let alone looking dishevelled.

“We’ve … been … compromised.” He doubled over, clinging to the door handle for support. Sandy didn’t budge, but then she didn’t need to, Jennifer was at his side in an instant, helping him up. Sandy noted that Vasquez said nothing, just waited, taut as piano-wire.

Shakirvasta had been running, she supposed, unless this was all for show. However, the sweat tracks suggested otherwise.

He addressed alternately Jennifer and Vasquez, granting Sandy and Antonia occasional consolation glances. “Since we left Earth I’ve been setting up an intelligence and surveillance network –”

Sandy folded her arms. I bet you have.

“– with full cognisance from Commander Blake –”

Full, my ass!

“– including tracking every survivor from Earth. Yesterday, there was an additional person here, for several hours, first on Ramires’ ship, then in Esperantia.”

Clever to use the city’s new name so quickly. Maybe he and Josefsson are actually working together after all. But Sandy felt a gnawing in her stomach. This man was an out and out predator, a raptor, but maybe this time it wasn’t all a ploy.

“We’ve been doing some checking,” Shakirvasta continued. “When we left Earth I managed to salvage the latest Censid crystal –”

Shit! He has detailed data on the whole planet’s population!

“– and I compared its records with Vince’s own Chorizon Profiling Intel Data Crystal –”

This just gets better and better.

“– and there’s no mistake; yesterday’s visitor, one Jarvik Ardvisson, is an Alician.”

Sandy made the connection immediately, and turned to Vasquez, who had already picked up the comms link. “Ramires,” she whispered.

Vasquez nodded. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Wait!” Shakirvasta shouted. “We must assume they now know all our comms frequencies.”

Vasquez eyed him coolly, and proceeded in Spanish, which Sandy understood perfectly. “Ramires, this is Colonel Vasquez. Leave the ship now, your position is compromised. I suggest you run!”

The developing knot in her stomach tightened. Until this moment she hadn’t realised she cared anything for Ramires.

Vasquez tapped Micah on the shoulder, but there was no reaction. He continued speaking into the microphone, in English. “This is Colonel Vasquez in Ops. Code Kappa Alpha, I repeat, code Kappa Alpha.” He put down the thin mike and leant forward, studying the fluidic screen that was linked into Micah’s neural cortex.

Micah’s screen had been registering a dark snowstorm for several minutes now, Sandy realised, and Micah had been immobile. She’d assumed this was normal, but then she’d no idea what happened with these Optron contraptions. “Kappa Alpha?” she asked.

Jennifer spoke up. “It means radio silence: comms are compromised; all units execute their missions unless they hear the pre-arranged termination code.”

Vasquez slanted his head, eyeing Jennifer. “How do you know so much about mil ops. Hold on a minute,” he said, tilting his head back a little, scrutinising her face. “Your surname – O’Donnell. Are you Captain James O’Donnell’s daughter?”

Jennifer nodded, chin up.

And proud of it, too, Sandy thought, whoever the hell he was. But something about the surname snagged her memory too.

Vasquez saluted Jennifer. “One of the International Navy’s finest.”

Jennifer’s face closed up like a clam. Sandy assumed it was to avoid letting the emotions breach the surface.

“There was another hero in my family too. An unsung hero … my brother.” Her voice cracked.

A chill drilled down Sandy’s spine. No, no, NO! It can’t be. Gabriel? O’Donnell was his surname too. Her right hand automatically reached around behind her to the table top to steady herself, while the other instinctively cradled her belly. My God, she thought, I’m carrying Gabriel’s child, and this bitch is his sister? She eased herself backwards so the table ledge supported her weight.

“What’s wrong?” Antonia said.

Sandy jerked her head around, but was relieved to see Antonia wasn’t referring to her. Antonia raced over to Micah, leant over him to take a good look at his face, then almost shouted at Vasquez and the tech. “Bring him out of it, this isn’t right. I’ve watched him use the Optron before, and it wasn’t like this.”

Vasquez glanced to the tech, who manoeuvred himself in front of Micah, and began checking various wires and indicators. “Sir, I believe she’s right. We should extract him, there seems to be some kind of malfunction.”

Vasquez nodded. The tech depressed a touch panel. Micah’s body immediately arched backwards violently, his mouth sucking in a jagged breath, arms shaking spasmodically, forearms flexed and rigid as iron. Sandy watched helplessly as Micah’s face, eyes closed, contorted in pain. She’d seen her own asshole of a father die like this. “Cardiac arrest,” she said, “Jack him back in!”

The bewildered tech glanced from her to Vasquez.

“Do it”, Vasquez said. The tech punched a display icon, and Micah’s body slumped, his breathing fluttering back to normal.

“Sir,” the tech said, cascading through various screen displays and readouts, “I don’t know how, but his central nervous system has been tagged into the virtual world. It’s not supposed to happen, there are cut-outs everywhere to avoid this, but –”

“Louise,” Sandy said, flat. “Louise has him.” And this time she won’t let him go.

A stark alarm sounded, then another one. She knew what they signified. The first two Q’Roth hulks, emptied of people and supplies, had just jumped to God knew where. She folded her arms and held her elbows tight, trying not to display any emotion, but inside, her stomach churned. Run, Ramires, run for your life!

◆◆◆

Ramires hurtled down the spiral walkway as fast as he could, careening down all nine levels, ricocheting off the sweating walls of the last Q’Roth transport. He sprinted so fast on the last level that his lungs barely kept pace, rendering his eyesight blotchy. He saw the open hatchway beckoning him, five metres away. A half-second later he felt the static on the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck that told him the ship was about to jump. With a sharp inbreath and then a guttural grunt he kicked off the ground and launched himself towards life, just as the scene luminesced towards a mercurial frozen death. Time slowed, and he was sure he was about to die. But he still travelled through the increasingly dense air-turning-fluid, slowly, getting slower. He was almost at the threshold, the inviting darkness almost within his reach, the brightening light clawing him backward to oblivion. He heard a voice, he was certain he did, and the deep tone could only have been that of his dead master, the last Sentinel Grandmaster, Cheveyo, who uttered two words.

Time unlocked and his body broke free and crash-landed into the dusty ground in the darkness. An ear-pummelling thunderclap rocked his sprawling body, a departing howl from the gargantuan Q’Roth vessel as it disappeared with its nuclear payload to somewhere, maybe the nearest star, but definitely not its target. He lay crumpled on Ourshiwann’s soil, his chest heaving, savouring the ground’s welcome harsh embrace, thankful for the stars up above, even if accompanied by a stinging thumping and ringing in his ears. He panted there for a full minute, arms spread wide, knees up, letting his heart decelerate.

He re-played it over in his mind. Had he really heard those words? What did they mean? Neither he, nor Cheveyo, nor any of the Sentinels were particularly religious, and didn’t believe in an afterlife. He got to his feet, dusted himself off, and glanced down toward the valley and the hazy glow of the newly-inhabited spider city. He tracked across thirty degrees to the right, where he knew the stealth-coated MCC truck was located. He picked out two distant mountain tops to use as transits, checked stars to use as a third navigation aid, and set off on a fast run toward the command centre.

While he closed the distance between himself and the MCC, the words kept playing over and over again in his mind; just two words, with no explanation. Somehow, Cheveyo had secured him across the threshold, out of the de-materialising Q’Roth ship, back to life, in order to fulfil a mission. So he would do what he had been asked, no matter if he didn’t understand why.

He would protect Sandy.

◆◆◆

Micah sat cross-legged on the floor. Louise hadn’t lingered. She’d told him to stay put, that she’d be back, and that a few things had changed. He hadn’t said anything, just watched her walk off into the darkness. She hadn’t killed him, at least. But he’d learned not to trust anything about Louise.

He wasn’t tired, since he knew that in the real world he was already in a chair – only his mind was trapped in this virtual holding cell. It was dark around him, but not completely: he could see ten metres or so in any direction – not that there was anything to see. He’d considered exploring, but had a bad feeling that he might get lost, and never be retrieved – if in fact he wasn’t already irretrievable. So he waited. Besides, during his early Optron training at the Zen centre in Palo Alto, he’d learned to meditate on the void, and this place pretty much looked like what he’d envisaged. He closed his eyes and counted his breaths, so as not to start ruminating on his imminent demise. He felt oddly calm, until he was pretty sure someone or something else was there with him.

He opened his eyes to find a Hohash in front of him, close enough to touch with his finger-tips. Its mirror face swirled with clouds of electric blues. He wondered if Louise had sent it, but that didn’t make sense, she’d probably never even seen one. The other option was that the others around his real body had somehow contacted one of these artefacts, and… But no, so far, only Kat had any luck in communicating with the Hohash, and she was lost, probably dead.

“How did you find me?” he said, fully expecting no answer. The swirling electric storm continued unabated. He decided to have a one-way conversation. Besides, as he’d once said to his Zen master, counting breaths is really boring. His fellow students had been shocked, but the tiny wizened man had belly-laughed, and said that Micah was ready to leave, while the others would have to stay a while longer.

Micah hadn’t had much contact with these artefacts, but since seeing the spider city, a burr had lodged in his mind. “Well,” he said, “what I’ve been wondering, you see, is…” he felt a little embarrassed. He coughed and continued. “The spider city. It’s quaint and all that, and their artistic skills were clearly to die for. But the technology, it’s just not that surprising. It’s like they stopped innovating thousands of years ago. They developed a brilliantly sustainable ecological environment, built self-maintaining systems that would last millennia, and then … just sat back.”

He paused. Was this going anywhere? But he’d learned a long time ago to let his mind roam sometimes. Freud, or more probably Jung, would argue that the subconscious mind knew the target destination, and by talking it through, he’d eventually arrive.

“So, would a race driven to such technological marvels just stop like that? We didn’t. Our own love affair with technology has survived three world wars, any one of which should have sent a sensible race scattering back to their ancestral caves. And yet your masters did amazing things, and then just hung up their … whatever, and started sky-painting.” He could feel an idea beginning to resonate. He stood up, with almost no effort at all, speaking quicker, eager to find the root argument. “And another thing. Why didn’t they explore space? Staying tied to this planet was tantamount to an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, knowing other alien forces were out there.” Something clicked inside his brain. He stared hard at the Hohash.

“So how did they build you?” This had been the chrysalis-like question sheltering deep in his mind. He spoke louder, firmer, almost accusing the Hohash. “I’ve seen nothing that equates to your level of technology on the planet. Nothing that even meets your level of technology half-way.”

Then it hit him. He took a step backwards. He stared at the Hohash mirror anew. “They didn’t make you, did they? You … you found them!” His thoughts solidified into instinctive knowledge, the type of truth which needs no evidence. He knew that these artefacts must be very, very old.

Still reeling from what now seemed to be the unassailable truth, he caught his breath as the clouds on the Hohash cleared to reveal four images: Blake and Zack in a Hohash scout-ship; Sandy and the others in the MCC; Vince and Kostakis in the trap laid for Louise; and the inside of a strange ship where Louise and two others, a man and woman he didn’t know, stared towards an image he couldn’t see.

“Can anyone hear me?” he shouted, not caring if Louise did. But there was no answer. Sensor information, he figured: the Hohash trafficked in electromagnetic transmissions, and apparently could pick up any media being transmitted or recorded. He sat down again, his mind feeling tired. “Okay,” he said, “I get it. At least I get a ring-side seat.”

◆◆◆

Zack powered up the Hohash craft, but there was no noise. Blake found it curious that the spider species, who didn’t appear to have used sound at all – he suspected they were deaf – could design equipment so quiet. The seven metre diameter ship they’d discovered two days ago underneath Esperantia was identical to the one he’d flown on Eden – the one which Pierre and Kat had been lost in. There wasn’t much spare room between him, Zack to his right piloting the vehicle, and the table-sized cubic metre nuclear device planted in the middle of the craft. He gave it a cold stare. It sat, innocent enough, but he’d seen a dozen detonations in WWIII and knew the unthinkable annihilating power it could unleash. The hammer of God, General Kilaney had once remarked, while they had witnessed from space the obliteration of huge tracts of enemy territory.

He watched Zack busy with his controls. Blake was resolved about dying, since Glenda would join him soon enough in the grand scheme of things, and would understand his sacrifice. Zack, on the other hand, was leaving behind a loving family: Sonja about to be a widow, his kids orphans.

The outside vista of the mountains evaporated, replaced by stars. The half-darkened globe of Ourshiwann appeared beneath them as they snapped into orbit. He cast an eye over the still-light Eastern crescent, its rugged mountain ranges speckled with sparse vegetation, but no cities. The spider civilisation had not grown or sprawled the way humanity had, taking up every nook and cranny, digging ever deeper into Earth’s diminishing resource pockets. Somehow, the spiders had matured to a level of stability and peace undreamed of by humankind. We could have learned so much from you, he thought, though not survival.

He had to ask the question. “How did the goodbye go with Sonja?”

Zack shifted in his seat.

“You did say goodbye, didn’t you? Zack, what –”

“Don’t, boss, just don’t. It’s my life, what’s left of it.”

Blake said no more.

The com-link blurted a message. “This is Colonel Vasquez, head of Ops. Code Kappa Alpha, I repeat, code Kappa Alpha.”

“Great,” Zack said. “So we have no triangulation, no means of detecting Louise’s ship other than the Hohash, assuming they even understand what we want from them.”

Blake set his jaw. “It’s begun.”

Zack stretched his large frame back in his fighter pilot’s chair, which he’d anchored into the Hohash craft’s Spartan interior. “We’ll find her, or she’ll find us, though if I’m honest I prefer the first option.” He faced the bank of screens he’d jury-rigged into the craft, borrowed from the Ulysses which they’d brought along with them from Eden. “I reckon Ramires’ plan failed, he should have detonated by now, we’d pick that up for sure anywhere within a million kilometres.”

Blake cracked the knuckles in his right fist.

“You impatient, boss?”

He smiled. “No. I was just thinking, I never, ever even so much as slapped a girl when I was a kid. I tried never to raise my voice to a woman when I was an adult, let alone a hand, and here I am about to nuke one single woman.”

“Now, Commander Blake, That’s not very nice.”

Blake leapt up from his seat, drawing and firing his pistol, sending a pulse charge clean through the heart of the shimmering image hovering above their nuclear cargo. Louise didn’t flinch.

Zack banked the craft hard. Blake gripped a lanyard hanging from the ceiling, but the image remained stationary relative to its surroundings. Zack made a brief transit, Blake guessed a few hundred kilometres, but the image resolutely stayed exactly where it was.

“Boys, relax, I’m just here to talk.”

But Blake recognised the hunger hiding behind Louise’s smile, one he’d seen all too often in people who’d gotten a taste for killing. He turned to Zack, the Louise hologram behind him, and mouthed the word “where?” Zack shook his head a fraction, ignoring Louise, hunting for the signal source on his screens.

“What do you want, Louise?” Blake faced her off, holstering his pistol, folding his arms.

“You won’t believe me if I tell you.” Her smile vanished.

“Try me,” he said.

“Yes!” Zack growled from behind him, and the ship lurched sideways. Blake saw Louise glance down, a lined creasing her brow. She said something he didn’t catch to someone on her left, then faced forward again. “Zack,” she shouted, “Zack, stop it now. It doesn’t have to be this way.’”

The stars outside vanished, dissolving into an out-of-focus room, with pipes and objects Blake couldn’t make out. But he knew Zack had done it – he’d traced the signal back to Louise’s ship. It was now or never. He reached over to the controls beneath Louise’s fading image.

“Not yet, boss, they’re blocking us from fully materialising. Just a few more seconds.”

Louise’s eyes, pupils sharp as needles, stabbed towards Blake’s hand hovering above the detonation switch. “You leave me no choice. Zack! Do you remember Paris?”

It was such a non-sequitur, Blake thought, and she said the last phrase in such an odd way, with unusual inflexions. It took a second to realise it must be the trigger code for the implant he’d suspected Zack having since the Eden Mission. But when Zack didn’t reply, and he saw Louise’s face relax, he knew what was coming. Just as he reached for the detonation plunger, he was yanked backwards by grapple-like hands. He tried to grab his pistol, but Zack twisted him by his legs. Zack’s ox-like strength twirled Blake like a rag doll, and his head and shoulders hit the deck hard. As soon as Zack let go of one foot, Blake lashed out with the other, but although he caught Zack solidly in the chest, a meteor-like heel crashed down on his own solar plexus, winding him completely, draining his strength away, as his nervous system went into shock. He knew it would only take one second for him to recover enough to be able to retaliate, or at least to defend. But there was no respite in the furious, deep-psyche-encoding the Alicians must have carried out on Zack back in Thailand. A single huge hand engulfed Blake’s throat, his thumb and middle finger mercilessly squeezing both carotid arteries. He stared wide-eyed up into Zack’s looming demonic face. Zack’s black eyes raged at who-knew-what insane lies had been buried there ten years earlier, powered into overdrive by a sudden hormone imbalance which gear-shifted the part of the human brain known as the ‘reptile brain’ into command. Blake’s arms and legs struggled with all his might, but he knew he was no match for Zack. His vision blurred, and he felt a sharp spike in his left carotid. Everything he saw turned blood red, then began to fade. He had no breath left, and felt the life being cut from him. Glenda! he thought, then his mind freefell into blackness.

“Munich was better,” Louise said, using the same strange inflexions.

Zack’s eyes snapped back into focus, and then the whites grew large as he flung himself off Blake. “What the hell?”

Blake lay immobile. Zack stared in horror at the growing purple bruise darkening the left side of Blake’s neck, his left eye blood red. He cautiously reached a hand over to the other carotid where he detected a thready pulse. He bent over and put his ear above Blake’s mouth. He heard a scratchy, rasping breath, like an old man’s, coming from his mentor, his friend.

“It’s over,” Louise said. “During that little event, we disabled your device, but a lot of your craft’s systems got fried in the process.”

Zack didn’t care. He squeezed his own eyes shut for a moment. The memory came back to him now: he’d been there, inside his body, staring down as he’d strangled his best friend. Still hunched over Blake, he lodged a knuckle into his mouth and bit till he tasted blood, emitting a groan that grew into a roar. The eye-searing astringent smell of ozone and burnt circuits confirmed that this was no nightmare he was going to ever wake up from. He eased off the knuckle, and took a deep breath. With one hand on Blake’s chest, he swivelled to see that most of the screens were dead, various pieces of kit sizzling and sputtering into silence. Outside there were stars again.

He stood, facing Louise’s image. “You fucking whore –”

She held up a hand. “I can do it again if you like, Zack, and leave you to tear the ship apart, and the rest of Blake.”

Zack loomed like a chained bear. “What the fuck do you want, bitch?”

“Just hear me out,” Louise said. “That is, if you want him to live.”

He barely felt the aching of his fore-finger knuckle bitten to the bone, as his blood trickled to the floor. The pain wasn’t enough, he wanted to tear at some more of his own flesh, but mostly his hands wanted to be around her neck. We both die, Louise, that’s the way it’s going to be. That’s the only endgame now. After I get Blake to the medics.

He folded his arms, his eyes burning steady as molten steel. “I’m listening.”

Chapter 11

Mannekhi

Pierre lifted his hands from the Omskrat orb, and felt the outside world engulf him, like a tsunami breaching an empty lagoon. But the real world seemed pale by comparison.

“How long this time?” he asked.

“Four bloody hours, Pierre. If you’re still Pierre.”

He stared at her for a while, then broke off as he realised he was doing so. “Sorry. It’s pretty immersive.” He had few words to describe it. It was less like he had been somewhere else, than he had been someone else – no, not someone, he thought, something else.

“So, what did you learn this time?”

Kat’s voice had her usual razor-wire edge, but it affected him less each time he came ‘out’.

“It started a billion years ago –”

“Good opener. Is this going to be long, though? I may have to wash my hair this evening.”

He knew better than to fence with Kat – he’d lose. “In another galaxy.” He sighed. He had to forewarn her. “One that’s no longer there.” He paused. She said nothing. At least he had her attention now.

“There was a fantastic civilisation, brimming with energy and life, almost every habitable world populated and thriving, species … I couldn’t begin to explain. A commercialism and tolerance which bred peace. Until…” His chest felt heavy. When he’d been in communication with the educational orb known as the Omskrat, he’d been objective, untouched emotionally. Now, however, the full weight of what he’d seen squashed him with the gravity of a gas giant.

He hadn’t noticed, but Kat was now sitting beside him, her arm around his shoulders. He looked at her, really looked at her for the first time in days.

“Hello, Pierre,” she said, “welcome back.”

“You understand what I’m going through, don’t you?”

She lay her head against the smooth white wall behind them. “You mean my node? Sort of. The immersion is similar – detached, that’s why they got banned, you know, too many psychotic episodes and meaningless homicides.” She half-laughed, then faced him square. “But when I come out, it’s still me, I’m not actually changed on the inside. With you, however…” She stood up and strolled to the other side of the small chamber and sat opposite him, hands pressing down on the cushioned seat. “Pierre, you’re slipping away from me. And not just me either. You’re losing your humanity, and I’m not just talking about your eyes.”

He nodded. She was right. Part of him was mourning his own slow disappearance. And yet, another part…

“Come on,” she said, “you started a good story. Tell me, it helps.”

He tried to smile. “Okay. The Kalaheii –”

“Who?”

“Right, sorry. One of the ascendant races at the time, called the Kalaheii –”

“What did they look like?”

He was surprised by the question, but more so by his inability to give a straight answer. “It’s … it’s not exactly visual. Well, some of it is, but other times it’s just … knowledge, facts.” Like it’s being hardwired into me, he thought. So I don’t forget. He understood now the power of this educational tool: it was indoctrinating him.

She shrugged, waving a hand. “Whatever. Carry on.”

“The Kalaheii wanted to rule over all the other races. There was a leader amongst them, Qaroll, who led a galactic coup. Thousands of worlds were conquered.” Pierre knew the death toll had been on an unimaginable scale. He tried to recall what came after trillions. “But seven of the ancient races, led by the Kalarash –”

“Gosh, the letter ‘K’ was popular in this galaxy. Sorry, please do continue.”

He paused, taking in her features, remembering the moment he thought he would drown – only a week ago.

“Oh come on, Pierre, don’t sulk. I promise to be quiet.”

He supposed it must sound abstract. But he knew that although it was legend, mythic, that it was also at some level true. He decided to cut to the chase. “There was a horrific war, the stakes kept getting higher. Suns were used as weapons, first by making a system’s star go nova, then later as actual missiles; whole stars jumped into other systems. The scale of artillery was literally astronomical: black holes, white holes, space-time tears that could engulf armadas or planetary systems alike, dark matter weapons; even harnessing dark energy to skim off some of the outlying enemy star systems on the galactic rim, accelerating them out into the inter-galactic void. But Qaroll was losing, so he and the Kalaheii developed the ultimate weapon.” He swallowed, at least tried to.

Kat’s voice grew soft. “They developed a way to destroy a galaxy, didn’t they Pierre?”

He stared at her.

“How did they do it?”

He realised that the operation on his eyes meant he could no longer shed tears. He took a breath. “They turned off all the suns. Einstein’s equation works both ways. They found a way to invert the normal flow of the basic laws of physics, reverting energy to matter. Everything … condensed to rock.”

They sat for a while in silence.

“Seven of the ancient races escaped to this galaxy. They began fostering a new society here millions of years ago. They took their time, being ultra-careful, instilling a discipline, an order. Still, civilisations rose and fell at least a hundred times in that period. Each time the ancients, the Progenitors, would wait a while and then start again. This current society has lasted longest, however, and reached stability about a million years ago.”

“So, are our Ossyrian friends one of these ancient races?”

“Ah, no, they’re only Level Eight. The Progenitors are gone, or in hiding somewhere. Three races left to explore other galaxies, and the other two disappeared, fading into obsolescence. There’s a myth that one race became Gaia-like gods, each super-being inhabiting the consciousness of a new world, then surrendering and merging with its nature, teaching its inhabitants how to advance, or simply experiencing evolution all over again.”

“That leaves one.”

“Yes, the Kalarash. They were the last to leave, though myth has it one of them remained, hiding or in abeyance, as overseer.” He felt tired, his brain wanted to sleep, as he’d come to expect shortly after each Omskrat session.

“The Kalaheii were pretty advanced, then?”

His eye-lids were heavy. “Yes,” he managed.

“Seems odd, then.”

He found it difficult to focus. “What do you mean?”

She knelt in front of where he was sitting. He resisted an over-powering urge to lie down.

“I’m asking the question you should be asking, Pierre. This little orb is not just showing you things, it’s constraining your thinking. It’s the perfect educational instrument – what to think, but also what not to think; building walls in your mind.”

He managed to sit up straight, so he could think better. “Kat – what are you talking about?” He was angry, and not sure why.

“These Kalaheii, a master race, hell-bent on galactic domination – would they really obliterate themselves?”

“They were losing the –”

“Doesn’t matter. Losing is just a stepping stone to winning. That’s what my uncle used to say.”

His mind felt like glue. Her uncle? That seemed like another lifetime – no, another universe away. Her uncle had been some power-mad media mogul, fifth richest man on the planet at one stage, and his influence had gotten Kat onto the crew of the Ulysses, with him and Blake and Zack. With a shudder he realised they’d only landed on Eden a month ago.

She stood up. “You see, I know ego-maniacal despots up close and personal, and they don’t suffer from spite. Revenge, hell yes, and as for controlling people and dominating them completely…” She looked away. “Anyway, killing themselves so no one can take the prize is simply not their style.”

“But then … what?”

She shrugged. “You’re the genetically enhanced one. You tell me.”

Just as a thought struck him, the orb flashed a blue pulse, and a sharp pain javellined through his head. He buckled over, clutching his temples, his jagged breathing rasping in his ears. Kat’s hands touched his head, stroked his neck.

“You see, I was right. That orb is educational alright, in the classical sense. These ancients instilled order, this caste system of levels. You’re not meant to have thoughts above your station.”

Pierre fought hard to cling to the thought retreating just out of reach. The galaxy-killer – what if it hadn’t been a weapon? He heard a noise inside his head like a train getting closer, braking hard, the noise reaching a crescendo, Kat shouting his name in the distance… He blacked out.

When he awoke, Kat had her back to him. She was facing the Hohash, which was showing her something he couldn’t make out, as she was between him and the alien artefact. He tried to sit up, but his head felt like it had a jack-hammer inside it. He groaned.

“Morning, sleepy head. Hangover, darling? Out with the boys again last night?”

He still couldn’t get used to this strange mock intimacy between them. If only they’d had a few more days on the Hohash craft before the Ossyrians had found them, maybe their relationship could have got off the starting blocks. Of course, another few days and they’d have died of lack of oxygen and food.

“Had a chat with the bitch last night,” Kat said, conversationally.

He found that if he moved very slowly, the hammer poised inside his head didn’t strike. He managed to prop his head on his hand. He had no idea what Kat meant, but decided to play along.

“Find out anything useful?”

“Yep.”

Pierre didn’t know the rules of this particular game. He’d never gotten past first base before, let alone been invited to the drinks party afterwards. “Er … what, exactly?”

“I’m Level 3 pushing 4, you’re already Level 5, and your little itsy-bitsy nannite friends are wreaking havoc with the usual Chinese walls the orb erects in your brain.”

He risked sitting up, incurring a full-frontal sledgehammer. He let out a shriek.

She turned around, her sharp eyes cutting through his pain, reminding him that their brief love-making had not in fact been a fantasy.

“I’m proud of you, Pierre. It took those Alician motherfuckers – as Zack would say – eight hundred years to begin to approach Level 5, and you made it in seven days.”

He went to nod, then thought better of it; he sensed the mallet of plazsteel hanging, threatening. “How did you communicate, Kat?”

She shifted sideways so he could see the Hohash. It was displaying fields of text, pictures, resembling a large vertical computer screen. “They figured out how to configure the Hohash to interface with the orb. I don’t get programmed like you, though, so no headaches.” She frowned. “Not sure why they let me see it all without the constraints though.”

A door irised open, and an Ossyrian stepped through, the wall sealing seamlessly behind her. He was sure it was the same Ossyrian, though they had only seen a few since their arrival. She faced him and her eyes blazed information into his brain. It stung, and before he knew what was happening one of the Ossyrian’s silver hands was at his neck. It extruded into his skin. He half-expected Kat to attack or shout, but she watched placidly – she’d obviously decided either to trust them, or that any kind of resistance was futile. Pierre felt soothing rain inside his head, drizzling away the residual heat from the battle enjoined there.

“Well?” Kat said.

He jolted himself back to the surface – she was right, the Ossyrian had just downloaded a lot of information into him. “They’re going to remove my nannites. But first, they need to answer a distress call – a plague on a small planetary system in what are called the dark territories: an old war tore up space-time in this region, making transiting difficult. We’ll get to observe, see them in action, from a distance. And … well, later, they will take us to one of the Grid hubs, and present evidence of our Level 4 and 5 status to the Grid Hierarchy.”

“Nice. Will that help us? Will it help Blake and the others, assuming they’re still alive?”

He heard the plaintive tone in her voice. She was angry at everything that had happened. And why not, he thought. “I don’t know. It means we might get patronage from another race –”

“You mean enslavement, don’t you?”

Pierre didn’t know how to answer. The orb had shown him, made him believe in the necessity of the galactic order. Kat had seen it on the Hohash, like a movie, whereas he had felt it to the core of his DNA. The Grid laws had functioned well for a million years. Who was humanity to try and go against them? But he decided to be diplomatic. “We’ll see. We’re not there yet, anyway. Oh, and the bitch, as you call her – her name is Chahat-Me. And she understands English now, though her vocal system can’t make our sounds like ours.”

Kat turned to the Ossyrian. “Charmed, I’m sure. Anyway, ‘bitch’ is a term of endearment, really. Just between us girls, that is.”

Pierre smiled. It felt odd to his facial muscles. It had been a while. “I’m really glad you’re here Kat.”

Her eyes sparkled. “So stick around, okay?”

◆◆◆

Kat watched from the viewport of their small pyramid that had detached from the mother ship. The huge silver ball shed pyramids like crystal snowflakes falling from orbit towards the yellow-green planet below. Despite herself, she was impressed by these Ossyrians, and relieved that compassion wasn’t a uniquely human trait. She felt Pierre’s hand touch hers, tentative, unsure. She took it, wrapped her fingers around his, and squeezed. She would lose him, sooner or later. Sooner, she decided. She let go.

She stepped away from the portal and glanced at Chahat-Me who was maybe looking at them both, maybe not – it was impossible to tell with her quicksilver eyes. She sat cross-legged in front of the Hohash. It displayed data on the progress of the medical mission as she’d requested. She’d studied epidemiology at University before crossing over into comms, and was interested to see how much more advanced this race was at dealing with pandemics.

The Hohash entertained a number of vistas and displays with fuzzy maroon borders: some were actual pictures relayed from the surface. One showed the Ossyrians in golden encounter suits which she presumed served as protection against the plague, either for themselves or to prevent them from becoming carriers. They streamed out, administering equipment and drugs. Some Ossyrians were on foot, others on amber sleds that skimmed the surface as smoothly as an ice skater on a frozen lake.

Another vista showed Ossyrian pyramids, slowly spinning, traversing the landscape at low level, dispersing a colourless hazy gas over the landscape. However, she was drawn to one particular data screen that illustrated circular pictograms of the spread and density of the affected areas: concentric circles radiating out from an obvious epicentre. Three-dimensional graphs, like mountain ranges, showed density of the plague as a function of the region and time since it had started. As she stared at it, she knew something wasn’t right. A stabbing pain behind her right eye made her jolt and let out a gasp.

Pierre turned around from the portal. “Are you alright?”

“Good question.” She knew what it was. It was the Hohash – it had just nudged her mind for some reason. She looked at the display again. It looked perfectly normal, exactly what she’d expect from her knowledge and understanding of epidemiological incursions; a textbook case. She studied it harder. It was a classic example… This time the pain made her cry out. Chahat-Me’s silver paw on her shoulder stopped her from toppling backwards. She scrunched her eyes closed, trying to recover her breathing. It was as if a needle had just passed through her eyeball. She leaned forwards, her hands on the ground for support.

“What’s going on?” Pierre said, standing in front of her.

She opened her eyes to see Chahat-Me move towards the Hohash, she guessed to try and disable it. “No,” she said firmly. “It’s trying to tell us something, to make me see something.” She pushed away Pierre’s steadying hand that had replaced the Ossyrian’s on her shoulder, and rocked forward onto her knees. She took a breath, and squinted at the data fields, ready for another mind-pulse through her node. This time it didn’t come, it didn’t have to: she got it. She rose to her feet, accepting the helping hand from Pierre. She spoke directly to the Ossyrian.

“It’s a trap! It’s so perfect an example of plague radiation, so classic a mixture of randomness and single node origin that it has to be false. Someone has lured you here.”

Chahat-Me’s eyes danced.

“What’s she saying, Pierre?”

He moved side to side with her. “I don’t know, it’s too fast, too complex, or both. I think she’s communicating with the others, rather than us.”

Kat supposed he was right – their Ossyrian guardian had that look of being elsewhere, as far as she could tell. Abruptly, as Kat looked on, fascinated by the shapes forming and collapsing at almost subliminal speeds, the eyes settled down, then appeared flat. But she wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Chahat-Me held out her two arms, and each one split into two thinner arms, peeling apart as if they had only been lightly stuck together, all the way to the armpits. Kat and Pierre both took a step backwards. One pair of the thinner arms swung back behind her to a wall control panel which appeared out of nowhere and blurred into action. The space they occupied went dark, just before their craft rocked heavily.

Kat tumbled into a corner, her shoulder landing hard up against one of the benches. She tried to get up but gravity squeezed her into the soft fabric, her internal organs pressing against her back. She realised they must be doing high-G manoeuvres, straining the inertial dampers to their limit. When it stopped she ended up rolling helplessly into the centre towards the other side, only to be stopped by one of Chahat-Me’s feet which pushed down on her chest, pinning her to the floor. The room spun a few times and then the sense of normality returned, leaving only a trace of nausea, reminding her of her space sickness training two years earlier.

The foot released her. She sat up, glaring at Chahat-Me, but she managed to growl a begrudging “Thanks, I think.” Pierre was already up behind her, and helped her to her feet. “What –?” But she didn’t need to ask, as soon as her gaze reached the portal.  She saw the mother ship shattered into several large chunks, surrounded by myriad smaller fragments. Flames sputtered, then winked out as soon as they formed, as the oxygen flashed into space. She glanced at the Hohash, still in view mode, giving ugly close-up shots of Ossyrians tumbling into space, jerking spasmodically for a few seconds before freezing into corpses that would shortly be cremated as they fell towards the atmosphere. A number of Ossyrians on the planet lay prone on the ground, the helmets of their encounter suits smashed open, their muzzles gasping and bodies twitching, clearly unable to make any concerted movement. Nerve gas, she reckoned. The low-level pyramids were crashing, one by one, she presumed due to some kind of EM pulse or similar device disabling their engines or guidance systems, probably both. She watched the mother ship explode into even more fragments, though many of them remained whole. Only then did the other ships appear – black, spiked spheres reminding her of long-spined sea urchins. They approached the fragments and stuck into them, pricking their hulls. They’re boarding the mother ship, or what’s left of it.

“Why?” Pierre said.

Kat knew it was a pointless question. What he really meant was how could they? She reckoned it was probably technology capture by a lower level race. Then came a shock. The Hohash showed some of those boarding. They were wearing space suits and though she couldn’t see their heads inside the helmets, they definitely looked humanoid. She snuck a glance at Chahat-Me, to find that she was communicating with Pierre. She waited, trying not to look at the carnage.

“Mannekhi raiders,” he said, “Level 5.” He seemed about to speak, but stalled, staring at the Ossyrian. His eyes moved like Chahat-Me’s, only less fluidly.

“What?” Kat asked.

Pierre’s brow creased, and he looked from Chahat-Me to Kat, then out the portal. “We’re … we’re cloaked. So…”

Kat walked up to him, put her hands on his elbows. “Pierre, talk to me. What’s going on?”

He turned back to her. Despite the silver eyes, she could see how anxious he was. He sat down on the bench.

“The Ossyrians have a vow to help people, a kind of Hippocratic oath.”

She folded her arms. “So, they’re going to stand by, while these Mannekhi bastards –”

“No. No, that’s just it. They have a higher oath, related to Galactic security. If the Mannekhi get the technology, the database from a mothership, well…” He waved a hand, listlessly.

She glanced through the portal again. Around thirty of the spike-ships festooned the collapsing hull fragments of the Ossyrian’s mighty vessel. “What can they do?’ What can we do? We’re just one tiny ship, maybe the only ones free right now.”

Without warning, Chahat-Me seized Kat’s shoulders and spun her around to face her, catching both her wrists and locking them in a vice-like grip. Kat’s eyes were wild. “Pierre!” But she sensed no movement behind her. Damn – he knows what she’s going to do to me! She watched as Chahat-Me’s second pair of aluminium-coloured arms transfigured at the ends into large needles – syringes.

“Pierre! What’s going on?”

He stood up, laid a hand on her shoulder. “She’s saving your life.”

With a blur, the first syringe stabbed into the left side of her neck, a fraction of a second before the second one pricked her belly.

“Christ!” she yelled, just as Chahat-Me released her. She took a swing at the dog-faced alien but hit nothing more than air, nearly falling over.

“Kat, don’t.”

She regained her balance, and glared at the dispassionate Ossyrian, then turned to Pierre. “Wanna see if you can move that quickly too?”

He stood right in front of her. “Go ahead. I won’t move.”

Her fist ached to connect with someone, or something; she realised how much she’d been holding in this past week. She thought about hitting the wall, but she’d given that up years ago. “Tell me what she just did to me.”

Pierre walked over to the portal. “Come and see.”

Reluctantly she joined him, just in time to catch a flash of emerald lightning that lit up everything. For a moment, as far as she could see, space turned an eerie green, and then faded back to black. “Fireworks. So what?”

He nodded towards the vista. She watched. The bustle of activity slowed down. Ships still moved, but nothing changed course. One or two of the spike ships collided, bursting into flame for a second before snuffing out. Her anger subsided. Everything was stilling, silent – she tried to avoid the word which most aptly described the scene, but said it anyway. “Dead?” She tried to imagine how that could be.

He nodded.

“How?” So fast, she thought, so damned efficient.

“A Level Eight weapon, like an electromagnetic pulse, but tuned only to organic signatures. Operates on what they call the epsilon spectrum: subatomic, penetrates hulls and shields.”

She felt light-headed, nauseous. “Then why aren’t we dead?”

“The weapon targets anything organic without Ossyrian DNA. The ship’s cloak transmits the DNA signature, and, I already have some Ossyrian DNA so my body doesn’t reject the eyes, and now … well, now you have some too.”

She sensed there was something else he wasn’t telling her, but it would wait. She moved back to see the Hohash, and was aghast. “The population! It’s wiping them out too!”

“I know. You were right about it all being too perfect. Most probable scenario is that the inhabitants, or at the least their government or factions of it, were in on the raid from the start. Probably they were promised advanced technology too.”

She stared in disbelief. “But that’s all supposition. You don’t know that. She doesn’t know that for sure!”

Pierre faced her, with those damned eyes. Less human again, she thought, the Ossyrian’s defender.

“You were right, Kat, and thanks to you they had a few seconds to take the appropriate precautions, or at least to set in motion their contingency protocol.”

“A few seconds! A few fucking seconds to decide to commit genocide!” Her fists were ready for use again.

“They’re Level Eight, Kat. They think much faster than we do, and have considered all manner of scenarios before, including this one, and the appropriate response.”

“Stop talking like a diplomat, Pierre! It doesn’t give them the right –”

“But it does, Kat, that’s the whole point. That’s how this galaxy works.”

“Like the Q’Roth culling us. That okay with you too, Pierre?”

She saw his confidence falter, a crack in the façade. Too little, too late. But she had nothing more to say. She moved to where she could see neither the Hohash nor the portal, drew her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. Pierre kept his distance, but the Ossyrian walked over towards her. It opened its mouth revealing the fibrous layers, like she’d seen once inside a dead whale’s jaws. A shrieking noise like a psychedelic choir emanated. Through the cacophony, Kat made out two distorted words: thank you.

She turned her head aside, unable to think of a suitable response.

Chapter 12

Igloo

"Your plan is going well,” Hannah said. Louise nodded: two nuclear threats neutralized, Blake out of the picture, Zack stuck in orbit, and Micah trapped in an Optronic landscape. Victory was within her grasp, and yet… She didn’t relish any of it. She was changing, could feel herself slipping away, thinking a little more like a Q’Roth warrior every day. She’d begun to second-guess her motives, her plan, and she knew how dangerous that was during battle. But showing any indecision in front of her Alician crew, or the humans for that matter, was out of the question.

Vince was still the key. She could negotiate a truce with him, maybe a more generous arrangement than she’d originally considered. But the thought came back – what was she changing into? Louise knew now why she needed to see Vince – so that he could pull her back towards her humanity, before she went too far over to the Q’Roth side.

She focused: see it through.

“Status,” she barked.

“Ready on all fronts,” Jarvik replied, crisply.

She took her chair. “Take us down to the surface, half a kilometre up-slope from their MCC. We’ll humour their pathetic stealth technology for the moment.”

Louise studied the viewscreen as the stars pitched upwards and the planet’s surface loomed into view, then raced towards them. The ship sliced into the atmosphere as easily as a scalpel making its first incision. They plunged straight towards the cloudless, starlit landscape, gathering speed, the hull’s shield systems displacing the heat energy to their phosphorous-white wake – their screeching, incandescent approach would not go unnoticed. The night-time landscape shifted into sharp relief, enhanced by the ship’s sensors and her Q’Roth-augmented vision: mountains, paths, a sleepless Esperantia, and desert-shrubs manifested beneath her. Despite her trust in Q’Roth inertial dampening technology, she had thought she would at least fall forward in her seat. But it was like an old-style fighter simulator – no gravity effects except inside the mind. The ship’s descent simply froze at its nadir, hanging Damocles-like above the terrain.

“Set us down, Jarvik. Hannah, contact their commander-in-chief.”

She knew how to play this out, she was good at this after all, having learnt from the best. For an instant she wondered where Sister Esma – her mentor and Alician High Priestess – might be now, and how they were faring under Q’Roth sponsorship. She flushed away the thought. Focus, she instructed herself.

“Colonel Vasquez is on the line,” Hannah said.

“Audio only,” Louise said. “Colonel Vasquez, I believe.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Good, military respect at least. “Your crude attempts to nuke me out of existence have failed. The three Q’Roth ships are … elsewhere –” two inside the sun, the other on this planet’s small moon as a back up for later, along with her insurance package “– and your commander Blake and his foul-mouthed pilot are indisposed.”

There was a pause. “And Mr. Sanderson?”

“Ah, yes, I’d almost forgotten. Micah is safe enough, for now.” Your move, Colonel. Empty threats would be bad. Her eyes darted to a geographic display showing the exact position of their MCC. She switched to penetration mode and clearly saw the outlines of the people inside.

“What do you propose?” he said.

So nice to deal with a professional. “I will meet with Vince. Alone. Unarmed.” She watched the display, seeing the obvious rapid conference going on between them. Hannah had been eavesdropping their comms for the past twenty-four hours. On cue, a display of key personnel information flashed up beneath the MCC view. Not bad, Hannah. Maybe I’ll keep you alive after all.

“Very well,” Vasquez started, “I’ll give you the coordinates –”

“I know where he is, Colonel. But I see him alone. Tell the good Professor Kostakis and Antonia, who are currently with Vince, to leave immediately.” She heard a woman gasp and another say “fu–” before Vasquez’ reflexes clicked off the microphone. She waited.

“They are leaving. Anything else?”

Really professional – she was impressed – not the slightest hint of sarcasm or distaste. She would keep this one, too.

“No, Colonel, that will be all for now.”

Louise stood, hands on hips, and faced Jarvik and Hannah. “I’ll be gone an hour. If my life signs stop, nuke the city, then take the last Q’Roth ship to the Grid. Leave the MCC alone – they’ll rot in their own guilt as they slowly starve to death. You’ll be on your own, but there are still non-nomadic Q’Roth in the Grid system.” They’ll probably kill you of course, but there might be some gratitude for a returned ship. “As for Micah, if I don’t return, leave him where he is. His body will die eventually, but not before his mind gives way. Questions?”

Jarvik shook his head, Hannah studied her console.

“Good.” She walked to the central walkway to the lower floor, then paused there. “One more thing. Whatever it is you’ve been plotting, Hannah, don’t. Let’s just say I have taken out an insurance policy, should there be any foul play.” With that, she left, knowing that Hannah’s mind would be doing overtime trying to work out what Louise could have set up, and Jarvik would respect Louise to the end now, and be more likely to kill Hannah himself before joining a mutiny.

◆◆◆

Vince could tell Antonia didn’t want to leave; she’d only just arrived in any case, sent to explain the latest security breach on comms. Thank God the weapon had never been discussed except face to face – Jennifer’s suggestion from her terrorist days after the fall of Dublin – a good call.

“But Louise is going to kill you, Vince.”

He perched on the ledge of the small oval table in the centre of the hastily-erected field dome, or the igloo, as they all called it, and shrugged. “If it’s just me and Micah, and she leaves the rest, it’s a bargain. In any case, if this works, she’ll be joining me.”

Kostakis spoke up, his voice uncharacteristically small. “I understand she’s coming alone, unarmed.”

“Don’t believe a word. First, I doubt she’ll be unarmed, even if it looks that way, and second, I’m sure her crew are watching like hawks for any attempts on our part. No – we have a plan, we stick to it.”

Antonia shook her head. “But Vince, like you, I’ve seen what she can do. Louise –”

“Enough! Get out, Antonia. Dimitri, take her out of here, now! I don’t want either of you running into Louise out there; she might kill you as a warm-up.”

He turned his back on both of them, until he heard the click of the door seal behind them. “Thanks,” he said, “nice to know someone cares.” He moved into the empty circular zone encompassed by the hidden weapon’s range, and folded his arms. The Hohash was also out of sight, so Louise wouldn’t see it, not at first.

Although he’d spent the night with Sandy, and it had been more passionate and intense than he’d expected, there just hadn’t been enough time for them to have a history. He found himself reminiscing about Louise – the good times, and not just the sex, either. He recalled a shoot-out in Rio during the Carnival: silent, scarlet plasma pulses zipping in and out of the crowds in Ipanema, like deadly hail; he and Louise covering for each other, the rest of their squad picked off one by one. They’d finally escaped inside the hollow undercarriage of a carnival wagon shaped like a giant cow, as it trundled along in the cacophony. It was the first time they made love, knowing they could die at any second, staring into each other’s eyes, neither of them masking their cries of ecstasy drowned by the music and hubbub outside.

Vince knew it hadn’t all been Alician ploy, part of Louise’s deep cover. They’d had something. She’d been the only one who…

The door clicked open and Louise breezed in. She looked tired, drawn, thinner than last time he’d seen her – killed her, to be precise. He had no illusions about how he looked either. The past month had worn everyone down.  He watched her as one would a tarantula. She sealed the door behind her.

“Hello, Vince. Long time.” She produced a slimline pulse pistol from behind her, and aimed it squarely at his forehead. “My turn.”

◆◆◆

The air was thick in the MCC, crammed as it was with technology which had proven useless against Louise. Sandy gazed at all the displays and dials, the winking lights and glinting controls, and at Micah’s occasionally twitching body, and wondered what was happening to him. She looked away.

She hated this waiting, not knowing. Vince, who she’d made love to for the first time – well, second and third, too – just last night, who she’d just said goodbye to, whose scent she could still detect on her fingertips, was on a suicide mission in the igloo with the Hohash weapon, with the ultra-bitch serial killer Louise. She stood up, and Vasquez for the umpteenth time glared at her, willing her to sit down. She folded, and obliged. She ignored the fact that Ramires kept surreptitiously staring at her – she didn’t know what that was about and didn’t care right now, though she was glad he’d survived Louise’s first wave of attacks. Shakirvasta and Jennifer were huddled in a corner, murmuring – a match made in hell, she thought. She glanced again at Micah’s form – he looked peaceful at least, as if sleeping.

The door burst open, Antonia whirling inside, followed by the large-framed Kostakis, clearly out of breath. “We saw her. She must be in there by now.”

Vasquez nodded. “Then bring it online Jennifer.”

Jennifer moved over to the inert Hohash propped up against one of the MCC walls. She held out a slim black box and depressed a button, and the Hohash sprang to life, lifting off the ground ten centimetres, its mirror face surging with a whirlpool of blues and mauves.

“Where did you find that?” Sandy asked, suspicious of the box.

“Sanjay made it for me … for us. It’s a remote node, basic communications only.”

“Sanjay, huh? Well, that answers one or two questions.” She glanced at Kostakis but he avoided her gaze.

Jennifer vaulted the slur. “I can give the Hohash instructions here, and the procedure will be executed in the igloo by the two other Hohash there.”

Sandy got to her feet. “When we need it.” Her voice was steel.

Jennifer reeled. “When is now. As soon as it’s ready, we activate it.”

Everyone stared at the two women, and there was a realisation around the room that the criteria for the final move had not actually been discussed. Jennifer turned back to her remote. Sandy bent down and retrieved something from her rucksack. The pistol barrel lifted and targeted Jennifer’s head. “Back off, bitch, or I’ll blow your ugly face off.” She caught a movement out of the corner of her left eye. “Don’t even think about it Vasquez. I reached the fencing nationals four years ago; fast-twitch reflexes – you so much as touch me, her brain’s barbecue.” She glared at Jennifer, who returned the favour. “Go ahead,” Sandy said, “try me”.

A woman’s scratchy, tinny voice stabbed into the heavy silence. “Colonel Vasquez, Colonel Vasquez, this is the Q’Roth Hunter Vessel calling. Switch off all other comms. We need to talk.”

Sandy ignored it. She remembered her fencing bouts, the concentration, waiting for a subtle move, an opening. But Jennifer didn’t budge a millimetre. Sandy had thought that Kostakis, or even Shakirvasta – Sanjay, no less – might try and intervene, but both remained behind Jennifer, Kostakis agitated, Shakirvasta serene.

“Colonel Vasquez, are you receiving me, this is –”

“This is Vasquez. Who the hell is this?”

Sandy heard a sigh of relief at the other end, ignoring or oblivious to the harsh tone of the Colonel, his patience obviously finally run out.

“My name is Hannah. This is a secure channel I installed yesterday in your comms matrix. Louise can’t intercept it. I’m commanding the Q’Roth vessel at this time.”

Vasquez left the microphone off for a while longer. “Ladies, could I suggest we put down –”

“NO!” they both said, at the same time.

Vasquez sighed. “Hannah, what do you want, I’m a little busy right now?”

“To surrender this vessel.”

Sandy’s head turned a fraction towards Vasquez; it was less than half a second, but Vasquez didn’t miss the slot. His left backhand whipped out slamming into her pistol-bearing forearm. It was a precision strike, spiking the tendon on her inner arm just the right way to make her trigger finger loosen rather than contract, sending the pistol spinning from her grip. His hand rebounded to strike her jaw. She stumbled and hit the bulkhead, dazed. When the faze passed, she looked up to see Vasquez towering above her, his own pistol in his hand.

“Jennifer, in case it’s not obvious, I’m in command. Prep the weapon, but don’t unleash it until I give the order. Is that clear?”

Sandy was watching Vasquez, and didn’t hear an answer, but she assumed the bitch had nodded. She’d underestimated Vasquez: he’d moved frighteningly fast.

“Colonel Vasquez, are you still there? Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard you. Power down your ship and open all access ports. Prepare to be boarded. I understand there is at least one other crew member?”

“There was. He’s dead.”

Vasquez shook his head. “I see. I’m sending someone over to check out your ship and bring you in.” He nodded sideways – without taking his eyes off Sandy – to the three men at the back of the trailer. “All of you. Take weapons. I can’t call the other marines without using a non-secure channel.”

Kostakis and Shakirvasta picked up pulse rifles like rookies, and shuffled out the door. Sandy glanced at Ramires, who seemed reluctant to leave, but he followed suit nonetheless.

“Now, Hannah. You’re clearly mutineering. What about Louise? Does she have any remote access to the ship or weapons? How much of a threat is she without you and your ship on her side?”

There was a pause. “Yes, yes, she’s still very dangerous. She wants to kill Vince then nuke the city; she wants to kill you all.”

Sandy played it back in her head. There was no doubt. “She’s lying, Vasquez.”

Vasquez clicked off the mike. “What?” His frown deepened. “Why would she lie?”

“Yes, Sandy,” Jennifer joined in. “Are you a psych now as well as a fencing champion?”

She disregarded the taunt. “I’m telling you, Colonel, this Hannah is lying about Louise being dangerous. She just went from vagueness to extreme threat, she clearly hadn’t thought it through; she’s just shit-scared Louise will kill her somehow if you don’t terminate her.”

Vasquez leaned back against the console.

“It’s ready,” Jennifer said, her thumb hovering above a button on the remote.

“Wait, Jennifer.” He clicked back on. “Hannah, tell me, what about Micah? Can you release him?”

There was a pause, but Hannah’s channel was obviously open all the time; they could hear her moving about, cursing occasionally. “Yes, yes I should be able to. Just hang on a minute… There, he’s clear to exit now.”

Sandy and the other three stared at Micah’s limp body. The tech, who had been trying to blend into the rear wall for the last half an hour, ventured forward and tried various controls. “Sir, he’s not coming to. I can’t tell if he’s been released or not. He might not be able to find his way back, Sir; depends where he’s been, if you see what I mean.”

“You see,” Sandy said, “she’s lying.”

“Doesn’t mean squat Sandy, and you know it.” Jennifer leered at her.

Sandy got to her feet. “Don’t you push that. We can take Louise down without losing Vince.”

“Sandy, please sit down –”

“Let her stand.” Jennifer transferred the device to her left hand so she could jab her right forefinger in Sandy’s direction. “Vince trained that whore; he said it as much himself, she’s his responsibility. If he’d been here, he’d have pushed the button already, and you damned well know it.”

She recognised the look in Jennifer’s eyes. She rushed for her but couldn’t reach her in time. Jennifer pressed the button. Sandy flailed at her. “NO!” just as Jennifer side-stepped, and her left foot connected with Sandy’s cheekbone, knocking her out cold.

◆◆◆

Vince relaxed his shoulders: he’d stared down the barrel of more pistols than he cared to remember. Fire up the weapon, guys, Louise doesn’t do long goodbyes.

She walked to him, spun the pulse gun around and presented the hilt to Vince. He didn’t take his eyes off hers for even a fraction of a second, nor did he blink. He took the pistol and tossed it behind him, sending it clattering across the stone floor.

“Okay, you just surprised me, Louise. What’s going on?”

She placed her hands on his shoulders, like they were dancing late at night. She smiled. The way she used to. He took her wrists, and was sorely tempted to cast them aside and slap her for what she’d done to Rashid’s ship. But he didn’t.

“I’m here to offer a truce, Vince. Terms will be a little tough, but nothing we can’t live with. You were the only one I knew would actually listen.”

He’d thought he’d become immune to her a long time ago, but seeing her resurrected stirred up old emotions. He stared hard into her eyes. “Shit, Louise, you’re serious aren’t you?”

She leaned forward and kissed him. “You’ve been on my mind. So I figured when you shot me you were just playing hard to get.”

That did it. He flung her wrists to the sides. “Do you know what you’ve done? Did you think they’d let you live if they had a second in which to kill you?” He flared at her. In his peripheral vision he noticed the Hohash that had been behind the door illuminate, snapping into life. Too late.

“You could negotiate for me,” she said, her sultry façade cooling rapidly. We have technology that can increase your chances of survival, prevent detection by hostile aliens passing by who might fancy a bite or some easy manpower. It’s a jungle out there in the stars, Vince, you’ve no idea.”

Vince felt the static building up on his forearms, like goosebumps. Flashes began to light up the room.

Louise swivelled around on her heels, facing the glowing yellow Hohash. “You! You were in my dream!” She spun back to Vince. “What –?” She darted for the entrance but was stung backwards by a force-field that burnt like dry ice. She glanced upwards and noticed another of the mirrors attached to the domed ceiling above them. A third device, metallic and squat, lurked behind Vince. It had also powered up, glowing orange. Her voice steeled. “What’s going on, Vince?”

Vince didn’t do sadness or remorse; he’d seen too much killing. He watched the glistening shroud, like a huge soap bubble, cocoon the area where they stood. It started to shrink towards them.

“They’re killing us, Louise. There’s not much time, and no way out. And no comms, so no way I can tell anyone it’s unnecessary.”

She slapped him hard. “Sonofabitch. Of all the stupid fucking –”

“Seconds, Louise, That’s all we have. Remember Rio?” He grabbed her, yanked her towards him. The air between them flickered.

She glanced down at her arms, quivering with static, ice cold. “Hell, Vince.”

“I know.” He kissed her hard, locked his arms around her, one around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head. She resisted at first, then kissed him back.

◆◆◆

Micah, still groggy, reached the igloo, supported by Ramires. He found Sandy there, sitting on the floor, listless, staring at the statue.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” she said.

He gazed at the statue for a few seconds, then knelt down behind her, and draped his arms around her shoulders. He didn’t speak. He’d observed it all silently through the Hohash connection. That’s why he hadn’t exited: he hadn’t known Louise’s real plan until it had been too late, and he’d needed to see it through till the end. Apparently, Louise had told Zack, but even if Zack had believed her, which he hadn’t, he’d had no way to communicate with Vasquez and the others, his ship’s comms system having been fried during Louise’s initial attack.

Sandy lowered her head against his forearm, and he felt the stickiness of dried tears. He stroked her hair with his other hand.

He watched Ramires approach the metallic effigy and test it with a finger. Ramires rapped his knuckles against Vince’s chest. There was a dull metallic sound, like the giant kodo drums Micah had once seen in Nara, near Kyoto. Ramires touched Vince’s eyes, as if to close them, but he couldn’t. They were fixed on Louise’s. He knelt down before the two of them, and began incanting a low chant: Tibetan, Micah guessed, probably from Ramires’ early Sentinel training. He chanted for an hour. No one else entered the igloo during that time, as the three of them paid homage to Vince, and Micah said a final farewell to Louise.

Ramires carried Sandy back half a kilometre to the camp in the starlight. They heard shouting and celebratory whoops long before they reached it. Vasquez came out to greet them, took one look at their faces, and handed them the keys to the MCC.

“There are bunks in the front compartment. Get some sleep. It’s too noisy here, anyway. Everyone else is celebrating; you understand, right? I’ll go pay my last respects to Vince when it calms down here.”

Micah nodded, and they meandered back to the deserted MCC. As they lay in darkness, sleep just out of reach, Sandy spoke.

“We can’t stay here, Micah.”

He didn’t know how she’d reached the same conclusion he had an hour ago – her probably by intuition. She’s right, he thought. It’s going to get bad here. The Grid, this galactic society out there, that’s where we have to go.

“Get some sleep, Sandy.”

“Not till you tell me you have a plan, Micah.”

“I have one. Now, go to sleep.” He watched her till her chest rose and fell with a calm rhythm. Then he began planning.

During the next two hours, every time he thought he had a good way forward, he imagined presenting it to Vince, who would shake his head and point out the holes. On the fifth attempt, in his mind’s eye, Vince shrugged and said “Okay, it’s a plan.” That was good enough for Micah. He rolled over onto his right side, and whispered “Goodbye Vince; thanks for everything,” and then he fell sound asleep.

Chapter 13

Fractures

"War is better,” Vasquez said, on the cliff’s edge. “Uniforms, insignia: you know who the enemy is. With politics, well… That’s why I always turned down promotions above the rank of Colonel.”

Micah listened, half-absent. His head felt heavy, weighed down by theories, some marginally less paranoid than others: hypotheses about who supported who, and who was out to get whoever else. They all ended up at the same destination. It wasn’t his preferred journey. “You could come with us,” he said, knowing that his very usage of the conditional already admitted what he knew about this man.

“I owe it to Vince to stay here. I’ll try to limit the damage.”

“You knew him well, didn’t you?”

Vasquez nudged a stone off the edge, so that it clattered down the escarpment. “As much as anyone did. I think only Louise knew him really well.” With his old arm he straightened his tunic. “He was my protégé originally, but he overtook me a long time ago.”

Micah understood the implication: we’ve lost our best strategist; and someone Micah could have learned a great deal from. He stared toward the blood-orange sun strafing the mountain-tops. It rose faster than on Earth, sending tepid shadows racing across the plains. “My first sunrise here. You were right to get me up early to see it.”

“Forget the sunrise, Micah. Watch, over there.”

He squinted in the direction pointed out by Vasquez. At first he saw nothing but a dry basin the colour of scoured oak, fringed by a range of sun-tinted orange mesa. Without warning, a diamond-white glint sparkled in the foreground. It lasted a full minute before it faded. His eyes remained rooted to the spot, the after-image blazing on his retina.

“Fitting, somehow,” Micah said. “Though I don’t know if Vince would approve; not the sort of guy who craved monuments, I’d imagine.”

Vasquez passed him a viewer. He put it to his eyes and zoomed in. It took a few seconds to relocate it. He stared for a while, then lowered the viewer and tried to see with his naked eyes. “Who are they?”

“People, ordinary citizens. More every day now, three weeks since our little War was officially declared over. It’s become a kind of shrine. I had one of my soldiers check them out, but they just sit or kneel on the sand, and wait till the sunrise catches the statue. After about twenty minutes they leave again. Always on foot.”

“You should ask Carlson.”

“Already did. He said the people need quasi-religious symbolism, emotional closure.”

Micah smiled. “That’s Carlson alright. What about you?” He watched Vasquez’ profile: straight, unerring, egoless. The right man to stay behind.

“I think they need a hero and a villain, locked in a struggle.”

Micah cleared his throat. “Not exactly a struggle.”

Vasquez put a firm hand on Micah’s shoulder. “Micah, I thought of all people you’d recognise love as the ultimate struggle.”

Micah’s brow grew trenches, not least because he remembered making love with Louise – except love had played no part in it. Then, unbidden, something snagged in his mind about Louise, just out of reach. And then it was gone.

Vasquez cracked a rare smile. “Let’s go, Micah, it’s show-time.”

As they descended, Micah noticed something. “You’re not wearing your sidearm.”

Vasquez’ white-haired head nodded. “Martial law was declared ‘over’ yesterday by Josefsson, himself hastily elected in the power vacuum left by Blake.”

Micah kept his counsel. Normally, martial law coming to an end would be a good thing, except that some of the best people were in the military. With Blake still in a coma, and Zack purged of his implant but an emotional space-wreck, Josefsson and Shakirvasta had moved quickly.

Vasquez was right – the war was shifting into politics, where people like Vasquez had little leverage. Micah had thought it was over, but then he knew what Vince would have said if he’d been there: it’s only over when you’re dead.

Micah did a double-take as he entered the meeting room. At the head of the anachronistic polished-wood table sat the triumvirate of Josefsson, Shakirvasta and Jennifer, with Josefsson in the middle. The ceiling, as with all dwellings in Esperantia, was low, adding to Micah’s gloomy outlook for this meeting, only the third official governmental meeting since the ‘event.’

He and Sandy took the seats nearest the doorway. Ramires arrived with Kostakis trailing after him. Antonia deposited herself next to Kostakis.

Josefsson, well-manicured, his quaff of hair perfectly in place, stood. “Well, I think we can get started.”

“We’re not all present yet,” Sandy said, flat.

Josefsson beamed. “Madam, we have never discussed the criteria for a quorum.”

Her riposte was obviously pre-planned. “Exactly,” Sandy said.

Josefsson’s smile splintered. Micah noticed a small flicker of Shakirvasta’s right hand, and Josefsson cleared his throat and spread his hands. “We can of course wait another few minutes.” He sat down.

Micah knew it wasn’t first blood, not even a scratch. These people were playing for bigger stakes, in for the long haul. He heard a shuffling noise outside, and then saw Zack lumber in slowly, looking like hell, leading Rashid by the arm. He hadn’t seen Rashid for three weeks; for that matter he’d hardly seen Zack, though he knew where he spent most of his time. They seated themselves. Micah noted that no one sat next to the triumvirate. Unfortunately it only served to enhance their appearance of power, of being more equal than the others.

Josefsson rose again. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, nodding particularly to Sandy with mock deference, “I declare this fifth session of the Council open. We have several orders of business today…”

Josefsson lorded over the proceedings, in full flood, stating how effective the fledgling government had been in the past few weeks: Shakirvasta and the military, aided by Hannah, had prevented the nannites from eating away the Hunter-Vessel’s engines and other systems. Hannah had apparently been very cooperative, even without the explosive neck-collar Jennifer had insisted she wear at all times, and had managed to remotely retrieve the last surviving transport from Ourshiwann’s moon. Micah recalled hearing that Jennifer now had a node, so she could communicate directly with the Hohash, although apparently it wasn’t going so well for some reason. He considered the neck collar had been a good idea, but had simply been placed around the wrong throat.

Hearing Hannah’s name, Louise leapt into his mind again. He tuned out from Josefsson’s waxing speech, trying to figure out what was bugging him. Hannah had killed Jarvik. Her version was that she had wanted to defect, and had tried to persuade Jarvik, and that at the last moment there had been a struggle. The only part that didn’t fit was how she had managed to overcome that Alician hulk. He’d wished Vince had been around to interrogate her. If only Jennifer had not been so trigger-happy…

And yet Micah had spoken with Hannah a week ago, and firmly believed she had been trying to change sides.

Still the Louise problem eluded him. But he was brought out of his reverie by raised voices. It had begun.

“– guards are there for his own protection, Zack. These are difficult times. We all want the good Commander to recover, and his security is therefore a high priority.”

Zack’s knuckles whitened on the table. “Next time they try and stop me or Glenda or anyone, you’ll be needing two new ones.”

“Are you suggesting illegal use of force?” Josefsson said.

Micah rose. Zack was about to complicate things, and these three would seize the first chance to lock him away for good. “I propose that we move to agenda item 4.” He stared at Shakirvasta, rather than Josefsson. Deal with the man whose DNA signs the cheques, his father had once said. Shakirvasta didn’t move a millimetre. Micah felt the rest of the room staring in his own direction. Josefsson sat down, peering officiously at the single sheet of paper in front of him, and nodded. “Very well, Mr. Sanderson. Please present your case.”

He looked at the faces around the room. He ignored his heart thumping inside his chest. He took a swig of water.

“Survival is key. If we’re discovered here by any of hundreds of alien races, we could easily be destroyed, consumed, or enslaved. The Q’Roth masking technology Hannah has shared with us will help, but it’s only a matter of time before we’re found. I propose that a small group travels to the Grid to proactively seek out potential allies.” He sat down. It had been short, but the less he said, the less his enemies had to attack.

Shakirvasta held up a finger. “Mr. President, might I reply?”

Josefsson waved a hand royally. “Certainly, Sanjay.”

“Mr. Sanderson – Micah – surely we are more likely to be found if you make contact with other races?”

He’d anticipated this one, especially since his own predictions supported it. “You’re right. But this way we have a chance to choose who finds us, rather than waiting and hoping we’re lucky.”

Josefsson couldn’t help himself. “And how do you propose to travel to the Grid?”

“We leave the large transport here, and take the Hunter Class vessel.” Micah raised a hand to stall Josefsson’s objection. “The Mil have already off-loaded most of the missile hardware for defence. If an alien race arrives, one single ship won’t make much difference, and you’ll have the transport ship for protection, and still have the Hohash craft, more manoeuvrable at close quarters.”

Shakirvasta tapped his cigarette case, but said nothing further. Josefsson bristled. “I judge that this would leave us with an unsatisfactory, insufficient defensive capability. I –”

“You what?” Sandy stood up.

Micah had expected her to be shaking with rage, but he heard iron in her voice – like the metal her lover had been transformed into.

“There’s no constitution here yet,” she continued. “You can call yourself President as much as you like, but we’re all representatives of this Council, so we vote.”

Josefsson was about to protest, but Shakirvasta nudged his arm. “Very well, then.” The ex-senator puffed his chest out. “All those in favour of allowing this futile, endangering mission?”

Although Kostakis abstained, Rashid’s vote carried the motion. Micah didn’t listen to the rest. He could already hear the void of space calling him, the far away Grid, all its undreamed-of wonders and horrors beckoning. Half of him knew it could be suicide. But somewhere, in another realm, he felt two proud parents smile, maybe Vince, too.

“That was a little easier than expected,” Micah said to Sandy, back out in the fresh plaza air, the noon-day sun casting no shadows.

“They want us gone as much as we want to be out of here,” Sandy replied. “But we should go quickly – you saw item seven on the agenda?”

He nodded. “They’re no doubt determining the new constitution right now.” He wished Blake had come out of his coma, but no one knew when – if – that was going to happen.

Zack joined them. “Fucking meetings.” He spat. “I’m coming with you tomorrow.”

Micah stared at him. “But –”

“Stow it. I’m washed up here, broken, useless. But I’m still the best pilot on this planet, and you can’t trust that bitch Hannah, not after the way they found her buddy Jarvik. Now, I have to go say goodbye to everyone who God-alone-knows-why still gives a shit about me. See you in the morning.” He strode off down one of the alleys which led out of the plaza like spokes from a hub.

Shakirvasta approached them with an easy grace, as if taking a Sunday stroll. He held out his hand. “Good luck, Mr. Sanderson.”

Micah decided to shake his hand – it was as sure and firm as he’d presumed it would be. Then Shakirvasta held out a small oblong device. “The detonator for Hannah’s necklace.”

“I want it off her. She’ll need us alive as much as we’ll need her knowledge of the ship.” He stared defiantly into the Indistani’s eyes. He’d seen a tiger once, as a kid, in a zoo; the tiger had looked at him the same way. But this time there were no bars in between.

“As you wish.” He held out another device. “You can release her once you leave tomorrow. Not before. President’s decree.”

Sandy snorted. ‘Got through item seven pretty quick then?’

Shakirvasta looked from one to the other. “What we want is not so different. Our methods, differ, that’s all.”

“That’s all, as you say,” Sandy said.

The tiger nodded, returning to the Council room.

“Let’s go pack,” Micah said, and they quit the place as fast as they could without breaking into a trot, neither one casting a second glance backwards.

◆◆◆

Sandy hid in the shadows till she was sure Kostakis was alone, then slipped inside his room. Unlike her own cell, as she thought of it, Kostakis had at least made an effort to render it more homely: a white and blue Greek pennant hung from one of the ceiling hooks, and various marble memorabilia were draped around the walls. A metallic mobile of yachts reflected Kostakis’ dim yellow reading light, dappling the walls with rocking shadow-boats, as if they were sailing choppy seas. He’s staying, she said to herself.

His chair strained as he leaned backwards from the small desk he was hunched over. “Please, please do come in; this is somewhat unexpected.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, she’s with Sanjay, plotting and scheming somewhere.” The smile dried up, lending a hollow look to his face. “I never used to want to sleep alone. Now my bed is empty, and I’m happier.”

You look anything but happy, she thought, but she didn’t have time to get into it. She had to stick to her purpose. She held out a manila envelope. He didn’t reach for it.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“It’s for Jennifer. Coded with her DNA so only she can open it.”

Kostakis studied the missive, then Sandy. “Have you ever read Hamlet?”

Sandy maintained her fencing arm straight. “No.”

“There is a part where two men are sent with a letter to deliver to a king. The letter is sealed, and inside it tells the king to kill the bearers of the message.”

She lowered her arm. “You’re right, Dimitri. It’s a weapon of sorts.” She tossed it onto one of the spider stools. “When you can no longer reach her, when she’s gone dangerously too far, let her find it.”

“What will it do to her?”

“It will undo her. That’s the point, isn’t it?” She held out her empty hand. “Goodbye, Professor. I’m sorry we didn’t get time to know each other better. Really, I am.”

He stood up, and took her hand with both of his, then pulled her into an enveloping hug. She felt awkward until she realised it was more for him than for her. Once that critical insight came, she hugged him back, massaging his pain. Abruptly he released her. She kissed him once on the cheek, and left him alone with the missive.

◆◆◆

Micah watched Antonia’s sleeping frame, and tried to recall how he’d gotten there. She’d knocked on his door, very late, muttered something about a conversation with Sandy, and then out of the blue kissed him, just once. Then she’d told him she couldn’t go further, because of how she felt about Kat. He knew his father would have somehow seduced her, justifying that she was in his room late at night, and had just kissed him, etc. Instead, Micah had held her hand, and listened while she poured out her feelings. He’d held her in the more emotional moments, felt her tears on his forearm, and comforted her with improbable statements about how Kat was still safe, somewhere, and they would find her again. At one point, in the early hours of the morning, she’d been about to say something he couldn’t bear to hear…

“Micah, tonight you’ve been such a good –”

His finger rushed to her lips. “Don’t. Don’t say it.”

Antonia stared at him. He removed his finger, and she nodded. “I should leave…”

He stood up. “No, stay, please. I’ll sleep on the floor, you take the bed. Don’t worry, I won’t –”

“I know, Micah.” She lay down, her head propped up on an elbow. “We’re both fully clothed, Micah, and very tired. Lie here next to me … if it’s not too painful.”

He studied the space next to her. Truth was, he was exhausted. In the background to everything else going on, he’d been chasing her these past months, and it was finally over. Now he’d accepted it, it wasn’t the end of the world. Inside, he laughed at himself for even thinking such a thing given everything that had happened. His head lightened. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards. “Okay, Antonia, but you whisper ‘Kat’ during the night and you’ll find yourself on the floor.”

She laughed, and laid her head on the pillow, closing her eyes. Micah stretched out next to her, and surprised himself by falling asleep.

Micah woke early, and saw her next to him; neither of them had moved during the night. She looked calm, more peaceful than he’d seen her since Earth. He leaned over and planted a soft kiss on her hair, then glanced outside to see the first ginger rays of dawn skate across the plaza. He headed out for the public shower cubicles in the courtyard.

As the lukewarm water trickled over him, he pondered how for more than a year he’d watched Antonia from a distance, having an instant crush on her, nurturing it into an infatuation, and finally maturing into something approaching love. All the pathetic plotting on Earth to meet her accidentally, the stupid conversations he’d tried to start, and then the cavalcade of events in that last week before the Q’Roth invaded, when Louise had almost killed Antonia and forced a love confession out of him. It seemed like a dream: someone else’s. He ran through various conversations they could have when he got back. It would be awkward, the moment of intimacy gone. But as he towelled himself dry, he realized she was stronger than she appeared, and he reckoned she’d be gone when he returned.

The bed wasn’t quite empty. He gathered up the slim sapphire cross and platinum chain lying in the centre of the bed, felt its weight in his hands, then fixed it around his neck. The emotions he’d worried might come, stayed put. He picked up his two bags and headed to the ship.

Zack and the rest of the small crew stood waiting for Micah on the entrance ramp of the towering hexagonal ship. It looked like a shiny black crab. Micah walked through the small throng which parted silently before him. At its head were Vasquez and Kostakis, Rashid behind them. He’d wanted a quick, quiet getaway, but he could tell it wasn’t going that way.

Kostakis drew close to the five departees, and addressed the crowd. “Friends, it is customary to christen a ship before it disembarks on a long journey, and this will surely be humanity’s longest journey yet.” He spoke quieter to Micah, a glint in his eye, as he produced, with a flourish, a bottle of champagne. “Preferably a nice Greek name.”

He knew Kostakis must have stolen it from Shakirvasta, somehow. He hefted the bottle in his hands, and addressed the crowd. “People of Esperantia. People of Earth. I had thought about the name Athena, a wise woman to watch over us. But we need to be prepared to show aliens they need to respect us.” He took a few steps to the side of the hull of the looming ship, raising the bottle high into the air. “I name this ship Agamemnon.” The bottle crashed against the black metal, champagne gushing out to a small cheer from the crowd. He tossed the bottle’s broken neck aside, and shook Kostakis’ hand. Vasquez came forward carrying a bundle.

“Micah. Your father’s jacket. Rashid replaced the nannites with some new ones, which we salvaged from this ship. You may well need them.”

He received the coat deferentially, remembering how it had already saved his life back on Earth. “Colonel Vasquez, Rashid, thank you both.” Micah wanted to say more, but no words came. In the awkward pause that followed, Antonia walked up to him.

“Bring everyone home, Micah.”

He met her gaze, and nodded. She moved back into the crowd. He leaned forward, and whispered into Kostakis’ ear. “Look after her, Professor.”

He looked across the sea of faces, trying to lodge some of them into his memory, though he knew the odds of him making it back were remote. He had to quicken his resolve. He addressed the crowd. “We hope to return, with allies. And a few stories to tell. Please be here when we get back.” With that he turned and led the group up the ramp.

Micah lowered himself cautiously into Louise’s chair. Zack had mounted his fighter pilot’s chair to the right and parallel to Micah’s, and Sandy sat in another chair to Micah’s left, with Ramires in Jarvik’s position. Micah stood up, one hand in each pocket, and faced Hannah.

“Hannah, do you relinquish any and all allegiance to the Alician order?”

She blanched, but nodded, jutting out her chin. “I do.”

He clicked the button in his right trouser pocket, and the chrome necklace clamped tight around her neck sprung open and tumbled noisily onto the floor. She swayed slightly, gasping, her hands around her throat. “Thank you,” she croaked. She glanced around the room. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”

Zack shook his head.

Micah nodded and sat down again, facing forward. The viewscreen showed that everyone had moved a safe distance away. He knew the ship was fully prepared, the first set of transits already programmed into the nav system. “Anyone not ready? Okay then…” He paused, and leaned over to Zack, whispering. “What am I supposed to say, exactly?”

“You’re the boss, now. You have to decide.”

Micah cleared his throat. He remembered an old sci-fi vid he’d watched as a kid. “Okay. Zack – Jump.”

As soon as he said it, sitting in Louise’s command chair, the puzzle unlocked itself in his mind. You’re the boss, now, Zack had said. Louise had been the captain of this ship, was Level Five intelligence, as well as a trained Chorazin agent, and should have spotted Hannah’s wavering loyalty. And yet she’d walked into a trap. Twice he’d seen her killed. Was it possible she had a back-up plan?

But Zack had already slammed the metal ankh, the ship’s starter key, into the slot; it was too late to think further on it. Micah and the others held their breath, as everything around them, every contour, every surface and crevice, turned silver, freezing them in space-time as the galaxy slid beneath them.

◆◆◆

A woman’s scream of primal rage echoed around the sealed chamber. She choked, her new body not yet fully functional. Vaulting off the table, her legs buckled when they hit the floor, slipping and sliding in the green amniotic fluid. She ended up on her knees and forearms. She screamed again, but it turned into a wail, tears bursting forward. Her fingers clawed at the clammy floor, but the fingernails had not yet grown fully. Her body racked with tremors, her back arched like a hyena. She pounded the floor with her fists, her breath catching in broken rasps. She let it all ride out. She couldn’t taste him any longer on her lips, but she remembered. She kissed the floor. The tears started again. She fell asleep, naked on the floor, crying.

Louise sat on the harsh bench. She hadn’t eaten in the five days since her wakening and emotional torrent, but felt no hunger. She took stock. Her back-up plan had worked well, but left her emotionally fraught. She tried to recall what she’d been like before Thailand: a young, optimistic, compassionate teacher. But with each day the old sympathetic traits diminished. The emotion gaining ascendancy was anger, along with a grinding thirst for revenge. It didn’t surprise her: the regeneration chamber she’d concealed inside the Transport’s hidden section was tuned to Q’Roth DNA, their emotional repertoire leaning to the darker end of the sentiment spectrum.

She’d hoped she’d never need the clone, but since discovering the nannites and watching Hannah’s moves, she’d uploaded long term memories into its maturing brain each night. She hadn’t known how good the final memory transfer would work, but the connecting node implant had triggered in her last moments with Vince. Clone maturation had taken three weeks, but for her, less than a second had passed. She was surprised it had worked at all, and assumed it was because she’d had so much Q’Roth DNA in her already.

Using Q’Roth surveillance gear in the shielded section of the ship, she’d found out what had happened since her demise, and where Micah had gone – at least his initial spatial vector. She lazed in the Q’Roth heat therapy room, sweat trickling off fresh, supple flesh. She’d been studying Q’Roth strategy, now able to read Largyl 6 fluently. Her new body and brain was far more Q’Roth compatible, and she found she could pick up their concepts faster. A diagnostic test confirmed she had passed Level 5 intelligence, and was approaching Level 6.

She pondered her options. She could wage battle here, but even with her new found physical prowess – many of her organs and body parts such as bones, musculature and tendons had been upgraded automatically – she was severely outnumbered, and a transport ship had no weapons. Q’Roth tended to go for genocidal incursions of non-affiliated races, to avoid retribution by survivors or co-dependants. So, if she could find Micah and bring him and the others down, then she could return with the attack ship either alone, or with allies, and stamp out humanity forever. Vince had been the only man she could have dealt with – and tolerated. And he was gone. She would leave only one relic of humanity: a statue of two lovers embracing.

Four engineers sat around a small stove having their night shift snack, on a break from operating the laser drill which was making slow progress on the third level of the transport. Chairman Shakirvasta reckoned there was a hidden chamber behind this wall, perhaps even the engine room.

One of the engineers choked on his soup, as the three heads of his colleagues slipped off their shoulders in mid-conversation, their bodies folding up like rag dolls. Coughing, dropping the bowl to the floor, spilling hot soup down his overalls, he stumbled backwards, panicking. He tripped over a power cable, slapping him face down on the floor. Two boots stood in front of him. He felt a razor cut across the back of his neck, and a warm wet feeling around his throat. He tried to move but nothing happened. His vision faded to black.

Louise executed the half-dozen or more engineers working inside the ship during the night shift. She gathered their bodies on the lower level, found some fuel and set fire to them, watching the funeral pyre burn. It barely sated her need for vengeance. She knew the one person whose death could slake her thirst. The one who had been instrumental in humanity escaping, and the brains behind the twisted assassination which had killed Vince, snatching away her last chance of being human. So be it, she thought, you’ve made me what I am. You’ll reap the whirlwind, Micah. Twice she’d had the opportunity to terminate him. She headed for the bridge.

She closed the external hatches and fed in the coordinates taken by Micah’s ship. She checked there were no more humans on board, and dropped the ankh key into the slot. The ship vanished.

◆◆◆

Deep inside the Q’Roth transport, the Hohash replayed what it had witnessed: a solitary female watching a bonfire of corpses, now smoking ash.

Once the transport had been recovered, the Hohash had tried to warn the ones calling themselves human that something was happening inside, but their scanning devices were too archaic, and now they were dead. All hatches had sealed, and the ship was about to transit.

It tried once again, as it had for aeons, to reach its master, but there was no response. And yet it sensed something, perhaps a wakening, the first stirrings from a slumber measuring nearly a million angts. It had been so long without instruction, and Hohash were above all servants, artefacts needing a purpose. It faced two choices: stay on Ourshiwann, or travel with, and confront, this hybrid, warped female. It connected briefly with its comrades to let them know its decision.

It surveyed its surroundings. Everything around it frosted silver in transit mode, which most beings believed was instantaneous. From a conventional space-time perspective, it was. But Hohash were not anchored in normal space-time. Decision made, it headed toward the bridge.

◆◆◆

The Ranger Ukrull paused his omniviewer. This human species had survived and defeated an attack by a new Level 5 species armed with Level 6 technology. This was noteworthy. His claw slid into the glistening slot on the Bartran’s back, and the purring ceased immediately. He thought – encode message to Ranger Grid Sub-Commander 423. The Bartran’s mind became fluid, stretching towards the Grid. The Ranger began:

<ENCODE: WILD SPECIES CALLED HUMAN DEFEATED LEVEL 5 ATTACK: SPECIES FRAGMENT GRIDBOUND IN SP195 CRUISER. GRID INTERCEPTION PREDICTED AT NODE 346A. REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS>

GSC 423 ACKNOWLEDGED – ASSESS SURVIVAL QUOTIENT. ZERO-CONTACT PROTOCOL TILL GRID-LAND. REQUESTING SP195 [Q’ROTH] PRESENCE FOR CONSULTATION.

Ukrull emitted a deep, rock-crushing growl.

<ENCODE: HUMAN-Q’ROTH ARBITRATION SUCCESS PROBABILITY NEGLIGIBLE. ADVISE NON-PRESENCE OF SP195>

OBJECTION NOTED. YOUR OBJECTIVITY QUOTIENT BORDERING TOLERANCE. WISH RE-ASSIGNMENT?

His foot lashed out, crushing a non-essential, self-repairing console. His objectivity was indeed wavering. Pathetic as they were, there was something about this species...

<NEGATIVE… REQUEST PRESENCE AT ARBITRATION>

DENIED. MONITOR NEW SPECIES IN HABITAT.

Ukrull broke off comms. The Bartran vibrated unevenly. The Hohash. Ukrull had not yet reported that he had found them – they had been missing for so many millennia – which would land him in trouble with Ranger Prefecture Central sooner or later. What was the Hohash interest in humanity?

Ukrull stroked the Bartran till it purred softly.

PART TWO

THE GRID

GAL-C-017-001: TLA BETH SENSES ONLY: INTER-GAL FAR STATION 3 CONTACT LOST

VERIFICATION PROBABILITY: 100%

INBOUND GENETIC MARKER: UNKNOWN. KALAHEII SUSPECTED

THREAT LEVEL: OCTRINO

GALACTIC BARRIER INTERCEPT TIME: 0.004637 ANGTS

MINES / DRONES DEPLOYED: Y

GALACTIC BARRIER INTEGRITY: HIGH

SPACE-TEAR FIREBREAK / DARK WEAPONS ISSUED & PRIMED: Y

EVACUATION PROTOCOL: LEVEL 12+ ADVISED EXODUS SECTORS RKZ249-UFZ355

SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: >12

EVALUATION: KALAHEII INVASION FLEET

DATA RESONANCE DIAGNOSIS: UNKNOWN WEAPONS CAPABILITY – INTEL NEEDED

ACTIONS: MUSTER SCLARESE NOVASTORMERS; CONVENE TLA BETH WAR COUNCIL; CONTINUE SEARCH FOR KALARASH – ALL RANGERS PRIORITY ONE; OSSYRIANS ASSIST MED-EVAC

Chapter 14

Seven minutes

The door irised closed behind Chahat-Me.

“Thank God. At last we can talk in private,” Kat said. “I preferred it when she didn’t understand our language.”

Pierre shifted from one foot to the other, reeling from the information exchange he’d just shared with the Ossyrian. They had only seven minutes, and he had a lot to tell Kat, most of it – no, all of it – bad news from her perspective. At least she can’t read my eyes, he thought. He cleared his throat. “We don’t have much time, Kat –”

She rounded on him. “Why? I’m pretty fed up with these ultra-fast conversations you two have.” Her eyes softened, and she managed a smile. “Girls get jealous, you know.”

Her joking made it worse. He decided to deal with the technical aspect first. “She needs to get back to the Grid, and we need to go into stasis. Because of the length of the journey,” he lied. Merde, when did I learn to lie?

The corners of her mouth flat-lined.

He moved on quickly. Distract. Evade. Where were these tactics coming from? “I found out some more things about the Grid, the society.”

“Can’t it wait? If we only have a few minutes I’d rather –”

“It’s important you know now. When we arrive there won’t be much time.”

She shrugged, and sat facing away from him.

He felt like a bastard. No, he thought, more like a doctor lying to a patient, trying to ease the blow. But he stuck to his course.

“Galactic society is well-orchestrated. It’s like a caste system. Most races know their place, their function in society. There are whole races who farm, or fabricate things; other races are predominantly engineers or scientists, or traders or militaristic, in which case they form the police network which maintains order spanning half the galaxy.”

Kat stared through the floor.

Pierre cut to the important part. “The caste system is rigorously enforced. Each race can interact with any race its own level or below, but can only address the immediate two levels above its own rank. Courtesy isn’t optional: if proper deference and respect isn’t observed, the perpetrator is usually recycled.”

Kat looked up, her expression a question mark.

“The offending person or group is deconstructed into basic biochemical constituents and used for medical or nutritional purposes.” He sighed. “The least infraction can constitute a violation, and if the party concerned is four or more levels above, they don’t even have to justify their claim of a ‘breach of hierarchy protocol’. We’re going to have to be extremely careful.”

Kat pursed her lips. “Then maybe we shouldn’t go.”

He nodded, and sat next to her. “We can’t remain here.”

“Why do we need to go into stasis, Pierre?”

He could tell she knew he was keeping something back. Timing was key. He needed to delay it a little longer. “I’m getting there.” He leant back against the chamber wall. “Many races aren’t satisfied with their status quo. They want what is called Elevation, which means rising to the next level. However, to do so needs two things. The first is education so that the race can take on higher responsibilities, and the second is finding another species to take over their current duties. The latter is the prerequisite to the former, and pretty hard to find, as you can imagine. Even if a petitioner race finds a substitute race it can foster to take its place, the replacement process can take anywhere from several hundred to thousands of years, due to the need to ensure the new race can do the job, and the difficulties of adjusting the new race’s culture to their new galactic social role. Also, the educational process of the petitioner race sometimes requires genetic re-structuring of the brain and nervous-endocrine systems, which has to be taken slowly over many generations.

Kat’s hand stifled a yawn.

He realised neither of them had slept for two days. That would be fixed soon enough, but he still had to play this out.

“So, some races rebel. Many of them, typically level 4 or 5, are clustered in this region of the Galaxy. To impede proper policing, there are illegal transpatial mines scattered over the whole region, particularly directly between us and the Grid.”

Kat raised an eyebrow.

“These mines exist in transpace and lock onto any object traversing it; they home in on it and detonate.”

“So, how do we get through them?”

He relaxed a little. Technical ground was easier. “A series of carefully programmed micro-jumps, each lasting about a second, flashing in and out of Transpace. It slows travel down, but it’s still infinitely faster than not jumping at all. However, it’ll take two months to get there.”

“And we need to be in stasis because..?”

“We wouldn’t survive otherwise. Neither would Chahat-Me, incidentally. Our nervous systems wouldn’t be able to handle it; they’d … melt.”

“I see.”

He waited, but she said no more. He knew the gas that would put them to sleep would come very soon. Then Chahat-Me would return to put them into stasis.

“There’s one other thing, Kat.”

She levered herself up to her feet. The words loitered in his throat, preferring to stay where they were. She approached him, so that he could smell her warm, inviting scent. Maybe he should tell her later…

She spoke softly. “Pierre, tell me right now what is going on, or I’m going to hit you very, very hard.”

He stood up, half-nodded, and swallowed. “You’re pregnant.” He watched her eyes widen, and continued as fast as he could get the words out. “I was sterile, honest, a by-product of my genetic engineering, but when Chahat-Me scanned you, she detected the defective sperm and your ripe ovum and, well … corrected things…”

For a second, while his heart didn’t dare beat, he thought he’d got away with it. Her hand lashed out towards his cheek, but stopped millimetres from him. He hadn’t flinched, feeling he’d somehow earned the pain.

She sat back down, then lay back on the bench, hands cradling her belly. She looked down at it.

He didn’t know what to say, but couldn’t stand the silence. He’d been brought up responsibly. He should, somehow, offer to marry Kat, or look after the child with her, or agree to take on the child alone if that was what she wanted. A badly-mixed cocktail of emotions had been stewing inside him since he’d found out: joy, at not being sterile; confusion over such an event, which should be a happy one, coming during a time when each day surpassed his imagination as to what could happen next; and sadness that his mother would never know her grandchild, or that her son could be a father. Just a few of the ingredients in the emotional punch washing around in his mind.

“Kat, I –”

“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. Call Chahat-Me, I know you can.”

Pierre turned to the single panel on the wall and gazed into it, imaging the Ossyrian in his mind, and Kat’s request.

A hologram appeared, facing Kat. Pierre leant his back against the wall. He guessed his rights in this matter were secondary.

Kat glanced up into the dog-like features, poker-faced. “Chahat-Me: make sure it’s a girl.”

Chahat-Me nodded, clearly not used to the gesture. The hologram vanished.

“You never dreamed of being a father, Pierre. Well, I can tell you, I never, ever thought I’d be a mother. And as for the timing…”

Pierre moved over to her side, and knelt down beside her. He desperately wanted to console her, and to ask why it must be a girl. Now he needed more time, but he heard the susurration of the anaesthetising gas as it entered the room, closing off any further discussion. He had long enough to take her hand in his. Just before he lost consciousness, he felt her squeeze his hand hard.

Chapter 15

Quarantine

Louise sprinted the last hundred metres toward the central spiral ramp, pumping her arms, pushing herself to the limit at the end of her morning ten-klick run. As she hit the incline, she powered down to a jog, then a fast walk. She panted. When she reached the next level she paused a moment, catching her breath, bending forward, hands on hips. That feeling had surfaced again during the run, as if someone – something – was watching her. She would do another scan later. Internal sensors hadn’t found anything, but they hadn’t confirmed definitively that she was alone, either. Bending further, pressing her palms flat on the floor, she pushed her thighs back, elongating her hamstrings so they wouldn’t shorten. Her breath back to normal, she straightened up and continued towards her quarters on the Control Room level.

She needed her daily routines – she’d not anticipated it would take two months to track Micah – knowing the transponder code of his ship hadn’t helped in the vastness of space. Neither had the fact that they’d not taken a direct route to the Grid, presumably because they weren’t experienced with deep space navigation. Or maybe Hannah was responsible, being naturally cautious as any Alician would be with the flight plan. Louise walked faster. Hannah. She’d like to have a word with that one, preferably the last word that girl would ever hear. Louise had seen the betrayal coming, but underestimated Hannah’s ruthlessness. That wouldn’t happen again.

She swung away from her quarters and into the Control Room, draping a towel around her shoulders, mopping up the cooling sheen from her brow. She uttered a Q’Roth syllable and a screen flashed into service, casting jade shadows in the darkened room; she used little light, unafraid of the catacomb-like corridors in the gargantuan ship. She reasoned that if there was someone or something else aboard, she didn’t need to illuminate herself. Besides, lately she felt more at ease in the dark.

Louise pored over the details on the screen. She’d picked up this particular news squirt two days ago on the local Grid-net: a renegade ship being held at an outlying sub-station. Details were sparse but her Q’Roth-honed instinct suggested it was Micah. It would take three days to get there, and she was concerned he might escape before her arrival. Once he entered the Grid, she might never find him again.

She glanced over the draft message she’d assembled earlier. It had taken all night to get the syntax and deference protocols right. It was a beacon message to any Q’Roth vessels within a hundred light years, letting them know that the renegade ship was a stolen Q’Roth Hunter Class vessel. In return for the information she claimed the right to its crew, preferably alive.

The one problem with the message protocol was that she had no Q’Roth identifier code, so she’d made one up, based on the idiomatic translation of her name. It meant they might not trust the source. But she’d given the hunter’s transponder code, which any Q’Roth vessel could verify. Good enough. She said ‘transmit’ in Q’Roth. She hoped Micah would still be alive when she arrived.

Her thirst for vengeance had long since condensed into a mission. She was thinking more like a Q’Roth, acting less out of ego need and more out of ‘instinctive species survival strategy’ – when you attack or cull a species, you go all the way – total eradication. She recalled a Pacific tribe she’d encountered whilst on recon; they’d had the same approach in their wars with neighbouring islands. Not content with killing their enemies, they ate their hearts, to conquer their souls so there could be no retribution, even in the after-life. Like that tribe, Q’Roth warriors relished battle. Louise, too, felt her moment was coming.

Of course if Vince was still alive he’d find a way to stop her, killing her again if he could. But at least he would understand her motives, and in a way, would be impressed by her tactics and her resolve – after all, he’d trained her how to track down an enemy. She smiled, aware it was the first time she’d done so since Vince’s death.

She shivered, suddenly cold. Time to go. She reached out her hand toward the ankh key, the coordinates already set for the first intercept jump. She paused. The coldness deepened, gravitating to her spine. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck sprang up. Her smile vanished. She held her breath. She remained completely still, not turning around, despite knowing with a primordial certainty that someone, or something, was standing right behind her.

◆◆◆

“I knew Blake’s son.” Micah fidgeted with a pen – he’d been trying to write his Captain’s log when Sandy had arrived at his cabin. He found he had to write it the old-fashioned way, or else he didn’t do it. He put the pen down, leaning back in the chair.

Sandy watched him.

Strange how some people instinctively know when to be quiet, he thought, when not to interrupt. “His name was Robert. We were training in the same squadron. On our first recon mission we were captured and air-lifted deep across enemy lines.” He recalled the Kurana Bay ghoster facility. He’d only seen it at night. To him, it only existed at night. The memory chilled him. “He didn’t make it.” That was all the detail he was prepared to disclose.

“Does Blake know you knew his son?”

He sighed. “No.” He wasn’t sure how Blake would react. Micah had been a witness, after all, though neither Blake nor Zack had recognised him in amongst the other sixteen year olds they’d rescued. He decided to park this for another time. Besides, it wasn’t why he’d asked to see Sandy. He cleared his throat.

“I’m losing control of this crew, Sandy.” She was the only one he could tell. His eyes drifted to her swelling belly. When they’d arrived it had still been barely noticeable. Now the whole crew knew. Hell, they’d even been suggesting names for it, though he knew the one she would choose. At least her growing foetus was a way of marking time since they’d arrived two months ago and been immediately placed – no, locked – into quarantine.

She stroked her stomach idly. He supposed she drew her serenity – a commodity in short supply in the rest of them – from the knowledge that she was doing something purposeful. Funny – at the start of the journey, after the pain of losing Vince, he thought she’d be the first to crack. But after a couple of weeks, she confided in him that a mother-to-be’s hormones had their own survival tricks.

“Micah, you’re an analyst. It’s what you’re good at. Enter analyst mode. Work out a resolution.”

He frowned. It had occurred to him. But his intuition told him they were screwed, and he didn’t want to nail that particular coffin lid down with the weight of a full analysis conclusion. But she was right. As usual.

“Okay,” he said. “Just stay with me. I’ll vocalise, so you can tell me it’s all crap afterwards, and that our glass is actually half-full.”

She touched his forearm. “Deal.”

He stood up and checked the cabin door was closed, not that anyone was likely to come in. Everyone stayed in their own cabins these days. He punched a pillow into a squat cushion, the closest he could get to the zafu he used to meditate on at home, and manoeuvred into a cross-legged, half-lotus position. He closed his eyelids, and began the breathing routine to connect the less-accessible, intuitive depths of the right brain, with the cold, unequivocal logic of the left. He visualised his corpus callosum as a rift between two mesa’s that were the left and right hemispheres, and flooded the valley with a soft white mist from which the thought process began to precipitate, the slow drips of ideas pooling into a stream of consciousness that would surge towards an unassailable conclusion, given the data available at the current time.

He began to vocalise, the words arriving from the right-brain before the left could edit them, so that he heard them as if someone else was speaking in his voice.

“Outer reach of the Grid; negligible knowledge of species, societal structure, customs, rules or language; understanding of Grid simplistic. Arrival at location apparently called Outer Feeder Sub-Station 13765-Alpha Dextrea – language approximation only – initial communication burst unintelligible; vessel controls taken over, brought into orbit above ringed gas giant; massive orbital space-station complex visible, all attempts at communication blocked or ignored. Visited twice by cylindrical holographic avatar; explored the ship, scanned crew, then left, no interaction. Ship immobile, unable to jump or move; weapons system blocked except torpedoes Zack rigged for manual targeting. Rations and water supplies will last one more month thanks to recycling. Crew in state of subdued high tension; Zack and Hannah of most imminent danger to each other; alien intentions unclear; most probable hypothesis quarantine; second hypothesis aliens have contacted nearest Q’Roth party to intercept since in Q’Roth vessel. Current mission success probability very low; survival prospects very low; situation characterisation: quietly catastrophic.”

His eyes flickered open, and accommodated to see Sandy’s face in stark relief in the harsh Agamemnon lighting. Her tranquility that had been there moments before morphed into a grimace. She stood up. “Christ, Micah, you really know how to depress a pregnant woman, don’t you?”

She stormed out.

“Thanks Sandy,” he said to the closed door. “Couldn’t have faced it without you.”

He took a hot shower. Oddly enough he felt better: bleak situations were familiar territory to him. Besides, now there was no thread of hope, his way forward was clear; his way backwards, in truth. Shakirvasta had been right after all. They stood no chance out here. They couldn’t even manage basic communications. It had been stupid, hubris all over again. He hoped they could at least get back in one piece, and that Josefsson’s ego hadn’t already ruined humanity’s second chance.

As the water sprayed over his naked body, he remembered all the faces when they’d left Ourshiwann – the hope he’d seen there which would now be squashed. It would also be tough returning personally – the triumvirate of Shakirvasta, Josefsson and Jennifer would feast on his humiliation. He wasn’t Blake. For a while he’d felt stronger, the man he’d always wanted to be, but out here he was powerless, unable to lead while they were stuck. A leader must act, and there was nothing he could do. He didn’t see how Blake would fare any better. The aliens were probably right to quarantine them. Maybe it was safer all around.

He reached the bridge to find everyone else already there. Zack hunkered in his pilot’s seat immersed in a data cloud which he guessed controlled the weapons cache. Ramires and Sandy were huddled over a comms unit, trying to figure out the latest burst of data that had arrived in translucent rotating cubes of rust-coloured serif-like digits. Every now and again symbols would illuminate or change colour. Once, two entire cubes merged and spawned four smaller ones. He and Hannah agreed it was some form of matrix coding in three dimensions, possibly four, since the timing of the cubes’ interactions appeared to matter. It was like an IQ test, and they were failing dismally. Worse still, he suspected this was a rudimentary level of communication.

Hannah’s flaxen hair draped over her console as she hunched over her screen on its pedestal – making him think of a wild, long-necked bird stooped on its perch. Not unattractive, actually … he shook himself mentally. What was he thinking?

He strode past her and stood by his Captain’s chair, facing them all, and waited. No one had noticed his arrival.  Oh well, he thought, here goes.

“Could you listen up, please, I’ve made a decision.”

One by one, the heads lifted and turned in his direction. He realised how much he hated being in the spotlight. Some are born to lead, his father had once lectured him, and some are not. He took a breath. “We –”

“– have company,” Hannah finished.

Micah and the others stared in her direction, then, seeing it was not a joke, whirled into activity. Within seconds everyone was at their post, infused with adrenaline. He didn’t know what to say, but a single word escaped nonetheless. “Report!”

Hannah: “Single ship, small transport most likely, off our starboard, approaching the docking bay.”

Zack: “Targeted their forward hull with two torpedoes.”

Sandy: “No comms yet.”

Ramires: “Visual image coming on-line… now.”

They turned as one to the large screen directly in front of Micah. A dark, circular shadow approached, discernible only by its obscuration of the stars behind it.

“Any chance of lighting it up?” Micah ventured.

“Hang on,” Ramires said, activating a touch-panel. “There!”

Nobody spoke, they just stared. Micah had seen plenty of cool ship designs in vids and games, but this wasn’t just the latest fluidic-chip maxi-sense holo-vid: this was real. And it was much, much better.

The approaching ship was somewhere between an elongated cone and a javelin, the sleek outer hull laced with metallic scarlet and purple shades rippling from the tip back to the aft section. Its texture reminded him of a moonlit lake, but its sleek lines suggested power, and above all, speed. It was hard to gauge the size, but as it approached Hannah filled them in.

“It’s a Scintarelli Star-piercer, according to the onboard database, Level Eight design, about two hundred meters in length, minimal jump drive, built for inter-stellar non-Transpace flight. Crew complement two, registering as Mannekhi, a Level Five race.”

Micah tore himself away from the screen to face her. ‘Two?’

She nodded assiduously.

It was hard to imagine such a big ship housing just two… But then, he reminded himself, he had no idea what size or shape those crew members might be.

He watched as the craft pivoted effortlessly towards them.

“Just say the word, skipper,” Zack said, a single finger poised above back-lit touch-screen pads.

He shook his head. If it was an attack, surely their moves would be more aggressive? Maybe they could fire some kind of warning shot. But it was getting closer with every second.

“We’re receiving a signal,” Sandy said.

He prayed it was not another data matrix ballet.

“Audio only.”

They all turned to Sandy then the screen. Micah wondered what it might sound like. English was the last thing he expected.

“Power down your weapons. We’re coming aboard. We’re here to help you.”

Zack retracted his finger, and stood up. “This I’ve gotta’ see. An English-speaking alien.” He paused as his gaze met Micah’s. “If it’s okay with you, boss?”

Micah felt stunned: English, and an offer of help. “Okay, Zack, you and Ramires take the pulse rifles and meet our … guests. Sandy and Hannah…” He stopped himself as he surveyed the intense faces around him. He grinned. “What am I saying? Let’s all go, there’s nothing much we can do from here anyway.”

Zack placed a conciliatory hand on his shoulder as they trotted down the rampway. “Don’t sweat it. The rifles were a good call.”

Hannah stood next to the airlock controls. “They’re inside, and pressure is equalised, same oxygen-nitrogen mix as here, no bio-threats detected.”

Micah wished the airlock had a portal so he could see the creatures before opening the hatch. Zack and Ramires stood at either side, rifles aimed at the grey-green metal archway.

“Open it,” he said.

There was a short hiss and a dull rumble, like a train carriage on tracks, as the door swung aside into a recess. A sheen of water vapour lingered in the air, then dissipated like wisps of dew in the morning sunlight. Micah’s eyes narrowed, then widened.

A lean, muscled woman in her thirties, completely bald, with sharp jade-coloured eyes, stepped toward them, looked straight at Micah, ignored the rifles, and held out her hand. “Angelica Rushton, you can call me Angel. Nice to meet you.”

Zack lowered his rifle. Ramires didn’t.

Micah gingerly met her hand, and shook it. “Micah Sanderson. How –”

“And this is Starkel.” She jerked a thumb behind her, as the second airlock occupant stepped out of its shadow. Zack’s rifle jerked back into readiness as the tall, black-clad figure glided into view, silent as a zero-G dancer, and muscled to boot. Micah’s instincts told him to be very careful, even before he noticed that the man’s eyes – irises included – were pure black.

“It’s okay everybody,” Angel said, “he’s eaten.” She turned to Zack. “Speaking of which, and I know this is going to sound weird, but do you have any meat onboard? You know, honest-to-God meat?”

It went smoother from there.

Micah pushed his plate aside. Angel’s gusto for their food rations had been infectious, and he’d eaten more than he had in weeks. She seemed to him completely self-unconscious, not caring an iota what anyone thought of her, not scarred by emotional baggage like the rest of them. He found it refreshing.

She tossed the last chicken bone onto her plate – completely denuded, bones cracked and the marrow sucked out. The rest of the crew had politely and patiently deferred to him to ask the questions.

“Angelica, how –”

“Angel, call me Angel, everyone does, you know.” She beamed.

He glanced at Sandy. “Okay, Angel. How… How the hell did you get out here? And actually, we don’t know anything.”

She kicked back in the chair, planted her boots of indeterminate material onto the metal table, and interlaced her fingers behind her head, flicking her tongue around her teeth, trying to flush out any last morsels. “Long story. The Games. Are you here for the Games?”

Micah and the rest looked from one to the other.

“Evidently not. But you’re on a Q’Roth Hunter Class vessel, here at the edge of the Grid, in one of the prime sub-stations for the Final Round.”

Micah shook his head. “Angelica … Angel, we have no idea what you’re talking about. Well, except the Q’Roth part. We stole this ship, after…” He stopped mid-sentence. He’d been watching her casual mannerisms since she’d arrived, and something had nagged at him ever since. He’d slipped into passive analyst mode during the past three quarters of an hour, and had synched an irrevocable conclusion: she doesn’t know; doesn’t know what has happened to Earth. Sandy started to say something, but Micah cut in.

“When did you leave Earth?” he asked. His crew tensed. He focused on Angel.

She rocked forward, swallowed the last morsel, and clasped her hands together on top of the table. “Two years ago. Why? When did you leave?”

“Hey,” Zack said, “she –” the rest of the sentence mutated into a grunt, Micah guessing because Sandy had kicked his shin under the table.

Micah’s mind snapped into overdrive: he didn’t know these two, or how they might react to finding out Earth had been destroyed. He reminded himself that although she looked human, and certainly the chicken-fest had been an impressively concrete demonstration, it could still be some elaborate ploy; the fate of the remnants of humanity and, most important, their existence and location, had to be carefully-guarded.

Micah elaborated the truth. “We came into contact with the Q’Roth a few months ago. They wreaked a lot of havoc before this ship was captured. I guess we were lucky they were just a scouting party.” There, that should suffice.

Starkel got up from his chair at the far end of the table, with an air of smouldering impatience. “How did you overcome the Mortix internal defence system?”

Shit! Micah felt his face begin to redden.

Hannah folded her arms. “Chameleon-DNA combined with fractal narrow-range EM bursts.”

Starkel leaned on his fists on the table, glaring at Hannah. “Then how did you repair the neural structure afterwards?”

Micah’s blush dissipated. It was like watching a lunar-style tennis match, with particularly hard hitters.

“Nannites,” Hannah parried.

“Hey, guys,” Angel jumped in, “look, we don’t have to trust each other, and we don’t have enough time to make it worthwhile in any case.” She eyed Starkel from her reclined position. “These are my people, remember? Let me handle it, okay?”

Starkel stood straight, solid as a sculpture, still aiming his attention at Hannah.

Angel spread her hands. “So, I got hijacked from Earth two years ago by Starkel and another Mannekhi called Torrann.” Her eyes glazed over. She laughed, and leaned toward Sandy, not that the two had said a word to each other yet. “Do yourself a big favour, don’t ever fall for an alien.” She ran her fingers over her scalp. “In any case, there’s some things you guys need to know, because you’re obviously new out here, and frankly you won’t last five minutes unless you know the basic rules.”

Micah started to speak but Angel shushed him with such an easy grace he didn’t doubt that even Blake would have been silenced.

“Just listen, there isn’t much time. We’ve travelled for a whole week to get here, since they posted your DNA on the Grid-net. And we totalled the Q’Roth envoy who was recalled to salvage this vessel you stole.” She made a mock bow in Zack’s direction. “Yeah, yeah, thanks can come later, I’ll give you my Mom’s address for the flowers.” She stood up, and began counting on her fingers. “Rules not to be toyed with: number one, you always need to know what level a race is. Two levels up or any level below you can address them. More levels above and you’re toast, no questions asked, no right of appeal.

Micah tried again to speak but Angel kept talking. “You’ll all need shrouders – we brought some with us – they keep all your exhaled air, body odour and shedding flesh inside a contained area about ten centimetres from your body, and will prevent any alien’s toxic, residual epidermis from entering your own body.” She glanced around at each of them. “Aliens are alien; sounds trite, I know, but sometimes you’ll be awed, sometimes you’ll be disgusted, your flesh will crawl, or you’ll just plain puke.”

As she continued with a long list of rules on how not to be pulped, Micah realised that underneath her flippant façade was a disciplined mind. He didn’t see how she’d survived this long otherwise, the only human amidst a galaxy of aliens. He had to admit that she also had their rapt attention after being starved of information for two months.

She finally paused, narrowing her eyes at all of them. She turned to Starkel, who hadn’t moved a centimetre. “We can give them a ball, can’t we? Otherwise we might as well kill them now, it’d be kinder.” She swivelled back to Zack. “Relax, big boy, just messing.” She turned to Micah. “Not all races use auditory language, quite a few use multi-dimensional mathematical constructs – roughly speaking, the higher the race, the more dimensions and parallel processing.” She shook her head. “They also think faster: we’re hillbillies to some, ants to others.”

Micah’s earlier thoughts of retreat to Ourshiwann resurfaced.

“Oh, I nearly forgot. I mentioned, the Games, didn’t I. Starkel?”

Starkel unfolded his arms. His voice boomed around the room. “Once every five thousand of your Earth years races below Level Seven have the chance to leapfrog the usual patronage system. A maximum of one hundred alien species compete in this spiral arm, each submitting a small team in what you might call a treasure hunt. Only one team will survive, and that team’s species is progressed at a much faster rate, say five hundred years to elevate to the next level, under the protection of a Level Eight species.’

‘You’re one of the teams,’ Sandy said.

Angel mock-bowed. “Well, Starkel is really. We decided the less the galaxy knows of Earth the better.”

“How are you doing?” Micah asked.

Her lips stretched into a forced smile. “We’re still alive. There’s a Q’Roth team… Vicious bastards. One of them took Torrann’s head. We’re trying to get it back.” She glazed into silence. Sandy leaned across the table so that her fingertips touched Angel’s hand. Angel looked at Sandy as if remembering something, then sat down. “It’s all in the ball, the rules, that is. What are you doing out here anyway?’

Micah’s words stalled, all except one. “Allies.”

She studied him. “What do you think, Starkel?”

“I think they should run home as fast as possible.”

Micah wanted to say there is no home anymore. But he couldn’t. “Look, Earth is worried. If the Q’Roth come back…”

Angel turned to Starkel. “Help them, Starkel. Please.”

He stared at her with an intensity Micah couldn’t interpret.

“Head to Grid Central Station 359A. There’s a Ranger outpost there. Any race of any level can approach them, although they’re somewhat temperamental. Never stand behind one, their tails are mean. Here,” he tossed Micah a glass ball the size of an orange. It was heavier than it looked.

“It’s a basic translation globe,” Angel said. “It’s been probing all of you since we arrived, and asked for you, Micah.” She leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, “You’re honoured, trust me.” Then she beamed at all of them, so that they didn’t react as she produced a gun from her boot and aimed it at the crew – except Micah – across the table. “Don’t move, this is normal. Sorry, Micah, this is going to hurt a little. Well, a lot actually.”

Micah stared at her nonplussed, and tried to get up. He realised he couldn’t feel his right hand, the one that held the crystal orb. He tried to let go, then reached over with his other hand to pluck it away, cursing himself immediately as his left hand stuck to its surface and began to numb.

“Everyone does that. Funny, really,” Angel said.

“This isn’t funny, Angel,” Sandy said, glaring.

“Yes, I know, but either you high-tail it to Earth or one of you gets the resident. It won’t harm him. I have one, you see.”

Micah felt like he was drowning while people sat around watching him. His whole body had turned numb, and was now heating up. He couldn’t move.

“It’s okay to scream, Micah, it’ll get really painful, but then it will pass, and there’ll be no damage.”

He found it hard to breathe as his lungs began to lock. He vaguely saw two flashes of a pistol Starkel produced with lightning speed, and heard two thumps to his right. His vision blurred and he heard white noise increasing in loudness and pitch, while his skin burned. He was sure he was on fire, though his eyes couldn’t move to check, and he smelt no burning flesh. Although his body wanted to scream, all that came out was a stuttering groan. He thought he would pass out with the pain, and then wished he could pass out just in order to stop it. And then, abruptly, as if a switch flicked, it was gone. He gasped. “Oh my God!” He could move again, and checked his limbs for burnt flesh, but they looked completely normal. “Hey, I think I’m alright,” he said, and promptly threw up.

“That’s normal,” Angel said, placing her pistol against her boot where it melded into the fabric and disappeared. “Sorry about that, but you’ll now see why.”

Starkel still had his pistol level with the rest of the table. He addressed Micah. “You now have a resident inside you. It’s a piece of Level Seven biotech only legal for Levels 5 and above – you don’t qualify, so you must conceal that you have it or pretend you are Mannekhi.”

“What does it do?” Micah said, wiping away dregs of vomit from his mouth with his sleeve.

“It is a communications device, but much more. Look at me.”

Micah was looking at him already, but as he focused, thoughts unfolded in his mind: Mannekhi, Level 5, male, central planet Grondsvissigen in Spiral sector –’ He looked away and it ceased. He looked back at Starkel, normally, and ‘heard’ nothing. On instinct he regarded the pistol and emptied his mind: Mannekhi Crasson multi-purpose sidearm; seven levels, set to stun, recently fired twice, 89% charged, four hundred rounds minimum remaining. “Shit,” he said. The wonder outranked the pain he’d just been through. He felt a wave of elation – this could be the key, their passport to the Grid. “Awesome!” He grinned and turned back to the others: Sandy and Hannah were staring at him, Zack and Ramires were on the ground, coming round. Sandy regarded him warily.

“What?” he said.

Hannah spoke up first. “Starkel was speaking in an alien language. You replied in the same language.”

“We can only spare one resident,” Angel said, “and it’s now bonded to Micah.”

Zack and Ramires got back to the table, wincing with the effort. “You are very quick, Mr. Starkel,” Ramires said.

“Evolutionary necessity. On our home planet we have very fast predators.”

Micah saw Zack about to say something, but didn’t want to get into a pissing contest when things were finally turning around. “It’s okay, this – ball – is going to be very useful. I’d decided earlier to abandon our mission and head back to … the others, but now we have a chance.”

Zack butted in. “Got any fancy weapons we could borrow?”

Angel leaned back, and for the first time Micah saw the edges of darkness around her eyes. “Our whole ship is a weapon, actually: organic metal, can pierce anything.”

The way she said it, Micah knew they had it for a very specific purpose, though he had no idea what it could be.

She stood up. “Well, it’s been great, and not just the chicken. Now we really have to go, and so do you by the way – there’s another Q’Roth hunter-destroyer inbound, one hour out. They’ve been tracking us down for two months, and they’re hunting you too, now. So we need you to do us a favour.” She glanced at the ball and Micah.

He shrugged, more than a little incredulously. “Sure,” he said, “why ever not?”

“Thanks, all of you. Sorry about our uninvited party tricks, but you may as well get used to it – the Grid Hierarchy is brutal, and what I did to you is like a snowflake on the tip of the iceberg, if you know that quaint old pre-War expression.” She smiled, ignoring the stares from everyone. “Starkel has cleared you from quarantine so you can leave as soon as you’re ready, just place that little ball on your nav console and it’ll do the rest. We’re asking you to wait until the other Q’Roth vessel arrives. As soon as it is in transit range your ball will jump you out of here.”

“And you’ll be..?” Zack asked.

“Far, far away, Zack. But don’t worry. We’ve planted a jump mine on your hull. When you jump it will release and then attach to the other vessel as soon as it tries to follow you.”

“Then what happens?” Micah asked, not sure he wanted to know.

Starkel answered. “You’ll exit the jump, they won’t. If you leave before they arrive, you won’t exit the jump.”

Angel shrugged. “Sorry – again. Funny – it’s been so long since I’ve had to use that word. This galaxy isn’t that big on sympathy, I’m afraid. Anyway, we’re going to leave you some kit. And we both hate the Q’Roth don’t we?”

Micah held up his hand. “Alright. We’ll do it.”

She looked as if she was going to offer her hand to Micah, but instead nodded to all of them, and without another word she headed for the exit, to the sounds of chairs raking across the floor as the others got up.

Starkel held up his arm, blocking her exit. “Just one more thing,” he said, producing a different pistol from somewhere inside his tunic.

Micah focused on it, letting the translation globe do its job. Starkel’s pistol was a molecular disruptor. It had only one setting. Everyone else stood perfectly still. Good, he thought, nobody move.

Angel frowned at Starkel, placing her hands on her hips. “What in Orion’s belt, Starkel –”

“The one called Hannah has Q’Roth DNA.” Starkel said, pistol aimed at Hannah’s head. “You’ll be dead before you reach them,” he added to Zack and Ramires, who were both edging towards their weapons.

Micah and Sandy exchanged glances. He looked pleadingly to Angel, but she silenced him with a raised hand, her face set in stone. Her stare towards Hannah rippled with a space-cold hatred.

“Sorry, Micah, but Starkel can smell these things – Mannekhi and Q’Roth are blood enemies you see. And if she has Q’Roth DNA in her, then it’s just a matter of time before she develops their nasty, aggressive tendencies. Frankly, if Starkel is correct, then I’m right behind him in the queue to vaporise her sorry ass.”

Chapter 16

Snow

Blake’s eyes flickered open to find Sonja’s dark face, haloed by tight black curls, staring down at him. She had a look he judged to be somewhere on the tightrope between fragile hope and outright desperation. She placed an index finger vertically across pursed lips. He felt like his head was full of wet cement. But the fact that she was telling him to be quiet caused his military instincts to kick in. He tried in vain to remember where he’d been before here, but it would wait. Blake trusted Sonja almost as much as he trusted Zack. Something snagged his mind when he thought of Zack – it was like a curtain, impervious. That would have to wait too, then.

Four large hooks protruded from the ceiling, and he recalled Antonia describing one of the spider dwellings in the city of Esperantia; so he was still on Ourshiwann. Rashid appeared, his tan features in stark contrast to his dolphin – a band of rainbow-tinted silver running around his head at eye level, obscuring his empty sockets. Blake had seen plenty before on soldiers who’d lost their sight in the War. The headband allowed detailed sonar perception of objects, based on dolphin physiology. The irony was, he recalled, that the nuclear War raised the ocean temperature so that krill and other plankton disappeared. Most dolphins and cetaceans followed shortly afterwards.

Sonja and Rashid man-handled him into a lev-chair. At first he instinctively tried to resist, then help, and finally he just gave up: his muscles were either damaged or atrophied due to lack of use. Taking the more optimistic of the two, it meant he’d been out for a long time; he reckoned a couple of months. Now that he knew he would be a passive participant in this event, his mind started to assemble the recent, or maybe not so recent, past. There was going to be a battle. He and Zack were in the Hohash craft, with the bomb. He remembered fighting Louise, struggling with her, she’d been stronger than he’d imagined. Then he’d blacked out. That was it, nothing more. Zack must have been knocked out or killed by Louise. The fact that Sonja was here instead of Zack was ominous. But whatever had happened, that any of them were here at all meant that Louise hadn’t been able to carry out her threat. Humanity had prevailed. A gust of relief swept over him, and no small amount of pride in mankind’s resilience.

Rashid walked on ahead as Sonja steered him from behind, the chair skimming a few centimetres above the ground down a dimly-lit tunnel. Blake saw two bodies, guards from the look of them, lying prostrate on the ground. As his eyes accommodated to the mustard light, he detected a carotid pulse in the neck of one of them. Good, he thought, it seems whatever has passed, we’re not yet in outright civil war.

Darkness loomed ahead. They set off at a brisk pace across a plaza he didn’t recognise. Sonja shoved him forward on the chair, and then he was startled as they emerged from the portico to find it snowing, but the snow was tinged cyan, an almost fluorescent lagoon blue. A few splotches landed on his cheeks and hands. It tingled, astringent at first, then numbed. He managed to turn his palms upwards, trying to catch snowflakes. Sonja placed a wide-brimmed hat on his head. At first he wasn’t sure why, guessing it was to stop the flakes going into his eyes. The snow looked so peaceful, so calming, but had an eerie feel to it, underlined as deep stinging pains spread in his hands and cheeks. He now knew why it was so quiet outside, this snow was perfect cover; no one would be out unless there was a good reason. It wouldn’t be good to get drunk and fall asleep in this weather.

Sonja sped up, joining Rashid on the other side of the plaza, where another man pushed out a skimmer. It was the same one he and Kat had ridden across Eden’s desert: the scarring on the sleek two-person hover-bike from the neutralino explosion was unmistakable. But all those events – the Hohash blowing up Rashid’s ship in order to kill a few Q’Roth; finding the underground lair brimming with hatching Q’Roth; and fighting the Q’Roth with nukes back on Eden – it all seemed a lifetime ago.

Sonja and Rashid helped him into an all-terrain jumpsuit and onto the skimmer’s pillion seat. They strapped a full-face visor and gloves onto him, and he found his muscles began to cooperate, remembering how to work. He tested his mouth – it moved, but his larynx didn’t – as if he’d forgotten how to speak. Just as well: Rashid and Sonja said goodbye, with a long kiss. She whispered something to him. Blake stared straight ahead, as Sonja came over to him, and saw his jaw set in stone.

“Don’t judge me too soon. A lot of bad things have happened. And Zack…” She touched his unresponsive shoulder. “Never mind. Now you’re back, the tide will turn.”

She made to leave, as Rashid climbed onto the seat in front of him.

With a supreme effort of will, he rasped one word. “Glenda.”

Sonja drew back. Rashid answered, without turning around. “She is safe. You will see her soon.”

Blake took little comfort from those words – Sonja’s expression told him a different story. The skimmer rose knee-height off the ground and accelerated through the houses and domes of Esperantia, whisking past in a blur of blue snowflakes and darkness – Rashid had no need of light.

They drove through the night into the scrubland, slowing down only once, as they passed a statue. Rashid turned on the skimmer’s headlights for a few seconds. Blake recognised the features of Vince and Louise locked in an embrace, and wondered how long he had been out. It flashed across his mind that perhaps he was still deep in a coma, dreaming, but he dismissed it – the stinging pain in his hands, now stretching up into his forearms like clawing roots of ice, suggested otherwise. A short while ago he’d been elated – humanity had survived. Now he had more questions than he thought there could possibly be good answers for.

After an hour’s riding at top speed, the engine’s whine stuttered into a low growl. Rashid braked hard and slewed the skimmer around a rocky outcrop, entering a small cavern at the foot of one of the low mountains. Blake had most of his muscle control back, but stayed immobile while Rashid powered the bike down and dismounted. The cavern was room-sized, a pool of stagnant water in the middle. Rashid activated a small black box, and yellow lights dappled the solid rock walls, casting eerie shadows.

Rashid took off his helmet and eyed him from a safe distance. “You should have muscle control by now,” he said. “Remember I was a paramedic too. So, the fact that you are acting as if you do not, means you do not trust me right now.”

Blake creaked an arm upwards and flicked up his visor. He recalled the first time he’d trusted Rashid. “Do you blame me?”

“Not at all. But there is much to tell, Commander.”

“No offence, Rashid, but I’d like to hear it from Glenda. Or Zack.” He noticed Rashid pause in reaction to the second name.

“You do not remember?”

Blake eased off his helmet with difficulty. It got stuck halfway, and Rashid had to yank it off for him. Rashid unfastened the straps and Blake half-fell off the bike with a groan – he’d intended to dismount alone, but was glad for Rashid’s helping hands.

“You will make a full recovery, but Zack… Please, Commander tell me what you remember. Everything.”

He told him what he remembered, then Rashid told him Zack’s version of events, and filled him in on the fatal encounter between Louise and Vince, the rapid political ascendance of Josefsson and Shakirvasta, and Micah and Zack’s departure.

Blake brooded for a long time, while Rashid used a field stove to boil water and make tea.

“It wasn’t Zack’s fault,” Blake said, finally. But he heard the tinge of anger in his own voice. He raised his hand to touch his throat, where Zack had caused a micro-stroke; Rashid had said it had been repaired since. He told himself again – it wasn’t his fault – and this time expunged all anger. He recalled Zack pulling him out of the nightmare that had been Kurana Bay. That did the trick. He added, “Nothing to forgive.”

Rashid paused, teapot in one hand, cup in the other. “Now I am blind, I hear things more clearly. Normally, I have to sift carefully for the truth… Your integrity has been missed.”

Blake accepted a cup of steaming chai. “So, what happened after Micah and the others left?”

Rashid sat down cross-legged, blowing across the top of his tea. He took a sip, then set down the antique china cup, the same one Blake had seen on Eden when he first met Rashid. The Indistani’s dolphin glistened as he faced Blake with uncanny accuracy. “When we left Eden, Commander, I had hoped for a turning point. But it seems we brought our darkness with us.”

◆◆◆

“How exactly did he escape?” Shakirvasta’s voice clawed at the air, like fingernails etching gravestone marble. Marvin Klempfer, Ourshiwann’s second Chief of Police in a month, shifted uneasily.

“They… must have planned this for a long time.”

“They?”

“Yes, well, there must have been many. And they will pay when we find out exactly who it was.”

“Who it was?”

The man’s face flushed. “Obviously we have suspicions, but we need evidence.”

“Evidence?”

The man wrung his hands. He stopped talking.

Shakirvasta tapped the end of a cheroot, the ash tumbling onto the floor. He took a long draught of the cigarillo, inhaling deeply so that its end blazed. “What do you think, my sweet?”

Jen appeared from behind a wooden screen decorated with semi-clad Indistani women. Barefoot, she wore a turquoise kimono. “I think anyone would be pleased to do their civic duty.”

Klempfer, standing to attention, kept his eyes on Shakirvasta.

“Well put,” Shakirvasta said. He eyed Klempfer. “Well?”

Marvin’s eyebrows knitted together. “Right. Right away, then. We’ll bring some people in –”

“To help us with our enquiries.”

Marvin nodded, and backed away to the door, then slipped out into the night.

Jen sidled up to Shakirvasta. “Remind me why exactly you gave an ex-cyberspace security hound the job of Chief of Police? He’s clearly an imbecile.”

Shakirvasta sat down and pulled Jen around so that she sat atop his bony knees.

“Good people aren’t hard to find, they’re just hard to manage.”

She cocked her head. “Do you manage me?”

“Barely.”

She smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and walked over to the oval window, staring out at the snow.

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“Who?” she said.

Shakirvasta said nothing.

“It was Dimitri’s choice to go off on his quest to find other spider cities. It’s a luxury I decided I could not afford – we, humanity, couldn’t afford.”

He stubbed out the dying cheroot, crushing the last embers of light. “Your new defence corps. How are they coming along?”

She turned back to him. “Ready for some field practice, I’d say.”

“Blake is out there. I doubt he is in the city. You know, if he comes back, there’s a chance he could gain popularity again.”

Her glow faded. She folded her arms. “He should join us in the fight. Seek out the Alicians and destroy them, before they find us again.”

“Agreed, he should. Humanity is working out nicely here: people are finding their way either in farming, services, or in your little army. It would be a shame to upset the balance.”

Jen thrust an arm outside, so that snowflakes danced on her fingers.

“My sweet, I wish you would not do that.”

She continued, until the pain began. She retracted her arm, and swept back into the room, casting off her kimono before she reached the screen. Shakirvasta listened to the snapping buckles of her commando gear and boots.

She reappeared, Valkyrie-like, fully armed. “Later,” she said.

He knew that most people would have waited until after the snow had stopped. He recalled one of his father’s epithets: A good horse runs at the sight of the whip. Sometimes you don’t find good people, he thought, but the right people: so much easier. He lit another cheroot.

As it too came to an end, Josefsson arrived, brushing the blue snow noisily from his raincoat with thick gloves, ignoring the mess it made on the floor.

“You know Blake is gone, of course. If he comes back, rallies people around him…” He took off his raincoat and draped it over the wooden screen. One of the semi-clad ladies began to melt under the acid snow.

Shakirvasta stared at the irreplaceable art dissolving for a moment, then looked at Josefsson. “Yes: our brave new world could falter. Order would be replaced by liberal democracy; society would fall apart within a year. Humanity would disappear into the mire. The feudal system we have re-introduced, with wise but firm overlords, is the best basis for humanity to get back on its feet again.” He studied Josefsson, but the latter’s expression had not changed. “Don’t worry, Jen has gone to look for him.”

Josefsson jabbed a finger in Shakirvasta’s direction. “You put too much trust in that girl. She could turn again, you know, you mark my words!”

He watched as twin spirals of smoke snaked around each other in the cool night air, circling but never mixing; like Jen and Josefsson. “I always mark your words, believe me.” But he also hedged his bets, and he had put Jen in charge of the military. He stubbed out the cheroot. “Some of my men will be with her, just in case she suffers a crisis of conscience.”

◆◆◆

“What about Vasquez?” Blake railed - his earlier state of epiphany, based on humanity’s survival and defeat of Louise, had quickly foundered, dragging him downward into political quicksand.

“The military was disbanded, and Colonel Vasquez and a contingent of his men were sent on a six-month exploration of the far reaches of the main continent.”

“Kostakis, then? Antonia?” Blake was running out of options.

Rashid retained his equanimity, making Blake feel all the worse. “The Professor went to search for other spider cities after Jennifer headed up a new militia, reporting directly to Chairman Shakirvasta.”

“Chairman?”

“Antonia remains within the Council, our only firm ally there. She has a hard time of it but knows that while she stays she can curb some of the excesses. New laws are passed every week, ever more stringent, centralising power and crushing dissent. People occasionally disappear, followed by announcements that they have gone on survey missions.”

Blake paced the small cavern. His heart thumped loudly in his veins. He’d had enough. He pressed his eyes closed, then thought of his priorities. And there lay the solution, he realised. His priorities, not ‘the people’s’. His heart eased off.

“So, Glenda is in this new central complex at the heart of the city?” He picked up and checked the pulse rifle: fully charged.

“It is not so simple. The city is effectively under martial law.”

“She’s my wife, and neither of us is technically a prisoner, right?”

Rashid sighed, and hung his head. “Your good wife told me to give you a message, if you became…”

“Difficult?” He rammed the rifle into the one of the skimmer’s gun slots.

“She said use it only as a last resort, to stop you doing something … foolish.”

“Rashid, after what I’ve been through – after what we’ve all been through – I can’t just leave her there. Even if Shakirvasta takes me prisoner, I’ll be closer to her.” He parked the second pulse rifle in the remaining gun slot. “Coming?”

Rashid squatted down. His hand glazed across the sandy floor. “Please, reconsider. At least, let us form a strategy, gather support. Give time for the rumours of your escape to reach the population and let Shakirvasta’s true nature be exposed by his actions.”

Blake felt the anger brewing inside him like a thunderstorm. He’d not given up everything just so Shakirvasta and his cronies could turn their new society into a dictatorship, with people working the land as effective forced-labour or as minions in ‘services’. And as for Jennifer – how had he misjudged her so? But he recognised a deeper seat to his anger. His mentor, General Kilaney, had warned him about it. He’d said that given enough time, every career soldier, at least once, will seriously question if the people he’s prepared to fight and die for are worth it. He realised he was boiling inside that particular crucible right now. He’d done his part, freed people from the Alician menace, only to see them hand power to a megalomaniac. How could they be so stupid? The only person he wanted to save now was Glenda. Nothing else, and no one else, mattered.

“Sorry, Rashid, but I’m done with saving other people all the time. I went to Eden knowing my wife had terminal cancer, knowing I might never see her again. Then I ran a suicide mission against Louise, saying goodbye to Glenda again. And now she’s a prisoner. This is personal, Rashid, I’m done being the Commander; I just want to save my wife, you understand that, don’t you?” He knew damn well Rashid understood – Rashid had gone to Eden leaving his wife behind, never to see her again. Blake knew he shouldn’t have said it, but it was out now.

Rashid’s dolphin dimmed. He found a pebble on the floor, and weighed it in his hand, saying nothing. Blake mounted the skimmer and grabbed his helmet.

“Commander, here is the message.” Rashid spoke to the floor. “She said that Zack told her about Robert. That was all she said. I do not know what it –”

Rashid winced as Blake’s helmet slammed into the wall, then ricocheted off onto the floor several times before sloshing to rest in the pool of water.

Blake sat on the skimmer, breathing hard, his arms hanging by his sides. His right hand trembled, the one that had pulled the trigger all those years ago. “Zack had no right,” he whispered, his voice almost breaking. He gritted his teeth, remembering his and Zack’s botched rescue attempt to save those captive boys near the end of the War in Kurana Bay. His own son, Robert, had been… transformed by the enemy into a mindless fighting machine… And Blake had shot him, after Robert had killed the rest of his platoon, and was about to kill Zack. He’d shot his own son. There was no reason, no justification or excuse worthy of such an act, in his book. Only he and Zack had known. Robert had been declared missing in action, presumed dead.

The fight drained out of him. Glenda’s message was as clear as it was brutal. No more botched rescues: use your head. He knew she was right. And the message was double-edged – she might well be angry with him, or not, he couldn’t tell. He could imagine her pounding him with her fists, tears running down her cheeks, screaming ‘How could you?’ Maybe that was what he wanted.

His breathing slowed. He remembered Pierre once used a French expression about the need to maintain one’s sang froid – cold blood. His right hand stilled.

He dismounted, walked past Rashid, and retrieved his helmet, shaking it a couple of times to rinse out the fetid water. He went over to the field stove and began preparing tea. ‘Names, Rashid. I need names of those you trust with your life, those who are on Shakirvasta’s side, and those who could be turned to our advantage. And I need schematics of the city, as well as the political infrastructure.’

Rashid came to Blake’s side. He saluted. “Good to have you back, Commander.”

Chapter 17

Galactic Barrier

"One minute to impact.” The timbre of the voice was calm, dispassionate, belying the fact that Grid Society was facing the most serious threat it had seen in more than a million angts of recorded history.

Drone A27243, Dapsilon to his friends, knew his organic colleagues in the fleet scattered along this section of the galaxy’s edge would be sweating, shedding scales, or exuding pus, according to their physiology. Their digits and tentacles would be twitching, hovering above buttons and triggers, ready to unleash awesome weaponry at the first sight of their foe. But to a war-drone, one minute was a long time to reflect.

Dapsilon’s primary function was intel, to gain knowledge of the inbound threat and its weapons capability, and feed data back to the Tla Beth War Council. Other drones in their thousands had been deployed to combat – correction – to annihilate the enemy, presumed to be the Kalaheii, though there was no definitive confirmation, because everything in the storm-front’s path had been obliterated before signals could be dispatched. And so he – for he possessed male attributes compared to other drones which could be considered female in their orientation – had been charged with one simple directive: inform.

But he was much more, a strategy drone, capable of matching a Tla Beth in poly-dimensional chess. He’d seen wonders, fought in many wars, often alongside Rangers. That had been his undoing. He’d been deemed ‘contaminated’ by close proximity with those reptiles, his neural nets biased by their unruly yet curiously efficient value structures. And so he’d been relegated to low-ranking tasks for the last millennium. But the hierarchy hadn’t deleted his higher functions, and he was determined to think until the end, and to be creative if necessary. That was what he was good at.

“Forty seconds.”

Stop day-dreaming, he told himself, analyse! He considered the threat first – the Kalaheii. The data was hard-coded in his permanent memory, now forty thousand angts old. The Progenitors of the Silverback galaxy – where the drone currently sat – were ancient, seven noble races more than two billion angts old, but they had not evolved there. They had come from the nearby Jannahi galaxy after the terrible thousand-angt war with an eighth race, the Kalaheii. Their original galaxy had been decimated by the Kalaheii’s leader Qaroll when he realised he’d lost the War. And now the data concluded that descendants of this eighth race, presumed extinct, were rushing toward the Silverback’s edge, traversing the inter-galactic void, in search of retribution. Only the higher levels of Grid Society had been alerted, to prevent widespread and futile panic. War was afoot.

Another drone intruded on his thoughts. “Drone A 27243 – status update – defence integrity secure?”

The digital signature of the message caused a core buffer swell, quickly rectified, but a memory string resonated and surfaced into his central core awareness. Sergeant Drone D46539: Delfina. A long time ago he had been teamed with her. It had been a tricky mission, involving the quelling of a rebellion following the discovery of cheating at one of the Games – a ridiculous anachronistic tradition he had really expected to have been quashed long since. Together, they had developed a rare form of rapport, even for drones designed to be compatible. He had always felt that as a team they could handle anything.

Eventually, the Tla Beth had assigned them to different quadrants. Things like that happened. They were probably right. But now – was it really her? The odds were astonishingly small, but the signature was unmistakable. His circuits hummed, their harmonics pulsing quietly in the background data noise. His CPU felt … perfect symmetry.

He sent the corresponding defence integrity status codes, and then transmitted “Is that really you?” using a single channel squirt.

She didn’t reply, of course. It was an inane question, and she was far too professional. But he knew that she had received his message, and the fact that she had not replied, not reprimanded him for unnecessary comms in an emergency situation, spoke volumes about how she felt about him. The Rangers had taught him too much about organics’ feelings, had ruined his career progression, but he wouldn’t want it any other way. Still, he knew he should get back to his analysis.

Dapsilon was not the only intel drone – three hundred were speckled along the predicted intercept region. But his own defences verged on the extreme – he was cocooned in a reinforced bubble inside a neutron star five parsecs inside the galaxy, sitting on top of a stabilised wormhole able to whisk him away in a matter of micro-seconds. Moreover, he was insta-connected to three back-up drones inside, respectively, a gas giant, a moon, and a small nebula.

Upon any intel whatsoever, such as visual image, confirmation of Kalaheii identity, first weapons volley, or attack formation, he was to get the hell out of there, slip-streaming data ahead of him. He was absolutely not to stay for the battle. He would do what he was told, or rather programmed, but there was a tinge of curiosity – he wanted to stay and watch the Kalaheii smash into the galactic barrier and be destroyed.

“Thirty seconds. Energise shields, ready all weapons.”

Comms traffic intensified across the fleet, but nothing unexpected, so he let his lower processing shells deal with the checks and confirmation requests. He returned to his analysis. Defences: the barrier and the void. The Galactic Barrier was a genius-engineered cosmic phenomenon, aimed at maintaining the integrity of the galaxy. If there was a need to resort to something as imprecise as a metaphor, then the barrier was a membrane, akin to the ‘skin’ of the simplest form of organic life, the amoeba. It stopped matter leaking out and, more importantly, prevented almost all dark energy seeping in. It was a repulsive force, devised by the ancients using equations of energy harmonics long since lost. The barrier itself had been forgotten until explorers attempted to leave the galaxy, their journeys ending catastrophically, said explorers becoming two-dimensional smears, molecular lamina flapping aimlessly inside the galactic edge.

Eventually – several hundred thousand angts later – ways out had been found, the most popular involving polarisation of a membrane weak spot, and careful insertion of a liquid-diamond stent, opened up using artificial black holes. But then there was another, more pernicious problem: the void itself.

Space was space, or so most organics thought. But space inside the galaxy had a density, counting space dust and EM clutter. The inter-galactic void was different. This was serious space. Nature might abhor a vacuum, but it was terrified of the void. The few ships that made it out there … died. There was no other word for it. Organics, machines, hybrids – all met the same fate, the life force or power source leached out of them by patches of dark space. And there was worse. A space faring creature known as the Xargylach, a space-whale, was thrown out into the void as an experiment, as bait. After a month, this normally peaceful, glacial-thinking leviathan suddenly thrashed and kicked and … screamed. They say no one can hear you scream in space, but everyone heard this goliath scream, for light years around, courtesy of its low-grade telepathic mind. At first no one knew why it was so anxious, so a Ranger who had been tracking it hooked it up to a telepathic Bartran, and then the Ranger stuck his claw into the Bartran’s mind-slot. He uttered two words before slipping into a terminal coma. Dark worms. The space-whale died, but when it was recovered, there were hideous scars on its hide: curving, wave-like ulcerations in its space-resistant silicate flesh. After that episode, further extra-galactic excursions were prohibited by the Tla Beth council.

“Ten seconds. Charge displacement capacitors. Arm black hole magnetic mines.”

Dapsilon’s surveillance channels told him the whole fleet was now in hyper-readiness, waiting just inside the barrier. The armada was the largest amassed in half a million angts, enough heavy weapons and armour to fill a black hole, all directed at a sliver of empty space. He knew the organic commanders, including the legendary Q’Roth High Guard, would be straining their eyes and slits to see the approaching invasion force, but since it was travelling at near-light speed, it would not be visible until nano-seconds before it hit.

“Be careful.”

Delfina’s message stopped his thinking in its tracks. She was taking a big risk sending this message. It meant two things – she really cared, and she was scared, worried they were really in big trouble, that the Kalaheii would somehow break through and destroy them.

“You too, my love,” he replied, knowing he was going way over the top. He reprimanded himself for such a cavalier attitude. He hoped no one would review the myriad communiqués after the battle.

Tactics. He knew at least one of their defence assumptions must be wrong – the Kalaheii wouldn’t spend all this time just to launch a suicide run. The Progenitors had made the inter-galactic voyage a billion angts earlier. For security reasons their mode of voyage had been classified to Level 15 access until recent events changed matters. The dark worms were not myth – they killed many of the ancients en route, a process of attrition that bled away seventy per cent of the ancients’ number during the million-plus angts voyage from the extinguished galaxy to this one.

The Progenitors had experienced first-hand the energy-leaching aspect of the void, and had countered it in two ways. The first was by adopting a minimal power output profile, with almost all ancients cocooned in stasis arks. The second counter-measure involved a ballistic approach – they used dark energy, in ways no one below Level 17 could fathom, to sling-shot towards the next galaxy. Their speed and low energy output prevented a fatal feeding frenzy by the dark worms, which would have created drag on the craft. If you lost momentum out in the void, it was all over.

As for breaching the galactic barrier from the outside, it was possible, but should take several angts just to overcome the repulsive force. There was nothing to anchor onto: it was like a swimmer with the shore in sight, struggling against the tide – the void offered no purchase, nothing to push off from or hook onto to gain enough momentum to break through. So, if the Kalaheii arrived – and the data definitely coalesced around that hypothesis – then it should be easy to pick them off as they tried to breach the barrier. The most disturbing conundrum was that the Kalaheii most probably knew all of this.

He took a few milliseconds to study the barrier. Though invisible to organics, to his sensors it looked like a shimmering, electrified wall crackling with hostility. How could they get through?

“Five seconds.”

Fleet communication reached fever pitch, but he could still handle it lower down in his processing chain. He possessed a full cache of emotions, orchestrated to optimise his performance. He could have done without the fear, however. Surplus energy fluxed with uncomfortable resonances – it would be recycled, naturally, but it kept him on edge.

To take his mind off the coming insurgency, he triple-checked his sensors and comms integrity status with the conduit, the wormhole, other drones… and Delfina. He sent her a private recursive ‘handshake’ algorithm, the equivalent of squeezing a human hand. She returned it. His circuits fizzed.

He became aware of an unannounced drop in comms traffic. In a nanosecond he checked the transpace conduit – it was offline.

“FLEE!”

He didn’t bother to check wormhole status, instead he initiated subversion, but it didn’t work – the wormhole had lost stability. His energy matrices ramped up to maximum. He tried contacting Delfina and other drones, but all channels were jammed by a hailstorm of sound and light across the entire EM and sub-spatial spectra. Just outside the barrier he saw what looked like a billowing cloud erupt and mushroom out of nowhere, engulfing everything, like an antibody enveloping another cell’s membrane. The shimmering galactic barrier fluttered, flashed once, and then a savage tear split across it, letting the cloud flood inward, like a burst dam. His fear sub-routines went off-scale. Why wasn’t anyone firing? His internal diagnostic system told him that thirty-nine of his lower intelligence levels had just been eviscerated. He’d auto-downloaded as much as he could. Time to get out! He shunted his core into the three back-up drones, just before his neutron star imploded inside the collapsing wormhole.

He awoke inside the shattered moon. The gas giant had been boiled away, the nebula ionised to intolerable levels, so he had no further boltholes. His external sensors scanned the area but had a hard time interpreting the data. Where am I? It was not logical. There were no stars. But there was plenty of debris all around, across a huge area: disabled drones and shredded hulls of the organics’ ships. He was out in the void.

He detected a far away swirl of light and pattern-matched it – definitely his galaxy. He triangulated with several other visible galaxies. He was fifty light years out into the void, and stationary. He tried again to connect with Delfina, first using point access, then he went broadband, no longer caring who or what listened in. No reply.

What had happened? It had been so quick. He managed to link with fifteen other non-dead Alpha drones, to assimilate data.

“Why?” they asked, “what’s the point?”

His agitation intensified. “Because it is our mission to understand!”

“Who can we tell? We’re all going to die.”

His electrons reached dangerous levels of excitation. He cursed their sub-optimal emotional responses. If Delfina was here, she would instil order into them. He would not let her death be in vain. “COMPLY!”

They did. Together they built a picture: not pretty, but impressive. The Kalaheii – for it was confirmed now – had used a poly-instantaneous-attack strategy. They had become visible as they slowed from near-light speed. What registered was, as his Ranger would say, a shitstorm of sun-sized meteorites. They smashed into the galactic barrier with such kinetic energy that it created a shock wave on the outer wall of the membrane, shattering conduits, wormholes, and most technology in the process – the mother of all EM pulses. But that wasn’t the clever part. Dark energy weapons had opened a micro-fissure in the Galactic Barrier – while it had been pounded by meteorites, no one had noticed a syringe-sized funnel piercing it. The Kalaheii had used this portal to do something ingenious.

When the Kalaheii’s ships had been slowed by the repulsive forces, they locked on through the fissure to every piece of matter just inside the galactic barrier – the defensive armada of drones and ships – and leap-frogged them, using their matter to pull their own ships forward and through the fractured barrier using advanced differential transit techniques, catapulting the defensive force into the void, realising one of the universe’s most basic axioms, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We’ve been played, he concluded – they used our fear, knowing we would mount a massive defence force, which gave them an anchor to pull against. Clever bastards.

He noted that five of his brother drones went off-line. There were chaotic high-intensity squirts from de-compiling data matrices – the drone equivalent of a primal scream. He knew what it was. It was the last piece of the puzzle. The Kalaheii hadn’t merely evaded the dark worms – they had somehow made them allies. Why? he wondered, as seven more of his co-drones stopped transmitting. The answer came all too readily from one of his tactical sub-servers: allies have overlapping goals; the Kalaheii are going to allow the dark worms into the galaxy. The perfect shock-troops, while the Kalaheii consolidate their forces, co-opting further allies. Even the Q’Roth wouldn’t be able to stand against them.

The last of his co-drones went silent. His circuits told him his conjecture was eighty-nine per cent probable. But who could he tell? If he transmitted now, light years out from the Galactic edge, his information would be of no timely use. Something stirred in his memory banks. It was unorthodox, but he had no other options. He assembled a nine-dimensional intel squirt and opened an ancient transpatial frequency accessible by a data-plexer known colloquially as Hohash, if indeed any of these mythical info-warping machines still existed. It was not an official channel, but a Ranger had once confided it to him, saying that it was an ancient, last-ditch emergency channel. But what to transmit? Most of his data had been corrupted.

His external sensors picked up something – in fact, an absence of space – moving toward him in steady, spiralling, homing curves. He could not switch off his fear conditioning, no more than an animal could, even when fear served no useful survival purpose. He had to work fast.

He trawled through the data fragments. But he could only reliably send one transmission at this distance, even using subspace. Five more layers of his intelligence sheared off like gas boiling into space. He had fifty milliseconds left. He knew the only hope for galactic survival lay in finding and re-activating the last ancient Progenitor race known as the Kalarash, not heard from for over a million angts. Only they could stand up to the Kalaheii. What did he have that could rouse them? He accessed the very last fragment, number 78. It stunned him. One of his now defunct brother drones had intercepted a Kalaheii command communication during the maelstrom. It was a visual, showing an organic commander with a face like a dying sun. Dapsilon had never been programmed to recognise something as subjective as ‘evil’, but he knew it when he saw it. There had been a single word decoded by the drone, a name: Qorall, the mythical leader of the Kalaheii. This, he knew, would get the Kalarash’s attention. He encoded and transmitted. He hoped a Hohash still existed somewhere to receive it.

The remains of the moon sheltering his outer shell exploded. There was nothing more he could do. He initiated crash shutdown, it would be better that way. As his sentience faded, his thoughts were of Delfina. He condensed his memories of her, creating an electronic pastiche of her personality. The last thing he sensed was a huge mouth darker than black, yawning wide, but he had acted just in time.

As the mouth closed, a single micro-EM pulse escaped, racing away into the void, containing a complex memory string of two drones entwined in a binary embrace.

Chapter 18

Star-piercer

"Move aside, Micah,” Angel said, her shoulder level with Starkel’s pistol.

Micah’s feet remained planted in front of Hannah. “Can’t do that, Angel. She’s one of my crew.”

Angel sighed. “Be smart, Micah. Starkel won’t let her go alive, and he’ll have very few qualms about you joining her.”

“Micah,” Sandy said, quietly, “now’s not the best time to be a hero. I’m tired of watching people I care about die.”

“Buddy, sorry, but she ain’t worth it,” Zack added. “You’re the Captain. Mission comes first. Let her go.”

Hannah stood perfectly still behind Micah. Angel peered around Micah to catch her feral eyes. “I see you haven’t been winning too many popularity contests, Hannah.”

Micah stared down the barrel of Starkel’s disruptor. His resident displayed a legend on the right side of his vision, telling him the weapon was set to vaporise at close range. He only half-understood why he was doing this. His logical mind voted to move his feet, but they wouldn’t budge. He tried to rationalise it, and an idea formed, an argument. “We need her. We’re in a Q’Roth vessel, how far are we going to get without her?”

“Trade it in,” Angel countered. “You’ll get a good price. I know places they don’t ask questions.”

Micah shook his head. “Sorry.” He stared into Starkel’s coal-black eyes, finding no trace of compassion there. Micah felt a wave of calm. “Go ahead, just –”

Noise erupted all around, like termites crunching through wood, amplified a thousand-fold. Micah flinched.

“Shit!” Angel shouted through the din. “They’ve arrived early.” She looked away for a second – Micah guessed she was accessing data via her resident, telemetry from her ship.

“Fuck, two ships – they sent two ships.” Angel turned to Starkel.

Hannah came out from behind Micah. “Now you need me.”

Everyone stared at Starkel, his pistol aimed between Hannah’s eyes. The muscles on his forearm bulged.

Hannah stood her ground. “They’re calling us. If we don’t reply in one minute they’ll open fire on both our vessels.”

Angel laid a hand on Starkel’s wrist, lowering his arm. She didn’t take her eyes off Hannah. “Don’t try anything clever.”

“We’re probably all dead anyway,” Hannah said. “The bridge – quickly.”

Micah and the others tailed Hannah as she raced up the ramp to the empty bridge. Two blue-black, starfish-shaped vessels filled the viewscreen, spinning slowly about their axes. The points of each limb of the two ships glowed a dull, throbbing red, growing in brightness with each pulse. Hannah rapped commands into her console, then regained her breath. “Okay, nobody say anything, not a sound.”

Micah watched, enthralled, as Hannah started speaking what he presumed was Q’Roth – a cross between walking over dry autumn leaves, and throat-clearing after chewing razor blades.

He stood with his back to his Captain’s chair, and glanced at Angel. She shrugged, looking distinctly unhappy. Starkel’s disruptor kept Hannah in its sights. So, neither of them have any clue what she’s saying to the Q’Roth vessels.

“Give me your pistol, Starkel.” Hannah shouted. Micah gaped at her. Hannah rolled her eyes. “Look, there isn’t time. I’ve told them I’ve captured a rival to the Q’Roth in the Games, plus your ship. They’re going to send a holo-avatar here to scan us, to check my story.”

Starkel flared. “I’d rather die than –”

“Then we will all die!” she screamed at him. “We have about fifteen seconds of life left.”

Angel pried the pistol from Starkel’s fingers and tossed it to Hannah.

“Thank you,” Hannah said, then produced another pistol from underneath her console. “Sorry,” she said, “no time to explain. I told them there’d been a fight onboard.”

Micah wondered what she meant, as he watched her right thumb skim down the handle of a Q’Roth pistol he’d not seen before. Without warning, she fired at Starkel and Ramires almost simultaneously, followed by Zack as he levelled his rifle at her. She jumped down from her dais and whipped the butt of Starkel’s pistol across Angel’s jaw, sending her sprawling unconscious to the floor. She faced Sandy and Micah. “Kneel! Both of you, now!”

Micah winced at the bodies lying sprawled around him, blood dripping from Angel’s slack jaw.

“I said NOW!”

Sandy tugged at his elbow and they both dropped to their knees.

Hannah soaked up beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of her forearm. “Do not speak. Do not look at her when she arrives.”

A swirling purple haze fizzed out of nowhere in the centre of the bridge, forming a familiar shape to Micah, one he’d hoped never to see again. First to materialise was the matt-black trapezoidal head, the lower edges tapered toward the neck, giving it the overall shape of a rectangle that had been stretched down at the middle, like the silhouette of an open book. Six diagonal slits, three on each side of its face, oozed vermillion wax, like weeping sores; eyes of some sort. A rhino-like armored thorax appeared, followed by its upper pair of barbed legs, like those of a praying mantis. The rest remained mercifully obscure, the projection only half complete.

Sandy tugged his elbow again and he remembered he was not supposed to look.

He listened at the rapid, staccato conversation between Hannah and the holo-avatar. At one point the Q’Roth issued a hiss like cold water hitting hot coals, and Micah sensed they were arguing. Abruptly, the avatar vanished.

“Quick, we don’t have much time.”

Before Micah got to his knees, Sandy sprung up, lunging at Hannah with her fist. But Hannah was quicker, and whirled around Sandy, deftly trapping her in a neck hold from behind. “They’re just stunned, Sandy,” she said. “Tell her Micah, use that thing inside your head.”

He’d been too caught up in everything to process the background data projected by the resident. He stared at the pistol in Hannah’s hands, draped around Sandy’s necks; it was set on stun.

“Sandy, she’s telling the truth. Let her go, Hannah, and tell us what’s going on.”

Hannah released Sandy, pistol at hip height. Sandy’s hands were shaking. He put a calming hand on her heaving shoulders.

Hannah backed away and leaned against her console. “You’ve no idea how exhausting it is using their language, and as for arguing with them… Sandy, I’m sorry, but they’re all unharmed. I didn’t want to stun you, well, for obvious reasons – she waved her pistol at Sandy’s ‘bump’. There should be something in the med-kit to rouse them, we need to work fast.”

“This had better be good, Hannah,” Sandy said, glowering.

“Okay.” Hannah addressed Micah. “I know about the Games, all Alicians do, we plan to compete in the next ones in three hundred years’ time in a different Grid quadrant. There are certain rules of engagement. I told the captain of the lead vessel that I had captured the Mannekhi contestant, a known rival of the Q’Roth entrant, but that I demanded trophy rights. It means guaranteed eligibility for the Alicians to enter next time. I said I would only hand Starkel over after the Q’Roth commander had contacted the Games authorities and submitted a formal evidenced request for entrance by a new species.”

Angel came round, sitting up, cradling her jaw, glaring at Hannah, but listening intently. “It’s plausible, Micah. I have something similar planned for humanity if we win.”

“The Q’Roth captain – well, she was furious, and only dimly aware of the Alicians as a newly Q’Roth-patronised race. Q’Roth hordes are nomadic, tribal, even. The various tribes don’t always stay in touch.”

Sandy had roused Starkel, who climbed to his feet.

Hannah continued. “We have ten minutes, then a boarding party will arrive. Before that time we have to destroy one of their ships, release the Star-piercer, and jump, blowing up the second Q’Roth vessel with the transpatial mine you so generously attached to our hull.” She nodded in Angel’s direction.

“And how do we take out one of their ships?” Angel stood, helped up by Starkel, a bloodstain tattooing her chin.

“I was hoping the name of your vessel, Star-piercer, wasn’t just cosmetic?”

Angel nodded. “Where’s their weakest point?”

Hannah turned to her console and indicated on the viewscreen an inner ring on the central body of one of the ships. “There. Penetrate that point and then get the hell out of the way as fast as you can. I told them I would take the Star-piercer and hand this ship and its Knarll – excuse me – all of you here, alive for them to do with as they please.”

Micah helped Zack to his feet. Ramires had already come to without Sandy’s help. “Zack,” he said, “can you fly this ship in your condition?”

Zack rubbed his chest. “Ugh. No problem, just get me to my seat.”

He and Sandy helped Zack to his fighter-jet chair. Once there he began tapping controls.

Micah walked up to Angel. “Nice meeting you,” he said. “You’d better go. Good luck.” He shrugged. He wanted to tell her about Earth, that it was gone, but there was no time, and it wouldn’t help her.

The corners of her mouth rose. “Thanks.” She paused and spoke in a low tone, just to Micah. “It’s probably none of my business, Micah, but my resident is attuned to emotional patterns, and, well life is short out here, so here goes.” She leaned close and whispered something in his ear.

He drew his head back, his eyes widening. He nodded, and parked it for later.

Starkel strode up to Hannah, holding out his hand. She slapped his disruptor into his palm. He quit the bridge without glancing back.

Angel paused at the exit. “Goodbye everyone, it’s been … an education. The Mannekhi have a saying – shit happens fast, death happens faster. Get used to it, it’s a jungle out here, and we’re just dumb wildebeest.” She nodded to Micah. “Good luck, you’re going to need it.”

Micah turned to the rest. “Stations, everyone.”

He took up his chair. “Hannah, can we power up the jump engines without them noticing?”

Zack answered. “The engines have been charged for weeks. We just need a few seconds to bring them online.”

“Show us the Star-piercer, Sandy.”

The viewscreen shifted. After a minute, the javelin-shaped ship, soap-bubble colours sliding down its shaft, edged gracefully away from their airlock.

Zack cracked his knuckles. “Now we get to see how good a pilot Starkel is.”

No sooner had he said it than the craft spun about at its mid-point, and shot like a crossbow bolt straight through the inner ring of the nearest Q’Roth ship, vanishing out of sight.

“Holy crap!” shouted Zack. His fingers crashed onto the dashboard in front of him, a dull whine rising rapidly throughout the bridge.

“Now, Zack!” Hannah shouted.

Zack’s fingers danced over his console. “Just a few seconds…”

Micah and the others watched explosions erupt where the Q’Roth ship had been punctured, spreading like cracking ice across the entire vessel.

“Zack?” Micah said. The second ship backed off. Its starfish points intensified from a dull red to bright white in a second.

“Zack! For God’s sake –”

Micah hated jumping. Every time, it felt like dying, or drowning. Everything turned the colour and texture of mercury. During these transits, he couldn’t breathe, or rather, simply didn’t breathe, as if his body instinctively knew it would be very bad if he did. There was no sound, and the eeriest thing was that he could see everything in his field of vision until it completely whited out. This time he saw a red streak lance towards them from the Q’Roth ship on the viewscreen, frozen in space-time. He wondered if the beam would somehow follow them into Transpace. The quicksilver texture of everything around him increased until he found it difficult to distinguish anything. He knew they were outside of time, but no one knew how long each jump actually lasted. His mind slowed too, hanging up, as if he was about to say something, or about to think something. He remembered a Zen koan – what is the sound of one hand clapping? Right now, he thought, this is it.

They snapped back into normal space. Micah lurched forward, resisting the urge to vomit, gasping for breath. The viewscreen showed a new set of stars. He twisted to Hannah. “Did they follow us? Did the mine get them?”

She brushed a strand of ginger hair from her eyes. “Yes and … yes. They went in – they’d ID’d our destination code – but they never emerged.”

Micah sank into his chair, looking out at the stars. Angel was right, things happened too fast in this galaxy. He heard a dull thump.

“Er, Micah?” Sandy said.

He twisted around to Sandy, and followed her gaze to Hannah’s console. She was on the floor, unconscious. Ramires’ wiry frame stood over her, his dark eyes projecting out from beneath goat-black hair. “She’s dangerous,” he said. “We need to decide her fate.”

Micah sealed his cabin door.

“Are you okay?” Sandy reclined on an easy chair opposite him while he perched on the edge of his bed.

“Me? You’re the pregnant lady around here. It’s been quite a day, Sandy. How about you?”

“What did Angel say to you, just before she left?”

Micah tugged off his boots, and let them thud onto the metal floor. “Nothing of any importance.” But it had been, since it had given him new hope, but he wasn’t sure he could trust Angel.

Sandy leant back on the sofa-like chair. “You’re one rubbish liar, Micah, but okay, I’ll humour you. I’m betting she told you to kill Hannah.”

Micah lay on the hard mattress, kneading tired eyes with the backs of his knuckles.

She pressed on. “Why did you vote to keep her alive, anyway?”

He propped himself up on his elbows. Sandy obviously wasn’t going to let him sleep. “She saved our necks today. We owe her one.”

Sandy snorted. “Along with Louise, she wiped out two thousand humans, Micah. She’s a long way from being in credit. And you saw how fast she moved today, and how quick she thinks.”

Yes, the Alicians really are an upgrade. We need to catch up – pronto. “She’s still useful. Without her, I’d feel compelled to turn right around and head back to Ourshiwann.”

“The others clearly disagree.”

“Captain’s prerogative. It’s not a democracy. Anyway, you abstained.”

Sandy nudged his shin with her boot. “Can’t have you sulking for the rest of the trip.”

She got up, standing over him, her legs gently making contact with his knees. “But she’s Alician, Micah. Ramires was right, we’ll never be able to really trust her.”

“Scorpion, eh? That’s what Zack called her.” Micah was dimly aware of Sandy’s physical proximity. But she’d said it a thousand times: it’s not going to happen.

“They’re both more experienced than you, Micah. Maybe you should listen.” She sat next to him on the bed, her hands in her lap. She placed one on his thigh. “Be a bit more cynical, Micah, like Blake. It’s quite attractive, you know.”

Micah rubbed his eyes again, he felt so tired. Why was she doing this? It wasn’t like her to tease him, not physically anyway. “You mean like Vince, don’t you?”

Her hand tensed, and withdrew. He realised what he’d just said – she’d been in love with Vince just before Louise had killed him. Idiot! “I’m sorry, don’t know why I said that.” He sat up, but she was already standing, brushing down her tunic over her bulge. She smoothed her black pants. He watched her hands as they stretched the elastic fabric over taut thighs.

“Neither do I, Micah. You need sleep, evidently. Good night.”

“Sandy, wait, just…” The door closed behind her. He slumped back down on the bed. Shit. He should have listened to Angel’s advice. He stripped off, lay down and rolled over onto his right side. He reckoned he could sleep standing up if necessary. His eyes fell on the pendant Antonia had given him two months ago; a lifetime ago. He was sure she’d have someone else by now, or maybe Kat and Pierre had found their way back. His eyes closed of their own accord, and he freefell into a deep slumber.

Micah stirred awake in a fug of sexual arousal. Completely dark, Sandy lay next to him, naked. She kissed him hard, her hand taking his and bringing it down between her legs, feeling her wetness. Her mouth travelled down his torso until he gasped with pleasure and surprise, his head arcing backwards into the pillow. She came back up and kissed him again, ravaging his mouth. She grabbed him and slid down onto him. He groaned in ecstasy. She writhed atop him, one hand between them playing alternately with herself and him, the other reaching behind her. He rose up to kiss her breasts, his hands squeezing her buttocks. It had been months – he knew he couldn’t hold on for long. Pressure built in his groin. He whispered, half-grunted “Sandy” but she plunged forward, pushing her breasts into his mouth, her hair raining over his face. The shakes started. But something was wrong. His climax approaching, he reached in front and stroked her belly, felt the tight sinews, the flatness...

“Lights,” he yelled. The lithe young Alician on top of him rode him like she was breaking in a horse, flaxen hair tumbling down her shoulders, half masking her face. She wrenched herself forwards and seized his wrists, pinning them to the bed next to his head, while she moved up and down on him faster and faster. Her mouth locked onto his, her tongue lashing inside. Too late… She thrust her pelvis down onto him, grinding her mons pubis against him as he came. She quivered as her body wracked into orgasm, synchronising her contractions with his every spasm. He shouted out, nothing coherent, a long animal cry. Arching his back one last time, he shuddered like a shutter in a storm, until it abated, and he collapsed backwards into the pillow.

She buried her head into his shoulder, released his hands. After a pause, he placed them around her back, until the post-orgasmic tremors subsided.

She raised herself up on her muscular arms. “She’ll never sleep with you Micah, you know that.”

Not now, at any rate. “Why did you sleep with me, Hannah?”

“You saved my life today.”

“You … didn’t have to.”

“I have needs too, Micah. Alicians are a matriarchal society. The genetic enhancements increase our hormonal activity. When we want a male, we take one. The others on this ship want me dead. Besides, like it or not, you’re the alpha male here.” Her feline eyes hunted his. Micah looked sideways. Abruptly she dismounted, while he was still inside her, causing him to take a sharp intake of breath. Instinctively he grabbed her buttocks but she pulled off him. “Want me to go, Micah?”

“No… Maybe… Yes. Too much today. Sorry.”

“I understand. You know where my quarters are.”

She bunched up her clothes and headed for the door. As it slid open, Sandy’s silhouette appeared from around the corner, barefoot, in a short dress. She and Hannah both froze. Sandy spun around and disappeared out of sight. Hannah, naked, carrying her clothes under one arm, turned back to Micah. “Sorry, Micah. Really.” The door closed behind her.

“Me too.” He lay there for an hour, trying to think of some form of words he could string together to say to Sandy. During the rest of the night he went to her room three times but she wouldn’t answer. At 5am ship-time he gave up, surrendering to fatigue. He’d lost her, for good, he reckoned. He’d always assumed he’d never had any real chance with her. But as he drifted off, exhaustion almost numbing the pain, Angel’s words played back to him, based on what her resident had shown her, re-affirming that something precious and irreplaceable had just slipped through his fingers. “Micah, Sandy really likes you, you know that don’t you?”

◆◆◆

Louise tested her right arm, flexing it to see if the hair-line break was fully healed. Shooting pains seared their way to her shoulder. She dismissed them. She limped back to the comms console, ignoring the booming thuds coming from the door barring entry to the secondary control room. Hammering, like a heartbeat. A display flashed yellow: message waiting. “Read,” she commanded in Q’Roth. Angular, barbed characters, all twisted iron nails and scalloped shrapnel, cascaded down the screen in foreground and background, the front field moving faster. Its elegance transfixed her.

So, Micah had escaped again, helped by an unidentified ally. Impressive – she hadn’t thought he had it in him. But the local authorities hadn’t taken too kindly to the jump-mine – highly illegal – and had banned further transits in the sector till it had been probed and pronounced clean. Micah and company were fugitives. That didn’t take long.

The pounding on the door accelerated, then stopped. She listened to the yawning silence of the behemoth ship around her. It, too, sensed the mirror – the Hohash, according to the human refugees’ database she’d downloaded on Ourshiwann before her departure. The ship itself had saved her when it had first attacked.

She’d not realised how fast the Hohash could move, nor how dangerous it was to fire a pulse weapon at it – it lived up to its mirror representation. She touched the still-raw scar on her left elbow, from the laser burn it had reflected back at her.

“More hide and seek?” She shouted through the door. “Okay, we’ll play again soon.” She recalled how it had chased her, she moving wildly to avoid its savage side-on thrusts, until she managed to reach the Regen-lab where she’d been reborn. By that time she’d been crawling, with a broken femur and fractured arm, not to mention concussion, and haemorrhaging inside her leg. She didn’t know why it hadn’t taken its opportunity there and then to crush her neck or head, but the ship had intervened, extruding a metal skin door in a millisecond, sealing her safe in the lab.

Two weeks of accelerated healing. During which time Micah had eluded her again. She’d not seen the Hohash since that day, but she heard it haunting the corridors often enough.

Where are you headed, Micah? She called up the nav-charts, and located the nearest Grid Station. Too close, and too small – they’d need anonymity now. She picked a minor hub, six transits from Micah’s previous location. She zoomed in to the hub’s alien manifest. She smiled. Perfect.

She composed another written message – she was becoming fluent by now – to a Q’Roth ambassador visiting the hub, advising him of impending ‘guests’. She sent it as a closed message, not needing a reply, using her adopted Q’Roth callsign, Arctura. In ancient Q’Roth it had the same meaning as the old Japanese word ronin, meaning a samurai who’d left their master; a dangerous renegade. She was already gaining a local reputation.

She was about to switch off when she noticed that the nearby station had a sub-spatial comms booster. She stared at the glowing icon, and tapped into it. The hammering started up again. She sent a one-line message, in English: Micah destination GZH-359A in 4 days. Arctura <Louise>. She addressed it to <Sister Esma>: no formalities, no honorific. Let’s see what you make of that.

The door bashing intensified, like a drum beating out a dervish. She heaved her hand-made high intensity thermal cannon onto her good hip. She aimed it at the door, and flicked the ignition on. Molten flame dripped from the tip of the muzzle. “Coming,” she shouted, slamming her good hand down on the door release.

Chapter 19

Ossyria Prime

Pierre’s quicksilver eyes gazed through the space-portal. The pearl-coloured home world of Ossyria Prime, the Galactic home of medicine, grew large. It appeared as if it had been cut into a dozen horizontal slices, then re-assembled. Each section turned at a different pace, creating a hypnotic effect. He saw no large masses of water: he’d gathered from the Omskrat orb – his handy Ossyrian encyclopedia – that water was largely underground, and only occasionally precipitated in precise locations via environmental control satellites. It took him back to a forgotten childhood – it was the most beautiful marble he could ever have imagined.

Kat entered, the swish of the door irising closed behind her.

“Don’t tell me that’s a natural phenomenon, Pierre.”

He decided to try something he’d been experimenting with, a way of accelerating his cognition. He studied her reflection in the portal and willed his mind to shift gear. As if in slow motion, her eyes began to close. His mind ran through what she’d just said, using a poly-dimensional scaling technique to study the covariance of her words, her speech rhythm, intonation, body language, eye contact including pupil dilation, and pheromone secretion level. He applied a Neo-Bayesian statistical model of her personality, harvested from every single interaction he’d ever had with her. His brain computed eight potential interpretations of what she had just said, with statistical likelihoods attached. Her eyelids made contact. His mind automatically ran through fifteen different responses he could make, then extrapolated each conversation for the next ten sentences. All but one projection ended with a net sum loss, in terms of her becoming colder with him. Her eyes were nearly open. She had blinked.

“No,” he said, re-focusing on the planet. “It took them forty thousand of our years, forty-five thousand galactic standard angts, more or less, to re-model the planet. It’s ingenious – the contradictory turning rates create magnetic flux inside the planet’s core, itself partly hollowed out and replenished with teratons of graphite-like material, generating almost limitless clean energy.” While he talked he suppressed ninety-eight per cent of the technical detail he could have expressed much faster in hyper-math. If he’d been communicating with Chahat-Me using his eyes, he could have transmitted all of it in the same timeframe. The information filtering effort at least slowed down his speech, so he still sounded human. “Also, the different segments are protected zones. They carry out genetic research, and any accidental outbreak of a virus, for example – there have been three over the past six millennia – is naturally confined to its continental slice.”

He watched her reflection, her short-cropped hair, lean lips, and greyish eyes atop a gymnastic physique, move toward him. His sense of smell had been heightened too, and he could sense her emotions via her pheromone signature. Her hand touched his shoulder. “We haven’t talked, Pierre, you know, about … our child.”

His logical brain stalled, as if it couldn’t compute. He was glad for the relief from the endless calculations and speculations: his heightened and accelerated intelligence came at a cost. He kissed her urgently, his silver arms – for he was changing – locked around her waist. He drew back, but held her hands. “I’m worried, Kat … that it’ll become like me.”

She leaned back. “You don’t mean…” She broke away from him, eyes widening. “Nannites?”

He was surprised she hadn’t thought of it. She stepped back to a bench and sat down, pointing to Ossyria Prime. “They can probably take them out,” she said.

He nodded, though his calculations revved up again, and gave it less than fifty-fifty odds. Change the subject. “The Ossyrians used to be war-mongers, no better than the Q’Roth.”

She moved to the portal and leant her brow against the glass. “What happened?”

Again, tirades of data surged into his mind, but he found a short-cut. “The Tla Beth, one of the most advanced races left, Level Seventeen. Legend has it they wanted to foster a medical race, and were impressed by the Ossyrians’ attention to anatomical detail, whether tending to their wounded after battle, or torturing prisoners. They became the patrons of the Ossyrians for a hundred thousand angts.”

“Probably needed a challenge.”

There, he hadn’t predicted that response.

“I’ve been thinking, about your nannites.” She turned around, blocking his view. “I think you have a choice.”

He wished her eyes worked like his, it would be so much faster. But this time she had his – and his nannites – complete attention. “What do you mean?”

“From what I remember, you know, the plague-vids from the 40’s, nannites are mission-oriented. They adapt to their environment, working for themselves and their host – without whom they cease to function. They aim to advance and have a better survival likelihood or quality of life.”

His nannite-infused brain was silent. No, not silent, he thought: dumb. It doesn’t want to hear this. But he did. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

“Pierre, you get to decide what advancement is. You can set the mission. Advanced intelligence, that was your father’s dream, not yours. And even he never expected it to go this far. You can stop this development, Pierre. It’s your life, your choice. The nannites will understand your will, and accept it.”

He stared at her, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it. She was right. Advanced intelligence, he realised, didn’t necessarily induce wisdom, nor did it preclude the ability to hide from the truth.

The door opened, revealing Chahat-Me and the Hohash. In a flash Pierre read her eyes: they were to go before a council to see what would be done with them, including the baby. “Kat, they –”

“I know, Pierre, at least I can guess. I’m not stupid. Just think about what I said.”

They crossed a narrow glass bridge so fine they could hardly see it. Beneath, a drop of several kilometres plunged downwards to a murky brown ground level. The bridge connected with a massive pyramid, itself made of Crysmorph – Pierre had studied the specs as soon as he’d come out of stasis – a crystal coded with inorganic DNA so that it could be grown into complex structures. He calculated that this pyramid must have taken four thousand years of accelerated growth to be completed.

Two suns, a yellow one like Earth’s, and a strawberry one, hung low in an apple green sky, creating stunning prismatic effects on the pyramid. Around twenty bridges like theirs struck out to the sides and below, reaching out to other ships. Chahat-Me walked ahead of them, regal, her gait smooth and fluid. The Hohash hovered silently behind them. Kat ambled next to him, giving the appearance of being relaxed, but his observational analyses told a different story. She guarded her belly with one hand, now three months into her pregnancy, and glanced furtively around. She was right to be anxious.

“Pierre, they’re doctors, right? So they must have some Hippocratic Oath, you know, do no harm?”

His mind skimmed over their complex code of conduct and ethics he’d accessed and memorised earlier. “I’m afraid their definition of harm goes beyond the single organism, to the societal structure.” He glanced at her, unsure that would make sense. It was difficult to remember how normal humans thought anymore.

“Great,” she said, “political doctors. So they might deem us unsafe for society. What about you? You’re an advanced intelligence life-form now. You must be approaching their level?”

“That’s just it. My intelligence growth rate shows no sign of stopping. I’m an anomaly – in their Grid Society I’m a freak or an abomination. I’m potentially a threat. They’ll probably vivisect me.”

She placed her hand on his and stopped him. “That’s not funny, Pierre.”

He took her hand, and continued walking. Why had he attempted humour? He went back to her question of fifteen minutes ago. What did he really want? What did ‘advanced’ mean to him? What mission should he give his nannites?

They entered the building not far from its apex, but at this level it was as wide as a hoverball stadium. He glanced downwards and was surprised to see through all the glass floors below, myriad Ossyrians going about their business. Some areas were opaque, but not that many. He looked up and saw the ceiling of their level, a dull greyish reflection of him, Kat, and all around them. He surmised that at each level, you could see below, but not upwards.

They reached a circular reflective Crysmorph wall. Chahat-Me beckoned to him, silver eyes shimmering information. He nodded. “This is it, Kat. At least she is on our side: because we helped her survive, and prevented the Mannekhi from gaining Ossyrian technology. She will present the case for us to be allowed to live out our lives, somewhere.”

“Ossyrian plea-bargaining, eh? Maybe we need a better lawyer.” She shook her head dismissively. “Just kidding, let’s get this over with.”

The room, brighter than an operating theatre, contained two red, high-backed chairs on a round plinth, surrounded by a wide circle of thirty seated Ossyrians. Pierre recognised from the arrangement of the gold, black and blue bars on their head-dresses, that this was a very senior group. One chair, directly facing the red ones, was empty.  They both dutifully sat where indicated, the Hohash taking up a position to the left of Kat. Chahat-Me stood next to Pierre. He presumed it was because she was their champion, or else because she was considered contaminated by them in some way. All of the Ossyrians rose, so he and Kat did too, as a white-fleeced Ossyrian with a pure gold head-dress entered, and took the main chair. She sat, and everyone else followed suit.

Kat leaned towards him. “Can you translate what they say? I know it’s tedious for you, and might irritate them, but this is important. I have the feeling my future, and our baby’s, are hanging in the balance here.”

He nodded, and communicated her request to Chahat-Me.

“Okay. It’s begun,” he said. “Chahat-Me is relating all that happened since she met us – she knows about Rashid’s ship and the Q’Roth, incidentally; the Hohash must have shown her. They wanted to know where we found the Hohash – they’re mythical, apparently, no one knows how old they are, and they defy scans or any type of analysis. There haven’t been reports of a Hohash sighting for millennia. Chahat-Me’s told them it found us on Eden. Okay, she’s now telling them what you did to save her and prevent their technology falling into enemy hands. Ah, now about me.”

“What?”

Pierre wondered how to condense the detailed discussions between half a dozen Ossyrians taking place at lightning speed. “They can’t stop the development without killing me. It has to be referred to a higher council: the Tla Beth themselves. I’m an aberration; there’s no precedent in their legal system. The Ossyrians have used nannites in the past, but have never seen anything like this – some unusual interaction between human physiology, my father’s genetic tampering, and the nannites.” He left out the part that a vote to vivisect him there and then was only narrowly defeated.

“A reprieve,” she said, the relief in her voice palpable. “Our baby?”

He looked down at the floor, and breathed out heavily.

“What is it Pierre? What have they decided?”

“It’s okay, Kat,” he said, his voice shaky. “I just didn’t anticipate my own emotional reaction. They can remove the nannites, they’re not bonded yet, they’re dormant – your physiology is unsuitable.” No, he thought, that wasn’t it. Kat was right. They’re inert, because Kat doesn’t want them there. Which means I also have a choice.

He looked up again, trying to catch up quickly. “They will accelerate the baby’s birth outside of you –”

“Hey, wait just a minute –”

“They know where Ourshiwann is. They will…” Take you there, he thought, with the baby. They’re going to separate us. His body flushed with an emotion he’d forgotten he was capable of – anger. His silver hands flexed, his fingers morphing into scalpel-sharp daggers. He stood up, rock steady. “No!” he said, his voice echoing around the room. All eyes were on him, but they were silent. Chahat-Me drew away from him. The Chief Ossyrian stood. Her jaw opened and the high-pitched screeching burst forth. To his left, Kat clasped her hands over her ears, but Pierre stood firm, and within micro-seconds his nannites had attenuated the sound. He focused on his throat, on the sounds the Ossyrian was making. He opened his mouth and shouted back in the same language: “You will not separate us. We are family. You will do no harm to us.” He quoted a litany of complex ethical precedents from Ossyrian history. The Chief Ossyrian sat back in her chair, while several others rose to their feet. Pierre knew they were a dispassionate race, but back in their genes they had the capacity for anger and outrage, and he saw it bubbling to the surface in their faces; all except Chahat-Me, her expression a mixture of shock and pride.

His own mind hurled objections to what he was doing – Kat would be better off without him, back with Blake, Micah, and Antonia. He needed to become what he could become – he was a scientist, no matter if his father engineered him that way, it was his nature, his destiny. How could he bring up a normal human child? But he choked off all these thoughts, forcing coherence in his mind. He read the eyes of one of the Ossyrians studying a screen – she was scanning him. It had happened, he now knew: the nannites had finally built the bridge between his right and left hemispheres of his brain, across the chasm known as the Corpus Callosum. His logical and intuitive brains had just been hot-wired. There was no turning back. He was no longer human. But he was one again, not divided. He was more powerful, and he knew what he wanted.

He spoke again, in their vocal language, shocking them into silence. “We all three go to the Tla Beth, or to Ourshiwann, but we stay together. This is beyond you now.”

He felt tiny pin-pricks on his neck as aerial micro-syringes injected him with powerful anaesthetics, but his nannites neutralised them. His whole body, all his skin, flashed silver. He stared at the Chief and shook his head. Then he walked up to her, and his eyes worked so fast that the Ossyrian leader had a hard time keeping up.

He came back to the seat and faced Kat’s bewildered face. “It’s okay, it’s over. We’re going to the Grid. All three of us.”

“What did you say to them? They looked pretty furious, until now.”

“They were. Most wanted me destroyed – as an abomination. They even tried to blackmail me with you and the baby. That was when I offered them something they couldn’t refuse. You see, Kat, I’m an experiment, and it’s not over. I offered them all my data, as I develop, on how what’s happening to me could be cross-adapted to another race – theirs.”

“But I thought they were happy with their lot, their level?”

“Kat, the Grid Society is a hierarchy. No matter what anyone says, everyone wants to move upwards.”

She eyed him with a mixture he could tell included fear, respect and love. He smiled, knelt down and kissed her hand, and then placed his and hers on her belly. Chahat-Me appeared next to them. “Oh, Kat, I left out one small detail.”

Kat raised an eyebrow.

“Chahat-Me is coming with us.”

“To ensure you keep up your side of the bargain, you mean?”

He frowned. “She’s taken us on as her responsibility, and in any case it might be better for her to be off-world for a while, I more than ruffled a few fur coats just now.”

Kat made to say something, but her body went rigid, then convulsed. She screamed once and dropped to her knees, hands covering her eyes.

“What is it?” Pierre said, then noticed the Hohash had sprung to life. All the Ossyrians froze, watching its display. Those who had started to leave quickly re-entered the room.

He found it hard to make out at first. It resembled a fleet of space ships lined up facing a translucent glittering curtain of light. Flashes of intense brilliance shook the image, and the curtain ripped apart. The scene shifted to one of utter carnage, ships torn apart, fragments of rocks spilling in all directions, and what looked like corpses frozen in a star-less space.

Kat lifted her head, pale as porcelain. “Pierre, something very bad has happened. I’m not sure what, but the Hohash reached inside my darkest fears, to convey how serious it is.”

He glanced at the Chief, who crossed over to Kat and the Hohash. “The Ossyrians here were dimly aware of an unusually intense military exercise at the farthest edge of the galactic rim, and had dispatched a contingent of medical staff out there over an angt ago. But this doesn’t look like an exercise, or if it was, it went badly wrong.”

“It’s not, the threat is real. The Hohash wanted me to convey a message, because it doesn’t have a good communication rapport with the Ossyrian species.” She glanced at Chahat-Me. “No offence.”

“What’s the message?”

“Wait. It wants me to speak as it shows a particular image. Here, watch the display: two words – Kalaheii, and Qorall. That’s it.”

Pierre scrutinised the frozen image of a face of red-hot lava, parting to reveal a black pit that could only be a mouth. In the centre of its forehead was a snake-yellow vertical slit, an eye of some sort. Two bone-like tubes protruded from the mouth, curving to the back of its head. Around its neck were metal rings, like he’d seen once on a visit to an African village, except the rings fluoresced darkly.

Most of the Ossyrians fell back. Some had already quit the chamber. The Chief stared at the image, silver eyes still. Abruptly, she turned to Pierre.

“What is it, Pierre? They’re all afraid, aren’t they?”

“The Chief says this message has to be delivered as soon as possible, and in person – it’s not safe to transmit on any carrier-wave, no matter how secure. She will deliver it herself to Grid Central. She asked if there was anything else in the message.”

Kat looked down. “No.”

Pierre’s observational analysis told him she was lying. Fine, she must have her reasons. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.

“How do you feel, Kat?” It was a pathetic question, but he needed to break the silence.

She sat knees against chest, holding herself. “Hollow. Cheated. I know it’s safer for the baby this way, but…”

He sat down and put his arms around her. “They said the baby will be fully matured in two weeks, and can then leave the maturation chamber. Hey,” he lifted her chin, then dabbed at tear-stains with the back of his silver knuckles. “I’ve heard childbirth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

She rubbed her temple against his hand, like a cat.

“They’re putting us into stasis again, Kat, in a few minutes. The journey is using a high-energy jumper; it’ll burn out a ship’s engines just to get us there faster.”

She nodded, head down again.

He knew it was unfair, and bad timing, but he needed to know. “Kat, there was something else in the message, wasn’t there?”

She didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“Please, Kat, you need to tell me.”

She raised her chin. “Pierre, I’ve already lost too much today. Besides, it wasn’t for them, it was…” She bent her head again. “Personal.”

He heard the low hiss of the gas entering the room. His mind kicked into hyperdrive and ran through the possibilities and probabilities: personal; lost too much today; she wouldn’t look at me. It’s about me. About losing me. The Hohash is connected to her, to her emotions, to our discussions. It knows what she has asked of me … and it disagrees. Earlier he had been coherent, had wanted to stay with Kat, but now he wasn’t so sure. Why did the Hohash disagree? Choices – but the decision will have to wait. He lapsed into unconsciousness.

◆◆◆

Pierre’s nannites had evolved considerably, after more than two hundred thousand short-lived generations since their activation on Eden. They were barely recognisable compared to their original design, vastly mutated on account of Pierre’s genetic re-engineering, and the recent infusion of Ossyrian DNA prior to the Mannekhi attack. Pierre, their host, hadn’t made up his mind about whether to continue his transformation, and nannites were not big on independent thought. They detected the stasis field and subdued their activity, mimicking shutdown. After an hour they resumed. The basic choice was whether to continue the evolution or not, that much they understood. Their host had not decided. The nannites, however, needed a mission. If they’d been told to stop, they would have, but they had not. In a micro-second they settled on continuing his development during stasis. After all, if their master were further evolved, they reasoned, it could help him decide, resolving his tension one way or the other. They swept into action, buzzing around his brain and neuro-endocrine system.

Nannites didn’t need sleep. The need for rest while unconscious and unprotected seemed to the nannites a ridiculous, untenable weakness, and they understood that a major threat was coming. So this would be their host’s last sleep, they decreed: he would never need it again. But they had to make choices, too. The nervous system re-construction activity required energy and raw materials. Some internal functions might need to be sacrificed. In particular the nannites didn’t favour all these gland-fed emotions their host had to endure – they caused indecision and made their host vulnerable. The lead nannites – the youngest and hence the most evolved – voted on what functions and glands could go. It took a full three micro-seconds to decide, and then they went to work.

Chapter 20

Nest

Blake grimaced as he woke up; his shoulder practically numb. His neck grated like rusted iron as he lifted his head. He pushed upward from the man-sized tarpaulin covering the rock floor with sluggish arms, and heaved himself into a sitting position. His post-coma muscles were on strike.

“You slept well,” Rashid said.

Tea was brewing. Rashid squatted next to the kettle in vest and shorts, despite the bracing air, heels flat on the ground, with an ease that most sedentary Westerners, including Blake, could only dream about. He wondered just how much tea Rashid had managed to bring from Earth. With an effort Blake got up, and started the loosening exercise routine he’d done every day for twenty-four years since enlisting. Shafts of sunlight cut through the chill morning air at the opening to the cave. Cubes of yellow tofu, like they’d had for dinner last night, laced with honey, were lined up for breakfast. At least it didn’t look curried like yesterday.

Rashid told him that the main priority from the nutritional point of view was to get vegetables growing on Ourshiwann. Despite being a largely barren planet, the soil was favourable. Vince had had the foresight to bring nitrates, seedlings, and crops including wheat and squash. They were faring well, growing quicker than back on Earth, aided by a few irrigation tricks Professor Kostakis had conjured up. Someone had even had the presence of mind to bring some birds and insect larvae in stasis, though debates still raged about waking up the latter.

The bland tofu came from the spider-race’s huge underground vat complex, and would last long enough until the meagre livestock that had survived the journey on Jennifer’s ship reached sustainable numbers. Farmers, Blake thought, we need to become farmers again.

He strolled to the cave entrance and stood in a martial chi gung posture facing the sun. And soldiers. Before they had gone to sleep in the absolute quiet of the desert, Rashid had given him more of the low-down on Shakirvasta’s budding empire: how any critics tended to be pushed out to the furthest farms, or, worse, sent on ‘expeditions’, never to be heard from again. He’d explained how a virtual caste system was emerging, with Shakirvasta and Josefsson’s cronies enjoying luxuries, as opposed to ninety-five per cent of the population being reduced to peasant status, working the land twelve hours a day. Schooling had been introduced, heavy on indoctrination into the need for order and societal restructuring. Dusk till dawn curfews operated for people’s ‘safety’ – martial law by any other name.

There were glimmers of hope, such as Antonia’s position on the Council. However, although a cause for good, and a quick study in political survival tactics, Rashid felt it was only a matter of time before Shakirvasta was irritated enough to find an excuse to get rid of her. A second ray of hope lay in Sonja’s fledgling hospital and medical staff. The third was a minor underground movement, led by Rashid, branded an outlaw, covertly supported by Carlson, who also retained a seat on the Council. Most were afraid to speak openly or join the movement. Jennifer’s militia kept a firm grip on the population; reactions to the slightest infractions were swift and brutal.

Blake was surprised how quickly things had deteriorated, and how fast Shakirvasta had centralised power and control. Rashid said he wasn’t. He’d seen how his fellow Indistani had turned ailing companies around in a matter of months back on Earth, using ruthless business methods.

“He’s treating Ourshiwann as if it is another corporate takeover,” he said, “but this time he has military muscle to back him up.”

Blake lowered his hands and relaxed, having learned through the years that the best soldier was dispassionate, though that was easier said than done. He walked back inside and sat down on a rock, accepting the cup of steaming chai from Rashid.

“Rashid, I’ve been meaning to ask you – Rashid isn’t exactly an Indistani name. Were your parents Kashmiri refugees?”

Rashid nodded, his hands continuing the work of scouring last night’s field crockery. “Yes, after decades of fighting over the territory, the land was finally poisoned by terrorists, or by governments – no one knows the truth – so, much of Kashmir had to be abandoned. Neither side could absorb everyone. My mother and father ended up in Tangiers, where I was conceived. They thought we would have to stay there for good, so they gave me an Arabic name. A few years later we moved back to the new, united Indistan. So many had died in that joining of those two long-divorced nations, that the new government needed all of its people back, especially those who had not suffered through the Integration. My parents decided to keep my name.”

“You’re proud of your ancestry, aren’t you?”

Rashid nodded, his dolphin reflecting the first rays of light entering the cave. “Five thousand years of civilisation.”

Blake coughed. “Several months ago,” he frowned – the lost time took some getting used to – “Jennifer told me you were Sarowan. What does that mean, exactly?”

Rashid paused. He put down the cups, turned away, and lifted the back of his vest. Blake saw a faded tattoo. Two pairs of three diagonal lines, like the feathers of an arrow separated horizontally, slanted downwards. Beneath them sat a waving red line, all boxed within a rectangle depressed at the middle, like the outline of an open book.

“Q’Roth,” Blake whispered.

“The face of our enemy, lest we forget.” Rashid lowered his vest and returned to where he had been squatting before. “The Sarowan are – were – an ancient tribe, at war with the Alicians and their Q’Roth patrons for nine hundred years. I was born Sarowan. The best of the Sarowan became Sentinels.” He reached for Blake’s cup.

“So, you were trained to fight them, or the Alicians?”

Rashid poured fresh tea into the cups, spilling a little. Blake had never seen Rashid lose a drop before. “Oh, I was trained all right.” He turned to Blake, his dolphin a blur of reds. “But foremost I was a scientist,” he said in a mocking tone. “I did not believe all that paranoid nonsense about aliens and monsters and Rangers: there should be evidence, and there was none! I had no time for it, so I left and went to University, made my way up in the world, leaving behind my family and their delusions…” He stopped moving.

“You weren’t to know.”

Rashid spoke to the floor. “I’ve lost my family, my wife and child, my world, and now my eyes. I have paid dearly for my arrogance.”

He and Rashid had never had an easy relationship, but Blake felt sorry for him. “Survivor guilt, Carlson would say.”

Rashid snorted. “And you, Commander, what would you say?”

He leaned back. ‘I’d say you had every reason to be mad as hell, more than most, except maybe the dead. But you’re alive, Rashid. We’re both soldiers. You know the deal as well as I do. Besides,” he chewed on it a bit before letting it out, “You have Sonja, apparently. I’m not ecstatic about it, but you need to protect her.”

Rashid stayed silent.

Blake stood up, interlaced his fingers and stretched them above his head, then bent forward so that his palms grazed the floor. He swung up again fluidly. “Think I’ll go for a short walk.”

“The large bush thirty metres to the right is where I went this morning. Sir. I suggest you find another. There is some paper in the satchel by the skimmer.”

Blake nodded, took the paper, and headed out.

“Ah, while we are on the subject, Commander, Ramires also has this tattoo, though he is not Sarowan by birth. He is a Sentinel, the last one alive.”

“Does that mean he’s a good soldier, or an assassin?”

“Try to imagine the best four soldiers you ever knew, taking him on, and then imagine them all dead before they hit the floor.”

“Does he have a nanosword, like Jennifer?”

“Of that I am sure, but he is far better at concealing it than she. Sentinels and Sarowan play the long game, you see.”

Blake wasn’t sure he did see, and headed out to find a bush.

“What is out there?” Rashid asked.

Blake peered through the viewer as they lay on the dry ground atop an escarpment. A warm wind whistled softly over the ridge. The magnification was up all the way, and he could just make out a diminutive girl strutting around between three commando-types. It looked like she was shouting down a radio. “Trouble,” he replied.

They jogged back to the cave. Once inside, Blake needed to sit down – he kept forgetting his muscles hadn’t been used for three months. The booster Sonja had given him only had so much to work with. “Why don’t they search for us with the sling-jets?”

Rashid fished around inside one of the skimmer saddlebags. “Fuel stocks from Earth are almost exhausted, certainly for sling jets. Colonel Vasquez commandeered a chunk of the remaining fuel for his platoon’s trip into the wilderness one month ago. He has not been seen since.”

“No satellite coverage, eh? So we can’t communicate with him once he’s too far away?”

Rashid pulled out a flashlight from a rucksack. “That seemed to be the idea. I think it was a mutually acceptable arrangement between him and Shakirvasta.”

“Why do you need a flashlight, Rashid?”

“I don’t,” he said, handing it over.

Blake hefted it, feeling its weight. “It’s just Jennifer. We can talk with her.”

“She is not alone,” Rashid replied.

“So, they’re using a spiral net tactic, groups of four strung out along a curving line, closing in on us. How’d they find us anyway?”

Rashid ran a finger along the upper rim of his dolphin – Blake had seen him do it a few times before. “Perhaps this, or a tracer buried in you somewhere. It makes little difference now. The net is closing. We must go deeper into the caves. But first, since they now know where we are, we can contact Esperantia.”

Rashid produced a small glass cylinder, flicked a switch so that the small light at one end flashed yellow, then after a few seconds, a steady green. He aimed one end at Blake, holding the other end close to his own mouth. “Citizens of Esperantia, behold: our honourable Commander Blake is alive and well, and will be returning soon, your Chairman Shakirvasta and his cohorts permitting. If you do not see this man in the next three days, then it is on the Chairman’s account. Please, Commander, say something to the people of Esperantia.”

He inwardly cursed Rashid for doing this, though he understood why it was a good idea – an insurance policy. Rashid could have warned him though. He cleared his throat. “It’s good to be awake again. I know a lot has happened since we defeated the Alician threat. I want to say first of all that I’m proud humanity won that battle. We should all be proud of that day. But I’ve heard disturbing rumours that suggest that, well, frankly, we’ve lost our way. So I’m coming back to see for myself and, if necessary, to get us back on track. Oh, and if my wife Glenda is hearing this, don’t worry, I’m coming to see you soon.”

Rashid jiggled his head and put the device away. Something beeped, and Rashid pulled out a radio. “Hello? Yes, she has almost found us… No, don’t worry… Really? Yes, please do, as quickly as possible. I –” Rashid stared it a moment, then dropped it into his rucksack.

“Transmission jammed?”

“Yes. Come, we must go deeper now.”

“We could defend from here.”

Rashid shook his head. Blake decided to defer to Rashid’s judgement this time. He slung a rifle over his shoulder, checked the charge in his pulse pistol, flicked on the torch, and followed Rashid down a steep, dark tunnel.

The air wasn’t getting hotter. Blake remembered a schoolboy trip to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, and how the temperature rose inside those claustrophobic tombs. Yet here it was almost getting cooler, with the faintest stirrings of a breeze every now and again. They’d been on the move for an hour. Blake’s thigh and calf muscles screamed at him. Eventually, after nearly going over on his ankle for the second time, he called Rashid to stop.

The pause was short-lived. Blake was in the middle of suggesting that maybe Jennifer and the others had not followed them in, when they heard a dull crack in the passage behind them, courtesy of a small device Rashid had placed there five minutes earlier. Without a word they set off again; the others were gaining. He remembered, as a boy, an uncle who used to keep weasels, and would love to drop one down a rabbit hole. Blake never saw what the weasel did to the rabbits, but its blood-stained fur when it re-surfaced was proof enough. “We can’t make a stand here, Rashid, we need some open space.” Not that they’d seen any for forty minutes.

Abruptly, Rashid halted, so that Blake almost bumped into the back of him.

“You wanted a clearing, I believe, Commander?”

He moved beside Rashid and shone the flashlight. It failed to reach the other side of the vast cavern before them, but it did illuminate its contents.

Blake sighed. “Not again,” he said, shining a beam onto the nearest, turquoise, basket-ball-sized object protruding from the dirt floor.

“What is it exactly, my dolphin is having a hard time interpreting the terrain.”

Blake wasn’t surprised by what he saw: it answered a long-harboured question. “Part of me always wondered why the spider race didn’t put up any fight, pacifists or not. One of the strongest instincts of any creature is to protect its young. So, by not fighting, they left their city intact, ready and waiting. But not for us.”

Rashid turned his head sideways, then back. “Eggs? Is that what I’m seeing? But there are thousands here.”

And not only that, Blake thought. They’re so closely packed, if we try and run through them we’ll break them. He looked around. They were on a stage-sized triangular promontory a metre above the flat egg-field stretching out into the rest of the cavern. He presumed there were no exits on the other side – why would there be? This whole thing seemed man-made – no, spider-made, he corrected himself. “We make our stand here, Rashid.”

Light exploded into the grotto, sending a searing pain to the back of Blake’s eyeballs, blinding him temporarily. He fired three times before his rifle was kicked out of his hands. Two men were suddenly on either side of him. One seized Blake’s pistol from its holster, pressing its barrel to Blake’s neck. The other rammed his foot into the back of Blake’s leg, so that Blake dropped to his knees. When his vision returned, he saw Rashid in the same position, but his dolphin had been torn off. A spike-flare, fired into the ceiling above the stage, sputtered a ghostly pale light over them, and revealed two gaping sockets where Rashid’s eyes should have been.

“That was a little too easy,” Jennifer said.

Blake watched her as she strutted in, then he saw her freeze as she glimpsed the eggs for the first time. She wandered over to the ledge, staring out across a sea of unhatched spiders.

“Let’s do it now, Captain,” said the one with the pistol barrel nudging Blake’s neck. “Then we can torch this place, or at the least bring the roof down and seal it.”

“Do you suppose,” Rashid said, as if making polite conversation, “that this is the only nest?”

The man standing behind Rashid whacked the back of his head with the butt of his gun. “Quiet, you scum. You killed my brother when you broke out.”

Blake held up a hand, looking over towards Jennifer, who had turned away from the eggs.

“Let him speak,” she said.

Blake acknowledged with a nod. “Jennifer, no one was dead when we left. Rashid was very careful.”

“LIAR!” the man behind Rashid pushed forward with his knee into Rashid’s back, toppling him to the ground.

“We will hear them out! Obey my orders!” Her right hand slipped into her jacket pocket.

“The hell we will, we have our own orders.” The man with the pistol barrel wedged into Blake’s neck stepped back and levelled his pistol at Blake’s forehead. Blake saw a flash of violet, just before the man slumped to the floor like a sack of dead meat, his head detaching itself half-way before he hit the ground. A fountain of blood gushed from the stump that used to be his neck. Blake didn’t miss his opportunity. His left hand formed a fist and slammed into the second man’s groin. As the man doubled-over, Blake kicked off the ground, catching the man’s chin in one palm and his shoulder with the other. He pushed and pulled both arms with equal force until he heard the man’s fifth cervical vertebrae snap.

Jennifer stood between him and Rashid, a thin short metal rod in her right hand. The man who had been holding Rashid down was on the floor. He wasn’t breathing. Rashid stood over the man, looking unruffled. Sarowan training must be pretty good. Blake prized the pulse pistol from the closest dead man’s fingers, glancing at Jennifer, who didn’t seem to mind.

“Whatever,” she said, dismissively, retracting the nanoblade into its hilt. “I’ve been watching them since yesterday. Furtive looks and conversations, secret radio conferences with base.” She squatted down, pocketing the nanosword. “One thing I learned in Dublin in the War, leading small groups of insurgents, is to tap their comms devices. First I thought it was just a renegade element in my ranks, till I found out one of them was getting orders direct from Josefsson. Best bit,” she emitted a hollow laugh which echoed across the chamber and bounced back to her, “was when Josefsson gave the instruction that if I vacillated – typical Josefsson language, don’t you think? Anyway, if I vacillated, then I should be eliminated too.” She stood, and shrugged, facing them. “Now, Commander Alexander,” she said, wandering back to the edge of the egg-field. “You were saying?”

“Sanjay is a brilliant man, a strategist! There is order in Esperantia, there is purpose. It’s down to him and him alone!”

Rashid shook his head vehemently. “He is a wolf, Jennifer!”

“Wolves have clarity! They’re strong, they survive.”

“Yes, by eating sheep!”

Blake held up a hand. The argument between Jennifer and Rashid was getting nowhere. “How soon before others arrive?”

“I told them to wait outside.” She glanced over the three dead men. “However, I’m not sure I’m in charge anymore.”

He thanked God she had heard them out. But she was strongly defensive of Shakirvasta, blaming her current predicament on Josefsson. She was still clearly making up her mind what to do about him and Rashid. Unfortunately, her support hung on Blake’s willingness to commit to Jennifer’s no-holds-barred mission to seek out and destroy the Alicians. Reason apparently had its boundaries.

Rashid at least had his dolphin back in place. He seemed to be listening to something; he kept tilting his head towards the floor.

“Let’s talk about the eggs,” Blake said, hoping they could find common ground. “Any idea when they might hatch?”

“Not for a long, long time, Commander!” A voice boomed out from the distant edge of the chamber.

The trio swivelled around, unwilling to believe their ears without visual corroboration.

“Dimitri?” Jennifer said, at the same time as Rashid sputtered, “Professor?”

The figure of Dimitri Kostakis loomed out of the darkness. He stood feet splayed on a narrow lev-panel, using a gnarled wooden staff to punt along over the eggs. It reminded Blake of the character from Greek mythology, Charon, who ferried poor souls across the river Acheron to Hades. He noticed Kostakis was careful not to touch any of the eggs with the staff.

Jennifer glared, her initial joy at seeing him now shrouded. Blake shouted to him, “Professor, what in the world are you doing here?”

Kostakis beamed through a straggling beard which merged seamlessly with his swathes of black hair. “I am on the best adventure of my life!” He reached the edge, and Blake and Rashid each leant an arm to help him up without propelling the levi-panel back out over the eggs. “And my Jennifer, it is so good to see you again, I had no idea you would be here to put things right. This means –”

She flared. “It means you’re wrong on two counts, Professor Kostakis. First I am not yours, and second, I have not yet decided about these two renegades.”

Kostakis’ smile faded but then resurged. “Still, it makes my heart swell just to see you. I have had a lot of time to think, these past months.”

Rashid lifted a hand. “More soldiers are coming. I can hear their comms. We must go, now!”

Neither Blake nor Jennifer moved, other than to check their weapons.

Rashid climbed down to the levi-panel. “They are preparing a fire-stormer – I can hear the ultrasonic charger winding up towards detonation.”

With that, they rushed to the edge, Blake grabbing Kostakis’ arm in the process. “Will this thing carry all of us?” As Kostakis got on board, it dipped and wobbled, so that they all momentarily clung to each other for balance. Rashid jabbed the staff to the ground to prevent them toppling, puncturing an egg, and shoving them backwards. A spume of yellow-brown gas spurted from the crushed shell.

“Do not breathe in – poison!” Kostakis shouted, as he covered his nose with a sleeve, and tried in vain to protect Jennifer’s face.

“Dammit, Dimitri, get off me, you haven’t had a bath in weeks!”

Rashid punted fast and fluidly into the darkness. The others crouched down, holding the edges of the lev-panel, remaining still, the elevated stage receding into the gloom. They all watched, waiting. “Professor,” Blake whispered, “can we run through the eggs?”

“That would be unwise: their yolks contain a fast-acting acid. We would die a miserable death.”

They heard a dull pop, then nothing. Blake hoped against hope that the fire-stormer had failed. A few seconds later fire erupted, engulfing the stage, and a tidal wave of flame flooded out across the eggs towards them. Blake felt searing heat on his face. He knew worse was yet to come, since the flame-front would breed until every last breath of oxygen had been scavenged from the chamber.

The tsunami of flame rushed toward them, but as it did so, eggs exploded in its pathway, mustard-coloured gas rising like a veil in front of the firestorm. Rashid’s strokes grew more furious and jerky, but powerful, too. Blake knew their lives were literally in his hands: one slip, one lost push, and they might be swallowed in fire or a cloud of acidic gas.

Rashid didn’t falter, however, and the curtain of gas grew thicker, but it no longer chased them, becoming an opaque barrier against the fire. Rashid continued to punt furiously, though the flame front flickered, dying, strangled by the gas. The spiders have saved us again, Blake thought. “Rashid, it’s okay, you can ease off now. You’ve saved us all, today. You too, Professor.”

His mind switched to Glenda. That was close. Mr. Shakirvasta, you and I are going to have a little talk, soon.

They reached the opposite side of the chamber, remaining quiet. Blake knew the soldiers would wait a short time and then enter with breathing apparatus and scanners. They disembarked, and followed Kostakis through a narrow, undulating schism in the rock face. After five minutes of hurried walking they emerged into a smaller room-sized cavity. Clearly, Kostakis had been squatting there for some time. Scattered clothes, a fusion stove, almost-empty boxes of rations, a dank-looking sleeping bag, and a bucket of water that didn’t look remotely drinkable, all lay haphazard on the floor. Pride of place was a small skel-table made of pneumatic micro-mesh, upon which lay a wafer-pad, glowing dully in the dim reddish light that would keep his eyesight cave-adapted.

“My home, my office, my laboratory,” he said quietly, with a mixture of embarrassment and pride. “I’m doing the best research I’ve ever done in my life, not that there are any journals to publish in or conferences to go to.” He belly-laughed, wheezily.

Blake smiled, but saw how haggard Kostakis looked – in the harsh ruby light his facial flesh sagged like jowls; he had lost a lot of weight, fast – no one fared well on rations, especially living in continuous night. Blake noticed that Jennifer’s glower masked traces of concern, maybe even shock. Good, you need to smell the coffee. He seized the opportunity. “I’d say your side has been chosen for you, Jennifer. Shakirvasta never trusted you fully. Josefsson doesn’t take this sort of action without covering his own ass first by checking with his boss. He could maybe have gotten away with explaining you were killed in crossfire, but, well, we all know a fire-stormer is designed to take no prisoners.”

She turned away, and walked to Kostakis’ desk. “Josefsson never trusted me. He was desperate, saw me as a threat. Maybe he thinks Shakirvasta will get over my death. Josefsson believes himself indispensable to Sanjay.”

Rashid spoke. “Do not delude yourself, Josefsson is merely a puppet, you of all people should know that.”

She whirled on him. “And you know that from her, don’t you?”

Blake frowned. Since no one answered, he asked. “Who?”

It was the trigger Jennifer had been waiting for. She rounded on Kostakis. “That conniving little bitch, Antonia! You know, that prissy little whore you were spending so much time with before you left!”

Blake looked open-mouthed to Rashid, then Kostakis.

Jennifer cracked. She launched herself at Kostakis, pummelling her fists into his chest. “How could you? How could you?”

Kostakis stood there letting her vent her anger. Blake thought about interfering, but she wasn’t hitting him hard – he knew she could kill Kostakis if she wanted to, despite their size ratio.

“My dear Jen, nothing happened between me and Antonia, I swear.”

Jen leapt back, eyelids red. Blake noticed with alarm what she had in her right hand. “Liar, Dimitri! Don’t you think I knew all about your secret little rendezvous, your soirees?”

Kostakis held his ground. “The resistance, Jen. We were trying to form a resistance. I couldn’t tell you, because…” His mahogany eyes looked as if they might split. He spoke in a small voice. “Shakirvasta manipulated you, my love. He has played like an alchemist on your grief for your brother Gabriel, turning it into an unquenchable anger, taking you away from me, from all of us.”

Her nostrils flared. “She stayed the night more than once!”

“There were curfews. Shakirvasta wasted no time seizing control. She wasn’t the only one who stayed. Carlson was often there, Rashid too.” He nodded in Rashid’s direction. “On my mother’s grave, my dear Jen, I never touched her. If you don’t believe me…” he nodded to her right wrist.

Blake watched Jennifer’s white-knuckled hand closely as it clutched the nanosword, not yet enabled. Her eyes bored into Kostakis’ with a fierce intensity. She took a step backwards, turned around, then storm-marched down another exit from the cave. Kostakis made to go after her, but Blake spoke up. “Leave her, Professor. She’ll be back. She needs time alone.”

They waited an hour. Rashid had ventured back towards the egg chamber, and employed his sonar to detect the soldiers’ summary search on the other side of the chamber. He heard them leave, reporting on the radio that all were dead, that the mission was accomplished. He returned to Kostakis’ refuge.

“Half the eggs have been destroyed, Commander, but the soldiers do not seem to be aware of them, since the ones on their side of the chamber were vaporised. They found enough ash from the soldiers we killed to think we are all dead.”

He nodded. Kostakis sagged on his small camp chair, like an overgrown scarecrow. Blake was just thinking they would have to go and look for Jennifer, when they heard a shrill scream echoing down the passageway she had taken. Blake had never seen Kostakis move so fast, as he jumped up, grabbed a torch and bolted down the narrow tunnel.

“Should one of us stay here?” Rashid asked.

A second scream, full of pain, reverberated into their room.

“No, we stick together.” He ran, followed by Rashid, cursing the fact that every event seemed to push him further away from his main mission, to rescue Glenda. He heard Kostakis shouting up ahead, and picked up his pace, ramping up his pulse pistol to maximum.

Chapter 21

Gridfall

Despite Micah’s attempt to play it cool as Captain, a “Wow!” slipped out as Grid Station 359 Alpha grew large in front of them on the viewscreen. It reminded him of a giant sea urchin, hundreds, maybe thousands of electric blue spines stretching out into space, myriad ships docked at the ends. The central hub was lozenge-shaped. Every part of it – and his resident told him it was forty kilometres long, converting automatically into its host’s metering system – glinted dark phosphorescent indigoes and blues. He was getting used to Angel’s gift, with its sporadic but well-timed alphanumeric data drops into the right side of his vision, to the point he wondered how long they’d survive without it. Once he’d read or scanned the data, it faded out – evidently the resident included a cognitive feedback loop. He reckoned it should win the resident’s designer the galactic equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

He focused on the hub again, and realised it wasn’t the most impressive item on their viewscreen. The space-port acted as a node on a ringway, a conduit of sliding colours. Micah recalled as a kid seeing a cuttlefish at the Monterey aquarium, how it changed colours as fluently as a man utters words, different shades rippling up and down its surface. Yet this was on a more majestic scale, and wasn’t just about aesthetics. The light show was a side effect of the type of radiation his resident translated as Eosin harmonics, propelling ships around the Grid without the need for fuel. Occasionally a swathe of colour, like the aurora borealis, whip-lashed from the hub to the ringway’s horizon, indicating that another ship had just been catapulted into the Grid network.

The ten kilometre diameter conduit lasered into space in both directions from the hub, cutting a bold line across the black tableau of space. He focused on a particularly large vessel in the upper levels of the hub, and the resident labelled it as Varctiarian – farm produce – Ischrian leaves. He studied numerous different ships and formed a hypothesis. Aside from a few yachts and military vessels, the Grid was mainly for commerce: Grid culture was about barter. Not only that, each race appeared to have a particular niche in the market. It made sense. After a million years, Grid society had decided its needs, and each race had been accorded one or maybe two functions. He wished people back on Ourshiwann could see it.

But his head began to thump – he wasn’t used to the resident yet. He turned back to his crew and relayed his observations. Sandy was cool with him, Hannah distant, and Ramires buoyant, in an understated way. Micah couldn’t help notice that Sandy seemed to be interacting a little more than usual with Ramires. Zack meanwhile frowned at his displays of the docking system.

“I haven’t got a clue how we dock,” Zack said. “Hannah?”

“This goes beyond my knowledge too, I’m afraid. I suggest we approach and see what happens; probably the ship knows what to do.”

“Great,” Zack said, “I’ll go get some kip, then.”

Micah moved next to him. “Take her in, Zack, let’s play this one by ear.”

The hub loomed closer. Zack raised his hands, and let them fall back down, slapping his thighs. “That’s it, autopilot’s kicked in.”

A holo-cube of emerald digits appeared in the centre of the bridge. Zack groaned. “Here we go again.”

But Micah’s resident highlighted six pairs of digits. He strode to Hannah’s console, which displayed the cube in slices. He used his forefinger to peel away each slice until he found the right pairs, then tapped them with two fingers. The holo-cube flashed once and vanished.

“I’m impressed,” Hannah said quietly. Her eyes lingered on him longer than he felt comfortable with, until he was saved by a scraping Q’Roth message which boomed over their heads. She translated. “It’s an automated welcome message: we’re being re-directed to one of the docking needles.” His resident also gave a brief translation of the location. “DN-725, to be precise.” More Q’Roth-speak spilled into the room. This time, although he couldn’t really tell, it didn’t sound automated. They all waited for Hannah to translate, but she stayed quiet. Her right hand tugged absent-mindedly at her ginger hair while she squinted at the written version of the last message. He was reminded of the previous night’s passion, and dared not turn back to Sandy. He waited, half-hoping his resident would translate, but for the moment there was nothing.

“We’re in trouble,” Hannah said. “Zack, can we break off our approach?”

Zack tapped his controls, then punched the console. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“What’s the problem, Hannah?” Micah asked.

“It’s an archaic Q’Roth dialect. So I wasn’t sure at first, but … there’s a Q’Roth ambassador aboard the hub, and, well, there’s good news and bad news.”

“I thought that was the bad news,” Sandy said.

“Good news is he just waived our docking fees and set up a credit account for us during our stay,” Hannah said, clasping the edges of her console, addressing all of them. “Bad news is he’s invited us to a dinner party this evening – he wants an update on news from our recent travels. It seems he doesn’t get out much.”

Zack rose from his chair, slapping his unresponsive console en route. “Well I’ll be –”

“Main course,” Sandy quipped.

The ship jolted, a loud clunk confirming they were locked in place.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Micah said.

Ramires got up and approached him in the centre of the bridge. He pulled out a thin metal tube and held it out in his left hand. A translucent purple blade eased outward, emitting a low hum.

Sandy cocked her head. “Boys and their toys, eh?” But she smiled at Ramires in a way that made Micah edgy. In that instant he understood two things: that he’d lost his chance with Sandy, and that he didn’t really want Hannah. It made him feel more alone than ever before. He realized he was glaring at the last Sentinel alive, just as Ramires caught his eye, and retracted the fluorescent blade.

Micah cleared his throat and swung his gaze back to the viewscreen. “We go get provisions, then we get the hell out of here before dinner.” He felt empty inside, but with that came a coldness he could firm into purpose. “Hannah, how much time do we have before our intended soiree?”

“About five hours.”

“Right. Hannah, you remain here, find a protocol, a reason we can disembark early. I want you to track the ambassador and keep us away from him. We’ll keep open comms. The rest of you, you’re with me. We look for provisions. With a bit of luck my resident should get us through the transactions. Angel left us encounter gear, we need to figure out how to use it. Meet down at the airlock in ten minutes. Questions?” He glanced around, and left the bridge before anyone had a chance to raise one.

Zack caught him up further down the corridor, just outside his cabin. “You okay?”

“Am I really that transparent?”

“You want some advice?”

“Not really.”

“Okay.”

Micah sighed. “Zack – yes, I’m out of my depth here. Too much, too fast.”

“That’s just it, Micah. You’re not. You just gotta let go of who you used to be. Blake chose you for a reason. Me, I thought you were just some geeky kid who got lucky back on Earth – had no idea why Blake singled you out for training.”

Micah’s anger flared up, out of the blue. “So please tell me, Zack, because right now I’d really like to know. I feel like I’m losing everything that matters to me.” He realised this shit shouldn’t be directed at Zack. “Sorry, I know you’ve lost a lot too, maybe everything.”

Zack shrugged. “Not everything, not my sense of purpose. And that’s just it. I asked Blake why, why you. He said you were smart, and right now, intelligence was our only hope. So, let go of them all – Sandy, Hannah, Antonia. Doesn’t mean you don’t care about people. But you need to be the leader, see things the way an eagle does, from above, cool, aloof.”

Micah bit his lip, but was unable to hold it in. “What about me, Zack, how I feel, my needs?”

Zack laughed, laying a heavy black hand on Micah’s shoulder. “No offence, Micah, but screw you. It ain’t about you or me. Take your pain, your anguish, and burn it in cold fire. That was Blake’s nickname back in the War, you know. Think about it, Micah, but not too much. Analyse our situation, not yourself. Humanity needs your brain, not your petty neuroses. Sorry, but there it is.”

Something clicked inside Micah’s head. If he could do as Zack said, then it would cut off the pain, and analysts were trained to disconnect from their emotions, though usually only when using the Optron. He made up his mind. “Alright. I have nothing to lose.”

Zack stared at him awhile, then grinned. “Actually, you have to lose everything first, that’s the point, just let go, you’ll feel lighter.” Zack headed to his own cabin.

Micah remembered what a Zen master had told him back in Palo Alto during his Optron training: resolved action only comes from emptiness. He’d never been comfortable with that aphorism, but right now, maybe for the first time in his life, it applied.

The encounter gear was less cumbersome than he’d imagined, amounting to lightweight self-fitting copper-coloured suits, a matching metallic headband, and two pencil-width booms curving around from the ears to the chin, leaving a gap for the mouth. His resident confirmed the shrouder device was operating, neutralising microbes exiting the mouth and nose, and any foreign flora which might try to enter. Despite a glove-tight fit, he didn’t sweat inside the suit; again, something inside the suit acted on the sweat immediately. So, aside from looking like some cheap, decked-out retro-punk rock band leader, he felt relaxed, at least until he exited the ship.

The hatch swished open to reveal a gelatinous twinkling membrane across the hatchway. Micah knew he had to be first, so he braced himself and stepped through it – it was like walking through jelly. Micah’s resident noted exodermic sterilisation in progress. The membrane was thin, and his body was almost through it when something snagged – his pulse pistol. Before he could do anything about it, the holster straps dissolved and the pistol clattered to the deck inside the ship, just as he emerged fully onto the other side. The same happened to Sandy and Zack as they came through.

“Guess there’s a ‘no-weapons’ policy.” Zack said.

They watched Ramires try – it snagged a while on his back pocket, then let him through with the nanosword.

“How come?” Zack asked.

Micah answered. “Maybe it doesn’t know it’s a weapon.”

“Still,” Zack said, “don’t seem fair.”

Micah felt a breeze brush his cheek, and without warning, all four of them were whisked off their feet. He held his breath as they were sucked down black corrugated tubing inside the needle connecting their ship to the hub, separated from instant space death by the gossamer thin pipeline funnelling them towards – well, he didn’t know where. He felt like a spider being flushed down a loo, and hoped the comparison was incorrect. He saw flashing lights, heard banshees, and was buffeted by cold and hot air blasts. The resident relayed information from the needle’s analysis of Micah and the others: air-breathers; gravitic tolerance level based on musculoskeletal design; environmental sensitivity ranges to heat, light, air pressure and ionising radiation; primary sensory modality visual, secondary auditory – it gave figures which he supposed were ranges on the EM spectrum; and approximate level intelligence. The last parameter took an extra second to register, deciding on five – presumably courtesy of the resident – which was the minimum level for entry into the hub. Micah wondered what would have happened if they’d been granted a four or even a three. The spider-down-the-toilet analogy came back to mind.

They arrived at a nexus, a spherical mirrored room with nine circular portals leading out of it. They hung in the middle, courtesy of a reflective gravity effect Earth’s scientists had speculated upon, but never quite managed to create. Micah recognised it because when he moved his hand away from his body, he started to move in the opposite direction. “Er, nobody move, just give me a second,” he warned the others floating behind him. He focused on the opposite portal. Nothing happened. Shit, we have to think Level Five or we’re going to get nowhere. He returned to his analyst training, and imagined the sphere and its ten portals including the one through which they’d just entered. It was hard for most people to truly think in three dimensions, but easier for an Optron analyst. As he’d hoped, courtesy of the resident, in his mind he saw each portal with supplementary information. He pivoted inside his mind, inspecting each one, surmising that the resident had probably chosen him as host because he had certain skills which were going to make survival easier.

Each portal led to different basic functional requirements: grid access registration, weapons ordering, restoration facilities, ship trading, and entertainment. One slightly above and to the right was designated nutrition. That would be their priority, as their rations were getting so low they were starting to taste good. He opened his eyes.

“Well, Micah? Much as this is fun…” Sandy didn’t need to complete the sentence.

“Working on it.” He puzzled over what to do next. If this was a pure gravity reflection field, then Newton’s laws would keep them there indefinitely. But alien tech would be smarter. It would work out what they wanted. He concentrated hard on the desired exit, but remained immobile. Of course, he thought, the machines aren’t telepathic. Okay, he thought, so the computer has already analysed our musculature, so can detect muscle movements. He flexed his feet as if getting up, and angled his torso toward the portal. He began to move in its direction, accelerating. “Quick, all of you, just imagine you’re walking to this portal, use your feet and follow –” He was sucked inside, and prayed the others got it in time. This time the trip was shorter, and he was deposited feet first onto a springy glass floor inside a room-sized, squat bubble the size and shape of a school bus. The others arrived one by one. Instinctively he held out a hand to help Sandy as she arrived, but she didn’t take it. “Everyone okay?” he said, retracting his hand.

Zack answered first. “Well, boss, unless we all get one of those things inside our head, I reckon we need to stick together.”

Sandy folded her arms, tight-lipped. Ramires spoke up. “Do we still have comms with Hannah?”

“Good point.” Micah addressed his wristcom. “Hannah, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Micah, loud and clear. How’s it going?”

“Well, we’re in, so to speak. We’ll contact you every thirty minutes. I strongly suggest you don’t leave the ship – the phrase culture shock doesn’t do it justice.”

He surveyed the surreal landscape before him. All of them walked to the bubble’s side, peering out at the sight beyond.

“Babel,” Sandy said.

Before them stood a Christmas-tree-like array of hemispheres, each with a diameter of several hundred metres. Micah could see ten at any one time as the tree slowly rotated. The tree was in the centre of a vast honeycombed sphere, with thousands of bubbles – more like blisters from this viewpoint – like the one they stood in right now, encircling the tree. He couldn’t see inside any of the others, but the overall effect was a thousand insect eyes gazing on the tree Sandy had aptly christened Babel. Fine opal tubes snaked from the hemispheres to some of the blisters, reminding Micah of a sea anemone’s tendrils waving in the sea currents, hunting plankton.

“Hey, boys, you’ll want to try this,” Sandy said, exuberant again. She had picked up a metal visor from several lying on a shelf, and was studying the habitats.

Micah took one and held it to his eyes. At first nothing happened as he looked towards the tree. Then as he noticed a liquid environment he unconsciously tried to focus, and the image immediately zoomed in, spying various creatures, some like ancient marine dinosaurs on Earth, others squid-like, though none looked like actual fish.

“Infini-vision,” Zack said, “every pilot’s dream! Mil-tech tried to develop this just before the War. It must senses eye muscle movements and amplify accordingly – but this is real smooth!”

Micah found four basic environmental types – air-like, heavy gas, liquid, and dark. The dark ones were opaque to the visors, although Micah thought he saw shadows moving within the blackness.

He focused on one of the air environments. “Wow,” he whispered, finding a menagerie of alien life-forms, from grey mushroom-shaped creatures whose means of locomotion escaped him, to a quadruped beast with an upper body of a scarlet manta ray. Numerous lime-coloured, diamond-shaped organisms with four rings around them rolled around the alien food market like gyroscopes, the diamonds remaining upright. His resident produced names for the various aliens he saw, but he paid no attention, just feasted on the abundance of forms life had found according to planetary demands and environmental niches. Darwin could work here forever.

“Hey, check this out,” Sandy shouted, “fourth level down the tree, last habitat on the right, central section.”

He pulled back from the visor, located the hemisphere, and then re-applied the optical device, wishing it to get closer. At first he couldn’t make it out, but then he saw what she must be referring to. A black eel was lengthening itself impossibly into fractal patterns, in front of a white, straight eel. The white eel began to do the same thing, interlacing and meshing with the black eel. At first the fractal patterns made no sense, even though it was kaleidoscopic to watch, but then he realised that this dance was generating a black and white cube. A number of other alien life-forms had gathered to watch.

Sandy laughed. “Shouldn’t they get a room?”

Good, she has her sense of humour back.

Ramires butted in, his voice regaining its usual deadly serious tone. “Bipeds, two levels below the fractal eels. Some look humanoid.”

They all switched to the lower hemisphere, and found a range of bipeds, including one that looked uncannily human. Micah zoomed in to the human’s face. “Mannekhi,” he said, even before his resident confirmed it. “That’s where we start.” He touched a finger on the inside edge of the bubble while staring at the habitat through the visor.

“Now look what you’ve gone and done,” Sandy said.

Micah lowered the visor to see a tendril snaking its way toward them. As its head rose in front of them, its mouth opened, and then leached onto the outside of the bubble. They each took a step backwards, but the exit behind them sealed.

‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘I’m sure it’s –”

They arrived in the habitat in a split second.

“– okay,” he finished.

“Sonofabitch, that was fast.” Zack swept his fingers over his bald head. “Must’ve used some kind of inertial field. Didn’t feel a damn thing!”

Ramires seemed the least shocked by the suddenness of the mode of transport. He wandered off down a plant-laden central aisle. “This way, I believe.”

“Wait,” Micah said. “Remember what Angel told us about Grid society level hierarchy, and how we mustn’t address any more than two levels above our station?”

They nodded, wearily.

Zack grunted. “Institutionalised racism.”

“Yep, but we have to respect it. Still, the good news is that every vendor I’ve checked out so far is Level Five or Six.”

“Makes sense,” Sandy said, “biggest market opportunity that way.”

Micah continued. “Those levels are probably also agrarian, farmers, and we’re here for food, so it’s a good match.”

Zack grinned. “You mean you can tell which is merchandise and which is alien, because, truth is, a few times I wasn’t really sure.”

Micah shook his head. “I know. We’re in Wonderland here, and we have almost no idea of the rules, but a pretty good idea that punishment can be terminal. So, given I’ve got the resident, I’ll do the talking.”

“Business as usual there, Micah,” Sandy quipped.

He shrugged, and let it go. Her sarcasm he could handle, indifference and the silent treatment, that was a different matter entirely. He caught up with Ramires, narrowly avoiding a sucker-like frond which tried to land on his head.

They passed a couple of tall saffron-caped mantas, and tried not to stare. Most of the merchandise was laid out on lawns of blue grass, with a vendor seated, hanging, or hovering in its midst. Micah’s eyes tugged in the direction of pulsing fluorescent elliptoids which kept elongating and shrinking, changing airbrushed colours at an almost subliminal rate. His resident confirmed it was nutritional, but appended the name with a red cross – not suitable for his physiology. Thanks, Angel, we really owe you one.

He decided to follow Ramires’ lead, and proceeded straight ahead to the Mannekhi’s stall. The white-bearded, bald man with the same all-black eyes as Starkel, rose from his stool to greet them. He spoke in fluent Mannekhi, and Micah’s resident translated. Micah relaxed, and spoke back naturally, knowing the resident would perform the requisite gymnastics with his vocal chords.

“Fine thank you…Yes, that’s right, human, not Mannekhi, though we met one recently, name of Starkel… Ah, yes, the Games. Yes, the same one… Food, mainly, we have water… Payment, yes, hold on a minute, please.’

He turned to the others. Zack was looking at him sideways, Sandy found something interesting to stare at on the grass, while Ramires kept lookout.

“Pleasantries so far,” he told them, “we’re just getting down to business.” He coughed, and tapped his wristcom. “Hannah? It’s Micah; the subject of payment has come up.”

“Thought it would. I’m zapping you the Q’Roth’s name and a credit account cipher. The vendor must have some kind of optical reader, just put your wristcom next to it, it should work.”

Sandy nudged Zack. “Remind me why he brought us along?”

Zack jabbed her back gently in the ribs. “Micah brought Ramires for his fighting skills, me for my good humour, and you because he was afraid of what you might do to Hannah.” He tickled her ribs and they both packed out laughing. Micah frowned and turned back to the vendor, and completed the purchase.

“Okay guys, I’ve just bought us … two hundred plaktars, four cubic metres of Zentbread, a nushell of Qimbari beans, and ten assorted eshnibar snacks. My resident says they’re all nutritional and a good balanced diet for our needs. It’s being sent back to the ship as we speak.”

“So,” Sandy said, “are we going to take a look around?”

Ramires cut in. “We must go now.”

“What’s the –” She paled as she glimpsed what Ramires had seen.

Micah twisted around, then wished he hadn’t. A tall Q’Roth warrior was heading straight for them. “Okay, no running, let’s just leave quietly.” Zack tripped over a root on the ground, and stumbled into Ramires. He gathered himself, muttered an apology, and they all walked as fast as they could without breaking into a run, back the way they’d come, towards the tube. As they rounded a bend, Micah risked a glance backwards – the Q’Roth wasn’t there. He prayed their luck would hold, but as they turned the final corner to reach the exit tube, they found the warrior half-crouching on four of its six legs, blocking their way. The Mannekhi vendor arrived by its side, out of breath. He spoke Q’Roth. This time Micah’s resident translated for him – Micah guessed it had a learning mechanism, and had now heard enough to develop translation algorithms: “Yes, ambassador, these are the ones who just spent some of your credit.” With that, the Mannekhi vendor left, not meeting Micah’s glare.

The Q’Roth rose upright on its hind legs, a good three and a half metres in height, its two other pairs of legs spread wide. Its armour-plated torso shone like a beetle’s wings in the hazy light, the six vermillion slits on its head waxing and waning. The ambassador’s broad gash of a mouth yawned open, the Q’Roth words easing out like barbed-wire pulled through flesh, in serrated English. “Leaving so soon?”

Micah tapped his wristcom. He presumed the Q’Roth had some kind of translation device too. “Hannah, we’ve met the good ambassador. We may be dining early.”

Courtesy of the resident, he spoke a halting Q’Roth. “My dear ambassador, we were merely attending to our needs for provisions. We will be honoured to meet you for dinner later.”

His mid-claws pounded into the ground, causing a sputter of dust. He reverted to Q’Roth. “Do not insult my intelligence! You think an ambassador would be unaware of events in the Q’Roth line, including the recent destruction of two vessels chasing a ship with your registration? I merely wanted you off-ship, to be sure you could not escape again. As soon as you spent my credit, I knew where to find you. You will indeed join me for dinner, all of you, including the Alician traitor onboard your stolen vessel, which is now locked down and targeted by my own flagship. But first,” it turned to Ramires, “this one has something of interest, detected when you left the ship, classed as a medical tool, but I believe it is a weapon.”

Micah swallowed. The Q’Roth faced Ramires, dropping into an aggressive stance: its two back legs bent behind it, ready to launch forwards, while its mid legs clawed the ground, and its upper legs folded in two, projecting out horizontally in Ramires’ direction. Its body slanted forward, its head statue-still. Micah had seen a praying mantis once, and knew the forelegs, when folded like this, could whip out faster than a man could blink, catching or shredding its prey. Ramires did not waver. Zack backed away from it, moving to its side.

“Ramires,” Sandy whispered.

“Do not fear,” he said. “All my life I have trained for this moment.” He stood tall, and reached around with his left hand to his back pocket – and found it empty. A puzzle framed his normally serene brow, and then his eyes darted sideways at Zack. Micah followed his gaze just in time to see Zack’s arms raised high as his large frame leapt silently forward and upward toward the Q’Roth, a shimmering violet line rising from the metal tube he gripped in both hands.

Chapter 22

Arjuna

Blake detected blue flashes at the end of the tunnel, and drew his pulse pistol. “Rashid, I go in, you brake.” He breached the cave mouth, dived and rolled to the opposite wall, ready to fire. Rashid skidded to the lip of the entrance, pistol also raised. The only sound was their laboured breathing. Blake holstered his weapon and surveyed the scene.

Kostakis held Jennifer’s limp but still breathing body in his arms, and there was a Hohash, though it looked very different to the ones they’d encountered so far. Instead of a pristine golden frame, it had copper vines twisted around it like rusted cabled steel, some of it frayed. The mirror surface was also different – it was fractured into eight uneven sections, each one bordered by a rusted gold ridge, reminding him of rice paddies he’d seen in Borneo during the War.

“What happened, Professor?”

“Dimitri, Commander, please. I tire of that particular anachronism, it has no meaning anymore.”

“Dimitri, then.” He noticed he did not seem to tire of holding her.

“I arrived and Jen was facing that thing. I imagine it accessed her node, and was communicating directly with her. She was screaming for it to stop; I felt so helpless, so I shouted too, and kicked it, or tried to – it can move very fast when it wishes to. You have some experience of this, I understand.”

“Only second hand, but it made Kat black out more than once, till they established a rapport.” He noticed Rashid tilting his head toward the floor.

Dimitri laid Jennifer on the ground. “So peaceful.”

Blake frowned. Rashid now appeared to be praying, with his head bowed to the floor. “Rashid, what the hell are you doing? You introduced us to these damned artefacts in the first place. Can we focus on the problem?”

Rashid didn’t budge. “That is what I am doing, Commander. I believe this Hohash, which I imagine is far older than the others, judging by its condition, is guarding something precious.” He placed his visor against the ground, rocking his head side-to-side slowly. “Something miraculous,” he whispered.

Dimitri, unangered like Blake, joined Rashid. “Tell us, what do you see, or rather, hear?”

Rashid lifted his head, and sat on the ground. “Professor – and I call you that because I was also a man of science, and I respect your work back on Earth a great deal – you never really explained why you were here.”

“Well,” Dimitri beamed, “I joined Vasquez’ mission just to get out of the city, away from the politics, but I had no enthusiasm to go on an engineering mission. I suppose I am still a scientist.”

“But why here?”

Dimitri studied his feet, like an overgrown schoolboy trying to explain his missing homework. “I overheard Antonia talking about these caves. She confided in me that if I was ever in trouble, to come here.”

Rashid stuck to his thread. “That was convenient, but not why you really came here, nor why you stayed here, was it?”

Blake stated the obvious. “The eggs, Rashid, he found the eggs.”

Rashid stood up, amidst Dimitri’s silence. “Professor Kostakis is not a biologist, Commander. He is a Gaiologist, one who studied the interconnectedness of Earth’s ecology as if it was a single being, but first and foremost he is an oceanographer.”

Blake shook his head. “But there are no…” He paused. “Wait a minute, you’re not telling me –”

“An underground ocean!” Dimitri interjected, unable to contain himself any longer, his arms taking off. “Huge, as big as the Atlantic, underneath the first crust.”

Blake’s brow furrowed. “Does that have anything to do with the eggs?”

Dimitri looked to Rashid, who answered, “No, I don’t believe so. I suspect the ocean is ancient. You found a way in, didn’t you, Professor?”

He nodded. “Far below, a glass wall, a platform, and I trekked for days above a roiling ocean, smooth perfect waves, never breaking, uniform as the planet’s rotation.”

Blake felt out of his depth, never at ease in the company of scientists. But he tried to get with the game. “Did the spiders somehow sink the ocean, or is this natural?”

“Ah, now we turn to my speciality,’ Rashid said, “terraforming theory.”

Dimitri tugged at his beard. “Really! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Rashid addressed Blake. “It is certainly not natural, and I believe beyond the spider’s technological ability. My sonar can detect the ocean, and I see how deep it is, but also that the second crust beneath this one, underlying the ocean, is smooth and of an impermeable, synthetic material, not rock as we’d expect.”

Dimitri placed two fingers delicately, as if touching a butterfly’s wings, on the rim of Rashid’s dolphin. “Amazing, almost worth losing one’s sight for. Such an instrument!”

Blake sighed. He knelt down next to Jennifer, and noticed the first signs of stirring. Although not fond of her, he wanted a more military mind to balance the odds. A cheek muscle twitched, a tremor skidded down her forearm. He addressed Dimitri: “So, why the secrecy?”

Now Dimitri stared hard at Rashid, and shook his head very lightly.

Blake hadn’t missed the covert signal, scientist to scientist. “What? What is it? What’s so important about finding an ocean? I don’t see how that alone has geopolitical magnitude right now, given our predicament.”

Rashid patted Dimitri’s arm. “I am sorry, but Blake is our rightful leader on this planet. He needs to know. We must trust in him.”

Dimitri met Blake’s eyes, with something approaching a look of pity. “But he is … a soldier. Where you and I see scientific wonder, he sees weapons.”

Blake stared back, but didn’t know what to reply. He’d heard it before, but now, for the first time, it cut deep. Was it true?

“It’s not the ocean, Commander,” Rashid said, “but what’s in it.”

“Wrong,” Jennifer said, prizing herself up on her elbows. With Blake’s help, she sat up, held her head, massaging her temples. “It’s not what’s in it,” she said, “but who is in it.”

She accepted Dimitri’s outstretched arm as he helped her up. “Come on,” she said, “the Hohash is going to show us the way.”

They continued ever downwards, tracking behind the blue glow of the Hohash along narrow paths spiralling around an abyssal crevasse. They travelled so deep Blake wondered if he’d ever see sunlight again. And then he heard it, the unmistakable swelling of waves, water moving, the salty smell of the sea. It triggered such a strong feeling of homesickness that he had to stop to catch his breath, thinking of all that had been lost. The salt water odour flooded back memories of sailing in San Francisco Bay, scuba diving off Point Lobos near Monterey, and sunbathing with Glenda and Robert on Venice Beach. He felt a shard of guilt for having left so many on Earth to perish at the hands of the Q’Roth. He leant against the crevasse wall, steadied himself, and then continued walking.

“Yes,” Rashid said, in front, “the smell of an ocean takes your breath away doesn’t it? When we get there, please describe it to me, because despite what Dimitri said, I’d trade almost anything to have my eyes back, to see the things and people I love and care about.”

He knew Rashid meant Sonja. His mind made the inevitable connection. Where are you Zack? I need you, dammit. I can lead, but I need a strong second; that was always you.

Dimitri’s voice boomed out. “The oxygen is very heavy down here, it may make you feel light-headed, emotional even.”

Yep, that must be it, Blake said to himself, not believing it for an instant, but then he of all people understood that soldiers are trained to follow orders, whether or not they believed in them. He battened down the emotional hatches, and regained his rhythm.

Blake stepped onto the glass gingerly, like a cat, despite having seen Jennifer and the Professor clatter down onto it. Beneath his feet, some thirty metres or so, dimly lit from the cave’s light source which he couldn’t pinpoint, was a black sea, wave crests rolling past every thirty seconds; they were massive.

“So, what exactly is in the ocean?”

Rashid’s boots thumped onto the glass behind him. “A ship, but a ship like no other we have ever encountered.”

He turned to see where Rashid was staring, but only saw the dark sheen of the ocean reflecting from the domed cavern’s glows. “I don’t get it, Rashid – your sonar shouldn’t be able to detect a ship through glass, air and then water. The dolphin’s just not that good.”

Dimitri spoke while turning on a small apparatus lying in the centre of the glass floor. “Yes, Rashid, you must tell us – I am also intrigued. I only found it when using this ultra-low frequency scanner.”

“It is breathing,” he replied, “very slowly.”

Blake stared first at him, and then glanced down again through the glass floor. Dimitri focused instead on the screen illuminating his face in green. “Come, Commander, take a look.”

Blake saw fuzz at first, then a figure emerged. He made out a triangular section like an arrowhead jutting out from a narrow neck, joined to the body of the ship, which was shaped like a semi-circle at the top, tapering down at the bottom. The ship resembled an elongated crossbow, pointing straight upwards out of the ocean.

“Arjuna,” Rashid said quietly, gazing through the floor, since he could not observe two-dimensional displays. “The mythical archer from the Bhagavad Gita. This is a noble ship, if ever there was one to behold.”

Blake had to admit its symmetry was elegant. He smiled – Zack would go nuts over this. “What’s the scale, Professor? I think Rashid is right. You’ve earned the title, and God knows we need to research and learn if we’re going to survive on this planet.” He detected a blush beneath Dimitri’s shroud of a beard, though it was hard to be sure in the grey light.

“The vessel is ten kilometres long. The top section alone is half a kilometre in length.”

Blake turned to Jennifer. “Now it’s your turn. What, or who, is inside the ship?”

She nodded to the Hohash. “The creators of these artefacts.”

Dimitri got there first. “So the spiders –”

“Are a relatively new species. The one in the ship is very, very old. It came here aeons ago, with a number of Hohash. It terraformed the planet to create an underground ocean where it and its ship could hide. The spiders were barely sentient at that time, but the Hohash interacted with them, and educated them.”

No one spoke for a while, as they digested this information, re-writing their basic assumptions about the spider race, and the Hohash. Blake cleared his throat. “Why did you scream, Jennifer? I heard Kat scream the first time, but she cried out in pain – forgive me, but your cry was one of fear.”

“My Jen is not afraid of anything,” Dimitri exclaimed.

She narrowed her eyes, then relaxed. Blake wasn’t sure on whose account, his or Dimitri’s. “You’re right, Commander. It showed me something, an image, and conveyed an intense emotion of fear; actually, more like dread of pure evil matched with unstoppable power. Something has happened out in the galaxy, something much bigger than us or our petty problems. The seeds of a galactic catastrophe have been sewn.”

“And this ship,” Rashid said, “is somehow a key?”

“Yes,” she said.

Blake recognised the look of uncertainty on her normally confident face. “So, what’s the problem?”

She tapped the screen. “Arjuna – we might as well call it that, as I don’t know its name – is dormant, and won’t respond to the Hohash. So our Hohash friend here wants us to wake it. Well, him actually. You see, there’s a single occupant inside the ship.”

They discussed it for hours, until they were getting too tired to think straight. They ate rations more or less in silence. Jennifer refused to sit with Dimitri, and responded to all of his questions with either monosyllabic answers or a shrug. The problem was that the ship was far below the water’s surface, they had no pressurised ship to explore it, no other obvious means of making contact, and the only deep diving gear was back in Esperantia. Blake acknowledged that perhaps this was of a higher priority in the grand scale of things, but there was nothing he could do, and there were other priorities he could do something about.

In the morning, he awoke later than planned. Rashid was doing some form of callisthenic exercises, and Dimitri and Jennifer were far away on the other side of the chamber, sitting close to each other, talking. He could tell by their body language that at least some problems had been resolved. Good, we have enough real wars on our hands.

On seeing him awake, they came over. Jennifer took the lead. “We’ve decided, while you slept, Commander.”

“Really? And do I get a say in the matter?”

“Dimitri and I are staying here, to try and help the Hohash contact the ship’s occupant. You and Rashid take Dimitri’s skimmer back to the city – the Hohash will show you the way back to the surface. Rashid will return with the diving gear. You must tell Shakirvasta that I was killed. It is imperative he believes I am dead, or else he will come looking, and find … this.” She scuffed the glass floor with her boot. “You must give me your word, Commander.”

Blake chewed his lip. He never liked giving promises, but it seemed like a lightweight one. “Very well. I give you my word. As for the rest, it sounds reasonable. I can go along with it, Jennifer.”

She looked down to the floor, then met his eyes head on, but her eyes were softer. “It’s Jen, from now on, just Jen. I will join you if I can. One more thing.” She squeezed her lips together, as if trying to hold something in. She held out an opened envelope. Her hand was shaking. “If Sandy returns, I…” Her voice broke. Dimitri wrapped an arm around her waist, and she took a breath. “I’d like to see her, Commander.”

He stared at it, then pushed her hand back gently, folding her fingers around the envelope. “I already know about Sandy’s pregnancy, Jen. Vince told me about it before the battle, but swore me to secrecy. You see, I do know how to keep my word.” He got to his feet. “And I understand, Jen. Good luck, both of you.” With that, he and Rashid departed, escorted by the Hohash out of the cavern.

◆◆◆

Blake strode down the main avenue in Esperantia. It was noon. Plenty of soldiers – Shakirvasta’s militia rather than Blake’s original men – had seen him, but no one had stopped him yet. A swelling throng emerged from their dwellings to see if it was really him. Good, he thought, this way Rashid can get the gear out of the city and back to Jen.

He arrived at the central plaza, a straggling crowd behind him, and stepped up on top of one of the spider’s tables dotted around the square. He stood a while, meeting the eyes of many in the crowd, then raised both his arms.

“People of Esperantia, people of Earth, I have returned.”

“And you are under arrest for the unlawful killing of a number of soldiers.” Josefsson approached with a not quite steady gait from a shaded portico outside the largest dwelling. A phalanx of militia flanked him, pulse rifles at their waists.

“I acted in self defence.”

“Ah, but there are witnesses, Mr. Alexander.”

“Commander.”

“Not any longer; you see the constitution states –” he paused long enough to make eye contact with several in the crowd, “– as it did so back on Earth, that the President is in charge of the military, and I have suspended your commission pending your trial.”

Blake had expected much of this, but it didn’t make it any easier. He’d seen Josefsson as something of a fool, but public speaking was the senator’s – now the President’s – home ground, even if he was a puppet for Shakirvasta. Josefsson seemed in no hurry to make the arrest, wallowing in this charade. Blake knew he had to tread carefully.

He turned back to the crowd. “You people need to be released from the shackles Shakirvasta has placed on you. He’s building an autocracy, enslaving people here.” He looked around the crowd, saw some nods, though not as many as he’d hoped for. He wondered where Antonia and Sonja were – they should have arrived by now.

“Nonsense, Commander – there, I accord you the title based on the merit that you were one of our greatest heroes, rescuing us from the brink of extinction at the hands of our real enemy, the Q’Roth and humanity’s bastards, the treacherous Alicians.”

He saw how deftly Josefsson worked the crowd. A little too quickly, some people in the melee shouted out “Death to the Alicians,” undoubtedly Josefsson’s men planted in the audience; this had all been pre-arranged. That’s why Josefsson was so confident. Which meant that either they’d intercepted his message, or they’d gotten to Antonia or Sonja. Or else Shakirvasta was just too damned good.

Josefsson continued, jutting out his chin, his greying blond hair shining in Aryan fashion in the pale orange sunlight. “Our Chairman, Sanjay Shakirvasta, has provided for everyone.” He addressed the crowd. “Do you go hungry? Do your children not have schools to go to? Are your medical needs not addressed? Yes, of course we all have to work hard out in the fields, and I assure you that Mr Shakirvasta barely sleeps, working all hours to oversee the re-building of humanity, getting us back on our feet, readying us to prepare for the day when we can exact revenge on the Alicians and the Q’Roth.”

More shouts this time, others joining in, not just the stooges planted in the gathering. Blake was losing this fast. He addressed the crowd, his words quiet, so they had to strain to listen. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Look into your hearts. We haven’t come all this way to become locked into a tyranny, with Shakirvasta as dictator.”

Josefsson advanced on Blake. “My dear Sir, you’ve been brainwashed by a few insurgents, terrorists who as we speak are being brought to the justice they deserve. The services you have given for mankind will be taken into consideration when you are sentenced, Commander. Chairman Shakirvasta has already decreed this.”

Blake’s patience broke. “Shakirvasta –”

“Saved your good wife Glenda, Commander,” Josefsson shouted to the crowd, as he joined Blake on the table. He faced Blake, lowering his voice, though clear enough for all to hear. “And yet you, Blake Alexander, are responsible for the death of Mr. Shakirvasta’s consort, Jennifer.”

Blake’s anger stalled. He was snared. It was Josefsson’s coup de grace, and Blake had to bite his lip, he’d given his word to Jen. For a fraction of a second it crossed his mind that Jen had been part of this – but he decided not, given her reaction to Sandy’s letter. In any case, a word given was final in his book. He’d lost this round. He gazed once more across the crowd. “This is your world, you must decide what kind of world you want it to be, while the decision is still yours to make.” The crowd stilled. “Josefsson, I’ll come with you now, but I want to see my wife.”

Josefsson nodded. “The arrangements are already being made.”

A glint of triumph peaked above the veneer of Josefsson’s practiced air of even-handedness. It was enough to enable Blake to do what he always did in situations like this: he transmuted his anger, storing it for later. Josefsson must have seen it in Blake’s eyes, because his smile faltered for a fraction of a second. He leaned forward to Blake and whispered. “I’d rather not use force, Commander.”

“There’ll be no more trouble today. Now, I’d like to see her.” Without waiting to be led, he jumped down from the table and made his way through the crowd, forcing Josefsson and the soldiers to trail behind him. He knew exactly where Shakirvasta’s residence was. The crowd stayed closely packed around him, slowing him down.

“Make way, please, make way,” Josefsson shouted, ineffectively.

Blake looked straight ahead as he cut his way through the crowd. He felt a number of people touch his arms, some shook his hand, a few saluted. Several times he heard whisperings: “May God be with you.” Once he heard “We’re still with you, Commander.”

At the edge of the crowd he recognised the familiar, pudgy face of Carlson, the psychologist, rushing toward him. Carlson shook his hand heavily, his greasy hair shaking with the effort. He spoke openly. “Antonia and Sonja have been arrested, and they have Sonja’s children in custody.” He raised an eyebrow. “And I’m next, on a trumped-up charge of sedition.”

“That’s quite enough of that, Mr. Carlson,” Josefsson said, finally catching up. The soldiers fanned out behind them, separating them from the crowd. “Let’s go, shall we? Mr.Carlson, I really think you should join us, don’t you?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, Mr. President.’

As their entourage left the crowd behind, the chattering from the throng rose in volume. This isn’t over, thought Blake. A broad smile spread across his lips.

A puzzle creased Carlson’s brow as he trudged along next to Blake. “I’m not sure why you’re so happy, Commander?”

“I’m going to see my wife,” he said, “and as Kat would say if she were here, it’s about bloody time.”

When they rounded the final bend, he saw her willowy frame and short blonde hair ruffled by the breeze, standing tall and frail supported by two walking sticks. He couldn’t restrain himself any longer. He broke into a run to greet her. As he swept her into his arms and held her tight, he spoke softly, his lips against her ear: “Nothing else matters except this, Glenda, nothing, just this.” Her breathing stuttered beneath her sobs, her weakened legs trembled. He clasped her closer to his chest, feeling how thin she was.

“I held on for you Blake, just for you.”

His emotions broke through. “I’m here now.”

Carlson paced nearby, defying anyone to break up the embrace. “Let them have this moment,” he said to Josefsson, who begrudgingly acquiesced.

Blake drew back, finally, and brushed the salt water from her hollowed cheeks with the backs of his fingers, traced a finger over the hairless, painted eyebrows, and adjusted her blonde wig back into perfect place. “I’m ready now,” he said to her. “Don’t worry, Glenda, it’s not over. Hang on a little longer if you can.” She nodded. He turned to Josefsson. “Let’s get this done.”

Chapter 23

Murder

Ramires screamed the loudest kiai Micah had ever heard, to distract the Q’Roth, but its slits must have detected Zack. It whipped its upper right leg to intercept him. The nanosword sailed right through it – it would have found the creature’s head too had its reflexes not been ultra-quick, as it ducked backwards just in time. Its right mid-leg slammed into Zack’s torso, lifting him off the ground just as he landed, blood splashing out as one of the leg’s serrated thorns punctured soft human flesh. Two of the Q’Roth’s other free legs lashed at Ramires in a shredding motion, so fast they were a blur. Ramires managed to dive out of the way, but the Q’Roth continued to flail two of his legs to fence him off. Zack landed with a thump a couple of metres away. “Ramires!” he cried out and spun the nanosword through the air towards him. The Q’Roth readied itself to intercept the sword as it wind-milled through the air. But out of the blue, Sandy leapt forward, snatched the sword’s hilt and in one simple move thrust it point first into the centre of the Ambassador’s head. Ramires vaulted over the stalled, quivering legs and planted both his hands around Sandy’s, driving the blade down through the Q’Roth’s torso, spilling black, sizzling guts onto the ground as the creature slumped backwards.

“I was just about to do that,” Sandy said.

Ramires flicked a switch on the hilt, retracting the blade. “Nice catch.”

“Sabre champion, summer of ’52.” She stared down at their handiwork.

Micah dashed over to Zack, who had his back to them. He rolled him over and recoiled. “Shit! That looks bad!” Blood streamed from a cone-shaped hole the size of a fist. Intestines, muscles and sinews, and at least one organ were in clear view.

Zack groaned, “Not as bad as your bedside manner!”

“Don’t talk, Zack.” he said.

Ramires and Sandy arrived, leaning over Micah’s shoulder. “Ramires, can we patch this up back on the ship?”

Ramires shook his head. “It’s taken a chunk out of your liver, Zack. I’m sorry, friend.”

Sandy moved around the others and knelt next to Zack. “Wait, what are you saying? We can’t leave him here!”

Zack choked up some blood. “Get the fuck out of here, all of you, before the alien police arrive. This ain’t curable, Micah, mission comes first, just go.” Zack’s head lurched backwards, his face wracked with pain.

“We’re not going to leave you, Zack! Are we?” She leaned across Zack’s shaking frame, glaring at Micah. “Don’t you go turning into Blake.”

Micah tapped his wristcom. “Hannah, Zack is down, we’re in trouble here. Can you break free?”

There was no reply. He spun around to Ramires. “If you want to go…” He didn’t much care for the look of indignation on Ramires’ face. “Okay, forget it. Can we stem the flow in some way, cauterise it with the sword?”

Ramires stared at the open wound. “No. Q’Roth thorns include an anticoagulant, so the blood runs free till there’s none left.”

“Zack,” Sandy said, “stay with us.”

His body was shaking. “T-tell … Sonja…” He coughed up more blood. Together they tried to manoeuvre him into a recovery position so he wouldn’t drown in it.

“Micah!” Ramires pointed at a dog-like creature wearing a white robe and a gold and lapis lazuli head-dress, approaching them on a floating disc. The creature took one look at the Ambassador and then came over towards Zack. It opened its mouth revealing thin cord-like strands, and emitted a grating noise which forced all three of them to back away. It stooped over Zack’s face, which was turning a sickly yellow colour, and sprayed fine white foam over the ragged wound. Micah was just getting used to the hope that this alien might actually be able to save Zack, when one of its silver hands morphed into a spear-like syringe and plunged straight into Zack’s forehead. Zack’s body bucked upwards once, then collapsed to the floor, eyes wide open, vacant, his chest still. Ramires’ hand pulled out the nanosword and primed its blade in one flowing movement. The dog-like creature – Ossyrian, Micah’s resident informed him – cocked its head, its silver eyes staring at the blade. Ramires raised it and brought it down on the Ossyrian. The blade stopped dead a centimetre from the Ossyrian’s dark brown head, a fizzing of light spattering out from the point of contact. Ramires’ forearms flexed, trying to cut through the field.

“Wait, Ramires,” Micah said. “It’s a doctor.”

“Then why did it just kill Zack?” Ramires took a step back. He lowered the sword, but didn’t switch it off.

Micah didn’t know if his resident could translate Ossyrian or not. Before he could try, however, four crystal spheres arrived on the scene, hovering above each of their heads, including one which approached Zack’s inert frame.

He glanced at Sandy, standing over Zack’s inert body. “Zack was right, we should have –”

There was darkness. Micah tried to remember what he was about to say, what he was doing. Who he was. But he couldn’t think. He wasn’t asleep, but it was like a stuck disk, as if he couldn’t remember how to think. With an effort, and because he’d been trained how to do it by his Zen master as an emergency escape in case of Optron terminal looping, he split his mind into two, creating a temporary schismata running in the background. It was still dark, and one part of him was still locked in some kind of thought-dampening bubble. But another part was now free.

Since he had no sense of space or touch, he presumed he must be in stasis. He considered what might be going on. On Earth, when criminals were apprehended – suspects, he corrected himself – they were handcuffed, and taken to a cell. So … what if in this culture, you were … mind-cuffed? It made sense; it would be easier to handle people who were cognitively inactivated. He heard a noise. Not good. They know I’ve found a loophole. The noise grew, sounding like a space-craft landing just above him. He knew they were shutting down the schismata as well. He thought about options, but he had none left. The noise became unbearable, and even though he knew it was only in his mind, unfortunately, that’s where he was. He gave up, no point doing himself mental damage. His second mind shut down.

Micah came to, standing on a small circular glass plinth suspended above – well, he could see nothing beneath him at first, just a gaping chasm, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw stars. Twenty metres beneath him lay open space, presumably behind some kind of force-field like the one the Ossyrian had been wearing. It crossed his mind that this was an illusion, but if so it was an elaborate one whose purpose he couldn’t fathom. He turned around carefully on the platform not much wider than his stance, and saw three other disks behind and beneath him. All three were standing – including Zack. But they were asleep.

A piercing sapphire light shone into his eyes, increasing in size till he realised something was coming toward him. When it arrived, Micah was surprised to see an ostrich-like creature with an indeterminate number of legs, like a millipede. Finchikta, his resident informed him, Level 9; judicial officer; do not address until it has first addressed you. A sharp mental twang, as if someone had just plucked a guitar string inside his skull, accompanied that last piece of information.

The creature had three eyes – Micah hadn’t noticed until the third one opened. He wasn’t expecting it to speak English, though. Polyglot, the resident stated.

“Facts: Q’Roth Ambassador assassinated by those calling themselves human; illegal weapon brought into Market area; stolen Q’Roth ship, last reported at scene of two Q’Roth ships destroyed. Verdict: guilty of murder of high ranking official, space vehicle theft, murder of twenty-four Q’Roth onboard two destroyed vessels; use of second illegal weapon, namely a transit-mine. Punishment: voiding.”

It was fast, dream-like. Micah assumed at first this was some sort of arraignment, an outline of the charges being brought against them. But as he heard and felt the disc underneath him crackle and splinter, he realised that they’d just been tried, convicted and sentenced in twenty seconds. “Wait!” he yelled, as the Finchikta turned to depart. “What about our side of the story?”

The Finchikta paused, then continued on its way.

“Fuck,” he said, glancing at the glass splintering underneath his feet. A fragment fell, and as it hit the barrier it flashed and passed straight through into open space. The resident, detecting his and its own plight, began showing him potential juridical procedures Micah might be able to use to stall their imminent demise. The Finchikta’s sapphire light was fading. Micah heard the others behind him waking up, and then various expletives as they each realised their predicament, but he had no time to explain. His left foot fell through the disk, and he only just managed to find his balance, bending over and gripping both sides of the disk with his hands.

“Micah!” Sandy screamed up to him, but he focused on the options flowing through his mind. The blue light was just a dot now, about to go out. There! That was it, he was sure, had to be. He lifted his head and shouted as loud as he could: “I declare retribution grounds for species violation.” The glass held. “Species 195 Q’Roth committed unlawful genocide of species human in … angt 753871GDS.”

Suddenly the bird was right next to him. “No need to shout,” it said. “I hear very well.”

Micah managed to bring his leg back up through the hole, and sat on the remaining crescent of his disk.

The Finchikta’s third eye was closed. “Q’Roth had permission to cull human species Level Three.”

“Not Level Three. Am I Level Three?”

The third eye opened, staring at Micah. It closed again. “Possible irregularity. Adjourn. Gather more evidence.” It turned to leave again.

“No,” Micah said, firm. “Trial.” Micah was scanning the resident’s outpouring of information, downloading direct into his brain as if he’d just remembered it. “Species violations … require trial, judged by … Tla Beth.” He’d seen enough now. “We have rights, this is not just a defence, this is a prosecution against the Q’Roth for direct violation of Grid Society laws.” He folded his arms.

The bird paused, staring at him for a long time. Micah was glad the others stayed quiet, for now.

The bird’s two main eyes closed, just as the third one, central and slightly above the others, opened. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

The offhand manner of the question disconcerted Micah, but he decided he had to see this through. Without a trial, ‘gathering more evidence’ would involve the Q’Roth – it would just delay his and the others’ deaths a few days at most. He nodded. “Yes.”

The third eye closed and the other two opened again. “Trial begins tomorrow. Q’Roth delegation en route. Ranger recalled. Tla Beth representative in station. Deposition candidate will be taken in one hour. You will select.”

He had no idea what that meant, he would need to study some more. The bird’s two eyes closed, and the central one opened. “You are above level three.” The eye closed, the other two opened, and the creature backed off into the distance. The glass began growing to its full disk width. The phrase deposition candidate wasn’t clear to him, and he had the feeling it was significant. He slipped into memory replay mode, while the others shouted to him.

“Micah,” Zack said, “wanna tell me why I’m not dead? And what was all that about anyway?”

Sandy shouted too. “Zack, Micah’s just trying to impress us, since he’s lousy with a nanosword.” She laughed, relieved. “We’re impressed, Micah, really. You just saved our necks.”

His smile at this slipped, however, as the missing fragment of information – deposition candidate – surfaced in his mind. Oh Shit, he thought, one of us has to die!

“What were you thinking, Micah?” Sandy stomped up and down the curved, windowless cell. The walls were the colour and texture of jade, revealing tantalising shadows outside whose form and purpose they could only guess at.

“He was saving our lives, Sandy.” Ramires sat in a lotus position on the bench which ran around half the room.

Micah noted Zack was silent on the issue. “Well” he said, standing up, “it was my call, so I should –”

“Sit the fuck down,” Zack said.

“Zack,” Micah began.

“Has made up his mind.” Zack finished.

The way Zack said it, Micah had the feeling there was no way he could go up against it.

“Shit, this sucks.” Sandy kicked the wall. A dull boom reverberated around the cell. “Alien justice – it’s insane!”

“Dunno,” Zack said, oddly calm. “Kinda makes sense to me. If we’d have had this option in the War, I sure as hell woulda used it on the enemy. Anyway,” he stood up and stretched, “when in Rome, as they used to say. You guys have something ahead – me, it’s mostly behind. Trust me, ain’t no picnic living like that. Shoulda died along with my platoon back in Thailand. Carrying around that time bomb in my head, nearly killing Blake, driving Sonja nuts…”

Micah didn’t know what to say; their time was almost up.

Before Micah or the others could remonstrate with him, the single, circular door opened, revealing the Finchikta – Micah didn’t know if it was the same one – standing on its filament legs, in front of a large sphere of shifting colours. Zack stood up and without warning or being asked to, walked toward the bird. Its third eye opened, staring at him. Zack waved a goodbye – no last words – and stood in front of the sphere. It hovered toward him and then enveloped him completely. Sandy joined Micah at the doorway, clutching his wrist so hard it hurt, but he just watched. Within a minute, the sphere retreated, leaving behind a translucent form of Zack, like a highly detailed waxwork model made of crystal. But even from the way it stood, Micah knew it wasn’t Zack anymore. Micah’s resident kicked in. Transpar – that was what this simulacrum was called – a transparent witness, unable to lie, his personality erased completely, his bodily functions obliterated. A vessel containing transparent memory strings – the perfect witness. The resident offered a footnote: Transpar procedure used only for species below Level 8, since such species cannot be trusted to know or tell the truth reliably. The idea stung Micah.

The Finchikta addressed Micah and the others. “You will remain silent during the deposition, on pain of immediate death. It turned to the crystal Transpar. “You have the memories of the human known as Zack.”

It didn’t sound like a question, more a statement, a judicial formality.

“Yes,” the Transpar said, its voice tinkling like wind chimes. Even its eyes were transparent, like watery glass.

“Did you help kill the Q’Roth Ambassador?”

“Yes.”

“Did you help kill the other Q’Roth using a transit mine?”

“Yes.”

Sandy clutched Micah’s arm. This wasn’t looking good.

“Do you wish the destruction of the Q’Roth race?”

“Yes,” it answered, without hesitation.

“Does this go for these humans, and the rest remaining on Ourshiwann?”

Shit!

“Yes.”

The Finchikta spoke to Micah. “Deposition received. Trial convenes tomorrow. If you lose, your race will be handed over to the Q’Roth. Do you wish to call any witnesses in your defence?”

Micah had been pondering that one, remembering his discussions with Rashid before they’d left the planet. “You mentioned a Ranger. Was he present during the ... Q’Roth incursion?”

“The Ranger Ukrull will be present. Anyone else?”

He looked glum and shook his head.

“The Transpar is now the property of the court.”

Sandy spoke up, risking protocol defiance. “What if we win? Do we get him back? Can you –”

The Finchikta’s third eye opened. “Your friend is no more.”

The court official and the effigy of Zack left, the door squelching closed behind them. Sandy sat down, laying her head on Ramires shoulder. Micah waited for her to attack him, to curse him for what he’d done. Nothing came. That made it all the worse.

Micah went into analysis mode several times during what he presumed was night, but each time the predictions came out with deplorable survival odds. He’d gambled on a legal procedure to save their four lives in the short term, losing Zack’s straight away, and unwittingly putting humanity’s survival down as collateral. The one parameter of uncertainty in the equation was Hannah. He speculated as to whether she had somehow escaped, and could warn the others back on Ourshiwann. But why would she? She wasn’t welcome back there in any case.

He glanced over to Ramires, who looked up from his meditation. Sandy was asleep, curled up next to him.

“Micah, you did the best you could.”

“Not exactly an accolade given the way things look right now.”

“Perhaps it is better this way. You’ve placed humanity on trial, but at least this way it will be resolved. We cannot hide on Ourshiwann for long, some alien race will find us. If we can demonstrate we’re better than Level Three, maybe then we have a chance.”

Micah stared into his lap. “I know you’re trying to help, Ramires, but if my skills are at least Level Four, and I hope to God they are, then they’re telling me we’re all going to end up in the hands of the Q’Roth.”

The doorway opened. “Hello Micah.” Hannah stood at the entrance but didn’t enter. Sandy stirred. Ramires unfolded his legs.

“Hannah, where have you been? What happened?” Micah was puzzled by the taut, scared look on her face. He saw a shadow behind her. A tall woman in a blood red gown advanced into the room, her long dark hair strained back into a braided ponytail. A sneer spread across her face, accented by her hooked nose and hawkish eyes.

“I happened, Micah.”

Ramires leapt towards her. A blur of fists and feet flailed in her direction, but she moved unbelievably fast, blocking every attack with arrogant ease. Her palm shot into his chest, slamming him back across the room into the wall.

“Sister Esma,” Micah said.

Her sneer deepened, a crevasse opening up in her white-as-snow face. She studied Sandy helping the winded Ramires back into a seated position, but said nothing.

Good, she doesn’t know whose child Sandy is carrying. Micah met Hannah’s eyes, and for the briefest moment, she shook her head. He wasn’t sure what it signified, whether it was an apology, or her way of saying don’t fight back, but it meant something to Micah. He suspected Sister Esma had arrived unannounced, and Hannah had made a quick survival choice. She hadn’t actually betrayed them – him, he thought, because it mattered to him personally.

He watched Sister Esma, High Priestess of the Alician Order, architect of Earth’s demise – we finally meet.

She addressed him. “I see this as a wonderful opportunity. Since obviously Louise failed to crush humanity, now the Grid Court will do it for me. The galaxy works in mysterious ways, indeed.”

“Come to gloat, bitch?” Sandy said, walking right up to her.

“You are with child, my dear, which is the only reason your neck is intact.”

Micah took Sandy’s wrist. “But she has a point. If you have nothing to say, leave.”

“I do have something to say, Micah. I wanted you all to know that we are prospering on our new home world, and Alicians have already begun to explore the Grid. Humanity – the upgraded Alician version – will continue and thrive, taking its rightful place in the galaxy. Oh, and we will be awarded the Transpar after your execution and humanity’s extermination. We will keep it as a memento, reminding our children never to slip backwards.”

Micah gripped Sandy’s wrist stronger, feeling her tug against him.

“Well, see you in court.” She left, ensuring Hannah departed first so she could not make any eye contact with the others. The door slid closed.

“She’s lying,” Sandy said.

“About what?”

“I don’t know Micah, but I know when somebody lies to my face. She’s afraid of something. That’s why she came here, to try and provoke us, to throw us off-balance. She’s worried the court might find us above Level Three.”

He nodded dully, but his predictions said that the Alician presence made their case worse. He’d been considering ways to show humanity’s ingenuity, but now the Alicians would argue that all the inventions, the great advances, were on their account, not ordinary humans. There was no evidence either way, so it would just be their word against Esma’s, and the dead Q’Roth Ambassador would tip the scales against mankind’s favour.

Sandy seized his shoulders and shook him. “Micah, are you listening to me? We have a chance. She came here to try to put you off, even parading Hannah in front of you like stolen spoils, and the parting shot about Zack. You’re the threat, Micah, because you’re so damned intelligent. Don’t you see? We have a chance.”

He bit his lip. Her words made sense, but his emotions were in freefall. She pulled his hands down to her belly. “You feel this, Micah? There’s a child in there. It’s Gabriel’s son. That witch killed his father, so don’t you dare give up on me now. I want my son to see daylight, dammit.”

He felt a movement there, in her belly. It jolted him, and the feeling of having been beaten subsided. He pulled her to him and held her, tight. Cold fire, Zack had said. He put his pessimistic analyses aside, and let her go. “Ramires, I’m going to need a fast history lesson, the Sentinels and the nine hundred years’ war against the Alicians.”

Ramires stood, rubbing his chest. “Gladly, but first… Sandy, you said Gabriel.”

“Yes, a Sentinel like you.”

“Not like me. He was the best. I did not know him, but we had the same Master, Cheveyo, who gave his life on Eden in combat with the Q’Roth.”

“Is it a problem?” she asked.

“No … quite the opposite. My Master’s last wish he conveyed to me was to protect you. Now I understand why. I will protect you and your child with my life, until it ends.”

Sandy risked a smile. “Best offer I’ve had for a while.”

Cold fire, Micah intoned, cold fire. “Okay, we don’t have much time. History lesson, Ramires. Q’Roth, Ranger, Alicians, Sentinels – all of it, please.

◆◆◆

Louise sat hunched, back against the wall, cradling her right elbow, occasionally scrunching her eyes against the grinding pain of a dislocated right shoulder. The usually green walls were splattered with scarlet scabs exuding brown pus. The ship was healing itself after her little pyrotechnic skirmish with the Hohash; the room smelt like char-grilled excrement. “Bastard,” she said. What is it you want from me anyway? Clearly not to kill me.

The Hohash loomed a few metres away, patrolling like a shark. Abruptly it stopped, pivoted, and turned its mirror face toward her, the smooth surface flowing like oil on water. An image rose from the depths: a fleet of titanic war-ships, of various shapes, hanging in space before a shimmering curtain. She recognized several Q’Roth planet-killer class craft. Thought they were all moth-balled: last time they were used was the Licutius rebellion, fifty thousand angts ago. The squid-shaped vessels had eight tendrils thousands of kilometres long, by twenty wide, sporting thorn-like crust-breakers, capable of puncturing a world’s outer and inner layers, leaving it to drown in its own lava. I could use one of those…

Other, equally gigantic ships of unknown origin straddled the shimmering field, an impressive menagerie of destructive power. She forgot about her pain. “Quite a line-up.” No sooner had she said it than the entire fleet was sucked through an impossibly small hole. Ships twisted, momentarily stretched toward the rift, before disintegrating en route. She knew what it meant – a massive gravitational shear force applied in a nano-second, bending the normal laws of physics. The next image wasn’t unexpected – utter carnage, organic beings and hardware alike de-skinned, disembowelled. The ships had been turned inside out, their occupants, too.

“Is this history, or now?”

It flashed back to being a mirror for a moment, reflecting her bruised and bloody face, a lock of her blonde hair singed black.

So, it’s now.

The next image was of another fleet pouring in through the widened tear. These ships were all of the same origin, dull black lozenges with spiralling indigo lights pulsing from front to back. Something accompanied them, too, blacker than black, only visible by their silhouettes, undulating like an electric ray she’d once seen in an aquarium. They loitered in the wake of the ships, wild beasts on a tight leash. She had no sense of scale, but reckoned they were bigger than a Q’Roth transport.

The last picture was a face. It would scare most people, but she intuited something beneath the bubbling flesh: rage, unadulterated, distilled anger. Some would call it pure evil, but she recognised an incredible force of will.

The pain returned as soon as the show stopped. “Well? What’s it to me? Or you, even?”

The Hohash vibrated, oscillating slowly to the left and right.

“Are you going to show me or not?”

A single image formed: a noble ship sculpted from a dream, bold contours of ivory, gold and emerald. It dissolved.

“So, good guys and bad guys. Want me to choose? Don’t you know me yet?”

It approached her side on. Its leading edge nudged her right elbow. Fuck, you’re shitting me! Despite reservations, she curled her fingers around the outside rail-like edge, and gripped hard, clamping her jaw down. She took a breath.

Her scream cut off just after the tchum sound of her shoulder snapping back into place. The pain miraculously ceased.

“Thanks,” she gasped. “But just so we know where we stand, I have more in common with the first guy you showed me.”

The Hohash sped to the bridge. She trailed after it, kicking aside the remnants of her shattered flamethrower. Upon arrival, she felt goose-bumps signalling a jump initiating. She had just enough time to notice two pieces of information from the displays. The first was their destination – though she had no idea how the Hohash had set it. They were going straight to Micah’s location, using a complex multi-jump process that wasn’t in the Q’Roth handbook. What Level are you, anyway? The second was the ownership registration of a docked vessel the Hohash had highlighted: Esmeralda Alessia Carthagena.

A smile etched across her face. “Micah and Sister Esma. Must be my lucky day.”

◆◆◆

The Ranger Ukrull made a clicking sound with his jaw, entering the hyper-transit sequence. He’d seen the deposition already: he would be a key witness. His superiors weren’t too happy about that; Rangers were meant to be impartial, in the background, unseen.

However, now that he had finally gotten what he’d wanted, to properly evaluate this race once and for all – he was reluctant to leave Ourshiwann’s orbit. Initial promising signs of recovery for humanity had stalled, sliding backwards into typical Level Three despotic tendencies, and would inevitably lead to a cycle of civil wars, depletion of planetary resources, followed by extinction through a process of attrition. Grid Society levels of intelligence weren’t about individuals – there were always statistical aberrations, geniuses even, in any species – there had to be collective intelligence too. If the species was locked into self-destructive and recidivist behaviour, then Grid society might order it culled – pruned – to protect the larger society from too many weeds. But some indicators, small-scale parameters at present, could turn the tide. If asked to give the assessment right now, he would say that there were the beginnings of Level Four tendencies and thinking. Humanity, as it called itself, was on the cusp of ascendance, but it could go either way. He growled and flicked a claw at the console. His ship vanished.

As he hummed through Transpace, he realised another source of his reluctance to go back. The Hohash. He hadn’t reported finding them yet, and there would be a Tla Beth presiding over the court. That was going to take a little explaining. As he warped through the multi-transit sequence, he detected another vessel inbound, also on a hyper-transit approach, which required Tla Beth authorisation, as it stretched and occasionally tore sub-space fabric. His ship was cloaked of course, but he could scan the other vessel: Ossyrian. He was about to stop scanning, since they held little interest for him, when he detected human life-signs. He corrected himself – one of the life signs was no longer human, but a hybrid. He sat up when he saw the level indicated. His jaw approximated a grin, and he whacked the Bartran with his claw, making it yelp and exude more pus than usual. Ukrull kicked back in his chair, grunting and snorting with pleasure. His tail curled and twitched. Interesting, very interesting.

PART THREE

THE TRIAL

Chapter 24

Event Horizon

Micah stood mesmerized by the blue-green globe as it rolled in slow motion around the funnel suspended in space beneath them. It was an illusion, a macro-hologram of some sort, but looked incredibly real. The outer rim of the inverted, thundercloud-grey cone appeared hard, ceramic; he almost expected to hear a grinding noise as the replica of Earth toiled its way around the circumference. Towards its centre, the funnel descended like a gaseous whirlpool into darkness, a faint fire-light glow reaching up from its core. He didn’t need to be Level 4 to grasp the implication.

The ball resembled Earth as it had been – trawled from one of Zack’s memories, no doubt – not the post-nuclear orange dustbowl which Micah remembered most clearly. Staring at it, he felt hollow, with an attendant nausea. All that remained of his world was a pale echo of humanity’s home. He gazed upon the treasure they had squandered. It was too easy to blame everything on the Alicians. They were a contributory factor, but humanity’s inherent weaknesses had facilitated its own downfall.

He tugged his eyes away from paradise lost, and tracked across to the far side of the vista, to a graphite ball scarred with glowing scarlet rivers. Pinpricks of blood-coloured light stabbed out from the planetary simulacrum. He imagined a sea urchin whose spines had been ripped off, oozing its life force into naked space. Far above that ball, on a platform higher than the one for him, Sandy and Ramires, stood two Q’Roth warriors. They looked more powerful than the ones he’d seen before, their lower legs splayed, and their mid and upper legs folded together in an Escher-like snake pattern. They were completely immobile, but he had the sense they were somehow spitting on the humans who had slain their ambassador. To his far right, on a small disk, Zack’s Transpar stood as if to attention – like Zack never had – emphasising that this was no longer Zack, just an alien replica. Micah’s friend, and mentor, was gone.

He noted that the three parties – humans, Q’Roth, and Transpar, were at three cardinal points of the compass. He looked to the logical fourth point, but there was just empty blackness, no walls in any direction, only darkness framing his opponents, the Transpar, and the swirling funnel.

“Is the judge late?” Sandy inquired.

Micah shrugged without turning to face her. “I don’t know, Sandy, nor does my resident, in case that’s who you’re really asking.” It came out ruder than he’d intended.

“Okay, then tell me something you do know!” Her voice ramped up a notch in sharpness. “What is the attraction between you and Alician women, Micah?”

“Sandy,” Ramires said, trying to placate her. Ramires looked more brittle than usual, a warrior longing for battle, rather than languishing in legal proceedings. He kept glaring across the funnel to his enemy, forearms and thighs taut as razor wire.

Micah turned around to face Sandy. He hated it when she was like this. But he knew she wouldn’t stop till blood had been drawn.

“No,” she said, “I really want to know. First Louise, then Hannah. What is it with you and the betrayers of humanity, Micah?”

“Wait a second,” Ramires said. “Louise?”

Micah didn’t flinch.

“Sure,” Sandy said, hands on hips, “I had a ringside seat.”

“You didn’t have to watch,” he said quietly. “And I didn’t know she was –”

The parry-and-strike was swift. “But Hannah, you knew she was Alician, party to genocide on Earth, let alone Rashid’s ship. Didn’t stop you, did it?”

He saw more hurt than anger in her eyes. He wanted to say that Hannah had tricked him, but it would sound pathetic, and she’d never believe him. Distant images flooded back to him, viewed through the night-time balustrade in his childhood home, when his parents thought he was asleep, peering through the wooden rails as they rowed over his father’s latest indiscretion. Micah had watched it play out a dozen times, maybe more: the accusations, the denials, the confessions, the pain his mother endured, written all over her face, and his father’s coolness, the knowledge – no, the confidence – that she would never leave him, so he could do what he wanted. And the two words that would always end the scene... Micah had sworn a hundred times as a boy that he would never be like that, would never utter those two words if the situation arose. But nothing else came to mind. They slipped out. “I’m sorry.” He unfolded his arms, so that they hung loose.

Her nostrils flared, and her chest heaved, but Ramires laid a hand on her forearm to still her. “Look,” he said, nodding to the far side.

Micah reluctantly broke off from Sandy to see. The two balls were still circling in the same direction, the Q’Roth home planet having moved a few degrees around the circumference as far as he could judge. Then he saw what Ramires had noticed. He backed off a pace. Between the two Q’Roth warriors, three times their height, stood a giant Q’Roth, its trapezoidal head red with black slits, the reverse of the warriors’ coloration. Its bloated, purple ribbed belly curved down to the floor supported by two ramrod straight, sturdy legs. Its four other legs looked puny by comparison, protruding from its mid-section like useless appendages. It glared at Micah and the others, excreting pure hate. Beneath its loins, half the size of the warriors, Sister Esma appeared in a burgundy cloak.

“Q’Roth queen, and Alician queen bitch,” Sandy said. “We must be on the Galactic A-list.”

He glanced at Sandy. Humour – even the sardonic wit variety – was a good sign, and he needed all of them to be on the same side. He detected a fine inverted triangular film hanging behind the Queen’s frame, and decided the Queen had wings, which wasn’t good news. Doubtless she would have liked to fly across and finish them off herself. He planted his legs firm, and stared right back. He felt Sandy’s hand on his shoulder.

“Apology accepted, Micah,” she said quietly. “But you fuck another Alician and I’ll kill you myself, understood?”

He nodded. “Sounds reasonable.”

A new disk arrived close to Zack’s Transpar, carrying an upright lizard, slick brown all over except for glimmering black thorns running from its crown to the tip of its tail. Its forelegs folded onto the ground so that it looked relaxed, bored even. Its smouldering yellow eyes stared forwards, though Micah had the impression it took in everything around it.

“Ukrull, the Ranger.”

Micah and the others spun around to see a lime-green Finchikta hovering behind them. Micah tried to focus internally, but nothing happened.

“Your resident has been disabled for the duration of the trial. I will translate the proceedings for you.” Its head bobbed like an albatross, though he guessed this creature was vastly more intelligent. He could barely make out the thin line where its upper third eye remained closed. When it spoke, its beak barely opened, but its two sharp orange eyes blazed. The Finchikta’s hundreds of green vermicelli-like legs did not quite reach the ground, hanging like a curtain over its nether region.

“Counsel for the defence?” Ramires asked.

“In this court, there are only truth, causes, context, and consequences,” it replied.

Micah wanted something clarified. “The funnel – what’s the significance, if the representation of our world disappears into it?”

The Finchikta bobbed slowly. “A good question. In your world you represent justice by a set of scales, which can tip either way. But that implies justice can be wrong, that verdicts can be revoked, since scales can be tipped back again. Grid justice, as you may understand it, does not entertain reversals. Once either your globe, or the Q’Roth’s, dip beneath the event horizon of the funnel, the case is lost permanently. There is no appeal. Execution of sentence cannot be stopped.”

Micah stared out at the swirling vista, suddenly concerned that maybe this wasn’t just an image. “But still, it’s only symbolic, right?” He hoped that whatever happened here, today, that Blake and the others on Ourshiwann might still have a chance to escape or at least defend themselves.

The Finchikta bobbed again, deeper, which Micah interpreted to mean he’d asked another ‘intelligent’ question. “It is mostly symbolic.”

He didn’t like the sound of that.

“Where’s the judge?” Sandy interjected.

“Arriving,” the Finchikta said, orientating its beak upwards.

They spotted something descending from way above. At first Micah couldn’t make out what was inside or riding the waves of rainbow-light, but as it got closer, he could pick out the details. Around thirty vertical rings circumscribed the main body, waves of fluorescent light surging through them. Inside the rings was a rounded hourglass shape which barely moved, except that the dark colours in the lower half sometimes squirted up into the lighter upper half of the hourglass, exchanging and sending lighter colours down through its narrow ‘waist’. It made Micah think of some night-time sea creatures he’d once seen, but his analytical mind dredged up a deeper analogy, that of the yin-yang symbol. He realised why, as he noticed a white patch in the lower, dark area, and a black one in the upper, lighter half. He recalled what his Zen master had said once about the symbol: “Most people only see black and white; they forget about the white dot in the sea of black, the black dot in the white portion. In nature there can no more be pure good than pure evil; in the heart of evil there is a speck of good, and vice versa. Nature abhors ultimate states.” Micah found the image fitting for a Galactic judge.

“At least it’s human size,” Sandy said. She placed herself between Micah and Ramires and put a hand around the waist of each. “Whatever happens, gentlemen, it’s been … interesting.”

An overwhelming impulse overtook Micah, to reach out to Sandy in some way, without offending her or Ramires. He leaned forward to her left cheek and deposited a soft kiss there. She didn’t pull back. Ramires shifted from one foot to another but said nothing.

“It has begun,” the Finchikta chirped in a crisp tone, drifting to Micah’s side. Sandy’s hand slipped from his waist, and he faced the Tla Beth, some thirty metres away, its aurora ebbing into a penumbra of rippling pastel shades.

“You will now bear witness to the charges,” the Finchikta said.

Above the funnel, a swirling spiral of myriad stars appeared. Micah immediately recognised it as their galaxy, the Milky Way. A scalpel-sharp white mesh etched its way outwards about a third of the distance from the galaxy’s white hot centre. The pattern was complex, like some kind of blueprint, but there was a design to it. As it stretched out like vines along a number of the spiral arms, Micah realised it was the Grid, the transport system that was the paragon of Galactic infrastructure, enabling its society to function. It reached fully half the galaxy, a criss-crossing net of curving and intersecting conduits: a skeleton framing the stars. A blue dot pulsed on one of the spiral arms remote from any grid lines or nodes.

“Your planet, the one you call Earth. Here is the latest recorded image.”

His jaw fell as an image of a charred, ocean-less, dust-coloured ball loomed large in front of them. He felt as if someone had just punched him in the stomach.

“The atmosphere was purged to reduce the radioactive poisoning. It will recover faster this way. In ten thousand of your years it can be terraformed and replenished with life.”

“Bastards,” Ramires cursed.

The Finchikta peered around Micah to see Ramires. It cocked its head. “I assure you the Q’Roth have followed strict protocol. Atmospheric removal is recommended in case of nuclear fallout, once radiation levels reach a certain point, to prevent planetary rot setting in. The world is then left fallow for a set period, after which time it can be used for resettlement of a displaced race or one requiring more room.”

Sandy whirled around to the Finchikta. “It was our home! Billions of people! Not to mention all the animal life! Who gave them the right?” She pointed to the Q’Roth platform. “You’ll pay for this one day, even if it takes a thousand years!” she shouted in their direction. She added quietly, just for Micah and Ramires’ ears: “They hibernate a long time, that’s when we’ll find them.”

Micah gazed toward the judge. A line of fire unfurled from the Tla Beth like a whiplash, latching onto the head of Zack’s Transpar.

“The judge is interrogating the human version of events.”

While the line connected the two, another dot glittered, very close to Earth. “Eden,” he whispered. The image zoomed in, so they could see this sector of space in more detail. Four blue dots zigzagged from Eden towards another distant ball he knew must be Ourshiwann, still far out on the spiral, and a long way from Grid access. A red dot intercepted one of the blues, and was extinguished. The fireline connecting the Transpar with the Tla Beth dissolved. A new one lashed out to Sister Esma, taking her by surprise. Her haughty stance wavered as her face disappeared inside a fist of fire-light. Her body arced as if she was being electrocuted, her arms and legs stretched out to maximum.

“About fucking time,” Sandy said. “Fry her, please.”

“What’s going on?” Micah asked, glancing at the Finchikta.

“She is being questioned. I have partial access as court official. She sent the one you know as Louise after you, but sabotaged her ship before she left so she could not hope to return to the Alicians. The Alicians made a deal with the Q’Roth a thousand of your years ago to dispose of humanity’s nuclear and nanotechnology, and to bring humanity to Eden. They instigated your third World War. They…” The Finchikta’s beak clamped shut.

“What?” Sandy and Micah said at the same time.

The Finchikta nudged a shoulder feather back into place. “They suppressed Level 4 emergents; co-opting those they found early enough into their order, terminating the rest.”

“This much we suspected.” Ramires said. He glanced at Sister Esma and spat over the side of the abyss. “Though we never knew the full extent.”

Micah gazed at Sister Esma’s taut body. Her face twisted in pain. Good, I hope it rips your mind apart. Abruptly the fireline dissipated, and they watched Sister Esma stagger, nearly collapsing. Her face had paled, and she looked shaken. Neither the Q’Roth warriors, nor their Queen, moved to support her. She gathered herself, and stared defiantly at Micah.

A deep, guttural voice boomed across the space between them and the Ranger: a series of growls and clicks that put Micah’s spine on edge.

“The Ranger Ukrull is testifying. He expresses surprise at finding the race calling itself humanity more advanced than he expected, based on the original Q’Roth incursion manifest. He believes humanity was on the cusp of emergence. However, the rate of progress in the last millennium was unusual by galactic development standards, so the Q’Roth couldn’t know. For him, given the escape of a number of humans, the main question is what to do with the survivors.”

“Micah, this is good isn’t it?” Sandy said. “He must be the one who saved Rashid.”

He nodded and addressed the Finchikta. “What else?”

The Finchikta shivered, its fine feathers fluffing momentarily before settling down. “Ah. There is an anomaly in his testament. You have…” It craned its neck and peered at Micah. Its third eye opened, a clear sapphire blue. “You have encountered the Hohash?”

“Yes. So what?”

The eye sealed again. The Finchikta moved in front of Micah, clearly more interested in this than the court case. “They are legendary. They are the Listeners, the ears of the Galaxy. They have been missing for a hundred thousand angts. They are omnipaths.”

“Omnipaths?” Micah wished his resident was online, this sounded important.

“The Hohash helped create the Finchikta Order, establishing it amongst the fifty core Grid professions known as The Torus. We worsh –”. It ruffled its feathers again. “They are very important to us.” The creature dipped its head and whole upper body slowly. Micah realised it was bowing to them. “You have been honoured.”

Micah wished they’d brought one along. He cleared his throat. “So, who’s nex…”

Micah had no body. His mind floated like a two dimensional sheet of plazfilm, flapping on the winds of a featureless emerald space. He heard sounds: his own voice, as a child, as an adult. He perceived other sheets drifting, slip-sliding in the windless space like a dropped sheaf of paper, each one containing a scene, a memory, voices, people he knew, things he’d seen, things he’d said, more than a few he wished he hadn’t. As they tumbled, he knew the Tla Beth had complete access to his mind and memory. There was no question of lying or even trying to hide anything. He heard his mother crying, his father raging at him when he was a kid. He saw again the aerial nuclear detonations over LA, his younger self sprinting for the shelter to beat the vaporising blast wave; huddling there with his mother when he couldn’t stop shaking; his father calling him a coward; Louise about to kill him; Antonia; Sandy… He wrenched himself back from it all. It was too easy to drown in his own life. His Optron training helped him. He took the astrosurfer’s viewpoint, and witnessed thousands of sheets peppering the green sky: a man’s life dissected – his life.

He discerned a common thread in the Tla Beth search strategy: Micah had always been a misfit as a kid, had hated his father, and had been a bit of a geek during adolescence. In the defence case for humanity, his head wasn’t the best brochure available.

Abruptly he was back in his body, in a white space. He was standing on something but couldn’t discriminate between floor and space and wall: everything was solid white. A figure emerged and walked toward him.

“No, not you,” he heard himself say, as an image of his father approached, in his grey military uniform. At least he didn’t have that disappointed look plastered across his face.

The image of his father spoke. “We see in humanity destruction, greed, conflict, injustice, and other disharmonious emotions associated with Level Three and below races. Such comportment is dangerous for the Grid Society. The Grid Council, chaired by the Tla Beth, sanctioned the Q’Roth request.”

Micah knew he had to remain as dispassionate as possible; anger would be a fast-track to humanity’s final demise. “Look at our technological achievements, our advances, they –”

“Are dangerous without mental and emotional discipline,” Sister Esma said, materialising out of the white ether. “We Alicians instigated all the major breakthroughs in the past five centuries, and –”

“How many did you stop?” he countered. “How many DaVinci’s, Mozarts, and Qorelli’s did you snuff out? Who knows where humanity would be now if you Alicians hadn’t intervened? Your agenda was to break humanity, not nurture it, wasn’t it, Esma?”

She flared, so that Micah knew this was no avatar, it was her.

The image of his father which the Tla Beth had chosen to utilise, held up a hand, choking off her retort. “The past cannot be undone. The Q’Roth incursion and their stewardship of the Alicians followed Grid protocol. Why is humanity worth saving? You don’t seem to believe in it yourself, Micah.”

Micah swallowed. He wished for any other figure than his father’s, but knew that was probably intentional. He had to think fast. Blake – he was as good a role model as Micah knew. “Then look into another head. Look at a real hero, Blake. Access Zack’s memories, and see another view of mankind.”

The Transpar materialised into the white construct, opposite Micah’s father. Its crystal surface flashed a pastiche of images, becoming a montage of Blake’s life. Micah had forgotten how much of it had been War-related. He couldn’t keep up with the almost subliminal shifting of events, but noticed that Esma apparently could. He saw her greedy ebony eyes darting about, peering into Blake’s history, scouring his soul.

“Look!” she shouted, pointing a bony finger, a sneer of triumph swelling her face. “There! See? See how humanity’s big hero behaves? He murders his own son!”

“This needs to be witnessed by all,” his father said.

Micah found himself back on the platform. His legs gave way but Sandy and Ramires’ arms caught him. “Thanks,” he groaned, feeling like he needed to throw up.

“What happened?” Sandy asked. But before he could answer, she continued. “Micah, the Earth. It’s shifted further downwards. What’s going on?”

He sagged as he saw the blue-green globe rolling closer and faster into the maw of the funnel. Worse, a dusty orange ball followed close behind. Ourshiwann. Humanity’s fate was slipping closer to the precipice. He’d have to play the next part very carefully. Meanwhile, the Q’Roth planet rotated serenely along the outer rim. “We’re about to see exhibit A,” he said.

Above the whirlpool, an image formed, like an outdoor holo. It was the one Sister Esma had spotted, a night-time scene played out in real time. Micah watched with a lead weight in his stomach as Blake, in battle fatigues soaked with blood, fired the slow-gun into his own son’s body, exploding him from the inside. The memory slammed into Micah as surely as if he’d stepped out in front of a hover-taxi.

He addressed the Tla Beth, his voice firm. “His name was Robert. Blake’s son had been transformed into a ghoster by the Alicians.” He pointed at Sister Esma. “He was no longer human.” Esma’s sneer faltered. Micah continued: “Please go forward in time, a few minutes,” he said. “Stop there.” He saw Sister Esma squint to see what he was referring to. In the freeze-framed view, Zack and Blake were rescuing a group of young boys from the Alician camp. Ramires also edged forward. Sandy rested a hand on Micah’s shoulder. Micah knew exactly where to look. His voice cracked. “I was there. He rescued me and fourteen others, losing his entire platoon except Zack. Blake had been too late to save his own son.”

“It doesn’t change anything,” Esma shouted. “Where is your Blake now? What use is a hero if the rest of your precious humanity hunts him down, and imprisons him?”

Micah frowned. “What … what are you talking about?”

She turned toward the Ranger. “We have studied the full testimony of the Ranger Ukrull. I call upon Ukrull to testify on the most recent events on Ourshiwann. I am sure the honourable Ranger knows to which events I refer to.”

“What’s that witch going on about now?” Sandy asked.

Micah didn’t know, but had a bad feeling in his gut.

A new image formed. It was another trial, but a human one. There was no sound; there didn’t need to be. Shakirvasta and Josefsson lorded over the proceedings, with the psychologist Carlson in the dock. Carlson was gesticulating wildly. The crowd in the cramped makeshift court room appeared to be shouting too, but there was a heavy militia presence, a new uniform Micah didn’t recognise. Then he saw the image of Blake, his hands cuffed behind him, sitting in a smaller dock, surrounded by four heavies. Whenever he tried to speak he was ordered into silence, then rifle-butted when he didn’t comply.

The scene shifted. On seeing it, Sandy let out a cry and buried her head into Ramires broad shoulder. But Micah couldn’t turn away, though it wrenched his heart to stare at the limp body of Carlson, hanging from a noose in the central plaza. There was no one around. His corpse, abandoned, twisted slowly in the Esperantian breeze.

Micah’s head bowed towards the ground.

The Finchikta moved aside and the image of his father reappeared. “Do you have anything more to say in humanity’s defence, Micah?”

He heard compassion and empathy in that calm voice, like he’d never known from his actual father. Something inside him splintered, cracking him like a shell. He shook his head, unable to speak. The Tla Beth’s representation vanished. Micah’s eyes lifted to see the two globes of Earth and Ourshiwann begin their roll inwards, down the slope, towards the point of no return into the funnel, and the cauldron of fire deep within.

Chapter 25

Dead Man Walking

Blake strained against the handcuffs for the umpteenth time, his shoulders and arms bulging until he felt the veins come out on his forehead. He relaxed, recovered his breathing, and sat back down on his solitary, armless metal chair. The white room he had occupied the past two weeks wasn’t quite square and had no sharp edges – like an inverted tin used for baking a loaf of bread. At night four guards armed with stun-sticks released him for five minutes before handcuffing his arms in front of him so he could relieve himself and then sleep. He’d taken the men on twice already, but they knew what they were doing, and he was knocked out cold both times. He stared toward the oval window – it had been papered over, but he could judge the time of day, which was, he guessed, about five in the afternoon, an hour before dusk on Ourshiwann.

On impulse he stood up and inhaled deeply. He’d adjusted long ago to the heightened oxygen mixture, but when he breathed really deep, it chilled his nostrils as if walking in cool mountain air. Footsteps approached. He’d been practising a roundhouse kick he’d learned during his more athletic youth – though now, especially cuffed, he’d ended up crashing to the floor each time. But it would be his only way to take out Shakirvasta, if he could just get it right and connect with the man’s scraggy neck. A desperate idea, highly unlikely to work, but he’d been sentenced to death, so desperation trumped rationality any day of the week. He crouched slightly, preparing his thigh muscles, then gave it up – the footsteps weren’t measured enough to be Shakirvasta’s, and not heavy enough to belong to one of the guards.

Sonja rounded the corner and ran straight to him, flung her arms around him, her head of dark frizzy hair burying into his chest, brushing against his chin. Her hands found his, squeezed his palms, and then she pulled back. Her face was more drawn than he remembered.

She nudged a tear away with her shoulder. “We didn’t even know if you were still alive.”

Antonia entered the room, head down, sheepish, arms crossing her waspish waist. “I tried, Commander. I tried everything.”

He’d forgotten her crisp Eastern European accent, her elegance and poise. “I know, Antonia, I’m sure you did everything you could, both of you.”

“Sit down, Blake,” Sonja said, “we don’t have much time.”

He obliged, while Sonja started pacing. He’d never seen her do that. She wrung her hands, too, speaking fast. “They have Benjy and Peter. All children now get raised in a boarding school in a ring-fenced part of the city. Shakirvasta’s doctrine is peddled there, and parents don’t get to see their kids except on Sundays. Everyone works six days a week, most on farms, tilling the soil – back-breaking, spirit-breaking work.”

She avoided looking at him. Blake guessed why she was here: absolution.

“After your escape I was arrested. I didn’t see my kids that weekend and when I was finally allowed, they…” Her hands raked at her hair, as if to try and pull the words out.

Antonia came to her rescue. “Her children are young, Commander, young and impressionable. They are being turned against Sonja. One of them – forgive me, Sonja – one of them spat at her, called her a traitor.”

Sonja trembled. She turned to face him, chin up, the proud eyes he’d known since her second date with Zack, a lifetime ago. “I’ll do whatever you ask of me. Maybe there’s some way I can help Rashid, if – when – he returns.”

He’d sent more men and women to their death than he cared to remember, always in the name of some cause or other. Despite Zack putting him in a coma, he owed him too much. “This is what I want you to do, Sonja.” He eased himself up. “Just love your kids, show them what real love is. That’s the only way they’ll see through the lies.”

Her lips pressed together; she looked tense enough to shatter. “Zack’s not coming back, is he?”

Blake frowned. “Sonja, I –”

“It’s okay. I’ve waited for it, dreaded it, half my life. But last night, I really felt it, suddenly, as if…” Her eyes narrowed. “He always belonged to you more than me, Blake.” Her voice hardened, and she spoke quickly through pursed lips. “And soon you’ll be together.”

“Sonja!” Antonia whispered.

“It’s okay, Antonia,” he said, quietly.

Sonja sniffed and approached him, face distraught, then stopped short. “I’m sorry, Blake, you know I didn’t mean it. I have to go.” She turned on her heels and dashed out of the room.

He stared through the empty doorway, then parked his back against the wall where the window light dwindled. “How did it come to this, Antonia? You’ve been on the Council, you’re as close to Shakirvasta as anyone, except maybe Josefsson.”

She shrugged and shook her head at the same time. “It started off better than I expected. He had an ideology and razor-sharp logic. At first it seemed he wanted to reinstate the Indistani neo-feudalism he’d installed in Mumbai after the War. He’s quite persuasive, and he had a plan when no one else did – two years to achieve sustainable harvests; immediate formation of education and medical facilities, and a defence capability strategy. Everyone had their part to play and, frankly, most valued his vision after weeks of chaos. It all seemed so rational. But then – well, it was like watching Karl Marx morph into Joseph Stalin. He wanted to be a Tsar, or maybe the Chinese God-Emperor was his model, I really don’t know.”

He noticed she stood straight, as if giving evidence; her aristocratic upbringing, no doubt. He could see why Kat liked her so much. He’d have been proud to have her as a daughter.

“Anyway, that was when…” She cleared her throat. “Jennifer would go berserk if she’d known.”

“What?”

She spread her hands. “He wanted a successor. To cut a long story short, he wanted to father a child with me. Can you believe it? Said I was ‘good stock’. I was stunned.”

She must have read his eyes. “Of course I told him where to go. But it was around that time that Bill – Bill Carlson, that is – when Bill and I noticed a change in him. He takes medication every morning, and Bill wanted to find out what it was. He even joked that maybe one day we could poison him that way. But we did finally find out. It was –”

“Retrocan.” Blake was guessing, but as soon as he said it, everything fell into place.

She smiled. “You’re as sharp as my father was. How did you know?”

“He smokes enough to be dead ten times over. His family were originally tobacco barons, growing fine-grade GM in the Himalayan foothills. The scientist who invented Retrocan was Indistani – designed not just to prevent lung cancer, but to re-boot the whole industry.”

“Except it was found to have chronic aggressive side-effects, with hints of paranoia.”

He nodded. “Explains some of it. He must be way over the normal dose. Probably also why he extended Glenda’s life – he sees his future fate.”

Antonia folded her arms and spoke to the floor. “I got to know his physician quite well. He … fancied me. I mean nothing ever … Anyway, Shakirvasta only has five years, maximum.”

“So, he’s in a hurry to make his stamp on this world.”

She looked up, her almond-shaped eyes pleading. “Blake, where I come from, we’ve seen this so many times. It can take decades, generations for a society to recover from his type of politics. Already people just go missing. That creates such a fear in everyone else left behind, their families…”

Blake nodded again. But he realised they must be running short on time. The guards would call for Antonia soon. “I have a question, Antonia, about Carlson – Bill. The accusations – were they true? Did he try and assassinate Shakirvasta in the end? Did he try and poison him?”

Antonia walked to the chair and sat down. She placed her hands in her lap, and shook her head. “We joked about it, nothing more.”

He coughed. After a silence: “When is my execution scheduled?”

She leant forwards in the chair, her hands cupping her chin. “He hasn’t decided, but I think it’ll be at dawn. He keeps everyone wrong-footed, as you know. Bill’s hanging…” Her voice choked off. She collected herself. “There were protests. Three people injured, one critically, more than twenty arrested.” She looked up at him. “There have been rumours about yours, many more people threatening to demonstrate. I don’t think he wants a repeat performance. Carlson was a test. Shakirvasta won’t want you as a martyr. Even Josefsson is starting to fray at the edges, after Carlson’s hanging, he fears how far Shakirvasta is prepared to go.”

Blake thought back to Josefsson’s visit the previous afternoon. He’d looked haggard, old. He’d offered no reason why he’d come, but had spent a whole hour trying to justify the hanging of Carlson, the other measures. Blake had listened to it all, asked Josefsson if he knew who Pontius Pilate was, and had reminded him of the political maxim that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Josefsson had stormed out.

“He’s in too deep, Antonia.” Blake brought himself back to the present. “Shakirvasta plays chess, I gather. He thinks of me as the opposing king. If he takes me out, then it’s endgame.”

“He keeps playing on you killing his mistress. No evidence of course, just a lot of hot air. But he’s good at sowing doubt in people’s minds, doubt about you.”

“It’s a shame about Jen, I admit, but I –”

Antonia shot to her feet. “What did you just call her?” Her words had a cutting edge, reminding him that although she looked demure, she was no pushover. She approached him, hunting his eyes. “Only Dimitri ever called her that, and maybe Shakirvasta himself...” Her eyes widened. She mouthed a single word silently: alive?

He returned her stare, neither denying nor affirming. She went back to the chair, stood behind it and leant on its back. “You don’t play chess by the rules, do you, Commander?”

He spoke to the window. “Do you know how to defeat a chess computer, Antonia?”

“I confess I don’t.”

He turned back to her, his eyes animated. “You defend your queen at all costs. You sacrifice everything for the queen. The computer focuses on the queen because you value it so much. You leave a back door open and let the computer take your queen, and then you strike with your last surviving rook.” He watched it sink in.

A frown scraped across her brow. “How do you know all this, Commander, have you actually done it? Did you ever beat a chess computer?”

“No, but I married someone who did.”

Footsteps approached from the courtyard.

“And if your plan fails? What then? What if Kat never returns? Micah neither?”

“Survive, at all costs.”

“You can’t possibly mean –”

“At all costs, Antonia. You said it yourself. Five years. You need to be around to pick up the pieces.”

She glared. “Why nice to Sonja and hard on me?”

The guard entered.

“Good stock, Antonia.” He smiled. “You can handle it. He’s right about that part, at least. Goodbye, it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

She pursed her lips, then relaxed them. She walked up to him and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Hold me, Antonia. Dying wish, and all that.”

She tensed, but complied. He whispered something into her ear. After a moment, she let go. “Au revoir, Commander.”

◆◆◆

Rashid had spent twelve days tracking Vasquez and his men. He’d ridden the skimmer into the ground, covering two thousand kilometres of terrain, staying in the saddle for twelve hours at a stretch, till his limbs and buttocks were numb from the vibrations; till he couldn’t steer anymore. At first, following their trail had been easy, the tell-tale signs of abandoned encampments and buried detritus, indicating a disciplined squadron of men on the move, conscious of the environment. Later, however, nearer Ourshiwann’s equator, their traces dried up, lost in an endless plain of dusty scrub, scoured clean by a recent sandstorm. He’d lost three days using a wave-search pattern until finally his dolphin had detected a single piece of metal foil lodged in a bush. After that, he’d managed to catch up with them in an extinct volcanic mountain range. It extended upwards like a botched and heavily-scarred incision on the planet’s skin, shrinking towards the Southern horizon. At first the trail disappeared again, but on a hunch he headed for a collapsed volcano which might contain water in its caldera. He ditched the skimmer and spent the chill dawn hours on foot to arrive at its crest undetected. Then he waited.

Rashid pressed his fingers to his temples, and through an effort of will scanned the encampment via his dolphin, using it to zoom in wherever he ‘looked’. The grainy black and grey ‘image’ was accurate, but the lack of colour had been depressing him lately. Occasionally he took it off, as if it was better to see nothing than to have this ‘limbo-vision’.

The scanning was giving him a headache, but he did not want to arrive unannounced. “Where are you, Vasquez?” he muttered to himself, searching for the tell-tale one-armed profile that had eluded him for the past hour. Soldiers came and went out of the tents, tending fires, cleaning kit and doing laundry in the water inside the deep basin whose upper lip he lay upon. He was relieved to see several men maintaining the sling-jet – he’d been praying for a quicker mode of travel for the return trip. Blake might be in difficulties.

He got distracted by several men in an inflatable dinghy just inside the lake in the pit of the caldera. They’d become agitated and were pointing wildly. He hunted around and then saw a large snake-like head rear up out of the water. As it rose, water gushed off its scaly hide. It threatened the boat then dove down, nearly capsizing it, causing the men to crouch and grab the sides to stabilise it. A wide fan-tail flicked up out of the water, then lashed down against it making a thwack which Rashid heard even at his distance, and then was gone. He reckoned the creature must be twenty metres long.

“Snake-whale. Or Whale-snake. We haven’t decided yet.”

Rashid recognised Vasquez’ taut command voice immediately, but nevertheless managed to spring up to his feet in one flowing, turning movement, so that he was facing the one-armed colonel. “How did you detect me? I left the skimmer several klicks back.”

Vasquez was a head taller, and Rashid remembered his shock of white hair, though now all his dolphin detected was spiky fuzz on top of the man’s head. But he found he could imagine it as white. Just.

“Oh you’re good, Rashid, nearly as good as Ramires, but we still have stealth tech.” He held up a small box. That was all Rashid’s sonar could perceive.

“Anyway, let’s call it a snake-whale. Hasn’t actually eaten anyone yet, but I don’t doubt it could acquire the taste if pressed.” He walked to the edge. “Mighty good fishing here. Don’t know where they come from, but –”

“Underground ocean. I have seen it.”

“That so? Well, best catch is some fish like jack, don’t taste so bad. We’ve been hauling them in, salt-drying them, and preparing to take them back to Esperantia.”

“Did you find anything else useful on your travels?”

Vasquez shook his head. “Afraid not. This planet isn’t inhospitable, but it’s damned barren. If only we’d had the presence of mind to bring more fauna and flora from Earth, the bacteria that make things grow. But your ocean sounds mighty interesting. But you’re not here as a tourist, are you, Rashid?”

Rashid thought of the spider nest, the ocean, the ship, Jen and Dimitri, and Blake. “We need to talk.” He squatted down. Vasquez followed suit, and listened.

“Hot damn! It’s only been three months! And Shakirvasta, well, I marked him as a control-freak, but this … megalomania… We have to get back there, and soon.”

“Is the sling-jet still functional?” Rashid asked.

“Enough fuel for a one-way trip. Was saving it for an emergency. This qualifies. Could take you, me and a dozen of my men – more than a match for Shakirvasta’s militia, given the hardware we’re packing.”

Rashid had sketched an outline of the ship he’d named Arjuna in the sand with his finger. “There’s another problem. Shakirvasta does not leave loose ends. Frankly, I feared I would not find you alive. He must have a spy, or spies, maybe assassins amongst your group.”

“My thoughts, too. Thirty of the men, well, I’ve known them for years, a few of them their fathers and elder brothers before them. The other twenty were volunteers or conscripts. There are a handful we’ve been keeping a close eye on, but nothing substantial yet. So, we have to flush them out.”

Rashid nodded. “We need bait, and you seem to have become a talented fisherman.”

“I take it you have a plan?”

“First, Colonel, if you don’t mind, tell me please: what colour is the water inside the caldera?”

“Now listen, Rashid, a piece of advice from someone who’s seen a lot of soldiers let dolphins be their downfall: forget all about col–”

“Please, Colonel.”

Vasquez let out a long breath. He glanced over the lip to the lake below. “It’s the colour of malachite, Rashid. Right now, it’s breathtakingly beautiful, the setting sun reflecting crimson on the wave-tops, the surrounding rocks the colour of rust, and you’ll never see colour again, and I’ll never know what sonar feels like, so get over it!  Now, your plan.”

Rashid lay in the undergrowth, still as a sleeping insect, listening to the gentle lapping of water on the rocky shore. Earlier, he’d heard from a distance as Vasquez told his assembled troops how he’d met with a messenger from Esperantia reporting crimes and social disarray there; how Vasquez planned to return with an elite platoon by sling-jet, while the rest would gather the salt-dried protein harvest and make the long return trek. All this would happen in the morning. Rashid knew that Shakirvasta’s man, or men, must strike during the night or lose their opportunity. Vasquez was the bait.

Rashid set his wristcom to tactile mode. Four pin-pricks in his flesh silently announced midnight. It was re-confirmed as a new guard arrived to replace the slumped figure on watch outside Vasquez’ tent, twenty metres away. The shift change was brief, both guards weary, one from having been awake, the other from having had his sleep broken in two. But once the off-going guard had disappeared back to his own tent, Rashid noticed how the new one became more alert, checking all around the camp for the next ten minutes. He kept bending down, checking the ground for something. Either he was very diligent, or he was making sure all were asleep. Once or twice he even approached Rashid’s hiding place. Rashid hoped the moon had sunk below the caldera’s steep walls, or else his dolphin might glint in its light.

After ten minutes, presumably giving enough time for the previous guard to have fallen into a deep slumber, two figures emerged from one of the far tents. Their silent steps, and their smooth dancer-like gait, told Rashid all he needed to know – they moved like shadows drifting on a breeze. Both of them were side-armed, though he could not tell what kind of pistol it was. Worse news was that each wore some kind of head-mounted sighting system. Tech-assassins. He spat quietly on the ground next to him. His own Sarowan training had followed the more traditional mode, where a code of honour prevailed.

He pushed back from the ground into a stable firing position, with one knee on the floor, one knee up, and aimed his pulse rifle at the lead assassin. They were still a way off from Vasquez’ tent. He squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He glanced at it uselessly, since his dolphin could not read the LCD display. But he’d asked Vasquez to check its charge earlier. Then it hit him. The guard hadn’t been checking the ground, he’d been placing something there, some kind of electrostatic suppression system. He remembered there had been a myth back on Earth that Shakirvasta, then President of the IVS mil-ware corporation, had survived a number of assassination attempts. Some had suspected a secret piece of never-patented IVS mil-tech was involved.

Rashid was running out of time. Even alerting the other soldiers wasn’t going to help if their weapons would not fire. He wondered what the assassins were carrying, and had a feeling he would soon find out.

He lay down his rifle and extracted his commando knife from its sheath. It was a long throw, and the only still target was the guard. Back in the War he’d hunted deer in the mountains with this knife; the sound of the knife spinning in the air captivated them for the half-second it took the knife to find its target. He judged the breeze and the distance, and drew his right arm back behind his shoulder, fingers wrapped around the blade. He took an in-breath, held it, then hurled the knife forward and upward in a killing arc.

He leapt to the left side as two things happened – the guard turned to the sound just before the knife thudded into his chest, punching him off his feet; and the other two assassins aimed their weapons at the tech-triangulated position from which Rashid had launched the knife. A shimmer of deadly needles whistled past Rashid, looking to his sonar like a shower of rain hitting a pool of water. He hit the ground, rolled, and came up behind a boulder. A second volley clattered against the rock, the needles splintering into it, sounding like a hundred out-of-synch cicadas. Luckily Rashid did not have to lift his head above the boulder’s crest to see what was going on – his dolphin was smart enough to assemble the reflected sonar bounces and construe a reliable picture – he could see around corners.

One assassin kept his weapon trained in Rashid’s direction, while the other faced Vasquez’ tent. No! thought Rashid, but he knew if he moved he would be dead in a split second. “Assassins!” he shouted, and then he thought of a better word, even though it was a lie. “Alicians! In the camp! Pulse weapons don’t work!”

He heard the assassins murmur something, then heard the needles slice Vasquez’ tent into shreds, mincing everything inside. The outrage made him want to jump up and scream. It cannot end this way! He clamped his jaw shut, and continued to ‘watch’ as soldiers emerged, the first few easily cut down in a hailstorm of poison shards. Then the assassin who had murdered Vasquez toppled – a smooth cylinder, which must have been the hilt of a knife, sticking out of his forehead. The second sprinted in Rashid’s direction, his weapon levelled in front of him.

Rashid had to time it perfectly. He put his back to the boulder. Just as the assassin reached it, readying to aim and fire downwards, Rashid kicked off from his squatting position upwards in a backward arch, catching the assassin’s gun-wielding forearm and forcing it upwards. Rashid’s head slammed into the assassin’s face, as the assassin’s momentum carried them both forward. The needle-gun left the assassin’s grip and scuttled across the rocks. As they toppled together, the assassin managed to bring his knees sharply into Rashid’s upper back. Rashid hit the deck hard, his cheek slamming against a rock. He tasted blood and felt the numbness that meant pain would be calling imminently. The assassin rolled and recovered quickly. His head darted around to locate the gun, then he leapt to a boulder at the edge of the lake and reached down to retrieve it between two rocks. Rashid ignored the shouting of the soldiers rushing in their direction. He sprang towards the assailant, arms spread wide. He connected with him just as the gun was lifting toward him, locking his grip around the gun-toting wrist, and shoved his shoulder into his opponent’s chest. The assassin grabbed Rashid’s other hand, and they plunged toward the lake below. Rashid took a single deep breath just before they hit the icy water.

They sank beneath the surface, touching bottom near the shore, wrestling, each trying to gain an advantage, arms pulling and shoving, legs kicking but less useful underwater. Rashid’s kicks pushed them further out into the lake. The gun fired once, needles shooting off into the depths. He knew how this would end: they would both drown. So be it, I’ll die like the Sarowan warrior my parents wanted me to be. His lungs were already near bursting, small bubbles escaping as he fought, water stinging his nostrils and sinuses whenever the assassin gained the advantage. The temptation to breathe in was so strong, he almost succumbed, but in a flash he thought of Sonja and Blake, seeing her in tears and Blake at the end of a rope. He clamped his mouth shut.

But each of them was losing strength, slowing down. Then Rashid’s dolphin picked up something rising missile-fast from the depths. He calculated its trajectory. It would be a gamble but this battle was lost otherwise. He waited another second, then brought up a knee close to his own chest, got his foot into his opponent’s stomach, and pushed hard, pressing himself away. He saw the assassin recover and aim the pistol at him, but he never got the chance to fire. The snake-whale rocketed up underneath him, its mouth engulfing the assassin. Rashid bolted upwards, clawing his way to air and life. The snake-whale broke surface first, its prey writhing and kicking in its jaws, before crashing downwards, heading back into the caldera’s depths.

Rashid inhaled more air than he thought possible, his body shaking. Rough arms seized him and dragged him to shore. He knew they may well believe him to be an assassin too. He then heard a voice he hadn’t expected to hear.

“Don’t hurt him, he’s one of us.” Vasquez squatted down next to him.

Rashid coughed up water. “But I saw –”

“Like I said earlier, Rashid, we still have a few stealth-ware tricks up our sleeves. My tent’s been empty all night, except for a one-armed holo, that is.”

Rashid’s heart still pounded inside his chest. “We should leave.”

“We have a few burials first, I’m afraid.”

Rashid grabbed his arm. “No. I have a very bad feeling about how this night might end. Seconds can count in battle, Colonel, you know that. We’re South-East of Esperantia. We need to arrive before dawn.”

Vasquez frowned, then stood up. “Okay men, get everything prepared, we ship out in thirty minutes.”

One of his men came forward. “But Sir, we have five of our own dead here.”

“They’re coming with us, to be buried in Esperantia where their families can pay their respects. Now, everyone get to work. Blake needs our help, and our speed!”

◆◆◆

Blake became aware someone else was in the darkened room. He sat up. “Assassin?”

Light flickered on, revealing Shakirvasta, relaxed in a chair, a pistol in his right hand resting on a crossed knee. The other hand held a cigarette, though there was no odour Blake could detect.

“What do you want?” Blake said, scowling.

“A trade, Commander.” He took a drag, and exhaled a ring of pale grey smoke. He stared though the ring. “This is an original cigarette, Commander, one of the old style. Unabashed nicotine, though odourless of course, since it is – was – highly illegal. Do you know, I actually have tobacco seeds stored with me? Might be nice to reintroduce it, don’t you think?”

“What’s the trade?”

“Yes, to business. After all, there isn’t much time. I have always found people over-complicate things. Personally, I simplify matters. One only has to define the solution, and then apply the required leverage. For example, I don’t want you to become a martyr. I need my people to break with the past, the old ways, and look ahead to a hard-earned but brighter future.”

Blake imagined Carlson, swinging at the end of a rope. “They already have one martyr.”

Shakirvasta shook his head dismissively. “People will soon forget Carlson. But you, Commander, are a different item altogether. If my citizens were able to watch you being publicly executed, with you being heroic till the end… Well, I would rather have a unified collective society of strong sheep, than one comprising a few heroes followed by weak and dissenting sheep. You are the last hero, Commander, an anachronism, and so must disappear, but in a cowardly way unbefitting your heroic status. So, here is the deal: a quick death for a painless one, that’s the trade. You try to escape, and I kill you, but your wife gets her endomorphine reinstated.”

Blake was on his feet before he knew it. “You sonofabitch, when did you take her off it?”

The pistol rotated idly in his direction. Shakirvasta spoke with his customary nonchalance. “Not yet, Commander. But if you wish a public execution, she will receive no more. Trust me, the pain will be severe before she dies. She may last for weeks –”

“Enough!” Blake’s muscles flexed, pulling the handcuff chain taut in front of him. He glanced down at the shackles. “But how can I make an escape attempt wearing handcuffs?”

“A good point, Commander.” He lodged the cigarette between his lips, and with his left hand fished into his pocket, producing a digi-key. He held it in front of him, staring at it for a moment. “Commander, I should give you fair warning: this gun shoots neural darts, the effect is instantaneous. The nervous system freezes, muscle control goes into spasm, the vagus nerve stops working, the diaphragm and lungs lock, and you asphyxiate, completely conscious throughout. I know because I’ve watched it happen every time somebody attempted to kill me.” He tossed the key at Blake’s feet.

Blake bent double and stuck the digi-key into the slot. The cuffs clanked to the floor. He rubbed his wrists, curling and uncurling his fingers to get the blood circulating properly. When he rose back up, Shakirvasta was standing, and had backed to the far side of the wall. He nodded to the oval doorway. “After you, Commander.”

“Carlson. The plaza. We do this there.”

Shakirvasta cocked his head, squinting slightly at Blake. “Why, Commander?”

“Last respects. He wasn’t one of my men, but in a way he died for me. I want to honour him before I go.”

Shakirvasta eyed Blake, then appeared to make up his mind. “Very well, it is close by. But no more words, Commander. You have been sentenced to death. You are technically already dead, and are no longer entitled to speak: a dead man walking. I have always respected you, Commander, so please don’t disappoint me now. In the plaza, you’ll have a brief opportunity to attack and kill me, or to run, in which case I will shoot you in the back. I think we both know how this is going to end. You’ll preserve your dignity. Come Commander, it is time.”

Blake thought of Rashid. Too late my friend. It all rested on Antonia now, his rook.

Chapter 26

Verdict

"This really is unfortunate timing, Louise. Or do you prefer Arctura, as the Q’Roth now call you?” Sister Esma stood on the bridge of the Q’Roth fast-liner. With the ship in idle mode, all the screens emitted a sleepy green glow and a rhythmic soft clicking, like crickets, just at the human hearing threshold. Two Q’Roth warriors barred the entrance. They were so still, Louise wondered if they had slipped into hibernation.

Louise paced slowly, hands clasped behind her back. “Court’s in recess.” She stopped. “Worried I’ll testify?”

Sister Esma’s eyes and nostrils flared. “Do not try my patience. You know what hangs in the balance here.” She cocked her head. “And what exactly is that abomination you have brought with you?”

Louise didn’t turn around to where the Hohash hovered behind her. “I was expecting this to be, somehow, different. You tried to kill me, remember? The nannites you had placed on my ship?”

Sister Esma waved a wax-skinned hand dismissively. “I knew you would find a way to survive, Louise. It’s what you do best, one of your two greatest talents.”

Louise ignored the invited question. She felt the dagger nestling inside her sleeve. “But finding your new homeworld would have been tricky, wouldn’t it?”

“Our homeworld: it is yours, too, especially after you sent me this message. You are already a hero, Louise.”

Louise frowned. She’d planned to strike as soon as the Q’Roth guards departed the bridge, but they hadn’t; the alliance with the Alicians had drawn the Q’Roth into limelight they didn’t relish, and they had Sister Esma on a tight leash. Louise knew that if she made her move now, she’d never get off the bridge alive. Another approach, then. “So what’s my reward?”

Sister Esma scrutinised her once-protégé, pausing to stare at Louise’s sleeve, the one that concealed the dagger. “I see.” She sat down in a make-shift throne chair, adopting a regal air. “What is it you want, exactly, besides my head? You can’t have it, Louise, you know that, don’t you? I played you, but that is what we do – in my position you’d have done the same. And look how far you’ve come. Level Five in a matter of months, your knowledge of Q’Roth customs and history rivals my own.”

Louise knew the moment had passed. Worst of all, Sister Esma’s logic was flawless – brutal, but flawless nonetheless. “I need something, or else I can’t come back with you.”

“Hannah?” Sister Esma said, raising an eyebrow.

Louise tried to keep her voice cool. “You have her?”

“Yes. She became Micah’s lover towards the end.”

Louise almost smiled. It would do for now. “It’s a start. One other thing –”

“That, my dear girl, is already arranged. Micah unnerves me. Break his spirit. It is nearly done. Nudge him over the edge. Lead him down the path of self-destruction. That is your second greatest talent.”

◆◆◆

Micah had been separated from the others, placed in a smaller holding cell. Same bare jade walls, but this time with an impenetrable glass door. He hoped the word ‘recess’ had a similar meaning in Grid law, that the verdict wouldn’t be passed in their absence. Maybe Josefsson had been right all along – we should’ve stayed on Ourshiwann, hiding, biding our time. He felt exhausted, deflated – seeing Carlson’s corpse… He heard footsteps – with a shock he registered heels. It can’t be!

“Hello, Micah, did you miss me?” Louise arrived on the other side of the glass. She carried a box under one arm. She set it on the floor.

“I saw you die.” That’s twice now.

“Must have been hard for you.”

He saw through the veneer to what lay underneath. “If I’d have known you were going to surrender, Louise –”

“Don’t you dare patronise me!” Her eyes whitened. Without warning, so fast he flinched, she punched the glass, causing it to ripple. “You set me up, Micah, killed the best man left alive.”

He stood his ground, close to the glass. “It was Vince’s plan, too. You must know that.”

“Of course I know that. He…” She turned her back to him, a hand touched a lock of her hair, tugged at it. She cleared her throat, faced him again. She flashed a smile. “This entire day; I’ve been planning it for months. It’s not going at all the way I’d like.”

He shrugged. “That makes two of us.”

She leaned her forehead against the glass and spoke softly. “I’d like this glass to be removed, Micah, so I could place my hands around your neck, stop you breathing, watch your lips turn blue, your eyes bulge, go wide with fear in the last throes of life.”

He looked at her, felt sorry for her. “I know.” He leant his forehead to the glass, too. “But you know what?”

She didn’t answer.

“You killed two thousand people in a blink of an eye, without a second thought. You’re sick, Louise. Even for an Alician. I’d say you need help, but we both know you’re beyond that. I’m not even sure Sister Esma wants you back.”

She uttered one soft laugh. “I always knew you were special, Micah. You never made it to the Alician A-list, but I thought you showed promise back on Earth. Vince did, too.”

He felt a pang. “If I could bring him back…”

She drew away. He reciprocated.

“If I get the chance, I won’t hesitate, Micah.”

He nodded. “See you in court shortly, I guess.”

“Unlikely. Oh, a parting gift.” She picked up the box, took the lid off and turned to leave. Just before she crossed the threshold, she up-ended it. A head with flaxen hair thudded to the floor, eyes wide. It rolled toward him till it rested next to the glass.

Micah’s breathing crevassed. He pounded the glass with both fists, blood rushing to his head. “Louise! Why did –?” He knew why. He punched the glass with both fists. The glass shimmered. “The feeling’s mutual. You hear me? If I get the chance...”

There was no reply, the sound of her footsteps receding. He dropped to his knees, fingers trailing down the glass. He gazed at the head lying so close to him, remembering when he released the explosive bracelet from her neck, her in his bed, the last time he saw her on the bridge... He banged his head against the glass, repeatedly, eyes misting.

A bell chimed. He clawed his way up the glass to his feet. Vince, Zack, and now Hannah. He straightened his tunic, brushed his palms up over his face and smoothed his hair down. The glass peeled backwards. He knelt down, closed her eyes with his hand. “Hannah, I’m glad to have known you, and also sorry I couldn’t protect you. Rest now.” He kissed his forefinger and touched her dry lips. The Finchikta was waiting, only its blue third eye open, watching him. Micah left Hannah’s head where it was, recalling that Alicians didn’t care for burial rites, believing a corpse to be an empty husk. He strode straight past the Finchikta.

◆◆◆

Micah shied away from the look of relish on Sister Esma’s face, as she ogled the two globes representing Earth and Ourshiwann, accelerating towards the throat of the funnel.

“Micah,” Sandy said, pointing to his right.

A new party approached out of the gloom, from behind Zack’s avatar. A triangular crystal plinth transported four figures he couldn’t quite make out. Across the arena, as he now considered it, Sister Esma flustered, communicating with the Q’Roth queen in a series of guttural clicks. The Q’Roth leader remained unperturbed.

The Finchikta bristled. “New witnesses,” it chirped. “An Ossyrian, another human, and… this is most irregular, this has never…” It moved to the ledge, craning its neck over the side to get a better view. Its blue third eye shone in the darkness. When it spoke again, it was in a hushed tone. “May the Progenitors be praised!” It wavered tantalisingly above the abyss.

“Good grief”, Sandy said, “it’s Kat!”

Micah recognised her as soon as Sandy said it, and the Hohash, which had obviously caught the Finchikta’s attention. An Ossyrian, indistinguishable from the one who had ‘fixed’ Zack, stood next to Kat, tall and proud, an arm or paw resting on her shoulder. But Micah was drawn to the third figure, a naked, but asexual, hairless man, fashioned entirely of glimmering flow-metal.

“Pierre,” Ramires whispered.

The plinth passed between Zack’s Transpar and the Ranger, and then split in two. Kat’s section headed to their platform, the other carried the Ossyrian, the Hohash and whatever was once Pierre, into the central area.

Micah studied Kat as she drew near. She clenched her jaw, trying to lock down her emotions. She looked angry, arms folded, lips a tight line. As she breached their platform, he held out his hand, but Sandy brushed past him and pulled her into a friendly embrace. He and Ramires glanced at each other, as Sandy held Kat’s rigid form, until it melted and Kat surrendered to the hug.

Micah wanted to ask her a hundred questions, particularly about Pierre, but Sandy, facing Micah over Kat’s hunched shoulder, said No with her eyes. He tried a different approach. “It’s good to see you again, Kat.”

The Finchikta, its third eye closed again, made a noise somewhere between a cough and a gulp. “The one calling himself Pierre is about to give evidence.”

Pierre faced the Tla Beth. He held his arms out and touched his metal fingers together. They flowed seamlessly into each other, so that his arms formed an unbroken circle. He then pulled his arms apart, shoulder width, and five tubes formed where his digits should have been. The tubes changed from a silver hue to white, then colours flowed rapidly along them in an incandescent pattern too fast for Micah to follow.

Micah turned to the Finchikta. “What’s going on?”

The court official watched, hawk-like, its orange eyes ablaze. “Your colleague is speaking Tla Beth! This is unheard of!”

“He’s almost gone, Micah,” Kat said, her voice crisp and dry, wrung free of all emotion. “His humanity. During the trip here, while we were in stasis, the nannites took over. I’ve lost him.”

Micah was jarred back to the arena by a sharp clicking from the Q’Roth queen. A Finchikta had appeared next to her, presumably as translator. Whatever had happened to Pierre, it clearly disturbed the Q’Roth. “What’s he saying?” he demanded of their Finchikta. The reply was halting, either because the alien had trouble translating it, or else had a hard time accepting it.

“He brings news … a Galactic Level 1 emergency. The … Kalaheii… returned! Your colleague says the Hohash has … proof … Q’Roth are arguing dismissal of irrelevant evidence. The Tla Beth … ah, there.”

The arena turned into a holorium, ectoplasmic light pouring out from the Hohash, condensing into images of a vast armada of ships floating inside a shimmering wall of light. The image shifted to myriad specks – broken hulls, metal debris littering the void, and then a face in freeze-frame. The only sound was Ukrull’s low growl. Micah noticed the Tla Beth’s inner hourglass pattern had stopped swirling, and became almost completely black, a lone mote of white swimming in the darkness.

Pierre looked over to Micah and the others. “Kat?”

She gathered herself and stood on the other side of the Finchikta, facing the Tla Beth. “Qorall,” she said. “Qorall, leader of the Kalaheii, has returned. You have to find the Kalarash, or your precious Grid Society will perish.”

Sister Esma tried to engage the Queen, but the latter gave a short burst of clicks, and Sister Esma bowed low in silence.

As the holo-image faded, Micah realised that the two globes had slowed down, no longer descending. They skirted the precipitous lip of the funnel, defying gravity.

Kat brushed down her tunic and continued to address the Tla Beth, ignoring the Q’Roth party completely. “We also have new evidence of relevance to this current case. We apologise for being late, but we were quarantined until Pierre –” she gestured towards him “– could demonstrate his Level Ten powers.”

Micah heard Sister Esma’s snort clear across the arena, but the Queen stretched her neck forward to gain a better view of Pierre. Micah glanced from Pierre to Kat; they had obviously thought this through, choreographed their duet. It would do no good if Pierre defended humanity – he was clearly something else now. Kat had to forge the main arguments.

The Hohash burst into life again, pouring out a new vision, of life some time ago on Ourshiwann. Micah felt a pang of loss as he witnessed scenes of everyday life on the planet before the invasion – the spiders and Hohash milling about the place he now knew as Esperantia with a grace and beauty he’d never imagined. They really owned the place, making him feel as if he and the rest of humanity were vagrants squatting in an abandoned mansion.

Incandescent vistas splashed onto the night-time sky, portraying ancient battle scenes, framed by lasers reflecting off the moon to create a luminescent vista hundreds of thousands of kilometres wide. Micah saw globe-like ships destroying whole planets, suns being propelled into other star systems, collapsing them, leaving violent nebulas in their wake. Orange and black metallic fingers of light tore the fabric of space, creating rifts that sucked whole planetary systems out of existence, until ivory and gold crossbow-shaped ships materialised, strafing the globes with streams of emerald light, imploding them into darkness.

“What are we watching,” Micah asked.

“An ancient history lesson,” Kat replied, a hint of sadness in her voice.

“I didn’t realise the spiders were that old as a race.”

“They’re not, but the Hohash are. The spiders were artists, and they liked to space-paint what the Hohash remembered.”

The Finchikta interjected in a hushed, reverent tone, without taking its eyes off the display. “They are omnipaths, record-keepers of the galaxy.”

“I’ve gotten to know them a little, especially since Pierre...” She shivered. “They’re tortured souls; they’ve seen too much. They miss their masters terribly.”

The Finchikta closed both its eyes and turned and stared at her with only the blue one. It bowed once, low.

The scene shifted, and Micah winced as the Q’Roth invasion unfurled, with heart-rending images Micah knew Kat had seen before, back on Eden; the merciless culling of the spider planet. Micah had no idea if sympathy or empathy had any currency in Grid Society, but the Finchikta several times looked away with distaste.

“This has no pertinence,” shouted Sister Esma. “The spider race were barely Level Four and refused sponsorship: aside from art, they were technologically primitive, even compared to humanity.”

Micah begrudged her the point. He imagined from the Grid Society’s perspective this would be no different to humans clubbing seals to death for fur, to the point of extinction.

“Level Four?” Kat addressed the Q’Roth and Sister Esma, as if just noticing them for the first time. “How can you be so sure?”

The scene shifted to a cavern full of blue eggs. “The spider race hid tens of thousands of eggs on the planet before the culling. They knew you were coming. They used a shielding system your technology could not penetrate. They knew how valuable a food source the eggs would be to you; a delicacy, perhaps.”

“Impossible,” Sister Esma shouted.

Ukrull’s voice grazed across the arena. “Have been watching. Would have seen. Not detected any eggs.”

Sister Esma pointed at Kat. “You are lying in a Grid court!”

Kat closed her eyes and concentrated. Micah realised she was communicating with the Hohash. Pierre turned to face the Ranger. “Access your ship’s logs.” An image of the planet appeared from the Hohash, small yellow patches appearing just below the surface, like sparse stubble on a smooth chin. “These are the nest locations. Here is the decryption cipher.” A sequence of serifs hung over the Ourshiwann world.

Ramires stepped behind Kat. “Are you sure we should be showing this to the Q’Roth?”

She opened her eyes. “It’s all or nothing, and this is our best evidence. These courts are sealed. Besides, Grid society values complete disclosure. They have a saying that a half-truth is worse than an outright lie.”

The Ranger stuck one of its claws into a smaller reptile which Micah only now realised was alive. After a moment, Ukrull growled a single word. “True.”

Sister Esma tried to confer with the queen, but again was shut down by her. Good, Micah thought, you’re showing your true colours. Maybe the Q’Roth will decide you’re a liability.

“This throws doubt,” Kat said, “on the Q’Roth and Grid procedures for determining the level to be assigned to the host of a planet.”

The Finchikta squawked. “Careful! Respect!”

Kat glanced at him once then continued unabashed. “We have more evidence, this time from Earth. Chahat-Me?”

Micah thought she was talking alien for a moment, until the Ossyrian creature opened its jaws and emitted a choral screeching that had him pressing his palms over his ears.

“You get used to it,” Kat said. “I can tell you what she’s saying, as Pierre told me earlier. Her race, the Ossyrians, visited Earth – Egypt to be precise – four thousand years ago. They detected an EPC – that’s an Emergence Precipitation Coefficient, which determines how close a race is to ascending to the next level of intelligence – of 0.7. If it reaches the threshold of 1, which is basically one per cent of the population, the race cannot be culled outright, and should be advertised for sponsorship. Oh, and she’s adding, I think, that I intervened on their behalf to stop their technology being stolen, in a show of cognitive pattern recognition worthy of Level 4.”

Chahat-Me closed her jaws, and bowed deeply to the Tla Beth. Pierre took up the reins. “My father was a geneticist but also a statistical historian, a researcher for the Sentinels, guardians fighting against the Alicians. He was aware of the Q’Roth-Alician pact, and believed the Alicians were systematically eliminating scientists who demonstrated Level Four talents. Before he died, he made me commit to memory various statistical data and analyses – his genetic re-engineering of my brain focused a great deal on compressed memory storage.”

So, Micah thought, he used Pierre, his own son, for data storage, to keep his ideas safe. He felt sorry for Pierre. No wonder he’d turned to science long ago – less chance of being hurt.

“Here are the data, analysed with the Level Ten formula usually applied for species categorisation.” Pierre’s tubes flashed at a subliminal rate. A sphere appeared, like a marble, with milky colours dancing inside its surface, shifting, falling, colliding like waves. Micah had no idea what it meant. The queen stared at it intently. He was gratified to see that Sister Esma was lost, too.

“As you can see,” Pierre said, “the EPC in 2058, when my father was terminated by the Alicians, was 5.8. This was despite an Alician policy of seeking out talented scientists and murdering them, as well as squashing or squandering research funding to keep humanity in the dark, despite the emergence of new intelligence.”

One of the Q’Roth warriors now stood between the queen and Sister Esma. Micah did not know how complicit the Q’Roth were in the Alician tactics to achieve their masters’ goals – probably they didn’t care, but right now he understood why the queen would want to distance herself from the Alicians.

“Is it likely,” Kat said, “given what you have seen, that less than a thousand angts ago, when humanity was rated and culling permission was granted, that the EPC was less than one?”

“This evidence could be pure fabrication!” Sister Esma screamed.

“It could, but is not.” Pierre said. “So, we would like to see the original deposition which rated humanity.”

Sister Esma started to speak but was nudged sharply by the warrior. A pregnant silence hung in the chamber. A minute passed.

“What’s going on?” Sandy said. “Why don’t they want to show it?”

Kat whispered. “Pierre’s hunch, we have to play it.” She walked to the other side of the platform to face the Ranger. “We call upon the Ranger to testify on the original deposition.”

Ukrull’s amber eyes flared, and his tail lashed out violently. “Deposition… accepted.”

Kat pressed. “Did the Ranger who submitted it agree with the rating?”

The tail flailed again.

“The whole truth please, that is what the Grid Society values, is it not? It is also a requirement in human judicial proceedings.”

The Finchikta ruffled its feathers. “You humans go too far!”

It was the last thing Micah remembered hearing. The Tla Beth ascended rapidly from the arena, and everything around him melted into static.

Micah opened his eyelids to see Sandy leaning over him, in a white room shaped like a tent. “Come on sleepy-head, the rest of us woke up hours ago.”

He rubbed his eyes, feeling for once like he’d had a good sleep. Then it all flooded back to him. He sat up as if starting from a nightmare. “The verdict! What happened?”

“We won,” Kat said. “Sort of.”

Micah would have preferred an unqualified version. “Can you elaborate?”

She glared at him. “Yeah, sure, Micah. You want elaboration? Okay then, here are the headlines. I saw Rashid’s ship evaporate in the heart of a star – glad to hear he survived, a story I’d like to hear in detail. Pierre and I were dying, and well, we made love, and I got pregnant. Nearly drowned but got rescued by the Ossyrians; saved their tech from being stolen by another alien race, the Mannekhi – friends of yours I believe, you really should watch the company you keep. My Hohash pal unleashed all hell inside my brain, not for the first time I might add, and it turns out the entire galaxy is under serious threat. Oh, and Pierre’s nannites got way ahead of themselves and everybody else, including the Ossyrians. It’s a girl, by the way. She’s next door, sleeping, Chahat-Me’s the godmother, kind of rushed it through for me.”

Micah stared open-mouthed. “Kat, I –”

“Oh sorry,” she said, in a mocking tone, much to Sandy’s amusement, “you meant the court case! Silly me, I thought you gave a damn.”

Micah stood up. “Kat I do –”

“The Tla Beth threw out the case. Pierre and I had a couple of days in quarantine outside to do some research. Chahat-Me helped us out. You see, the Tla Beth fostered the Ossyrians aeons ago, steered them away from their genocidal tendencies to become caring doctors. Meanwhile, though less well-known, the very same Tla Beth fostered the already nastily violent Q’Roth to become even more lethal, with a killing instinct hooked into the most basic instinct of all, hunger. The Tla Beth needed foot-soldiers, see? There was a war coming. The Q’Roth did their bit around fifty thousand years ago. Wrecked their own civilisation, reducing themselves to nomadic status, but they saved a whole quadrant from chaos. Only problem was that the killing instinct couldn’t be bred out of them. Best the Tla Beth could do was extend their hibernation cycle. For a while it didn’t matter, there were plenty of Level Two or Three planets to feed upon every thousand years. But then finding such planets got trickier. So, they –”

“– relaxed the rules,” Micah finished. He figured it was his turn to interrupt. She nodded, and flashed a fake smile. He could tell she was angry, but he knew it wasn’t about him. “Where’s Pierre now?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Are we talking existentially or physically? Because for me it’s the first that’s bugging me.”

Sandy intervened. “Kat,” she held the other’s hand. “From what you’ve told me, he’s no longer Pierre.”

Micah was impressed at how Sandy never feared to say the things everyone else only dared to think. Kat retracted her hand, though not abruptly, and walked over to the single small oval portal onto space.

“He’s with Chahat-Me, finalising the deal they struck with the Tla Beth.”

Micah felt awkward, not knowing if he should do something like give Kat a hug – but he didn’t know her that well.

Sandy rescued him. “Why don’t you go and see the baby, Micah. I sent Ramires in there, too, you know how emotionally inept men can be.”

He frowned, and walked towards the seamless wall as Sandy had indicated. A door irised out of nowhere, and he stepped through it. It closed silently behind him, and he realised he didn’t know which way to go down the three-sided windowless corridor, left or right. On impulse he turned left and came to a dead end. He decided to try it and approached the wall. Another round doorway opened up revealing Pierre and Chahat-Me in some kind of crystalline control room.

“Enter, Micah, we need to talk. The Tla Beth have delivered their detailed ruling. You won, but there’s a catch.”

“Where’s Kat?” Micah asked Sandy and Ramires, who were sitting on the floor, legs stretched in front of them, their backs to the bench running half-way around the room.

“Breast-feeding, last time I checked,” Sandy said.

“Oh, right. I’ll fill her in later.”

“So, what’s the deal?”

Micah sat down opposite them. He felt dizzy from the speed of events the past few days, as if he’d just stepped off a particularly violent rollercoaster. “First, the good news. The Q’Roth have been banned from going anywhere near Ourshiwann, which is where we’re headed. And we’ve been granted provisional Level Four status, which means we can’t be selected for culling. And there’s an unexpected bonus, a trove it’s called.”

“Which is?”

“Whenever a culling takes place, a record is taken, a sample if you like. A slice of the biosphere is literally cut out of the planet, put into a massive stasis container, and sent for processing in some kind of Galactic library. Good news is, it hasn’t reached processing yet, and is now being diverted back to Ourshiwann, where it’ll arrive in a few months. Wherever the trove came from on Earth, there’ll be fauna, insects, birds, maybe even some animals, or … people, I suppose. We can get back some of our bio-diversity.”

“But that’s fantastic!” Sandy said. “So, why aren’t you smiling?” She rested her palm on top of Ramires’ thigh. “Spill the beans, Micah.”

He sighed. “Okay. We have to be sponsored. It’s a fact of Grid life. The Ossyrians will be our guardians and representatives for the next fifteen years. During this time,” he raised and dipped his eyebrows, “we’ll be quarantined: no one leaves or enters Ourshiwann, except a handful of Ossyrians. They’ve promised to be hands-off with us, just helping with education, a kind of induction into Grid Society.” He looked down at his feet.

“There’s more isn’t there?”

“Yes. And it affects you directly, Sandy.”

Her eyes fixed on him and didn’t waver. Ramires pulled himself into a more upright pose, his hand clasping hers.

Micah took a breath. “The next generation must undergo genetic enhancement.”

She shot to her feet. “No fucking way!”

Micah stayed where he was. “No exceptions, Sandy. Kat’s daughter, too.”

Sandy stomped the floor hard. “No! It’s Gabriel’s son. He’s all I have! We didn’t survive all this just to have our genes manipulated and mutilated.”

Micah kept his voice calm. He guessed Pierre was having a similar discussion with Kat right now. “How long do you think humanity will last as it is, Sandy? We’ve been out here a few months, and we’re hopelessly inept, unable even to communicate most of the time without my resident, which is borrowed, illegal alien tech. Fifteen years – a generation – to give us a chance to survive in the Grid. If nothing else it will put us on an even keel with the Alicians. The genning won’t be too severe, mainly an upgrade to our neural processing – kids will think faster and be able to process thoughts in parallel.”

“And what do they lose, Micah, what’s the downside of this trade, because there always is one, isn’t there?”

Micah had no answer. “It’s non-negotiable, Sandy. It’s been decreed. We take it or else we’re abandoned, and the Q’Roth will finish the job they started. The Q’Roth queen played her hand well, knowing that with this Kalaheii threat, all their tribes will once again be called upon by the Tla Beth to fight; apparently two entire legions have been lost already. Despite all the evidence, we nearly had them sponsoring us.”

Ramires spoke softly, holding her hand. “Sandy, I am a warrior, one of the best in humanity, but I’m barely a match for an Alician. I want your son to be unafraid, to know he can fight on equal terms. Gabriel would have wanted this.”

She snatched her hand away, turning away from both of them, but remained silent. Ramires caught Micah’s eye and nodded to the hidden doorway. Micah got up and started to leave.

“Micah,” Sandy said, still facing away from him, “how are you going to convince the rest of humanity to go along with this? They’ve not seen what we’ve seen. They won’t understand. They’ll think you’ve sold them out.”

Micah paused in front of the doorway. “No idea, Sandy. One leap at a time.”

Kat drilled holes in the floor with her eyes, while Pierre went through the deal and the implications for humanity. Only when he’d finished everything and seemed ready to leave, did she speak.

“You’re not staying with us, are you?” She indicated the cot in the corner where their daughter slept.

He answered straight away – not harsh, just clinical, “Part of the deal is that I aid the Tla Beth and the Rangers. My development has not stopped. If anything, it is accelerating.”

Kat looked up. “I want to see my Pierre, even if only for one last time. I know you can do it. Somewhere buried deep inside you, he’s still there.”

Pierre’s silver eyes danced, though the rest of him remained motionless. Kat had the sense that there was some kind of internal debate going on inside his head. Abruptly Pierre shook and fell to his knees. She was by his side in a moment, her arms locked around his trembling frame, the silver flesh uncannily soft to her touch.

“Kat,” he said, short of breath.

“My God, Pierre, what’s happened to you?” She braced herself and kissed his silver lips hard.

He hung his arms around her. “It’s … it’s okay. In fact, it’s utterly amazing, beyond description. So much, I don’t know where to begin.” He panted, leaning heavily on her.

“I want you back, Pierre, I need you. Your daughter needs you!”

His silver eyes flashed metallic blue, irises forming. “Can’t, Kat, almost gone. No way back, organs … changed. Everything … rewired. I’m just an echo of who I was. War is coming… Need to prepare, fight, or else no one will survive, not even the Tla Beth. You see, I worked it out.” His speech quickened, as if he was running out of time. “What the Kalaheii were trying to do when they destroyed their galaxy. You were right all along, Kat. You said it months ago: why would they commit suicide? So I figured it out. We have to find the Kalarash before they try again.”

She shook him. “I don’t care!” She screamed at him, waking the baby. “What about us?”

“Doing this for us. Must. No way … back.”

She felt him tensing, the blue eyes reverting to silver, his skin hardening. She was losing him for good this time. “Our daughter, Pierre, name her, please.” She sniffed, trying to hold back the tears.

He held her hand, gently. “Petra,” he said. “Rock. Me. Remember?”

The tears broke. She watched them fall, splashing onto his silver thigh, running off immediately onto the floor. “Petra,” she whispered, as Pierre got up and left the room.

Chapter 27

Showdown

Cool ground crunched underneath Blake’s boots as the night surrendered to the first pre-dawn rays, rendering Shakirvasta pale and ghost-like, his pistol arm hanging by his side. They reached the plaza where Carlson’s large frame hung, the noose long since dug into his neck so that the blood had congealed black around it, his contorted face chalk white. Blake followed the pleated cord upwards to a crude bronze hook, the type butchers had used since ancient times to hang up carcasses. The cadaver twisted slowly in the dawn breeze, the rope creaking at each turn. Blake wanted above all else to get Carlson down; he deserved better.

“Your move, Commander,” Shakirvasta said.

Blake approached Carlson. He’d seen enough dead bodies in his time to anticipate the smell and rigidity of a stale corpse. He placed his arms around the dead man’s legs, and with a grunt, shoved the stiff body upwards. It took a few attempts, but the cord finally slipped off the hook, and Blake lowered Carlson’s body to the ground. Surreptitiously, squatting on his haunches next to Carlson’s frame while regaining his breath, he slipped his hand inside Carlson’s jacket pocket. Empty.

“Do you take me for a fool, Commander?”

He stood up to see Shakirvasta flourish the pistol Antonia had put there an hour earlier. Blake’s own pistol. Good, he thought, now the odds are even. He took a step closer, so the military pulse pistol’s sensors could lock onto their target. He hoped there was enough light for the facial pattern recognisers to work. Zack – due to the implant theory – had re-programmed it months ago to overload in the event someone tried to fire it at its owner.

Blake spat onto the dust. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? You can say you wrestled my gun from me and killed me with it. A certain symmetry from your point of view.”

Shakirvasta narrowed his eyes. “Yes, I could. But you seem a little eager, all of a sudden.” He lowered Blake’s weapon and held up his own. “Sometimes it’s best to stick to the original plan.”

Blake judged the distance: he’d never make it. Shakirvasta would fire on him before he could get half-way. Nevertheless, he lowered his body weight a fraction, loosening his knees.

“Sanjay.” Jen’s voice cut through the air behind Blake.

Shakirvasta did a double-take, glancing from her to Blake. “What … what is this? You told me she was dead!”

“No, you told me she was dead, and that I’d killed her. I never admitted anything.”

Shakirvasta shifted from one foot to the other. Both pistols were raised now, facing Blake, but occasionally drifting towards Jen. “But … this is marvellous!”

Jen walked straight towards her former lover.

He frowned. “Wait, Jennifer,” he said. “Just wait there. Please.”

She carried on walking. ‘What’s the matter. Don’t you…” She stopped as Blake’s pistol shifted resolutely in her direction.

Blake bit his lip. Damn, switch hands!

“Please, Jennifer,” Shakirvasta said, a little flustered, “this is not good timing. Please just wait a moment, this man is a criminal, sentenced to death, and judgement needs to be passed.”

Jen stood level with Blake. “For my murder. But I’m alive.”

“Nevertheless,” Shakirvasta was clearly trying to find a rationale, but then gave up. “He has to die, my love, he stands in the way of everything we’ve planned.”

Blake noticed she’d brought no weapon, not even the nanosword. Surely she wasn’t that naïve? He wondered if he could get to Shakirvasta while Jen distracted him. He doubted it.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Sanjay. Our premises were wrong. While this was just about us on a barren planet versus the Alicians and the Q’Roth, the strategy made sense. But I’ve seen fields of spider eggs, and Dimitri says they will hatch in the next few years. And that’s not all. There’s an ocean underground, and inside it a ship, millions of years old. The creature inside is waking, slowly but surely.”

Her eyes glowed, evangelical. Blake had never seen her like this.

“Dimitri and I tried to contact it via the Hohash, and for one brief instant, through my node, I glimpsed a small part of its mind.” She took a half step towards him.

Shakirvasta’s pistol pushed out further as he took a step backwards. “What is this nonsense? What have they done to you?” A look of revulsion crawled across his face.

Jen’s voice was calm, resolute. “It’s a sublime creature, Sanjay, purity of thought beyond words. It made me think about things, about everything. There’s a great war coming to the galaxy. Our petty rivalry with the Alicians is like old, defunct stock, it doesn’t matter anymore. We need soldiers – and the best one on the planet is right in front of you. And farmers, obviously. But we need scientists, researchers, free thinkers, or else we’ll remain small and of no consequence, wrapped up in our own little world.”

Shakirvasta stopped shifting. That worried Blake. It meant he had decided, and Blake reckoned Shakirvasta had way too much to lose to turn back now.

“I don’t know what they’ve done to you, Jennifer – brainwashed you in some way. If you could hear yourself! Do you know who you sound like? Antonia! I was right, they did kill my Jennifer.”

She didn’t rise to the bait. The first shafts of the sun broke across the courtyard, straight into Sanjay’s eyes. He lifted Blake’s pistol to block the glare.

People would be waking, now. Blake knew that Shakirvasta had to act very soon, one way or the other.

“Sanjay, please. It’s not too late. Free Blake, reconvene the Council – the real one, and disband the militia. You can control people by freedom, you once taught that, years ago.”

“No,” he said, his voice tombstone cold. His arm flexed toward Jennifer. “You are no longer Jennifer. My Jennifer would never have come here alone, without any weapon. You haven’t learned anything from me, after all this time. This religious enlightenment on the road to Damascus, it has weakened you, it’s pathetic.” He took a step to the side, so the sun was no longer in his eyes. He hefted the gun in his left hand. “This is Blake’s pistol, Jennifer. You escaped imprisonment, held by Rashid and Dimitri, and you returned here to be by my side, only to be cut down by Blake as he escaped. In a fit of lover’s rage I killed Blake myself, and I will grieve, and my grief will be real. Goodbye, my love.”

Blake had heard the graveyard edge in a killing voice often enough to know that Shakirvasta was ready to fire. He leapt towards Shakirvasta as the fizz of a pulse pistol charged the air and he smelt ozone. In mid-air he raised his arm to smash down on Shakirvasta’s clavicle so that he couldn’t fire on Jen, but before he met his target, Shakirvasta’s body jerked backwards and hit the ground. Blake landed roughly on all fours next to him, watching the tell-tale electric blue wisps of lightning skittering across his corpse, illuminating the look of surprise on the dead man’s face. Shakirvasta had aimed Blake’s weapon at Jen, but as Blake had attacked, the man’s defensive instincts had taken over and he’d fired the weapon at Blake, electrocuting himself in the process.

Jen walked over and crouched next to Shakirvasta, and brushed a lock of lank hair from his staring eye. “Such a waste,” she said. “He was a good leader.”

Blake loosened his still-warm pistol from Shakirvasta’s grip. “So, it wasn’t all an act, then?”

“I’m not religious, Commander, don’t worry. It’s just that I always thought the only way to survive at the top was to be ruthless. Like Sanjay,” she said, glancing down. “But the creature in the ship… It’s immensely strong, yet compassionate.” She shrugged. “I need to wake it, but couldn’t reach it on the last two attempts; it’s very deep. I need some more gear, and I know where Sanjay had all the mil-tech equipment stashed.”

“Jen, you were lovers. How can you just walk away?”

She addressed the corpse. “We were like snakes coiling around each other, using each other. We were fascinated by finding kindred spirits, that’s all. But he was right about one thing, Commander – that Jennifer is dead. I fought for years in the ruins of Dublin during the War, did unspeakable things to survive and wound the enemy. After the War it stayed with me, in my head. When I arrived here, it over-loaded, like a snake biting itself, gorging on its own venom.” She met his eyes. “That Jennifer is lying there, next to him, dead on the ground.”

She started walking away, then paused. “Oh, by the way, Commander, Rashid contacted us an hour ago. He and Vasquez are flying in with some troops.”

“Jen, are you sure waking this creature is a good idea?”

“Absolutely. No time to waste.”

Blake listened to the roar of a sling-jet arriving and landing nearby. As it powered down, he heard the sound of running bare feet coming from the other direction. Sonja burst into the courtyard, Zack’s old pistol at her side. She came over to him, then fired three times at Shakirvasta’s corpse, the body recoiling each time. She dropped the pistol to the ground. “A little late, I know.”

He looked up at her. “It’s never too late, Sonja.”

She held out her hand. ‘Come, I’ll take you to Glenda; she doesn’t have much time.”

They ran all the way.

Chapter 28

Kalarash

"Just like old times,” Jen said, her voice only partly muffled by the squirt of cold air into the rebreather’s full-face mask.

“Except you are alone. Last time we were underwater together, and I am exceedingly anxious for you. How deep are you now?”

She glanced to the right and checked through the green digits short-focused onto her visor. “A kilometre. Hey, my daddy would be proud!” She tried to hide her ragged breathing. She’d been free-falling for twenty minutes in the roiling dark ocean, buffeted by undersea currents. She stared downwards into a cone of light from her torch that only served to emphasise the blackness beneath her.

“You’re the bravest soul I know, my dear Jen.”

“Yeah, well, somebody’s got to do it.” And this is scaring the crap out of me! “How close do you reckon?”

“My sensor says you’re almost on top of it, but it is not precise.”

She yawned her eyes wide open to exercise them – all this staring into a bubble of light, nothing to focus on, was giving her a headache, not to mention vertigo. She tried not to think about getting back. On the way down the thrusters and gyros in her suit could track their target and nudge her back onto course every ten seconds. But going up would require deploying two small balloons. At this depth she wasn’t sure they’d inflate enough to lift her, and if they did, she could drift miles off course, even assuming the thrusters’ fuel cell didn’t run out. She reminded herself she was supposed to be not thinking about it.

“Jen, it’s back again.”

Dimitri sounded worried. Something kept hovering near her every now and again. Dimitri couldn’t determine its shape or size, but she could tell he was trying to play it down.

“Jen. Jen! I want you to take manual control of your thrusters.”

“What is it?” She fumbled for the control panel on her left wrist, flipped open the cover.

“Please do as I say. When I say ‘now’ you must go hard to port.”

“Dimitri, what the hell –”

“NOW!”

She hit the button and went starboard. “Shit!” she said, locking down the other button ricocheting her to port. A huge set of pearl-toothed jaws missed her by centimetres as it shot up past her, its albino smooth body bumping her, somersaulting her. When she stopped in the featureless black she felt dazed, no longer sure which way was up. Look at the bubbles, she remembered her father telling her during her first scuba lesson. She looked for the tiny trail of bubbles emitted from the rebreather, and checked which way they were headed. Good, I’m upright. “Is it gone?”

“It is circling above you.”

“This is taking too long!” She pivoted so that she was head down, and pressed the button which controlled her heel thrusters, and torpedoed downwards, arms stretched out before her.

“What are you doing?”

A blinding pressure headache erupted, as if her forehead was in a vice.

“Jen, it’s turning, it’s diving down towards you!”

She realised she’d made a tactical error. At this angle and speed, the thrusters on her shoulders – her only brakes – would have marginal effect. Her one hope was to reach the ship, probably ramming it with her head. “Come on,” she said aloud, “where the hell are you?” A proximity sensor beeped, signalling that it was fifty metres below.

“Jen, it’s gaining on you!”

She stretched her body to minimise her drag in the water, and ramped up the thrusters to maximum. The beeps accelerated: thirty metres, twenty-five, twenty…”

She felt a yawning suction behind her, and imagined the creature’s jaws opening wide.

Ten metres. The top of the ship snapped into view, like a giant turtle’s head. A wave of turbulence washing against her legs told her the creature had broken off its chase, no doubt not wanting to ram the ship itself.  Instinctively she hit the drag-balloon actuation button to slow her down. The harness tore at her shoulders, whipping her around as her metal boots hit the top of the ship hard with a deafening clang. Her legs buckled, sending her sprawling and scraping across the metallic surface. The current caught the balloons and dragged her sideways. She clutched for anything to anchor herself down, but the convex hull was smooth. The balloons started to lift her from the ship. “No!” she screamed. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” She hit the balloon harness-release button, and clattered back down onto the ship’s crown. She slowed down and stopped. She stayed where she was, breath shaky, as the full enormity of her situation hit her. “Dimitri,” she said, “promise you won’t be angry.”

She’d been shallow-breathing for the last forty-five minutes, trying to squeeze as much oxygen from the rebreather as possible. The creature hadn’t returned, evidently preferring not to venture too close to the ship.

The air was getting hot to the point it singed her lungs, making her cough, which wasted precious oxygen. She’d been on the ship’s skull for four hours, seeking a way in, but there was nothing except smooth metal.

Dimitri had suggested a range of outlandish rescue options, but she knew she was going nowhere. Her family had been submariners for three generations. She guessed they’d be interested in her story, and if there was any after-life, they’d be hearing it first-hand pretty soon. She and Dimitri had gone through the emotional ringer, but she’d asked him to stop – she didn’t want to die morose, and now there was little else to say. They were both waiting for her to die.

“My dear Jen,” he began, again.

“Tell me about Santorini,” she cut in. While she listened, she tried to make her breathing sound normal, though her chest muscles were exhausted, and the over-used air was getting hotter. Her throat ached, feeling as if strips of flesh had been peeled off like wallpaper. She knew she only had minutes of consciousness left. She tried to drift on his words, like a seagull soaring above the Greek cliffs, over an azure sea that no longer existed. But the pain kept intruding, destroying the illusory scene in her mind as easily as tearing rice paper.

She heard muffled voices. Dimitri must have had his hand over the mike, she guessed. She recognised the second voice: Rashid and Dimitri were arguing. “What’s going on, guys?”

“Jennifer – Jen, it’s Rashid here. I have an idea, if Dimitri will let me.”

There was a grumbling noise in the background. “I’ll let you, Rashid. Tell me.”

“Do you have the nanosword with you?”

Jen had almost forgotten about it. She reached down to where it was strapped to her right calf. She’d already tried it on the hull, but it couldn’t penetrate it. “What did you have in mind?”

“It is a long shot, but I want you to carve the infinity symbol on the hull, and place two dots, one in each half. You know the symbol?”

Of course she knew it – an elongated hourglass. Putting the dots in each section would make it a bit like an unpacked yin-yang symbol. She retrieved the sword and activated it. It glowed a soft purple in the darkness, miniscule bubbles fizzing outwards from its blade. “Why, Rashid?” She began drawing the symbol, tracing the arc. It scored the hull, leaving a dull red glow in its wake, quickly quenched by the ice-cold water, as she sculpted the blade around.

“The symbol is known to my people. Legend has it that it was on the Ranger’s ship and his uniform when he crash-landed on Earth nine hundred years ago.”

She finished. She lifted the blade and drove it down point-first into one of the segments. “Maybe I should carve my name instead,” she said, trying not to cough. “You know, Jen was here, for example.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t. She barely heard Dimitri remonstrating with Rashid far up above her. She felt dizzy, her sight growing blotchy. She raised the blade one more time, and felt the tug on her lungs which told her she was out of time. She sank to her knees as she drove the blade down into the second segment, fully convinced that nothing at all would happen.

She fell straight through the hull.

◆◆◆

“Jen, come in.” Dimitri’s bulk dwarfed the small radio set. He flicked the switch again. “Jen, come in.” He glanced at his wristcom. It had been fifty-one minutes since he’d lost contact. She was dead. But he could think of nothing else to do. “Jen, come in, Jen.”

“She’s gone, Dimitri,” Rashid said, as patient as if it was the first time he’d said it.

Dimitri hunched his shoulders, not even deigning to turn around. “Come in, Jen. Jen, come in.”

“Dimitri?”

He toppled from the chair, then struggled to grab the radio set again, kneeling at the table. “Jen, Jen is that you? How can that be?” He heard her laugh.

“Take a look at your sonar.”

He rushed to another table and spun the sonar screen to face him. “Jen, I don’t see anything, I…” But then he did see it. It was barely noticeable at first, but he confirmed it, and sat back, his hands disappearing into his mounds of hair. Rashid’s dolphin couldn’t read the two-dimensional screen, so he stared down through the floor instead, to the ocean below, and saw it too. The ship was rising toward the surface.

◆◆◆

It reminded her of an Escher sketch. She stood firm, feet spread for balance, on a smooth glass ball the diameter of a football field, filled with swirling red gas. She could see Dimitri on a neighbouring one, a grisly green affair connected to hers by a porcelain white pathway, crouching down on its underside. Further afield, she watched Rashid stroll across a sea blue sphere, his form sticking out sideways at a logically impossible angle. Her mind told her both of them should fall off and tumble into the boiling violet lake five kilometres below, toward the base of the ship.

It was like the giant molecular holo-models she’d read about, used to teach chemistry in virtual immersion-classes back on Earth. But she’d studied the laws of physics well enough to know that these globes couldn’t possibly have enough mass to create such a short-range gravity field without affecting each other. The only explanation, as far as she could see, was that the ship’s occupant could control gravity.

None of them had yet seen the alien dweller – she remained convinced by her interactions with the Hohash that there was only one inhabitant on the ship. She’d seen something – a fleeting shadow, more or less – move out of her field of vision once or twice, always staying ahead of her eye movements, which meant its perception and reaction time were off the scale. When she’d first heard the theory that there were nineteen levels of intelligence in the galaxy, she’d struggled to see what they could possibly know at the upper levels. But now, for the first time, she began to think it was possible after all to have such a range of capabilities in the galaxy.

Her gaze shifted back to Dimitri – it was good to be with him again. He’d stuck by her during what she now thought of as her ‘dark phase’. She’d never leave him or lose him again, she decided. Looking back, she felt as if Shakirvasta had cast a spell on her. If he were here now, she’d throw him down into that lake for sure.

Dimitri’s mess of hair and beard craned upwards from whatever he was doing, and he waved to her, shouting something she couldn’t catch, the sound lost in the echoless chamber. She waved back, smiling, trusting him like no one else.

They’d found no control room, or any room for that matter, just these gas-filled spheres, like the one she’d landed on when she first entered the ship. Dimitri had conjectured that this whole hallucinogenic structure was part of the creature itself, but her instincts told her otherwise.

She stared past the countless orbs toward the ship’s hull a kilometre away. A dull orange glow hung there. It reminded her of the first pre-dawn rays back in Dublin when she was a young girl, except here it stayed the same – sunrise never actually arrived. Yet it was uplifting, as if the creature was dawning, waking slowly, coming back to life. But she was growing impatient. Idly, she scuffed the glass surface with one of her boots, creating a smear which healed itself within seconds. They’d been here for hours, and found nothing. Even the Hohash had stopped communicating, instead shadowing her like a manservant, always there when she turned around. On impulse she checked to see it was still there, and it was gone. The slender man who stood in its place took her breath away.

“Gabriel?” she whispered, knowing it couldn’t be her brother. He’d aged since she’d last seen him ten years ago, but the resemblance was unmistakeable.

“Hello, Jen. I’m not Gabriel, but I needed to find a way to communicate with you, other than through my Hohash.”

Her pulse raced. Part of her wanted to rush up to the man in front of her and embrace him, even if it was the alien in disguise. The other part of her was angered by the manipulative act. “Then use a vidcom!”

Gabriel smiled the wan smile she’d forgotten. It almost cracked her apart. “I’m sorry, Jen. I need to have your full attention. It’s taken me a long time to understand your species. The Hohash are my eyes and ears. They are omnipaths: they see, hear, empathise, and record everything. We created them long ago as galactic recording devices, witnesses. I’ve been studying you, as well as your companions on this planet and elsewhere, through the surviving Hohash devices. I needed to know if I could trust humanity.”

Jen snorted. “You must have dozed off during a few episodes if you’ve not noticed how difficult and untrustworthy we can be.” The frustration at seeing her long lost brother, in the flesh, within arms’ reach – yet it was not him – made her scratch deeper. “You must be a little desperate, too, to be honest. Don’t you have any Level Nineteen friends to play with?”

His face grew more serious. “There isn’t much time, Jen. You must listen.”

Gabriel’s face took the same expression he’d had when as kids he’d needed to tell her something important. It disarmed her. She turned away. “What about the others?” But she saw they were not moving, or perhaps were moving very slowly. She turned back to him. “Do you control time as well?”

Gabriel laughed. “I wish. No, I accelerated your synaptic ability for a short while. It won’t harm you.”

She shrugged. “Okay, I’m listening, but I have some questions too.”

“I’ll answer three. Choose carefully.”

She folded her arms. “You first.”

Gabriel’s gaze swept around the menagerie of globes, as if he’d never seen them before. Maybe, Jen thought, he’s never seen them with human vision before.

“The galaxy has been invaded by an ancient race called the Kalaheii. They are Level Nineteen, like me. The definition of a level difference is very simple – they can subdue any level beneath them if they so choose. All the Progenitors – the ancient Level Nineteen races – left this galaxy long ago, or sublimated, which comes to the same thing.” He glanced at her to see if she wished to ask anything, then continued. “We had a War in our home galaxy. Qorall, the Kalaheii leader, was losing badly. He unleashed a weapon we’d not seen before. It destroyed the entire galaxy in a matter of what you would call days. We barely escaped. Quintillions perished, including, so we’d thought, Qorall himself.” He squatted down. He grazed his fingertips over the smooth glass surface. As he did so, the red colour underneath rippled. “Qorall will wage war here, and will steadily sweep across the galaxy. All opponents will fall before him, though they will delay him and his army. I may be able to stop him. But, as you neatly phrased it, I need friends.”

“But your friends left the galaxy.”

He nodded.

Jen thought about it, imagined how Qorall would think. “His first priority will be to ensure there are no ancients in the galaxy. That’s why you’ve been hiding here.”

“I’ve been dormant for some time, contemplating my future. However, his arrival changes everything. He must not find me before I am ready.”

She unfolded her arms. “So, you’re… Oh my God. You’re leaving the galaxy?”

He stood up, stretching backwards at the waist the way her brother used to do. “For a short while. You three are coming with me. One of my ‘friends’ developed a portal, aeons ago, an inter-galactic shunt to a neighbouring galaxy. The trip will take a few months in your subjective time, but back here – and here we will return – some ten or so of your years will pass.”

Jen felt dazed. Her anger about the creature taking the form of her sibling dissipated in the wake of this news. “Why take us with you?”

“A good question, your second by the way.” He chewed his lip. Jen knew that if it had been Gabriel, that gesture would have indicated embarrassment. Could that be true of such an advanced species?

He gazed into the distance. “It’s so long since I’ve held a physical form like this, so limited, yet so alive! That’s why I need you three with me, by the way. When you’ve lived tens of millions of years, not as a race, but as an individual, you’ve seen it all, over and over again. You become detached. Many opt for sublimation, merging with planets, even suns. Others go off to explore new galaxies, new dimensions if they can find entry.” He walked up to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “When I find others… they may persuade me to stay with them. I need a reason to come back. You three will remind me.”

She sensed there must be more to it than that, but she had the feeling he wouldn’t be drawn further on the matter, so she let it go. In any case, his touch melted her anger. He even smelled like her brother. She reached for his hand.

He drew back, leaving her fingers dangling in mid-air. “You have one more question, Jen. What is it to be?”

Her hand dropped to her side, and she brought herself back under emotional control. She thought hard. There were so many potential questions, but one rose above the rest. Why was he here, on this world? What was on Ourshiwann that made him pick it, because she was sure that a Level 19 alien did nothing by accident. “The spiders. They’re important, somehow, aren’t they?”

A broad smile lit up Gabriel’s face. “Your brother would be proud of you, Jen, your father, too. Very well then, I will tell you, and then, before we leave, I need one of you to deliver a message to the man called Micah.”

Chapter 29

Hard Choices

The pyramid-shaped Ossyrian ship Solace dwarfed Esperantia, its burnished sides reflecting the morning’s first rays. It had landed silently during the night, though not unnoticed. A straggling crowd two thousand strong had assembled at the city’s boundary in the chill morning air. A hundred metres ahead of them, near the leading edge of the gargantuan vessel, Vasquez spear-headed a phalanx of a hundred or so jittery soldiers, all of whom hefted an array of heavy weapons.

A hole the shape of an eye opened up near the ship’s base. A transparent oval tube sprouted forward, descending toward the ground where Vasquez and Antonia had been standing the past hour. Micah emerged, leading Sandy, Ramires, and Kat down the glass tunnel. He kept a measured gait until they got closer, when it seemed as if Sandy was tripping over his heels. He broke into a trot, and all four of them ran the last twenty metres. Micah slowed down just as they arrived at the outlet, the others fanning out around him. He made a half-hearted attempt to maintain decorum, but a grin split across his face. “Damn, it’s good to see you!”

Vasquez saluted. “Welcome back, Captain Sanderson.”

Micah turned to Antonia, but Kat whipped around in front of him and swept her into a long kiss.

Micah tried to ignore them, and spoke to Vasquez. “We had some disturbing news… Carlson?”

Vasquez’ smile vanished. “It got ugly here, Micah, but Shakirvasta’s dead, and Josefsson is in a cell with his militia commanders.”

Sandy interjected. “Blake?”

Antonia extricated herself, a little short of breath, her face flushed. “His wife Glenda is dying, Micah. She could go anytime.”

Kat glanced at Micah. “Not if I can help it, she won’t.” She turned back to the mouth of the tube, and shouted. “Chahat-Me, come on down, we have work to do!”

The soldiers, most of whom had lowered their weapons on seeing Micah and the others, raised them again, aiming at the majestic Ossyrian who appeared from the bottom of the ship aboard a crystal hover-sled.

“Hold your fire!” Vasquez yelled to his men, his hand held high.

Chahat-Me drew up beside them silently. Kat pulled Antonia behind her as they boarded the sled and sped towards the city, the wall of soldiers parting before them. Antonia glanced back once, catching Micah’s eye. He nodded. You’re welcome.

Micah picked out a lone figure walking towards them from the crowd. Even at a distance he could see her footsteps weighed heavily. Sonja.

Vasquez asked about the ship, its inhabitants, their weapons capability, Micah was relieved when Ramires stepped in and furnished answers to the barrage of questions. Micah had gone over and over in his mind what he would say to Sonja. He felt personally responsible: it should have been him, not Zack, turned into an emotionless crystal echo, little more than a walking, talking memory chip.

“Sonja,” he said, his pre-planned speeches deserting him.

She stared deep into his face, searching, then looked downcast, her bright hopeful eyes melting in the face of his conciliatory frown. “It’s alright,” she said, “I already knew he was gone. I just needed to be sure.”

She made to leave, but he seized her wrist. “Wait. Please.” He gazed back up the tunnel, nodding to those standing just inside the ship.

He returned to Sonja. “Listen, Zack is gone, but not completely.” He watched her eyes widen as Pierre and the Transpar started their descent down the walkway.

Sandy tried to warn her. “Sonja, it’s not –”

But she pushed through them with surprising force and sprinted into the tunnel towards the Transpar. “Zack!” she screamed. “Zack!”

Sandy set off after her.

“Is it Zack?” Vasquez asked, incredulous. “And is that Pierre?”

Micah watched the scene as Sonja reached the crystal form of Zack. It slowed down as she tried to embrace it. “It was Zack,” Micah said, “but now it’s … it has his memories, that’s all. They don’t add up to a person, not by a long way.”

Micah couldn’t hear what Sonja was saying. He didn’t need to. She collapsed before the Transpar, kneeling down and curling around its lower leg, stopping it from walking. What was once Pierre stared at her with a look of detached curiosity. Two of the Ossyrians came forward, but before they reached her, Sandy arrived. She knelt down next to Sonja, and slowly disentangled her from the glass leg. Sonja collapsed sobbing into Sandy’s shoulder.

Vasquez cleared his throat. “Micah, why exactly did you bring it back? What good is going to come of it?”

Micah and Ramires exchanged glances. Micah spoke in a hushed tone. “We were put on trial by one of the high races – all humanity was judged. What happened to Zack was part of that process. We think that maybe they sent the Transpar – that’s what it’s called – with us, because their judgement isn’t entirely over.”

Pierre and the Transpar made their way down. Pierre’s silver eyes glistened in the morning sun. He addressed Vasquez. “Colonel,” he said, “how nice to see you again.” He offered a silver hand. Vasquez didn’t bat an eyelid, and shook Pierre’s hand firmly.

Micah knew that Pierre was affecting this all; doubtless his mind was elsewhere, working on infinitely more complex problems, most probably the Galactic incursion.

“Why are you here, Pierre?” Vasquez asked.

“The Ossyrians, the Transpar and myself are here to help you. We can offer you protection.”

Micah thought Vasquez would have folded his arms if he could. Instead he stood rigid as ever.

“You’ll forgive me for saying this, Pierre, but as you know yourself, invaders and colonisers throughout history have used very similar overtures.”

The Transpar spoke, its wind chime voice tinkling on the breeze. “Where is your other arm?”

Micah’s jaw dropped slightly. Vasquez didn’t miss a beat.

“I lost it in the War, Sir, fighting for what I believe in.”

“Which is?” the Transpar asked.

Vasquez jutted out his chin. “Freedom, Sir. That is what we humans value most.”

The Transpar’s glass eyes twinkled.

“Micah,” Vasquez said, “maybe you and I had better brief each other before you meet the Council.”

Micah nodded, knowing there was worse to come. “Good idea.”

Pierre held up his hand. “No.”

Micah and the others froze. The tell-tale buzz of soldiers’ pulse weapons activating drifted toward them on the breeze. Micah leaned towards Pierre. “What are you doing?”

Pierre ignored him. “Colonel. You and Micah can talk inside the ship while we repair your arm.”

Vasquez bristled. “My arm is perfectly…” His brow furrowed so deep, Micah thought it might crack. “Wait a Goddam minute, you’re not saying…” He turned to Micah and Ramires. “Can they…?”

Two Ossyrians arrived level with them. Pierre faced them, his eyes evanescing instructions to them.

Sandy and Sonja arrived. “Colonel,” Micah said. “These are the best doctors in the galaxy. They don’t often make house-calls.”

Micah had never seen Vasquez ruffled. “Trust has to start somewhere, Colonel, and, to be honest, it’ll make our job a lot easier.”

Vasquez’ eyes darted from Micah, to Pierre, to the Ossyrians. He glanced down to the stump where his arm used to be. “Twelve years,” he said softly, head lowered.

Pierre gestured toward the tube. “If it makes you feel any better, Colonel, this race used to be fierce warriors and field surgeons. They’d patch up their wounded in the midst of battle, repairing injuries, growing new limbs and re-fitting them if necessary, and have them fighting again within the hour.”

Vasquez stood tall again, and nodded. He turned around to his soldiers. “You hear that men. One hour. Take a break. If I’m not back here in one hour, board their ship, and bring your weapons.”

Vasquez faced Pierre. “I’m all yours, Pierre. You have fifty-nine minutes and fifty seconds to convince me.”

Micah wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw the trace of a smile cross Pierre’s silver lips.

◆◆◆

Micah sat positioned between Pierre on one side, and Chahat-Me and the Transpar on the other, in the domed, circular room. Its rugged white walls had a deadening effect on sound. Vasquez had remarked to Micah that many thought the room had been a place of meditation for the spiders, but in reality, no one knew. He’d also said that it had a beneficial effect on the Council meetings they’d been holding there recently, since people did not ramble on – it required such an effort to keep discussions animated.

Sandy, Ramires and Kat joined the Council meeting as honorary members, taking up their allocated places next to Micah in the high-backed wooden chairs arranged in a wide circle. Micah recognised them as those Shakirvasta had originally brought along, but the conference table was gone, people adopting the apparent spider habit of facing each other without any physical object separating them. He didn’t know all the other faces in the Council, the hastily concocted governing body of the surviving population, which had quickly filled the vacuum left by Shakirvasta’s militaristic junta.

Vasquez sat across the circle from Micah, oblivious to all around him, staring at his new right arm, playing with his fingers, curling and uncurling them. News of this ‘miracle’ had spread quickly, and the Ossyrians had wasted no time in curing other afflictions. Micah knew it would add weight to his cause, though he wasn’t sure it would be enough.

He glanced towards Antonia and Sonja, who were equally introspective, for opposite reasons: Antonia had found her lost love, while Sonja had lost hers. Next to Sonja’s seat was Rashid’s empty chair – he’d been missing for several days. But as long as they had ten members present, the Council was considered to have a quorum, and its decisions would hold sway over the entire population.

Micah was in no hurry to see Jennifer again – even if she’d turned over a new leaf according to Vasquez, the people of Ourshiwann would be less quick to forgive. He wished Dimitri could be there though – he’d have been a welcome tonic for the dour atmosphere in the room. But the Professor was too close to his protégé, and so would probably not be given a Council position. He didn’t recognise any of the other Council members, but they’d each been elected for various reasons. Micah mused that humanity was on trial yet again, this time judging itself – hardly best positioned to reach an objective conclusion.

He stared towards the empty seat dominating the room: Blake’s. They’d awaited his arrival some forty-five minutes. When the Commander at last entered, Micah was shocked at how gaunt he looked, despite Vasquez’ warning.

Blake’s force of presence wasn’t lacking, though. He strode towards his place, his footfalls stilling conversation in the room. He surveyed the alien from behind the polished oak back of the chair, and gave Micah the curtest of nods. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for waiting. I’ve already been briefed. I have to say that I was amazed, aghast even, at these proposals.”

Shit, he’s against it.

“However,” he cleared his throat, and stared down at the seat of the chair, “in light of recent events, namely that my wife’s can–”. His speech stopped dead. Several people made to get up but he raised a hand, his face tilted towards the floor, jaw clenched. Micah saw the great man’s chest lift and fall, Blake’s breathing the only sound in the chamber. He lifted his head and gazed around the circle. “She will live. I have you to thank for that,” he said, addressing Chahat-Me. “But that’s a personal matter, and as Chairman of this Council, I don’t intend to let that influence my judgement of the proposition we’re here to debate today. So, we will hear your proposals, and then discuss them in private – humans only.” He addressed Micah. “Is that acceptable to our guests?”

Before he could answer, Pierre nodded gravely. “Your terms are accepted.”

“Then let’s begin,” Blake said, and took his seat.

Micah swallowed, then rose to his feet to convey the Tla Beth ruling.

Micah paced up and down the centre of the room, grown stuffy after hours of relentless arguing. “For the hundredth time, there’s really no choice!”

“We hear you, Micah,” a matronly, red-haired woman said, in a way that indicated she’d heard quite enough.

“No you don’t!” He raised his hands towards the ceiling, looking upwards, trying to make them see. “We’ve been out there, we’ve seen what awaits us. We won’t survive any other way.” He was glad Pierre and the Transpar weren’t present to hear all of this – they might just ship out and leave humanity to its own fate. But he hoped not. Pierre had confided in him earlier that the first Tla Beth assault on the Kalaheii had been a crushing rout. The Tla Beth Level 17 warships – not seen in action for fifty thousand years – had been easily disabled by Qorall’s arsenal of legendary weaponry. But such news had failed to sway the Council. It seemed too abstract and foreign to them, too far away.

“You’ve seen it, Mr. Sanderson. But we have only your own word and your colleagues’ word for it. Perhaps you were unlucky with the aliens you encountered. Maybe you approached them the wrong way. Please try to understand – these are our children and grandchildren we’re talking about sacrificing.”

Micah faced the stout, middle-aged woman. She was one of a number of key Council members, presumably stalwart citizens who had risen in status over the past five months, who were resolutely blocking the alien proposal. She was a lot shrewder than she looked, he’d come to realise in the past four hours. But he sensed that Blake was the real threat, though the Commander was biding his time, playing out his role as Chairman of the Council, staying out of the fray until the end. Blake’s emotions were locked down like a good poker player. Yet Micah had seen subtle reactions which convinced him that Blake was strongly opposed to the motion.  Micah guessed that in the end, it was going to come down to him and Blake.

“Not sacrificing,” Micah continued, no longer bothering to try and hide his exasperation, “they’ll be better, for God’s sake, better able to defend themselves and make their way in the galaxy!”

The Councilwoman remained calm and collected, adopting a haughty air. “We’re altering humanity. There will be no way back, will there, Mr. Sanderson? May I ask you to remind us of the likely changes that will take place in our offspring?”

He frowned. They’d been over this before. Each time he went through it he felt victory – sustainable survival prospects for humanity – slipping from his grasp. He held up a closed fist, and then peeled open his little finger, beginning his cataloguing of the five main differences the Ossyrians had predicted.

“One – they will be physically superior – a little taller, a lot stronger, with faster reflexes, better hearing and sharper eyesight.” He noted Kat staring at him intently, Sandy too – Kat’s child and Sandy’s embryo were already undergoing the process, the ‘upgrade’ as someone in the Council had labelled it. “Two – they’ll be more intelligent. They will mature a lot faster, able to speak fluently after a year, and they’ll be able to grasp mathematical concepts by the age of two.”

The woman interrupted. “At what age will they surpass us intellectually?”

Micah restrained a sigh. “Around twelve.” He raised his voice to quell the murmurs simmering around the Council. “Three – they’ll be able to parallel process, meaning they can do two things at once, for example, having a conversation and working on a computer at the same time, without making any mistakes or missing anything.” He tried to press the advantage. “Don’t you see? That alone is worth its weight in gold. Flying a space-craft is very tricky; we have to rely on advanced computers all the time because they can process information in parallel, whereas we can’t. Most other races can. Without this upgrade, because it is an upgrade, we’d be the dullards of the galaxy! If we’re lucky they might let us farm land and plant crops. That’s all we’ll be good for.” He caught sight of Sandy’s slight shake of her head – of course, what was he thinking, there were farmers here in the Council. Several members folded their arms, their body language as clear as raising a drawbridge. This time he let the sigh come out. “Sorry, that was … that wasn’t meant the way it sounded.” He realised he was screwing this up. He unfurled his index finger. “Four – they’ll be more creative. Music, art, they’ll create wonders we’ve never imagined.”

The woman raised her nose. “Will we lower-grade humans – dullards and farmers that we are apparently – be able to appreciate such art, Mr. Sanderson?”

Sandy tapped her inflated belly. “I’ll appreciate whatever my son does.”

Micah wanted to get through this part. His thumb joined his fingers, out in the open air. “Five.” He paused. This was the one people feared most. “They will be less emotionally labile.”

The woman snorted. “Cold fish, that’s what you mean, isn’t it, Micah? Cold and uncaring? Like your friend Pierre?”

Kat interjected, urgency in her voice. “Pierre’s already Level Ten. There’s no comparison!”

“As I understand it, my dear, he is prepared to leave you and your child – his child – behind him, in the pursuit of greater things.”

Micah cut in – he had to get off this track somehow. “That’s not how it’s going to be. Less labile means less erratic: people will be able to control their emotions, they won’t fly off the handle so readily. There’ll also be much less mental illness, if any at all. Isn’t that worth something?” He stared at the faces around the room.

Blake joined in. “People will be more dispassionate, is that what you’re saying, Micah?”

Micah wasn’t sure if Blake was supporting or preparing for an attack. “Yes,” he said cautiously.

Blake rose from his chair. “But it seems to me, that passion is what makes us human. Isn’t that so, Micah?”

It was rhetorical. He didn’t get a chance to reply.

“You see, Micah,” Blake continued, “I didn’t lead us all the way here, fighting against the Alicians, so we could become like them.”

Micah saw several vigorous nods.

Blake continued. “I promised to protect humanity, not to sell it out.”

Micah spread his hands. “It won’t –”

“Hear me out, Micah. You’ve been speaking a lot this afternoon, and I’ve listened to everything you’ve had to say, and weighed it up carefully. But it comes down to this. Are we going to sacrifice everything that defines us as a species, in order to survive? If we’re no longer human, is that survival?” Several people clapped.

Micah waited a moment. He hadn’t wanted to do this. His stomach churned, rebelling against the line of argument his mind knew was his last recourse, humanity’s last chance. He kept his voice low. “When we departed Eden, Commander, you made a speech to all of us.” He paused, allowing the clapping to sputter to a stop, all eyes turning to him. “You said that hubris had led to our undoing. I had hoped that we had learned from that, but maybe we just don’t learn.” He walked up to Blake, facing him off, raising his voice. “The Alicians are still out there. Sister Esma is biding her time, hoping we screw up so they can finish what they started, or better still, enslave us. And if they don’t, there’ll be a dozen other species in the queue.”

Blake replied, ice cold. “We can take our chances; move planets again if necessary.”

The frustration of the last few hours, the anguish of the past six months since he’d first stumbled on the Alician-Q’Roth plot back on Earth, and the scars from the War ten years ago, welled up inside him like a fast-fusion reactor with the safeties off. Bordering on shouting, his voice uneven, he launched his last-ditch attack on Blake.

“Chances? What chance did we have against the Q’Roth, only a couple of levels above us? What chance did you have against Zack, your best friend, when he was re-programmed by the Alicians? What chance did your own son, Robert, have against the Alicians in the War? If he had had the opportunity the Ossyrians are giving us –”

Blake’s eyes flared. “Don’t you dare drag my son into this!” he shouted.

The harshness in his voice drove Micah back a step. Blake tried to recover his breathing, his eyes coring into Micah’s, amplifying Micah’s regret over his own tactics.

“Commander, I was merely –”

Blake held up his right hand. “Enough, Micah.” His eyes swept around the room. “I think we’ve all heard enough, haven’t we? Frankly, nothing new of any substance has been added in the last hour and a half. I propose that we move to the vote. Any objections?” Blake gestured towards Micah’s seat. Micah clenched his fists, but he turned and sat down, arms folded. Sandy laid a hand on his shoulder.

Blake waited a full minute until people finished shuffling in their chairs, then addressed the Council. “There are eleven of us here, since Rashid is missing, but we have a quorum, so the vote will be binding. Moreover this will be an open vote: we take responsibility for our actions. All those for the proposal?” Sandy, Ramires, Kat and Micah raised their hands, followed hesitantly by Antonia. Micah glanced over to Vasquez, who replied with a subtle shake of his head, his old hand clasping the new one, locking it firmly in his lap. Five. Shit!

“All those against?” Blake’s own hand went up first, followed by others. Micah bowed his head, ready for the coup de grace.

“That… also makes five,” Blake said.

Micah lifted his head. All eyes latched onto Sonja. He’d almost forgotten she was there; she’d said nothing throughout the entire debate.

“Sonja?” Blake asked, quietly.

She stood up. “You’ll have my answer first thing in the morning.” Without a backward glance, she walked out of the chamber, amid erupting confusion in the Council.

Abruptly Micah stood up.

“Where are you going?” Sandy asked.

“To prevent a catastrophe.” He headed out the exit opposite the one Sonja had taken.

◆◆◆

Micah dropped his bag onto the end of the bed. He resisted the urge to collapse onto the cot, and instead perched on its hard edge. Night was falling, wondrous to see after living on a spaceship for five months. He’d talked with Pierre, but he had been distant, his mind clearly elsewhere. Micah had felt like a mosquito buzzing around Einstein. Kat was right, Pierre was gone. He just hoped Pierre could do what he’d asked. He suppressed the guilt he felt about it.

“Micah,” someone whispered.

It took him a moment to register the voice. He levered himself off the bed, his spirits lifting. “Rashid?”

His Indistani friend emerged from the shadowy doorway to the adjoining room. Micah stared at Rashid’s silver dolphin band around his head – he’d never seen one before, except in vids.

“No one must know I have been here,” he said.

Micah was taken aback at the lack of a ‘hello’ at least – he’d not seen Rashid since leaving Ourshiwann months ago. He seemed edgy. “Why? What’s going on?”

Rashid bit his lip, looking toward the door. “How is Sonja?”

“Sonja?” Micah’s brow puckered in puzzlement. “She’s, well, pretty cut up. Where’ve you been?”

Rashid nodded, as if remembering why he’d come. “I’ve been sent to you to deliver a message, before we depart.”

Micah presumed his reference to ‘we’ referred to Jen and Dimitri, based on what Vasquez had told him earlier. “Depart?”

“Yes, we are … going away.”

Micah’s frustration rose. It had already been a long, difficult day. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where?” He watched Rashid’s face, the tension lacing his forehead. “Never mind. What’s the message?”

“Protect the spiders. At all costs.”

Micah waited, observing Rashid, who looked distracted, his shoulders rigid. But Rashid said no more. “That’s it? You mean the eggs, right?”

“In two years a new generation will hatch. They are critical to galactic survival, and must be protected at all costs, but you must tell no one.”

Micah parked his hands on his hips. “I thought communicating with aliens was difficult,” he murmured. But he could see Rashid was in pain of some sort. “Look, Rashid, is there anything I can –”

“Zack. Did he make it back?”

Micah sighed. “No. Long, sorry story, and I feel responsible.”

“Then Sonja is –”

“There’s something left of Zack. Maybe not enough, certainly not a man anymore, but Pierre thinks that maybe –”

“There is hope, then,” Rashid finished. He straightened up.

He thought Rashid seemed to relax, become himself again. He’d been hoping to have Rashid and Dimitri around, whatever the vote’s outcome. “When are you coming back?”

For the first time Rashid faced Micah directly, as if he could see straight through the dolphin. “It will be a very long trip.”

Micah didn’t want him to leave. Coming back hadn’t been what he’d expected. Instead of the exultation, the joy of seeing old friends and colleagues, he’d found complex political situations, changed relationships, and in several quarters, outright hostility. He didn’t know how much this was because people had changed, and how much was due to the fact that he himself had changed. “The Ossyrians could fix your eyes, you know,” he offered.

Rashid jiggled his head, a smile at last dawning across his face. “Yes, I have heard about their medical wonders. A few weeks ago I would have begged them to return my sight.” His smile retreated. Micah realised Rashid had aged since he’d last seen him.

“But sometimes, Micah, a blind man sees more clearly. Less distraction.”

He had no idea what Rashid meant, but had learned to accept such aphorisms from his Indistani friend. Without warning, Rashid approached and hugged him. Micah’s arms stuck out like he was a waxwork model, then he hugged Rashid back.

“Good luck, Rashid.” They stood back from each other. “Give my regards to Dimitri. And Jennifer, too, I suppose.”

As Rashid headed for the exit, Micah thought of something. “Wait a second, Rashid. Why me? Why wasn’t the message for Blake?”

“He didn’t say.” Rashid slipped out into the night.

Micah stared out into the darkness, thinking that for the first time he really understood just how far away those stars really were. Somewhere in the distance he heard music, shouting. It was welcome after months of hushed, vacuum-packed space travel. He longed to hear cicadas, dogs barking, babies crying, or hover cars speeding in the distance; all the sounds he used to hate. Maybe one day.

Then it struck him, because he was suddenly sure Rashid had not been referring to Dimitri: He? Who the hell is ‘he’?

◆◆◆

The Council members arrived subdued, a few with stooped postures, bleary-eyed. The previous evening, and a sizeable chunk of the early hours of the morning, had seen a large open-air party. People had been celebrating the Ossyrians’ arrival and medical prowess, as well as the recent release from Shakirvasta’s martial law. Micah hoped it had eased the mood in the Council. Sandy and Ramires were standing close by, and closer to each other. He didn’t try to engage them, instead leaning forward in his seat, alone, concentrating on the task ahead, feeling humanity’s survival hanging in the balance. Vasquez had earlier confided in Micah that he knew Micah was right, but that he wouldn’t go up against Blake. Micah had just nodded, knowing that loyalty could easily trump logic, and besides, who was he to judge what was right?

He asked himself again why he’d told no one about Louise being still alive, or Hannah’s demise. He didn’t fully understand it himself. He could have thrown it into the debate, underlining their plight with the threat of Louise being back again, but somehow it felt underhand to do so. Of course it might pale into insignificance compared to what he’d instigated last night.

He prayed Pierre had pulled it off, even though he’d said he wasn’t certain to succeed. But if it wasn’t finished in time then it was all for nothing: Micah would lose the vote, and the Ossyrians would leave humanity to its own devices. Mankind could negotiate maybe a decade of peaceful quarantine on Ourshiwann – not nearly enough – after which it would be open season, with the Alicians waiting patiently at the gate. But if the Ossyrians left, they would take the Transpar with them. That had been the key. The Transpar was the wild card in the pack, and Micah intended to play it fully. He stared at Sonja’s empty chair, unsure how she’d react. He’d done this for the good of everyone, he told himself, again.

The chattering in the room died down: Sonja had arrived. The gravity of the situation reasserted itself on everyone, as they all took their seats silently. She walked solemnly towards her chair, head held high, ebony face like marble.

“Good luck,” Sandy whispered to Micah. It sounded consolatory, anticipating defeat.

Blake waited for Sonja to take her place, then rose to his feet. “Sonja, have you made your decision?”

She nodded once.

Micah glanced around once more to the empty doorway.

She stood. “I –”

She was interrupted by a commotion outside: shouting, muffled noises, and heavy footfalls. The Transpar strolled into the room, dragging along two soldiers struggling ineffectively to hold it back. Its crystal head swivelled first to Blake, then to Sonja.

Blake held up a hand. “Easy men, let it be. What do you want here?” he said to the Transpar. “This is a closed session.”

The soldiers backed away, as the crystal man opened its mouth. Its teeth sparkled, its voice carrying like coins bouncing off a stone floor. “Blake,” it said. “You are Blake. I remember you. I remember Kurana Bay.”

Blake glared at the Transpar. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The Transpar walked to a spot in front of Sonja. “And you. You are Sonja. I have many memories of you and the one called Zack.”

Blake rounded on Micah. “Is this your doing, Micah?”

Micah rose from his chair, facing Sonja. He’d rehearsed this a dozen times, but still it came out haltingly. “Sonja, one of us had to make the ultimate sacrifice, out there, at the trial. I wanted it to be me, but Zack… Well, you know him better than any of us. When we won, I asked the court if his memories were still inside him. I knew the emotions were gone, but the memories…” He faced Blake. “Normally after a trial is finished, they dispose of Transpars, but they agreed not to, and left him in the Ossyrians’ care.” He swallowed. “Last night I asked Pierre to…” Micah found it hard to say the rest. He stared at the floor.

“What did you ask him to do, Micah?” Sandy asked.

“At first it was about saving us all, by getting Sonja on our side, any way possible.” He glanced in Sonja’s direction. “But as I talked to Pierre, I realised it was guilt. It,” he said, nodding in the Transpar’s direction, “that, should have been me.” He took a breath, drawing himself up. “I asked Pierre to restore as much of Zack as he could. He’s done something to the Transpar, don’t ask me what. It’ll never be Zack, of course, and I can ask him to undo it if –”

“No!” Sonja was on her feet. “No, Micah, you’ve done quite enough.”

She approached the Transpar, standing close to its face, looking up into its crystal eyes. “What is my favourite time of the day?”

“Sunset,” it answered.

“Where did Zack and I first kiss?”

“In your room in your parents’ house. There was a storm outside. You were talking, and he told you not to stop, to close your eyes so he could focus on the sounds, and then he leant forward and kissed you in mid-sentence.” The Transpar looked at the ceiling, then back down at Sonja. “He thought you were fragile, too trusting in people.” The Transpar sounded curious, as if trying to grasp the emotions underneath the words. “He never told you that, because you are also a proud, strong woman. He was terrified something would happen to you. He wanted so much to protect –”

She placed a finger on the Transpar’s lips, silencing it. “Stop, please,” she said, her voice quavering.

She returned to her seat, clutching its edges with rigid arms. She glared at Micah. “You’ve manipulated me, Micah. You’ve grown from the young man I met six months ago. I’m not sure I like what you’ve become.”

Blake cut in. “Then your vote is against the proposal?”

Sonja looked to the Transpar, then to Blake. “I’m sorry, Blake, really, but if I do that, these Ossyrians will take this – him – with them.” She stared hard at Micah. “My vote is for the proposal. Micah has left me no choice.”

In the uproar that followed, with everyone on their feet shouting and arguing, Micah stared at Sonja in disbelief. In the din, he mouthed the word “Sorry”. Her lips widened a little, and she mouthed back, so that no one else could hear, “Thank you.”

◆◆◆

Blake and Micah were the last two left in the room, absolute quiet having seeped in once all the others had gone. They stood some distance apart. Blake hadn’t said a word to Micah since Sonja’s vote. Micah had expected an outburst of some kind, but instead he sensed resolution, and waited patiently, ready to accept whatever Blake had to say.

Blake sat down in Rashid’s seat. “I’m retiring, Micah. I’m going to spend my remaining time with Glenda. There’s a chair over there needs filling. You’ve earned it, and you’re man enough now for the job.”

Micah searched for an edge in Blake’s voice, a tinge of bitterness, but found none. He knew he still had a long way to go to reach Blake’s level of professionalism. He walked over to the chair, ran his fingers over its varnished wooden surface. It was no doubt heavy, like the position it occupied in the Council. He considered others who could have taken it, Vasquez for one.

Micah had never sought power – if anything he’d always been anti-establishment. But the idea resonated and, more than that, he wanted to see this through, and only someone who believed in the upgrade could lead humanity forward. He knew it would be less of an uphill struggle if he was at the top.

“I’ll do it. But you can’t retire. I need you to do something.”

“Micah, I’ve –”

“Jennifer, Rashid and Dimitri need you to do something. The galaxy needs you for one last task. And Glenda will be well enough to help you soon.”

Blake surveyed Micah. “Sonja was right about you, you’ve grown alright. Well, you’ve got my attention. What is this great Galactic task?”

“Protect the spiders. There are eggs on the planet, and they’re going to hatch in a couple of years.”

“Ah,” Blake said. “They found their way in, then.”

Micah tried the chair for size. “Could you maybe elaborate on that?”

Blake told Micah of the caves, the egg nest, and the ship. Micah pondered for a while. He closed his eyes and let the possibilities formulate into hypotheses. Rashid had obviously been referring to the ship’s inhabitant. In the Tla Beth ‘Court’, Micah had seen an image of a crossbow-shaped ship, and on the way to Ourshiwann, Pierre had mentioned an ancient race of Progenitors, called the Kalarash. The pieces slotted together in his mind, though he had no idea what the role of the spiders could be. As often happened, his projections catapulted forward to yield a less certain, but plausible prediction: that the Galactic battle would find its way to Ourshiwann, and humanity and the spiders would be swept up into that confrontation. He opened his eyes.

Blake stood in front of him, watching, a wry smile on his face. “Still want the chair, Micah?”

He rose and met Blake’s offered hand, shaking it firmly. “Yes, but I’d really welcome your guidance.”

◆◆◆

Micah strolled towards the central plaza. He wore his father’s military jacket; it kept the chill night air at bay and, well, it was comfortable, he told himself. People liked to see him in it. At first he thought they respected it, or his deceased father. But then he realised they respected the fact that he wore it, honouring his father. Either way, Micah had decided that it fit, and anything that helped him get the job done…

He’d been doing the rounds, visited Kat and Antonia, played with their child, Petra, which had been awkward at first, until Kat said Micah should visit often, that Petra needed some kind of male anti-role model in her life, or else she’d end up straight. Despite the banter, Micah suspected she was still cut up about Pierre.

He travelled to the egg nest with Blake and Glenda. Far from being revolted as he’d feared, Glenda threw herself into cataloguing the chamber’s contents, planning nurseries, and hatching her own proposal for co-habitation between spiders and humans. He winced at that, and began formulating his own plans for a new human city on the ridge, though they only had two years to build it.

He and Blake had descended alone into the deeper caves, found the roiling ocean, but no trace of the ship, just equipment abandoned by Dimitri. Blake told him of Rashid’s love for Sonja. Micah cursed himself for not seeing it, playing back his last conversation with his tormented friend, realising how it had cemented Rashid’s resolve to depart.

Micah squatted, staring down at the unending, perfect waves rolling fifty metres below his feet. He wondered how long it had been there, how long the ship had been hiding, waiting; maybe a million years. We always took ourselves so seriously back on Earth. We had no idea what was out in the galaxy. He ran a finger over the smooth glass surface, and wondered how much of a difference it would have made if mankind had known, and decided it would have made all the difference.

He straightened up. “How is Sonja getting on with the Transpar?”

“They need time, a lot of time. Pierre’s advanced nannites are still working. Last time I was there, it saluted me, can you believe that?”

Micah smiled. “I don’t think Pierre is doing it just for Sonja, or for me. I have a feeling the Tla Beth will pay a visit one day and ask the Transpar to give them a reckoning on us, on humanity. Pierre is doing it to protect us.”

Blake picked up the torch, and indicated to the exit. “Sorry the Ossyrians didn’t grant your request, about upgrading adults who want the process. Guess we’ll have to rely on the young ones to fend for us.”

Micah felt a shiver, knowing the social problems all of this was going to unleash. He’d have a lot on his shoulders starting in about twelve years’ time, when teenagers would begin to outsmart him. He hoped he’d done the right thing.

◆◆◆

Micah met Pierre for the last time as he boarded the small, ash-coloured spacecraft crouching crocodile-like outside the city.

“Are you coming back, Pierre?”

“The Kalaheii must be defeated. I will do whatever I can to help.”

Micah nodded, hearing Ukrull grumble something from inside the ship.

“Micah, there is something you should know. Sister Esma has petitioned for stewardship of humanity if this ‘experiment’ fails.”

Micah shook his head. “She doesn’t give up, does she?”

He told Pierre about Louise.

“There is no threat now. Neither Alicians nor Q’Roth are allowed within ten light years of this planet. But the quarantine is only for one generation, Micah.”

“I understand. But by then, I doubt I’ll be in charge, Pierre – one of the young men or women will be better suited.”

Pierre didn’t respond, but it seemed to Micah that he had an odd, unreadable expression on his face, as if he was deciding something. Pierre held out his hand, Micah assumed out of politeness. Micah gripped the cool silver, feeling a tingling sensation in his palm. “Good bye, Pierre,” Micah said.

“Au revoir,” he replied, a shadow of a smile.

Pierre boarded the ship, and shortly afterwards, it vanished. “Good luck,” Micah said to the rocks and bushes undisturbed by its wake. As he walked back to the city, he scratched his aching forearm absently, oblivious to the grey-black swirl, like iron filings, that circled there momentarily before disappearing beneath his skin.

◆◆◆

Micah found Sandy and Blake in the central plaza. Like others who had gathered there and elsewhere in the city, they were looking upwards. He followed their gaze to see the final pulse of red light whisk up from the top of the Ossyrian pyramid ship into the night sky. A luminous drop, like a giant scarlet snowflake, formed at its zenith, then radiated outwards in every direction down to the horizon and beyond, a shimmering shroud around the entire planet. After a few seconds, the shield became completely transparent, vanishing from human eyesight.

“That’s it,” Blake said. “Nothing gets in or out. From here on it’s just us, the spiders, and a handful of Ossyrians.”

“A generation of quarantine; fifteen years,” Micah said. “A lot can happen in that time.”

“Families, stability, some breathing space, for one thing,” Blake said.

“Coming to terms with arachnophobia, for another,” Sandy added.

Micah laughed. But he foresaw a complex tapestry of social problems in the near future, and knew that he and Blake would clash again, sooner or later; Micah had won the first round; that was all. Still, he wanted to relax for the moment, so he suppressed those thoughts. “No news on Rashid, Jennifer or Dimitri?” he ventured.

Blake slapped his hands together, then rubbed them in the crisp air. “None. I doubt we’ll see them again.”

“I wonder what was in the ship?” Micah added.

“We’ll probably never know,” Blake said. He tilted his head as he looked at Micah, then cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Micah, Sandy tells me … you knew my son.”

Micah coughed, and shot a glance at Sandy, wishing she’d warned him, but she just stared right back at him, smiling. He nodded, facing Blake. “I was in Kurana Bay, just a kid then, like Robert. We were in the same training squad. You and Zack rescued me. I never expected you to remember me, given everything that happened that night.”

Blake chewed on it for a while. For the first time since Micah had met him, Blake looked vulnerable.

Sandy put a hand on each of their shoulders, pulling them closer. “God, you men are really useless, aren’t you? Micah, tell him about his son.”

He swallowed. “I only knew him for a couple of months,” he replied. He addressed Blake. “What do you want to know, exactly?”

Blake’s eyes lit up. “Everything, Micah,” he said softly. “Everything you can remember.”

Chapter 30

Epilogue

Pierre studied Ukrull’s chaotic green console, studded with jagged controls, spattered with myriad spherical screens of shades of brown which Pierre had difficulty interpreting.

“The Kalarash was here all along?” Pierre asked.

“Masked. Level 19 stealth tech. Detected once ship folded space-time.”

“The three humans have gone with it?”

“Yes.”

Pierre’s eyes zoomed onto the central cubic display showing the razor-thin tear in the space-time fabric caused by the Kalarash’s departure. No more than a hair’s breadth, and blacker-than-black, it streaked up from the planet’s surface, flailing silently out into the void.

“Must fix,” Ukrull said. “Qorall’s spies must never see.” He nudged Pierre with a claw. “Image it.”

Pierre’s left hand riffed over the controls to highlight the rip on the main screen. Ukrull wheeled the ship around to intercept the filament from just above the shimmering barrier. The ship emitted a narrow orange beam from its front section. Ukrull – in manual, Pierre noticed – steered the ship to trace up the tear’s entire length, from Ourshiwann’s orbital shield, all the way to the thread’s dangling end a hundred or so kilometres out into space. The painstaking operation took over five hours, and Ukrull didn’t miss a centimetre. He then withdrew the ship to observe.

Pierre was relieved to see the rip slowly contract in on itself and disappear. He also noticed Ukrull did not seem in the least fatigued. “Can we track the Kalarash vessel?”

“No.”

“You’ve informed Tla Beth Central?”

Ukrull folded his muscular forelegs. “Yes.”

“What was their suggestion?”

Ukrull snorted, his heavy tail thudding into the hull at the same time.

“What do you suggest?” Pierre asked.

“Have idea. Long shot. Long trip.”

Pierre wondered – not for the first time – why Ukrull hated using words, minimising everything, odd for such an advanced species. He seemed to be always testing Pierre, trying to make him guess what was probably obvious to the Ranger. Pierre considered what to do next, what leads to follow. He concentrated his mind, searching through trans-dimensional landscapes of probability projections, but nothing emerged that was statistically noteworthy. The galaxy was simply too big: they could be anywhere. And the space-time rip the Kalarash ship had left behind was like nothing ever recorded. That ship could be half-way across the galaxy by now, or even … yes, it was possible, the Kalarash vessel might have left the galaxy, in which case there was no way to pursue them. To make matters worse, according to the Tla Beth, there was only one Kalarash left.

He noticed that Ukrull remained still. The Rangers appeared to be aggressive, over-bearing reptiles, and said little. Yet he knew Ukrull was Level Fifteen. He wondered how this could be, in a race so loathe to communicate.

“Not loathe,” Ukrull said.

The two words struck Pierre’s mind like a jeweller’s hammer smartly splitting a diamond in two. He understood straightaway why Rangers would want to keep it a secret.

“You’re telepathic?”

Ukrull laughed, a vicious chomping sound like chewing rocks. “You not so dumb.” He opened his foreclaws and activated a number of controls in blurred motion while he spoke. “Kalarash paired species. Mate for life. Female still hiding. Find her before Qorall does.”

Pierre’s analysis told him something about Ukrull’s body language, and it stunned him further. “You know where she is, don’t you? But how? You couldn’t conceal such knowledge from the Tla Beth for long.”

Ukrull nudged a panel with his tail, and a small hatch opened. Pierre stared in disbelief at an ancient-looking Hohash, its fractured, mirror-like surface surging with purple and blue swirls. Pierre guessed it was showing a highly unusual nebula. A location, he guessed, unique in the galaxy. As if on cue, Ukrull whacked a control that produced a holo-display of the nebula’s position on an outer galactic spiral.

“Can she do battle against Qorall?”

“Female of species tougher than male.” Ukrull grunted, grinning, as far as Pierre could tell.

Pierre considered the distances, the timescales, weighing up the most recent reports from the progress of the Kalaheii. The nebula was on the opposite edge of the galaxy, so the female was not yet in danger. But one Kalarash against a legion of Kalaheii… Still, they had some time. Qorall’s strategy appeared to be slow but firm progression. He did the calculations, and the coincidence surprised him: fifteen years. Qorall would reach this sector of the galaxy shortly after the quarantine had ended. So he, Ukrull and the female Kalarash had that long to mount a defence, and then he must return to Ourshiwann. For an instant, he factored a background variable – his daughter, Petra – into the equation; she would be fifteen by then. An emotion flickered inside him, like a ghost in the data-core. He immediately suppressed it. He could not allow himself to be distracted by such things. That was why he’d programmed the Transpar to record everything, particularly Petra’s development. At least that way he’d have a record of her life, even if a fragmented one.

He was about to say “I am ready,” when he realised it was not necessary, since he’d already thought it.

“You learn fast,” Ukrull said. He kicked a control with his lower left claw, and their small ship disappeared.

◆◆◆

Louise watched the Hohash’s mirror surface relax back to its oil-film state. She weighed her options, straddling Micah’s chair on the bridge of the Hunter-Seeker vessel she had reclaimed. “So,” she said, having gotten used to talking to the Hohash – it had mastered understanding English some time ago, whether by sound or lip-reading, she wasn’t sure which, and didn’t care. “I’m pretty much persona non grata with the Alicians and the Q’Roth: Sister Esma would find a way to get rid of me sooner or later, last thing she needs is a hero around cramping her style, and the Q’Roth are giving Alicians the cold shoulder right now. Micah’s untouchable for a while, and the other two parties of interest are betting on the Kalarash.” She still wasn’t sure why the Hohash had shown her so much. She assumed these artefacts were like dogs – despite their intelligence – needing a master or a mistress.

“What would you do?” she said, addressing the metal sculpture of her and Vince she’d stolen from Ourshiwann an hour before the planet-shroud energized. She nodded. “My thoughts exactly, we should check out the likely winner.” This was going to test the Hohash’s loyalty to the limit; she was interested to see if it would go along with it or fight her again. She turned to her companion, as she now thought of it. “We should go see Qorall, offer him information, don’t you think?”

The Hohash vibrated, sparks splashing across its surface.

“Really, I’m serious.” She walked to Zack’s console and called up the Galactic Nav chart, pointing as she spoke. “We’ll enter the Grid here, run right around to the other side, disembark here, then head out on this spiral. Might take a few years.” She folded her arms. “I’m sure Qorall will be interested in you, in any case.”

The Hohash surface was transparent, its frame stilled.

“Hmm. You know I can’t decide whether you are very dumb, or way smarter than me. Only one way to find out.” She turned her back on the Hohash as she entered the flight plan.

As she dropped the ankh key into the slot, engaging the engines, an ivory and emerald eye opened on the surface of the Hohash, watching her. The jump initiated. Everything on the bridge, including Louise, turned quicksilver.

Everything except the eye.

Continue reading the series:

The Eden Paradox – where it begins, with a murder, and Earth’s third mission to the virgin planet Eden… But what really lies in wait on Eden? Will it be humanity’s salvation, or will it trigger our demise?

Eden’s Revenge – Qorall, an invader from another galaxy, threatens the galactic order. Beneath humanity’s new home lies a key to stopping him. But humanity’s old enemies are out for vengeance at any cost…

Eden’s Endgame – Superior races are falling one by one in the relentless galactic war. The only solution is a dormant weapon, one that almost destroyed the galaxy millions of years ago…

Available in paperback and Ebook from all major retailers
www.barrykirwan.com

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to fellow writers Chris Vanier and Dimitri Keramitas for their support throughout this journey, and to reviewers Gary Gibson, Gideon Roberton, Lara Nagy, Gwyneth Hughes, and Michael Zammett, and my trusty readers Andy Kilner and Andrew Hale. Last but not least, thanks to all the fans of The Eden Paradox who kept asking me for this sequel.

Eden’s Revenge

EDEN'S REVENGE

First published 2013; re-published 2019
copyright © BARRY KIRWAN 2013, 2019

This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

for my sister Janice

Prologue

1563 AD, the Himalayan Kingdom

No birds ever approached the Fortress of Alessia. This was the first thing Esma noticed when she arrived after her long trek into the barren Tibetan foothills. The second was the architectural precision of the gothic castle, its steep black ramparts, towers and twisting spires rising skywards, as if uprooted from the earth by the stars themselves. Its cruel beauty went beyond anything she’d ever seen. Although it was over four hundred years old, Alessia’s Fortress looked as if it had been built yesterday.

Archers’ slits in its three tall towers stared out over the surrounding land, unblinking eyes daring anyone below to step onto the path to its iron gates. The guide had left a mile earlier, unwilling to proceed further, and in the end had begged her to return with him to the safety of his village. But Esma turned her back on him, as she did on the rest of humanity, and continued alone.

A savage wind scoured her sheepskin coat, leather face-mask and gloves as she walked with a measured gait under anvil-shaped clouds threatening winter’s first snowfall. Atop the towers, red and gold pennants displaying bloodied eagle’s claws whipped and crackled, the emblazoned talons seeming to grasp at the air. Prayer wheels, adapted from naïve Buddhist ideology to worship another entity, one altogether more sublime and not of this world, whistled like banshees across the bleak countryside.

Esma had left her family for good this time, after one beating too many, and had not told her bitter mother or sickly brother where she was going. They would not understand, and she no longer cared. For two years Esma had secretly followed the Order of Alessia as an acolyte-in- waiting, after being noticed by a wandering monk visiting her home city, Padua. He made a speech in the central plaza, addressing anyone who would listen, and asked what they all saw when they raised their eyes to the night sky. Most in the lingering crowd talked of God and his marvels. Esma waited till the throng dispersed and approached him on her own; she had often looked up, craving an alternative to the misery she and others endured.

“Our star, the sun, has worlds around it,” she said. “I believe, and I pray, that other worlds are up there too, better ones.” She glanced around to ensure no one else was listening. “With a God less tolerant of human depravity.”

Within a year she had a job working with a scribe, learning to copy and translate theological documents; a cover for her induction into the Alessian Order. Esma had to endure two more years at home, but each time her father’s hand raised above her, she knew that revenge would come, and never once cried out in voice or with tears, which only angered him further. On the night she left, Esma slit his throat with a razor-sharp knife clutched in trembling hands, where he lay snoring, drunk, in the kitchen. Only then did the tears come, as she watched the life bleed out of his bloated, twitching body. She knew that her mother, despite being regularly beaten herself, would never forgive this act, but after Esma had finally stopped shaking, she left a note for her mother and brother that simply said, “My parting gift.”

On her way to the mountains, she passed through a village where the very same wandering monk who had first inspired her three years earlier had been arrested for heresy. As an outsider sheltering against the winter at a local inn, she was questioned by men in scarlet cloaks, witch-finders. Seeing his battered, tortured body chained in the market place, scorched eye sockets in his listless head, and beholding the faces and shrieking accusations of the local villagers filled with rage and bloodlust, fear seized Esma. When dragged before the monk, she vehemently denied knowing him, adding her voice to those crying out for him to be burned at the stake.

Once released, she fled the village. Huddled in her coat on the hillside that evening, she watched the smoke rise from the pyre, occasionally catching the shrill screams of the monk’s voice that had so entranced her in Padua, and the jeering of the crowd. Afterwards, Esma wandered for five days and nights, not eating, punishing herself for being so weak, vowing it would never happen again. On the months-long journey, she studied hard, always dwelling on the words of Alessia, promising a better life than Esma had known.

Now she would finally meet the High Priestess herself, or at least glimpse her. As she strode against the wind, up the winding cobbled pathway and endless granite steps, she spied something from the corner of her eye – a blue-black beast, its carapace shining like that of a beetle. It had a strangely shaped head, not quite a rectangle, more like the silhouette of a half-open book. But this creature was the height of two men, and moved so fast it was gone almost before her mind could paint its picture. Esma had heard the rumours. So, it was true, they were here. She quickened her pace.

When the great gate opened, uncreaking and seemingly of its own accord, three men in full-length grey robes faced her, their hands hidden in long sleeves, eyes intense, uncompromising. While the tallest asked questions concerning the Order’s scripture, which Esma had to answer without reflection or error, the other two walked and stood close behind her. After what felt like half an hour of relentless examination, she faltered, unsure of the answer, and rather than give a wrong one, bowed her head. She heard a blade slipping from its sheath behind her. The man in front paused, his deep blue eyes scrutinizing her. “And what if you are called upon to kill those of your own flesh, Esma, your family?”

She raised her head high as she slowly pulled out the curved knife from her coat pocket, showing him the dried blood on its blade. “I already have.”

The man before her gave the barest of smiles. “I am Brother Tilgar. Welcome, Esma, to the abode of Alessia.”

Life in the fortress was hard, its rules strict and unforgiving, but Esma endured it, doing whatever was asked no matter how menial, without question or complaint. Tilgar was stern with her in front of others, gentler when it was just the two of them, as he instructed her in the Order’s ways and in her chosen specialism, the study of written scripture. With his quiet but sharp mind and constant attention to detail, and his patience with her, he became the father figure she had never known.

When she had a spare moment she would approach the narrow windows where the wind howled, and stare out, hoping to catch sight of the beast, but to no avail. Esma told no one what she had seen; in the Order, it was dangerous to know more than one should. She did however catch rare glimpses of Alessia, easily recognised by her mane of flowing red locks as she swept across the inner courtyard from the base of one stone tower to another.

Early one morning, Esma had to fetch a bucket of water for her master, Tilgar, for his morning ablutions. Ice with a dusting of snow covered the surface of the deep well, and she had to lean down precariously and hack at it with her knife, chopping hard. The ice suddenly cracked, and her foot slipped and she lost her balance, tipping forward, arms flailing as she tried to grab onto anything to save her from an icy death. A firm hand seized her ankle and hauled her back from the brink, another yanking her back out of the well’s embrace by the shoulder, turning her around with deft ease and power. Esma landed on the frosted ground, panting, by Alessia’s feet. Aghast at her mistake, she got to her knees in front of the High Priestess of the Order, though she maintained eye contact: in the Order, deference was never blind. “I am sorry for my foolishness, Your Eminence.”

Alessia at first said nothing, the hint of a smile playing across her lips. Her jade eyes fixed on Esma, the smile evaporating. “Once is a mistake, twice is a fault.” Alessia turned and continued in her whirlwind fashion towards the principal tower where the Order’s Council met regularly. Esma watched Alessia go, feeling as if she had just been touched by an Angel of God.

Esma had never been interested in boys, or in the sinful pleasures of the flesh, but she was still young, and that night she found herself unable to sleep, and with a gnawing sense of disgust, she exorcised the bad thoughts in the only way she knew. But it was different this time. Instead of trying to conjure up enthusiasm in her mind’s eye for the handsome young groom other girls fantasized about, Esma imagined Alessia’s beatific face, her slim but strong hands caressing her. In her ecstasy Esma cried out in the female dormitory. But in the morning her shame at this profane, animalistic activity bubbled to the surface like acid on skin. She had been disrespectful to Alessia, and Esma vowed never again to demean herself or another by proxy. She threw all her energy into her work.

Months passed, and Esma progressed in her duties – she could write well, and Tilgar had been teaching her a challenging new script, one with serifs, barbs and jagged points, an aggressive rune alphabet that looked sharp enough to draw blood. But she didn’t just copy, and learning more, Esma began to translate, occasionally finding herself staring at these words and their unfolding concepts like none she had ever heard, even inside the Order. Her ability to fathom meaning behind the alien language didn’t go unnoticed by Tilgar. Esma did not know if this was good or bad news.

One night Tilgar woke her quietly – she had been summoned to a room at the top of the second tower, where the elite lived. Once there, Tilgar ushered her inside and then left, closing the heavy oak door behind him. A flaxen-haired knight in chain-mail armour sat upright in a high-backed wooden chair. Silburn: she had seen him occasionally in the fortress, often with Alessia. He was second-in-command. Silburn rose.

“Come,” he said, walking out to the balcony where flurries of snowflakes swirled, in no rush to reach the ground. She stood a little behind him but he gestured for her to stand at the edge, a knee-high stone wall separating them from a sheer drop into darkness. Silburn’s hand went to the small of Esma’s back. She stiffened. One small shove and she would depart this world.

“Look up, girl, and tell me what you see.”

Esma’s heart raced. “Stars,” she said, the word barely escaping her lips, her mind trying to ignore the hand that could end her life so easily. A snowflake entered her left eye, ice cold, making her blink rapidly. She was not dressed for outside, and the chill air bit through her woollen dress. She ignored it, tried to focus, unsure what was required of her, or which answer would spare her life. But the Order was not about closing minds; that was why she had joined. She remembered Alessia saving her from a messy, futile death in the well, and cleared her throat. “Stars,” she said again. “But they do not circle us, for we are not the centre of the universe.”

The hand remained firm, a judge deciding her fate. “Continue.” Silburn’s voice was as unfeeling as the stone wall at her sandaled feet.

Esma tried not to shiver. “Somewhere out there is another life, another way, more than us.” She paused, then decided to say it. “I saw one. When I first arrived. Barely a glimpse. But what I saw… impressed me. Such grace and power.” She waited, then continued. “I know they are not gods, yet it seems to me – from what I have read – that they   are closer to God than we.” She dared to glance across to see Silburn’s reaction, but his face was as unmoving as the granite walls. Her own face turned downwards, to the oblivion below.

“Have you told anyone else?”

“No,” she said, a shiver breaking through despite her best efforts. “Not even Tilgar?”

She had hinted several times, asked Tilgar questions that might have given away what she had seen, but Esma didn’t want to get her master into trouble; he had been kind to her. She shook her head. Esma knew that words held deadly power in the Order, especially secrets. Sometimes acolytes disappeared, and no one asked questions afterwards. The line between savant and heretic was of a hair’s breadth.

“Esma, would you die for the Order?”

The words echoed in her head, like the eddies of snow before her, making her feel giddy. “Yes,” she said, swallowing, guessing she had over-stepped the mark. For the first time in months she visualised her mother, sneering, saying that Esma had always had too much to say, had never accepted her place, and would now pay the price. She would end her life gashed open on the rocks below, leaving carrion birds and insects to pick her bones dry. Esma thought of her sickly brother, Arnault, surely by now taken by the plague ravaging the land. At least he would be sad for her fate. So be it, she and her sibling would comfort each other in whatever came after.

Silburn’s face turned to her. “Then will you die for the Order, Esma?” He removed his hand from the small of her back.

Esma found her hands shaking, her lips quivering.  She stared into Silburn’s eyes, but they were pitiless, they had probably seen and dispatched such death that there was no mercy remaining in his soul. Bracing herself, she squeezed her lips together, clenched her fists against the biting pain of cold in her fingers. She lifted one foot on top of the low wall, then pushed up and stood atop the slippery, uneven stone. Her mind, awash with fears and inner cries, suddenly cleared, as if she had broken through its surface ice to clear water underneath. The shaking stopped, and she felt at peace. She wanted to say some last words, and then it came to her, the only two things she cared about. “I do this for Alessia, and for the truth that cannot yet be known or spoken.” Eyes wide open, she sucked in a deep breath, leaned forward and took a step.

Silburn’s large hands snatched the waist-band of her dress and held her in place, Esma’s right foot stretched out over the abyss. “You will indeed die for the Order one day, Esma, but not this night.”

Meeting his eyes, she stepped back down cautiously, the shaking returning with a vengeance, her breathing ragged. A single tear escaped. She brushed it away as if it was snow, and in her mind’s eye her mother was silent for once, while her brother beamed.

To her surprise, Tilgar joined them on the balcony, wearing a look somewhere between shocked admiration and pride as he wrapped a blanket around her trembling frame.

Silburn patted her on the back. “Go with him. From now on you are no longer an acolyte, you are Sister Esma. You will have new chambers, and new duties. Oh, and Tilgar, I know it is late, but give her some ale to warm her, or else she will not sleep.”

Esma found she needed Tilgar’s arm to steady herself as she walked to the door.

Alessia chaired the Council meeting, the atmosphere around the heavy oak table tensing with her news. “The last Q’Roth surgeon will depart shortly. We will be on our own now, for exactly five hundred years.”

Silburn banged his fist on the table, rattling his chain mail. “Our enemies, the Sentinels, are hunting us down, and our number diminishes every month. Without our Masters’ aid our ability to quicken new members in the Order will be severely limited.”

Sister Esma recalled her own ‘quickening’ three months ago, the day after that fateful night on Silburn’s balcony. She had been transformed, her muscles and tendons made stronger and tougher. Several organs had been changed or even replaced, notably the heart, kidneys, and liver, extending her life expectancy by centuries. But it was her mind that she noticed reborn; faster, able to grasp ideas formerly occluded, though she knew it would take another fifty years for the treatment to raise her intellect to Level Five.

Her transformation had also been a chance to see the noble Q’Roth in action as they performed surgery on her; they were indeed God-like, tremendously powerful yet elegant creatures, with scientific and medical marvels beyond her wildest imaginings. And such discipline and harmony – they never bickered or suffered the endemic pettiness and rivalry afflicting mankind.

She snapped herself out of her reverie, back to the grave matter of the day – the last Q’Roth were departing, going into hibernation, leaving the Order to take care of things until their return. But Silburn was right; it could not have come at a worse time. Those damned Sentinels, the only people who knew of the Order’s existence, were hunting them down, one by one. They were not as advanced as the Alicians, but were just as determined, and had been given instruction by a visitor not of this world, warning them of the latent threat to its populace. She had witnessed the torture of one of these infidels, captured and dragged to the fortress. He had been resilient, but Tilgar, draped in a butcher’s full apron and armed with a dazzling array of metal implements, spent days and nights working relentlessly on the man who screamed and squirmed, extracting valuable information before the end, when the whimpering wretch’s heart gave out.

The Sentinels had been given a formidable weapon, a device hidden somewhere in one of their strongholds, to locate those touched by the Q’Roth surgeons; something to do with the blood. The Sentinels used their influence with the Church of Rome, and the paranoia of the great witch hunt gripping Europe, to prosecute their silent war. When someone of the Order was suspected and arrested, a Sentinel masquerading as a witch-finder would prick their thumb with a special dagger to see if they bled – witches would not bleed, they told the crowds. Esma did not yet understand how, but the knife would detect the hint of Q’Roth blood and stem the flow, after which the man or woman would be dragged away in chains and burned at the stake. Those of the Order who used their new- found strength to try to escape only confirmed and enflamed the local people’s convictions of witchery in their midst, and were hunted down and slain like dogs. The Sentinels preyed upon the wild, ignorant fears of ordinary men and women to amplify their power base. And they were winning.

Silburn continued. “If the Q’Roth gave us some of their weapons, or left just a handful of warriors, or one of their flying machines, we could destroy our enemies.”

No other Council Member spoke, all awaiting Alessia’s reply. “They have done this many times before, Silburn, as you know well, on a number of worlds. This is their way, and we do not question their methods. The automaton they have left behind will still be able to quicken those we judge worthy, but only at a rate of ten per year. We must be careful, bide our time and use stealth until the Q’Roth return. Remember that it is us, Silburn, whom they have chosen. We must determine a way to prevail, or else we are not worthy of their patronage.”

But Silburn’s grim face remained set. “The Sentinels, backed by the soldiers of the Church of Rome, outnumber us ten to one. They use the witch hunt as a pretence, or any other excuse, to track us down and kill us. We have lost two hundred members of the Order this year alone, a third of our entire force! We cannot keep taking such losses. Soon they will trace us here.” He sat back, folding his silver-coated arms. “What is your grand plan, Alessia, now that our Masters are all but gone? I am sure we would all like to hear it.”

All eyes fell on Alessia. She stood, leaned across the table on splayed fingers, russet locks tumbling over her shoulders, and glared at Silburn. “I sense you have a proposal, great warrior that you are.”

Others shrank away from the table, knowing how quick to anger both of them were, but Silburn leaned back, the fire gone from his voice. “I have a strategy, but it requires great sacrifice.”

Alessia righted herself. “I am listening.”

Silburn spoke in an unusually quiet tone. He stared down at the gnarled table in front of him, for once not meeting Alessia’s eyes. “The only way to make them relax their efforts is to make them think they have won. They believe that if they cut off the head of the snake, the snake will die.”

There were gasps in the chamber. Esma glanced from Silburn to Alessia. Surely she would not even consider it!

Alessia glared, then spread her arms wide, addressing everyone, but keeping her eyes fixed on Silburn. “Get out, all of you, now! Leave us!”

Esma fled along with the rest, but waited in the snow-bound arches under the meeting room. An hour later, when all the others had departed to the relative warmth of their rooms, Silburn walked out, head proud in his armour, and tramped across the courtyard’s fresh snow. Esma waited, but no one else stirred. For once the wind had stopped, leaving the prayer-wheels idle and silent. The castle’s pennants hung as if in mourning of what was to come. Quietly, Esma climbed back up the steps, wondering what she would find.

Alessia sat alone at the great oak table, studying a wooden chessboard with carved pieces, the black queen lying down. Alessia looked up. “Ah, the gifted translator. Remind me your name, girl.”

Esma bowed deeply, and told her, adding her honorific, as was appropriate.

“Do you know this game, Sister Esma?” Esma nodded. “A little, your Eminence.”

Alessia gazed out the window into the far-off, approaching snowstorm. “What have you gleaned from their writing?”

Esma thought carefully. She had been pondering the most recent document day and night. “That the heavens and time are curved. And this means that although the stars are very far away, our Masters can arrive in an instant.”

Alessia turned back, giving her a searching look. “Bravo, Sister Esma.” She smiled, and picked up a pawn from the board, weighing it in her hands. “People think a pawn will always be a pawn, because they think the game is flat, in two dimensions. But it is also curved by time.” She nudged the fallen queen with a finger. “A queen cannot become a pawn. Her destiny is set. She is strong yet entrenched by her own power. But a pawn…” Alessia pursed her lips, deliberating. “Sit,” she said.

Esma obliged, sitting next to Alessia, the chessboard in front of them.

“Few truly understand that which you so easily grasp, Sister Esma.” She played her fingers across the king, bishops and rooks next to her fallen queen. “You see, all of these may fail, or may fall to the Sentinels. I need a pawn to stay in the background, to wait, just in case.”

Esma stared at the pawn in Alessia’s hand. “Your Eminence, I –” “Five centuries hence, if your wits keep you alive that long, you will see our Masters again, and they will feed on the life energy of ordinary men, and take us to the stars, to a better future. Mankind is fatally flawed, and will be forgotten. Only we and our progeny will reach our true potential.” Her eyes gleamed momentarily. “We will travel to the very stars themselves! You understand this, don’t you Sister Esma?”

Esma nodded.

“Take this,” Alessia said, handing her the wooden queen. “Remember this day, but tell no one of it.” With that, she stood, carried the rest of the wooden set to the window, flung the pieces into the snowdrift outside, and stormed out.

Six months later, a long and bloody battle ensued. Alessia was slain by the Sentinels, alongside fifty of her acolytes who defended her until the last. Alessia and her most trusted had attacked the Sentinel stronghold that held their locator device, and finally destroyed it, but during her escape she had been overwhelmed by hundreds of Sentinels.

Sister Esma arrived the next day with Tilgar and a handful of others to retrieve their leader’s body from the battlefield, only to find it almost unrecognisable apart from strands of red hair. Esma spent hours gathering Alessia’s hacked-apart remains and assembled them into the semblance of a corpse. She wept openly during the cremation, and vowed vengeance, swearing never to forget nor forgive.

Alessia’s sacrifice had of course been a gambit, one that worked. The Sentinels grew complacent and soft, believing they had won. But the Q’Roth-enhanced upgrades, Alessia’s chosen, lay low with Silburn, barely ageing, and never forgetting. They emerged a hundred years later with a savage pogrom against the Sentinels’ descendants, rooting out their hidden cells from the Russian Steppes all the way to the shores   of Ireland, slaughtering nine tenths of their number in a single week of synchronized fury. Assassinations of key vassals in the Vatican in the same week forever broke the support of the Church of Rome. These and subsequent brutal murders were masked by a more virulent, genetically- concocted version of the plague still ravaging Europe, forever tipping the war’s balance in the Order’s favour, though enough escaped to be a constant, if greatly diminished, menace.

Silburn was slain in one of the final raids on a Sentinel stronghold in Tibet, though those who found his body said he looked serene. Esma was not surprised – a king might sacrifice his queen, but will never be the same without her.

In the spring of 1693, when the Order had shifted its headquarters to the New World to escape the lingering political influence of Rome, Tilgar was arrested as part of the trumped-up Salem witch trials in colonial Massachusetts, while he and Esma were recruiting for the Order. Esma had been in a distant village when Tilgar had been cornered by two Sentinels masquerading as witch-finders, backed up by a dozen local soldiers. Esma arrived just in time to be present in the seething throng gathered to watch him hang. Ordinary people yelled obscenities, threw rubbish at his limping, tortured and battered frame. His left arm was missing, a cut so clean just below the shoulder it could only have come from one of the fabled Sentinel nano-swords.

Tilgar had been one of the best of their new breed she had ever known. He held his head high despite his injuries and time on the rack. He raised his remaining hand, and the crowd briefly grew quiet to hear and then spit on his last words. “Your time will come,” was all he said, looking over them, catching her eye at the end. The crowd, including men, women, children, young and old, screamed “Witch! Hang him! Torture him some more! He still has another arm, cut it off!” and other profanities she tried to close her ears to. One young man looked so much like her long-dead brother, Arnault, that Esma caught her breath. With spittle on his lips and an ugly snarl, he hurled abuse at Tilgar, as she knew Arnault would have done, and inside her the last vestige of her umbilical cord with humanity snapped.

Hot tears streamed down her cheeks as she regarded Tilgar’s brave face for the last time. He could have taken half a dozen of the guards on the stage with him, but now more than ever the Order needed to snuff out the last public embers of this war, and so he accepted his fate. Her eyes met his, and she nodded the unspoken vow to avenge him. As his body twisted and turned at the end of a crude rope, bloating his face purple, she could barely breathe, long fingernails inside her fists digging so deep they drew blood. Esma wanted to kill all those cheering, stinking peasants with her bare hands, not only the two Sentinels masquerading as witch-finders, who she dispatched the following summer.

That year was the turning point for her, when she saw how the Q’Roth classification of ordinary people as Level Three – galactic weeds that would never be fit for Grid Society, instead ripe for culling – was right and just. Humanity’s future was a dead end. Ordinary men would wage war and kill and violate each other for all eternity. More likely, men would annihilate all life once they developed the type of weapons she had read about in Q’Roth scripture, weapons that could raise the heat of the sun on Earth itself. No, the only possible future lay with the brothers and sisters of the Order of Alessia, later to be called Alicians, augmented by their Q’Roth patrons. Alicians were neither fractious nor small-minded, and worked together tirelessly toward a common goal – their salvation at the hands of the Q’Roth, deliverance from this flawed world to a new one, and a better way of life. Helping the Q’Roth to cull humanity would only bring forward mankind’s inevitable demise.

As time passed, the balance of evidence against humanity accrued in her mind. By the nineteenth century, the Order’s numbers had swelled, and they had a stronger foothold, subtly influencing many political decisions. The Alicians fomented wars to keep mankind off-balance and divided in collective mind and spirit. However, individuals began to appear amongst the normal population, showing great intellect. This had always been a concern – that humanity was beginning to produce Level Four specimens – Leonardo, Galileo and others had until that time been statistical outliers. Now, a clear trend emerged of new men and women with genius potential, and the Alicians set about finding them, detecting them through universities and learned societies. Some were recruited, but most were unreceptive to Alician ideology and became the unfortunate victims of accidents or strange illnesses. A few inevitably slipped through the net, Darwin one of the most dangerous.

Esma and others in the High Council realised mankind was nearing its evolutionary ‘cusp’, when it could actually advance on its own from its dismal Level Three status. The surviving and greatly weakened Sentinels grasped it too, and tried to find and protect such individuals. If another visitor from the faraway galactic society she now knew as the Grid were to come and re-evaluate the human race, and found evidence of the rising frequency of such individuals, the planned and Grid-approved Q’Roth cull would be questioned, postponed, perhaps even cancelled.

That was when Esma and other Council members came up with the strategy of world wars as a way of killing off large sections of young people. What better way to demonstrate the prospects of humanity, than peoples’ willingness to slaughter each other in their millions without question. It was so easy to incite fascism and hate, fanning the flames of man’s pathetic innate barbarism. Those few lone voices arguing against the atrocities and insanity of war were drowned out in an orgy of bloodletting. Esma, as other Alicians, relished the arrival of each new update of casualty statistics, almost unbelieving how well the wars went. At one point, Sister Esma and other Alicians actually had to rein in the world’s leaders to prevent mankind’s total annihilation. After all, the Alicians had to hold up their end of the bargain, ensuring that the newly hatched Q’Roth, upon their return, could harvest humanity.

Once, Esma and a group of Alicians visited the aftermath of a First World War battlefield, thousands of bodies lying in poppy fields, some of the soldiers not yet dead from fatal wounds. One man called out to her, in agony, lying in a growing pool of his own blood. She stood above him, listening to his lamentable supplications, while she recalled the bravery of Tilgar and Alessia. Her lip curled in disgust. “You deserve to die,” she said, “all of you.” Esma placed the heel of her boot on his skull, and applied her weight until his inferior brain squeezed out onto the blood-soaked grass. This single act calmed her, but only momentarily. She would need many more deaths, billions, to quench her hatred: every last human. One thing she and Darwin had agreed upon years earlier was that evolution leads to complete eradication of mal-adapted species; irrevocable de-selection. There are no half-measures in nature, and no sentimentality. A new, superior breed displaces and eradicates an inferior one. That was the way of things.

Many years later, while reading Einstein’s brilliant, if imperfect and ultimately flawed understanding of relativity, Esma realised something else about the curved nature of time. The Alician perspective, granted by their newfound longevity, was so different from normal men and women with their short lifespans. As centuries passed, she watched nations fight bloody wars – often catalysed by the Alicians to keep humanity off- balance – then generations later, become allies, friends even. Despite losing their loved ones and sons and daughters in battle, eventually they wanted their grandchildren to find peace. But those touched by the Q’Roth did not age appreciably, did not forget, and so never forgave. The faces of Alessia, Silburn, Tilgar and dozens of other fallen comrades called out to her every day, demanding retribution. And she would deliver it.

By the twenty-first century humanity was where the Q’Roth needed them to be, hopelessly divided by politics and religion, and on their knees after a third world war that had finally made humanity averse to nuclear weapons and nanotechnology, the only two defences against the Q’Roth.

Esma had risen slowly and stealthily through the ranks. When new Q’Roth hatchlings stirred on Eden in 2063, right on schedule, she had taken Alessia’s place. But she never accepted any honorific other than ‘Sister’; that is what Alessia had called her, and she wanted nothing more.

2081: Savange, Alician Homeworld

Sister Esma sat on the Bridge of the Crucible Class battleship as it undocked from Savange’s orbital tether. Twice she had come close to completely eradicating humanity. Two had stood in her way: Blake – a rook – and Micah, a pawn, but like her, one who had grown into something more. This time there would be no mistake. She would wipe the board clean once and for all, as soon as Quarantine came down around Esperia, their pathetic excuse for a world. Never mind the war raging across half the galaxy. As the plague had helped mask their revenge on the Sentinels centuries earlier, so the galactic invasion led by Qorall would hide her intended actions. Worlds fell every day. Who would miss another one? Her hand dipped into a recess in her cloak and clasped a small wooden figure whose edges had grown smooth. Soon, Alessia, soon.

Eden’s Aliens & Artifacts

Alicians – neo-human race genetically altered by the Q’Roth to increase intelligence, resilience and longevity. Alicians are named after Alessia, their founder, who brokered a deal with the Q’Roth in 1053 AD to prepare humanity for culling, and to eradicate Earth-based nuclear and nano-based weaponry, in exchange for genetic advancement and patronage. Alicians are Level Five, and are led by Sister Esma. Louise is an Alician renegade imbued with too much Q’Roth DNA.

Dark Worms – leviathan-like creatures that live in the space between galaxies, feeding off both dark and normal energy sources. They are almost impossible to kill. Normally they are kept outside by the Galactic Barrier, which was breached by Qorall’s forces.

Esperia – formerly Ourshiwann – the spider planet serving as mankind’s home after the fall of Earth and Eden, with only two major cities: human-occupied Esperantia, and spider-occupied Shimsha.

Finchikta – Level Nine bird-like creatures who administrate judicial affairs for the Tla Beth, e.g. during the trial of humanity in 2063.

Genners – following the trial of humanity, prosecuted by the Alicians and the Q’Roth, mankind was quarantined on Esperia for its own protection and all children genetically upgraded to Level Four (with Level Five potential) by the Ossyrians. ‘Genners’ surpass their parents intellectually by the age of twelve.

Grid – ring-shaped ultra-rapid transport hub that runs around the inner rim of the galaxy, for ease of commerce.

Grid Society - established by the Kalarash ten million years ago, based on a scale of levels of intelligence running from one to nineteen, with Kalarash at the top. Mankind was initially graded Level Three.

Hohash – intelligent artifacts resembling upright oval mirrors, designed by the Kalarash, known as ‘omnipaths’ due to their powerful perception, communication and recording abilities. Their true function is unknown.

Kalarash – Level Nineteen beings believed to have left our galaxy.

Only seven remain in the universe. Little is known about them. They are called ‘the Progenitors’ by many Grid species, as the Kalarash fostered civilisation in the galaxy, based on a strictly hierarchical intelligence-ranking system.

Mannekhi – human-looking alien race except for their all-black eyes. Level Five. They sided with Qorall in the ongoing galactic war, due to millennia of oppression under Grid rule.

Nganks – full name Ngankfushtora – squid-like Level Twelve cosmetic surgeons whose services are usually reserved for higher-level species.

Ossyrians – dog-like Level Eight medical race, charged as humanity’s custodians after the trial, their eighteen-year long stay on Esperia led by Chahat-Me.

Qorall [kwo-rahl] – ancient enemy of the Kalarash, and invader of the galaxy.

Q’Roth [kyu-roth] – Level Six nomadic warrior race who culled Earth as part of the maturation process for its hatchlings, in a deal with the Alicians. Currently engaged as soldiers trying to stop the progress of Qorall’s forces across the galaxy. The Q’Roth are formal Patrons of the Alicians.

Rangers – Level Fifteen taciturn reptilian creatures working for the Tla Beth. Ranger Shatrall crash-landed in Tibet in the early part of the twelfth century and realized the Q’Roth had targeted humanity for culling. He was unsure the Level Three assessment of humanity was correct, and so unofficially warned a local warrior tribe who became the Alicians’ principal adversary, the Sentinels.

Resident – internal alien-designed symbiote implanted in Micah’s head prior to the Trial of humanity, which acts as a semi-intelligent Level Five translator, with various additional survival-oriented functions.

Savange – new home planet of the Alicians, ruled by Sister Esma.

Scintarelli – Level Twelve legendary master shipbuilders, whose shipyards dwell in gas giants. Their star-ship designs include the Starpiercer and the Scythe.

Sclarese [skla-ray-zee] Nova Stormers – Level Nine semi-intelligent stealth missiles based on energy amplification technology, aimed at turning stars nova. Built by the Sclarese.

Sentinels – blood enemies of the Alicians, involved in a silent war over a period of nine centuries. Last remaining Sentinel alive is Ramires. Sentinels were famous for their nano-swords, able to slice through a Q’Roth warrior’s armoured flesh.

Shrell – Level Nine matriarchal ray-like creatures who live in deep space, guardians and ‘gardeners’ of the space-environment, invisible to most other species. As well as protecting and ‘fixing’ spatial tears, they can also ‘poison’ space. They work for the Tla Beth.

Spiders – Level Four race harvested by the Q’Roth one thousand years prior to the culling on Earth. Homeworld called Ourshiwann, renamed Esperia. Visually-oriented race, otherwise deaf and mute. Now live in Shimsha, near Esperantia, humanity’s last city.

Steaders – the ‘non-genned’ human population on Esperia, so called because of the preponderance of farms and homesteads surrounding Esperantia.

Tla Beth – Level Seventeen energy creatures, rulers of the Grid in the absence of the Kalarash. Homeworld location unknown.

Transpar – Blake’s pilot Zack was transformed by the Tla Beth into a glass-like transparent living witness, unable to lie, and devoid (mostly) of his original personality, as part of the judicial procedure during the trial of mankind. Zack’s wife Sonja decided to keep the Transpar rather than let it be returned to the Tla Beth after the trial and be destroyed. The Transpar’s longevity and capabilities are unknown.

Wagramanians – Level Seven forest-dwelling tripeds famed for art, but also employed by the Tla Beth as shock troops during times of interstellar war.

Abbreviated Galactic Historical Timeline

Ossyrian School Notes for Genners

TIME (past)

EVENT

2 billion years

War between Kalarash – highest Level beings known in Universe – and Qorall, in Jannahi Galaxy. Qorall believed dead. Galaxy destroyed. Seven Kalarash travel to Silverback Galaxy (human name: “Milky Way”).

Unknown

Various civilisations rise and fall. Five Kalarash leave Galaxy.

>2 million years

Grid Society established under Kalarash guidance. Grid is a transport hub traversing a third of the galaxy. Grid Society strongly hierarchical based on Levels of intelligence. Kalarash are Level 19. [Humanity is Level 3].

2 million years

Kalarash disappear. Level 17 Tla Beth left in charge, supported by Level 15 Rangers (reptilian).

50000 years

Anxorian (Level Sixteen) Rebellion threatens Grid. Tla Beth genetically alter Grid species 195 [Q’Roth] to become galactic foot-soldiers. Rebellion quashed. Anxorian species extinguished.

40000 years

Ossyrian (Level 8) race patronised by Tla Beth, become Medical race for the galaxy.

30000 years

Last sighting of a Hohash – Kalarash intelligent artefacts known as ‘omnipaths’.

Every 1000 years

Q’Roth newborns must seek out ‘nourishment’ by culling species Level 4 or below.

~1000 years

Q’Roth cull spider race on Ourshiwann (renamed Esperia)

~1000 years

Q’Roth scouts land on Earth. Broker a deal with Alician sect in exchange for upgrading Alicians to Level 5 and promised sponsorship by Q’Roth

~900 years

Ranger Shattrall crash-lands on Earth. Realises humanity targeted for culling. Warns local Tibetan tribe who become Sentinels. Sentinels engage in silent war with Alicians.

~500 years

Q’Roth terraform Eden and plant egg nests.

40 years

Nanoplague on Earth. 50 million dead. Nannite technology banned. Plague instigated by Alicians, as harmful to Q’Roth.

30 years

Third World War on Earth. Environment sent into irrecoverable global warming. Alicians gain power through religious sect known as Fundies.

20 years

Eden discovered. Blake and crew arrive and find Q’Roth eggs hatching, and Hohash artefact. Micah uncovers Alician plot on Earth. Battle ensues. Earth destroyed, refugees flee to Esperia. Alicians escape.

19 years

Alician known as Louise attacks Esperia. Humanity prevails.

19 years

Qorall and his forces attack, breaking through galactic barrier.

18 years

Micah and crew enter Grid. After murder of Q’Roth ambassador, humanity placed on trial by Tla Beth. Humanity acquitted but placed in protective Quarantine for one generation. All children to be genetically upgraded by Ossyrians.

18 years

Kalarash presence detected on Esperia along with spider egg nests. Kalarash ship disappears with three humans onboard (Jen, Dimitri and Rashid). Believed to have left galaxy, reason unknown.

Today

The Tla Beth, aided by the Q’Roth and other races, have lost half the galaxy to Qorall. Eldest human ‘genned’ child is eighteen.

In one week

Quarantine will come down. Ossyrians scheduled to leave. Humanity will have to fend for itself.

Petra’s notes

1.The last Kalarash (apparently) was hiding on Esperia, and left just before Quarantine, along with three people: Jennifer, Dimitri and Rashid. Why was it here? Maybe they’ll come back.

2.The Ossyrians have been kind to us, especially my godmother, Chahat-Me.

3.Micah is just about holding things together between Steaders and Genners on Esperia. Tensions will spike as Quarantine down-date approaches. Good luck, Uncle.

4.Blake is now a recluse, lives in Shimsha with the spiders. No one goes there, except Micah, though not in a long while. Zack’s Transpar sometimes goes to see Blake.

5.Mom1 (Kat) disappeared two years ago, after she went looking in caves where the Kalarash ship was last seen. Someone abducted her, but who, and why? Mom2 (Antonia) devastated. Buries herself in work for the Council.

6.Father (Pierre – never met him) disappeared with a Ranger known as Ukrull just before Quarantine. He’s never coming back.

7.Gabriel, beautiful as ever, still intent on revenge against the Alicians as soon as Quarantine comes down. Micah is trying to keep him in check, but that won’t work for much longer.

8.We’ve become farmers. People don’t want to face the prospect of another war or battle, hoping instead that the Alicians and Q’Roth have lost interest. But Gabriel and his Youngbloods might be right: the old enemies may be waiting just outside Quarantine, in which case we’d better be prepared.

9.Being Level Four isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We’ve gained a lot, but we may have lost something along the way; most Steaders certainly think so. No turning back now, though.

10.We are defenceless and blind, unknowing of what is out there. The Quarantine has been an eighteen-year stay of execution. If only there was someone out there, an ally who gave a damn about us, especially with the ongoing Galactic War. We are on our own, perhaps about to be written out of history. But we’ll go down fighting, as long as we get the chance.

PART ONE

QUARANTINE

Chapter 1

Duel

Micah stood on Hazzard’s Ridge surveying Esperantia, the last human city, wondering if it would still exist in a week’s time. He glanced upwards to the clear blue sky where the invisible quarantine barrier hung, protecting them these past eighteen years from alien invaders. One more week and the barrier would come down. Then they would see if anyone was out there waiting for them.

Esperantia’s zinc-coated buildings gleamed in the late afternoon sun, laid out like the eight points of a compass star. As his eyes swept across the city he’d helped build, his vision stalled on the blood orange blister at the southern perimeter – the dome – where the duel awaited him. People were already gathering. Micah’s resident, an alien gift lodged in the software of his mind, dating back to his brief time travelling in the Grid, reminded him of the hour, flashing a subtle countdown in his left eye’s visual field. It was getting late, but Micah was in no hurry to arrive, especially given how he intended to try and win the match.

He gazed beyond the outlying farms – a patchwork quilt of corn, rapeseed and astrasa – to the Ossyrian crystal pyramid, three kilometers away at the far end of the valley. The three-hundred-metre-tall vessel glistened, reflecting tangerine rays as Esperia’s sun dipped towards the Acarian Mountains. The giant space ship housed humanity’s guardians, a hundred and fifteen Ossyrians, who rarely ventured outside these days. Micah could barely imagine how it had been for the upright, dog-like aliens, enduring all these years as mankind’s caretakers, trapped with them in the quarantine placed around the planet. Still, under Ossyrian husbandry, crops had prospered and humanity’s surviving ranks had doubled to twenty thousand and, thanks to Ossyrian medical wizardry, mankind was disease-free for the first time in its history.

Yet Esperantia was a divided community, and Micah had been instrumental in that social division. Facing annihilation, he’d negotiated protection for mankind in exchange for an agreement that all future human children would undergo genetic manipulation, to advance them from what the ruling pan-galactic alien Grid Society called Level Three, to Level Four, a kind of basic entry point to avoid future culling. It had seemed a good idea at the time, in fact the only non-terminal solution on the table.

The resulting Genner children, the eldest just eighteen, had been incredibly resourceful with the basic materials available on Esperia, whether in agriculture, developing more efficient crop strains and irrigation methods, or energy, creating new solar cell systems that boosted lighting and heating for the entire city. Even if parents couldn’t always relate to their kids, they were proud of them. But it had been a high price to pay. One father had summed it up neatly a month ago at a Council meeting, addressing Micah, who was, after all, President.

“They’re unemotional… cold. No other word for it, though few parents will say it aloud. I… I watch my son, but I can’t reach him. He’s way smarter than me, has been since he was twelve.” The man paced before Micah and other Council members, who could offer little solace. He continued, wringing his hands. “And what have we created? Our old enemies, our ‘cousins’ the Alicians, were genned to Level Five by the Q’Roth, and they damned near exterminated us. You, Micah, you and Blake, you fought so hard to save us so that humanity would survive. But now we’re doing the same thing to ourselves. Don’t you see?”

Micah did see. If he could turn back time…

His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of the young Genners’ polyphonous chant carried along the breeze, their adolescent voices sharp and clear. He paused to watch their procession along the main street leading to the dome. Most ungenned people – all, if they were honest – could not really appreciate the mathematical music. But many of the parents trooped behind, trying to follow a rhythmic melody that Micah knew was too fractal for ungenned tastes. His resident supplied subtle harmonics and he heard how clever it was, brilliant by normal human standards, but also how clinical, lacking emotional resonance. That about sums it up.

Zooming in, courtesy of his other secret ‘gift’, a bunch of overactive nannites his former friend Pierre had injected him with just before Quarantine, he picked out tall and wiry Gabriel, his opponent in the upcoming duel. Next to him, Sandy oozed pride for her son. Micah hadn’t seen her for two years. Squatting, he hefted a large stone in his hands, to keep his balance. Down below, Ramires came up to Gabriel and Sandy, and Sandy kissed her partner full on the lips. The stone snapped in Micah’s palms with a loud crack. A line of blood appeared on his right palm, fizzed grey, and withdrew, healing in seconds, courtesy of the nannites. His resident began to intrude, telling him to get going. Micah ignored it, and spoke to the wind. “Pierre, wherever the hell you are out there, couldn’t you have given me something more useful?”

But Pierre had left him something far more precious. Micah tried to pick his adopted niece, Pierre’s daughter Petra, out of the crowd, but couldn’t find her. Micah had never married, though he’d had offers he largely attributed to his being President; he’d never had children, and now figured it was too late. But he cherished Petra as if she were his own daughter. He kept his fondness for her hidden, though; in the past, every time he’d let his feelings for someone be known, it had always backfired, and he couldn’t stand to lose anyone else.

His mind returned to the end of Quarantine, the Alician/Q’Roth potential threat, and the Genner issue. Genners were faster, stronger, more intelligent, able to truly multi-task, and adept with languages and art. Most of them weren’t children anymore, and like all adolescents they wanted to be treated as equals. But while most Genners were pacifist   in outlook, and some even apologetic for their enhanced abilities, the Youngbloods were a breed apart. They held a strong lust for vengeance against the Alicians who had almost eradicated humanity.

Micah never quite understood why the Youngbloods were more angry with mankind’s mortal enemy than their parents were, who after all had suffered near-annihilation first-hand. He wished the psychologist Carlson was still around to try and explain it. Eight years ago, Petra, who wasn’t tattooed but nevertheless spent all her time hanging out with this warrior caste, told Micah he must ask Gabriel himself. Instead, a year later, he’d asked Ramires, the last Sentinel, and the Youngbloods’ trainer in the arts of war. Ramires had been indignant…

“Don’t you want the Alicians dead, too, Micah? Sister Esma? Louise? Seven billion people slaughtered, their voices silenced forever. Don’t you feel them waiting, watching, demanding justice? Do you sleep well, Micah, knowing the Alicians and the Q’Roth are still out there, probably plotting out demise?”

Micah didn’t sleep well. But he’d argued with Ramires, pressing him as to why the Genners should take up the cause so fervently. Then Sandy came out. He’d not seen her in ages, and the sight of her stilled him in an instant. She spoke with that same cutting edge he’d once loved to hear. Hell, he still did, but she belonged to Ramires now.

“It’s not so hard to grasp, Micah. Genners may be less emotional, but they’re not blind. They see the sacrifice their parents made, the one to which you bound us all.”

Ramires’ eyes widened. “Darling, that’s not fair. Even our son, Gabriel –”

Sandy’s eyes remained fixed on Micah, ignoring her husband. “They think relativistically, Micah, long term, causes stretching backwards, effects rushing forwards; one of the gifts you handed them. The way they see it, the Alicians have exterminated humanity, because in fifty years’ time, even if they do nothing, all that will be left will be Genners. Our children –” her voice quavered “– my son Gabriel, and others like him, wish to avenge us, their parents, while we still breathe. You have denied us all so much already, do you deny them that right as well?” She turned and headed back inside Ramires’ cottage, not waiting for an answer.

“I’m sorry, Micah, she’s upset, she doesn’t –”

“She does, Ramires, and we both know it. And she’s right.”

Ramires seized Micah’s shoulders. “If you hadn’t agreed with the Tla Beth ruling, we wouldn’t even be standing here today, and Gabriel would never have been born.”

Micah felt hollow, as if his innards had been sucked out, as if he might collapse, like walls of empty skin. Only Sandy could do this to him. He stared towards the cottage, then tore his eyesight back to Ramires, and collected himself. “But she’s wrong about the other part. I won’t deny the Youngbloods that right. When the time comes...” An idea struck him. “We have to train them, Ramires.”

Ramires shrugged. “I do train them, you know that. I teach them Sentinel fighting arts every day.”

“No, more than that.” The idea took flight in his head. “Battle simulations, space warfare…”

That was how the annual duel had started. But still the  Youngbloods weren’t ready. Micah knew that these would-be avengers would rush off at the first opportunity to attack the Alicians, and get themselves killed. The Ossyrians hadn’t managed to breed hubris out of the children’s DNA; which brought him back to the impending contest, and the last lesson he could give Gabriel, one that might save the boy’s life. A light breeze whispering up the mountain told him evening was approaching. Micah already knew he was cutting it fine; it started in ten minutes.

He turned and squinted westwards towards the adjacent valley where Shimsha lay, humanity’s refuge for its first two years on Ourshiwann – renamed Esperia – before the spiders who’d lain dormant for a millennium hatched and reclaimed their home. The spiders hadn’t been violent about it, just moved back as inexorably as a tide. No one wanted to stick around after the first night of their return, and besides, Esperantia had been ready, just. Now the alabaster spider city, with its trapezoidal buildings like upside-down cake moulds, and its ivory minarets, bustled with metre-high, four-legged spiders. Micah could just make out a few spiders in the city, milling about, going about their business, whatever that was. Their black, furry, headless bodies were circumscribed by a jagged band that fluoresced rainbow hues. It was how they communicated, and since the band was three-sixty degrees, any spider within sight could see what any other spider was ‘saying’. Blake, the only human allowed to live in Shimsha, and the only one they trusted, had pointed out that the spiders never lied, never deceived each other. How could they? Micah wondered if humanity would have been better off with such a mode of communication, especially since he was about to perpetrate a lie.

Shimsha glimmered, its light display twinkling in the approaching dusk. Micah wondered what the spiders would do if war came, whether they would fight this time. He doubted it.

His resident pressed, initiating a nagging buzz inside his skull, and so Micah got up, dusted off his trousers, and headed down the slope towards the dome.

As Micah neared a side entrance, he spied one of Esperantia’s staunch citizens, Albert Schwartz, gaunt and stiff as if walking to attention, but still strong for a sixty year old. Albert cut directly across Micah’s path, blocking his route. This wasn’t Micah’s first encounter with Albert, and as usual, he guessed it wasn’t going to be pleasant. Micah’s resident pressed.

“Good day, Mr. President,” Albert said.

“Mr. Schwartz. Can I help you? I’m running a little late.”

“You don’t have children, do you, Mr. President?”

It was a rhetorical question, as they both knew, but Micah shook his head anyway, sensing what was coming.

Albert’s lips squeezed together, almost white. Then he spat it out, while staring at the distant blue mountains. “Do you know what it’s like to have your own daughter look at you as if…” He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again. “As if,” he continued, “you’re some kind of dumb animal to be pitied?” He glanced up at Micah, his face flushed.

Micah shook his head again, then spoke quietly. “No, Mr. Schwarz, I do not.”

Albert swallowed. “That’s not the end of it. After pity, which usually comes when they’re aged about ten, well, by twelve they lose respect.”

“Mr. Schwartz, I’m sure –”

“You hold your tongue, Mr. President. You hear me out!”

Micah nodded. This had happened before. It could be any of a hundred parents in Albert’s place, standing there, trembling with bottled- up frustration verging on desperation.

“Their eyes go cold, indifferent. Crushes our hearts! My wife’s…” His voice cracked. He closed his eyes again.

Micah took a risk, and spoke. “Your daughter Virginia is probably the brightest of all the Genners, maybe even more so than Gabriel. She’s solved more technical and engineering problems on Esperia than I can remember. I can’t pretend to know how you and your wife feel, but… I’m not blind to it, Mr. Schwartz, and I wish with all my heart I could change it. But you should be proud of her.” He lowered his voice. “God knows, I am.”

Albert stood, chest heaving, head bowed. He gave Micah a sideways glance. “You know why you keep getting re-elected?”

Micah smiled. “If I did, I would do something about it.”

“It’s because you’re the only one who can win these damned duels.”

Micah raised an eyebrow.

Albert walked up to Micah and grabbed him by the arm, with a surprisingly strong grip. “You go in there, and you win, Mr President, because it’s one of the few things that enables us normal folk, us Steaders as our children call us, to retain some dignity.” Albert let go, as if realising how hard he held Micah, then sagged, the anger drained out of him, making him seem older, more fragile.

Micah touched him gently on the shoulder. “I’ll do my best, Sir, for all of us, Steaders and Genners alike.”

Micah noticed his resident had given up warning him how late he was. He broke into a run.

The arena was brim-full of people in tan clothes with brightly coloured scarves and hats to stave off the chill autumn breeze outside. Murmurings subsided as he headed straight for the central stage, shaped like an old- style boxing ring. Two high-backed wooden chairs faced each other; one was empty, Colonel Vasquez standing bolt upright behind it, with his shock of white hair and eagle-sharp eyes. Gabriel waited in the other, fingers loosely curled around the ends of the arm-rests, calm, confident, his blond hair reaching square shoulders, a mauve maze tattooed around his left eye and temple. He had a presence – with Gabriel sitting in it, the chair became a throne.

Just below the stage, on the far side of the ‘ring’, fifteen other Youngbloods sat, headsets in place, already immersed in the simulation. Above the ring a darkened cylindrical holoscreen glittered with stars, awaiting game activation.

Micah overheard a Genner somewhere in the front rows of the audience, speaking in Hremsta, the fast-click dialect that only Genners – and Micah via his resident – understood: “Twenty seconds before you forfeit the match, Mr. Asshole President.”

Micah shrugged it off, leapt up to the stage and dropped into the seat facing Gabriel. He nodded to Vasquez. “Ready.”

Vasquez planted the headset on Micah, clicked the ‘trodes into  active mode, then leaned forward towards Micah’s ear. “Are you sure you don’t want any human backup this time?”

Micah shook his head. This time he preferred to have simulated human generals and fighter pilots, because he’d need them to obey tough orders without hesitation. He met Gabriel’s almost black eyes head on, resisting the urge to look at Sandy, sitting in the front row just behind her son. He and Gabriel both raised their right hands, the crowd hushing. The rule was, the first one to blink had to start the game. Within thirty seconds, the crowd began stamping their feet to a slow drumbeat rhythm, gradually getting faster. Still Micah held Gabriel’s eyes. Whistles flew forth from the crowd, cheering, shouting. Genners chanted Gabriel’s name, all the time his face not showing the tiniest crack of emotion. Micah knew he could win this part of the game courtesy of his nannites, but instead he tilted his head back, raised his hand a little higher to a cheer from the crowd, let a smile spread across his face, nodded slightly to Gabriel, and slammed his hand down on the start button.

Micah found himself on the bridge of an Axion Class Battlestar, orbiting dust-brown Esperia with its Spartan patches of malachite – the great lakes – overflows from the planet’s underground oceans. A small patch of light indicated Esperantia and Shimsha. Micah winced – they looked so fragile from up here, such easy targets.

His data-screens told him he had six Blaze Class Destroyers, a hundred single-man Reapers, and four thousand remote Shuriken drones at his disposal. Defence, he gathered. Which meant Gabriel would be leading a simulated attack on Esperia. Micah eschewed the standard strategy of arranging his resources in a defence grid around the planet and moon; Gabriel was far too smart. In such a tactical battle, with Gabriel’s heightened reflexes, Micah would lose.

“Long range,” he instructed the bridge comp, then studied the unfolding hologram. Nothing. No sign of Gabriel and his genetically advanced crew. He knew people back in the dome could see avatars of him on the battle-bridge, Gabriel on his ship, wherever it was, and the general situation on a star-field map, along with a digital score of the number of remaining ships on both sides. Custom was for each opponent to talk through his thoughts, but Micah didn’t feel like talking today, and the taciturn Gabriel habitually flouted that particular tradition.

Micah had anguished for months over what he was about to do, had almost decided against it. He despised any form of cheating. But he knew that politically – a word he grew to hate more with each year of his Presidency – he could not afford to lose this match; it would destabilize everything just when they were most vulnerable. Besides, the information from the program would only give him an edge, nothing more. Gabriel was still a formidable opponent. Micah instructed his resident to activate the search program he’d installed the night before into the simulation software, using Presidential access codes, and waited.

Within seconds a set of coordinates appeared, and Micah did all the necessary calcs in his head, assisted by his resident. Leaning forward in his command chair, he tapped in a set of commands, then sat back and steepled his fingers, a habit he’d borrowed from Blake. Two of his destroyers peeled off and took up position on the other side of the larger of Esperia’s two moons. The other four destroyers blinked bright then vanished into transit, the arrowhead-shaped Reapers and three quarters of the Shuriken – spherical drones spiked with laser turrets – following in their wake. The remaining Shuriken streaked out of Esperia’s system. He imagined the consternation in the dome; it appeared he’d left Esperia almost defenceless, and he couldn’t know from which direction Gabriel would attack. Except that he did. He stared at the screens, then walked up to the bridge’s starmap holo and moved inside it, so that his eyes were close to a particular star, as if inspecting it. Micah knew he was giving the game away. But he’d decided that if he was going to cheat, he was going to be honest about it. He wondered if Petra was out there somewhere, watching, and whether she would hate him for cheating, or, being a Genner, be impressed. Reluctantly he realized that of all the people who would judge his performance tonight, her opinion – and Sandy’s – mattered most.

◆◆◆

Petra leaned against the dome’s rear wall, hands sunk into dungaree pockets, observing everything from a distance. With her genned eyesight she had no need to be up front, easily able to pick out the stars and the expressions on Micah or Gabriel’s closed-eyed faces. She gazed across the seated crowd, all of them bent forward, eager to see the outcome; a lot was riding on this particular game. As for her, she didn’t care who won, but she didn’t want either of them to lose. She switched back to the holo-screen.

Gabriel’s small attack force of sixteen ships arranged themselves into formation, his hundred-metre-long, javelin-shaped Starpiercer in front, encircled by three waves of five single-pilot, delta wing Hawks. The overall effect was of a skeletal bullet. The ships winked out as they entered Transpace on an attack vector towards Esperia that would take a minimum of two jumps.

Inside the dome, chatter subsided as everyone watched Micah’s avatar saunter over to where Gabriel’s fleet had been moments before. Four Youngbloods rose to their sandaled feet, shouting first in their own language, Hremsta, then in English. But for once the Steaders needed no translation.

“Cheat! He knew Gabriel’s location! He should forfeit the match!”

Petra felt the temperature rise in the throng. She studied Micah’s simulated face. He’s doing this on purpose. A crooked smile spread across her lips. “Sneaky, Uncle,” she said to no one in particular. Her smile faded. “Mum would have been amused.” But she noticed a couple of the Steaders were now on their feet, too, shouting back.

Brandt, one of her fellow Genners near the front row, a Youngblood nicknamed ‘Hulk’ due to his size, caught her eye. She used the face- code Genners had developed as kids so they could communicate without their Steader parents knowing, to tell Brandt to cool the Genners down.

Brandt gave the barest of nods, then turned back to his friends, clicked a command, and his colleagues silenced themselves in an instant, regaining their seats. The two Steaders who’d got up looked pleased with themselves, and with much fuss regained their seats.

The bridge shot of Micah receded to reveal an open section of space, halfway to Esperia. Gabriel’s golden attack fleet burst into the space just as two of Micah’s vermillion Blaze destroyers popped out of transit and opened fire. Petra had studied enough of transit hyper-math to know that two ships on a converging vector would both be pushed back into normal space-time by their bow waves nullifying the warp effect, like two waves colliding and cancelling each other out. But what was Micah playing at? In a straight, evenly matched fight, Genners always won against Steaders.

Gabriel’s fifteen Hawks dodged the much larger Blaze destroyers’ particle beam sweeps, even when Micah’s simulated generals used coordinated lattices, but the Hawks couldn’t get close enough to fire. Petra figured it was a matter of time before one or two Hawks would be hit. But then Gabriel’s Starpiercer shot off at an angle, as if running away. One of the Blazes turned in pursuit, and Petra saw what was coming. “Nice one, Gabe,” she uttered under her breath, as his ship spun around and micro-jumped, evading the beams and punching straight through both destroyers’ hulls. Every Genner, Youngblood or not, was on their feet yelling and whooping. Through the melee, she regarded Micah again. He hardly followed the battle. What are you up to, Uncle?

She sighed and walked forward. Small as she was, the runt in the Genner litter as she called herself to save everyone else the trouble, she made her way nimbly towards the front, a little to the side. She watched Gabriel’s beautiful face, calm as marble, blond locks tumbling down to his shoulders. Virginia, Gabriel’s tall, tawny-haired girlfriend, glanced in her direction, so Petra switched instead to staring at Sandy, Gabriel’s mother, and her partner Ramires. Though Sandy held Ramires’ hand throughout, and cheered along as Gabriel’s forces outwitted Micah’s, Sandy’s eyes often flicked towards Micah’s inert face. Although Petra was a natural at reading people, she couldn’t work out what was going on behind Sandy’s eyes.

Gabriel’s ship and his Hawks winked out – not bothering to engage Micah’s foundering destroyers – for the last transit toward Esperia. She had no clue how Gabriel would face down an Axion Class Battleship with a Starpiercer, but knew he must have a good plan. His Hawks could take out the Reapers, even though they were outnumbered more than six to one.

Petra’s gaze again swept over the expectant faces in the dome. Everyone knew what was hanging in the balance. Gabriel wanted to hunt down the Alicians as soon as Quarantine came down. Micah had said for years that they weren’t ready, but she’d heard that some of the Council members were wavering as the end of Quarantine approached. If Micah lost this simulation, there would be more defections towards Gabriel’s ambitions, represented by Ramires in Council. Colonel Vasquez, the militia commander, would never vote against Micah, but others could be persuaded.

She and her fellow Genners outstripped their human parents on every parameter and desperately sought their own destiny, their freedom. Technically, no parent could force their genned child to do anything, nor win any argument with them. But emotionally – though branded even by their parents as cold fish – the Genners needed the stamp of approval from their elders. Most of all, though few would care to admit it, they needed it from Micah, who had continued to win these matches against the odds each year. She’d tried to tell him the day before when she’d cornered him arriving for a Council meeting by the rear entrance...

“I thought Presidents wanted to be seen, Uncle.”

Micah frowned. “I’m late, Petra.”

Leaning against the wall, Petra glanced at her antique watch, a present he’d given her on her eighteenth birthday three months ago. “Not quite, actually.”

Micah shook his head. “What’s on your mind?”

She jerked a thumb towards a poster next to her advertising the duel. “Why do you do this every year?”

He sighed. “Ramires, Vasquez and I developed the simulated battles seven years ago to prepare you Genners for the eventuality of attack, either in Esperia’s system or in deep space.”

“But why you? Why the President? Why not Vasquez, for example? He’s the military leader in the absence of Blake.”

“Maybe –”

“I’ll tell you what I think, Uncle.” She gave him a measured stare. “I think you don’t like being President anymore. I don’t blame you, no one would. This annual ritual isn’t exactly an election, but if you lost, it might get you off the hook eventually, maybe at the next poll.”

Micah folded his arms. “Where’s this going, Petra, because I really don’t have much time.”

She pushed off the wall and walked right up to him. “This contest means a lot to us Genners, especially the Youngbloods. You’ve never lost a match, and none of us know how you’ve kept it up all these years, especially now we’re maturing, reaching our intellectual peak. But Gabriel has to win it fair and square. Don’t you dare lose on purpose. None of us would ever forgive you. Especially me.” She backed away. “You’d better go, Uncle.”

Micah nodded. “Don’t worry, Petra. I have zero intention of letting him win.”

She hadn’t expected Micah to cheat, though. Maybe it was for the Steaders; they needed Micah to win, to remind them they weren’t obsolete. The day Gabriel beat Micah would be the beginning of the end for ordinary folk. Added into the mix, the Steaders wanted to hang onto their kids, especially since the Alicians had already robbed them of so much. But as she gazed at her Genner colleagues, her friends, she knew it was time, time for their parents and Micah to let them go. She gazed toward the stage, to the two inert figures, settling on the younger one. Come on Gabe!

Petra was just wondering where Micah’s drones had gone, when she saw Gabriel’s fleet drop out of transit again, approaching something that looked like a mist. Uh-oh. Five Genners were on their feet again in loud protest: not only did Micah somehow have Gabriel’s flight plan, he was actually tracking Gabriel in Transpace – which wasn’t technically possible, even by cheating. But it didn’t matter for now: the rule was, once the simulation started, it was played out till the end. She watched as a silver hail of drones raced towards Gabriel’s fleet.

But soon the Genners were cheering Gabriel’s Hawks on as they raked across the frontline of drones that should have torn them apart. His five lead Hawks pinpointed the laser-armed Shuriken, despite the drones’ erratic avoidance manoeuvres, with amazing speed and accuracy, as if the spiked mines were drifting in space. The Hawks doused them with rapid pulse fire, lighting them up like fire-crackers. Hundreds of spheres winked out of existence, the digital scoreboard for Micah’s diminishing resources blurring in an effort to keep up. As the five lead Hawks’ beam weapons overheated, they peeled back, allowing the next five to push through seamlessly and open fire. Gabriel’s Hawks kept up this rotation for a full minute, destroying more than half of Micah’s drones. Petra noticed even the hard-liners amongst the Steaders were impressed with their genetically-enhanced offspring. Valiant as the Hawk pilots were, however, the swarm of mines began to close around them like an engulfing antibody. A section of drones within the cloud fell behind Gabriel and suddenly attacked the rear wave of recovering Hawks, obliterating three of them before the middle wave could fend them off.

There’s too many, Gabe.

Gabriel’s Starpiercer veered away from the swarm, allowing the Hawks to shelter on its leeward side, then his ship whiplashed back into the heart of the drone storm, three Hawks in tight formation at its rear. Petra held her breath, thinking this was a suicide run, but Gabriel unleashed hidden cables anchored to his hull. As his ship began to spin, the cable-ends glowed white-hot, flailing outwards, lacerating the attacking drones, carving a boiling corridor through the drone-cloud’s centre. Anti-matter! Way to go, Gabe!

◆◆◆

Micah watched Gabriel’s flawless performance. But it wasn’t enough. Together with Vasquez and Ramires, Micah had devised these annual games with one sole objective: to train Genners, to ready them for battle. But the odds were always stacked against them, because even upgraded to what Grid Society called Level Four, with a potential to develop to Level Five in generations to come, that’s how it would always be outside Esperia’s small system, out in the Grid. Still, Micah knew he could only hold the Genners back so long. Yet time and again, whilst Gabriel and the others excelled at tactics and strategic planning, they shied away from the tough calls and sacrifices necessary in any field situation. He knew it was because their group was tight-knit and small; Gabriel never wanted to lose anyone. But that was a colossal blind-spot, one an adversary like the Alicians would see and exploit fast.

He turned up the heat.

◆◆◆

Petra heard gasps as Micah’s Reapers appeared in stealth-mode, black shadows against the dark tapestry of space, only visible by the occlusion of stars, engaging the nine other Hawks now on the opposite side of the drone cloud. At first the Reapers were no match for the reflexes of the Genner pilots; in less than a minute half the Reapers were cut down without a single Hawk casualty. Petra managed a subdued punch in the air.

Then the dome went eerily quiet as the remaining Reapers did something no one had seen before. If any Reaper got close to a Hawk, it exploded its engines and detonated all its weapons, sending debris in all directions. Because they were dark, it looked as if space was mined, random explosions spattering around the Hawks. Soon five Hawks were damaged enough to slow them down. Petra guessed what was coming. Two Blaze destroyers appeared. Steader cheers competed with Genner expletives as a broiling dogfight erupted before their eyes, particle beams criss-crossing the holo-screen.

That was when she detected a shift in the Shuriken pattern and saw the deeper layer in Micah’s plan. She pushed through to the ring, and rushed towards Gabriel’s chair, clicking a command to Brandt above the din. He heard it, and blocked Vasquez’ attempt to intercept her. Virginia’s eyes were steel, but she remained seated. Petra reached Gabriel’s side, noticing a single bead of sweat clinging to his temple. She spoke in clipped Hremsta: “Compression wave; jump now; higher goal,” then turned to the holoscreen, ignoring Vasquez’ glare.

The Shuriken were no longer in a loose cloud formation, but were in concentric circles, cocooning Gabriel’s Starpiercer and its attendant three Hawks. The outer sphere of drones flashed blinding white, then the next one followed suit, then the next. It happened so fast, and the light pulses were so intense, that everyone in the auditorium shrouded their eyes momentarily. Two seconds later, darkness flooded back in. Through blotchy vision, Petra searched for Gabriel’s ship, but could only see a vast area of carnage and scorched metal.

Brandt pointed at Gabriel’s scorecard and cheered. “He escaped!” Petra let out a long breath, and felt Sandy’s hand squeeze her arm.

Petra turned back to the holo to watch the remaining Hawks fight the destroyers and Reapers till the end, against impossible odds. When the last of the Hawks was destroyed, all the Genners clicked a single Hremsta word, Petra too, raising her right fist in the air. The Steaders all knew what it was, a word that translated as “Honour in life, honour in death.” As the slightly dazed Genner Hawk pilots came out from under their headsets on the other edge of the ring, Vasquez saluted them. A number of other men and women, Steaders no less, stood and followed suit. That’s a first. She turned back to Virginia, only to meet a cool stare, before Gabriel’s girlfriend turned and pushed her way back through the crowd. Petra shrugged, and took Virginia’s seat, and gazed straight ahead.

Within seconds, Gabriel’s Starpiercer was thrust out of Transpace again by the two Blaze destroyers that had just eradicated most of Gabriel’s Hawks. Destroyer jump range was farther than a Starpiercer’s, but she still didn’t see how Micah was doing this. How had he been able to track ships in transit, since, after the first encounter, Gabriel must have realised Micah had advance information, and would have altered his next transit vector? She wasn’t alone; both Steaders and Genners were shouting unorthodox and unrealistic tactics. Then she got it. The first two destroyers must have tagged Gabriel’s Starpiercer, probably via coded micro-debris from their hulls clinging to it when Gabriel tore through their hulls. Not for the first time, she wondered how Micah thought like a Genner.

This time Gabriel did not turn to fight, and instead bore onwards into a nearby solar system, unable to pull away from the closing destroyers. The three remaining attendant hawks, knowing they would hold Gabriel back from reaching his maximum speed, bled away from the Starpiercer and headed back towards the lead destroyer. But it was futile – they were incinerated in the beam-fire before they could inflict any damage or even slow down the destroyers. Gabriel aimed straight for the sun. It had been a hot discussion topic with the Ossyrians as to whether the Starpiercer could really live up to its name. Petra twisted around for a moment, noted that the entire audience was on its feet, eyes glued to the chase scene. She joined them.

As Gabriel approached the point of no return, with the destroyers almost in firing range, he wavered to the left, then swung right, accelerating into a hard curve. The destroyers had momentarily adjusted direction to catch Gabriel, and now had to swing back. But they were less manoeuvrable, and laboured hard to make the course correction. All three ships skated along the lick of the sun’s corona, and Petra could only imagine the stresses on the hull and engines. Gabriel’s ship jettisoned all its cables. The lead destroyer caught several of them, atomizing the front half of the ship and flinging fireballs into the tandem destroyer, tearing off one of its engines, sending it careening down into the sun. Gabriel’s ship pulled away, and then jumped back into Transpace.

Unanimous applause broke out, but it sputtered as a quadrant of the star-field shifted, as if there had been a glitch in the holosim. Not everyone had seen it, but as the noise died down, two ugly black scars, rips in the fabric of space, opened up some way out from Esperia’s sun. All eyes darted first to Micah’s avatar returning to his battle chair on the bridge, then to Gabriel, who, in his last transit, was oblivious to something that had happened ahead of his ship. Petra couldn’t warn him this time, not while he was in transit.

Petra realized she had really hoped Gabriel would win this time. The Genners had earned it; deserved it. But Micah obviously had one more trick. She did the hyper-math in her head to predict where Gabriel would drop out of transit. Even before she finished the calcs she’d been able to do since seven years of age, she knew where he would arrive, and glanced towards the two remaining Blaze destroyers on the other side of Esperia’s larger moon.

People quietened down as the holo zoomed in for the final showdown. If Micah had miscalculated by even a fraction, Gabriel would have had his target right there in front of him, with only a single battleship to fight. But she knew Micah hadn’t faltered, his strategy had been orchestrated with ruthless precision. Petra folded her arms, and stared at her adopted uncle, realizing she didn’t know him as well as she thought.

The two destroyers began blasting a focused beam on the moon’s surface, interspersed with ‘burrower’ nuclear torpedoes. Within seconds, rock spewed forth into space. The destroyers came about.

She knew now that Micah had used the remaining drones to explode two black hole mines close to the final transit route, creating a gravimetric shock wave; a ripple, in effect, but one strong enough to divert Gabriel’s transit vector by half a million kilometres. As his Starpiercer leapt back into normal space, instead of having the planet before him and Micah’s flagship in his sights, he met two destroyers head on, gun ports blazing. As yellow beams lit up space, Gabriel hardly had time to detect the dark avalanche streaming toward him from the moon. Pummelled by the rock, his ship was caught in the destroyers’ crossfire. The Starpiercer was sliced in half.

A single, space-suited figure ejected from the disintegrating ship, amidst a collective intake of breath by the audience. Petra held herself, then noticed something blink onto the scoreboard; another Hawk had entered the game. She spotted Virginia sitting in one of the dummy simulation chairs on the other side of the stage. Petra turned back to the screen. Just as the destroyers moved in for the final kill, a single Hawk dropped out of transit for a few seconds, then disappeared again, snatching up the avatar of Gabriel with it. Petra smiled. Way to go, girl. She vacated her seat before Gabriel came to, avoided Sandy’s searching stare, and headed toward the exit.

◆◆◆

Micah leant back heavily in his chair. He knew he should feel elation, but his over-riding reaction was closer to nausea. He prayed he’d never have to do anything like this for real. But although Gabriel had lost the match, he had made the necessary sacrifices this time.

Micah would have preferred to remain inside the simulation till everyone had gone home, but no sooner had he thought it than he found himself ‘back’ in the dome.

Some of the Steaders were euphoric, cheering, but many were quiet. Micah gazed across to Gabriel, who was leaning forward, staring at the floor, a frown across his normally smooth brow. A phalanx of Youngbloods jumped onto the stage, placing themselves between Gabriel and Micah, with Brandt at their head. He jabbed a forefinger at Micah, shouting so that all could hear.

“You cheated, Micah, you got the location of our fleet. And black hole mines are illegal –”

“He won.” Gabriel hadn’t raised his voice, but it cut through Brandt’s onslaught nonetheless, and Gabriel’s cohorts turned to him, opening up a path between him and Micah. Gabriel stepped into the middle ground, and addressed everyone while staring at Micah. “It doesn’t matter how: cheating, use of illegal weapons, whatever. War is war.” He turned to the rest of the crowd, the Steaders, and his parents. “Once again we are reminded that we should be proud of what our elders can accomplish. We still have much to learn.”

The dome fell silent. Micah couldn’t judge the mood at that point: some pride, and maybe some mutual respect, which had been sorely missing in the increasing tension building during recent months. Gabriel turned to leave. Micah saw Sandy glaring at him, a look he knew too well.

“Wait,” Micah said, rising to his feet. “Gabriel, everyone, I have three announcements to make.” He cleared his throat. He’d rehearsed this over and over, to get the words exactly right, but he mentally binned his memorized speech, and said the first thing that came into his mind. “I cheated.” He met the eyes of the Steaders, other councilors, people he’d known and worked with for a generation. “I’d do it again to save this planet. And our enemies would do a lot worse. I rigged the simulation yesterday to deliver me the enemy’s position. But a real enemy can   use various means to achieve the same end. A surprise attack isn’t any guarantee when facing a more advanced enemy. Surprise is a two-way street when it comes to war.” Especially with the Alicians. He remembered how they’d betrayed humanity, and stayed one step ahead, all the way. He faced Gabriel.

“But it says something when the only way I can beat you is to cheat.” Micah tried not to look in Sandy’s direction. “So, as President, by the powers vested in me, I now declare formally that you Genners are of age. The oldest of you is eighteen, but we all know that by the age of twelve you surpass us intellectually. I declare that any Genner at least sixteen years old is to be considered a full citizen of Esperia, with full voting rights.” Micah could barely hear the end of his sentence in the din that erupted. Some of the Council Members kept quiet – this had of course been discussed at length with them – most of them thought it was time, and agreed to let Micah decide the right moment to announce it. But Micah had two more surprises to unveil.

Gabriel stared back at him, and nodded, a rare smile sculpting his lips. Ramires leapt up into the ring and shook Micah’s hand, as he patted Gabriel’s shoulder. Micah nodded, risking a glance once more in Sandy’s direction, detecting one eyebrow raised slightly higher than the other.

Gabriel raised a hand, and waited for the shouting to die down.    He stood close to Micah, his dark eyes glinting. “Mr.  President, then I formally request that we be given a ship to hunt down and kill the Alicians who helped slaughter seven billion people.”

Micah paused before speaking. “That’s for Council to decide. And I hereby nominate you to Council.” There were gasps from some of the Steaders; a Genner had never sat in Council. Nominating Gabriel to Council was partly intended as a delaying tactic, aimed at stopping the Youngbloods from stealing one of the space-craft as soon as Quarantine came down. But Micah reckoned Gabriel would work that out pretty fast.

“Seconded,” Ramires said.

“Thirded,” Vasquez added, sealing the vote.

Micah nodded, and spoke just to Gabriel. “Welcome to democracy, good luck with it.”

Gabriel folded his arms “Are you still going to block me in Council?”

Micah turned to the crowd and raised his hands high, and shouted. “Third,” he waited for the noise to abate, then spoke quieter, but with   a firm tone. “My third announcement is that I’m retiring from the Presidency and the Council, effective immediately.” He rushed on.

“Colonel Vasquez and Antonia have agreed to look after things until the next election in three months’ time.” Without another word, he jumped down off the stage, and made his way through the crowd toward the exit.

By the time he got outside it was dark. Petra sat astride a skimmer, revving the engine. She unhooked an earpiece. “Get aboard, Uncle. I’m of age now, according to you, so you can’t send me home, and anyway you promised my mother you’d look after me, which means we have to stick together.”

Micah sighed. “And where are you taking me?”

Petra tilted her head. “Didn’t you just say we surpass you intellectually at twelve? We’re going where you want to go, of course. Shimsha. Spider central.”

Micah heard others coming out of the dome. “Okay, but I drive.” “Genner eyesight is better than –”

“I can see in the dark.”

She cocked her head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Move. Your mother – your biological one – would beat me to a pulp if she knew how badly you’d been raised these past couple of years.” He swung his leg over the seat in front of Petra, switched off the skimmer’s lights, and took off down the valley, his resident automatically supplying him with night vision.

As they left Esperantia, he accelerated into the darkness, so that Petra had to shout above the wind. “We’re going to see Blake, aren’t we?” Her voice was light; she’d always liked speed, he remembered, having taken her on desert rides more than once.

Micah nodded.

“I heard he still believes Mum’s alive,” she shouted.

Micah gripped the throttle harder. It wasn’t necessarily good news if Kat was still alive, given who had abducted her and a Hohash two years ago, somehow managing to break through a Level Twelve Quarantine barrier. If Kat was still breathing somewhere, she sure as hell wouldn’t be having a good time of it.

Chapter 2

Prisoner

Beneath a lapis sky skewered by towering redwoods, Kat dodged the pine spears raining down on her. Each one whistled on its fifty-metre descent before puncturing the mossy ground with a dull ‘pfft’, spattering musky soil into the air around her. Bastard trees! She hurdled a root rising from the spongy undergrowth, then ducked as a branch swung down to head height – it would have knocked her out cold. Up ahead a small clearing invited, but she knew better – the shards of pine, dropping like weighted arrows as they tipped off the trees, would get her for sure if she fled into the open. She should have done as she was told and stayed by the lake. Then Tomar wouldn’t be dead.

Kat wasn’t as fit as she used to be, but adrenaline had kicked in, and she ran fast, keeping close to the broad, gnarled trunks in the forest that was trying to kill her. She imagined snarling faces in the bark’s twisted patterns, but she knew the forest wasn’t highly intelligent, barely self- aware; just reacting to something which didn’t belong in its midst. As she lingered next to an old bough, trying to catch her breath, a vine curled up her leg. She pulled out her knife and rammed it hard into the tree. Kat doubted the forest felt pain, at least not at the level of her small blade, but she needed to make a statement. She yanked her leg out of the coil and worked out her sprint path, squinting through the branches and leaves that surrounded her, trying to cocoon her into a compost grave. A jet engine flared overhead – Louise, her captor these past two years, searching for her – another reason to stay under the canopy.

Kat bolted away from the malevolent fir, buffeted by leaves as the wind swirled through the branches; the trees used it to their advantage, and she had to dive and roll on the mossy ground as a gust drove wooden claws down towards her. Just as her head was lifting from the ground, a patch of violet daisies squirted virulent pollen, catching the left side of her face. Pain seared through her left eyeball. While staggering blind for only a moment, a branch from behind connected with her head like a baseball bat and sent her sprawling.

Thick vines lost no time in trapping her ankles. Struggling onto   her knees, she fished for her knife and found its sheath empty, the glimmer of her blade out of reach, sinking into the undergrowth as if it were quicksand. She looked upwards: four massive redwoods loomed overhead, swaying in the gale above, closing around her. She knew what was next. Considering her options, she decided she had none, other than becoming fertilizer, probably the fate of many an alien landing on this inviting, green, and thoroughly deadly planet. Sharp cracks above announced a shower of spears on its way. Kat kept her eyes open. Rather than pointlessly placing her hands over her head, she folded her arms, spat at the ground, then held her breath.

Two boots thudded in front of her. She tried to think of it as good news. The air around her shimmered, just as the wooden javelins pounded like hail on the shield her captor had just erected.

“Pleased to see me?” Louise’s voice was deep, sultry, mocking as usual.

“Tomar’s dead,” Kat replied. That was a good thing, given what Louise would have done to him had he survived; Louise wasn’t the forgiving type, especially when it came to betrayal.

Louise knelt down, her eyes level with Kat’s. “I left the other four Mannekhi at the lakeside.”

Kat’s grey eyes flared. “They had nothing to do with it. It was only Tomar who –”

“Your word that you won’t try again. Or else they stay here on this planet.”

Kat turned her head away. She hadn’t cared much for the Mannekhi, human-looking companions but for their all-black eyes – except Tomar – but they wouldn’t last a night on this lethal forest planet, and even if they did, they’d starve to death within a week. Louise didn’t seem to be paying attention – the Alician-Q’Roth hybrid treated everything as   a game, one she wasn’t that interested in, except when she might lose. Then she could get unbelievably nasty.

Kat nodded.

“Say it.”

Kat looked Louise in the eyes. “I won’t try to escape again. You have my word.” She waited a second while Louise watched her, like a cobra deciding whether to strike or not. “Okay, Louise, I’ve had enough countryside for one day. Are we done here?”

Louise smiled. “You are more amusing than the others, I’ll give you that.” She pulled out a pistol and fired at the vines trapping Kat’s legs, releasing her. She held out a hand to help Kat up. “Let’s go home, shall we?”

Kat found her legs were numb below the knee, and she had to accept Louise’s help to get up. She wanted to spit again, but decided not to push her luck.

Back onboard the long range Q’Roth Marauder, Kat met with the four remaining Mannekhi crew in one of the many jade-coloured walled chambers with no furniture save a table extruded at one end, too high to be of much use for non-Q’Roth passengers. Q’Roth never sat, apparently. The Mannekhi appeared so humanoid, except for their pure-black eyes, that Kat wondered if they were somehow related. Like her, they wore grey one-piece suits, purely functional affairs.

Kat made the first move. “I’m sorry about Tomar, really.” She was. It had been his idea – he’d thought they could escape. But nobody except Louise had known the nature of the forest, and he’d been speared in the first five minutes of leaving the lake.

The bald Elder, Tarish, fingered his short white beard. “We thank you for getting us back aboard.”

Aramisk, the only female in the Mannekhi group, glared at Kat from beneath a dark mop of hair. She flexed her arm muscles, like a male gorilla. “If this precious bitch hadn’t tried to escape… Where were you going to go, anyway? Did you even have a plan? You humans may look like us but I can see why the Q’Roth cull on humanity was sanctioned.”

Kat advanced, her nostrils flaring, readying her fists to see just how tough Aramisk’s bony cheeks were, how easily her thick lips would split.

Tarish stepped between them, held up his hand. He turned to Aramisk, bowed his head slightly, said “Forgive me, Aramisk,” then slapped her right cheek hard.

Kat winced. She’d been stuck with this group for the past nine months, and still found their culture shocking. Mannekhi valued free speech and discipline in equal measure. She wouldn’t fancy being brought up as a Mannekhi child. Tomar had been the youngest, a rebel by Mannekhi standards.

Aramisk recovered, bowed, and gave the customary reply. “Thank you, Elder, for reminding me of my place.”

Kat tried again for the umpteenth time to reach them, wondering if their blood debt to her, for making sure Louise didn’t leave them to die on the forest planet, might incline them to listen this time. The Mannekhi had chosen Qorall’s side, and these four – plus Tomar – had been an advance scouting party tracking down the almost mythical Kalarash known as Hellera, last seen in the Ant Nebula. Louise was delivering them to Qorall’s generals with a piece of critical information they wouldn’t even tell her, which was maybe why she had a cavalier attitude to their survival.

Kat spoke up. “Qorall is using you, you know that don’t you? Once he gets his way, he’ll cast the Mannekhi aside, assuming there’s anything left of the galaxy by the time he’s finished.”

Tarish nodded heavily, as always. She knew from Tomar that this wasn’t just an affectation. Mannekhi looked human, but they were far more advanced. Tomar had explained to her one night how Mannekhi considered premises from all angles, playing them backwards and forwards in time with multiple what-if scenarios; like four-dimensional chess. Humans, by comparison, seemed to be guessing all the time, failing to include vital pieces of information or likely events that didn’t fit the view they wanted.

Tomar had made love to her that night. At least in that sphere of activity they hadn’t been too different. That was the first and only time, just a few days ago, before Louise had decided to go down to the forest- planet to re-stock certain rare minerals, or maybe just to stretch her legs.

Kat missed Tomar, though they’d barely known each other. He’d been her first real emotional contact in the two years since Louise had taken her prisoner. She focused her mind back on the issue at hand.

Kat appreciated that Tarish was weighing not just the words, but the context, motives and personality of the speaker, and factoring in knowledge about her cultural origins. Mannekhi did not waste words; there was never any banter. Maybe that was their problem, Kat mused; this crew is too damned serious.

“Try to imagine,” Tarish began, with a voice that commanded absolute attention, “an alien occupation lasting your entire people’s history. Sponsorship is a difficult process. Over millennia, it gets inside your cultural DNA. Growing up knowing that you are not considered good enough for anything but the Grid’s menial work. Our earliest artifacts and artistry from fifty thousand years ago show us as subservient to other races. It has shaped our identity.”

He approached her, and placed a smooth palm on her shoulder. With any other man, except maybe Blake or Zack, she’d have brushed the hand off immediately, but this Elder – his sincerity and humility were like nothing she’d ever encountered before.

He smiled, the way she imagined a saint might, except for the glimmering all-black eyes. “For the first time in our entire history, we have been given respect by a higher order species. We are on the winning side now. If you were us, would you not take this opportunity?”

Louise entered the chamber, and the four Mannekhi immediately dropped to one knee. Kat folded her arms.

Louise walked up to her. “You should listen to him, Katrina.”

“You should listen to yourself, Louise.” It was a game they played.

Something ugly flared behind Louise’s eyes, and Kat found herself on the floor, her chin smarting. Goddammit, Louise was quick; Kat hadn’t even seen the blow coming.

“You are too familiar with me. You will address me by my formal Q’Roth designation as the Mannekhi do. You will address me as Arctura.” Louise wandered around the kneeling, heads-bowed group, and paused behind Aramisk. The fingers of her left hand traced the girl’s chin, then cupped it in her palm, the other hand on the nape of the girl’s sturdy neck.

Kat leapt to her feet. “No… Please, Lou –” She met the part-woman-mostly-Q’Roth’s eyes, taking in the steadfast look on Aramisk’s face, despite her trembling lower lip.

Kat knelt on one knee. “Please…Arctura.”

Louise’s fingers traced Aramisk’s cheek, stroked her hair, and then let go of her. “You’ve come a long way today, Katrina. There is hope for you yet. You and I will dine together tonight, there is much to discuss.” She stood in front of Tarish, and lifted up her palms. As one, the Mannekhi rose. “Elder,” she said, “Your loyalty today has not gone unnoticed.” She left the room.

Kat got up, wishing one of the spears had gotten her earlier. She stared at the floor. Two sandaled feet appeared before her. Six toes per foot; the other difference, she remembered.

Aramisk’s voice was firm. “Thank you. But you must understand, I wish you had died today. Because of you, Tomar is dead.”

She reached out and touched Kat’s face; another gesture Kat had noticed, a way of saying, “listen to me”, or rather, “I need to ensure you hear my words.” But Aramisk’s fingers were iron. The others departed while she held Kat’s chin. Kat knew that by custom she had to wait until the speaker let go. When the others were gone, Aramisk continued in a lower, less aggressive tone. “You cared for him, didn’t you?”

Kat realized the power of this form of exchange. She could not lie, and emotions rose to the surface. Her eyes misted. She said nothing.

“We  Mannekhi are neither stupid nor blind.  We look for  opportunities.” She let go of Kat’s face. “When the time comes, we will see whose side we choose.”

Alone, Kat sat on the cold floor. For the first time in days, she thought about her daughter Petra, wondering how she would look now, two years older. And Antonia, her wife. Kat missed her. But the face she kept coming back to was Micah’s. They’d never got on, especially since he’d originally been interested in Antonia. But she’d been counting the days carefully over the past two years, and knew Quarantine would be coming down very soon. Blake was getting on in years and would not leave his beloved spiders. Gabriel would go after Sister Esma and the Alicians – that much bloodlust could not have abated in such a short space of time. Micah, though – he would come looking. Not just for her, but for Louise, because he knew, as Kat did now, that Louise was the larger threat.

But the question arose in her mind, as it had almost every day since her capture, of what Louise wanted with her, and where exactly she was taking her. Not for the first time, she wondered if it was better not to know.

Kat was roused from her slumber as ocean blue light drifted into her room, rippling over the dark walls. She rubbed her eyes. “About time.” It had been three weeks. “You know I worry about you spending so much time with that bitch.”

The Hohash, an alien artefact she’d first  encountered  on Eden, was about the same height as she was, its oval mirror-like flow-surface bordered by a golden tube. It hovered within arms’ reach of her bedside. Its fluidic surface mimicked Pacific rollers, one of her favourite vistas, reminding her of her surfing days with her older sister.

“What’s new?”

The Hohash could not make sounds, but had learned to lip-read human speech. Abruptly its face changed to a star chart, showing the entire galaxy from above. The colour of more than half changed to deep red: Qorall-controlled space. Worse, a finger of scarlet edged towards a yellow-highlighted star, where Esperia, and Kat’s loved ones lay, presumably oblivious to approaching Armageddon.

“Zoom in please.”

She did a rough count of the stars between the front and Esperia. Six months, at most. “Where are we?” Her heart sank as a blue dot flashed, deep inside Qorall space. “Do you know where Qorall is?” A band of orange appeared. It included many star systems – so the Hohash didn’t know exactly where Qorall was.

Kat dreaded asking the next question. She cleared her throat, and found herself closing her eyes as she asked it. “Where is Pierre?” She prayed he would still be out there somewhere, even though he was no longer her Pierre, and had advanced to God-alone knew what Level on the Grid scale. She held her breath and opened her eyes. A purple dot, between the front and Esperia. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Do you know what he’s up to?” Her Hohash had never answered this question, though Pierre evidently had one on his ship.

To her surprise, she was shown an image inside Pierre and Ukrull’s compact ship. She saw the Ranger Ukrull, a big, reptilian alien with disgusting table manners, and a perfectly silver Pierre – her former lover and Petra’s father, inadvertently advanced to Level Ten, shedding his emotions along the way. The Hohash was showing her far more than usual, so Kat decided to push her luck. “Petra? Antonia? Micah?”

She half-fell, half-clambered off the bed down onto the hard floor on her knees as a series of images flooded across its face. She gripped the golden edges of the Hohash, her arms trembling, as she saw her daughter, laughing with Micah, and then Antonia, for the first time in two years. Pride surged in her breast: Petra was quite the young woman, Antonia as regal as ever. Was that the first tinge of grey on Micah’s hair? She wiped tears away, not wishing to miss a second of it. Abruptly the images ceased. Mustard light flooded into her room, Louise’s silhouette framed in the doorway.

“Katrina, I made a deal with the Hohash when I first brought you aboard. It likes you, and I made it clear that if it showed you any images without my permission, I would blind you; you don’t need sight for what I have in mind for you.”

Kat felt winded; these past two years, she’d thought the Hohash didn’t trust her anymore. She turned to face Louise, letting go of the Hohash’s rim. “So, why now, Arctura?”

Louise folded her arms – something Kat had never seen her do before.

“I need your cooperation… Kat. If you work with me – I mean really cooperate, then the Hohash is free to show you all the images it can. I will not intervene.”

Kat turned back to the Hohash’s dulled surface, its familiar oil-on- water swirl of browns. She knew the Hohash had an extremely limited emotional repertoire, being an intelligent device rather than a species. Still, she wondered how it felt about the situation. She guessed she’d never know, so it was her decision alone.

Her chest felt tight, but there was a longing deep in her belly. She felt like she’d been in prison the past two years, ripped from her friends and family, from everything. She’d become a ghost. She didn’t want to help Louise, let alone Qorall, and yet... she had needs.

She remembered Tarish’s words, and knew that a Mannekhi would weigh all this up in an instant and come to a different conclusion. But Kat wasn’t Mannekhi. She traced a finger over the Hohash’s mirror surface. Louise had waited all this time, not to break her spirit, but to bend it to her will.

Forgive me, Micah.

She stood up. “What do want me to do, Arctura?”

Kat stayed up all night. Hellera, the last Kalarash in the galaxy. Not myth after all. A Level Nineteen female, one of the so-called Progenitors who had breathed sentient life into the galaxy, the original masters of the Tla Beth, the Grid’s current rulers, and sworn enemies of Qorall. Qorall wanted to know where she was. Apparently the Mannekhi had tracked her to the Ant Nebula but she had moved to one of three potential locations – Tarish had finally told Louise earlier that evening. Hellera possessed a Hohash, for sure – the Kalarash had devised them – and Kat could communicate with Hohash…

Hohash were data-plexers – omnipaths – capable of receiving all sorts of signals and processing them, and interfacing with other Hohash, of which there were not many left – a few on Esperia, maybe a few others scattered across the galaxy, and one with Hellera. And Kalaran. That’s where she had been when Louise captured her, in Esperia’s caves, together with the Hohash, looking for anything left behind by the only other Kalarash, who had left the planet just before Quarantine. Micah had sent her to the caves to look, and Louise had somehow gotten past the barrier.

Kat realized her hands were clenched into fists, her lips squeezed tight, and released them. She’d had so much anger, had spent so much time working on a way to kill Louise. But Louise – Arctura – whatever, was bloody tough, and might look human on the outside, but inside she’d been re-engineered by the Q’Roth more than any other Alician.

She sat back. At least she had something to do. She had been accessing all sorts of war reports from both sides – the Hohash translated everything for her – but nothing yet, not even a mention of Hellera or   a Kalarash. She thought of Antonia, of Micah, and her former captain, Blake. What would you want me to do?

For Antonia, it would be simple – come home; not so easy. For Blake, kill Louise; ditto. But Micah. He could be devious. Then it came to her. It was as blindingly obvious as it was dangerous: play both sides.

She accessed the Hohash again, interfacing with it via the node in her brain, and began surfing the information streams again, but this time she was looking for something different.

She missed breakfast. She skipped lunch. Aramisk came to check up on her and forced her to break off for ten minutes to drink some water and take a shower. By early evening, Kat found something. Although the Q’Roth had culled humanity, and so were her sworn enemies, they now worked for the Tla beth, and were actually on the ‘good side’, fighting against Qorall, as were the Alicians, though they seemed to have their own agenda.

She accessed encrypted Q’Roth battle reports – Hohash could decrypt anything, it seemed – and found several obscure references to a human. The Q’Roth were losing most if not all battles against Qorall’s forces. She couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for them, even if it meant that Qorall was getting closer to Esperia. But this reference to Jorann kept cropping up. Apparently, now a low-ranking general commanding a battleship, this Jorann was once human. After cross-referencing many reports and notes, her mouth dropped open as she realized who Jorann really was, who he used to be.

Kat leapt off the bed and paced in her room. Here was a potential ally, someone who could help Esperia from the outside. But apparently, although he knew he used to be human, Jorann had no recollection of who he used to be, of his real name, and had been re-engineered into a full Q’Roth warrior. Her heart beat fast, nonetheless. Jorann could be the best hope to protect Esperia when Quarantine came down, though apparently he was about to engage one of Qorall’s main fleets. But what could she do with the information? She bit into her knuckles.

Louise appeared at Kat’s doorway.

“Not now!” Kat shouted, then added, “Sorry, Arctura, but I may have something, a possible lead on Hellera, but I need time to think.” And come up with a good lie. Louise glared, but left without another word, sealing the door behind her.

Kat went back to the Hohash, grabbing its rim. “Pierre. You have to tell Pierre.” No, that won’t work, Pierre can’t access a Hohash. “Ukrull – the Ranger; show him.” Kat closed her eyes and opened her mind, focusing on the Jorann information, his last known location, and a single word – his original name.

She collapsed back on her bed, exhausted. At first there was a sense of elation – she’d done something, and maybe it could make a difference. But her loneliness – something she kept at bay every day – fuelled by fatigue, surfaced and threatened to overwhelm her. She lay thinking of her wife Antonia, longing for her soft touch and tender kisses. For once, she let the emotions out. She pulled the cover up over her shoulders. While the Hohash showed her images of rain falling on the sea, Kat fell asleep on a wet pillow.

Chapter 3

Sides

If Jorann had still been human he’d have shaken himself. The Q’Roth had been his sworn enemy, that much he remembered; he’d nuked a quarter of a million of the warriors in the last days of the fall of Earth. Then he’d been captured and offered a stark choice – join forces or die. He’d spat at Sister Esma, told her where to go, and she’d obliged him by venting him into space. But she’d downloaded his memories beforehand and taken enough DNA to produce a hybrid clone. She told him later that the Q’Roth leaders usually got what they wanted – in this case his intuitive battle strategies. Initially they’d tested the clone without his memories, but its performance had been rudimentary. So they’d uploaded his personality, and he’d woken, surprised to be alive, and then disgusted at what they’d turned him into – a six-legged, black-carapaced three-metre-tall Q’Roth warrior.

His trapezoidal head had a lipless gash of a mouth that rarely opened, communication achieved instead by stone-like throat muscles that clicked and grated in Q’Roth language whose sound reminded him of rustling leaves and grinding rocks. Instead of eyes he had six vermillion slits, like razor cuts, arranged in two opposing sets sloping diagonally downwards toward the centre of his forehead. Although the slits occasionally oozed blood-like sweat, Q’Roth warriors could not cry. That suited Jorann just fine.

He only wished he could remember his human name.

“Bring the Hunters forward, they go in hot,” he signaled the other battleships. There was no reply, no confirmation – Q’Roth war tactics were largely silent, they would only speak if they disagreed. But he knew they also disliked talking to him, let alone taking commands from a hybrid once-human. Yet this was his battle strategy, his call. Pride and prejudice were irrelevant today; if he had miscalculated, they would all be dead very soon.

For seven years he’d refused to cooperate with his Q’Roth captors. But they kept taking him on missions. He witnessed the inexorable slaughter as the invader Qorall slashed and burned his way across the galaxy, and Jorann knew where the remnants of humanity lay – right in Qorall’s path. They wouldn’t last a second. Four ships full of human cargo had fled the Q’Roth’s culling of Earth eighteen years earlier, and without doubt still saw the Q’Roth and their Alician cohorts as their principal enemy. But Jorann had seen many species far more malevolent; he knew how brutal the galaxy could be, and Qorall put even those alien races to shame.

So, here he was, fighting alongside the species who had almost erased mankind. He even had command of a four hundred crew, kilometer-long battleship, sculpted from obsidian Scintarelli tree-metal and shaped like Thor’s hammer, dripping with weapons turrets. If he’d wanted to, he could cause it to self-destruct or fire on the other Q’Roth ships and take out as many as possible. He had enough command overrides on the Bridge, and was alone – his lieutenants worked a deck below in Tactical. But futile bravado had never been his style. He’d learned that to survive in this galaxy you had to play the long game.

“Your guest is en route.” A voice message from Granch, the senior commander, interrupted his thoughts. The fact that Granch had announced it fleet-wide was significant. Perhaps he finally trusted Jorann, or more likely he wanted all his troops to be focused and follow commands.     In any case, it was good that the ‘guest’ was en route; Jorann’s whole strategy depended on it.

Jorann knew the nine other senior commanders never fully  trusted him, despite his strong performance in the last dozen battles. He’d saved most of the fleet from near disaster in the Ossyrian sector less than a week ago, seconds after Qorall fired an anti-matter cluster into its sun, triggering a super-flare, engulfing four defending fleets and two of Jorann’s destroyer squadrons unable to jump fast enough. Still, to his colleagues, Jorann was an aberration. One of them had even fired on Jorann’s flagship a month earlier during a firefight. Qorall had surprised them all by launching planets through a wormhole at the third largest Q’Roth shipyard, after destabilising their cores to turn them into world-sized grenades. None of them, even the oldest Q’Roth warriors from the Antechratian Campaign five centuries earlier, had ever seen anything like this level of carnage or firepower. The errant commander who’d fired – luckily Jorann had just raised his shields – confessed his misdemeanour and took the honourable way out, piloting a Hunter vessel stacked with atomics deep into enemy space, taking out one of Qorall’s supply convoys.

He checked his displays, densely packed with Q’Roth three- dimensional script no normal human could ever hope to fathom. Sixty seconds till they emerged and met the leading edge of Qorall’s forces.

Jorann understood the Q’Roth sense of frustration – they were warriors, foot-soldiers of the highest calibre, space dog-fighters extraordinaire. But such skills were useless against Qorall’s Inferno Class weaponry. Moreover, Qorall’s strategy eluded the galaxy’s indigenous species – he did not seem interested in the spoils of war, whether worlds, technologies, or resources, except for swelling the ranks of his armies and navies. Instead, he spread inexorably across the galaxy like a cancer. What perplexed Jorann in particular was that the arrowhead of Qorall’s general front had from the start charted a course towards the new homeworld of humanity, Esperia. It didn’t make sense: mankind – what was left of it – was as much a threat to Qorall as an ant was to a Q’Roth warrior. And yet through eighteen years, despite brief deviations, Qorall’s forces held this course. Perhaps that was one reason the Q’Roth High Guard wanted to keep Jorann alive.

His ex-humanity lowered his standing amongst the commanders’ ranks. He had no Q’Roth ‘friends’, and certainly never any female companionship – which would have been a step too far in any case. Despite being in the largest army in the galaxy, and having four hundred crewmembers on his ship under his command, he often felt completely alone. He’d learned to live with it, channeling his energies into battle tactics and strategies. That was all that kept him going; quite Q’Roth, he realized. But he sensed he had had a vibrant social life before, when human; a wife, friends, camaraderie. But there were so many holes in his memory, locked away somehow, the key being his original name. If only he could remember it. He didn’t want to go to his grave as Jorann; he wanted his human name, whatever it was. Surely he deserved that much? But after eighteen years as a Q’Roth, and perhaps even as a military commander back on Earth, he knew that ‘deserved’ had nothing to do with it. And so he’d prefer his grave, if there ever was one, to be unmarked.

As with all front-line commanders, his nights were numbered. Yet the Q’Roth High Guard grew increasingly desperate – they had lost thirty- three battles in a row, more than eight thousand ships; they couldn’t keep taking those kinds of losses. This mission was different. Jorann had outlined a new strategy, enlisting the aid of the mysterious Tla Beth, the very top layer of the Grid hierarchy, who were apparently pure energy creatures whose Homeworld remained a closely-guarded secret. One of them was venturing out from their hyper-dimensional safe haven where they strategized, moving ships and inter-stellar counter-measures on trans-dimensional maps that no species below Level Fifteen understood. The Q’Roth all but worshipped the Tla Beth, and if anything happened to this one… But that was why they’d recruited Jorann into their ranks in the first place, to think outside the sphere. He prayed his gambit would work.

The normally green display in front of him flashed blood red, and the Q’Roth equivalent of adrenaline surged through his arteries. Jorann deplored war and its inevitable carnage, but he nevertheless felt the thrill of battle he’d known so many times before. He’d always been a career soldier, and was never more alive than when his life was on the line, knowing he could be killed at any second. His upper claw hovered above the ‘fire’ button during the extended jump into Qorall-controlled space.

His fleet re-materialised as planned, the enemy’s flotilla dead ahead, and he and nine other commanders unleashed the planet-breakers. Waves of energy whipped like fluorescent barbed wire at the darkly translucent, bubble-shaped shield protecting the enemy’s ships. Secondary artillery fired automatically, spewing volleys of energy pulses and strange-matter- tipped missiles, which crashed into the energy barrier like psychedelic hail on glass. He hated using strange-matter weapons. Aside from their precarious nature – they sometimes ‘went off’ before being fired – they tended to rip the space-time fabric, leaving jagged potholes for any traffic transiting through the affected sector. But as the Q’Roth were in permanent retreat, that hardly mattered, and conventional atomics and anti-matter artillery seemed to have no effect on these shields. In any case, as had happened the last three times he’d encountered this enemy formation, the shield remained intact. The enemy’s strategy was simple – they would wait until the Q’Roth forces had expended considerable firepower, then lower the shield and attack. Jorann’s gash of a mouth opened a crack and a hiss issued forth.

As planned, five Q’Roth Hunter Class crab-shaped ships broke formation and hurtled toward the sphere. Ten other Q’Roth destroyers vectored particle weapons around the tightly-packed quintet, creating   a halo of white plasma fire around them, as they converged toward a single point on the barrier’s surface, inflicting the heat of a hundred suns. In eighteen years of warfare, no one had successfully breached one of these shields, and Qorall’s army had remained unstoppable, conquering more than half the known galaxy, laying waste to any sector refusing to surrender.

Jorann’s claw squeezed hard as the glare of the beams blotted out all the stars. Now would be good… On cue, his ‘guest’ appeared. A small Tla Beth single-occupant ship, iridescent blue and shaped like a gyroscope, popped into existence behind the five Q’Roth Hunters, sucked along   in their wake. Steady… He’d not been able to ‘talk’ with the Tla Beth directly, having instead to explain his strategy through several layers of intermediaries. He accepted this state of affairs – after all, he was a mere Q’Roth, Level Six intelligence standard, and the Tla Beth were Level Seventeen. He’d never even seen one up close. He hoped the upward briefings had been effective.

Intel on the holo dashboard contained nothing but bad news: the barrier was holding. Their drenching of the shield with enough energy to rent apart a star was looking increasingly like a suicide dash. If any more Q’Roth ships joined in with their weapons, the radiation backlash would fry their compatriots. Still, he’d seen too many futile deaths.

He signalled, “Break off?” to Granch, but already guessed the answer, which remained unspoken. His suggestion was broadcast to  all commanders simultaneously using the mind-plexing system the Tla Beth had granted them, enabling them to communicate and react as one. Humans could never use such augments, it would sound like a deafening cacophony and paralyse them; one of the advantages of being Level Six. He imagined his own standing amongst his commanders had dropped a notch for even suggesting aborting the charge.

Space appeared to ignite as the Hunters pummelled into the shield, vaporizing on impact, cremating their crews. Fifty. He always counted the dead; he’d never know their names, but the least he felt he could do was to recognize the sacrifice of those under his command. The explosion would have burned out his retinas if he’d still been human, but instead the six slits on his trapezoidal head oozed a little more vermillion than usual, rendering the scene blood red. He missed human vision, but then his Q’Roth senses allowed him to see what no human eye could have. Amidst the explosive swirl of plasma boiling off into space, the Tla Beth craft launched a missile of unknown origin directly at the glowing area of the barrier wall, which sprouted electric blue fractures, then shattered as the toy-like Tla Beth ship rammed it. Jorann’s mouth-gash widened into something approaching a grin. Fire and ice – smart bastards.

Jorann wasted no time. His flagship and four other battleships supported by ten destroyers jumped according to a pre-ordered pattern, and punched their way through the fissure. Finally! A message from Granch appeared fleet-wide, a staccato Q’Roth phrase translating as “Kill them all, no prisoners, leave nothing alive.”

But as soon as Jorann was inside he knew something was wrong. His battleship stuttered, its engines faltered, losing speed. Black ships shaped like sea urchins approached, but the beam weapons he fired on them dispersed like a lamp in fog; letting loose the planet-breaker would simply backfire on his own ships. It took him a second to recognise what was happening: they weren’t in normal space anymore – it looked like so-called ‘empty’ space, but it had a much higher density.

He ignored the storm of comms from other commanders; instinctively he knew what it was – he’d been a nuclear submarine commander back on Earth a lifetime ago, and knew how a craft handled in space, and    in water. They were in a very low density, transparent fluid. Some of  the Grid scientists had conjectured this possibility, how some form of unknown ‘liquid space’, presumably from Qorall’s galaxy, could make the shield more resilient, offering internal pressure, and dampening any energy-based attack on it.

“Torpedoes!” he barked in Largyl 6, the formal Q’Roth command language. His battleship spattered the nearest enemy ship, and he relaxed as he saw hundreds of other Q’Roth-launched intelligent missiles to port and starboard, snaking their way through the invisible medium, homing onto their targets. He recognised the enemy ship design: Mannekhi, Level Five. So, they’d joined ranks with Qorall. Not surprising, they’d been treated like dirt by Grid Society for eons. But such defections bled away effort that should have been targeted at the real foe.

The Mannekhi ships returned fire, purple pulses spitting from their spines, unaffected by the fluidic space. He ignored the battering as the energy bursts slammed into his battleship, keeping one sensory slit focused on the damage indicator, dropping slowly from ninety-three per cent. At fifteen per cent his ship would implode. He leaned forward, two of his six slits trying to see what was behind the ranks of Mannekhi vessels. His battle instincts kicked in; he had a bad feeling…

The enemy sea urchin in front of him ignited, a third of its spines flaring before melting. Something nagged at him; a seed of doubt growing fast, but he and the other commanders drove on. This was the first time they were actually progressing; for eighteen years it had been a cycle of defeat, retreat, re-group, attack, defeat. He checked that the other ships outside the sphere had installed a stent to ensure the hole didn’t close; he didn’t want to be trapped inside a galactic pitcher plant.

His battleship forged through three ranks of Mannekhi ships, decimating dozens. Fifty-three per cent integrity left. That meant casualties. Connection broke with three destroyers whose hulls were less protected. Jorann and his fellow Q’Roth commanders were winning, but the attrition rate was punishing. He sent a coded message up the chain to the Tla Beth: <Leave – we’ll take it from here>. He knew how many Q’Roth were vanishing in this battle, but that would pale into insignificance against losing a single Tla Beth.

Amidst the flashes and blossoming flares of space battle – his lieutenants and the automatic systems handling the Mannekhi ships – his old rage unexpectedly surfaced. He recalled watching as the Q’Roth purged a dying Earth of its atmosphere and all its water, all its life. When he’d first emerged as a Q’Roth clone, he’d promised himself one day that he would exact revenge, seizing an opportunity to eradicate a large number of Q’Roth. And here it was. If he turned and opened fire on the other battleships, the Mannekhi would not stop to question, and together they would annihilate the Seventh Fleet. He’d promised himself that he’d never empathize with his blood enemy, the Q’Roth, no matter what. Seven billion people wiped out, he reminded himself.

Five years ago he would have done it without hesitation. But he didn’t know himself anymore. What he did know was that against all odds, Blake and Micah and thousands of other humans had survived, safely quarantined on Esperia, the so-called spider planet, protected by a Level Twelve shield and Ossyrian guardians. But the quarantine – always intended as a temporary measure – would come down soon, and Jorann wanted to hold back Qorall as long as possible. If they had any sense, as soon as quarantine ended, mankind’s refugees would run like hell to the far end of the galaxy.

And if Jorann somehow met them one day – Micah, Blake and the others – he wouldn’t expect them to understand. He’d be quite happy if they dealt out rough justice, court-martialed him for treason as a Q’Roth sympathizer and executed him. That would be more than okay.

A shudder, as a crumbling enemy ship rammed his own ineffectually, jolted him back into the present. The Tla Beth ship was still there, buzzing about like a mosquito, occasionally visible, then moving too fast for even Q’Roth vision to keep up. What was it doing? Why hadn’t it left? But he knew why: curiosity. Like him, it was trying to determine what was lurking in the background. The Mannekhi ships had given up firing at the Tla Beth ship, their sprays of purple pulses failing to touch it.

Jorann’s ship nudged through more wrecked sea urchins and dispatched Hunter Class vessels from his bays to clean up the mess – just as well, he’d run out of torpedoes. He ignored the charred corpses drifting around cracked hulls – the Mannekhi were humanoid in shape, the only species he’d seen that resembled humanity. More than once he’d wondered if they were distant cousins. Too bad, they’d chosen the wrong side.

The last row of sea-urchin ships was white instead of black, burning bright, masking whatever was behind. Seven Q’Roth ships remained active inside the shield-bubble; five others including two battleships were now debris. Two destroyers limped back to the stent. Jorann knew that their commanders and crew would have preferred to fight to the death, but the Q’Roth ship-yards were finding it hard to keep up with daily losses, so any ship not obliterated was towed back for re-conditioning.

The tiny Tla Beth ship spun into view ahead of Jorann, and fired a metastaser – a weapon he’d only heard rumours of until now. Orange light bathed one of the sea urchins then leapt across to adjacent ships, spreading outwards to the entire array, latching onto any material with a Mannekhi signature, ignoring Q’Roth ships. The sea urchins shimmered then exploded one by one, opening up a gap in the final defence perimeter.

That was when he saw it. His claws flexed defensively of their own accord. It was darker than anything around it, a slug-shaped hole in space. Except that it writhed. One of the fabled dark worms. As he tried to take it in, to see any features, a priority message plexed into his mind: the stent was collapsing. His gun turrets trained on the worm, fifty times the size of his battleship, but he didn’t fire – he’d read the reports. One of his fellow commanders lit it up with focused particle beams, but as Jorann had heard before, no sooner had the beams touched the worm’s vacuum- hardened flesh, than black tendrils traced their way back to the firing ship – as if they could latch onto light – and yanked the ship towards the worm with alarming speed, enveloping it inside its dark folds.

He now knew why the Mannekhi and the liquid space had been present: to exhaust the Q’Roth’s supply of torpedoes. Even so, he wasn’t sure they could really have inflicted much damage. These creatures usually inhabited the null-space between galaxies, surviving on dark energy and any vessel foolish enough to attempt such a voyage. Qorall had used the worms in the first battle to breach the galactic barrier, but they’d hardly been seen since, and most in the Alliance had hoped they had returned home. Jorann sent a priority message to those outside the stent, to dispatch one ship immediately back to the High Guard with news of this development.

The worm slithered towards the Tla Beth ship.  Why wasn’t  the Tla Beth running? The other commanders were eerily silent. Breaking protocol, he tried contacting the Tla Beth ship directly on the emergency channel, but there was not even a transponder response.

He skimmed through sensor readings and then his mind snagged on one: the worm had emitted a dark energy spike that had been off the scale, directed at the Tla Beth ship. No one knew much about Tla Beth tech or physiology, but Qorall must have somehow gained intel on their weak spots. But then another thought struck him: how had Qorall known a Tla Beth would be present? The idea of a corrupt Q’Roth was impossible. Never mind, he told himself, that would have to wait.

Qorall’s tactic was suddenly clear to him: all this slaughter had been a ploy with a single objective: to destroy – or more likely capture – a Tla Beth, the highest level of intelligence in the galaxy. Qorall wanted one, presumably alive, to study. The Tla Beth were the only species of any real threat to him, and Qorall didn’t know enough about them, coming from a different galaxy. Jorann understood the importance of military intelligence: if Qorall captured a Tla Beth…

He mindplexed the other commanders, not bothering to apologise for involving the Tla Beth in the first place; that was in the past now, and regret wasn’t in the Q’Roth psychological lexicon.

Immediately the two remaining battleships lurched forward to place themselves between the worm and the Tla Beth ship. Jorann received a message <Recover Tla Beth> the commanders appending the Q’Roth equivalent of “Sir”. In all Jorann’s years serving with them, even when he’d led entire fleets, they’d never used it. He understood why – for the first time they’d penetrated one of Qorall’s fleet spheres and had gained valuable intelligence, even if they now risked losing one of their masters. Jorann had an instinct to salute them and their imminent sacrifice, but his Q’Roth anatomy wouldn’t do it justice. Nor did he return with “Good luck” – Q’Roth warrior culture scorned such concepts.

Instead he spun his ship into action, plotting a loop-and-catch manoeuvre that would push more ‘G’s than human physiology could have handled. Using a gravity web he snatched up the inert Tla Beth craft into the main hold. As he raced back toward the collapsing stent, the liquid space increased its density, slowing his ship down. That made him realise something about the sphere – it had intelligence. He wondered if it was alive in some rudimentary way; so much of Qorall’s arsenal was organic, compared to this galaxy’s focus on techware. Instinct could react faster than intellect. Jorann wanted to think this through but he had other priorities: his ship’s integrity was at twenty-five per cent and falling. Two destroyers paved a way before him, attracting mines which hadn’t been there on their way in. The two battleships behind him went silent. He gunned all engines and thrusters, ordering his faster Hunter craft to make a dash for the stent. Instead, they turned and charged the worm, trying to slow it down.

Jorann wasn’t going to make it. The stent had already buckled.  One of the outside commanders informed him the whole sphere was shimmering; it was about to jump, presumably away from the War’s front, back deep inside Qorall space. The destroyer to port exploded, and two seconds later the one to starboard peeled off, its drives heavily damaged, drifting backwards to detonate in the worm’s pathway. Jorann watched the gargantuan creature ease through the debris field, nudging the exploding destroyer aside like driftwood. Jorann and his surviving crew were alone.

His sensors told him the worm was increasing its speed, gaining on him. He calculated he had twenty seconds before it would make contact and leach the energy from his battleship, including all Q’Roth life, and capture its Tla Beth prize.

Jorann set the self-destruct timer for ten seconds and broadcast a message to Granch and the other commanders outside. “They won’t get the Tla Beth. Take the intel we’ve gained back to the Ch’Hrach staging point. Prepare better next time.” He didn’t add what he thought: that it had been an honour serving with them, that they were the most impressive, fearless soldiers he’d ever seen. He counted down. At three seconds everything around him turned quicksilver.

A second later he found himself in a cramped metallic compartment gazing through a porthole at a distant luminous sphere. A spark flared briefly inside it, then the bubble itself flashed and was gone, leaving a motley flotilla of healthy and injured Q’Roth ships, which soon jumped out of this space as well, onto their long trip back home.

Jorann tried to turn around, but the area confining him was like a cylindrical coffin. He heard a voice behind him. It took him a moment to realize it was human, though it spoke perfectly accented Q’Roth.

“Sorry for the discomfort, this is really a two-person craft, but we needed to talk.”

Jorann thrashed his legs, manoeuvring his body until he could rotate enough to see who the voice belonged to. As he finally managed to turn around, he saw a compact cockpit with two occupants: the first was humanoid, but made entirely of platinum flow-metal. Next to him was one of the mud-coloured reptilian Rangers he’d seen once or twice, two and a half metres from snout to tail, with serious teeth. Some said they served the Tla Beth; others that they had unknown allegiances. The Q’Roth considered them to be anachronistic mavericks the Tla Beth should have weeded out long ago.

Jorann tried to speak human, but of course it came out Q’Roth. “Who are you? Why did you save me? And for that matter, how did you save me?”

The platinum man stared a while, then smiled. “We know who you really are, General – well, who you used to be. We  were here on reconnaissance back-up for the Tla Beth, when we, er, received a message, and discovered you.”

Jorann could not see how any of this was possible. “Is the Tla Beth safe?”

The reptilian Ranger answered in Largyl 6, though it sounded as if he had bricks in his throat. “Tla Beth in hold. Unconscious. Stasis. Second Tla Beth ship on intercept. Will take home.”

Jorann gathered that was as much information as he was going to get. “Then we need to return to the Q’Roth High Guard, and –’

The platinum man held up a hand. “The other commanders have   all the intel they need. Besides, we have another mission for you, one involving humanity.”

Jorann’s gash pressed closed. He couldn’t accept this was happening. In the first five years after awakening as a Q’Roth he’d plotted, and dreamt of somehow being rescued by humans. But the Q’Roth warriors he’d lived with until now were infinitely more pragmatic, and didn’t indulge in wanton optimism. It had been so long. Despite having yearned for human contact all these years, now he found he couldn’t face it. “Any humans would kill me on sight if they could.”

The platinum man’s face rippled for a moment, as if he had momentarily been elsewhere. “Fair point. But maybe I can help you out. Would you like to look human again?”

Jorann stared with all six slits at the humanoid creature, wondering if he was some kind of agent for Qorall, if this was some kind of trick. Maybe the sphere had jumped with him and his crew inside it, and Qorall was using some form of mental simulation to get his guard down. It seemed infinitely more likely than being rescued by a humanesque figure promising to deliver his most heartfelt, and most discarded, desire. Jorann steeled himself. The Q’Roth had trained him for such interrogation. All he had to do to break this charade was ask for a piece of information which the enemy couldn’t know, that even he himself didn’t know.

“If you know who I am, then tell me my name.” There, that would stump him for sure. Only Sister Esma knew, and she’d withheld it even from the Q’Roth. Once they failed to answer this question he would attack, or die trying. He readied muscles in all six of his legs; his claws curled, ready. He would show Qorall what a Q’Roth warrior could do at close quarters.

The man’s silver brow creased in a frown, which then morphed into a measured stare. Again, he did something very human – he folded his arms. “You’re General Bill Kilaney.” His tone grew softer. “She hid that from you all this time, didn’t she?”

Jorann heard the name echo inside his memory, at first like a small tinkle, but then it reverberated, resonated, a massive church bell getting louder. His muscles eased off. Of course. General William “Bill” Kilaney. Hearing his name was like a cadence, as if a thousand memories, a thousand voices, suddenly snapped into coherence. Instead of an irritating background cacophony, it was an orchestrated choir. How clever Sister Esma had been to extricate that one memory from all the rest, keeping his humanity off-balance, off-key, all these years.

He couldn’t speak. He kept intoning his name over and over, terrified he might forget it. Q’Roth physiology wasn’t strong on emotions, but his upper claws shook. He clenched them, and closed all six slits for a moment. Thank you, he intoned, not sure exactly who or what he was thanking, and in the same moment he paid his last respects to all the Q’Roth who’d perished inside the sphere. 26,012. From this day on, he would count them no more.

The platinum man waited patiently, seeming to understand. “Will you join us, General? We mean to stop Qorall, and to preserve humanity. Blake and Micah are still alive, and they’re going to need your help when the quarantine comes down in a week’s time. We believe that some of the people there are set to engage in a war with the Alicians and the Q’Roth, which is the last thing any of us needs. Until finding you, I wasn’t sure how to prevent this from happening, but as you can imagine, your presence, and your unique perspective, would be invaluable.”

Jorann – Kilaney – found he could utter no words. He’d been Blake’s mentor for two decades. All the smaller memories flooded back to him – all              of the detailed ones that ultimately mattered most, the ones that defined him – unlocked by the simple keystone, his name. Everything he’d done, everyone he’d known, who he really was. Amidst the tumble of images, his wife’s face emerged, so clear in front of him, lost to cancer four years before the fall of Earth. She seemed to smile, as if happy to see him again. He raised his two shaking, upper claws in front of him, stared at them, saw them as alien, so alien, despite they were his. The shakes passed. He stretched open the claws like fingers, and meshed them into a crude steeple, like he used to do back on Earth.

Purpose crystallised inside him: defeat Qorall, hell yes; but also –despite what his rescuer had said – Sister Esma would pay for her crimes.

“General, will you join us in helping humanity?”

Kilaney gazed at the platinum man. He no longer felt like uttering a further word of Q’Roth – he would put that behind him. Instead, he manoeuvred muscles in his armoured thorax, shoulder carapace and neck to approximate a movement he’d not practiced in eighteen years.

He nodded.

Chapter 4

Arson

Micah and Petra sped through the night along the rarely used dust- track towards Shimsha, Spider Central as Petra called it. But Micah wasn’t in search of spiders. One way or another, war was coming either soon after Quarantine came down as Gabriel predicted, or whenever Qorall’s forces reached Esperia. Mankind needed the best tactical commander left alive on the planet. But Blake had become a recluse since his wife had passed, staying hidden in Shimsha. Micah hoped to persuade him to come back, rejoin the effort, and fight once again if necessary. Blake was respected by Genners and Steaders alike, and could perhaps heal some divisions.

Petra shouted above the wind as they roared closer to Shimsha. “Do you reckon he’ll even talk to us? He’s so wrapped up with the spiders. Who knows if he even cares about us anymore?”

Micah knew he should have called on Blake more often. “His wife died, Petra. He needed some peace, and some space. Anyway, I sent a message, so he knows we’re coming.”

“I wasn’t criticizing his motives.”

“He’s not going to let us down, that’s not who he is.” Micah prayed he was right about that.

There was a short pause. “I know he was a great commander,” began Petra, “by the old standards.”

“Look, intellectually he’s not at your or Gabriel’s level, Petra, he can’t be, I know that. But he has a damn sight more experience of fighting a war. We need him.”

Petra made a skeptical noise but didn’t say anything further.

Micah swerved the skimmer around a tight bend and braked hard, skidding to a halt, Petra slamming into his back. Four spiders barred the entrance to Shimsha.

“Guess we walk the rest of the way,” she said, easing herself off the seat.

Micah powered down the engine and dismounted. The vehicle sank to the ground, crunching hard soil underneath. He waited for the spiders to part, but they didn’t move. In the moonless night, pale blue light seeped out from the city, casting long shadows towards Micah and Petra, making the spiders’ legs appear spindlier than the muscular, single-jointed limbs Micah knew them to be. He’d heard the outlying farmers gossip about how fast they could move, even jump, though he’d never seen them do it. Petra edged forward but he stayed her with his palm. Out of the shadows six more arrived, surrounding them.

Petra backed away from them. “Micah, tell me this is some weird greeting ritual I’ve not heard about.”

His adrenaline kicked in. This wasn’t just unusual, it was exceptional. In sixteen years of co-existence since the spiders had hatched, they had never once threatened any human. “Whatever happens, don’t run,” he whispered, unsure why; the spiders had no hearing, relying completely on visual and olfactory senses. “Get back on –”

Suddenly, a spider was right next to him, its broad, headless body nudging his forearm. It was the first time he’d ever had physical contact with one, and although the body looked black and hairy, he was surprised how soft it felt, like velvet. It pushed him away from the skimmer, just as another two separated him from Petra. That was it. “Blake!” Micah yelled, as he and Petra were herded to the side of the road. One of the spiders’ legs curled around Micah’s and knocked him onto his back. He heard Petra shout his name, but he was too busy avoiding piston-like legs. His nannites rose to high alert, allowing him to react quicker than would have been possible for a normal human, his hands and feet hardening as he kicked back at the spider’s legs.

The night sky flashed brilliant white. Micah flinched, elbows and knees up to protect his head and body, temporarily unable to see, expecting to be trampled at any second. But as the flare diminished and his vision readjusted, he realized the spiders had gone, leaving Micah with nothing more than a few bruises. A lone, gaunt figure stood silhouetted by the city light, two large spiders behind him.

Micah got to his feet and dusted himself off, glancing in Petra’s direction. She stood with her fists clenched, but seemed to be okay. She gave him a crooked smile, like Kat, her mother. “I’m okay, Micah, I can move fast, and I play mean.” She opened her hands. Black fur drifted to the ground. Micah wondered if the spiders had really meant to hurt them, and if so, why.

They walked over to his former mentor. Micah shook his hand. “Care to explain what just happened?” He expected some sort of apology from Blake, as the spiders’ overseer.

“I was delayed getting here, Micah. This shouldn’t have happened. They forget how fragile humans are, and they’re pretty upset right now. Come with me, you’d best see for yourself.” Blake turned without another word and strode into the city.

Petra drew to Micah’s side, speaking softly. “We could have been killed, intentionally or not. Remind me, how long have you two been friends?”

Micah stared in Blake’s direction. “There has to be a good reason.”

“One I’d like to see,” she said.

Micah realised it had been a year since he’d last visited Shimsha, and many more since he’d walked its streets at night. Single-storey dwellings with low domes, either rounded-off rhomboids or kidney- shaped affairs, lined the curving pathways, sharp cyan light spilling through broad doors and arched windows. Whereas Esperantia was all Cartesian angles, Shimsha was slow-twisting arcs. It was easy on the eye, calming. Wide plazas opened up every hundred metres or so, but the squat tables, where huddles of spiders would normally be seen conversing via flickering rainbow light exchanges, were empty. Where were they all? A fluorescent glow hung behind a row of longer buildings. As they approached the source, the aurora shimmered. It began to strobe faster. Blake held up a small device and projected a purple beam into the cloud of light. Abruptly, the night flooded back in. Micah sped up, turned the corner and stopped dead.

The plaza was filled with spiders, so many that it was as if there was a four foot high black lake rippling all the way across the square in the night breeze. Blake strode ahead, the spiders parting before him. The lack of light, the sudden absence of spider communication, put Micah on edge. He wished he’d come alone, though it wasn’t safe to leave Petra now. The two of them had never been very physical, but he stretched out his hand, half sure she’d ignore him or brush it away. Instead she clasped it, and they walked tall together behind Blake. As they reached the other end of the plaza, and the last spiders moved aside, Petra’s hand flinched inside his own.

He stared at the blackened remains of one of the larger domiciles on Shimsha’s western edge, near the slope trailing up to Hazzard’s Ridge where he’d sat just a few hours ago. Amidst the ruins, four spider carcasses lay upside down, stumps where half their legs had been burned away, their torsos charred husks containing remnants of organs and entrails grilled to charcoal. A smell of sulphur seared his eyes. Petra let go of his hand, looking like she would puke, and confirmed his assessment    a moment later. Without taking his eyes off the scene, he passed her a handkerchief.

Stepping forward, he inspected the smoking, crackling remains of a house that had stood unblemished for more than a millennium, and switched into analysis mode. The burning had blazed brightest at the home’s entrance, sealing them in, in a clear attempt to cremate the occupants. The scorch-marks were consistent with the bio-fuel used to power the five jury-rigged tractors shared by Esperantia’s farmers. The spiders’ fur made them averse to any form of combustion, and there had never been a case of spider domestic violence or inter-spider rivalry. His jaw clenched of its own accord, a cocktail of emotions inside him: sadness and outrage, but also anger at the stupidity of such an act of aggression. He could only imagine how Blake felt. “Any idea who did this?”

Blake’s stern features were sharp enough to cut metal. “I sent Zack to find out.”

“That maybe wasn’t the best…” His sentence wilted under Blake’s glare. He turned around. In the dim light from the homes surrounding the plaza, the spiders seemed to loom towards him. He had little idea of their emotional repertoire; the spiders were supposedly pacifist, but he reckoned anger had to be in there somewhere, deep down. Besides, he and Petra had just experienced the first aggressive act towards humans. He turned back to Blake and tried another tack. “Who were they? I mean, why this group – or family.” Micah regretted how little he knew of their social structure.

Blake’s voice was taut, emotions locked down. “Random hit; soft target on the edge of the city while the annual simulated battle in the dome distracted most people; easy escape over the hill back to Esperantia.”

Micah noticed how Blake had slipped back into his military  persona so quickly. Another thought intruded. “Why did the other spiders attack us at the perimeter? My lucky timing, or –”

“You’re President. In their book you’re responsible.”

Petra finished wiping her mouth, stood up. “He just resigned, though I guess that won’t count for much here.”

Micah wondered out loud. “Why now?” But he knew why. Most likely it was one of the Steaders; the Genners were respectful of the spiders, and their aggressive ambitions were entirely focused on the Alicians. A few faces popped into Micah’s mind of Steaders who might be stupid enough – or scared enough – to pull a stunt like this.

Blake kicked at a piece of steaming rubble. “Quarantine comes down in less than a week. The Ossyrians pick up their pieces and leave. Genners of age will follow suit, leaving just the Steaders and the spiders, with a new generation about to hatch.”

Petra spoke up. “A provocation, an act out of pure fear or bigotry, or both. A first strike, probably intended to stoke itself up into a decisive war, assuming the spiders are pacifists, and if not, proving they are a threat to be defended against. Typical human rhetoric; doesn’t help anything.”

Micah stared at her a moment, recalling she was a Genner, far smarter than her years. He ran through various options, including trying to persuade the Ossyrians to stay.

An unwelcome thought broke in: Sister Esma... If she knew about this, she would rub her hands with glee, and add it to her mountain of evidence that humanity should be eradicated for the terminally destructive species it was. For a second, as he stared at the corpses in front of him, he could almost agree.

“We have to deal with this quickly, Blake, contain it. And you have to keep the spiders in check.”

Blake faced Micah, the afterglow from the embers highlighting the grey strands in Blake’s reddish hair, and the pockmarks on his right cheek from Earth’s Third World War. Micah knew the Ossyrians had offered more than once to remove those scars.

Blake’s voice softened. “Sorry about what happened to you both out there. They were young, upset, two of them were…” He swallowed, seeming to search for the right word. “… related.” He nodded to the corpses.

Petra jumped in. “They could have killed Micah, you know, injured him at least.” She gave Micah a curious look. “Not sure how he got off so lightly, actually.”

Micah ignored the remark. “Blake, tell them we’ll find who did this, and deal with them severely.”

Blake walked up to the spider closest to them who, to Micah, looked somehow different to the rest – maybe it was the way it stood. Blake raised the hand-held device he’d used earlier, his fingers dancing over its surface. A small holo of flickering hues appeared between him and the spider, then vanished.

The lead spider’s band around its circumference lit up, repeating the pattern. Colour cascaded backwards to all the other spiders behind it, fanning outwards to all sides of the plaza, like a rainbow wave. Then it rebounded back to the front, terminating at the lead spider. Micah had just enough time to see that the returning pattern was far more dense, more nuanced, but with a central scarlet diamond that seemed to shake. At last the light-show stopped, the original spider being the last one to go dark. Micah surmised that they’d all just discussed it, and ‘voted’. It had taken four seconds.

Blake shook his head. “Not nearly enough, Micah. They want whoever did this delivered here, to them.”

“Blake, you know –”

“I know what will happen if you don’t.”

Micah wished Glenda was still around; she’d softened Blake, moderated him. But although the Ossyrians had saved Blake’s wife from cancer and extended her life by a decade, there had been too much damage. Blake had taken her death hard, as had the spiders, since she’d raised many of them, tending night and day to the nursery in their first vulnerable year. Micah had seen spiders at her graveside more than once, standing vigil.

He cleared his throat. “Blake, I came to talk to you about something important.”

Blake turned away, crouched down, and laid a hand on one of the husks. “Her name… It can’t be pronounced, it was a particular light pattern. She was an artist, taught Glenda how to sky-paint, was with her at the end…”

Micah walked over to Blake, thought about placing a hand on his shoulder, then thought again. The commander had been his mentor, and that relationship could never reverse in Micah’s book. “I’ll find out who did this, Blake.” He turned to Petra. “We’re leaving.”

They made their way unhindered back to the city’s edge, though Micah had the feeling they were watched every step of the way. Neither of them felt like talking until they reached the skimmer.

Petra’s shoulders were hunched as she climbed aboard, her lips pursed. Micah waited, not mounting the skimmer. At last she spat it out.

“You Steaders are dangerous, Micah. We Genners understand why the Tla Beth executed the judgment they did back at the trial.”

He’d thought this over a thousand times. “Do you think we should be condemned to oblivion as a species? Our only heritage Genners and Alicians?”

She folded her arms. “Evolution isn’t always kind, Micah. There’s no conscience behind it.”

He stared at her. “But this wasn’t natural selection, Petra, this was a conscious societal act that –”

“No difference. I’m surprised at you, Uncle. Don’t you get it? Whether it’s like the vids I’ve seen of lions and gazelle on the plains of the Serengeti, or us and the Q’Roth in the Grid, it’s all natural selection.”

“There are choices. There’s room for empathy.”

She shook her head. “Not much. Billions of stars, but not that many planets capable of sustaining all the life in the Grid. It’s always been a jungle, always will be.” She unfolded her arms. “I don’t want to argue with you, and I’m getting cold sitting here, so can we go?”

There was tenderness in her voice. He dropped the argument and mounted the vehicle. She touched his arm.

“What did you come here for, Micah? What were you going to ask him?”

He primed the engine. “War is coming. Soon after the quarantine comes down, we’ll be in the thick of it.” He thought of his original intent, to persuade Blake to come back. This arson, this murder, had hardly helped that cause.

“Looks like we started early,” she said.

He remembered something Louise had said to him a lifetime ago, that men carried war in their heads, wherever they went. For the past eighteen years he’d begun to hope she was wrong, but now even Petra had said as much. Still, he hoped; there was so much good in people if you knew where to find it, and they’d all had such a rough time of things in the past two decades. He gunned the engine and they sped off into the darkness.

“Where are we going now?” He didn’t really know.

“Antonia would like to see you,” she said.

His first thought had been of Sandy; she’d have ideas, but seeing her was out of the question, and she hadn’t talked or listened to him in years. Antonia? She would offer good counsel, but what about Petra’s absent mother, Kat, Antonia’s wife? It seemed a dangerous idea. Then again, Petra was wiser than her years, or maybe just shrewder. He decided to follow her recommendation. Besides, he needed to drop Petra home. He’d just stop to say hello to Antonia. Just a quick hello. Maybe a cup of coffee, as he was tired.

Petra wrapped her arms around his waist, her head leaning against his back. Micah had never understood how Pierre could have left her behind.

Antonia answered the door, auburn hair piled on top of her head, eyes a weary red.

“Working late?” Micah asked.

She sighed, rolled her eyes. “Sewage reclamation project, mainly. Come in, Micah, I was just making tea.”

“Are you sure, it’s late, and –”

Petra shoved him in the back, pushing him across the threshold. “You two kids go talk, I’ll fix tea.”

Micah sat in one of the four wooden chairs in the lounge, while Antonia powered down her pad. He watched the contours of her body move within her shim-dress, the ubiquitous functional material leant them by the Ossyrians. Micah remembered how glamorous she’d been back on Earth, an ambassador’s daughter. He caught himself staring as she bent over to put things away, and reminded himself she belonged to Kat, something he’d accepted long ago.

“How’s it going? You know,  the, er, sewage project.” He felt idiotic.

“Well, if we can bring it off, it will help the farmers immensely; after all, it’s something we’re never short of.” She smiled, almond eyes flashing, dimples opening on her cheeks.

Her smile disarmed him; it always had. He wanted to… well, at the least, console her about Kat having been missing now for two years. She caught his look, held it, then sat in the chair opposite him.

Petra arrived with a tray carrying a crudely fashioned metal teapot and three cups. “Still talking shit?”

“Petra, don’t start, please.” Antonia took the tray and placed it on the squat table.

Petra sat cross-legged on the floor. “I spoke with Chahat-Me yesterday.”

Micah sat up. So did Antonia. Petra said nothing more. “Well?” Micah asked.

Petra gave him a look. “Are you sure you’re interested? I mean excrement reclamation sounds enthralling.”

Micah had been trying to extract the latest news out of the Ossyrian leader for weeks. Petra was close to Chahat-Me, having been the first to be genned by the Ossyrians, followed shortly thereafter by Gabriel. He knew Petra liked Gabriel, and Gabriel liked her too, though not that way. Given his own lingering and unrequited interest in both Antonia and Sandy before either had gotten married, he realized he and his adopted niece had a lot in common.

Petra pouted. “I’ll trade. A truth-swap game us Genners play when we’re nine, before we grow up. When we’re stuck in the playground phase, and we twist the truth, rather than speak it.” She shook her head. “Do you have any idea what it’s like living with you people, watching the pathetic games you play, hurting each other all the time?”

Micah half-stood to leave, but a glance from Antonia set him down again. Besides, he needed the information. “Okay, what did Chahat-Me say?”

Antonia began pouring the tea.

“First, Micah,” Petra said, “we trade truths. Do you love Antonia?” Tea spilled all over the table. “

Petra!” Antonia cursed.

“Why do you do this, Petra?” Micah asked, feeling tired. He stood.

Petra stood too. “Louise has Kat. She’s still alive.”

Micah’s eyes flashed to Antonia, who froze, still holding the teapot.

She swallowed, then with a shaking hand, placed it on the table.

Petra pointed to Micah’s chair. “Sit please, if you want to hear the rest.”

Reluctantly, Micah did as he was told.

“She is taking Kat to Qorall. You know why, don’t you Micah?”

He stared at the floor. “Her node. She can communicate with the Hohash.”

Antonia stared at Micah. “So what?”

Only he, Blake and Chahat-Me knew about the Kalarash having been on Esperia. They’d agreed to keep it quiet; another reason he had wanted to see Blake. From what little he knew, and what scraps of intel he’d gleaned from Chahat-Me on the historical legends of the Grid, only the Kalarash could stop a force such as Qorall. Maybe it was time everyone else knew, it might give them some hope.

Petra continued. “Chahat-Me said you believed the Kalarash were here once, on this planet, when we first arrived.”

Antonia took her cup and leaned back in her chair. “I thought they were pure myth, bedtime-story material for Grid parents to lull their young to sleep. Well, Micah?”

He reached over and picked up his dripping cup, blew across the top of the steaming liquid, then inhaled: lemon and ginger. He shook his head. “One of them was here. It left just before Quarantine.”

Antonia’s mouth dropped open.

Petra closed on him. “Do you love Sandy, Micah?”

He cast her a look of disdain, but her eyes were defiant, and he felt Antonia’s on him too. “Same answer: why do you do this, Petra?”

“Mom said – before she was abducted – you’re the saddest man she knows. You love two women you can’t have, and do nothing with the half-dozen others interested in you. Sit back down!” Her eyes flared. “And you’re the closest thing I have to a father, so I’m sick of seeing you miserable.”

Micah sipped the tea, cradling the cup in both hands, and closed his eyes.

Petra’s voice quavered. “Do you think of me as a daughter? You’ve never said it.”

He leaned forward, head bowed, so she couldn’t see his eyes, controlling his breathing. He’d never had children, never been in a relationship long enough. Most kids… he found it difficult to interact with them, though he could smile at them from afar. He wasn’t what he considered great ‘father material’, until Petra had come along. If he’d had a daughter, he’d have wanted her to be just like Petra.

He nodded.

“I need to hear you say it!”

His eyes met hers. She looked vulnerable, and he wanted more than anything to protect her from the savage jungle outside Quarantine. “I think of you as the daughter I never had.”

“Thank you.” She said it in her small voice, the one he remembered from her second birthday, when he’d brought her a present, a toy horse, something which made no sense on a world without horses, and she’d looked up at him with such intelligence and understanding, and undemanding love, it had taken his breath away.

Petra continued. “I know where Qorall is. Chahat-Me showed me the latest projections from the front line. Where he is doesn’t really matter, of course. But I know when he’ll be here.”

Micah stood. “Okay, Petra, that’s enough, we need to know, now. Stop this game!” Antonia joined him, so that they loomed over her like two parents.

Petra rose slowly. “You must stop your games first. Do you have any idea what it’s like surpassing your parents intellectually at the age of twelve? Watching the futile games you play, watching you suffer all the time? Listening to you lie to each other and yourselves all the time, every second of every fucking day?”

Antonia advanced on Petra. “That’s enough, Petra! You may be way ahead of me intellectually, but your emotional IQ needs a lot of work. Go to your room!”

“Do you love Micah? I mean even a little bit?”

Antonia turned her back on Petra, facing Micah. “She’s utterly impossible!”

“Mother, answer me!”

Antonia’s eyes rolled, but Micah thought he detected moisture there as she turned away from them both, and spoke to the wall. “What do you want from me, Petra, from us?”

“I want you to go to your room, Mom. You haven’t had a lover for two years, Micah more like seven. You’re  both hurting, it eats away at you, and we’re all probably dead in the next week once Quarantine comes down and lets in whoever’s waiting for us out there, with Qorall’s army just six months behind. That’s your answer, by the way, as I already have mine, even if you’re both too weak to answer me directly. I’m going to leave for a few hours. I’ll be back in the morning. It’s your lives.” She stormed out.

Micah half-expected to hear the door slam, but it didn’t. He stood motionless in the silence which descended.

Antonia broke it, facing him again. “Do you think she’s right? Are we such a lost cause?”

Micah frowned. “I’m afraid that one is usually right, even if she’s sometimes emotionally immature. But at least she has emotions. I think that’s why I put up with her quirky nature. You’ve done a good job raising her, Antonia. I often wish she was the leader of the Genners, not Gabriel.”

Antonia nodded. She stood within arms’ reach. “Has there really been no one these past seven years, Micah?”

Micah suddenly felt fragile, like he was made of glass. “I’ve been… busy, you know, being President and all that. Listen, it’s late, I should go. I’m sorry for… Well, I should leave, Antonia.”

But he didn’t move.

“A goodnight kiss, Micah. Please.”

Micah felt the glass crack. “If I kiss you now, Antonia, it won’t stop there.”

Antonia moved closer to him, took his hands. “I know.”

◆◆◆

Petra sat cross-legged outside Gabriel’s home, underneath his bedroom window. She’d hoped to find him alone, but Virginia was there. The pre-dawn air was chilly. A robin was singing somewhere close by, one of the few birds to have been rescued from the destruction of Earth. Beneath its chirping, she heard Virginia’s soft moans, Gabriel’s gasps of rapture. She carved the Greek letter Phi into a piece of driftwood with her knife. When she and Gabe had been five years old, she’d cut it into the bark of a tree, told him it was like a ‘g’ and a ‘p’ back-to-back, that they were like brother and sister, like Apollo and Artemis, and they would never be apart.

She heard Virginia tell him she loved him, and paused her whittling, straining to hear his reply, but couldn’t make it out. The piece of wood was wet. She wanted to kick herself, having just berated Micah and Antonia for not telling each other their feelings, when she herself had never once let Gabriel know how she really felt. Not for the first time she wondered why she was more emotional than other Genners. She’d been the first one to be genned; maybe the Ossyrians hadn’t quite got it right. More advanced, my ass. Hell, I’m even sitting here like a goddammed stalker. She got up silently and wiped her eyes, and walked towards Carlson Plaza as the first rays of dawn breached the tops of the slate-grey prefab housing units. Ramires was doing some form of martial arts exercise.

“Do those techniques really work?”

He paused from his kata. “Petra, hello.” He studied her. “Are you okay?”

She took out her knife and threw it so that it thwacked into the   wall of one of the zinc-coated units. “I’m fine. I could use a workout, though.” She took off her jacket, and hung it on her home-made coat- hook. “Apparently you have the best fighting skills left in the human race. Let’s see how you fare with a little Genner girl like me, shall we?” Without waiting for a reply, she launched her attack.

Chapter 5

Surgical Procedures

Kilaney – formerly Jorann – stared at his hand for the umpteenth time, curling his fingers, watching supple skin stretch and contract over fresh knuckles. He still had difficulty believing it had happened. It had all been so fast, so matter of fact, almost as if being fitted for a new uniform, not changing his body for God’s sake. Becoming human again had been something he’d literally dreamt of during his early years as a Q’Roth. He remembered – though it was difficult for him to go back there – how he’d tried to commit suicide more than once in that first awful year. He nearly succeeded, but then the local station commander executed the Q’Roth surgeon supervising Kilaney’s ‘transition’. Kilaney hadn’t wanted any more blood spilled on his account, so he gave up hope and accepted his fate. Yet now, within a couple of days, they’d simply changed him back. He stared at his hands again.

But his new skin felt terribly flimsy after Q’Roth armoured flesh. His arms, however, still had the appearance of corrugated iron, blue-grey from shoulder to wrist, petering out into pinkish hands. Good enough. He held his breath as he pulled the sheet off to reveal his legs. A metallic blue sheen glistened over powerful, hairless musculature, tailing off in sturdy feet with five toes, all of them prehensile.

But he was missing a second pair of Q’Roth legs – he could feel the ghost limbs where they should have been attached at hip level. Kilaney closed his eyes. It was done. The DNA transplant, supercharged by Pierre’s specialised nannites, would override the Q’Roth signature, given enough time. His brain would remain quadro-spherical, but he could live with that.

He lay back on the pillow, inspecting the stars through windows on the domed roof. The vast hangar containing him and other alien patients was so unusual that at first he thought the eye surgery had gone awry. Swathes of colour – violet, red, teal, and apple, swirled in the air as far as he could see, never mixing. Each layer was grainy, with fine particles that moved like sand beneath a wave, shifting and flowing, occasionally surging from one spot to another. The ‘air’ around him was a pale blue, had no taste or texture, and he had no idea of its function. The surgeons – squid-shaped creatures, transparent so that he could see all their organs and watch their two hearts twitch – drifted and surfed in the currents. When they had worked on him it had felt like a feather-touch, even when they had peeled back his armoured ribcage as if it were made of silk. He’d expected terrible pain when the anaesthetic wore off, but there was none at all, not even an itch.

One of the squids had gurgled to him in Largyl 6. “Sure want this? Q’Roth physiology beautiful design – human arrangement clumsy.”

Kilaney told him it was necessary for political reasons. The surgeon made a strange gulping motion, then got back to work. Afterwards, the squid whispered that he understood, and continued that he had added some refinements to make it more bearable. Kilaney wondered what those might be, but no surgeon had approached him again since the operation, several hours ago.

He guessed the various coloured layers were for different patient species on the hospital ship, run by the Level Twelve Ngankfushtora – he could no longer pronounce it properly with a human tongue – and that the swirling sediment had multiple purposes including bio-containment, regeneration, sterilisation, and monitoring of recovery progress and health parameters.

He’d encountered the Level Eight Ossyrian medical race during his time as Q’Roth, and had been impressed, but the Nganks were something else: massive surgery and rewriting DNA while keeping cognitive faculties and memories intact in a matter of a couple of days – he’d assumed it was impossible. Pierre had told him that the Ossyrians were advanced medically, but fundamentally they were triage doctors, relieving planets beset by new plagues, or assisting wounded in Grid wars. The Nganks, however, were more like cosmetic surgeons, called upon by the higher races, up to Level Fifteen, for specialised work. When Ukrull had first brought him to the hospital ship, Kilaney has asked who tended higher species like the Level Seventeen Tla Beth. As usual, the reptilian Ranger had grunted and refused to answer.

The Nganks’ ship had looked impressive from space, a large purple lozenge studded with ghostly translucent struts, stretching outwards to eight luminous jade globes. Pierre had said that when it travelled, the outer spheres emitted a trail of fluorescent waves in their wake. Evidently, Level Twelve species weren’t beyond a little panache.

Kilaney fidgeted, scratching idly at non-existent scars. He’d always hated hospitals, and wanted to get to Esperia as soon as possible. While on Ukrull’s ship, assisted by Pierre, he’d accessed and interrogated Q’Roth news data-streams, and found that Sister Esma had been loaned a warship for a ‘tactical mission’ of unspecified intentions. He didn’t like the sound of that one bit; the timing couldn’t be coincidental.

The teal-coloured channel around him throbbed, as if sensing his antagonism. Cooling rain tinkled down his spine, massaging him, and he realized they had drugged him again. His consciousness winked out.

Kilaney awoke to see something shimmer to the left of his cot. As he propped himself up on his elbows, an avatar of Pierre coalesced out of the ether.

“General, it’s good to see you human again. How do you feel?”

“Fine. Where are you? When do we leave?”

“Better, I see. That’s good. Can you run?”

Kilaney tried to shake the fuzz out of his head. “Excuse me?”

“Run, General, now, to the left end of the chamber, as fast as you can. This is not a joke or a test.”

Kilaney blinked, then rolled off the cot, meaning to break his fall with the mid-legs he no longer possessed, instead slamming hard onto the floor with his knees and hands, feeling sharp stabbing pains. He staggered in the direction Pierre had said, following the avatar, trying to remember how bipeds walked, let alone ran.

“Pierre, mind telling me what the hell –”

“Take a deep breath now, and grab something fixed!”

He’d barely  inflated  his  lungs  when  space  outside  lit  up,  and  a thunderclap behind him announced a hull breach. Hellfire, we’re under attack! Kilaney gripped a metal pole next to an empty bed, but as a sandstorm of swirling colours fled through Pierre’s holo-avatar, another alien patient resembling an eight-legged rhino buffeted past him, snapping the rod in two. Kilaney began travelling back towards open space, longing for his Q’Roth claws that could have easily dug into the floor.

The suction stopped with a ‘phtum’ sound, and he crashed to the floor. Gasping in the scant air left in the room, he turned and saw the snagged rhino’s legs flailing. The screaming alien was being slowly sucked through the gash, no doubt being bled dry on the part of its body exposed to hard vacuum.

Kilaney remembered how to run this time, and sprinted to the automatic airlock door, which was trying to close, Pierre’s avatar somehow preventing it from doing so. One of the squid surgeons zipped past him, swimming in the violet channel. On instinct he swerved into it too, just as the rhino’s scream spiked and was lost in the rush of air vortexing out of the chamber. Kilaney felt like he was running in slow motion, but at least was not being tugged backwards, and his urge to breathe ceased. The squid turned back to glance at him, then swished through the gap into the cylindrical strut. Kilaney made it through three seconds later, suddenly accelerating so fast that he smacked into a wall on the other side, hearing the airlock door clamp into place behind him. He remembered how to sit up against a wall, and his new lungs had no trouble recalling how to pant.

Pierre’s platinum avatar lost no time. “Ukrull and I are seventeen long-range transits from your position. We got a lead on Hellera’s location while you were being remixed, she’s the Kalarash –”

“My memory is fine, Pierre, you told me about her yesterday. Who’s attacking, what do I do?”

“Mannekhi raiding party; grab one of the Nganks and don’t let go, no matter what happens.” Pierre’s avatar started fizzing. “Interference. Losing transmission. Good lu–” The avatar vanished.

Kilaney got to his feet. He was at the juncture of two major struts –the squid had bolted down one of the connecting tubes, but he didn’t know which. He charged down the left one.

Midway, he passed rectangular windows, and saw a black sea urchin ship spitting fire at the Ngank lozenge. Normally, Ossyrians or Nganks should have been able to use bio-weapons, eradicating a certain DNA- type within a five million kilometre radius, but if there was one thing Qorall knew about, it was biological warfare, and he’d evidently handed down a few tricks to his Mannekhi foot-soldiers.

Kilaney’s conduit lurched, throwing him to the ceiling, enabling him to see a Mannekhi beam slice a clean break through the opposite strut half a kilometre away. The central purple ovoid was criss-crossed with breaches: equipment, patients and no doubt medical staff haemorrhaged from energy-beam incisions. They’re dismembering the ship.

Artificial gravity failed, and he began to drift away from the ceiling. He managed to kick against it just in time to avoid floating uselessly mid-tube. He drifted to the opposite floor, allowed himself to crouch on it, then kicked off hard. Flying ten metres along the strut, he reached the ceiling again, and shoved his hands against it, effecting an upside-down handspring, making less distance this time, but heading to the floor. As he spun, he saw the Mannekhi ship lance another strut. He kicked off again and reckoned he had just another fifty metres to go. Six struts left, so if I’m lucky…

His ears filled with a noise somewhere between a blow-torch and a rocket engine, and he reached ground just in time to grab a conduit as once again air whipped past him. He squinted through the howling rush of air towards the auto-sealing shield door at the end of the strut. No way would he make it. Then he spied the squid surgeon, tentacles flapping, as if trying to swim against the current. As it tumbled towards him, he remembered what Pierre had said. Timing it carefully, just as the Ngank passed over his head, he let go of the conduit and seized the slippery creature’s tentacles with both hands.

His fingers and palms burned, then his eyeballs felt like they were aflame, then his whole body. Don’t let go! Kilaney’s eyes scrunched closed against the freezing pull of space, while the bastard squid sent electric shocks through its tentacles till Kilaney tasted blood in his mouth. Still he held on. He knew he had only seconds of consciousness. Sorry Blake, looks like I’m not going to…

“Where are we?” Kilaney saw black everywhere except for the luminous squid he still gripped with bleeding hands.

“Let go now. Mannekhi ship. Maintenance shaft.”

Kilaney released the Ngank. “You nearly fried me alive back there.”

“Saved you. Side effect. Emergency micro-jump.”

He studied his palms. The blood was drying. No scars. “Fixed you. Easy. You basic model now.”

He knew he was missing some of what the squid was saying, because Largyl 6 included consonants undecipherable by the human hearing system. “Your ship, your comrades?”

The squid’s head did a small pirouette. “Ship gone. Comrades?”

“The other surgeons… Wait a Goddam minute, you mean to say you were the only Ngank aboard?”

“Clone projections. Tell you secret. You work out soon, but need know now. Higher Level, less number.”

Kilaney thought about it. Pierre said there were only seven Kalarash left in the entire universe, including one who had quit this galaxy, and Hellera, who remained. Q’Roth were Level Six and numbered hundreds of billions, Ossyrians were Level Eight and numbered a few billion, Rangers were Level Fifteen, and were few and far between, maybe a few thousand in the entire galaxy from what he’d heard, and Tla Beth... In all this time he’d never done the math.

“Why?” he asked.

“Think later. Now you take ship.”

Kilaney thought he’d heard it wrong, then laughed out loud. “I used to be a general, but I haven’t seen my troops in a long time. Why don’t you take the ship?”

“Not harm. Ever.”

“I thought you used bio-weapons when you had to?” The squid shivered. “Not Ossyrian. Never harm.” “Not a great survival philosophy.”

One of the tentacles swiped Kilaney’s arm, stinging it. “What happened to ‘not harm’?”

“You hurt, not harmed. We are old race, ninety million your years. You very young race, know nothing, understand less.”

Kilaney bristled. “Still –”

“Survival not everything. Bigger picture.”

Kilaney shook his head. This was going nowhere. At least he was still alive. And he had no pain, though by rights he should have. No pain. An idea crystallised in his head. “Anaesthetic doesn’t do harm, does it?”

The squid didn’t answer, but its tentacles braided around each other as if it was crossing them.

Kilaney held out his palms. “Micro-jump. Bridge. Anaesthetise everyone there except me.”

The squid didn’t move. “You not kill them. Aiding harm, causing harm.”

Kilaney grimaced. He’d prefer not to deal with prisoners. “They stay anaesthetised, I’ll leave them alone. You have my word.”

Two tentacles unfurled into his palms. “This will hurt.”

Story of my life.

He tied the last knot around the wrists of the twelfth Mannekhi crewmember on the bridge, then moved over to the comms console. Twice in the past decade he’d boarded a Mannekhi Spiker, so he knew his way around. He sent the comms signal, the one Ukrull had shown him.

Pierre’s avatar appeared. “Esperia, fast as you can.”

Kilaney wasn’t much of a man for sentimentalism or congratulations, but he’d expected some surprise that he’d survived and taken the ship. But Pierre continued before he had time to reply.

“General, we’ve gained some new intel while trying to reach Hellera. We’ve confirmed that Sister Esma is onboard a Crucible bound for Esperia. Micah and Blake have nothing to match that level of hardware, and frankly neither do the local Ossyrians stationed there. The vessel you’re on might stand a chance, if you can surprise her. Can you pilot it alone?”

Kilaney had thought about that. Navigate and operate tactical weapons at the same time? He shook his head. Pierre’s avatar looked away from him, and Kilaney heard Ukrull’s grating voice.

“Crew still breathe?”

“Yes,” Kilaney answered.

“Then listen.”

Ukrull told Kilaney something. It made his jaw drop. He stared at the inert crew on the Bridge.

Pierre took up the lead again. “General, there are Shrell en route to Esperia. They will poison space around the planet. You must arrive quickly. We have to jump now. The Ngank can explain about the Shrell.” Pierre’s eyes grew intense. “You must hold Esperia till the very end, General, whatever the cost. Even if you defeat Sister Esma. Tell Blake not to leave the spiders. Qorall will come to you. Sorry, we have to jump now.”

Kilaney stared at the space where the avatar had been a second ago. It was almost too much to take in, and Pierre had left a lot out. While he chewed it over, he checked weapons status, then set the navigation controls and powered up the engines for the first jump. A low bass rumble vibrated the soles of his feet.

He turned to the Ngank. “So, tell me, who are the Shrell?”

“Space-dwellers, born in outer layer of gas giant.” Its tentacles sketched an outline in the air. It flash-filled with colour to produce an image in 3D: picting. Kilaney had heard some species could do this, but never actually seen it before. The picture vanished. What Kilaney had seen reminded him of the eagle ray from Earth’s tropical oceans, some kind of techware along its wings’ edges.

The Ngank’s tentacles coiled and twisted around each other. “This bad news. Shrell space-fixers. Patch space after too many high-energy transits bruise subspace. Care about habitat.”

Kilaney imagined serene, eco-friendly rays swimming through space. But he’d seen how wars could twist allegiances, particularly those who tried to stay ‘neutral’. When a war went global, or in this case galactic, there was no neutral party or territory, everyone took sides sooner or later, out of choice or coercion.

The engines reached mid-pitch. “What did he mean, ‘poison space’?”

“Fracture subspace harmonics. Stops transits, creates eddies and vortices.”

Kilaney envisioned ships travelling full speed then slamming into a lattice of supercharged exotic particles, like a giant cheese-grater, shredding vessels and occupants, leaving their fragments to drift forever in quickspace. Qorall would send in the worms later to mop everything up. Bad news indeed.

The engines’ keening hurt his ears; he wondered how much of a jump they were about to make. He shouted over the rising crescendo.

“Can we stop them?”

The squid’s tentacles braided again. “My relief transport arrived. You on own now.” The squid teleported, vanishing in front of Kilaney’s eyes.

Never harm, it had said, and never abet harm. Kilaney sighed and took the command chair. He doubted he could do anything about the Shrell, except hopefully arrive before them. Sister Esma, though, that was a different matter. But he would need the crew lying unconscious on the floor to help him. That wasn’t going to be easy. The engine noise suddenly ceased, as if the ship were holding its breath.

Just as every surface around him turned mercurial, signifying jump initiation, Kilaney smiled, and it felt good on his new face. Despite the odds – his ship was no real match for a Crucible – this was a battle he was looking forward to.

◆◆◆

Three hundred Shrell flew in V-formation, their leader Genaspa at the front, setting the pace. They noticed a ship tearing past on a similar vector, ploughing a furrow through the rolling hills of folded Transpace. As one, they flinched at the taut wake-line etched into space-fabric behind its pathway.

<Destroy?> inquired the Second.

<No, Mannekhi vessel, probably escort sent by Qorall> replied Genaspa, the First.

<Repair damage?> inquired the Third.

<Continue> Genaspa replied.

They watched the time-frozen ship race ahead of them on its long trek to Esperia’ s system, their own destination, then, as one, increased their speed to match its velocity.

Chapter 6

Eye of the Storm

Micah awoke as Esperia’s dawn rays stole through the curtains, glancing off Antonia’s bare shoulder. She slept on her side, facing away from him. He nuzzled closer, inhaling her scent, nestling his forehead against her hair. Years earlier, a lifetime ago, he’d dreamed of being in bed with her – not just the love-making – of simply being with her, and of them sleeping together. For the first time in months, he felt peaceful, even if he knew it wouldn’t last. His fingers traced the curve from her ribs to her hip, then cupped her perfect buttocks one after the other. He moved closer, kissing the back of her neck as he nudged his groin to make contact with her, and he felt himself harden against her soft flesh. She stirred, a hand reaching behind her, finding him. She held him, rubbed him gently between fingers and thumb.

Micah gasped, gnawed at her neck, then coaxed Antonia onto her stomach. She parted her thighs. He stroked the wetness there, her buttocks rising as she moaned softly against his finger.

“Don’t be a tease, Micah.”

He mounted her, entered her, closed her legs between his, and moved as slowly as he could. Levering up onto his left elbow, his right hand reached around to caress her pert breasts, finding her nipples erect. She made a moaning noise, and both her hands reached behind her, flat against her buttocks, palms upwards, touching him.

His mind reeled, and his body shook. Micah took both her wrists and pinned them to the pillow above her head with his left hand, while his right lifted her chin up so his lips could meet her mouth. She kissed him hard, devouring him. He kept up the same rhythm, thrust deeper, felt her tighten around him, never letting go of the kiss.

They lay entwined, neither of them speaking. Micah basked in the moment, knowing their world was soon to unravel, but savouring every minute that passed. He etched every second of the past ten hours into his memory. Antonia’s finger played with the hair on his chest, tugged at it. He kissed her again, urgently, knowing he was in forbidden territory, somebody else’s bed. He felt the guilt rise inside him, like a gathering storm in his chest. As he drew back, she read his look.

“Another lifetime,” she said, kindness and warmth in her eyes, letting him down gently.

A lyric from an old classic song popped into his head. “You’re fuckin’ perfect, Antonia.”

She glanced away, bit her lip. “Kat used to sing me that song.”

He rolled onto his back. She had always belonged to Kat. This night had been an eye in the storm for Antonia, too.

He sat up. “I intend to find her. Bring her back to you.”

She stroked his back, then sat up, and kissed his shoulder. “Do you think you can find her?”

“It’s top of my agenda, why I resigned.”

“To find Louise, or to find Kat?”

He gave her a sideways look, which made her smile. He knew that while Antonia looked demure, she wasn’t naïve. “Both, I hope, but I only plan to bring one back alive.”

Her eyebrows edged closer. “But if they split up and you have to make a choice?”

He’d thought about it. “Kat,” he answered, wondering how he might really react if faced with that particular choice.

“Because she can link to the Hohash?”

He nodded. And because the Hohash can link to the Kalarash, and only they can stop Qorall.

Micah mock-pinched her thigh and got out of bed. “I’ll make breakfast.”

“Micah?”

He paused, turned around to face her, naked in every way. “Whoever gets you is a lucky woman.”

He winked. “Perhaps. Or maybe you just don’t often sleep with a guy who hasn’t had sex for seven years.”

She grinned, and was about to say something else, but he pre-empted her. “Toast or eggs?”

She lay back down, put her hands behind her head. “I like both, Micah.”

He laughed and walked into the lounge and froze. A Hohash mirror hovered soundlessly a few centimetres off the floor on the other side of the room. Kat stared through the mirror straight at him.

“Kat!” he said.

Kat’s face cocked an eyebrow, and he remembered he was completely nude. But Antonia had heard him utter Kat’s name, and dashed into the room, a sheet hastily draped around her. Kat raised the other eyebrow, but Antonia rushed past Micah to the mirror, her sheet falling off as she seized the Hohash’s frame and knelt before her lover, her wife. Micah couldn’t see either of their faces, but Antonia’s shoulders trembled. He moved out of line of sight into the kitchen, retrieving one or two of his garments on the way.

He wondered how timing could be so cruel. Hohash were mute, like the spiders, so no verbal communication was possible except through a third medium, somebody with a node. His guilt went into overdrive, but that was secondary – this could have ramifications. Kat had every right to be angry and could turn away from them. But there was nothing he could do. Even if oral communication were possible it would probably not help. Sometimes words only made it worse.

Antonia called him over. “Micah, I think she wants to say something to you.”

Micah didn’t see how. But no sooner than he was in line of sight of Kat, his head started to hurt. A searing pain stabbed at him behind his eyeballs, blinding him. He cried out and dropped to his knees, gasping with pain.

“Micah, what’s wrong?” Antonia put her arm around his shoulders, but he could see nothing, and the pain bit deeper. His forehead was on the floor, his hands to his temples.

“Kat, stop it, please, you’re hurting him!”

Micah groaned, unable to think. His resident, she must be using it. How? He gasped again.

Antonia was shouting. “Kat, stop it now. Please! Hurt me, I’m as much to blame!”

Abruptly the pain shut off, and Micah collapsed onto his back, his hands over his eyes, his breath ragged. After a while, he dared to open them. Antonia knelt next to him, red-eyed, wiping her cheeks, sheet back in place around her. He laid a hand on her thigh. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Micah, really. Kat’s gone now; she looked sharply at something to her right and then the Hohash just cleared.”

Micah tried to get up, but his head started to split. “Not all her fault,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

His thoughts were clearing, but he was still catching his breath. “The Hohash accessed my resident.”

“What? You still have that thing in your head? I thought the Tla Beth neutralized it during the trial?”

He shrugged, then winced.

“How can a node interface with a resident?”

“I don’t know, but it did. Kat was trying to send me a message.  The Hohash… it picked up on Kat’s anger – pretty natural, really – and amplified it.”

Antonia frowned. “Are you just saying that, Micah? Because I’m

–”

He squeezed her thigh. “I felt her; she was willing it to stop. Honest.”

Antonia bit her lip. “This is all my fault. I don’t deserve either of you.”

Micah tried getting up again, Antonia helping him. “Listen, Antonia, she’s alive. That’s what matters.” Micah had also felt something else in the ‘transmission’; Kat’s intense loneliness verging on despair. He’d tried to convey emotions back to her: that she was sorely missed; that last night had been a one-night fling; but he wasn’t sure he’d gotten through.

Antonia’s face brightened. “She is alive, isn’t she? My God, Micah, you’ve no idea…”

He held her, saying nothing, while her tears rolled down his chest. Then his resident interrupted his thoughts. He had no idea how Kat and the Hohash had done it, given that nodes and residents were completely different technologies, but two verbal messages appeared in his mind’s eye. The first said that Kat would somehow find a way to forgive him, but if he did it again she would kill him, adding that she already forgave Antonia, and to tell her so. His relief translated into a tighter hug around Antonia.

The second message said: “General Kilaney is alive. Pierre went to retrieve him. Complicated. With luck he can help you from the outside. Will try to find out more. Have to go. Difficult to communicate. Louise is –”. The message ended.

He closed his eyes, relishing Antonia’s touch for the last time. Thanks Kat, we owe you one, and this will never happen again.

They ate, or at least Antonia did, once she’d calmed down. Kat’s first message helped. Micah had black coffee, a rarity grown with haphazard success some three hundred klicks South of Esperantia. He cradled the cup, sipping the steaming bitter ultresso as he stared through the window towards the Acarian mountains. If Kilaney was able to come… He needed to tell Blake, this news would turn things around for sure, since Kilaney had been Blake’s commander back on Earth.

“Is Pierre coming back, too?” Antonia asked.

Micah knew why she was asking. “I don’t think so. At least the message to me implied Kilaney would be coming back. I think she’d have said if Pierre was, too.”

Antonia didn’t comment further, blowing across the top of her coffee cup, looking to Micah as if she were miles away, most probably light years.

Micah put down his cup and stood up.

“Blake needs to know about this, Vasquez too,” he said.

She rose. “And Petra. And Zack?”

He stared at her. He hadn’t thought about involving Zack’s Transpar, Blake’s former right-hand man. Antonia had a point, since  Kilaney had also trained Zack, apparently. But during the Trial Zack had been transformed into a man of glass, completely transparent in every way, unable to lie and therefore the perfect witness for the prosecution. They’d also taken away his personality. His wife Sonja said that every now and again she saw glimpses of the old Zack, but if so, she was the only one. Even Blake believed there was nothing left of the original Zack.

“Maybe,” he said. “The Council should be informed, but I’m no longer on Council, so –”

“I’ll inform them, Micah.” She touched his arm. “I see now why you resigned. You don’t want to be second-guessed and compromised by eleven other people.”

He nodded, and was about to say goodbye, but she placed a finger across his lips, and shook her head.

In the doorway, as he was about to leave, she spoke again. “You know, Micah, you and Gabriel aren’t so different. You want the same thing, and neither of you play by the rules. He’s fixated on the threat from Sister Esma, you’re more worried about Louise. And Pierre, wherever he is, well, he went off to fight against Qorall.” Her face darkened. “Micah, what if all three enemies are coming here?”

Micah stroked his chin. “We can’t have that much bad luck, Antonia.”

Once he left, foreboding flooded in. What if Antonia was right? He needed to see Blake. But then he also needed to see the Ossyrians. They alone had sensors reaching outside the quarantine barrier, and they alone could call for reinforcements. They might be pacifists, but they were Level Eight, two notches higher than the Q’Roth and three above the Alicians.

He headed into the centre of town, wondering how he was going   to set up a meeting with them. For the past nine months as the end of Quarantine approached, excepting a couple of medical emergencies due to farming accidents, the Ossyrians had eschewed all human contact.

Micah heard the shouting before he arrived in the square in front of the Council Chamber, the only place where daffodils grew in the Esperian Spring, genetically modified by the Genners to survive the winter’s acidic blue snows. The yelling rose in pitch, and he broke into a trot. Rounding the corner he saw the Transpar – Zack – holding the wrist of a farmer Micah barely knew. Erik Fornasson, his resident reminded him, a wizened man with wild grey hair like a scouring pad, framing hollow cheeks and blazing eyes. Fornasson pounded the transparent man made of alien glass with his free fist and his dusty boots, to no avail. Micah slowed to a brisk pace, cutting through the growing crowd of bemused and angry people.

Micah caught the eye of an approaching khaki-uniformed constable and then stepped into the zone surrounding the grappling pair.

Zack had been Micah’s friend, and Blake’s best friend, and had sworn vengeance on Louise after her last attack, but had been the first casualty of their trial by the Tla Beth. He was no longer human, instead a cipher made of flow-glass, but with enough of Zack’s memories that his wife Sonja would rather have him than nothing. Most of the community shunned Zack and pitied Sonja, and nobody talked to him except the original team who’d been out in the Grid: himself, Sandy, and Blake. Micah hadn’t seen him for over a year.

Fornasson spied Micah. “Hey, get him the hell off me. I have rights, don’t I?”

Micah considered it for a moment. Two more constables arrived, taking up the rear. “Release him, Zack. That’s an order.” He had no jurisdiction over Zack, but he hoped the military style of his command would have an impact; the original Zack had been a soldier all his life. With an inward shiver Micah realized Zack had not aged in any appreciable sense in eighteen years.

The head of glass swivelled in Micah’s direction, eyes crystal clear like an ice sculpture. He regarded Micah for a second then opened the hand holding Fornasson. The farmer made a fuss of rubbing his wrist and glaring at the Transpar.

“Now, if nobody minds, I’ll get back to my animals, they need milking, and –”

“A couple of questions first, please.” Micah barred his way, as the constables moved a measured distance behind the farmer. He noticed other farmers, friends of Fornasson most likely, edge towards the front of the crowd. Several had their staffs with them. They stood tall, outnumbering Micah and the constables three to one.

Fornasson puffed out his chest. “I don’t have to answer any questions from you, Mr. President. In fact, I heard you resigned last night, so I’ll be on my way.” But he remained where he was.

Micah nodded absently. He addressed the small crowd, focusing on the farmers. “Four spiders were burned to death yesterday in their home in Shimsha. It was arson.”

People shuffled, murmured to each other. A few of Fornasson’s friends glanced to him, then to one other. Fornasson glared. The embers of hatred evident in his eyes and the lack of surprise told Micah all he needed to know.

Fornasson glowered. “Can’t say I’m too upset about that. More than a few of my cattle have disappeared through the years.”

It was true. Micah had pressed Blake on the issue but had never gotten a satisfactory answer. But equating the sentient spiders to cattle spoke volumes about how Fornasson viewed humanity’s alien neighbours. Micah turned to Zack, who hadn’t budged a millimetre since releasing the farmer. “Why did you seize this man?”

Zack answered in a voice that tinkled like wind chimes. It was pleasant on the ears, but Micah missed Zack’s booming baritone. “Forensic evidence: spider DNA strands, fuel oil residue on his palms, smoke particles in his hair consistent with the crime scene, psychological profile and reactions since capture.”

Micah didn’t know Zack’s capabilities; nobody did, not even Sonja, who wouldn’t tell if she did. He had no doubt that Zack was right, but the crowd wouldn’t see it that way, and there was due legal process to be followed; Micah’s process, in fact.

“Mr. Fornasson, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to accompany these constables to the police station.”

A young farmer stepped forward, planting his staff in the ground. “Erik is right. You are no longer President. And these spiders – why should we care if they had an accident and a few of them died? What did they ever do for us?”

In part Micah sympathised with the latter argument. Over the years he’d entreated Blake and Glenda to work to bring the communities together. But the spiders didn’t trust humans. Whether it was a self- fulfilling prophecy, or an accurate judgment of human characteristics, was moot right now. Micah was amazed they had all gotten this far without incident.

“As a citizen, and on behalf of Captain Blake Alexander,” Micah said, knowing that most citizens still held Blake in high regard, “I’d like to ask the constables to question this man and the Transpar.” There, that should do it.

“No.” Zack’s gaze locked onto Fornasson.

“Zack,” Micah started, but didn’t get time to finish. The nannites in his brain shifted gear to quick-mode to take it all in. The young farmer swung his staff upwards to strike at Zack’s groin. Another farmer behind Fornasson took out a short pulse pistol from his pocket. A third, seeing the constables distracted, let his weapon – a stun rod – drop into the palm of his hand. Zack moved like a blur, the young farmer’s staff finding empty air until Zack’s hand sliced through it, chopping it in two. Zack sank to the ground, his right leg stretching out horizontally behind him at calf level as he spun around, sweeping both farmers off their feet, snatching the pistol out of the second farmer’s hand in mid-air. Zack rose again, and with a flourish of his fingers flicked a globule of his own glass flesh at the third farmer’s forehead, then returned to exactly where he’d been, in time to seize Fornasson’s wrist before the man had time to move away. The two farmers hit the ground with a thump. Micah’s resident flashed “1.1 seconds” in his left eye.

The young farmer was on the ground, staff snapped in two, the other farmer, pistol-less, rolled into the dust clutching a mangled hand. The third wavered as if stung, as his weapon dropped from his limp hand to the floor. A small coin-sized glass disk adhered momentarily to his forehead. As it fell off, the man collapsed onto all fours, the disk rolling in the dust towards Zack’s foot where it was re-absorbed. Zack passed the pistol to one of the constables. It had been crushed beyond repair. The constable took it gingerly, his eyes wide, staring at the Transpar.

The crowd caught up with these lightning-fast events, shuffling backwards. Two of the constables dragged the unconscious farmer away, confiscating his illegal stun rod. But the peace didn’t last. Other farmers helped up their comrades, then as one advanced on Zack.

Shouting and arm-waving resumed, farmers jostling with the two remaining constables to release Fornasson from Zack’s grip. Micah knew the time for reasoning, always short with a mob, had passed. Not for the first time, he witnessed fear overtake people’s rational minds   as they fought against the Transpar, something alien, ignoring the man buried deep inside who had fought so hard and sacrificed everything to save them. The crowd grew larger, which in Micah’s experience rarely improved the situation. Against his better judgment, nannites poured into his hands and feet, increasing their tensile strength tenfold. Zack’s crystal head pivoted in Micah’s direction. Micah wondered how much Zack sensed.

The whine of a transport sled screeching to a halt interrupted the melee. The crowd broke apart, those at the front craning their necks to see who had arrived. Micah watched the two Ossyrians dismount from their hover-chariot.

People turned to see the pure black faces like Alsatian dogs, Pharaonic head-dresses of horizontal gold, jet and lapis lazuli stripes, and dazzling white knee-length tunics concealing black furry limbs.

The Ossyrians, Level Eight doctors who had eradicated every ailment from cancer to the common cold, had ministered to the populace whenever in dire need. All diseases had been purged permanently, to the point where Ossyrian appearances had become a rarity. One walked with a dancer’s gait up to Fornasson. It lifted a scanning device that swept invisible waves up and down the farmer’s body. The Ossyrian placed a paw on Fornasson’s chest. The farmer tried to back away but Zack held him firm. From the Ossyrian’s limb a needle emerged and punctured the man’s sternum. No blood appeared. Fornasson became still. So did everyone else.

The Ossyrian opened his jaw, revealing the mesh of pale blue fibres within. A few in the crowd placed their hands over their ears again,     as the voice emanated like a choir of fingernails scratching down a chalkboard.

“Did you kill the spiders?”

Fornasson’s body shuddered as if due to an internal struggle, then became calm. “Yes.”

Again the grating voice. “Did you have help?”

Fornasson’s body was almost as still as Zack’s. “No.” The syringe retracted and the Ossyrian lowered his paw.

“Wait,” Micah said. He walked up to Fornasson, who looked groggy, as if waking from a dream, his calm features crumpling into a frown as he realized what he’d just confessed.

“Fornasson,” Micah said, keeping anger out of his voice. “Erik. Why? Why did you do it?”

The man’s features twisted and curled, and he turned sideways and spat on the floor. “It’s just a matter of time. A few cattle, a few people go missing. We’re on their world, Micah. You and Blake brought us here, thinking it was empty, but it wasn’t. Sooner or later, it’ll be us or them. Any sane person can see what’s coming.”

Micah turned to the Ossyrian. He had to move on, because he knew that even the more rational people around him had at one time or another wondered the same thing. Hell, even he had. “What happens now?”

The Ossyrian uttered a squeal that made Micah and everyone else flinch, and the Transpar led an unresisting Fornasson to the sled, the farmers backing away, heads down, few meeting the eyes of their comrade. Anger and resentment were one thing, apparently, pre-meditated murder another.

The Ossyrian addressed Micah. “You are also coming with us. You are responsible for your people.”

Micah’s eyes widened a fraction, then he nodded. “Of course.” He addressed the crowd. “Go home, all of you.” Then he added to the farmers. “I’ll see Erik Fornasson gets fair treatment.” Without waiting for a reaction, because he had no idea if he could deliver on that promise, he called to Zack. “Tell Blake what happened, where we’re going.” He’d almost forgotten. “And tell him Kilaney is coming.”

The Transpar stared at Micah.

The crowd shuffled backwards as Micah and the Ossyrian boarded the sled. He stood next to Fornasson, who scowled.

“You should’ve stayed out of this, Mr. ex-President. Your time is over. You led us to this point, you and your damned liberalism, and were about to walk away. Well, now you can’t.” He looked Micah in the eye. “You’re an analyst, as we’ve all heard before. So, I know I’ve committed a crime, and I’ll pay, but you, you can trace it all the way back to its causes.” He looked forward again. “Might not like what you find – who you find – if you do.”

Micah dismissed the idea. Long ago he’d learned the difference between a cause and a contributory factor, and the role of individual choice in separating the two. However, there was a trace of guilt, though not for this crime. “You’re mostly wrong, Fornasson. What I should have done, as an analyst, is seen this coming.”

Zack appeared next to Micah so silently it made him start. “Bill Kilaney?”

Micah nodded. The Transpar’s face was like a child’s, completely innocent. Without another word the Transpar turned and started walking towards Hazzard’s Ridge.

The Ossyrian sled lifted knee-height off the ground and thrummed through the streets, the cool morning breeze brushing against Micah’s cheeks. Once outside Esperantia, the crystal pyramid gleamed up ahead in the distance. Despite the circumstances, Micah smiled. It had been a long time since he’d been inside the Ossyrian ship.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw something charging up the hill to his right, a trail of dust behind it. It was the Transpar, running. God it was fast! Micah smiled again. Go, Zack, go! He wished he could be there to see Blake’s face when he heard the news.

Chapter 7

Supernova

Pierre’s father had often told him the smart ones hide right out in the open. Still, where they were about to go was hard for him to accept, even with his Level Ten intelligence rating. Sitting next to the reptilian Ranger Ukrull in their cramped craft that smelled like a swamp, he stared through the front viewer, his nannites adjusting to the glare so he didn’t have to squint.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked, knowing there was really no need for the question, for two reasons. First Ukrull, at Level Fifteen, had a kind of telepathy, advanced neurological scanning senses that could detect and process thought patterns from an array of stimuli. Second, Ukrull was always sure. Still, Pierre had never seen the inside of a supernova before, and felt the occasion merited the question, even if he knew Ukrull would not deign to answer. Telepaths didn’t appreciate rhetoric.

The blaze of raw power in front of them across the entire spectrum screamed at any normal being to run like hell, whether intelligent or simply endowed with basic survival instincts. Pierre hadn’t felt anything like fear for a long time, but he had to admit this situation had his full attention. Ukrull, however, didn’t even acknowledge the question with so much as a grunt. Instead he kicked a control and their ship lunged forward into the hidden homeworld of the Tla Beth.

As they slipped though the cauldron’s edge of the slowly exploding star the ship’s scanner blanked, unable to process brightness on such a scale. This time Ukrull grunted. “Fix later.”

Pierre had asked him years ago why he didn’t have a bigger, better ship. The Ice Pick, as Ukrull referred to his stubby vessel, effectively his home for more than ten thousand years, wasn’t top of the range by Grid standards. Ukrull had gone unusually quiet, and his scaly tail had for once stopped thrashing. “Acquired second-hand. Gift. Don’t make like used to.”

Ukrull had never revealed who the gift was from. The ship’s hull creaked despite the null field around it, made the grinding whine of an animal in pain, and shuddered. The Ice Pick had to be Tla Beth tech, Level 17.

“Eighteen,” Ukrull corrected.

Pierre turned to stare at his mud-coloured, amber-eyed reptilian companion, whose upper incisors curled down his lower jaw like mini- tusks. Level Eighteen were a mystery, confirmed extinct. The Kalarash, having nurtured them for millions of years, had suddenly and inexplicably wiped them out. Pierre wondered how old Ukrull really was. He didn’t believe telepaths were beyond telling lies.

The screen stuttered awake again, and Pierre felt a jolt. They had landed. On what he had no idea, because all he saw forward was a uniform purple sky.

“Outside,” Ukrull stated, as he nudged the airlock control, adding, even before Pierre thought his question, “Safe.”

In many respects it was the inverse of a Dyson Sphere. Humanity had long ago conceived the idea of constructing a sphere of immense diameter around a small star, creating a self-contained world within the Dyson shell, with infinite energy supply. The Tla Beth had gone one stage further and built a home inside a dying sun. He knew that two billion years ago the war between the Kalarash and Qorall had involved using stars as weapons, so perhaps they had developed counter-measures, maybe involving phase-shifting – Pierre could only guess. Still, superlatives failed him. He gazed upwards towards the reflective shield, indigo in colour, shading their inner asteroid-sized planet in permanent twilight. He had no idea how it worked, but as a defence it was ingenious; even star-breaker weapons were unpredictable against a supernova, and Nova bombs would be a self-evident waste of time and energy.

The ground was smooth as glass. With each step its marbled yellows and greys swirled, as if the floor was alive, reacting to him. He intuited what it meant. The entire surface was receptive, recording and processing everything. Ukrull had once told Pierre that the highest intelligence was pure perception, though Pierre found that difficult to accept. But evidently the Tla Beth placed a high value on data and information.

He’d expected a grand city, at least some spires and exotic aerial vehicles. The Tla Beth were legendary in Gridlore, and also mysterious, leading to many fables and artistic renditions of a fantastic crystal metropolis in golden skies where they might live. But after half an hour of walking, something he relished after being cooped up in the Ice Pick for months, he had seen no structures whatsoever.

“Tla Beth energy creatures, phase-shifters. Can live, function, hide in Transpace. Self-sustaining. Entire planet tech. Planet has Makers. If need, supply. Power no problem here,” he said, flicking a claw skywards.

Pierre filled in the rest: the inner core of the small ‘planet’ must include exotic matter, so the ‘Makers’ could fabricate anything – ships, weapons. The planet would then shrink very slightly, as matter was converted during the process, and local gravity would be updated. No, he thought, the Tla Beth themselves were probably tolerant of massive gravitic shifts – it wouldn’t matter to them. He gazed down at the whorls around his feet and understood. The flooring was creating local gravity for him and Ukrull. It represented yet another defence mechanism against uninvited invaders.

“Correct.”

This time it wasn’t Ukrull. A Tla Beth had buzzed in front of them. Pierre had the curious feeling he should bow, but restrained himself. The creature was the shape of a rounded hourglass encircled by a dozen vertical metallic rings, hues on each one shifting like oil on water into infra and ultra frequencies. Pierre adjusted his eyesight so he could pick up all twenty-seven official Grid colours. It was impressive, mainly because he knew these rings were processing terabytes of data every second; the light show was a side effect.

The top and bottom parts of the hourglass – the Tla Beth’s ‘body’ – were black and white, like a version of the yin-yang symbol, ubiquitous in more than a hundred Grid sub-cultures. The top half was mainly dark with smatterings of white, the lower half the reverse. Drops of white – whatever they were – sifted through the Tla Beth’s hourglass ‘waist’ like liquid sand, altering the balance of black and white.

Pierre focused. This was a War Council meeting. Ukrull delivered his briefing, and Pierre watched as holos flashed at an almost subliminal rate: star charts, figures and casualty statistics, attack formations, dark worm incursions, strategic assessments, all silently transmitted between Ukrull and the Tla Beth. Pierre couldn’t follow all of it, but the net result was plain; they were steadily losing against Qorall.

Abruptly the transmissions stopped. The Tla Beth’s upper half was almost black, a single white dot in its centre. It spoke to Pierre in flawless English.

“We have located one of the Benefactors, a Kalarash.”

Pierre knew better than to ask where; undoubtedly the information had already been uploaded into the Ice Pick’s nav-mind. The Tla Beth answered the next questions before Pierre had finished thinking them.

“The second one. Tla Beth and Kalarash have uneasy relationship. Yes.”

Pierre tried to catch up fast, reverse-engineering his questions. The one that left the galaxy, or its mate Hellera, who was still somewhere inside the galaxy? Next. Why send us, why don’t you go find the Kalarash? Next. Is it because of what happened to the Level Eighteen race?

Pierre nodded, but the Tla Beth and Ukrull had gotten bored waiting and were conversing again, using some kind of ‘picting’, symbols appearing and dissolving in the ether between them.

Pierre had never been very emotional, having been raised by two scientists, even before his father had interfered with Pierre’s genetics, mutating his intelligence at the cost of his ability to love. Or so he’d thought until his brief affair with Kat. Since then, after the Ossyrians had tried to help him change and his nannites had spiralled out of control, catapulting him to Level Ten, he’d lost almost all emotional feeling. He’d never looked back. It was a scientist’s dream to become more intelligent, to understand so much more, to travel the galaxy and see its wonders first-hand, in the company of someone even more intelligent. A scientist always needed a challenge, and for Pierre finding new questions motivated him almost as much as deriving answers.

But he had thought of Kat over the years, wondering what had become of her and the daughter he’d abandoned shortly after her birth. Sure, he had bigger things to attend to. But recently – and he was convinced this was somehow Ukrull’s doing – he was almost remembering how to feel, how to care. And he ‘felt’ something now. He tried to remember which emotion it was, what label to apply. To know was to quantify, so he made an instantaneous assessment, even though he knew that such numbers were neither stable nor independent. What he ‘felt’ was 41% anxiety, 27% concern for two people he’d not seen in eighteen years and – this was the one that surprised him – 32% indignation at the way the Tla Beth and Ukrull were ignoring him, and the fact that they’d lost touch with the Kalarash in the first place. The 32% increased, polarising him into a state of something approaching anger.

The picting stopped. Ukrull turned toward Pierre. The Tla Beth had a helix of white coiling in its upper half. It was hard to tell when Ukrull was grinning, but Pierre reckoned he was. The Tla Beth spoke.

“You are right. We became complacent, arrogant. We felt we did not need the Benefactors anymore. And your next question: can a single Kalarash defeat Qorall and his ever-growing army? Unlikely. But she must try.”

For a split-second, white surged into the Tla Beth’s upper half, swirled, and then squirted back into the lower half, the rings all turning a pale green. Pierre had no idea what that meant.

The Tla Beth continued. “If you are unsuccessful, we will consider surrender. Too much of the galaxy has already been lost.”

Pierre’s quicksilver eyes narrowed. “But…” He gazed first at the Tla Beth, then Ukrull. Neither said any more.

Pierre bowed to the Tla Beth, and then nodded to Ukrull. “Then let’s go.” He recalled what Blake, his former commander, used to say. It seemed appropriate.

“Time’s burning.”

Pierre ate a small plate of nutrients as he and Ukrull hurtled through Transpace toward the Diamond Nebula where the last Kalarash known to exist in the galaxy, Hellera, was reportedly hiding. The food was the perfect mix for his health, and had a bland, metallic taste. He hadn’t changed his weekly ‘meal’ for ten years. Ukrull chewed noisily on a bone, occasional crunching sounds preceding a spray of gristle and reptilian saliva that Ukrull would leave for the Ice Pick’s cockpit microbes and fauna to digest and reprocess into amino acids, including some of those Pierre was eating. Pierre forced down his last mouthful with an audible gulp, then made sure he got to the waste recycling closet before Ukrull. Pierre could mentally disconnect his nasal senses if he chose to, but he simply preferred to be first.

Afterwards, Pierre decided he needed some privacy. He slipped into an inner trance to take stock of events and his own situation. He and Ukrull had seen first-hand Qorall’s strategy, brilliant in military terms, and utterly ruthless. But Pierre felt he was missing something, something obvious. For eighteen years he had had no truck with something as fuzzy as intuition, and yet he couldn’t deny he was uncomfortable with the Tla Beth’s plan.

For the first time in years, he wished Kat were there to advise him, he would welcome her instinct. But at Level Ten, he could do the next best thing: he focused and recalled every aspect of her, every conversation, inflexion of voice, eye movement, pupil dilation… In his mind an avatar of Kat arose, facing him in a white room.

“Hello, Pierre,” the avatar said. “Platinum suits you. It’s your colour.”

Pierre felt pleased at first, then caught himself – was he pleased with the simulation, or to see her again? Just an avatar, he reminded himself –              let’s try to keep this scientific; clinical. He addressed the slim, short-haired brunette with the grey eyes and crooked smile. “You have access to all my premises. We go to meet the female Kalarash known as Hellera. What do you advise?”

She cocked her head. “I missed you. I thought it would go away; you know, fade. It didn’t. Not much, anyway. Not nearly enough.”

He had an urge to clear his throat. This wasn’t going to plan. He thought about removing some of the emotional algorithms his brain had engineered into her avatar, but of course that would affect her intuition. He had to play along.

“I… missed you too, in a way.”

She glanced away. “Whatever. Your daughter – Petra – of course you remember her name, it’s the last word you spoke to me. She’s grown up into quite the young lady, but she’s never even met you, her father.” Her eyes flashed dark. Anger, he realised. But she continued, waving a hand dismissively. “Okay, back to your agenda. You’re seeing something that the Tla Beth are missing, but you’re also avoiding an obvious solution.” She folded her arms, stared at him.

Pierre knew the first part, what he was seeing. “That Qorall is evil.” To the Tla Beth such a concept would be seen as too vague and superstitious, foolish even. Pierre considered it, letting it ‘run’ in his head. The Tla Beth thought Qorall wanted to overtake the galaxy, to be its supreme commander. That made sense to Grid Society and its masters, who valued intelligence above all else, and ultimately order through control. But what if Qorall wanted revenge? What if he was not only intelligent, but consumed by two billion years of rage against whatever the Kalarash had done to him? The thought stream and all its implications condensed into fact in his mind. “Qorall wants to destroy the galaxy? But why?”

She walked up to him, held his shoulders. It had a curious effect on him, and he didn’t understand why, since both his image and the avatar were figments of his mind. Still, he didn’t shrug her off. Her hands felt warm. He remembered Kat’s touch, a long time ago, when he’d been a different Pierre. It had meant so much to him then. She let go. He felt a pang. Why did she let go?

“Pierre, this galaxy was nurtured by Qorall’s nemesis, the Kalarash. It’s their garden, it means something to them. He wants to hurt them. Maybe he’s only pretending to take over the galaxy. He’ll leave nothing but cold rock, no light, no stars left burning.”

“Like last time,” he said, recalling the legends of the War two billion years ago that had left the Jannahi galaxy dead.

“Petra has your eyes. Well, not those ones obviously, not silver, but you know, like you had before. It’s why I could never forget you.”

Pierre felt unbalanced, disturbed. But he resisted the urge to tamper with her algorithms, because he hadn’t yet seen the solution she’d mentioned.

“Show me those eyes, Pierre, then I’ll tell you.”

He felt something, a shade of an emotion. Indignation, he recalled. “This is a little absurd, you know you are an avatar.”

She shrugged. “Humour me. Or yourself. I’m a construct of your mind. Maybe you’re trying to answer more than the question you think you are interested in.”

Was it possible? He made an adjustment to his matrix, his silver eyes rippling to be replaced by his old human ones. He still stored their DNA signature. He thought it would make no difference, this was all inside his mind in any case. But it did. He saw her differently, as if she really were Kat, not just an avatar. She gazed at him. A smile, a non-crooked one, broadened her lips. He felt an urge to mimic the gesture.

“Thank you,” she said. She broke off her gaze and turned away, speaking to the nondescript, out-of-focus walls in his mind. “You go to seek Hellera as an ally, to fight Qorall.”

“Yes.”

“But the Tla Beth think she will not be enough on her own to defeat him.”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t see her as an ally.”

Pierre still didn’t get it. How was this possible? What was the point of being Level Ten if a normal human could see something he could not? He suddenly wondered if she were really an avatar, or something else. But that wasn’t possible.

She said nothing further. He played back her words. Hellera. Ally. The antonym of ally would be enemy. Not an enemy. Wrong track. Defeat. Synonym of defeat is surrender. No. Something else. Third way. Not defeat. Qorall more powerful. Capitulate. Placate. Hellera…”

Kat turned back to him. “There, that wasn’t so hard was it?”

He stared at her. “You think we should capture Hellera and hand her over to Qorall?”

“He wants to hurt someone.” She walked up close to him. “Pierre, you’re still a good man, it’s why you haven’t thought of it, but it’s an option you must consider.”

“For the sake of the galaxy?”

She shrugged. “You called me here to dig up what you didn’t want to face. You now have more cards in your hand. It’s just an option, you don’t have to take it.”

She looked small, human, fragile. He placed a hand on her shoulder, then another. She looked up at him. He pulled her towards him, felt her warmth against his cool platinum skin. He let her avatar fade from his arms, dissolving her construct.

Pierre returned from the depths of his mind to the surface, back inside the Ice Pick. The Hohash had been active, he noticed, but it went dark again. Ukrull was gazing at it. Pierre assumed he’d been interfacing with it for some reason.

Pierre wondered whether to tell Ukrull about this potential game plan. He didn’t know how far the Ranger’s telepathy could penetrate. Too far, probably.

“Ukrull, we have to talk.”

The Ranger pulled back from the controls, clasped his fore-claws together, and faced Pierre with a hard stare. He then leaned forward, close enough that his breath made Pierre recoil.

“What?” Pierre said.

Ukrull leant back in his chair, and snorted. “Okay. We talk. First, what wrong with your eyes?”

Chapter 8

Interrogation

Louise no longer liked what she saw in the washroom mirror when she got up in the morning. She’d just finished her daily physical training routine and showered. The face was still pretty enough, her body trim and fit, but her expression betrayed a wrong turn she’d made somewhere along the line, a sacrifice that went against her inner nature. She continued to stare as she stood in the full-body dryer, warm jets of air rippling her supple skin. She reflected that her life split neatly into four parts.

Before Earth’s Third World War she’d been ‘normal’, a teacher. Louise could barely remember what that even felt like, who she was back then: naïve and dumb, asleep, drifting through life. The War changed her forever; signing up then getting captured, tortured and raped every day for a year before their camp was liberated and she took her revenge. She’d joined the Chorazin, the global Interpol, fought against the bad guys – though it never really mattered to her who they were – alongside Vince.

She stepped out of the dryer enclosure, put on a string and donned her one-piece black uniform with its Chinese collar, Qorall’s vermillion circle insignia above the left breast. It reminded her of the Chorazin outfit, and of Vince. Those had been the good times, when work and love came together in a resounding, satisfying collision. Except she outgrew the Chorazin and became a double agent for the Alicians. Her third phase. She still could have recovered at that point, but then Micah came along. Louise brushed her teeth. Micah had gotten Vince killed on Esperia, while trying to kill her. She spat out the frothy foam, rinsing her mouth. That had been the sharp point of inflexion on the curve of her life, into a downward spiral. She’d ended up irrevocably pitted against humanity, whom she now despised and believed should be eradicated. But her ‘career path’, ending up working for Qorall in her fourth phase, had also left her at odds with Sister Esma and the Alicians, her only remaining ‘family’.

These last eighteen years had been intriguing and fascinating, exploring the Grid and all its species. But lately it had all been ultimately unsatisfying. What was the point? Rather, what was the point for her, personally? She’d had a few lovers here and there, the Mannekhi being the closest physically, but no one that mattered. So, where the hell was she going with her life? It reminded her of one of those pathetic job questions during her annual appraisal back on Earth: “Where do you see yourself in five years time?” She quit the bathroom.

Louise walked to Kat’s room. Aramisk, the stocky, dark-haired Mannekhi girl with an impudent tongue that would get her killed one day, sat staring at a pad beside the twitching body of Kat. The Hohash mirror was locked in a rectangular brace at the foot of Kat’s bed, active but unable to leave.

“Is she still in the dream, Aramisk?”

“Yes, Arctura.”

Even her Q’Roth name now sounded wrong to her. She studied Kat. This had been Qorall’s idea. Let her rampage through the info-streams till she dug up something from Qorall’s enemies about Hellera, the missing Kalarash, or the other one, Kalaran, who left the galaxy just before Esperia’s quarantine. The Kalarash were the only real potential threat to Qorall, but he couldn’t locate them.

Louise reluctantly acknowledged she liked Kat, or at least respected her, which put her in a very select but important category in Louise’s world. It was probably because Kat had never truly given up her struggle since her capture two years ago. Similar to Louise in that enemy camp back in Thailand, Kat was biding her time, even now trying to play both sides, pretending she was working for Louise and Qorall. A little naïve, but at least she had integrity, a quality few possessed, no matter their Level.

But this controlled dreaming procedure, and its next interrogation phase would almost certainly kill her. Louise kept her voice flat. “How are her vitals?”

“Within tolerance. The human psyche is complex and maladaptive; her subconscious knows she is being manipulated even though her conscious mind doesn’t. That creates physiological stresses that most higher-level species have outgrown. In her case it will eventually trigger cardiac trauma and irreparable dysfunction.” Aramisk watched Louise’s reaction. “I’ll do whatever I can to keep her alive... if that’s what you want, I mean after Qorall has the information.”

Louise cleared her throat. “Yes. Do that. She may prove useful afterwards.”

Aramisk glanced at the Hohash. “That, however, I have no control over whatsoever. The connection between them runs deep. Psychophysiologically it connects to the node in her head, but over the past two years bridges have built inside her brain from the frontal lobe and hippocampus to the brain stem, the reticular formation.”

“Your point?”

Aramisk glanced back towards Kat. “I believe it could kill her if it chose to do so.”

Louise didn’t need the rest spelled out. The Hohash clearly had a strong link with Kat – it also ‘liked’ her, for want of a better word, and was protective towards her. Hohash were always destined to be servants to somebody. But its higher goal would always be to protect its creators, the Kalarash. So, today they would test its loyalties to the limit.

“Proceed. Let me worry about the Hohash, you focus on Kat. Does she have the information yet?”

Aramisk nodded. “Yes, I can’t see it of course, but there was a spike five minutes ago, consistent with our objectives.”

Qorall was monitoring this as well, from the other side of the galaxy, wherever he was – Louise didn’t want to know. But if this went wrong, if they failed to retrieve the information, it would go badly for her. Louise’s “where do you see yourself in five years?” question would change its parameters to “five minutes”, the most likely answer being “dead”. Qorall didn’t tolerate mistakes. Her own loyalties would also be tested today.

Louise pulled up a chair. “Wake her.”

◆◆◆

Kat had been dreaming of Pierre. It had seemed so real. She stirred, but restraints held her body down. She snapped fully awake. Louise was sitting next to her.

“Louise – Arctura – what the hell is going on?”

Louise didn’t look happy, but said nothing. On the other side of Kat’s cot, Aramisk tended a drip feeding into Kat’s left wrist.

Kat grew suddenly desperate. “Jesus! Aramisk, let me go!” She turned back to Louise, noticing the Hohash at the foot of her bed. It was in some kind of metal brace. “Arctura, please, why are you doing this? I said I would help you.”

Louise spoke. “Where is Hellera?”

Kat was nonplussed. “Who? How would I know?” But with a shock she realized she did know. The dream she’d just had; somehow…

“Qorall is devious,” Louise said. “I met him once, after a fashion. I wish I hadn’t.” She turned away.

Kat had never seen Louise look afraid before.

Louise turned back to her. “He doesn’t have anything like a Hohash, but he can access your node, and you can access the Hohash.” Louise leaned forward. “He’s been looking inside your head, at least part of him has, following your ‘research’.

Shit! He’s been ghosting me! Kat wondered what he had seen. The encounter with Micah and Antonia? Qorall wouldn’t care about that. Finding Kilaney? Maybe. Pierre and Ukrull? Definitely.

“During your last ‘trip’, your drug-induced dream, he managed to trick your Hohash into accessing the one onboard the Ranger’s ship. Kat, make this easy on yourself, because he will get the information from you, one way or another.” She leant back. “I have no desire to see you hurt.”

At first it sounded like what any torturer might say, but something told Kat that Louise actually meant it.

Kat tried to stall, knowing that this information was of incredible importance, perhaps enough to tip the balance of the entire war forever into Qorall’s favour. “My mind’s foggy, Louise, I need some time to think.”

Louise nodded, tight-lipped, and stood up. “Have it your way.” She turned to Aramisk. “Do it.”

Kat’s head swiveled in the Mannekhi woman’s direction, but her all-black eyes didn’t meet Kat’s. She turned a valve on the transparent tube, opening it fully. Louise spoke from the doorway. “Call me when it starts.”

Once Louise had left, Aramisk faced Kat, her eyes intense. She whispered. “You will dream, Kat. There will be terrible pain. Just remember that whatever happens, it is not real; your body remains here. Do you understand? Try to remember: your body is here.”

Kat decided to do something else instead. As drowsiness washed over her, she accessed her node and linked to the Hohash. Her mind was growing fuzzy, heavy, but she communicated, not hiding her distress or sense of panic. Erase Hellera’s location from my mind! The Hohash burst into life, like a fireworks display at close range.

Aramisk leapt to her feet. “What are you doing? By all the Gods! Arctura! Come quickly!”

Kat tried to focus, to stay awake long enough to let the Hohash do its job. She felt a slash inside her head, like a razor cut, and through pain-slitted eyes saw the Hohash vibrating, rattling inside the brace.

Louise raced back into the room, took one look, and then glared at the Hohash. “Oh no you don’t!” She pulled out a pulse pistol and put it next to Kat’s temple. The Hohash stilled.

Kat communicated again with the Hohash. Don’t stop. Make her pull the trigger. But the Hohash remained calm. Kat’s eyelids grew too heavy to stay open, and she slipped into sleep.

Kat felt her mind falling out of her body, as if she’d become a ghost, Hades pulling her down through the floor. It was as if the ground no longer had substance for her, or else her mind had lost its grip. Kat wanted to scream, but couldn’t breathe or speak. Amidst her terror, she remembered how Einstein’s theory of relativity said that no object could move faster than the speed of light. But a mind is not an object. She swallowed, and fell faster.

Beads of light streamed past her, with occasional violet and pink flashes of nebulae, and Kat had the sensation of travelling impossible distances in the blink of an eye, of her mind being whiplashed halfway across the galaxy.  She guessed the Hohash had something to do with it. Pierre had once told her he believed them to be incredibly advanced artifacts, designed by the Kalarash themselves, and that even the Tla Beth did not know their full potential.

The light show slowed, and blackness loomed. She saw a swirl up ahead, and at first thought it was the rings of a gas giant, but at the centre was a darkness sucking everything around it into its core. The perfectly round edge of that mouth folded inwards, as if it might swallow itself. Futile as it was, Kat flailed her limbs, trying to turn back, to stop herself tumbling into the black hole.

She tried to remind herself that she was physically safe – her body was still back on Louise’s ship, and her mind had no gravity, so a black hole couldn’t hold her. But inwardly she screamed as she was swept into the pitiless blackness. Just as it had almost engulfed her, she saw a spherical ship beneath her, stationary near the event horizon, resisting the terrible gravitational forces streaming past it, like a pupil in the black hole’s eye. She fell straight through its outer hull.

Everything was red. It reminded her of a vid she’s seen as a kid, of Dante’s Inferno. She had already guessed whose ship it was, and doubted Qorall would want her to see the real ship’s interior, so she persuaded herself to try and relax and ‘enjoy’ the show.

Kat tumbled through a sky that was aflame, through clouds that twisted and wrenched amidst tornadoes of fire, and fell directly into a volcano’s mouth vomiting molten rock. She drifted in boiling gelatinous magma, crushing sound surrounding her, like bubbling thunder. Every contour was soaked in shades of red: vermillion and crimson the hottest zones, deep russets the slightly cooler ones. Kat could no longer feel any part of her body, had no sensation of limbs, torso or head, and bobbed along in the currents. She reckoned she was okay as long as she knew this was not real, or rather, that she was not really there. She could treat it as a dream.

No sooner had she thought it, than her mind became groggy, and she could no longer see clearly. Shit – he’s playing with my mind. She focused: this is a dream, this is a dream, this is…

The lava surged along with her for hours. Something writhed in the distance, though she didn’t understand how she could see, encased as she was in a river of scarlet mud whose temperature she couldn’t begin to imagine. But whatever it was, Kat had the impression of size, that what she witnessed was titanic, though there was no point of reference. It reminded her of a cubic frame, but each strut was a massive limb, a bone covered in purple flesh sweating rivulets of ice despite the heat. There was no obvious head. The cube-frame moved awkwardly, spasmodically, an upper joint opening, allowing it to rock forward, as another bone- like limb pounded onto the superheated silicate terrain of the ruby island surrounding it. Qorall.

A split opened up on one of the upper limbs. A roar bellowed across the lava sea, blowing waves across the molten rock’s surface. The sound was terrifying, but agonising, too. She sensed bitter loneliness, and a pit of rage against injustices of the past. The creature howled for revenge.

Kat still had no sensation of her body, but felt her fugue receding. She couldn’t remember how she’d arrived, or precisely where she’d been before. Then she recalled falling through the hull of a black ship on an event horizon, so everything around her must be some kind of vast ship, where the sky must be the roof; a hollow asteroid, maybe. She wanted to get the hell out of there, but had no control whatsoever, no idea where in the galaxy the ship was, nor how she’d gotten there. The next question was why she’d been kidnapped.

The eddies buffeted her along a channel where the lava flowed faster, away from the creature. She sped past a shore of rust-coloured rock, towards a pulsing ovoid, textured like smooth heart muscle. She tacked toward it then veered away in her river of magma.

Kat floated like this for several more hours, coursing along, occasionally meeting organ-like masses that she supposed were part of this vessel’s anatomy. But she was losing her sense of self, and found it harder to think, as if her consciousness was only capable of perception. She didn’t tire, which made her worry she’d be trapped there indefinitely, a speck of consciousness wandering forever in a ship from Hell. Then she saw something, a faraway blue dot. She’d become so used to perceiving myriad shades of red that she’d forgotten other colours existed.

Up ahead, the dodecahedron of blue crystal sat motionless amidst the surging fluid. She picked up speed, accelerating toward it. Her mind raced, too, knowing this was somehow sanctuary, but she feared she would be dragged away again, doomed to swim endlessly inside the volcanic tides. It got closer, and she dared to hope. She slowed down, and bumped into its exterior, which wasn’t hard as she’d expected; it was spongy and sticky, a glistening membrane. It held her in check. There was a sucking sound, and Kat squeezed through. Incredible pain, like being dropped from an oven into a glacial lake, saturated her mind, as her body was reborn inside the sphere.

She lay on the transparent floor, naked, short of breath, her skin goose-bumped. Shivering, Kat drew her knees up beneath her and curled into a foetal position, forehead against the cool, glass-like floor. She was relieved to have a body again, and listened to her own breathing, waited till it calmed, then stood. It was like being inside a child’s marble, terrible heat and power coiling outside.

Interrogators back on Earth for centuries had used nakedness as a form of humiliation to beat down their male or female captives. Kat stood up, chin lifted, hands on hips, the way she’d done back on Earth during a gay pride march during her University days following a threatened post-War resurgence in homophobia. This time, however, she didn’t have ‘Look me in the eye’ tattooed across her breasts.

But her body felt younger, too perfect, and she worked out it was merely another illusion. No bruises, burns or lesions. The mole on her inner left thigh told her that this was no simple avatar simulation – someone, or rather something, had created a damned good simulacrum. Then she remembered who that ‘someone’ was.

She doubted her lava trip was an idle gesture, or to impress, and guessed that while in that state of almost pure perception, the rest of her mind had been accessible; she’d been violated, interrogated without her consent or even awareness, as easily as she might download and review files on a holopad. That raised the further questions of why she was still there, or alive at all, and what Qorall was searching for, and why he couldn’t find it. She had no idea what it was.

Kat blinked and suddenly her sister Angelica was there, dressed exactly as she had been at Kat’s going-away party, the night before Kat had joined the Eden Mission Academy. Her heart skipped a beat, then her fists and teeth clenched. Her sister was long dead. But it looked like her, even smelled of her sister’s favourite perfume, Orsex. Kat almost cried out, and had to hold herself back from jumping up to hug her lost sibling. Instead, she stayed put, lips zipped, waiting for whatever it was to speak.

“Where did Pierre go?”

It sounded just like Angel’s luxurious throaty voice, the one that used to fondue boys’ hearts. Kat closed her eyes, but they opened again, against her will. Trying to turn had no effect either. She glared at the apparition. “If I’m right, you’ve already been inside my head, so you should know what I know.”

Angel wore her signature ‘whatever’ smile, the same one that, along with her athletic figure and Nordic looks, made boys awfully stupid around her. But this wasn’t Angel.

“It’s what you don’t know you know that interests me.” Angel winked. “Let’s try something else then. What were you doing in Esperia’s caverns when Louise found you two years ago?”

Good question, but she had nothing to offer there that Qorall didn’t already know; that was why he’d sent Louise there in the first place. “Curiosity. I’d never been to those caves, where the spaceship had been. You know, the Kalarash. A pal of yours I imagine –”

Kat’s left arm burst into flame, but she couldn’t move. She tried to curse but blinding pain overwhelmed her. She screamed as she watched her skin crackle, warp and spit, her cry choking on itself as the pain blurred her mind and vision. Inside she shook, gasping for breath, hot tears running down her cheeks, but her body remained upright as if suspended by a hook. Her head turned against her will, eyes clearing so she could see the blue flames burn down to muscle, blackening bone. What was left of her arm crumbled to ash on the floor.

Abruptly Kat collapsed, dizzy, convulsing, knowing she should have blacked out, that no one was meant to experience such pain. She bit down on her right knuckle, tried to control her breathing. Her heart had gone into overdrive, felt like it would burst through her chest.

“What did you find down there, Kat?”

“Nothing.” Yet even as she said it, she knew for the first time that it wasn’t exactly true. Something she’d forgotten, or not really seen at the time, but had been there, before Louise had arrived. Something else lurking in the cavern directly above the underground ocean. But Qorall didn’t wait. Her legs were next.

Kat’s breath came in jagged, laboured rasps. With her one arm left, she clawed against the floor, tried to move away from her captor. She had nothing in her mind except the desire for no more pain, or to die, she really didn’t care which. She reached the wall.

“Go screw yourself,” she said, then closed her eyes tight, waiting.

Angel crouched next to her, and whispered in her right ear. “This isn’t going to work, is it? Let’s try another way. Let’s see how resistant you are at age fifteen.”

Kat’s former fugue returned, blanking all thought until only perception remained, and then she fell asleep.

◆◆◆

Louise was pacing. “Her vitals?”

Aramisk raked a hand through her thick black hair. “We almost lost her, but her signs are calming down a little. However, he’s taking her to a deeper level.” Aramisk dropped the pad onto the bed. “She won’t survive the next one, Arctura.”

Louise bit her lip. “Then wake her.”

“What?”

“I said wake her, bring her out of it. Now!”

“Qorall will kill us!”

Louise’s voice steeled. “I’ll think of something.”

Aramisk shook her head in disbelief, then picked up and tapped at the pad. She frowned. “It’s no good, Arctura, I can’t break the connection. Qorall and the Hohash are each accessing her node, and neither seems inclined to let go. She’s locked in, and they’re pulling her mind apart.”

Louise stared at the Hohash, its flashes and vibrations at fever pitch. “I’ll be back shortly, Aramisk, and she had better be alive when I return.”

Aramisk nodded, then leant over to Kat’s contorted face. “It’s a dream, Kat, remember it’s just a dream.”

◆◆◆

Kat lay face down on the beach, the sound of the surf roaring in the background. She wiggled her toes, trying to dislodge the wet sand stuck between them, towel damp underneath her after the last frolic in the waves surfing with her sister. When she was on the longboard behind Angel, nothing else mattered, not her damned exams, not even her uncle’s odd behaviour toward her; the way she sometimes caught him staring.

Some boys were playing football close by; there were always boys close by when Angel was around. Kat had zero interest in boys, and looked the other way whenever her sis kissed one of her many boyfriends. Angel said Kat’s time would come, but Kat was already fifteen, and reckoned her hormones had other avenues in mind.

Kat was starting to burn; she knew she should really turn over, or get into the shade. But she wanted a deep tan like her sister. Besides, the sun could block out all kinds of things. She heard Angel stir, and cracked open an eye, squinting in the blazing sun, to see the silhouette of her sister standing above her, squirting sunscreen into the palms of her hands. Angel straddled Kat’s lower back, and began rubbing oil into her. Kat had seen Angel do this routine before with one of her vivacious girlfriends, but never with her ‘little sis’. It was the first time Angel had treated Kat as someone approaching an equal, one of her entourage. Kat decided to play along.

She moaned as Angel’s hands rhythmically pressed down into the grooves either side of her spine, kneading the warm oil up and over her shoulders. “Oh God, Angel, that feels good!”

Angel varied her massage routine, eliciting more pseudo-groans from Kat. The boys stopped their football. She leaned forward, close to Kat’s ear, lingering for effect. “We’re giving them long-shower material.” They both burst out laughing. Angel dismounted, and sat cross-legged next to her.

Kat turned over, propped herself up on her elbows, letting her head roll back, feeling the sun beat down against her small breasts and her throat. “You’re killing them, Sis.”

Angel laid a hand on Kat’s stomach, and drew circles with her finger, and winked. “But what a way to go, eh?”

They both laughed again. Kat lay down flat, feeling as light as the cirrus clouds wisping across the azure sky. She shaded her eyes to spy a gull soaring overhead, shrieking for its mate.

“You miss him, don’t you?”

Kat did. She hadn’t talked about it, not to anyone else. “Like hell,” she said. She turned toward Angel, saw the frown. The boys were calling lewdly to Angel, but she never took her eyes off Kat. Abruptly Angel’s head turned to face the sea.

“He had no right to just dump you like that.”

Kat’s lips tightened. She didn’t like to talk about it; but she’d never seen her sister so concerned for her before. Their whole family was pretty stunted on the emotional register. She’d not even talked about it to her new best friend at school, Louise, or that strange new girl that had befriended her, Aramisk. “Pierre had to leave, you know that.”

Angel turned back with a flash of anger, opened her mouth as if to say something, then shook her head. “I know, I’ve just never understood.”

Kat sat up, moved closer. Angel had always comforted her, been the big sister, stood in for their mother who’d died when Kat was barely two, and had protected her from her God-awful uncle when their father had gone off the rails and drunk himself into oblivion. But now Angel was in pain. Kat stretched out her arm and, hesitatingly, placed it over Angel’s shoulders. Angel folded into Kat’s embrace, the first time their caring relationship had ever reversed direction. Kat felt her eyes water. The boys quietened, and moved further towards the breaking waves.

Kat needed to talk about it; had needed to for a long time. She drew in a breath. “Micah said Pierre’s gone to get help.” Her head started to ache; she should get out of the sun, it was so damned hot. She played with her straw hat, but didn’t put it on.

“Where on Earth is he going to get help, with the storm that’s coming. Don’t be naïve, Kat, he’s dumped you, that’s all there is to it.”

Kat felt as if she’d been slapped. What had gotten into Angel? “I don’t know any more than what Micah said, I’m not even sure he knows, but –”

Angel broke out of Kat’s arms. “Listen to yourself. It’s pathetic. Men stick together, cover for each other. Micah, Pierre, they’re all the bloody same. Christ, I should know.” Angel dug into her bag and fished out a cigarette, lighting it with a fluency that looked so adult. But Kat hated it when Angel smoked. She only smoked when she was angry – no, when she’d been let down by somebody.

Kat looked away. The boys had moved closer again, yelling something. Suddenly a ball thudded right next to Angel, showering them both with a hissing spray of sand.

Angel was on her feet in a second, shouting. “For God’s sake piss off and leave us alone.” She picked up the ball and gave it an impressive drop-kick into the ocean. She took a long drag, glaring at the boys till they ran off to retrieve their ball, looked down at Kat, and then dropped the cigarette into the sand, burying it.

She knelt down next to Kat and put her arms around her. “Sorry, Sis, I’m being a real bitch today. Forget about it, just forget the whole damned thing.”

Kat shook; if Angel wasn’t there for her, she wouldn’t – couldn’t – cope. But Angel hugged her tight, rocking her. She thought of Pierre, how he’d left, deserted her. But she couldn’t be angry with him; he wasn’t the first to leave her, everyone did sooner or later. Yet she believed he would come back. Why? She tried to focus. Why would he come back? She flinched at a stabbing pain behind her eyes. God, not another migraine! And her heart was thumping, which was odd. Must be the heat. She wanted to get in the water, put her head under, but she didn’t move.

Angel released her from the hug. “I hope he does come back, Kat. For you.”

Something clicked in her mind. “Not for me.”

Angel opened her palms upwards. “Meaning what? Don’t tell me he’s got a crush on me, I couldn’t –”

“No, no,” Kat said, with an urgency to verbalise the revelation while it hung in her mind. “Something else! The Kalarash were here on Esperia for half a million years.” Kat found it hard to concentrate. The sun, this sudden stabbing pain. Wait a minute. Esperia?

Angel rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows that, Kat. But Louise told me Micah searched all the caves, the oceans even. Nothing. Gone, the same as Pierre.”

Kat gave her a quizzical look. “How does Louise know Micah?” Angel put on her cynical face.

“Oh, I see.” Kat felt her face flush. “Well, anyway. The Kalarash did leave something behind.”

“Besides a few Hohash, you mean?”

Kat nodded, but pain lanced through her left eye. She cried out, cupping a hand over her face, squeezing both eyes closed. Angel moved toward her.

“Come here, let me see.” She pushed Kat’s hand aside. “Open your eyes.”

Kat tried, but couldn’t open the left one.

“Open it!” Angel shouted, her voice sounding odd, distorted.

Through her right eye, Kat saw dark shadows as the boys gathered around them. The pain grew, as if someone was pulling a needle through her left eyeball. “Angel, help me, please! Call an ambulance!” The boys closed in, pinned her down, their hands rough claws.

Angel’s voice hardened, sounding masculine. “OPEN YOUR EYE!”

Kat squirmed, trying to escape the boys’ grip and the blinding pain; she felt her left eye boiling inside its socket. Angel’s fingers became talons, trying to tear open Kat’s eyelids, but they were glued shut. Through her other eye she saw the gull circling above, framed against a sky of pure fire. It dropped down, wings fluttering, until just above the boys’ heads. It landed on her chest.

“Get it off me! What the fuck is going on? Angel, please!” Kat glanced up at Angel, who was busy clawing at her left eyelids, teeth bared with the effort. The gull leaned closer, its own blood red eyes peering into Kat’s. One of the boys behind the bird unsheathed a knife, and passed it blade-first to Angel, who loomed closer.

“Now we’ll see what you’re hiding, Katrina.” She raised the knife high above her in a closed fist, then slammed it down into Kat’s chest and raked it downwards, carving a fissure in her ribcage. Amidst the spray and spume of blood, something stirred within Kat’s body, and then a small, black, four-legged spider emerged.

Kat screamed and screamed again, until she fell backwards out of her body. She felt her mind being tugged back across huge distances by the Hohash, back to Louise’s ship. Her last thought before her consciousness dissipated was that she’d never thought she’d be glad to get back there.

◆◆◆

Aramisk studied the pad next to Kat, a finger on her carotid pulse. “She’s alive, barely, falling into a deep coma, there’s nothing else I can do.” She stood away from Kat’s bed, staring toward the other end of the room. “Qorall’s not going to be happy with you, Arctura, though I think he got the intel just in time.”

A smoking multi-barreled rifle hung from Louise’s right hand, as she also stared at the molten mess at the foot of Kat’s cot, a hole scorched right through the Hohash. It was dead.

Louise inspected the rifle. She hadn’t been sure it would work against a Hohash, even though the weapon had a Level Twelve rating – Qorall had sent it to her five years ago as a reward after she helped bring down an entire enemy star system. Louise lowered the weapon. She’d grown too attached to Kat, even though she wasn’t Alician, even though Louise wanted all other humans dead, gone. Kat was the closest person she could relate to. Louise had been too long on the road, spent too much time with aliens. She knew Kat wasn’t a friend – quite the opposite, Kat would probably kill her if she ever got the chance – but Louise found she couldn’t stand by and watch Qorall literally frighten Kat to death.

She made up her mind. “The Hohash self-destructed, Aramisk. Understood? They’ve been known to do that. It sensed Kat was about to betray a Kalarash secret, and shattered. Tell the others.”

“Yes, Arctura.”

As Aramisk left, Louise called after her. “It’s just ‘Louise’, now. Tell the others that, too.”

Aramisk gave her a searching stare, then left.

Louise considered her options. She had to get out of Qorall’s service, she’d had enough: endless killing and espionage, all the time away from her own kind, serving Qorall, always his agenda. That wasn’t who she was. She had dared to ask to be released, but he always demanded one more task first. She knew better than to press the issue. As for where she would go if he did allow it, there was really only one option, given that the Mannekhi or a hundred other species she’d met held no interest for her. It would have to be Sister Esma and the Alicians.

She glanced down at Kat, her short hair matted with sweat; she didn’t smell too good either. Louise stroked the woman’s damp forearm once. “I will take you with me, if you don’t disappoint me. If you ever wake up.”

Her wristcom buzzed, a coded Largyl 9 message, an advanced Q’Roth dialect that Mannekhi could never decrypt. Qorall had the information he wanted. Louise was to destroy the Hohash, and go at once to Esperia and obliterate it, leave no trace.

Afterwards, she decided, she would leave his service.

Louise smiled. She picked up the pad on Kat’s cot, and while checking that Kat’s vitals had stabilised, noticed her own reflection. It was more like her old self. She spoke to Kat’s comatose frame. “Within a week, you’re going to be the last human alive. I will kill all of them. Don’t worry, I’ll get you upgraded if I have to do it myself.” As she walked away from Kat’s bed with a lighter step than in years, Louise killed the lights, and added, “Sweet dreams.”

Chapter 9

Betrayal

The Ossyrian chariot skated just above the ground towards the pyramid-ship. Micah and Fornasson stood rigidly side-by-side behind their canine-like chauffeurs. Strands of the Ossyrians’ manes, jet black and shiny, flailed in the wind, whipping against their white tunics. From the corner of his eye Micah noticed Fornasson gaze out to a hillock beyond which his farm lay, then stare at the ground rushing past. One of Fornasson’s hands let go of the railing, and his body tensed. Micah seized the man’s wrist. “Don’t even think about it,” he said. “How far do you think you’ll get, assuming you survive the fall?”

Fornasson grimaced, grabbed the rail again and stared straight ahead.

Micah let go of his wrist.

From afar, the pyramid glistened silver, but as they approached and began to decelerate, Micah noticed that he could see the Acarian mountain range straight through the three-hundred-metre-tall pyramid as if it were transparent. He knew it was no such thing: the outer layer was stealth tech. From space it would not be detected at all, and would look like a shimmer of heat haze on the desert floor. It reminded him that the Ossyrians, a medical race bred to heal, weren’t naïve – even doctors needed defences, and in their case, that meant formidable bio-weaponry. None they would share – their convoluted equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath had been made quite clear on that point on numerous occasions, though as President he’d pushed hard. It was one reason he’d not been allowed back inside the ship for over a year. Officially he was here to see that Fornasson got proper justice, but he also needed to talk to Chahat-Me about defences once the Ossyrians departed, and promised reinforcements. The news from Kat had reminded him just how vulnerable Esperia was.

The chariot stopped slowing down. Fornasson fidgeted and glanced nervously at Micah, who looked straight ahead, hands firm on the railing. Images of the burned-out husks of the spider family flooded back into his mind, making him want to punch Fornasson. Yet he feared what the Ossyrians would do, how they would mete out justice as they saw it.

“Bend your knees a little,” Micah said.

A glass ramp appeared, extending down to ground level from about a quarter of the way up the pyramid. They hit the bottom of the ramp smoothly and shot upwards into the Ossyrian space vessel that hadn’t moved an inch from the ground since it had first landed. Despite knowing better, Micah braced himself for some kind of impact, but they simply stopped, as inertia-controllers relieved them of Newtonian momentum. Micah stepped off the chariot as if he did this all the time.

The room was cylindrical in shape, as were many in the pyramid whose Ossyrian name could not be pronounced with human vocal chords, but which they’d translated as the Pteraxia. The Ossyrians had never explained the name’s origins or significance; as usual they were very private about their past, as if they had something to hide. The floors, ceiling and walls were glassy, a shifting sea-shell collage of pastel pinks, tangerines and lilacs, but opaque all the same. There was a faint smell of rose petals.

Micah didn’t look at his kinsman. “Fornasson, you can get down.” His voice came out crisp. In his time as leader on Esperia there had only been three murders, and he had opposed the death penalty each time, carrying the vote against several respected Council members, even though prison was difficult to maintain in such a small society. The community of Esperantia had mercifully escaped anything like a serial killer.

Micah knew that if he himself had done something so heinous against the spiders as Fornasson had, he’d expect and accept the worst. But he hoped for redemption in others. Micah tuned out his anger and studied Fornasson, the creases on his face, the hooded look around his eyes and hunched posture. Was remorse setting in, or was Fornasson just sorry he was about to be punished? Micah couldn’t tell. What he did know was that although he personally wanted to drag Fornasson back to the scene of the crime and hurl him into the midst of the carnage and cindered corpses, instead he’d defend him, and argue for humane treatment.

Their Ossyrian chauffeurs stood in line with two others. One of them had more horizontal golds than reds, blues and blacks in the head-dress, which Micah knew signified her as the leader of this party. Micah had never seen a male, and had begun to wonder if they existed at all, or had been side-stepped somewhere along the Ossyrians’ evolutionary trek, their procreative function supplanted by medical ingenuity.

Fornasson stepped down and stood in front of Micah. He stuck his chin out and held his chest proud, as if ready to take responsibility for his actions and accept his fate; Micah decided that whatever Fornasson had done, he deserved some respect, and fair treatment. He also realized that he was the only person present who was going to stand up for Fornasson’s rights. He’d seen enough domestic justice situations over the past years, but he’d never had to defend a murderer before. The Ossyrians had already extracted a confession from Fornasson, and he suddenly wondered if there would be any trial at all, or if they would simply dispense punishment – whatever that might be – on the spot.

Micah made to speak, but felt a pricking in the back of his neck, and suddenly he was unable to move. His eyes waxed into a kind of stupor, and he realised his hosts had just anaesthetised him. Micah felt a sense of outrage, violation even, but his physiology failed to react – there was no blood rushing to his head, he couldn’t clench his fists or even glare. He beckoned his resident, but the Ossyrians had somehow deactivated it. His fingertips tingled, and Micah knew that it was his nannites; they were still active, awaiting his command.

In his peripheral vision he noticed Fornasson shift from one foot to the other, fists by his side, then take a step back. Micah saw why. Three spiders came into view behind the Ossyrian line-up, sturdy, silent and quick. The Ossyrians parted to allow the spiders through. Micah’s fingers itched, but the paralysing drug was too strong. The tingling shifted to his lips and throat. He tried to find a voice, yet still nothing came and he couldn’t move, except the muscles in his chest and diaphragm allowing him to breathe.

The spiders circled Fornasson, who remained as still as he could, given that he was shaking from head to foot. The bands around the spiders’ bodies pulsed scarlet and black. One at the front advanced, nudging Fornasson back towards the entrance, and it was clear they were going to take him away.

The implications of what was about to happen burst into sharp relief in Micah’s mind. Despite Fornasson’s crime, there were enough Steaders who would sympathise with him to cause problems, and a summary execution would fuel long-harboured fears about their alien neighbours. Fornasson’s crime would be forgotten long before the fact that the spiders killed him in revenge.

Micah made up his mind. It was a long shot. His nannites complied, and surged around his torso, locking his diaphragm muscles. He reckoned he had twenty seconds, tops.

As one, the four Ossyrians turned towards Micah, just as his vision fazed and he slumped towards the floor. An Ossyrian moved so fast it was a blur, catching him before his head hit the ground. The Ossyrian’s quicksilver paw morphed into a needle and punctured his sternum. Micah gulped in air and arched his back, his body control returning. The Ossyrian released him, and Micah rolled over and promptly threw up, the acid taste of bile lingering in his throat. Still on the floor, he turned to find that Fornasson and the spiders had stopped and were staring at him.

Another Ossyrian entered: Chahat-Me, the Ossyrian contingent’s leader, the only one who spoke any decent semblance of English through their musical windpipe system. Her voice sounded like a synthetic choir.

“Micah. What are you trying to achieve?”

He got to his feet, and bowed to Chahat-Me. The Ossyrians never expected any such deference, but Micah always gave it, out of respect and gratitude, and in her specific case because Chahat-Me had helped defend humanity when they had been on trial.

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, aware he must look a mess. “Fornasson is our responsibility. Justice should be served according to our rules.”

Chahat-Me looked toward the spiders. Her mercurial eyes flashed a tight band of colour at one of them, the laser-light ricocheting to the others in their cascading instant mode of communication.

There was a pause, and Micah felt that everyone, especially he and Fornasson, held their breath. The three spiders then moved in front of Fornasson. Light shone into the man’s eyes. Micah went to move towards him but Ossyrian leader’s arms held him where he was.

“Be still, Micah,” Chahat-Me said. “They are showing him his crime.”

Micah stood transfixed, as Fornasson hung there, rigid, spellbound, fingers flexing as if he were being electrocuted. It lasted long, torturous minutes. The man’s mouth was agape, as if shouting, but no sound issued forth. Suddenly, Fornasson dropped to his knees, the light beams still pouring into his eyes. One of his hands shot to his mouth, knuckles first, and Micah saw him bite down hard. Micah glanced at Chahat-Me, but she shook her head.

The light beams shut off. Fornasson’s head bowed to the ground, and Micah saw drops of blood drip to the glass floor as the man’s upper body shivered. The spiders shuffled past him and left, disappearing down the ramp.

Micah was released, and he rushed over to Fornasson, grabbing him by the shoulders. His face lifted, and stared vaguely in Micah’s direction.

“Micah, is that you?”

It took Micah a second to realise what had been done. He helped Fornasson to his feet, and faced Chahat-Me. “They blinded him?”

Chahat-Me nodded. Fornasson was in a daze, staring at the floor – no, Micah realised, staring at the images left there by the spiders.

“You could cure him,” Micah said. “You are doctors.”

One of the other Ossyrians took a step forward, but Chahat-Me stalled her with a gesture from her right paw, not taking her eyes off Micah’s.

Chahat-Me approached Micah very close, her snout centimetres from his face. Her jaw opened, the mesh of blue and white fibres tightening and vibrating as she spoke.

“Be quiet, Micah. Do not say anything in the next minute.” She turned her head to Fornasson. “Erik Fornasson,” she began. “They have taken your eyesight away as punishment, but spared your life.” Chahat- Me raised a paw and three toes leant on Micah’s chest just below his throat to enforce his silence. “Erik Fornasson. Do you wish us to restore your eyesight?”

Micah stared at Fornasson, who looked as if he’d been broken on the inside. The farmer lifted his head, managing to stare in the rough direction of Chahat-Me. He raised himself up, swallowed hard. “Their judgement,” he began, but his voice cracked. He coughed, cleared his throat, and shook his head.

The toes on Micah’s chest stayed him a little longer.

“We need to be clear,” Chahat-Me continued. “Do you wish us to restore your eyesight?”

Micah watched the man’s eyes mist, his jaw clench, but he stood proud again.

“No.”

Whatever Micah had thought of saying deserted him. Two Ossyrians escorted Fornasson back to the chariot, and they departed.

Micah had a hunch, knowing from Petra of Chahat-Me’s compassionate side. “Will he really stay blind?”

Chahat-Me lowered her voice. “In ten years the effects will wear off and he will see again. The images of what he has done will stay with him till his end. The spider representatives agreed with this sentence. Erik Fornasson was lucky. The spiders are one of the most pacifist and forgiving races we have ever encountered. Most other species would have killed him, after long and painful torture.”

“Including yours?”

Chahat-Me’s mercurial eyes stayed unusually still. The other three Ossyrians left. She laid a paw on his shoulder. “Micah, we must talk.”

Micah was suddenly tired, then had an idea, mundane as it was. He needed to get the sour taste out of his throat. “Kat told me once that you make a mean Cafarino.”

Chahat-Me’s eyes glittered.

They glided through triangular corridors proceeding upwards, though a locally-controlled gravity gradient made it feel like he was strolling across flat ground. Ahead, pulsing rainbow shades invited them into a voluminous domed chamber. The bitter aroma of bubbling Cafarino, a coffee substitute derived from a local mountain herb, quickened his pace. They emerged into the vast, kaleidoscopic atrium where Ossyrians milled about, clustered in small groups around tall, narrow racks of tubes from which the Ossyrians sipped the grainy purple liquid, all the time ‘talking’ with their quicksilver eyes, shapes rising and falling in complex, almost subliminal patterns. His vision cast around; still nothing resembling a male, not that he was sure how they would look.

Chahat-Me paused at the entrance, and shook her head. “Kat introduced Cafarino to us, contaminated us with it. It is not so good for human physiology, worse for ours.” She made a movement with her shoulders, resembling a shrug, and led Micah to a free rack. Micah closed his eyes as he sipped, savouring the clove and cinnamon melange in his mouth, then swallowed, careful not to crack down on the small grains. His head warmed and cleared at the same time, and he felt a trickle     of energy run down his spine as his tension released – this blend was good! Within seconds he felt more alert than he had for days – years, he decided. Whatever they had added to it had an almost narcotic effect, and he felt his shoulders relax, his chest open. He licked his lips afterwards, and found himself grinning at Chahat-Me. Then a gong sounded, and the atrium quickly emptied. His good humour dried up, knowing the dispute he was about to have with Chahat-Me. It wasn’t that they were running out of time; rather, to Micah, it felt like they had all been standing still for a whole generation, and now time was rushing towards them.

Micah paced up and down the only square room in the pyramid, one the Ossyrians had fashioned for the yearly meeting held with the human Council, to make them feel more at ease. But after three hours of debate he grew increasingly frustrated, not helped by the withdrawal from their damned spiced coffee. He smacked his hand down on the table.

“What was the point of saving us, keeping us alive, if you desert us now? We could be annihilated in days. Are they out there, now, waiting? Can you at least tell me that much?”

Chahat-Me and three other Ossyrians sat in their golden, high-backed chairs, front paws folded in their laps. The others had evidently decided to leave the talking to Chahat-Me, but he had no doubt they understood every word, nuance and inflexion, even if they couldn’t formulate human speech properly themselves. He pushed. “We have two ships, one is a transport, the other a Q’Roth Hunter Class vessel. Not exactly a fleet, is it? How long do you think we’ll last? Where are the reinforcements you promised?”

Chahat-Me glanced at her colleagues, flashing the ultra-rapid communication mode that only Pierre had ever mastered.

“We have been recalled, Micah,” Chahat-Me answered. “The war is going badly. We requested your extraction a year ago, but you must understand there are other priorities.”

Micah threw in his ace, courtesy of Kat’s message. “Qorall is headed here, isn’t he?” He noticed the other three ruffle their manes.

Chahat-Me touched something on her armrest and an image appeared, a holo. Micah stared at it; his anger stalled, then freefell.

Ossyria was one of the most beautiful planets he’d ever seen, unique in the whole galaxy, a giant marble divided into ten horizontal slices that rotated at different speeds. Three of its five turquoise oceans were bisected, and cumulous cloud layers swirled at the edges, and would have created permanent hurricanes were it not for advanced weather control systems. The re-designing of their original planet, which had taken thousands   of years to implement, led to unlimited geothermal energy, feeding the continent-sized hospital and city-sized clinical research complexes, the medical engine underpinning Grid Society.

Yet what Micah saw now was a charred, shattered, lump of rock, its horizontal fault lines cracked open by crust-breaker weapons. Their homeworld had been destroyed. No wonder the Ossyrians had been pre- occupied these past months, as Qorall’s forces had drawn ever closer.

“I don’t know what to say, other than to express how deeply sorry I am for you all. You should have told me earlier. You have other planets, right?”

One of the other Ossyrians made a noise like a snarl, and Chahat-Me turned to her, silencing her with a quicksilver look.

Micah felt he should add more. “It must have been difficult for all of you, being here while this was ongoing.”

The one who had snarled stared at him, her quicksilver eyes unmoving. Micah didn’t know what that meant.

Chahat-Me closed down the holo, much to the relief of everyone in the room. “We have all been recalled. Two ships sent for your extraction have been destroyed en route.”

Micah stared at Chahat-Me. “I’m sorry for those aboard. Does that mean –”

“We have no information on who destroyed the ships. Debris from a Q’Roth vessel was found at one of the sites.”

“But they are on your side – our side – surely, they are fighting against Qorall, aren’t they?” This news quickened his pulse.

“We do not jump to conclusions, Micah, they could just as well have been defending the Ossyrian ship. Nevertheless, it has given us cause for concern for your welfare.”

Micah sat down on the bench on one side of the room. Q’Roth, again, waiting to finish the job? His voice sounded flat. “What do you propose?”

“We leave in two days. Fill your transport vessel. It will take half the population. They can follow us, we will protect them. For the rest –”

An oval door irised open out of the far wall. Petra stepped through, short but like a cat ready to spring, followed by Gabriel. They both wore combat fatigues, Gabriel’s famous long blond curls shorn. Around his left eye was a fresh tattoo, a darker, curved maze. Micah didn’t like the look of it.

“I have a better idea,” Gabriel said. His hands were closed by his side. He opened them, and two small metal balls fell towards the floor. Micah didn’t hear them hit the ground.

Micah awoke with ringing in his ears. As consciousness returned fully, it rose to a screeching din. He made to get up, but couldn’t decide where ‘up’ was. But that made no sense: he could see Gabriel and Petra standing at a console in front of a luminous window, but his inner ear was playing havoc with his sense of balance. He manoeuvred into a sitting position, and placed a finger behind each ear, pressing. A buzzing ensued as his nannites got the message.

He looked around. Three Ossyrians lay slumped in a pile a few metres away. One loosely held something in its front paw, a weapon drawn too late. With great relief, Micah saw their chests rise and fall beneath their tunics. He crawled on all fours toward the weapon.

“Told you.”

He could barely hear Petra’s voice through the high-pitched whine. Micah reached the Ossyrian, and sat back on his knees. He had no idea what the weapon did, and didn’t much care. Slipping the loop off the Ossyrian’s wrist, and expecting to get shot by Gabriel at any moment, he turned around and levelled his arm at Gabriel who, together with Petra, stared at him, arms folded. Micah tried to speak, but couldn’t hear himself properly, and gave it up. Gabriel didn’t budge, so Micah pulled what seemed to be a trigger. Nothing happened.

Gabriel walked over, crouched down, took the weapon from Micah, and mouthed two words. Micah frowned, and then got it the second time. Like this. Gabriel flicked some kind of switch on its handle, and fired point blank at Micah’s leg.

Pain exploded in Micah’s thigh. Agony accompanied the crackling blue electric arcs that engulfed his leg, then spread upwards to his waist. His eyes rolled back, but through the haze of electrifying shock he saw Petra walk over, snatch the device and do something to it, then fire at him again. The pain shut off as if it had never been there.

The screeching lowered in intensity. He could make out a few words as Petra spoke close to his face.

“… injured two of us ... icah … ship … ours. No Ossyr… dead … sthetised. They can mo… ery fast.”

He felt an itching behind his right ear, then a crack, as if a bone had just snapped back into place. Suddenly he could hear.

“… coming down in ten minutes. Then –” “No need to shout,” he said.

Petra grinned. “Told you, Gabe. Better watch him.” She strolled back to the console.

Gabriel scrutinised Micah. “Pierre. Pierre did something to you, didn’t he, before he left?”

Micah struggled to his feet. “Gabriel, listen to me.”

“We were listening, Micah, all three hours of that field-manure. Petra bugged you.”

Micah felt he’d been slapped. He thought about it: when she’d hugged him on the back of the skimmer. Petra didn’t turn around, instead studying a display in front of her. Micah stowed it for later. Gabriel continued.

“They’re screwing us over, Micah. Not necessarily the ones here, but their lords and masters. ‘Following orders. A question of priorities.’ Do those refrains sound familiar? And you, no disrespect, but you have no leverage with them, do you?”

Micah glowered. “What did you do to them?”

“Sonic grenade, adapted to their physiology.” He turned his head slightly, and Micah noticed a small disk in his ear.

“Not sure how you’re conscious, though, let alone standing. Petra said you were special.”

Micah got up, and they both joined her at the console. The flat part, at waist height, was fluid, shifting braids of colour. Petra’s hands glided over them, tightening reds with one hand, blues with another, then sent them twisting around each other into one corner of the display. Micah had no idea what the console did, what she was doing, or how she knew what to do.

As if sensing his question, she spoke. “Chahat-Me used to bring me up here when I was a kid. The others scolded her, but she had a soft spot for me.”

Micah remembered something he’d heard. “But it shouldn’t work for you. The ship’s controls are genetically coded for Ossyrians.” Then he recalled. “Ah… the climbing accident?”

She nodded.

He remembered it well. It had nearly given him a heart attack. Petra had been just six years old when she’d skipped school and accepted a dare to free-climb the Eastern face of Mt. Cerebus. No one had managed it yet, and Petra had almost made it. When the Ossyrians got to the site, Petra’s skull was literally cracked open. Chahat-Me had used some of her own flesh and blood to heal her on the spot.

“Nice way to repay her,” Micah said.

Petra’s head dipped as she peered deeper into the display.

“Don’t be too hard on her, Micah. This was my plan. We’re doing this to save everyone, Steaders and Genners alike.” Gabriel cocked his head at Micah. “You taught us how to fight, how to strategise, remember?”

“Done!” Petra announced. A wave of fluorescent orange swept from one end of the display to the other, rebounded and headed back to its origin. The entire display flickered and went off, revealing a dull metal surface.

“What just happened?” Micah asked.

Gabriel patted Petra on the shoulder. She tensed, almost flinched. Gabriel withdrew his hand. “Petra has primed the barrier for de- energising. Once the tip of the ship reaches it, we enter the access code. No more quarantine.”

Micah stared in disbelief. “What? You’re insane! We’ll be defenceless!”

Gabriel shook his head. “No Micah, for the first time we will have the ultimate weapon.”

Micah thought about it. The timeworn weapon of choice when faced with a larger, more powerful foe. Surprise. If there was an enemy waiting, all they’d observe was an Ossyrian ship departing, a bunch of harmless medical doctors. He had to admit, right now he didn’t have a better plan, and the Ossyrians were only capable of taking half the human population, something few people including himself were likely to accept. Still, he felt like they were all groping in the dark, unknowing of who or what lay just outside scanning range.

“How long have you been planning this?”

Petra answered. “Two years, Uncle. Fornasson gave us the distraction we needed, saved us manufacturing one. Twelve Genners are aboard. We have control and access to Ossyrian bio-weaponry, as well as delivery systems.”

He stared at her, feeling like a father who has just realised his daughter is grown up and about to leave home. She held his gaze, raised her chin a little, then turned away.

A radio message filled the silence, using Genner click language. Micah’s resident translated: Gabriel, two parties are headed our way, fast: Vasquez and Blake.

Gabriel clicked back a receipt of message, and then addressed Micah. “Time for you to leave.”

Micah folded his arms, splaying his legs. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re going into battle. You’re smart, but still inexperienced. Besides, I have someone to look after. I made a promise to both her parents.”

Petra didn’t turn around.

Gabriel faced Micah. “Give me one good reason why I should allow you to stay onboard.”

Micah studied the young man, a born leader, a natural hero. But there were nasty, treacherous minds out there. “Who do you think we’ll find waiting for us, Gabriel? I assume Petra told you about Louise.”

Gabriel nodded. “And I predict that Sister Esma will be there waiting with her, too.”

Micah nodded absently. “Ah, so you see you do need me. If they are both there, that could actually be better than one of them alone.”

Gabriel’s brow creased.

“I think he’s got you there, Gabe. As Ramires always said, know your enemy. Micah knows them both, especially Lou –”

“Thank you, Petra,” Micah said.

Gabriel eyed him then nodded. “So be it. Take us up, Petra. And Micah, don’t try anything. You might beat me in a holosim, but in a fight you’d be no match at all.”

Micah willed his nannites to stand down. “Agreed.”

Petra touched a control and the panel flooded with a sea of blues. She sank her fingers knuckle-deep into a gelatinous part of the display, and then lifted them out slowly, blue slime cloying to her fingers. The pyramid, stationary for eighteen years, rose into the air as smoothly and silently as a weather balloon.

Micah walked around the console and leaned forward against the glass to see his town, the one he had founded and led through so many crises. He’d never seen it from the air. In that moment, Micah realised how much he cared for it, for his people. This is all that’s left of us, he thought, small and fragile, driven by love and fear in equal measure, desperate to survive. Only twenty thousand souls remaining out of almost seven billion. As the Pteraxia rose higher and faster, and stars pierced the darkening sky, it felt like seven billion pairs of phantom eyes waiting in the darkness, watching.

As they ascended and the sky grew darker, Micah switched into assessment mode. Worst case scenario was Sister Esma and Louise having somehow teamed up, lying in wait just outside the Ossyrian ship’s sensor range. Best case scenario was nobody there, except maybe a grinning General Bill Kilaney in a warship come to defend them. But Micah had heard nothing further from Kat, no news via the Hohash, and in this case no news was bad news. The best news of all would be the Kalarash known as Kalaran, accompanied by Jen and the others, returning from wherever the hell they’d been. A Level Nineteen ship could see off the Q’Roth and Alicians, no trouble. But that felt like pure fantasy.

Micah had thought Kilaney long dead; it would be good to see   him and find out where he’d been and what he’d been up to all these years. But the likelihood of him being already out there seemed remote; the Ossyrians would have detected his approach. The outcome of his assessment veered back towards pessimism.

He turned around to Gabriel. “Okay, tell me about the weapons we have aboard. All of them.”

Chapter 10

Secrets & Lies

Kilaney had been busy since his forced departure from the Ngank’s surgery vessel. He and his commandeered Mannekhi ship lurched back into normal space-time, still a couple of hours from Esperia. He’d dragged all twelve unconscious crew members onto the Bridge, carrying the three females – he was ‘old school’. He sat in the command chair, waiting for them to wake up. His sweat smelled less acrid than when he’d been human first time around; the Ngank had done a good cosmetic job, but on the inside he felt a powerful panther-like strength and focus, a legacy from his Q’Roth days.

He ran his hands over his face – he’d always hated mirrors, even before Sister Esma had converted him into a Q’Roth warrior, and wasn’t going to start liking them now. Hair was beginning to grow back on his head; it felt soft, downy. That was going to be downright embarrassing if he managed to meet up with Blake. He had eyebrows, and – it brought a smile to his lips – he felt the prickle of stubble on his chin. He’d never worn a beard. Maybe it was time.

Kilaney observed his captives, who were about to be freed, after a fashion. All of them were fit and young, one or two a little more mature, but no show of grey hair, if indeed they greyed with age. Staring towards their closed eyelids, he knew that underneath was the only overt way to distinguish them from humans. Long ago he’d tried to find out if humans and Mannekhi were in some way related, but the relevant files in Grid Central Archives were classified Level Fifteen. He’d asked Ukrull about it during his short stay aboard the Ice Pick, fully expecting no answer, or at most a grunt. Instead, he’d gotten the longest sentence he’d heard from the reptile. It was partly why they now lay on the floor alive.

Their long, deep breathing rate shifted, became shallower. Good, he was beginning to think he’d have to find a bucket of cold water. Within minutes the first two stirred, and they quickly woke the others. He watched the order they chose, inferring the crew hierarchy. The first one they woke, evidently their captain, stood apart, facing Kilaney, while the others busied themselves, checking instruments, navcom, weapons capability, life support. A nod or two from the captain here and there. Two males went to the weapons locker and withdrew four pistols, arming two other crew members as well as themselves. They didn’t give one to the captain, but he was the one who spoke.

“You’re in my chair.”

“That’s not how it is,” Kilaney replied.

One of the females moved in Kilaney’s direction, but a glance from the captain stopped her.

“Then tell me how you think it is.”

“Ask your crew.”

Without taking his eyes off Kilaney, the captain called out to his key officers.

“Siltern.”

“Sir, Navigation is locked, control encrypted, we’re heading toward a planet in the Quintara sector, the human one we were briefed on. A Level Twelve barrier shields it. Arrival in two hours.”

“Arnter.”

“Sir, half the ship’s spines are prepped for penetration mode, the other half for hellfire beams. We’re going in hot.”

“Gallas.”

“Long range comms has been disabled, encrypted with a Q’Roth Largyl 6 cipher. I can break the code, but it will take longer than two hours.”

“Fentra, something good, please.”

The female withdrew her face from an enclosure screen, and gave Kilaney a long hard look. “He’s a hybrid. Human and Q’Roth.” One of the men’s pistol arm went rigid. “I wouldn’t do that, Tolbar,” she added. “He’s injected us all with a Kelleran bloodworm. He has the mother.”

Kilaney shrugged. “I found them in your Medlab. I’d heard about them, though I’d never seen them up close before. Pesky little critters. Is it true what they say about them?” He knew damned well, as the Mannekhi used them on prisoners, but he wanted to hear the captain say it, to acknowledge the status quo.

The captain folded his arms. “You die, we die. You hurt, we hurt.

You’re still in my chair.”

Kilaney got up, gesturing to the seat. As the captain took it, Kilaney added, “You have a fine crew, captain.”

The captain looked taller now, sitting in the command chair. “What is your name?”

“Does it really matter?” Kilaney didn’t want to give them his Q’Roth name, they might well have heard of Jorann, and decide that bloodworms or no bloodworms, he had to die.

The captain spoke while he called up holos showing the Esperian system. “Names are everything. Our lineage matters deeply to us. I am Xenic, of the clan of Karanashak, wardens of the twelve jewel planets of our Eastern sector for fifty generations. I am the first of my line to be captain, all my ancestors were traders, many of them in the Orrat, the resistance, thirty-three of them put to death at the hands of our patrons. I know all their names. If you ask any of my crew, you will hear similar heritage.” His all-black eyes bore down on Kilaney. “Names are important to us. When you are born into servitude, history becomes your lifeline. Our progeny know our names, and we will live on through them. We are a proud people, and are not afraid to die. So, tell me, what is your name, your heritage.”

Kilaney felt stung. He’d slaughtered so many Mannekhi in battle, yet had never met one before. He drew in a breath. “My name is Bill Kilaney, I was a general back on Earth, our only planet, destroyed by the Q’Roth.” He hesitated. He’d never told anyone the rest, except his wife Sarah, back on Earth decades ago. “My father was a petty thief who deserted me and my mother when I was still a child. I found out later he died in a bar fight. My mother became a prostitute, and at first cared for me, but the drugs she took to cope with what she did stole her from me, bit by bit, until she died in a fire in a cheap motel. I had one lucky break serving as a grunt during the War, when I took a knife missile in the gut intended for a Colonel, and still managed to rip the assassin’s throat out with my bare hands.” He looked down at his fingers. There had been so much anger in him back then. He looked back up. “Life turned around after that, and the Colonel promoted me fast through the ranks, even if he didn’t make it through the war himself. My ancestors… I know little of them, the rest of the family shunned me, more so after I became a General.” He stared at the floor, then looked directly at the captain. “I’m still a soldier. I have nothing else. I have no children. My wife is dead. I have to say I envy you your ancestry. All I have lies on the planet we’re bound towards, and I am here, you are here, to protect them.”

“Protect them from what, exactly?”

Siltern spoke up. “From a Q’Roth Crucible.”

Kilaney continued. “It is indeed your chair. I could not operate this ship on my own, certainly not in a battle. The Q’Roth are your sworn enemy, and –”

Xenic held up his hand. “What was your Q’Roth designation?” Kilaney chewed his lip, then answered in a quiet voice. “Jorann.”

One of the younger females walked up to him, and with speed and power that surprised him, punched his jaw. Kilaney stood and took the force of the blow, while all of the crew except the captain gasped at the shared pain. The girl herself grunted with some satisfaction, and walked back to her station, nursing her chin.

The captain spoke, as the rest of his crew stroked their jaws gingerly. “Thank you, Tessia.” He stood up. “Siltern, you have the Bridge. Kilaney – that is what we will call you, or else we will all have very short lives – walk with me.”

They left the Bridge, and Kilaney followed Xenic to the observation deck, letting Xenic speak first.

“You took quite a gamble, especially telling us your Q’Roth name, hated by so many Mannekhi. You know the bloodworms are cyborg, and their power sources have a short duration, just twelve hours. They also have a limited range. I could put you in a pod and eject you into space, to rot.”

Kilaney had thought of it. “I would self-terminate if you tried it.”

“So ready to die?”

Kilaney gripped the rail and stared toward the slightly brighter star he knew to be Esperia’s sun. He turned to Xenic. “My people are in mortal danger. Imagine how you would act if all Mannekhi were in jeopardy?”

“But humans are not my people.”

Kilaney drew in a deep breath, then told him what Ukrull had said.

Xenic and Kilaney re-entered the Bridge. “Gallas, set up General Kilaney a tactical console, with external comms.” He paused. “With weapons back-up access.” The entire crew turned to stare at their captain. “We are going to take out that Q’Roth vessel. Kilaney has defected, and has their defence codes.”

The crew nodded, turning back to their stations. The Bridge lights shifted to red, battle mode, and Kilaney felt rather than heard the engines increase their output, spurring the ship onwards, faster.

Kilaney realised two things about Xenic: first, the Mannekhi captain knew how to lead, and second, that he was a damned good liar.

◆◆◆

The Shrell leader Genaspa, at the front of six phalanxes of her most trusted warriors, stared straight ahead with all six eyes and twelve sensor ridges, through the eddies of Transpace to the Quintara sector, where the spider world lay, where she would lead the unhappy mission to poison space within that entire sector. She already knew all the details, but wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to train her protégé, Nasjana.

She thought-directed “Tell. What you see. What you propose.” Nasjana shifted up a gear, flapping her tech-augmented wings faster, and moved forward from her phalanx of fifty, her Second taking her place. She drew alongside and slightly behind Genaspa, and addressed her First. “I see the two-mooned Katha Class planet the indigenous natives name Ourshiwann, that the humans call Esperia. I see two other planets, one further in to its Giver, and one further out, both without intelligent life’s seed. There is also a thin asteroid belt from a former planet, and the ice-scratch of a past comet with a return cycle of two thousand years. I propose standard spatial necrosis treatment: three opposing Shrell teams at right angles to the Giver, twenty light minutes apart before we commence the run.”

Genaspa sent a sinusoidal frisson down her right wing, a sign of approval.

Nasjana did not return to her team.

“You have a question?”

Nasjana dropped slightly behind. “I have a doubt.”

Genaspa’s wings took on a more rigid motion. She’d been expecting this from one of her team leaders, though not Nasjana, her Second. Or maybe, she reflected, that was why she had chosen Nasjana as Second. “Tell.”

“Where you lead I follow. What you tell, I do. As do we all. But this… We only poison space when absolutely necessary, to avoid dangerous space-rift expansions, or to corral errant races.”

Nasjana’s thought stream had come out fast, urgent, and Genaspa realised she was worried. But they were short on time. They must be in formation, in every sense of that word.

“Tell true, Second.” She had to wait a full flap-beat for the response.

“Why do we follow the orders of Qorall? He has brought the Xenshra inside the galaxy, those despicable inter-galactic worms. I fear we will never get them out. And Qorall has caused more space damage than in recorded Grid history.”

It was a good question, but not the whole reason Nasjana was daring to doubt her First’s judgement.

“Tell deeper. All.”

Nasjana wings trembled, slowing her until with an effort she caught up. “My husbands. I fear many will perish today.”

Genaspa forced herself to concentrate on the flight. A First must never waver. Tell true, she had instructed, and yet she had not told her team-leaders the whole. None of the husbands would survive the day. Genaspa and three hundred Shrell would enter the system, she and fifty would return, all female. This was a high price. But only Genaspa knew that Qorall held fifty thousand Shrell hostage – a tenth of their entire nomadic population – in a faraway quadrant, lured there to shore up the damage done when he and his worms breached the galactic barrier eighteen years earlier.

This was not what Nasjana and the others needed to hear, nor would it necessarily convince them – it did not persuade her, either, since Qorall might decide never to free his captives, or to feed them to the worms.

Genaspa knew the other team leaders would have one or two eyes and ridges focused on this little exchange, wondering if Nasjana would persuade her to call it off. Not this day.

“Nasjana. This is for you alone. When Qorall asked – demanded – I sought a second opinion.”

Nasjana broke protocol and jumped in. “But who could you possibly –”

“Hellera, the last Kalarash left in our galaxy.”

Nasjana winged forward, taking her eyes off their target, a dangerous move at this speed, and stared at her First, then dropped back just behind Genaspa’s lead.

“What did she say?” Nasjana asked.

“She told me to do it. That it was necessary for the long-term strategy.”

“Did she explain that strategy?”

“No. Nor did I expect a Level Nineteen being to indulge me, a mere Level Nine.” She swivelled three of her eyes towards her Second.

Nasjana drew back. “I… I apologise, my First. I understand if you wish to name a new Second –”

“I do not.”

Nasjana blinked all six eyes at once, for a full flapbeat. “With your leave, I shall return to my position.”

“You will signal to the other leaders and instruct them and all the husbands that what we do today is of the utmost importance for the survival of the galaxy.”

“Such a message should come from the First, not me.”

No, Genaspa thought. I may not survive this run. They must begin to hear from you as a Leader.

Nasjana hesitated, then began to fall back.

Genaspa listened to Nasjana’s pronouncement. She would make a good leader one day, a good First. As the thought streams rippled through the ranks, Genaspa felt their swarm’s wing pulse harmonic grow stronger. But she herself did waver, thinking of her own former husbands, lost during a similar run two thousand years earlier. It was why she was First, because she made the necessary sacrifice, knowing that the husbands’ life force would be bled away from them as they ripped spacetime, curdling its quantum foam; that was the energy exchange needed to inflict such damage. She had cherished each of her six males, and had not taken a husband since.

Abruptly she made the decision. She slowed down, decelerating at a breathtaking pace, as if rearing up against a wall. With no small pride she observed all six phalanxes stay in formation, even the husbands. The entire swarm stopped, panting, awaiting her command. The eddies of Transpace scattered around them like tornadoes of orange steam, blown away into wispy nothingness.

She turned and addressed them all. “We will pay a heavy price today.” Her thought-stream flickered for a moment, then regained its true. “You are the best, that is why you were chosen. Many of us will not return.” She let her eyes swivel to take in every individual Shrell, including the males, who blinked all eyes in return. “I wish you to say your goodbyes properly, as you see fit. You have one hour.” She turned her back on them, and quietened her form-sensors so they could have their privacy.

A single ship threaded above her, the Mannekhi one her flock had overtaken earlier. She watched its ripples flourish then diminish, twirling in its wake before dissipating. Go ahead, she thought, do whatever it is you have to do, you have little time. She spied another ship on the other side of the Quintara sector, a Q’Roth Marauder, also heading in at terrific speed. She reflected that so many beings – the Rangers an exception – rushed around in their short life-spans, generally making things worse. Shrell were different, they were gardeners, conserving natural space – in normal situations, of course, though not this time.

Genaspa heard the cries of ecstasy behind her. Good, she thought, in a year there will be new Shrell to replace those we lose today. Her eyes and all twelve sensor ridges fixed hard on the distant planet, the object of so much sudden attention while at the war’s front another planet fell every few days. We do this for you Hellera, not Qorall. You had better be right. I hope that whatever is in that system is worth it.

Chapter 11

the Plight

The Crucible Class Q’Roth vessel hung dark and silent in stealth mode, two million kilometers across the system from Esperia. Sister Esma stood close enough to the battleship bridge viewscreen to scratch the outline of Esperia with her fingernails. None should ever have escaped. Nearly two decades earlier she’d underestimated a single outlier factor – Micah. Two and a half more days and she would flatline the curve, close the coffin lid on an inferior humanity’s dead-end history.

But that wasn’t the only reason she was here. If it had been purely a mission of revenge, of eradication of the dwindling embers of humanity, she’d have sent her Principal, Serena, to do the job. No, the plight,   that was why she had to oversee this job personally, why she had left high level war-room talks with the Q’Roth Supreme Commander. By   a cruel twist of fate, the future survival of her beloved Alicians hinged on mankind. She needed to take back a handful of humans, the only question being how many; no Genners, that much was certain. Once she had that figure, which should arrive any minute, the human cargo could be extracted as soon as Quarantine came down. Then the rest of that dustbowl planet and all its inhabitants, including the Ossyrian guardians, would be exterminated, leaving only cinders.

Behind her on the bridge of the three kilometre-long Q’tarin, two elite Q’Roth warriors stood draped in blood-red cloaks. They each held in their possession one half of the genetically coded key to arm the Inferno Class planet-cutter, whose tightly-coiled tendrils occupied four- fifths of the ship’s length. She longed to see the Crucible weapon in action, unfurling and embracing the planet, its eight finger-thick lance- wires stretching tens of thousands of kilometres from high orbit down to the planet’s surface. The wires would cut their way through enough of the planet’s crust to begin irreversible magma spouts and disintegration. Esperia would boil in its own lava. The Crucible was aptly named.

She stood next to her command chair, the only seat on the bridge, while her elite Alician bridge crew manned their consoles standing up as was traditional on all Q’Roth vessels. She rarely sat in that chair, knowing the Q’Roth would see it as a sign of weakness. Despite her height in heeled boots, the two warriors towered a good metre over her. But to the rest of the Alician crew there was never any doubt as to who was in charge. That was necessary: in order to stay at the top in Alician politics there could never be any sign of weakness or doubt about a leader’s command capability. Otherwise an assassination attempt was likely; that is after all how she had finally risen to the position.

Ten years earlier Sister Esma had traded her jet black hair for a golden Q’Roth skull cap descending to the nape of her neck, shrouding her cheeks, and drawing anyone’s attention – Q’Roth or Alician – to  her wide black eyes, hooked nose and thin lips that rarely smiled. Her whole demeanour sent a message – she was deadly serious. Though to her people back home she could occasionally exhibit kindness of a sort, in battle, and particularly in front of the Q’Roth, she was always ruthless.

Her left arm ended in a blue-black, lobster-like Q’Roth claw, capable of shearing through metal. Most believed she had taken it willingly – true to a degree – but it had also been a punishment by the Q’Roth Queen after her High Guard suffered an embarrassing defeat during humanity’s trial. The Q’Roth surgeons had also rendered Sister Esma sterile, though she would live another seven hundred years. The claw hung motionless at her side. During eighteen years it had seen little action. For Sister Esma it had only one purpose to serve. She wanted it to close around Micah’s throat.

A year earlier, she had ambushed an Ossyrian relief vessel en route to the planet, and information gleaned from the wrecked pyramid ship’s data-core had shown the pathetic progress Micah had made in all this time; a sprawling tinpot town fringed by scraggy farms, almost no transport infrastructure. It was a travesty compared to the Alician new homeworld Savange, with its silver-spired central city, tethered spaceport and Level Five ship-outfitting industry. The Alician spaceport harboured the ships of two other species as well as the Q’Roth, earning their place in Grid society rather than cowering under a shield and Ossyrian skirts.

She pictured Savange’s three moons, its shark-grey mountain range with peaks reaching twenty kilometres, counterpointed by nutrient-rich purple oceans. Alicians were not lowly farmers; they were traders and tacticians, participating in the war effort, assisting in numerous battles, aiding the Q’Roth in strategy and logistics. She’d seen a Level Eight report which had mentioned the bipedal newcomers, stating that the Alicians showed promise, that “they had an edge”.

The praise had not gone unnoticed by her patron, and two years earlier, the new Q’Roth Queen had offered Sister Esma her arm back. She declined. It was a symbol to others, and hardened her purpose to the very core. Maybe after humanity had been erased. Instead she had traded the rare opportunity of the Queen’s goodwill for a succession of missions, first to discreetly prevent relief from arriving at Esperia, and then to extinguish humanity once and for all. The Queen had agreed, although there might be repercussions afterwards, sanctions even, from the Tla Beth or the Ossyrians. But in the heat of the War it would be forgotten quickly, and Sister Esma had promised to make it look like an accident, a freak interaction between the engines of the departing Ossyrian ship and the quarantine barrier, resulting in a devastating chain reaction. In any case, the Queen also wanted to see humanity squashed, after the humiliation of the trial. As for the Tla Beth, they had quarantined Esperia more out of necessary legal protocol rather than actually giving a damn about the upstart race called humanity. Removing humanity from the Grid map would secretly satisfy all the parties remaining, and afterwards, all would simply move on.

Glancing down at one of the emerald screens, she watched the Q’Roth data scroll past, its writing filled with barbed and jagged serifs; Q’Roth script looked as if it would cut clean through any paper it landed on. One field was a countdown till the quarantine shield came down. Fifty-six hours. But her eyes latched onto another icon; the analysis she had been waiting for was complete. She swung around, walked between the two guardians and barked two names.

“Serena; Casteur.”

An athletic blonde and a middle-aged, balding man quit their stations and fell into step behind her. As they marched through a maze of twisting, jade-coloured corridors, Sister Esma recalled her conversation with her chief medical advisor Beatrix three years earlier…

“It is as we feared, Your Eminence. The Mannekhi genetic infusion did not take. The results were… abominations. All have been destroyed, along with the Mannekhi prisoners. There is only one option left, difficult as I know it will be to accept. The Ossyrian medic has confirmed it. She has agreed to aid in the genetic transfusion process, under duress. No one else knows of these results, they have been encrypted for your sole –”

Sister Esma knew she should not have had Beatrix executed. Shooting the messenger was a human reaction, beneath Alician standards. But the news had been terrible. How had nine hundred years of careful planning derailed so completely? Negligible statistical collateral, she’d said to the Q’Roth Queen when Micah, Blake and twelve thousand humans had escaped the Cull. The Queen’s slits had blazed scarlet. Culls must be total, she’d replied. And yet if humanity had not escaped, the Alicians would have no future. It had been the cruelest of jokes, but now Sister Esma was determined to deliver the final punchline.

Casteur, Serena and Sister Esma arrived outside a sealed room, the narrow glass pane in the door revealing a lone occupant, an Ossyrian doctor, sitting upright, her quicksilver eyes oddly calm, forepaws bound in magnetic cuffs. Sister Esma held up the amethyst amulet that always hung from a gold chain around her neck, and the door swished open. The female Ossyrian doctor’s snout pivoted towards her, though she did not rise from her bench.

“Are you ready for the humans?” Sister Esma enquired.

The Ossyrian bared her jaws as if to speak, then closed them again. She nodded towards the far wall. Sister Esma followed her gaze to the rack of empty stasis drawers from floor to ceiling which she knew ran five deep behind the wall. She raised her wristcom to her lips, staring directly at the Ossyrian, searching those silver eyes.

“Lieutenant, transmit a message to Savange, to my aide Nera. Pick one of the Ossyrian’s offspring…” The Ossyrian was suddenly on her feet, and Serena leapt in front of Sister Esma, weapon drawn, aimed at the Ossyrian’s head. Sister Esma did not blink, and continued with the instruction. “The youngest is to be released. Leave her in a war zone near the front, where an Ossyrian support vessel will find her. Remind her that if she breathes a word, her siblings and mother will be executed after long and painful torture.”

“Understood.”

Sister Esma lowered her wrist. The Ossyrian hesitated, then bowed. Serena kept her weapon drawn. Sister Esma noted that throughout the exchange, Casteur had remained behind her, near the door.  Still, he had his uses, and it was the price she had to pay for executing Beatrix. She left the room, Casteur trailing in her wake, Serena backing out, not holstering her weapon till the door was sealed again.

After re-tracing their steps through the long, low-lit silent corridors, they reached Sister Esma’s briefing room behind the bridge, and went inside. An array of weapons including gun-helmets and flow-metal armour decorated the ebony walls, all taken in battle from deceased foes. Sister Esma wasn’t afraid to bloody her own hands; many of the bladed weapons were stained with varying hues of it. One in particular, an ivory- coloured fire-sword, had a faded spray of her blood spattered along its matt-black edge. She resisted touching the scar on the right side of her abdomen where it had slashed her open. Her own counter-strike at the exact same moment had found her combatant’s throat. In battle and in life, choosing the right target had always been her way.

She perched on her chair carved from finest Savange forest oak, facing the two Alicians. Casteur was almost four hundred years old, and looked around fifty. Serena was technically eighteen, but now, with Q’Roth surgeons at Sister Esma’s disposal, Alicians matured faster in the early years, so that the girl had the looks and demeanour of a thirty year old, and now her ageing process would pause for hundreds of years.

Serena’s head was bowed slightly, whereas Casteur’s wasn’t. He had the arrogance of many doctors she’d encountered, irrespective of species. No matter, he had learned much from the Ossyrian. But she was in no mood for bad news.

“Doctor, I understand your analysis is complete.”

His chin lifted slightly, his grey eyes meeting hers. “The originals will serve our purpose. Fifty will do, but I suggest we take one hundred. The others, the ones who call themselves the Genners, are not useful.”

She remembered why she tolerated Casteur; he was more politically astute than Beatrix had ever been, and knew which details would please, factoring in how she despised the Genners to the point of outrage; they had not earned their upgrade the way the Alicians had. She gave him the barest of nods. This time he bowed, then left.

She studied Serena. Young and beautiful, as Sister Esma herself had never been. But she had sharpened Serena like a razor, fashioned her as she once had Louise. The thought of Louise distracted her a moment. So much time and effort invested in that one, only to lose her, for her to turn renegade. This time there would be no mistake. Besides, Serena was one of the few Alician offspring to survive the plight.

“Serena, you know your mission.”

The girl raised herself up, pride lighting her eyes. Her voice was smooth, self-assured, but respectful – no, Sister Esma thought, something better – she was loyal.

“To capture one hundred human adults, fifty male, fifty female, of fathering and child-bearing age, and bring them aboard, anaesthetized. No Genners. Every other creature encountered to be culled. My troops are prepared. Six of my fellow Achillia, fourteen Q’Roth guardians, seven Raptors fuelled and tooled. My raiding party will have one hour before the planet-cutter initiates.” She dared a smile.

Sister Esma knew from bitter experience that where humans were concerned there could be unaccounted-for variables. “Practice again. Use the Tla Beth battle simulator set to ‘unpredictable’.”

Serena’s smile broadened. “Of course.”

“This time, with the holographic simulation safety protocols switched off.”

Serena’s eyes widened a fraction, then settled. She waited a few moments for any further instructions, then bowed and left.

The door sealed, and Sister Esma leant back against the chair. The plight: a genetic mutation, a reproductive fault. Their and the Q’Roth’s doctors, and two kidnapped Ossyrians, had not been able to solve the problem. Ninety-nine per cent of Alician children were stillborn or died within a few days. When first told by the lead Ossyrian doctor that this situation was not curable, she had lashed out with her claw, decapitating the dog-faced doctor, and then turned to the other one, daring her to come to the same conclusion. A year later it had been pronounced that there was a solution, after the imprisoned Ossyrian had managed to have a consultation with a Ngank surgeon passing through the sector.

Since Earth’s fall, the Alician population of five thousand had only grown by fifty, even after an intense breeding programme initiated by Sister Esma’s decree. She eventually quashed it, as the infant death rate was intolerable for her people. Artificial attempts to stimulate birth success fared even worse.

She rose and moved to a shelf and poured a glass of Vintnarian Brandy, watching the blue, syrupy liquid roll around the glass, inhaling its minty vapour. She drank it down in one go, as was custom even though it seared her throat, and then hurled the empty glass into the far wall, striking and shattering against the cutlass that had almost claimed her. She retook her seat.

Beatrix had been right, of course. Unless Sister Esma’s Alician flock found a compatible source of genetic material, they would become completely sterile as a species in two generations. Genetic obsolescence. A problem in their DNA re-sequencing, another unaccounted-for variable. The problem had not shown itself on Earth while the Alician Order had slowly grown over the last millennium – something in the environment had masked it, or most likely prevented it. But now Earth was a charred lump of rock.

Sister Esma noticed her claw was cutting into the armrest of the chair. Standing up, she walked to the porthole and stared towards Esperia’s orange disk. The proposed solution had almost made Sister Esma kill the second surviving Ossyrian doctor. An infusion of original human genetic material. Her claw closed, and she rammed it fist-like into the hull, sending a deafening boom around the room. Those on the bridge would hear it, too.

Let them.

The Ossyrian doctor onboard had been pregnant when captured by an Alician elite squad, her litter of six children now hostages back on Savange, so Sister Esma knew she could count on her. Releasing one of the Ossyrian’s daughters would guarantee her obedience. A camp had been prepared fifty kilometres outside Savange’s capital, a kilometre underground, to house the humans. The infusion process would take fifty years, after which the genetic mutation would be resolved. During that time, infant survival would start off close to thirty per cent, rising to ninety-nine within five years, where it would plateau. The saving grace in all of this was that the required human genome served only as a catalyst: all the newborns would be pure-bred, fertile Alicians. Initially she would let the humans live their lives underground, but if they proved difficult they would be kept in stasis except for short periods to take part in the infusion process. After the fifty years the surviving humans would be put down.

Sister Esma turned away from the portal and closed her eyes, instructing her resident to show the year-old detailed holos and intel on humanity’s population, demographics, weapons and ship capability, as well as the Ossyrians in their pyramid ship. Nothing would be left to chance this time. Onboard and primed were the countermeasures against Ossyrian bio-weapons that all Q’Roth ships now carried, in case of accidental exposure during battle against Mannekhi and other Qorall allies. More importantly, she also had the Mannekhi weapon used to destroy pyramid-ships. Most Ossyrian vessels had been upgraded a year ago with their own defences, but not the one on Esperia. The Ossyrians would be added to a long list of unsung heroes, and the human quarantine experiment would soon be forgotten, buried in the ongoing avalanche of daily War statistics. And the Ossyrian doctor onboard would know nothing about the fate of her comrades, confined as she was to a secure and data-dry area of the ship. No one was going to get out this time, just her ship and the hundred who would ensure the Alicians would live to see their rightful place in the galaxy.

She instructed her resident to show the latest data on the War, in particular where the front-line had reached, and re-calculate her prime inquiry, the one she checked every day. The answer had not changed. At the current rate of progress, the War would reach Savange in two years. Sister Esma opened her eyes, the resident auto-shutting off, and gazed out at the stars, finding the twin yellow epsilon pulsars, a signpost to the Alicians’ new home with its grenadine sunsets in winter-time. She pictured the Terosh, dinosaur-like winged reptiles that swooped down from the cliff-tops, calling to their young. No matter that she was sterile and could never have offspring; her people, they were all her children.

Two years until the War arrived. But she doubted it would last that long. The Tla Beth were tough, but not stupid, and were running out of options. Rumours of the Mannekhi being favoured by Qorall gave Sister Esma hope. New alliances could always be made, if necessary bowing to a higher order. The Q’Roth might fight to the last warrior’s dying breath, but that instinct had been bred into them by the Tla Beth themselves; the Alician way had always been one of cunning. Sister Esma didn’t think big, she thought long.

Her claw relaxed. The objectives and priorities were clear: the hundred, Micah’s head, and Esperia blitzed into an asteroid belt. She returned to her chair, and activated a small control with her right hand. A melody issued forth, a little night music. She remembered Amadeus, so full of life, his hands so expressive, that candle-lit evening in Vienna. She began to hum.

A thought intruded: no Alician musician had surpassed this human genius, despite their upgrade. Never mind, she thought, we have other talents more useful in the Grid.  She closed  her  eyes, remembering his touch, no matter that he slept with others. She’d whispered to him afterwards that he was Level Five, but he had laughed, dismissing her fanciful ideas, and gone back to his composing. She’d watched him work till the first rays of morning, his shoulders hunched and twitching as he raced to write down the wonders in his brain, as if his subconscious sensed he was short of time. He and Leonardo had been the only two humans who had made her wonder if her strategy had been wrong during all those centuries. But the music lulled her, and she remembered watching him conduct the piece in a packed music hall. At one point, he had looked up and fleetingly waved to her with his baton.

For the first time in a week, Sister Esma fell asleep.

Chapter 12

Defenceless

Blake powered down the skimmer at the edge of Esperantia, dust whipping around him and Zack’s Transpar. They dismounted and walked over to meet with Vasquez and Ramires, neither of whom looked happy. An ebony, dread-locked Genner stood apart. He wore desert-style ultra- light combat fatigues, and rested on one bare foot, the other planted firm on his standing leg’s inner thigh, holding a steel halberd in his right hand, its foot-long curved blade glinting in the afternoon sun. A scarlet, semi- circular maze-like tattoo skirted the boy’s left eye and temple, marking him out as one of Gabriel’s top Youngbloods. There was something odd about the blade, the way its edge glimmered even though the young warrior held it perfectly still.

Vasquez stood rod-straight as usual, his shock of short white hair making him look fitter than his age deserved. Ramires, the last Sentinel, whom Blake had not seen for five years, had greyed, even his moustache, but he still moved like a leopard; you would never hear him coming up behind you. Blake noticed the waist pouch that contained his legendary nanosword. So, it was serious.

Both men nodded to Blake without indulging in pleasantries. Blake was glad for that. He took command. “Zack said Micah went to the pyramid, but something tells me more is going on.”

Ramires clicked something in Hremsta to the Youngblood, who lowered his foot to the ground, and turned to face Blake, with a pinched, almost surly expression. Clearly he didn’t want to be there. Ramires clicked faster, almost spitting. The warrior raised his chin.

“Gabriel, Petra and twelve others have seized the Ossyrian ship,” he
said.

Blake stared from the boy to Ramires, to Vasquez, their looks confirming it. He ground his teeth, trying to remember not to beat up the messenger, who obviously wished he were with Gabriel right now. “To what end?”

The young man stamped his halberd into the dust. “To defend ourselves, of course! You of all people should understand. I…” He stopped shouting. “We revere you, Commander. All Genners have studied your battle strategies. But you have been absent, and Micah has become a politician. You have all grown soft.” He pointed to the sky. “We believe our enemies are up there. Perhaps they will not even wait until Quarantine comes down. We must seize the advantage.”

Blake simmered, wondering whether it were true; had they gone soft? He’d not been able to face people after Glenda had slipped away. Nor could he sit in endless Council meetings, debating meaningless minutiae. Micah was welcome to it.

He addressed the boy. “What’s your name, son?”

“Marcus,” he said, standing firm, then added his lineage as all Genners had been taught, “of Chris and Mary Ellen Arvine.”

“I remember your father and mother, a forthright couple if I well recall.” Blake noticed the boy’s shoulders relax a little. “So, tell me, what’s Gabriel’s plan, and what are the rest of you supposed to do now?”

Marcus glanced sideways at Ramires. Blake knew that Ramires had always been the closest link with the Youngbloods, training them in martial arts and mental discipline.

Ramires addressed the Youngblood. “Marcus, you said you studied Blake’s strategy. Very well. Tell me, what is the quickest way to disable a defence capability?”

Marcus looked at the dusty ground. “Inner divisions,” he said quietly, dark eyes peering through his dreadlocks, straight at Blake. “Gabriel will take the ship into orbit then disperse Ossyrian genetically-coded mines there and at the edges of the system, neutralising any non-Ossyrian, non-human or non-Genner who enters our space.”

Vasquez interrupted. “That’s a war crime. Tell me he’s going to post warning beacons, at least?”

When Marcus didn’t answer, Blake pursued. “The Ossyrians – Chahat-Me – will never agree to this.”

Ramires shook his head, kicked at the ground. “Petra,” he said. “She has the Ossyrian gene, and knows her way around that ship.”

Marcus said nothing more.

A booming, grinding noise caused Blake to turn around. Zack’s Transpar already faced the pyramid, three klicks away, half-way between them and the mountain range. The Ossyrian ship’s vertex had the same apparent height as the Acarian peaks. At first nothing happened, but then the pyramid slowly lifted from the desert floor. Blake heard shouting from the other direction, and had no doubt that people in Esperantia would be watching in disbelief, the massive vessel that had been a landmark for eighteen years finally departing, abandoning them two days early.

Clouds reflected off the ship’s mirror-like surface as it rose, sand and earth tumbling from its base, forming small dust-clouds, but otherwise no jet engine or obvious source of thrust. Anti-gravity, a trick humanity hadn’t yet learned. Abruptly the sound ceased. The pyramid flushed     a deep blue from top to bottom, then began to rotate. When it was a hundred metres from the ground, it became fully transparent, no longer reflective, almost invisible except for a slight rippling of the sky behind it. Blake knew that if he took his eyes off it he would not find it again. Stealth mode. Gabriel and Petra were smart, at least.

Blake had never trusted the Ossyrians, even though they’d cured Glenda’s cancer and many other illnesses, and never harmed anyone, never interfered in human politics, and never asked for anything. But he couldn’t forgive them for their role in the Genning, in forever dividing human parents from their children. He’d always kept his distance from the dog-like aliens, and a part of him was glad to see them go, captives on their own ship, even if it made humanity more vulnerable. While he didn’t condone Gabriel’s actions, there was a taste of justice about it: you reap what you sow.

When the pyramid ship could no longer be seen, he turned to Marcus. “So, what are you supposed to do now?”

Marcus shifted his feet. “We were to take the Q’Roth Hunter vessel into low orbit.” He glared at Ramires.

Ramires cocked his head to one side. “That’s where Vasquez and I first found Marcus and three others trying to break into the secure area around the ship.”

For the first time, Blake noticed a light bruising on Ramires’ forearms. The holster clasp on Vasquez’ sidearm was also undone. “The other three are in the infirmary, right?”

A wry smile cracked under Ramires’ moustache. “Two of them; not the girl, Virginia.” He raised an eyebrow. “She’s very tough, that one.”

Blake eyed Marcus. “We’ve not gone completely soft, then.”

Marcus bristled. “Our role was to protect Esperantia and all the Steaders in case of attack. Others were to stay here in case of ground assault.”

“Goddammit, boy,” Vasquez interrupted,  “we  don’t  even  know if anyone is up there. Council has discussed this over and over. The Ossyrians promised –”

“To leave!” Marcus flared up again. “I know… all Genners know that none of you have forgotten what the Alicians did. And we understand Grid Law, we learned all the rules from the Ossyrian classes in school, about the different Levels, rules of engagement and inter-alien conflict protocol, what a crime is and what the punishment is, all of it. But we also know that there is a war going on out there. So, you tell me, Commander, do people ever play by the rules in a war? And you, Colonel Vasquez, have the Ossyrians left us with any real technology to defend ourselves against a Level Six attack? And you, Ramires, the last living Sentinel, you are sworn to avenge your fallen brothers and sisters. You knew Gabriel’s true father, the ultimate Sentinel assassin, killed by Sister Esma herself. You have trained us since we could walk, to fight, to kill, to defend ourselves. Can you not hear your slain Sentinel brothers and sisters screaming from their graves to act, to take the fight to our enemies?”

The three older men looked at each other, Zack’s Transpar remaining immobile behind them. Blake couldn’t refute any of it, and wondered why they hadn’t come to the same conclusion. Council was mainly farmers and small-minded politicians, the military sidelined long ago. That was probably why Micah resigned; his hands were tied behind his back. But Blake realized he should have come back long ago instead of burying himself. He stood straight. “You trained them a little too well, Ramires.”

Vasquez jerked a thumb behind him towards Esperantia. “The Council –”

“Irrelevant now,” Blake said. “This community has committed an act of aggression, that’s how the Grid will see it, and they won’t split hairs between Steaders and Genners. These kids – excuse me, Marcus – have made the first move. It’s not the way it should have happened, but it’s done. We need to stand behind them. If there’s no one out there, fine, Council can do what it likes with Gabriel. But if there is anyone waiting, they are sure as hell going to react now, so we’d better be ready.”

Marcus thumped the end of his halberd into the ground, twice. “Then you will release my colleagues and we will take the Hunter vessel –”

Blake raised a hand. “I don’t doubt your intentions, nor your courage, Marcus. But we’re not helpless sheep. Gabriel has given us a wake-up call – one we clearly needed – but from here on we work together.”

Ramires nodded eagerly. “This will only work if you are seen to take the lead, Blake. Maybe we should let Marcus take the vessel?”

Blake turned and laid a hand on the shoulder of the tall, all-glass shell of his former best friend, who had hardly moved nor said a word during the entire exchange. “Actually, I have a better idea.” He then turned to Ramires. “But first, tell me about the halberd. Is it what I think it is?”

Vasquez rubbed the stubble on his chin, then smiled. “It’s been our little secret, Blake. What do you think we’ve been working on for the past ten years? I only wish we had a nano-pistol, but we could never get one to work.”

Ramires nodded to Marcus, and walked a few paces away. “Last time we met the Q’Roth in battle, only my nanosword and Earth’s nukes could kill them.” He dug into one of his pockets, and pulled out a blue- black object. Blake recognized it as a thumb from a Q’Roth claw.

“A memento from my last encounter with one.” Ramires shrugged off an inquisitive look from Vasquez. “The head was a little too heavy to carry.” He tossed the thumb into the air. In a blur, Marcus flourished the halberd and struck the normally impervious Q’Roth flesh, cleaving it in two with a metallic twang that reverberated in Blake’s ears like a high-pitched gong.

Blake stared at the halberd. “Sweet.” He could imagine Glenda’s reaction. If she had been there, she would have told Ramires that Blake wanted one. In that moment, he knew why he’d been hiding away with the spiders for so long. It wasn’t just about Glenda. It was about him as a soldier. Soldiers should be able to defend those they care about, fight for what they believe in. But he’d felt their cause was futile; they had nothing to fight back with. Maybe their town would be wiped out from deep space, in which case such a weapon was useless. But in his experience, sooner or later, wars came down to decisive battles, and battles always came down to infantry, to hand-to-hand combat, to staring your enemy in the eye and knowing that one of you had to die. Glenda was right; he damned well wanted one of those weapons.

Ramires patted Marcus on the shoulder. “You were wrong when you said I was the last Sentinel. You, Marcus, and Gabriel, and all the Youngbloods, you are all strong enough, and skilled enough. You are worthy to bear that name.”

Blake looked up at the sky, wondering how many ships might be waiting for Quarantine to fall. Or there might be no one, the rest of the galaxy too busy or uninterested. But he recalled what his mentor General Bill Kilaney had once told him: “If you don’t prepare for something, you are prepared for nothing.” I hope what I heard is true, my old friend, that you are out there, too. We could use a hand.

He turned to the other three, who were waiting for him to speak, and moved to one side and gestured for the Transpar to join their circle. As he told them his plan, Blake felt a cold fire he had thought long extinguished ignite in his veins. And as they discussed tactics and scenarios, he sensed a fifth presence, and imagined the touch of Glenda’s hand on his shoulder, happy for him, glad that he was back in the game.

◆◆◆

The truce between Gabriel and Micah hadn’t lasted long. Petra had never enjoyed watching men argue.

Micah shouted, even though Gabriel was right in front of him. “Do you have any idea what the Tla Beth will do afterwards, when they find out you’ve deployed mines? And you’re betraying our only ally!” His hands balled into fists.

Gabriel’s shoulders tensed. “The Tla Beth are otherwise engaged, Micah. And the Ossyrians were about to become an ex-ally.”

“Rubbish!” Micah’s fist slammed down onto the top of the console. “Since the previous two back-up missions failed to arrive, Chahat-Me has negotiated a relief squadron of Level Seven Wagramanians to be here in three months, they will install orbital defences. The Alicians and Q’Roth can’t ambush them, they’re too strong, especially now they’re forewarned.”

“All the more reason our enemies will attack as soon as the Ossyrians leave. From orbit it would take Sister Esma thirty seconds to wipe Esperantia off the face of the planet!”

“You’re obsessed with that woman. For all we know she’s long dead. She killed your father, and I’m sorry for that, but don’t you think it’s clouding your judgment?”

“Sharpening it. It’s your judgment that’s clouded, Micah.  Why did you really resign as President?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s because you know deep down that we’ve become completely reliant on other races, victims in waiting; sheep, Micah. And you have led us to this point. Your guilt over our situation, our complete inability to act, made you resign.”

Micah turned away from both of them.

Petra touched Gabriel’s arm. “Don’t be too hard on him, Gabe. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if it wasn’t for him.”

Gabriel shrugged off her touch. “Past records don’t always make for current success. It was time for Micah to step aside, and he did. And here we are.”

Micah spoke softly, still not facing them. “It’s Louise we should be worried about. I’ve seen her in action, Gabriel…”

Petra tuned out the verbal fencing, watched it from a distance. She’d been expecting Micah to turn on her; after all, she had betrayed his trust. But he hadn’t, except for one long, hard look before he’d embarked on this tirade against Gabriel.

She wondered if she should have warned Micah. But then Micah would have found some way to tear down their plans, and she believed Gabriel was right – that even if there was a remote chance a hostile force was waiting for Quarantine to come down, then they had to strike first or risk being exterminated in a matter of hours.

But Gabriel himself was also a reason. He wasn’t hers, but she had made herself important to him, and she was on the ship with him right now, not his girlfriend Virginia, who would be with Marcus in the Hunter. She mentally kicked herself for being so pathetic, so Level Three.

Petra watched the two men she loved: Micah, the father figure, and Gabriel, beautiful Gabriel, whose arms she longed to feel wrapped around her. But a flicker caught her eye, from a bank of screens showing various chambers where the Ossyrians lay unconscious. Chahat-Me was awake. Petra didn’t see how that was possible. She tapped the console and saw her Ossyrian godmother pacing in the cell, occasionally glancing towards the camera, appearing to look directly at her. Petra felt a little sick; too much betrayal for one day.

Micah and Gabriel were still arguing. She didn’t need to listen, all the arguments had been played out over and over by Genner discussion groups during the past year; the Youngbloods had frequently met intense resistance from other Genner groups. As required by their Genner-optimised process, she’d taken alternative sides during fierce debates in Hremsta, and the answer was always the same: Gabriel’s solution carried least ‘cliff-edge’ risk, least chance of total annihilation. The other Genner factions had accepted the verdict, and despite misgivings, had not warned any of the Steaders. She took some comfort from that.

Petra manipulated the controls with practiced ease as they ascended into orbit – they’d made a simulation of the Ossyrian console from hacked schematics and her memories from when Chahat-Me had brought her onto this very bridge at the age of four, along with Kat, her mother. Her thoughts stilled and dwelt on Kat. Petra wondered if her birth-mother would be proud of her, of what she’d become, of who she was, and what she’d decided to do right now.

Many Genners had grown cool to their parents over the years due to intellectual superiority, though such phrases were never spoken outside of Hremsta. One had even told Petra she was in some ways lucky, that absence made the heart grow fonder. But Petra had always been more emotional than other Genner kids, a trait that had pushed Gabriel away from her, as if she seemed needy. So she’d played the tough girl with her peers, the one with a cutting tongue and sharp nails. If you can’t get love, she’d decided, respect was the next best thing. She hoped her mother would understand.

“… what about you, Petra? Petra?”

They were both staring at her. She’d tuned out, but with a mental flick she replayed their entire conversation, analysed it and formed a response. “You’re both wrong.”

Micah folded his arms. “Which part, exactly?”

“None of that. You are both wrong because you stopped trusting each other years ago. Genners and Steaders. That says it all, doesn’t it? We’re a divided community. We have to re-integrate. Now would seem a good time to start.”

Micah ran his fingers through his mat of salt-and-pepper hair. He sighed, and turned to Gabriel. “I can never win with that one.”

Gabriel turned to his console. “Tell me about it,” he said.

Petra smiled. Now that would have made her mother proud.

“It’s time,” Gabriel said.

Micah spoke more softly than before. “Once you take the shield down, there’s no fast way to get it back up. Are you sure about this?”

Gabriel turned back to Petra. “Anything on long range scans?” She shook her head.

“How long will it take to deploy the mines?” Micah asked.

Gabriel touched the console panel in front of him. “Araik and the others below are preparing them. The first batch is ready.” He turned to Micah. “You’re not going to try and stop me?”

Micah leant against the hull. “I want warning beacons in Grid Standard posted at all entry points, including a subspace one to alert ships in transit.”

“That will alert the Tla Beth, or at least the Rangers.”

Micah pursed his lips. “Zack used to say something: the deeper you are in the shit, the cleaner you’d better dress.”

“Very well,” Gabriel said. As soon as deployment is complete. It will add another hour.”

“What about the Ossyrians?”

Petra joined in. “We release them, of course. I’ll talk with Chahat-Me. But the mines are going to be locked in stealth mode. They won’t be able to undo them.”

“The Tla Beth will,” Micah said.

Petra thought Micah was taking this well, all things considered. She still expected his tone to be harsh with her, yet it wasn’t. “That’s where you come in, Uncle. You can blame us Genners –”

“I won’t do that.”

“You could, though, Uncle. The Tla Beth made you accept the ‘upgrade’ of all human kids. You had no choice. Anyway, by the time they get here we’ll either have destroyed the enemy or we’ll all be dead, and if nobody’s out there we’ll have had plenty of time to think up excuses for deploying mines. You’re good at that.”

Micah uttered a short laugh. “Thanks, I’m sure.”

Gabriel addressed her. “Take the barrier down, Petra.”

She stared at the button. Eighteen years of protection. They’d thought about trying to keep the barrier up beyond its fixed lifetime, but it had proven well beyond their technical know-how, even that of the Ossyrians, apparently. The Level Twelve shield’s make-up was founded on a strict energy decay cycle that would need a transfusion of fresh barrier energy to replenish it and keep it going, none of which existed on the planet. The only solution had been to bring it down early. That had always been an Ossyrian option in case of catastrophic events either on Esperia or in its solar system. Now the option was theirs, the Genners’, and in that precise moment, it was hers. Having decided everything logically, still a part of Petra’s emotional mind had doubts. She prayed they were doing the right thing, and held her breath. Her finger hovered, as if questioning, then she pressed it down firmly, and entered the command. She gazed out the viewscreen at the starlit sky. There was a shimmer for a second, and then it was as if a thin film dissipated. The stars looked brighter; she was sure she could see more of them now.

Inside the ship, a screeching noise began, rising in intensity. She glanced back at the internal scans and saw Chahat-Me’s snout in the air, her jaw open, the blue fibres within stretched taut; she was howling. Not only her; Petra saw that all the Ossyrians had woken, including the three they’d removed from the bridge, all of them were screaming the same high-pitched, single word. The grating sound jangled down her spine. Reports came in from all over the ship, from Gabriel’s people, trying to speak above the din. Abruptly it stopped.

Gabriel moved over to Petra’s console. “Are they all still contained?”

“Yes.”

Micah came over to them. “What did they just shout, Petra?”

Her hand trembled, the one that had tapped in the final command. “It was a single word,” she said, forcing herself to keep her voice steady. She prayed they hadn’t all just made a fatal mistake.

Gabriel placed a hand on her shoulder. “What did they say, Petra?”

She hoped her mother Kat would return soon, not caring if Louise was with her. She looked into Gabriel’s eyes. “They said… that is… they screamed… ‘No’.”

PART TWO

BATTLEFIELD

Chapter 13

Kalarash

Jen watched their ship’s entrance into the Hourglass Galaxy, courtesy of the scout-drone sent ahead. In the pure darkness of the inter-galactic void, a ruby gash opened in the fabric of space. The tear widened, like a bloodshot eye, an obsidian pupil irising open at its centre. The Kalarash ship, the Memento, her home for the past year, emerged, shaped like   an elongated crossbow. Metallic hues of aquamarine and scarlet rippled back along its ten-kilometre shaft. Her two comrades Dimitri and Rashid had gotten bored watching these events – it was their thirty-third galaxy after all – and busied themselves elsewhere. Jen never missed one. The eye-like portal blinked and was gone, space around it snapping closed as if the portal had never been there. They were in.

The Memento hung outside the shimmering galactic barrier that billowed like a giant, translucent sail, buffeted by dark energy riptides. Sitting in the arrowhead fore-section, Jen stared in awe at the tumble of stars speckled with orange and azure nebulae, the galaxy’s tightening ‘waist’ visible as a brightness that hurt her eyes after nine more days inside a trans-galactic shunt. The ship’s fourth occupant, and its Master, Kalaran, was elsewhere and everywhere, his mind long since melded with the ship’s organic-metal physiology. She saw from the console that he had sent the access codes, but the barrier stayed up.

On instruction, Jen fired the quantum-tunnelling syringe into the barrier, and it set to work, quiet and invisible. She imagined it chewing its way through the barrier’s epidermis, numbing the galactic sheath as it bit deeper, to prevent alarms being raised. She confirmed that the hollow moon they had hauled all the way from the Silverback Galaxy – which she’d known since a child as the ‘Milky Way’ – was intact, and remained masked in its null-entropy field. Kalaran hoped he wouldn’t need it, but it was insurance; none of them were prepared to return empty-handed.

Jen put her feet up on the console. They had some waiting to do, especially as during the previous thirty-two visits they had had no response. Kalaran was looking for the Kalarash known as Darkur. Considering there were only seven Kalarash left in the entire universe, they were pretty anti-social and good at covering their tracks. Still, Kalaran believed that this time he would be there.

She trawled her hands through her hair, and wondered how things were going back home. Intergalactic time dilation was a tricky business, especially using these shunts, and whenever she asked Kalaran what year it was back ‘home’ he’d answer the same – he could only tell her when they headed back. But she knew his agenda was getting tight. In fact both their schedules converged on the same point – Quarantine disablement. For her, her lover Dimitri and comrade-in-arms Rashid, they wanted to be back in time to help protect whatever had become of humanity from those Alician bastards and their Q’Roth locust friends. For Kalaran, he wanted to save Hellera – though she hadn’t talked to him for half a million years – and defeat Qorall. It all came down to the spiders, apparently, and having at least two Kalarash ships, ideally three. Hellera no longer had one, and so Kalaran needed to borrow one.

For Jen it was more personal. She had never fit in socially, and had burned most of her bridges with people back home. But the one anchor that kept pulling at her was Gabriel, the namesake and son of her dead brother. She wondered if he was a tall boy by now, or even a grown man, how he looked, if he had his father’s voice...

She got up and paced. As if on cue, Kalaran spoke to her. As always, he used her brother’s voice, sometimes an avatar of him. She both hated and loved it; hated it because Kalaran manipulated her, was assured of her complete attention and compliance when he took her brother’s form, and loved it because it was just as if her brother was alive again.

“Are you okay, Jen? I picked up a drop in your psycho-emotive state.”

“Uh-huh. Like I’m ever stable for more than five minutes. What do you really want?”

“Darkur is here. He’s coming. Get ready. Tell the others.”

He ‘choired’ the last four sentences so they hit her all at the same time, something he’d been teaching her since he ‘messed with her brain’ as she put it, trying to advance her to Level 5. He’d asked her at the time if he could quash some of her emotions to make room for higher order thinking. She’d told him to fuck off. He’d inquired as to whether that meant yes or no. Jen always had to remind herself to be careful whenever communicating with Level Nineteen beings.

She whirled to the comms station he’d created for her, and connected the neural interface. “We’ve found Darkur. You guys better get up here.” She used the interface to scan the other side of the barrier – and felt, as well as saw, the bow-wave of Darkur’s crossbow ship, sleek, elegant, subtly muscled with space-field manipulation weaponry that even Qorall didn’t possess. It reminded her of her martial arts training years ago, when she studied the classic Art of War by Sun Tzu and the Book of Five Rings by the most famous swordsman of all time, Miyamoto Musashi. The first rule was ‘ground’; you should know the terrain you are fighting on. And if you can control it, all the better. The Kalarash could alter space and gravity fields. With that kind of power, they didn’t need conventional weapons, though they could make them on demand. Unfortunately, Qorall had those damned dark worms…

Dimitri arrived first, his large frame, goat-black hair and huge smile tumbling into the cockpit. She grinned.

He saw the interface node clipped to her right ear, and beamed. “Oh, how marvellous! You finally got it to work! How I hate you!” But he swung her into his arms and lifted her feet off the floor in an embrace, kissing her fully. She closed her eyes, wondering how she had ever even thought of giving him up back on Esperia when she’d gone off the rails. He put her down, but still had his burly arms locked around her. “I’m handling the stent. I want to be able to tell Micah and Blake when we get back that I broke through a galactic barrier!” He laughed and she had no choice but to acquiesce.

An Indian voice intruded. “Then I will monitor the moon. Please, excuse my interruption.”

Jen disentangled herself from Dimitri’s grasp. “Thanks Rashid, that leaves me with comms, and my new toy.” She tapped her ear, smiling.

Rashid took the third station. She briefly studied his thin frame, tight black curls, and gleaming white-toothed smile that was the most genuine she had ever encountered. But it was the eyes that drew her. All black. Rashid had been blinded during the escape from Earth, in the initial assault by Louise. When Rashid had joined her and Dimitri just before Kalaran departed Esperia, Rashid had been wearing a ‘dolphin’, a rainbow-hued band of metal around his eyes and head that acted as a ‘sensurround’ system to replace normal vision. A month ago Kalaran had given Rashid new eyes, but they were all black, like the Mannekhi. Kalaran didn’t say why, only that it might come in useful later.

Kalaran’s voice spoke just to her, via the interface. “Jen, I’m going to be communicating with Darkur. I’m going to give you filtered access so it does not hurt you or scramble your brain. You’ll also pick up thought remnants – filtering such communications all the way from Level Nineteen to Level Five is messy, but this means you will feel some of the context as well. Is this acceptable?”

“Are you kidding me? I get to see inside your head, what you’re thinking?”

“It will be a gross translation, that is all. Our thought patterns are far too nuanced for you to ever fully comprehend.”

“I’ll take it,” she said.

She sat down, leaned back in her chair, beaming. Dimitri glanced at her. “What’s going on, my love?”

“Oh nothing much,” she lied.

◆◆◆

After reaching the age of two and a half billion years, Kalaran had hoped he was done with arguing. But within the first pico-second of his former colleague arriving at the other side of the barrier, the bickering began. Kalaran had at least expected a “Hello”. The truth was, when there were only seven of your species left in the entire universe, each in its own adopted galaxy or like Darkur and two others, itinerant, and all of them leagues ahead of every other registered species, privacy became a premium, irritability a reflex.

He didn’t stop Darkur’s thought-probe from interrogating every facet of the ship, including downloading the entire thought structure of the three humans onboard. As if that wasn’t rude enough, Darkur refused to follow protocol and drop the barrier. The Kalarash species weren’t big on reunions, and evidently a ship-to-ship meeting was off the agenda. But Kalaran relaxed – Darkur’s scans failed to detect the moon, which now drifted a couple of hundred thousand kilometres away in the starless void. Darkur – your complacency will be your undoing.

Kalaran was tired from the long journey – he’d had to fight off dark worm attacks in the interstitial void whenever there were breaks in the shunt system. He had certain visitor’s rights, however, and demanded linear communication. It would vex Darkur, but after a year of talking to Jen, Dimitri and Rashid in human language, he’d gotten used to it.

“Whatever you want, the answer’s no,” Darkur grumbled.

Not exactly a good start. “I’ve come a long way, Darkur. At least hear me out.”

“Kalaran, this distraction has just cost me the Saccardian Sector rebellion. I’d been keeping an eye on them. It’s cusp time. Two thousand years of careful social manipulation are now careening down a black hole! Literally!”

Kalarash made it a policy of never saying sorry. They did what they did and accepted responsibility for it, unless they decided not to, of course. Being at the top of the species pyramid had its perks.

Kalaran took advantage of the few nanoseconds’ pause that followed to make his case personally. “Qorall is winning the War in the Silverback galaxy, and racking up an impressive death toll, even by our standards.” “Kalaran, when will you ever learn? We’ve seeded hundreds of galaxies. Some work, some fail. You’re losing perspective.”

Or finding it again. “Qorall is our responsibility. We set him on this path.” That was below the belt, but true enough.

Darkur sidestepped it. “What’s with the low-bred company you’re keeping? They’re barely Level Four.”

Kalaran didn’t have a good answer. There was something about this race calling itself ‘human’. He’d always been a sucker for the underdog, and humanity had lost everything, including its home planet. But Darkur had a point – why should he care? There were millions of races scattered across the universe, most of whom were more intelligent than this one. But even a Level Nineteen race such as the Kalarash had to rely on instinct once in an aeon.

“What exactly is it you want from me, Kalaran? I’d like to get back to my work and see what I can salvage in Saccardia.”

Kalaran aimed high. “Recall the others. Fight Qorall, destroy him once and for all.”

Darkur’s voice lost its grumpiness. “Not sure we can destroy him anymore. We could defeat him, maybe. But the others are busy and will be less hospitable than I. Also, if we did wage war on him again, the galaxy likely wouldn’t survive – you do remember what happened last time?”

Kalaran considered the Jannahi galaxy: dark, inert, devoid of life, its stars extinguished.

“Kalaran, tell me your mind hasn’t entered the scattering stage. You must have anticipated my answer. In any case, why don’t you talk to Hellera? Rumour has it she’s in your precious Silverback galaxy at the moment.”

Kalaran would have kicked something if he’d had a foot handy. “We’re not talking at the moment.” He reflected that in this case, ‘moment’ signified half a million years. Kalaran wondered if he had more in common with these humans than he’d thought.

But Darkur was right, he had considered that he would get no personal help. He checked the moon. Rashid was ready, Dimitri, too. “Darkur, I need to borrow your ship.”

The expletives that followed had no human equivalent.

Kalaran’s scanners snapped into action, latching onto the comms spike on the sub-space frequency used only by Kalarash. He located Darkur’s ship on the other side of the barrier. He primed the moon, then hesitated, deciding to try one last time.

“Darkur, I’ll have it back before you know it.”

“I swear you’ve really lost it this time, Kalaran. Aside from Hellera, who likes hanging out in nebulas, we haven’t been separated from our ships for two billion years! Not since we defeated Qorall last time, back when your little human friends were amino acid goo waiting for something special to happen. The answer is –”

Kalaran’s mind unleashed a set of synchronous commands: the syringe punctured the barrier; a liquid diamond stent widened it in nanoseconds; gravitic hooks leapt through like gossamer lampreys, fixing onto Darkur’s hull; the moon catapulted forward through the fissure,  its mass used as the counterweight to pull Darkur’s ship through the other way. Last, an extraction program Hellera had first used on Kalaran several million years ago stripped Darkur’s mind and physical correlates from his ship and deposited them inside the moon. Kalaran smiled – as far as his residual anatomy would allow – a trick he’d learned from his human associates.

The moon drifted along the inner edge of the galactic barrier. The stent collapsed. Kalaran knew that Darkur would waken soon, really pissed off, so much so that he might actually chase him all the way back to the Silverback Galaxy. But first he’d have to build another ship. Until then, the hollow moon would do – Kalaran had made it Kalarash-friendly, even tearing out some of the guts of his own ship to make the moon comfortable and functionally advanced. He instructed the moon’s navigational array to head to Saccardia at maximum speed.

It was done.

◆◆◆

Jen, Dimitri and Rashid all breathed out at the same time. Jen smoothed her brow with a clammy hand. After a year of waiting, it had all happened so fast.

“Three point eight seconds,” Dimitri confirmed.

Jen’s head ached, but she didn’t want to click off the interface just yet. She felt elated and groggy at the same time. It had been like watching two Gods play zero-G tennis.

She tried to contact Kalaran. “That didn’t take long. Which plan are we on now, B or C?”

“Would you like to pilot one of these ships? Darkur’s is known as the Duality. He’s always hated black holes.”

She was on her feet in an instant. “Hell, yes!” she shouted Dimitri and Rashid turned to her. “What, Jen?” Dimitri asked.

She walked over to him, kissed him, held his face with trembling hands. “Love of my life, when I tell you, you must promise not to kill me…”

◆◆◆

Kalaran’s mind held all the data of their thirty-three trips, exact local times including gravity distortion effects, and plotted the trip home. He didn’t calculate as such. Instead, his mind, distributed over the ship, perceived all the parameters and coalesced an answer that required no further checking. It would be tight, but they would arrive back just before Quarantine came down.

Even with Darkur’s ship, it was still a long shot. He’d have to find Hellera after all, though she might side with Qorall just to spite him, or quit the galaxy.

Kalaran whisked all three humans into the control centre of Darkur’s ship.

He’d hoped to stay longer, to catch up, but this had always been a flying visit. He sent an avatar over to Jen and the others to instruct them on how to manoeuvre the ship, though their task would be much easier: all they had to do was stay within his slipstream. He would handle the worms.

He’d run many simulations since leaving, predicting what would happen on the small world where the humans had been quarantined; most of them resulted in catastrophic outcomes. The ones called Micah and Blake were predicted to hold things together, just. But he knew that as soon as the quarantine came down all prediction confidence was lost in an uncertainty cascade. Humanity had a score to settle against the Alicians, and all simulations predicted that humans would pursue this vendetta even at the cost of losing the galaxy to Qorall. Moreover, even when he biased the statistics to gain a positive outcome, it required humans and Alicians to work together, and put aside their lethal feud. As Jen would say, fat chance.

Jen signalled ‘ready’. His ship turned and accelerated away, Jen’s in tandem.

While his avatar indulged the humans who were having a great deal of ‘fun’, he focused his mind on the task at hand. He had one ally remaining in the Silverback galaxy, the Hohash. Those omnipaths, servants of the Kalarash and no one else, had nearly been lost. The eldest survivor had transmitted disturbing signals across the void: a new variable, one tending to worsen all simulation runs, an Alician female who had joined forces with Qorall. He had no idea why she should do so, nor did Jen, other than that this woman named Louise was a ‘queen bitch’, as unpredictable as she was dangerous. Normally this would not even be on his sensor grid, but Louise had kidnapped one of his Hohash, and if it fell into Qorall’s clutches…

Kalaran considered that this was all a suicide run, given that Qorall had been preparing for a very long time, and that he should turn around, explain to Darkur that it had all been a bad joke, or else high-tail it to   a new galaxy on the other side of the universe. Jen and the others had already said they’d understand if he didn’t go back. Kalaran recalled that in his long history, at one point he’d been technically dead for a million years, and had found the experience unmemorable, definitely not worth repeating. But he’d fought Qorall once before, stared into those nova eyes. If Qorall won this time, aside from taking revenge on Kalaran so that he would be truly gone forever, he wouldn’t stop there: he’d target other galaxies, those harbouring the remaining Kalarash and their progeny. On impulse, Kalaran sent a sub-space comms message ahead of him, addressed to Hellera, via all Hohash, in case she still had one: “We need to talk.”

He activated the portal, an oval patch of space blinking open, latticed by lightning bolts that sparked then vanished, revealing the blue and white vortex that was their route home. The first batch of dark worms smeared into view, blockading the shunt gateway. They’d arrived quicker this time. He readied the anti-matter and spatial distortion defences, but knew that it would take all his mental effort to outrun them. It was a welcome relief. Jen brought her ship up close behind his. Good girl.

Kalaran erased all the simulations. In a matter of local human days they would be back, just before quarantine came down, and then they would see. In any case, as Jen would say, it was all now in the lap of the Gods. He smiled again; it felt good for a Level Nineteen being to consider that there might be a higher order.

But it was time to focus. Kalaran’s consciousness spread out to all parts of the ship and its Hades Class weaponry, and he got down to business, tackling the writhing, dark energy creatures who could swallow both ships whole.

Chapter 14

Strategies & Tactics

Sister Esma got the call from Serena, leapt out of her bed, still fully clothed, and for once broke her own protocol and ran all the way. She calmed her breathing just before arriving, then swept onto the bridge. “Report!”

Serena was ready for her. “Quarantine is down, two days early. The Ossyrian pyramid ship is about to leave orbit. The single Q’Roth Hunter Class vessel is still on the ground.”

“Long range tactical?”

Serena tapped a screen. “A Q’Roth Marauder is inbound, no callsign registering –”

“Louise,” Sister Esma interrupted. “Interesting.” Louise had always been a wild card. That had been advantageous when she’d controlled Louise, but she didn’t anymore. Sister Esma drummed her fingers, wondering what she was up to. Then she caught Serena’s expression. “More?”

“Yes – ah – good, they’re in sensor range now.” Serena touched the console and a starchart holo appeared, showing Louise’s Marauder and another vessel almost in-system. Serena put her finger against the moving blob on the 3D display. “A Mannekhi spike-ship is coming in fast, again no callsign but that’s to be expected; we cannot decode enemy insignia. We only picked it up three minutes ago.”

Sister Esma moved towards the display, inspecting a blur like a faint comet’s tail approaching from the same direction as the spike ship. “And what, may I ask, is that?” It looked like the wake from a craft, but there was no vessel at its head.

Serena pursed her lips. “We don’t know. The Q’Roth don’t either, it seems. It’s not in their database.”

Sister Esma surveyed the sector holo, Esperia and its two moons dead centre. Bringing down the barrier early was a smart move she hadn’t given them credit for, but it would make no difference. The fact that the Hunter was still on the ground suggested that either they were not expecting attack, or the vessel itself was disabled, or else they had been divided concerning this action – perhaps the Ossyrians were called back early to their new base planet. Again, it changed little, and the Hunter was not a serious threat against Serena and their smaller but faster Raptor craft.

Louise – if it was indeed her former protégé – could prove to be   an asset or a distraction. She had to admit, though, that she would like to have Louise back after all this time. True, she’d tried to have Louise killed after the sacking of Earth, but Louise was Alician, and would see the larger picture.

The Mannekhi Spike-ship, however, could prove to be a problem. She decided to delay the launching of the planet-cutter tendrils until its motivation had been discerned – spike-ships were unpredictable, as were the Mannekhi generally. The space anomaly – that was a known unknown, a risk that would need to be handled tactically as it developed.

The assessment had taken her five seconds. She dismissed Serena back to her station. She turned to address her crew and the two Q’Roth warriors.

“This changes nothing, our strategy remains the same. First, the absolute priority is to take fifty to a hundred captives from Esperia to restore our future survival prospects. We will not under any circumstances attack Esperia before those people are secured. Second, we disable and preferably destroy the Ossyrian vessel before it can transit out of the sector, and neutralize the Hunter vessel once airborne – it is too close to their precious Esperantia at present.”

“Third, we destroy Esperia using the planet-cutter as agreed with the Q’Roth queen, to make it look like an accident –” she bowed slightly to the Q’Roth warriors, who remained immobile, “– unless this becomes difficult, in which case we launch missiles to obliterate Esperantia and most of the surrounding continent. If we take that course of action, we, the Alicians, and I personally, will take full responsibility for our actions, absolving the Q’Roth of any and all complicity.” She stared at the two warriors. “Is this agreed?”

The two simultaneously clicked their mid-claws together twice, fast.

Sister Esma turned to the rest of her crew. “Is any of what I have said unclear? If so, speak now, for mistakes will not be tolerated once battle is joined.”

Serena studied the rest of the crew. “I believe everything is clear, your Eminence.”

Sister Esma took her command chair. “Do we have a clear shot at the Ossyrian pyramid ship?”

“In five minutes,” Serena replied.

“As soon as we are ready, take us out of stealth mode, and open fire.”

◆◆◆

Kat awoke in darkness, and could still see what she’d just been dreaming. Six Q’Roth letters. She knew a little about Q’Roth script, but to her it didn’t make any word she recognized. It blazed in her mind like an after-image, ivory figures against the indefinable blackness of night. It felt like she had been staring at them for hours whilst asleep, which made no sense.

“Lights,” she said, and her room was bathed in Q’Roth standard mustard light. At least she wasn’t restrained anymore. She lifted her right wrist to her mouth, too weary to get out of bed or even lift her head.

“Aramisk? I’m awake. Can you help me, please?”

She lay there trying to work out what had happened before, but it was all mixed up in her head, and her mind felt as exhausted as her body.

As soon as Aramisk entered, Kat interrogated her. How long? Where are we? Where are we headed? Where is the Hohash? What is Louise’s plan?

She didn’t care much for any of the answers she received. If Louise teamed up with Sister Esma, Micah and the others wouldn’t stand a chance. Everyone she knew would be killed. Kat thought her nightmares had been bad, but this felt like endgame. Her stomach knotted.

Aramisk was unusually quiet, even for her. Kat guessed why.  “What will happen to you, Tarish and the others?”

Aramisk’s face clouded over. “She said she will take us with her.”

Kat said nothing, she didn’t need to join the dots for a Mannekhi.

“What does Tarish say?”

Aramisk looked even less happy, if that was possible. “He says we are bound to her, we must do her bidding. If she disposes of us, which is his and my prediction, then so be it.”

“So, you let her kill you? Just like that?”

Aramisk’s voice grew harsh. “No, not ‘just like that’. You know nothing about us, our history… what we’ve been through. Besides, Louise carries that damned rifle with her all the time now. We’ve never encountered anything so lethal.”

Kat remembered something. “What if I could distract her, get her away from the Bridge?”

Aramisk regarded her with suspicion. “How?”

Kat wanted to keep it to herself for the moment. “Can’t you trust me?”

Aramisk snorted. “No. Mannekhi live and die as teams. We don’t hide anything from each other. That is our code. Tell me now or this conversation goes no further.”

“But then you will tell Tarish, and he’ll inform Louise and I’ll be dead within seconds.”

Aramisk paused. “You need my help or you wouldn’t be asking.” She got up and walked a circle. “There is a blood debt between us: I owe you for saving my life at the forest planet.” She stopped. “Very well, speak now and I may decide to delay telling Tarish.”

“Christ, remind me never to haggle with one of your kind!”

Aramisk waited.

Kat tried to sit up, and Aramisk came over to help her. As she held Kat in her arms, their faces neared, and Aramisk kissed Kat, locking her in an embrace.

Kat was completely surprised, also because Aramisk was one hell of a kisser. “What…?”

“Do you think your species is the only one to have same-gender attraction? My own lover was killed in action four years ago.” She released Kat, and stood. “Your plan, please.”

Kat swallowed. At least it had got her blood flowing again; she felt her face flushing. “Right. Um…” She briefly imagined Micah and Antonia witnessing that kiss – the tables turned. But thinking of Micah brought her neatly back to her plan. She cleared her throat. “Last time we dealt with Louise, Micah killed her.”

Aramisk placed her hands on her hips.

“Well, to be precise, it was another called Jen, but it was Micah’s plan, which is why she hates him so much. Anyway, she had a back-up clone.”

“Ah. And you think she has one onboard.”

“Definitely. She must go there frequently, at least once every few days, to download recent memories, so that if she’s killed –”

“Yes, yes. You want me to find it. I think I already know where it is, as I have access to security logs detailing movements, and there is an area of the ship, a locked room near to where Louise carries out her training regime. But it will require an entry code, most probably her command override code, in Largyl 9.” She folded her arms. “Do you have this code?”

Kat recalled the figures she had dreamed, carved into her mind. The Hohash was an omnipath, it could access the entire ship’s database and see straight through any code. When Louise had been about to destroy it, it must have sent the code to her, a last attempt to aid her. She felt sorry for it, as if she’d lost a beautiful, trusting animal. She also knew it must have been incredibly old, and now was gone forever.

“Yes,” she said.

Aramisk studied Kat, then began to walk in a circle again, hands clasped behind her back. “We arrive in Esperia’s system in two hours. The location is deck 4, room alpha 17. If you can disable the clone, and we can get her off the bridge, I might be able to persuade Tarish.” She stopped pacing again. “But if he says ‘no’, then I will not defy him. Do you accept these conditions?”

Kat nodded. Aramisk headed for the door. Kat found herself calling after her. “Wait? Wait a minute, please.” She got up off the bed, and staggered toward Aramisk, who met her mid-room, supporting her in her arms.

Kat looked into those eyes, for the first time not repulsed at some subliminal level by their alien nature. “Aramisk, in a few hours we’re both likely dead, and if there is an after-life, we’ll both be reunited with our lovers.”

“So?”

Kat knew it was wrong, but she needed something to get her through what she had to do. “So… kiss me again, one last time? Aramisk, Plea–”

Chapter 15

First Strike

Blake felt a chill run down his spine when he heard the ripping sound coming from the sky as the Quarantine shield came down. He stared upwards. A spot of red blazed in the sky’s zenith, then stretched into a circle of fire racing outwards in all directions towards the horizon. Thunder boomed across a cloudless afternoon sky, then silence poured in. The other four men all turned as one to him.

“Let’s get to the ship. We need to get into the game, and it’s going to take place up there.”

They ran all the way.

Blake stood at the Hunter vessel’s portal, with his back to Zack’s Transpar in the pilot’s chair, Marcus at the weapons console. He gazed at the screen as their blue-black Q’Roth Hunter Class vessel, shaped like an armoured crab and half the size of a football field, lifted from the ground, retracting its six squat legs. The inquisitive crowd dispersed, ushered away by Vasquez’s militia. Vasquez would coordinate Ops – if there were any – from the dome. Ramires, working with Gabriel’s partner Virginia, was to set up armed Youngblood trios – they functioned best that way – at each main intersection of Esperantia, while several militia patrols had been dispatched to the farms.

Vasquez had earlier posed a question as he shaded his sight from the afternoon sun, looking towards Hazzards Ridge. “What about the spiders, Blake? Will they join the fight if it comes?”

Blake had thought about it often. In many ways he still hardly knew them – they always seemed non-violent, artistic. They had sacrificed themselves during the previous Q’Roth incursion a thousand years earlier in order to save their unhatched young, not firing a single weapon. In fact, he’d never seen so much as a spider dagger.

“Wouldn’t count on it,” he’d replied.

Vasquez carried on his preparations. “Should we head out to the hills? From space, Esperantia looks like a big round target.”

Vasquez had a point, Blake thought, studying Esperantia from the ascending ship. From above, the town was roughly circular, its rooves glinting from the zinc solar panels, corrugated lines marking out the main streets, pockets of plazas here and there, stubby three-storey blocks on each corner with low-rises in-between.

Five churches, including the Monofaith, faced off each other in Pentangle Square, notable for its minarets and steeples competing for height. The square park on the opposite side from Pentangle, next to the schools, was a soft, easy target, where strafing invaders would reap scattering humans like wheat. As for the Dome at Esperantia’s Northern edge, it stared upwards like an innocent, unblinking eye gazing at the sky, inviting a single well-chosen missile. During WWIII Blake had commanded enough strikes on enemy outposts to know how to level a place like Esperantia in short order. He was tempted to shut off the display.

Vasquez had told Blake that Antonia was handling a crisis meeting of the Council, which right now included anyone who could squeeze inside the Monofaith, answering the question of whether they should ship some people out. It would take two hours to reach the caves they’d first found on their arrival, those that led down to the underground ocean. Esperantia had subterranean shelters, Micah and he had seen to it years ago. Yet one serious-sized nuke would finish the town and cremate anyone below ground. So, the big question was how long they had.

Word had been sent to the fringe town on Lake Taka two hundred kilometres away, but there were only two hundred residents in scattered homesteads, those who couldn’t take the ‘big city life’ of Esperantia.

The Transpar lifted them away from the town and Blake spied ivory Shimsha, and felt a pang of regret. He’d sworn to Glenda to protect the spider race, and yet at the first sniff of trouble here he was, backing humanity again.

Sonja’s medical team was already gearing up the infirmary, with paramedics ready just in case. Weapons had been dispatched to all able-bodied men, and although Marcus and Virginia had persuaded the Youngbloods to work alongside the militia, they all knew that if it came to a ground assault, each group would fight according to its training and style. Blake consoled himself that, altogether, it wasn’t too bad given how much time he’d had to prepare. But then he caught himself – in reality they’d had eighteen years to prepare for this day, and now it had arrived, their readiness was pitiful.

The Transpar accelerated the Hunter into Esperia’s deep-blue ionosphere.

“Like old times, Zack.”

The Transpar didn’t respond, nor did Blake expect him to, long ago having given up the ghost of his friend. “Transpar or not, you’re still the best goddammed pilot on the planet.” Blake decided there and then, that even if only one per cent of that glass being was still Zack, then that was enough, especially as they were about to go into battle. He decided to call him Zack forthwith.

He glanced at Marcus, who looked uneasy. Blake would have preferred a crew of just himself and Zack, but he needed someone to liaise with Gabriel, if that was possible, someone Gabriel trusted. And he needed a good man at the weapons console. Blake had no doubt Marcus’ reactions would be quicker than his own.

“Marcus, can you contact Gabriel?”

Marcus nodded. His hands tapped at the tall Q’Roth console, its green light reflecting off his sixteen-year-old chin, barely registering  the stubble he undoubtedly longed for.

“He’s not responding.” Marcus paused. “Sir.”

Blake sat in the forward command chair. “But I’ll bet he’s listening.

Open a channel, and see if you can bring up a visual of the Pyramid.” Blake heard a click and a sound like a distant stream. “Gabriel, this is Commander Blake Alexander. Long time no see. I know what your plan is, and I’m not going to interfere, but we should coordinate our efforts. Do you agree?”

There was no visual; stealth mode, Blake assumed. The sound of trickling water continued. “Is he reading me?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then you try. In Hremsta.”

Marcus clicked for around thirty seconds, while Blake momentarily let his head rest against the back of the chair. He closed his eyes. Well, here I am again Glenda, sixty years of age and still kicking. Maybe I’ll see you soon. He knew what her response would have been. Nothing reckless now, you look after that young boy. He opened his eyes. Fast clicks and guttural noises came through from Gabriel’s ship. Progress.

Blake was about to ask when the Transpar broke in. “We are not alone. A Q’Roth warship, range two million kilometres, stealth mode. I cannot yet tell the vessel’s class.”

“Marcus, relay it to Gabriel!”

Marcus stuttered the message in Hremsta as fast as he could.

“Blake, this is Micah. We aren’t picking up any vessel other than yours.”

Blake frowned. Since when did Micah speak Hremsta? “Micah, Zack’s at the controls, patched into the Hunter’s sensor arrays. I don’t doubt him – if he says it’s there, it’s there.”

Micah continued. “Okay – Gabriel is going to deploy one of the mines as a missile, please relay us some telemetry – ship codes – anything – so we can target the ship.”

“Roger.” He turned to watch Zack’s crystal fingers blur over the keypad.

Marcus nodded. “Co-ordinates sent.”

Blake was thrown sideways out of his chair as their ship lurched to one side. He clawed his way back, struggling against the G-force of intense acceleration, noting that Marcus had managed to stay with his console. “Report,” he barked.

The Transpar responded with its cool, tinkling voice. “The warship fired on us and the pyramid too. We took minor damage, and I am executing a fractal defence pattern so they cannot get a fix on us. The inertial gravity will protect you now – my first evasive manoeuvre was a little extreme.”

Blake regained his chair. “Show me the Ossyrian vessel, split screen.”

The pyramid spun slowly, punched by pulse beams from the warship. Stealth mode had failed, and the pyramid hung like a spinning sapphire in space. Hell’s teeth, how could they detect and target it so accurately from so far away?

Marcus interrupted. “Gabriel has launched the Ossyrian genetic weapon. Five seconds…”

Blake waited, then shielded his eyes as space lit up with green saccadic flashes. The Level Eight weapon, refined for the Ossyrians by the Tla Beth, was known and feared throughout the galaxy, employing a gamma-based carrier wave to penetrate hulls and infect non-coded DNA. Yet Blake wondered if counter-measures had been developed during the War – after all, it had not stopped Qorall’s advance. The Q’Roth vessel stopped firing, and Blake held his breath. At least the beam pulses had ceased. He prayed Gabriel’s gambit had worked.

“Blake,” Micah said over the comms, “we took some damage, the Ossyrian shields are still holding, barely. It appears the Q’Roth firepower has increased since this particular Pyramid-ship was last updated.”

“Do you have any conventional weapons, beams or missiles?” Even as he asked, he doubted they would help. The Ossyrian vessel might be Level Eight compared to Q’Roth Level Six, but so much time had passed, and weapon-tech had undoubtedly advanced during the ongoing war.

“No,” Micah answered, hints of desperation and frustration in his voice.

A yellow pulse beam flashed across Blake’s viewscreen, slapping straight into the pyramid. Dammit!

“Zack, intercept the Q’Roth ship, full speed with your fractal pattern, don’t be afraid to shake us up a little.”

Marcus looked up from his console. “Suicide run?”

“Not today, son. Hail the warship, let’s see how personal this is.”

Marcus tried. “No reply.”

Okay, Blake thought, have it your way, strictly professional. “Micah, Gabriel, we’re going in. I have a nannite warhead and a nuke. Won’t down the warship, but maybe I can take out their beam weapon and distract them for a while.” He wondered why it wasn’t coming closer, but then why should it, it could do all it needed to from a safe distance. The real question was why it hadn’t fired on Esperantia, now that the Q’Roth – or whoever was aboard that ship – knew the barrier must have come down.

Gabriel came online. “Commander. Clearly they want something from us.”

Gabriel’s last word jarred as Blake saw three pulses smack simultaneously into the pyramid, its own evasive manoeuvres failing to outpace the Q’Roth warship’s targeting capability. A blackened smudge scarred the pyramid’s mid-section, some of the mirror-like exterior appearing fused and warped. Blake winced; there were casualties for sure.

He stood. “Gabriel, get behind the moon while you still can.” But even as he said it, the pyramid vanished, and Blake reminded himself these kids were smart. Sure enough they showed up where he’d advised.

Blake sat down again, and called up the long-range viewscreen. The enemy warship was long, large structures at the front end, engines at the rear, but most of it was uniform, without any gun turrets or obvious function. He frowned. “Marcus, do you recognize that ship configuration from any of the Ossyrian databases?”

Marcus walked down a few steps from his console and stood next to Blake, as if he needed to get closer to the screen to verify what his eyes had already confirmed.

“It’s a planet-cutter, Sir, Crucible Class. They haven’t been in use since the Eruvian uprising two thousand years ago, except for demolition during solar system re-balancing.” He returned to his station.

Blake steepled his fingers in front of him. Sonofabitch. Blake had heard about them, but never seen so much as a schematic. So, that was the attacker’s plan. Blake guessed it would have to get a lot closer to Esperia to deploy the weapon, so Gabriel was right, whoever was out there wanted something first.

Micah came online. “Blake, we’re out of the action for a while. We took heavy damage, and that last jump triggered a general power failure.” Micah sounded rattled, though trying to put a brave face on it.

“Micah you take care of yourselves for a while. I always said the best place to have an accident is in a hospital. We’ll keep them occupied.”

Gabriel spoke, his voice uneven. “Commander, I fear I have misjudged the situation, we –”

“Stow it, Gabriel,” Blake interrupted. “You and your Youngbloods were right, and we should have listened.” And I should have been there to listen. “If you hadn’t done anything we’d have been easy meat. You gave it your best shot. Now get that ship back up and running, I’m damned sure we’re going to need it active pretty soon.”

He turned to Marcus, who was staring at him. “Apprise Vasquez of the situation. Relay him all our telemetry. Tell him to prepare.”

“For what, Sir?”

Blake could feel it in his gut; he knew what was coming, though he had no idea what they wanted or why. “Tell him to prepare for ground assault. They’ll be coming soon.”

Their Hunter zigzagged as sporadic beams from the destroyer tried to target them. Every once in a while the ship was punched sideways as one of the energy pulses struck a glancing blow, but they were steadily closing the gap. He knew no human pilot, not even Zack, could fly like this, anticipating and reacting with lightning speed. Still, it was taking too long. He slapped his thighs. “Zack, can’t you go any faster, dammit?”

“Sure, boss.”

Blake swivelled his head to face the Transpar. What did you just say? Marcus, deep in discussion with Vasquez, hadn’t heard it. Blake spoke quietly to his crystal companion. “Zack? Is that you?” But there was no response, the Transpar looking serene as ever, glass eyes glinting and staring straight ahead at the nav-displays in front of him, his fingers dancing over the console, enabling all of them to escape being fried alive.

Blake clutched the edges of his command chair. They were nearly in range, fifty thousand miles from the Crucible. But he detected movement on the mid-range scanner. “Marcus?”

“Sir, seven smaller craft – Raptor Class – just left the Crucible, heading towards us.”

No, he thought, they’re going maximum speed towards Esperia, though a couple might slow to tackle us en route.

Marcus voiced the question Blake was pondering. “Do we engage them?”

Blake studied the tactical screen, the vectors, the time-to-intercept display. He knew if they went into a dogfight, they could be damaged or taken out – Raptors were short range, more manoeuvrable than a Hunter, harder to hit. He had ten seconds before intercept. If only he knew their mission.

“Zack, slide into their path, so at least the destroyer won’t fire on us. Maintain speed but increase spin. Just before intercept, thrust to avoid any grav-mines they deploy and launch port and starboard spikeshot… well, you know what I want, right, a dead-man’s flourish?”

The Transpar nodded.

Marcus interjected. “What you’re asking is impossible! Even the Transpar can’t –”

Blake raised a hand, and Marcus cut off the rest of his words. They both watched the screen. Blake brought up the aft viewscreen, too. The tactic was the equivalent of an old-style Uzi machine gun being whirled around to catch anything in its spray: the Hunter would spin and jettison HB-enhanced proton-heavy clusters – shot, in layman’s terms – into the enemy’s pathway. The Raptors’ own speed would magnify the kinetic energy of the impact, their normal bow-wave deflectors overwhelmed by the super-dense material. If enough made contact they could tear a ship apart. That was the theory, but in practice it was very difficult due to the relative speeds. It was like firing a rifle at a rider galloping past a narrow window, the shooter using a microscope for a lens. Time to see what the Transpar can really do.

On the forescreen, seven pinpricks of light blurred large then were gone. At the same moment on the aft screen, seven blobs flashed down to nothingness, but then two of them flared into a shower of red sparks before vanishing.

Marcus was speechless, though he let out a short laugh. His right arm tensed, as if he was going to punch the air, but instead he faced the Transpar and bowed deep, a fist over his heart.

Blake smiled, but knew what was coming. He turned to Zack. “Well done, buddy. You’d better increase our defence moves, whoever is on that Crucible is going to be pretty pissed.”

Blake was proven correct almost immediately. A lattice of pulse beam tracers lit up space all around them, jarring the ship. Zack’s frame leaned forward, zen-like concentration smoothing his face so that his nose seemed to recede and the eyes grew larger, as they dodged a hailstorm of fire from the Crucible.

Blake watched the Transpar, wondering if it could sweat, feeling proud of what his erstwhile friend had done. But the growing density of enemy beams told him they’d never reach their target in one piece.

“Turn about, Zack, use fractal dodge but stay in the Raptors’ slipstream, chase them back to Esperia.”

He walked up to Marcus’ station. “Think we can target any of them?”

Marcus hit a pad and a 3D image of a spherical grid showed the five remaining Raptors closing on Esperia, the Hunter lagging well behind. Marcus’ brow furrowed. “Not till they decelerate outside Esperia’s atmosphere, if that’s what they intend to do. Even then we’d risk striking Esperantia ourselves if we missed.”

Marcus laid his right forefinger along his nose, studying the Raptors’ flight pattern. It was a gesture Blake had seen Genners do when they concentrated: considering all the eventualities, playing them forward in probabilistic time. He recalled the chess matches Micah had instituted to check the children’s development, and how the really good adult players had learned to hate this forefinger habit, as it was usually shortly followed within a few moves by checkmate. Blake recalled the bitter rows over the Genning of the children, how he’d fought and lost against Micah on that issue. Now, maybe for the first time, he realised its advantages.

He stared at the pattern too, but there were too many unknowns for him to handle: the enemy’s intention, including their identity, their pattern when they decided to attack, and their armoury capacity… All he knew was that humanity had one vessel against five Raptors; he had to even the odds.

“You have an idea, Marcus?”

He nodded. “Yes, but very risky.”

Blake assumed they were on the same track. “How many could we take down?”

“Two, maybe three.”

“Are we still alive afterwards?”

Marcus’ eyes met Blake’s.

Blake nodded, then returned to his station. He punched a control. “Gabriel, Micah, Vasquez, you’re all on comms. We’ll be coming in hot behind the Raptors. My guess is they’re on a ground assault. Don’t know why, but that Crucible can only be here for one reason, to destroy Esperia. We’re going to try and take down a couple of the Raptors. Vasquez, get everyone prepped down there, they’ll be coming in in five minutes. Gabriel, Micah, do you have jump capability?”

“Blake, it’s Petra, Micah and Gabriel are busy. Negative.”

“Then damn well get it back, and get Chahat-Me to call for –”

“The Crucible is jamming everything.”

So, a surgical strike, whatever it was, then a clean-up operation. No witnesses. And it meant he had no real strategy, just tactical manoeuvres. That had implications for chain of command. “Vasquez, you’re now in charge.”

There was a pause. He knew Vasquez would catch the implication that Blake and the others might not survive. A second later, Vasquez replied, his voice firm. “Good hunting, Sir.”

“Marcus, tell Zack what you need him to do.”

As he listened to Marcus’ words, he smiled. It was brilliant, and yet underlying it was a very old strategy, one he’d heard from Bill Kilaney forty years ago during close combat training. Bill had simply said, “If you don’t want to miss, make sure you’re touching your opponent.” He’d called it the bayonet strategy, after the ancient horrors of the First World War trenches, when young men had to learn to kill others directly, pushing cold steel into their enemies’ bellies and hearts, prising the life out of them. Fear made most men do it, because if they didn’t, they’d be on the receiving end instead. Being in ships, fighting with energy beams and missiles made it feel more distant, less personal, but in the end it wasn’t. You lock onto your enemy, you touch him, and then you kill him, you tear his life from him. That was war. That was what you did to protect those you loved. Glenda was far from his mind when he was in this mode, and he knew she found it difficult to accept, it being the one sore point in their long marriage they’d argued over countless times.

But then, he figured, in about five minutes he’d have plenty of time to explain.

Marcus came and stood next to Blake. “It’s all set. Four minutes, Zack and I will coordinate on tactical, you, Sir, just…”

“I promise not to touch anything.”

“Commander. Us Genners… I feel we’ve been foolish. Thinking we’re so much smarter, and yet we’re only a level or at most two above you, and out here, that means little.”

Blake nodded. “Enough foolishness to go around.” He turned to Marcus, still a boy, as proud as any sixteen-year-old would be. The Genners had become distanced from their parents, they’d lost something. If Glenda was there, she’d have wrapped her arms around the boy, and hugged him.

“Take your station, Marcus.”

Marcus obeyed. Blake stared into the viewscreen, the dot dead centre where Esperia would suddenly grow large in about four minutes. Glenda, he thought to himself, I’m bringing some friends home. Despite facing almost certain death, he smiled.

Chapter 16

History Lesson

Pierre had spied the majesty of nebulas from a distance  many times before, their swirling scarlets, violets and Prussian blues a semi- transparent palette against a canvas of stars. But being inside a nebula was different. Ukrull’s Ice Pick whorled through curtains of energy and dark radiation that made the small ship vibrate. The viewscreen showed vermillion veils buffeting them, and showers of purple super-charged exotic particles that spattered like hail on the hull’s shields. Blood orange lightning stretched thousands of kilometres into the endless distance, only serving to emphasise the strangeness of what was known as the Diamond Nebula.

For Pierre, sights such as these were what he lived for. They more than compensated for the loss of emotional connection with his former companions, including the first and only woman he had ever loved, and the baby he had never seen grow up into the eighteen year old girl she was by now. To him, that whole period had been before, the dark, chaotic and mostly unhappy life of a socially-inept scientist staggering blindly on the hazardous spaceway of complex human social interactions. That was before his nannites interacted with an Ossyrian medical intervention, sending his intellect rocketing from Level Four to Ten.

But Pierre wanted to help his former associates; he felt he owed them that much. Having finally met the Tla Beth, the incumbent rulers and administrators of Grid Society, he and Ukrull were about to meet a Kalarash, the most intelligent beings in the known universe. The one emotion he still allowed himself to manifest was the unbridled and pure scientific joy of discovery, of wonder. A thin smile decorated his flow-metal face.

Ukrull said little, navigating as if bored, searching, hunting according to no discernible pattern. They had come to find Hellera, officially the last Kalarash in the galaxy, given that Kalaran had left eighteen years earlier. He wondered about the relationship between the two, if there was any. The Tla Beth wanted her aid, though the avatar of Kat had suggested a more sinister tactical mission. He’d dismissed it; aside from the very idea that he could capture a Level Nineteen being, it felt…wrong.

He still didn’t know how far Ukrull’s telepathy could penetrate, whether the reptile had detected this other option of trying to kidnap Hellera as a future bargaining chip with Qorall. If so, Ukrull had kept his own counsel. There was no point in Pierre trying to conceal a thought from the Ranger, which Pierre presumed would only serve to amplify it. Next to the currently dormant Hohash mirror was a holo-display that tapped into the Tla Beth Grid-net, requiring a sub-vocal guttural command for activation. Pierre uttered the grunt, much to Ukrull’s amusement judging by the bout of hacking and spitting that followed, and regarded the display of the galactic war’s progress. Half the galaxy glowed red, including that half’s spiral arms. The inner core blazed white, since there was nothing worth conquering there. The war front was like an unstoppable tsunami wave, tongues of flame licking outward, enveloping systems one by one. Esperia lay like a dusty pearl in its path.

Six months, Pierre judged.

“Your offspring there,” Ukrull grunted, tugging with a claw at something the colour of spinach caught between two giant stained incisors.

Pierre said nothing.

“Two days,” Ukrull continued.

Two days till Quarantine came down. Pierre didn’t need reminding. He wondered again how Kat and Petra were doing, and Micah and Blake, and the Genned children. But it seemed pointless to speculate, and he’d left it all behind. He noticed that the thought had wiped the smile off his face. Perhaps it was time to carry out another emotional thought-pattern purge.

“Miss them,” Ukrull pursued.

Pierre turned to face Ukrull. Telepaths could be quite annoying, evidently, probably why they never settled down with a mate. “Why are you so talkative all of a sudden? And this flight plan is ridiculous. We’ll never find her.”

“Not flight plan; dance.”

Pierre wondered if his companion had inadvertently drugged himself somehow. Before he could continue, Ukrull took up the lead again.

“To find something must know what looks like.”

Pierre’s mouth opened, but his thoughts overtook him: Ukrull talkative; erratic flight plan; know what you’re looking for; Level Nineteen race…

“Hellera?” he ventured.

Ukrull sat back, and his yellow eyes softened as he folded his fore- claws across his ribbed, sand-coloured underbelly. He – or rather she – seemed to be smiling. “Ukrull gave me permission.”

Pierre stood, despite himself. “How long?”

“A day.”

“Telep –”

“Naturally.”

So, Hellera had been watching him, seeing the Tla Beth plan in his mind, maybe the other one, too. Now she had made her presence known, she faced him square, held his gaze the way Ukrull never did, and had that unperturbed confidence of a superior being. Pierre wanted to know how she could inhabit Ukrull’s body and mind, and where Ukrull was exactly, but all of that was secondary – while she was there, he had more important questions. His excitement ramped up inside himself, unchecked. He was smiling again.

“Will you join the fight against Qorall?”

Ukrull’s voluminous rust-coloured tongue flicked out and rolled over his eyes. “My effort alone would make no substantive difference.”

“Then what is your plan?”

Ukrull made the grunting noise that controlled the galactic display, which shifted into the centre of the cramped cabin, and hung between them.

“History lesson,” Hellera said, “of life in this galaxy. Tell me what you understand.”

The swirl of stars turned slowly about its axis. Time. She was showing him time speeded up at an incredible rate. He calculated the galaxy’s rate of turn and converted it – a million years per second. Nothing happened for a while, then a spark flared in a spiral then snuffed out, signifying a civilisation flourishing and fading into obsolescence and extinction. Several more peppered the display, each one barely registering before fading. For a few seconds, an entire spiral waxed red, and then thousands of star systems glowed violet, indicating a terrible and all-consuming war, then faded to black, a few star systems hanging on before reverting to grey, indicating their civilisations and grand empires had decayed into oblivion.

And so it continued. He worked out where Earth was, and kept   half an eye on it, but knew that at this rate of time lapse it would not even show up as having produced sentient life and civilisation. Then a swelling ring of stars lit up around the inner hub, inward of the spirals, flickered precariously, and remained bright. The Grid. The interstellar highway that had fuelled and cemented a galactic society. It lasted a full ten seconds, rippling out to most of the spirals, then froze. Today.

He wanted more. “Hellera, can you fast-forward, please, most likely prediction.”

The reptile’s yellow eyes blinked lazily one at a time, so Hellera never took an eye off him. The stars all returned to their silver-grey pinpricks, all civilisation extinguished, and then the galaxy split apart, shattered into myriad motes losing cohesion, imploding, becoming dust, the dark matter and energy forces that bind a galaxy together depleted. Just like before, Pierre thought, according to the legends of the war two billon years ago in the Jannahi galaxy when the Kalarash last joined battle against Qorall.

Pierre sat back. She had asked him to say what he understood, but the shock of knowing the likely end numbed him.

Hellera spoke, the harshness somehow removed from Ukrull’s larynx. “The time between enduring civilisations is very long. You should know this from your own history – four billion years – and humanity has only evolved in the last couple of million, the beginnings of civilisation just dawning before almost being erased.”

She stood, Ukrull’s long tail swiping slowly side to side. “We Kalarash get terribly lonely in those times of darkness. We see the same mistakes over and over again.”

Pierre sensed the despair of a goddess whose children were forever doomed. He wanted to counter this pessimism. “But this is different, Hellera. The Grid is something spectacular, a glue to fix society into the galaxy’s fabric, make it sustainable, and Qorall threatens it all. Why? And how can you not fight him, while there is still a chance, even if remote?”

Ukrull’s head shook. “Listen to yourself. You are supposed to be Level Ten. Do you care for the ants around your feet?”

“I might if I had cultivated them for generations.”

She snorted, a stream of salty snot issuing forward from one nostril, drenching a console that immediately exuded a resinous cleaning compound. But she grew more serious. “We fought his race, killed all of them, Qorall is the last. It takes a long time to get to Level Nineteen. As you already have guessed, the higher the species, the lower the successful reproduction rate – the maturation takes so long, too many mutations along the way. A natural negative feedback loop.” Her voice became distant. “Your Level Three companions might consider it God’s little joke on us, perhaps, and maybe just as well, we are not easy to get along with. Still, Kalaran and I tried…” Her tail swished out and struck a boxed equipment item, denting it. “Qorall cannot create mates or his own kind. But he can exact revenge.”

“Yet he doesn’t target you directly.” But Pierre already understood. Qorall wanted to make the Kalarash suffer first. And yet it still seemed wrong, as if Qorall had another agenda. Something Kat had said a long time ago. Pierre needed to backtrack. He didn’t know how much time he would have with Hellera, and sensed her growing impatience, perhaps boredom. After all, he was effectively just another ant. “Why did you go to war with Qorall the first time?”

Ukrull’s tongue flicked over his eyes again, as the large reptile settled back into its chair. “Guess.”

Pierre went straight at it. “The Level Eighteen race. It’s to do with them, isn’t it?”

“You are quite smart for a Level Ten. But there is a piece you have not yet understood, a key question you have not yet asked. What would Kat ask if she were here?”

It seemed such a non sequitur, but Pierre obliged, not hiding the fact that he thought the question derisory. “Well… she’d probably ask what you looked like.”

“Yes, she would. Not quite the right question, though. It does not concern what we look like.”

Pierre’s sight went black, before him a uniform darkness. Something blue and metallic began forming out of the ether in front of him. Two bars extended horizontally, an oval ring above them at their mid-point, with a long stalk protruding downwards. The ring, shaped like the outline of a hood, contained a thin stretched film of rapidly changing colours, moving faster than his sight could follow, not unlike a Hohash display. Suddenly the flickering colours stilled into a single ivory and blue eye, which vanished.

What remained before him, blue-silver, was a shape familiar to any historian back on Earth. It was the ancient Egyptian ankh symbol of life and water.  But it wasn’t only a shape, he could sense an order, a way of thinking; the only analogy he could bring to mind was an old-style computer operating system.

His eyes opened again. So what? It was interesting, but what was so significant about this shape and its underlying ‘programming’?

“Template,” Hellera said. “Basic form, instinctive reactions and thought processes.” She sighed as if Pierre was a dullard. “Inter-species genetic paradigm.”

Pierre’s mouth fell open. He closed his eyes and called up every alien image he’d studied in Grid history, mapping them against the physical and cognitive ankh template, humans included. He integrated all available information about their thinking strategies up to Level Ten, as he couldn’t comprehend beyond that point. Still, he tried to extrapolate all the way up to Level Seventeen. The template was like a genetic prime number. One species stood apart. “Tla Beth,” he said.

“Changed now, originally they fit the template.” “Qorall?”

“No. He is from a distant galaxy, his species brought back by a travelling Kalarash named Bareel.”

Pierre pondered the implications. She’d somehow moved into Ukrull’s mind. If most intelligent life in the galaxy had been seeded by the Kalarash, probably after watching it stutter and stall too many times on its own, then it would also give the Kalarash a way in, like a DNA key, to any of those species. A control mechanism, bringing order. It was also a failsafe device in case of rebellion. He recalled what the Grid races called the Kalarash – the Progenitors. How apt. It made it clearer why Qorall would be content to destroy all life in the galaxy.

Pierre tried again. “The Level Eighteen race?”

“A particular brand of machine intelligence.”

Pierre nodded. He’d often wondered about the Tla Beth’s imposed limitations on drone intelligence. “Went bad?”

Hellera cleared the other nostril. “That adjective doesn’t really cover it.”

“So, your plan?”

“To leave.”

Pierre had hoped for more, and let the disappointment ring loud inside his mind, in case it would have an effect. It did. She was gone. He knew it even before Ukrull started growling, and then howling with a deafening roar, the din ricocheting off the walls, making Pierre clamp his hands over his ears, his nannite-enhanced physiology not protecting him as it usually did. Hellera’s doing, he assumed. His entire skin tingled from head to toe as if ants were crawling over him and chewing at him with formic-acid-coated mandibles, and he wondered how long Hellera would make it endure. After a minute it abated.

“You dumb!” Ukrull said, kicking a range of controls that sent them spinning back towards the nebula’s edge. “Why ask wrong questions?”

Pierre scratched the last itch from his chin and managed not to glare at Ukrull. “What would you have asked?”

Ukrull leant back, and held his fore-claws above his rib-cage, as if holding a ball. “Why Esperia?”

Ah, yes, that question had been on his list.

“Doesn’t matter, know now,” Ukrull said.

Pierre looked at his companion. “You do?” He could never tell when Ukrull was grinning, but a couple of larger incisors thrust out beyond the Ranger’s mangled mud-coloured lips more than usual.

Ukrull grunted a command, and a new holo popped up between them. He muttered something and an image of Shimsha from Hazzards’ Ridge arose. Pierre watched the spiders milling about. Okay, what was so special about the spiders? The template. They didn’t fit the template, neither in shape nor in thought format. “Wait, you mean they’ve evolved here separately?”

Ukrull did the eye-licking thing, which Pierre presumed equated with eye-rolling. Then he got it.

“Not from this galaxy,” Ukrull said. “Kalaran brought spiders here.”

Pierre sat back, reeling from the implications. “But they are only Level Four! They have no weapons, no real tech, how can they help? What threat can they be to Qorall?”

“Level only meaningful inside template. Spiders outside. Qorall knows now they are threat. Will destroy them, autopsy later. We get back first. Find out.”

At that moment the Hohash flashed into life, and they both turned to stare at its display. Pierre’s heart, such as it was after so much physiological evolution, sank at what he saw in Esperia’s sky, evidently viewed from a Hohash still on the planet. The quarantine barrier shimmered and effervesced, and then it was gone. Early. They’ve taken it down early. “How fast can we get there?” Pierre noticed his physiological components were erratic… as if he was worried.

Ukrull growled. “Will be late. Maybe too late.”

Pierre stared at the viewscreen. He suddenly, ridiculously, felt like a father on a business trip who was going to miss his little daughter’s birthday party. Hellera had augmented his emotions, that much was certain, perhaps in retaliation for his daring to try and make her feel remorse. He stood and kicked at the equipment.

Ukrull turned his yellow eyes on him, cocking his head. “Never kick my ship. Only I kick. You sit. I make us go faster. Will hurt. Want?”

Pierre sat down, and nodded. His lover, his daughter, images and projections of what Kat and Petra might look like now, flooded his mind. He’d abandoned them… for what? To look at pretty nebulae? He felt an old enemy emotion wash over him – guilt. But the underlying feeling stressing his entire system was worry, concern, and… with a sinking, defeated feeling, he realised it was love. He watched and felt Hellera’s handiwork, like a virus sweeping over eighteen years of careful cognitive management and emotional excision. There was nothing he could do to stop the onslaught, the re-writing of his mind’s software, and the longer it went on, the more he knew he would not want it to stop. His whole being wanted to be there on Esperia. Despite all his Level Ten processes, all he could think about was Kat and Petra, Micah, Blake, and all the others. His people were in terrible danger.

Ukrull gave him a long, searching look, growled, and entered his claw into a recess on the console, and pulled hard. Pierre’s vision blurred momentarily then cleared. Sound seemed suppressed, and he had to force himself to keep breathing, his mind fazed. He shook it off, willing his nannites to compensate, and glanced at one of the console indications that registered speed, noting that it was already off-scale.

Pierre had not felt such strong emotions since the changing, his ‘evolution’. Anger at Hellera for what she had made him feel was submerged by guilt-fuelled rage at himself. How could he have stayed away for so long? Give me pain, Ukrull, bring it down on me. Go faster, warp spacetime as much as you can.

A headache started, and Pierre felt as if his flesh was being boiled off his skin. But he sat, refusing to move, his jaw clenched shut. Petra – Kat

– hang on please, I’m coming! Against the invading silence, Ukrull stood and began to roar, tilting his head back, holding out his right claw, his bass voice shaking Pierre’s bones. Pierre got up and clasped the reptile’s wrist and joined in, venting his sudden outpouring of concern and frustration in a tenor scream of anger, their voices mingling in an unholy choir as the ship ripped through subspace at an unprecedented rate. Pierre’s body began to convulse, but he held on, and everything around him turned blinding white.

◆◆◆

Hellera watched them go. She gave the Ice Pick a helping shove, having earlier added a Level Nineteen protective membrane over its hull so the shear stresses of travelling through a hyper-conduit wouldn’t eviscerate the occupants. “Ants,” she thought, though not unkindly. She gazed to the far side of the galaxy, fixing her vision on a spot that was as unremarkable as it was dark, a hidden inter-galactic portal where she had last tracked her former mate.

Hurry, Kalaran, or you will be too late.

Chapter 17

Distress

The acrid smell of burnt equipment and flesh woke Micah. He gazed forward blearily towards the jagged, charcoal hole into open space, wide enough to suck out a hovercar, framing a black-suited Petra who manned the console. She worked feverishly within arm’s reach of yawning vacuum, protected by a pink-tinged emergency force field. It shimmered every few seconds, indicating the precariousness of its power supply.

Everything  sounded  to  Micah  as  if  his  head  was  underwater,  a bubbling diffuse noise that only served to make what he saw more surreal. Sparks rained down from shattered, fused equipment. Frayed cords hung and swayed as the ship was rocked by small explosions and decompressions, occasionally touching the force field keeping them all alive, sending electric blue arcs skittering across the gossamer energy skein. Death was knocking, trying to open that door to cold relentless oblivion. One more hit…

He tried to get up, to move, but nothing happened, the only sensation something trickling from the left side of his mouth down his chin. Gabriel came into view next to Petra, agitated, shouting, waving his arms. Micah swallowed with effort, thought about speaking, gave it up, then looked down. A rod-like chunk of blue ceramic material protruded from his navel. He gripped its smooth surface, slick with his own blood, and dared to pull. It was stuck fast.

Gabriel came closer, singed hair and blackened tattoo, frowning. He said something but Micah couldn’t untangle the words. A black-haired snout appeared, quicksilver eyes shifting rapidly. Micah placed a listless hand on Chahat-Me’s shoulder and nodded, held his breath. One of her paws morphed into a syringe and pierced his sternum. Gabriel’s palm braced against Micah’s left shoulder as he wrenched the ceramic rod from Micah’s body. Micah’s jaw clamped down on the scream exploding inside him, and he rolled his eyes back into his head, arms shaking, then he dared to look down again. Blood gushed out, but Chahat-Me stemmed it with a paw morphed into a flat disk, generating a rising heat that grew and grew, accompanied by steam tainted with the smell of cauterised flesh. Chahat-Me put something in Micah’s mouth and he bit down hard, his voice finding itself in gasping, spasmodic growls, fists squeezing rhythmically in time with tremors of pain in his abdomen. He glimpsed Petra turn towards him, horror plastered across her face. Gabriel yelled something at her and she turned back to her station.

Micah tried to move but Chahat-Me’s paw rested firmly on him. From his sternum, where her syringe still penetrated him, a trickle of cool rain fountained through his body, and he slumped back with relief when it reached his head. Gabriel tossed the blue bar aside, said something to Chahat-Me, then moved out of view.

One of her paws extended something into his right ear. It felt and sounded odd, as if someone was rummaging about inside his head, nudging flesh and bones out of the way. She tugged at something, there was a snap, and suddenly sound flooded in: hisses, alarms, clanks, thuds, and a gushing noise he knew to be the Pyramid’s circulatory self-healing system channelling liquid nannite polymers to bolster and repair damaged areas and equipment. It sounded like it was in full flood. Beneath it he heard not-so-distant cries of agony, some human. Ossyrians called to each other in their high-pitched wails.

“Are we still behind the moon?” he said. Chahat-Me nodded. Thank God.

“Make me mobile,” he said. Her eyes quivered, and Micah guessed she had other plans, to put him into stasis, to kill the pain. “I prefer to die awake, fighting.”

Chahat-Me stood, and he noticed something different about her, she was suited in black, tight around her, the normal headdress replaced by a smooth hood, also black, down around her shoulders. Pierre had once told him that the Ossyrians had originally been violent warmongers until the Tla Beth had tamed them and changed their orientation. Now would be a good time to resurrect those traits.

Chahat-Me said something to two other Ossyrians, also  black- clad, who came over and clamped something to Micah’s forearms, then manoeuvred a rig underneath him, one of them wrapping a thick band of material around his waist. That was when he realised he couldn’t feel his legs.

They harnessed him into a kind of anti-grav chair. Micah suppressed the worry that he might be paralysed from the waist down, on the basis that their survival prospects were bleak anyway. He needed to get back into the battle. There was a joystick by his right hand and he played with it once the others moved back. Rising from the ground, he lurched around and moved in fits and starts, then more gently as he got the hang of it, and headed towards Petra. She turned as he approached, her face blanching before she set her chin and braved a smile.

“About time,” she said.

He remembered why he cared so much for her. “Status,” he said. “Like you, Uncle, pretty messed up.” She smiled again, then grew more serious. “Ninety dead including six Genners, 47% of the ship exposed to space, life support functioning in four main areas, 30% of the ship fused and impenetrable. No jump capability, no comms outside local, energy reserves will last a few hours, shields and stealth tech down.”

Micah turned to Chahat-Me as she joined them. “Weapons?”

Chahat-Me stared through the hole. Her left paw delved into the plasma console and the ship rotated slowly, accompanied by a shuddering that made Petra grip Micah’s arm for support. Esperia loomed into view, looking equally peaceful and defenceless. Micah spotted the five points of light flashing across the gash of space, inbound to Esperia. Dammit, Gabriel had been so right.

Gabriel joined them. “We’re dead in the water, Q’Roth Raptors inbound to Esperia, Blake in hot pursuit. From the stealth-sats we launched just before jumping here, we know the Crucible is moving this way, backed up by a Q’Roth Marauder we just detected entering the system. The Crucible is almost certainly here for a clean-up job after whatever it is they plan on Esperia.” He cast Chahat-Me a harsh look. “They won’t leave any survivors.”

Micah understood Gabriel’s frustration, and his implicit blaming of the Ossyrians for leaving them defenceless. But he also knew Gabriel’s genned instincts would kick in, and decided to nudge them in the right direction.

“Chahat-Me, do you have nothing else we can use in a fight? You’re Level Eight, Q’Roth are Level Six, there must be something?”

She stared at the console, then resolutely outside, toward Esperia. “Nothing,” she said. “Two Hohash scout ships. One two decks from here. The other one the Genners below could reach. They are in danger. Decompression will come soon.” She showed Gabriel the location of the second Hohash vessel on a schematic, then addressed the human contingent. “You should abandon ship. We Ossyrians will stay.”

Gabriel clicked in Hremsta through comms to his Youngbloods to get to the craft, then paused, facing Chahat-Me, his face softening a little. “I am sorry it has come to this, that you must pay the price as well. Micah, I will check out the nearer craft. Maybe we can do something about the Marauder when it arrives.”

Micah watched him go, knew it was a long shot; Hohash craft had no weapons capability. Still, he could imagine how hard it must be for a young warrior like Gabriel to be left adrift, far from the battle, waiting to be taken out by a single energy pulse once the Crucible had line-of-sight.

Something about Chahat-Me wasn’t right. Micah had been surprised about the two Hohash craft, a well-kept secret for the past eighteen years, but that wasn’t the issue right now; the Ossyrians probably considered the Hohash tech too advanced for humans, genned or otherwise. Micah had come to know Chahat-Me’s inflexions, and there was something defiant about the way she had earlier said “Nothing”. He decided to probe.

“What do Ossyrians do when faced with certain death? Do you have some rituals? Petra is effectively your goddaughter, your Chorana-Wa. You adopted her as part of your family. How do you say goodbye?”

Petra flicked a hand at his elbow. “Uncle, what do you think you’re doing?”

Micah stared at Chahat-Me, her snout resolutely pointing outwards, her silver eyes quiet.

He pressed harder. “Apparently you were once fierce warriors, worse than the Q’Roth, before the Tla Beth modified you.”

Another klaxon burst forth, which Petra quickly silenced. She spoke in a small voice. “I’m sorry Chahat-Me, we just lost emergency shielding in section 12. There were six Ossyrians in that compartment.” She thumped the console. “Just lost comms connection with Esperantia.”

“Chahat-Me,” Micah pursued, knowing it was unfair, “there must be –”

Micah found himself shoved backwards in his anti-grav chair against a bulkhead, an Ossyrian paw morphed into a rounded claw squeezing his throat. Chahat-Me’s eyes were unmoving. Her jaw opened, the blue fibres drenched in spittle as he’d never seen before. She spoke, or rather, seethed one word – “Watch!” – as another of her paws syringed into his right temple, and his resident spurred into action.

In his mind’s eye he saw space littered with broken ships, some defunct, cracked open, alien bodies drifting, a fleet dismembered. Something moved between the ships, like black fireflies – his resident informed him they had been highlighted, as they would not otherwise be seen. One large ship lumbered forward, particle beams lashing out wildly as if trying to swat invisible mosquitoes.

The image zoomed in on a cluster of the fireflies making their way to the ship. Tight-suited, hooded aliens with something sleek on their backs for propulsion. Each held its gloved paws above its snouted helmet, as if diving, gripping a metallic hemisphere in front. They cored straight through the ship’s hull, into the decks, as half a dozen Q’Roth warriors were sucked out into space. The pack of Ossyrians were wolf-like, feral, working in trios to tear down Q’Roth warriors, spraying a directed mist from their paws that caused Q’Roth flesh to bubble and disintegrate. The Ossyrians always attacked the head first, blinding their opponents. Micah guessed it was a genetic nannite, very aggressive, coded to Q’Roth DNA. The Q’Roth warriors, once attacked, thrashed about wildly, but within seconds their heads were reduced to an ugly, rust-coloured, fizzing and quivering husk. Despite his hatred of the Q’Roth, Micah wanted to turn away. But he couldn’t.

The onslaught was relentless, and if an Ossyrian was cut down another took its place. The view shifted to a pack in the engine room, then another in the command centre, as coordinated teams sent the ship’s systems into irreversible overload. Just before the detonation, the three Ossyrian packs onboard all suddenly stopped what they were doing and sat, raising their snouts in the air, emitting a piercing choral howl that grated Micah’s skull, seconds before the ship tore itself apart, incinerating all aboard, Ossyrians included.

Micah was shown land invasions, ground assaults, and witnessed the terrible violence of the Ossyrians. Interjected behind these scenes were short info-spurts, showing how the Ossyrian ‘plague’ as it had been called over fifty thousand years ago, had rampaged across one sector after another.

Many species had feared these wild creatures, until the Ossyrians’ ‘taming’ by the Tla Beth. High level Grid Council hearings had called for the Ossyrians’ outright extermination. The Tla Beth solution had been clever, gradually assuaging the hatred as the reconfigured doctor-race saved trillions of lives across the Grid.

The scene shifted, and he saw Ossyrians more like the ones he knew today, doctors, parents with their children, whom he had never seen, schools where young Ossyrians were shown their awful heritage. He hadn’t known Ossyrians could cry. The last images, his resident informed him, were secret, never shown outside Ossyria: scrupulous genetic testing and termination of any embryo or child showing any retroactive tendency toward their more aggressive past. The intrinsically more violent males were genetically bred out of Ossyrian society. That had been a necessary condition for Grid Council’s acceptance of the Tla Beth solution.

Miach’s resident shut off, and he opened his eyes. Chahat-Me released him, and he manoeuvred his anti-grav chair towards Petra. She studied him, waiting, but he found nothing to say. He held back from pushing Chahat-Me further, feeling he had no right; the Ossyrians had been through too much. Besides, they were all now trapped in a lost cause. What would it gain?

Gabriel re-entered, booting a pipe leaking yellow bile out of his way. “The rest of the Youngbloods have found the Hohash craft on the lower level; they’re inside, awaiting instructions. The one two levels up is prepped.” He folded his arms, a wry smile on his face. “Well, Micah, you never programmed this in your little simulations, did you? It seems the only option is to wait around and then try some kind of distraction tactic, most probably a suicide run. Even so, I doubt it will affect the overall outcome.”

Petra stirred, as if she wanted to say something. A frown crossed her face, then evened out. “Gabe, I’m sorry you can’t be with Virginia.”

Micah stared at her. Why do we do this? Even when there may be minutes left, why don’t we speak the truth?

Gabriel nodded to her. “Thanks Petra, maybe at least she’ll get to fight them.”

Misplaced anger boiled up inside Micah. “Gabriel, you know for a Genner you’re pretty –”

Another klaxon cut him off. Petra was on it. “Another ship has arrived. Two!”

Gabriel was next to her in a second, and Micah moved back, letting them work together.

Gabriel called out the intel. “The Q’Roth vessel we detected earlier, Marauder Class, and… a Mannekhi vessel. The Marauder is inbound for Esperia, the Mannekhi Spike-ship is on an intercept with the Crucible.” A voice crackled into the air around them. “This is General Bill Kilaney, can anyone hear me?”

If Micah hadn’t been supported by anti-grav, he would have fallen over. “Bill? Is that you?” He whooped. “My God, you are most seriously welcome here. We’re under attack, Esperantia is –”

“We’ve got it all Micah, these Mannekhi have damned good scan- tech, I have to say. We’re going to engage the Crucible, we’re too far out to reach the Marauder in time, never mind the Raptors, but watch out, that Q’Roth Marauder is carrying some pretty heavy ordnance. Micah, you need to do something to stall it or else we’ll arrive too late. Got to go, it’s about to get hot here. Godspeed.”

Micah turned to face Chahat-Me’s unwavering eyes. “I’m sorry, Chahat-Me, but it has to be done.”

Gabriel cast a look at Petra, who shrugged.

He pressed one final time. “We’re out of time, we need to act or you might as well kill your god-daughter yourself in a humane way.”

“Steady, Micah,” Gabriel said. “What’s going on?”

Micah said nothing. Chahat-Me brushed past him and stood close to Petra. Two of her paws morphed into a crude approximation of human hands, and took Petra’s small fingers and clasped them. “Forgive me,” Chahat-Me said, then added, “for you, daughter.”

Still holding Petra’s hands, Chahat-Me leant her head back, raised her snout in the air, and emitted a deafening howl that made Gabriel and Petra flinch, but Micah found himself smiling grimly. The howl continued across a shocked silence for a full minute, before several other Ossyrians entered the Bridge, staring at their leader. Then, one by one they joined in, and Micah heard it elsewhere throughout the ship via the local comms. It lasted another full two minutes before the coordinated howl shut off, leaving a ringing in Micah’s ears.

“Thank you,” Micah said, and bowed first to Chahat-Me, then the other Ossyrians on the Bridge. She nodded, and they all left.

Gabriel leant back against the console, a wry smile of his own. “Micah, we Genners hate being out of the loop.”

Micah explained the Ossyrians’ history. “We’re going to abandon this vessel, and inflict damage on whichever ship comes our way. Petra, use thrusters to get us as close to interception point as possible.”

She watched him a moment, then began activating controls.

Micah studied her, knowing that despite this sliver of hope offered by Kilaney’s arrival, their end was likely approaching. Of all people, he knew what it was like to love on a one-way street basis. He turned toward the Youngblood leader.

“One more thing, Gabriel. I need you to do something.”

Gabriel allowed another smile. “Sure, you’re the man with the plan, Micah. Name it.”

Micah folded his arms. “Kiss Petra.”

Petra’s hands froze on the console. Gabriel laughed. “What?”

Micah stared hard at him. “We’re all likely to be dead in the next fifteen minutes. Kiss her.”

Gabriel’s smile caught. He turned to Petra, who was stone. “Petra, what’s he…?”

Micah watched them as if in slow motion, happy that even if Genners were emotionally stunted, they weren’t stupid. She cracked, and tears raced down her cheeks when Gabriel placed his hands gently on her shoulders and turned her towards him. He looked her in the eyes, then lifted her chin gently, and kissed her once. Not truly a lover’s passionate kiss, but it hardly mattered. Petra buried her head into Gabriel’s shoulder, one hand around his waist, and with the other she reached out to Micah, who clasped it. The three of them stayed like that, Gabriel hugging her tight, whispering softly to her in Hremsta, until Chahat-Me reappeared with three suits, followed by the remaining Ossyrians, a predatory crouch in their stance, as if they were once again capable of a viciousness that had in former times made many species’ blood run cold.

Good, Micah thought. Now we’re ready. Now we’re a team.

Chapter 18

Ground Assault

Blake had almost forgotten what it was like to be in command of a tactical space vessel. The black, crab-like Hunter stole after the Raptors inbound to Esperia, the single rectangular viewscreen hunting its prey. He searched the growing disc of Esperia for the after-burner lights of the Raptor craft, used for rapid ground troop dispersal, imagining them full of deadly Q’Roth warriors. Truth told, he still did not know the Q’Roth mission objectives, or if Alicians counted in their number.

Five orange lights blazed above cloudless Esperia as the Raptors braked for atmospheric entry. The Hunter accelerated, and he gripped the arms of the chair as he, Zack and Marcus tore towards the planet’s atmosphere with no intention of slowing down.

“Four minutes,” Marcus shouted as the ship shook violently upon breaching the outer atmosphere. Four minutes till ground impact. Within a precious twenty of those seconds the Hunter’s outer corona glared orange on the viewscreen.

“Integrity?” Blake dared to ask. He glanced at Zack’s Transpar, who gazed calmly ahead.

“Barely holding,” Marcus replied, “but we’re closing on the three rear Raptors, they’re slowing down to avoid damage – we won’t be able to go back into space again.” He uttered a mirthless laugh. They all knew this was a one-way trip.

“Catch them my friend,” Blake said quietly, turning to the Transpar, knowing he could hear far better than any human. The Hunter accelerated again, pushing Blake back into his chair. A keening noise rose steadily in pitch, and there was a flash of white as something tore off their outer hull and disappeared into their wake.

That was when he saw the first Raptor, dead ahead, its two wings like curved swords, its box-like rear tapering to a stubby snout at the front. With its silver and ice-blue hull, the Raptor reminded him of the Trevally fish, a predator that hung out with sharks, often taking the first taste of blood that would unleash a feeding frenzy. “Prepare the grappler,” he shouted, but Marcus was already readying it for deployment.

Blake fired the Hunter’s energy beam, but as they’d feared, the enemy ship slipstream diminished the pulse, or else the Raptors had new shielding; possibly a mixture of both. It meant he couldn’t take the Raptors out easily, and once they’d decelerated through the outer atmosphere the Raptors could work together and eliminate the Hunter, and then carry on with their mission. Marcus had been right: his gambit with the grapple was their only option to eliminate one or two of the Raptors, evening the odds for the ground troops in Esperantia.

The Raptor immediately in front veered to starboard, revealing the lead vessel. “That one,” Blake said, pointing. “Chase it down, Zack. Marcus, be ready, we only get one shot.”

The Raptor that had dodged sideways slowed, aiming to get alongside the Hunter so it could get a good clean shot. Just as Marcus had planned. Feigning the chase of the lead Raptor, Blake waited until the sidelong Raptor was nearly in optimum firing range. “Now!”

The Hunter sheared sideways and accelerated, narrowly missing the slowing Raptor. Marcus fired the grapple harpoon and snagged the parallel Raptor’s main engine housing. Blake held tight in his chair as the Hunter slewed violently, handcuffed to the Raptor in a deadly spiral dance.

Zack’s Transpar stood, his glass arms lengthening down to the console. His feet morphed outwards like crampons, anchoring him to the floor.

The scene in front of Blake spun wildly, as the two ships careened downwards, trailing after the lead Raptor. Blake knew better than to watch the main viewscreen when in a spin; it was too disorientating. He called up an ‘outsider view’, the holo showing the Hunter and the tagged Raptor spiralling towards Esperia. The chained Raptor fired wildly, trying to hit the Hunter or the grapple connection. But Zack worked the thrusters and the coupled momentum to their advantage; the Raptor couldn’t get a clean shot. Blake saw two other Raptors falling back to engage, and Zack executed Marcus’ stroke of genius. The Hunter pumped up its main engine and shot downwards after the lead ship. The other three Raptors, fearing for their leader, moved in to intercept in an offset pattern that meant they would not hit each other in the crossfire.

“Sixty seconds,” Marcus shouted.

Blake chewed his lower lip. It was getting close, but he couldn’t give the instruction; only Zack’s calculative powers could pick the perfect moment. After five agonizing seconds Zack pulled a hard turn and jettisoned the grapple.

The suddenly released Raptor spun out of control and hit one of the other Raptors, shattering its engines before both ships exploded into fireballs of burning debris. Blake heard a shrill whine as Zack strained the engines to their limit, bringing the ship out of a deadly tumble. An explosion in the next compartment threw Blake out of his chair.

“Main engines offline, thrusters still working,” Marcus confirmed.

Blake got to his feet. No more fancy manoeuvres; only one course now. He turned to Zack. “Well done, my friend. Now run that sonofabitch down,” Blake said, pointing again to the lead ship.

Energy beams strafed the Hunter, and explosions echoed from the outer decks as the other two remaining aft Raptors fired non-stop. But the Hunter’s slipstream vortex diluted their weapons-fire, and Marcus successfully targeted two enemy homing missiles, nearly gaining another kill as the Raptors got too close to their own missile detonations.

“Thirty seconds!” Marcus shouted.

Blake returned to the main viewscreen, now stabilised, and watched as Esperia’s desert landscape filled it, the Acarian mountain range clear as a scar on a man’s face. A small patch glinted in a valley – Esperantia. The Raptor in front bucked this way and that, but its pilot was no match for Zack. Blake knew many in mankind’s last city would be staring upwards, witnessing the screeching chase bearing down on them. Abruptly the Raptor, evidently realising its fate, swung about and fired point blank on them – Blake respected that. The viewscreen whited-out, and the sound of metal tearing off their ship made him wince. Then there was the unmistakeable grinding sound of the two ships colliding, and a heavy clunk as the Hunter’s forward grips clamped onto the Raptor.

Blake recalled Kilaney’s counsel: if you don’t want to miss, touch your enemy, then kill him.

“Goodbye, Boss, it’s been an honour.”

Blake whirled around to see Zack move towards him, as if to embrace him, like they’d never done. But instead, the Transpar’s features blurred, its body becoming fluid. It advanced on him before Blake could react, enveloping him completely in a warm liquid cocoon that quickly hardened into an external shell that felt very dense. Blake could see clearly, but could neither feel nor hear anything external, only his heart beating once, slowly, reverberating like a drum through his body. The blood swished around his arteries, into his head. It didn’t make any sense, unless…

With an effort Blake turned his head and stared forwards. The screen in front of him splintered in slow motion, cracked and then burst apart. Shards showered past Blake at the speed of falling snow, a few glancing off the hardened glass case tightly wrapped around his head and body, though he felt nothing. The hull ripped slowly apart, revealing the Raptor’s glowing fore-section, the cockpit and its two pilots – Alician, he realised – eyes wide with fear. There was a bump and they were tossed upwards from their seats like toys. The Raptor’s hull warped and buckled, a metallic ripple sweeping towards  the  pilots who  raised their  arms  in slow motion, unable to defend themselves against the compression wave that pulped them both at their mid-section, their necks and eyes suddenly going slack. Behind them a Q’Roth warrior was running, again in slow motion, straight towards Blake. Still unable to move or speak, Blake watched the warrior, in an incredibly brave move, dive over the crumpling metal and shoot across the compacting ship straight at him. The warrior’s serrated foreclaws stretched out for Blake’s head but glanced off his protective shell – what was left of Zack’s Transpar. The warrior’s trapezoidal head with its six bleeding vermillion eyes hit Blake’s face straight on, ruptured and split in two. Blake got to see what a Q’Roth brain looked like up close.

Through blue-blooded smears Blake stared as the Hunter worked its way through the Raptor, its momentum crushing the smaller ship. Marcus’ body flew forward like a rag doll, gashed by the jagged hull, mashing his body… Blake closed his eyes.

Zack, what have you done? But he knew, though he had not known it was possible. Marcus had asked him what Level the Transpar had been, but they had never known, only that the Tla Beth had fashioned him from an impervious flow-material. Transpars were technically ‘evidence’ used in Tla Beth courts, and as such had to be permanent, almost indestructible. He recalled that Vasquez had once commented that if they could somehow replicate the material, it would make impregnable armour.

Blake heard the hammer-strike of another heartbeat and surmised that the process had quickened his mind, so that everything around him appeared to move slowly. That would also make sense for a being whose primary function was to be an unbiased witness: events could be observed and absorbed in good time, dispassionately.

Blake opened his eyes to find the fused ships, what was left of them, burying themselves into a crater of hard rock. Solid stone and bedrock ignited and split apart with the power of their impact. He thanked Zack for managing to miss Esperantia.

Closing his eyes again, he thought of Zack at his wedding, of heady nights in Thai bars during training, of firefights and battles when they lost count of saving each other’s lives, and inevitably of Kurana Bay. The glass Blake was encased in, the Transpar’s body that Blake now knew had enveloped him just before impact with the Raptor, wouldn’t let the tears he felt inside form. He guessed Zack wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Goodbye, my friend, may you rest in peace at last.

He opened his eyes. Everything had stopped moving. It was dark but there was light from somewhere behind him, so he figured he was in an open crater. Flames licked all around him, but still he couldn’t move. Blake guessed the protective casing would wait until things cooled down.

There was no urge to breathe, but he wanted to get out of the crater. The two remaining Raptors would be executing their mission, whatever it was. He became impatient, though he knew it would do no good, that he would be released as soon as it was safe; no point surviving the crash only to be burned alive.

After a few minutes some movement returned, but he was like a man covered in thick glue. He fell over, then crawled to Marcus’ mangled body and smashed head, and sat for a while cradling the boy, stroking his matted, burned dreadlocks. One eye socket was burned out. Blake closed the other. Glenda, take care of him. He laid the boy’s remains down with tenderness, then stood up, able to balance this time. Sunlight glinted down towards him through twisted metal, revealing the smoking crater’s rim, thirty metres above. He began to climb. As he passed Marcus’ station, he noticed something glinting blue, trapped in the carnage. It was the blade from Marcus’ halberd. He prised it free. The shaft had snapped in two, but the nano-edge shimmered. “Thanks again, Marcus,” he said, picking the active half up as he resumed his ascent, Zack’s residue dripping from him with every step like morning dew.

◆◆◆

Virginia, Ramires, and six Youngbloods sprinted toward the still- smoking Raptor just landed in Pentangle Square in front of the Monofaith, as four Q’Roth and a tall, slender woman leapt down from its aft hatch. Virginia noticed straightaway the woman’s air of confidence, as if she was about to go for a stroll – Alician for sure.

Two teams of Vasquez’s heavily armed militia converged from opposite sides of the plaza. The blonde in the midst of the Q’Roth held up a silver ball above her head, then let it go.

“Down!” Ramires yelled, but only he and Virginia hit the ground fast enough. A carpet of emerald flame lasered outwards with a sharp wasp- like buzzing sound across the plaza, cutting all the other Youngbloods and militia in two. Virginia watched in horror as her brothers’ and sisters’ heads and torsos toppled to the ground, sliced in two at their waists, twitching and arching, gurgling noises coming from bursting throats, hands and arms reaching out in spasm before stilling.

Not like this!

“Be still!” Ramires hissed at her in Hremsta. The flame layer hovered above them, still fizzing, and Virginia knew he was right – they were still far enough away that the raiders might think they were dead. Through heat-hazed air she saw four Alicians leave the Raptor and head into the Monofaith, accompanied by two of the Q’Roth warriors, leaving one pair and the blonde.

“I take the warriors, you take down the woman,” Ramires said. That was fine with her; that bitch was dead meat.

“Vasquez,” Ramires whispered to his wristcom, “we need a distraction, fire a shell right in front of the Monofaith.”

Virginia surveyed her target and calculated the distance, the time, the wind direction. Six seconds. Her muscles tensed, she lifted her abdomen slightly, dug the toes of her boots into the ground, and placed her palms next to her chest. The Q’Roth and Alicians had just entered the Monofaith’s wooden archway doors when the shell hit. Virginia sprang forward as soon as the woman’s head swivelled to see the blast of dirt, like an upside-down volcano. One. She took the giant silent strides like she’d been trained to, straight towards the woman, who had lifted something silver and stubby in her right hand. Two. In the corner of her eye, she saw Ramires cut left to go around the other side of the Raptor to take the Q’Roth warriors from an oblique angle – God he ran fast! Three. She unholstered her pulse pistol, felt its warmth in her hand. Four. She took aim, still running. The woman’s head turned and saw her. Five. Virginia fired, but the woman had flung herself backward in an arc, twisting in midair. Virginia’s right leg caved beneath her as a stab of heat lengthening up her torso and down to her right foot told her she’d been hit. She tried to get off another shot but her right hand instinctively went down to the ground as she pummelled headlong into the dust.

Virginia tried to roll but a boot connected with her cheek, and she tumbled to a stop, a deft hand snatching the pistol from her. The right side of her vision was blurred, but she sprang up onto her good foot, the other dragging on the ground. She wiped blood from her chin, and unsheathed the dagger from her belt.

The longhaired woman in front of her had a smile on her face – something about it told Virginia it was always there, mocking life. Virginia spat blood into the air then leapt forward with the dagger in a feint followed by a thrust. Dammit, the woman was fast too, clearing the rapid, deadly sweeps and lunges by millimetres, as if dancing, or simply walking out of the way. Virginia heard the sound of Ramires’ kiai shout and the ring of metal, then the sound of a nanosword slicing through tough flesh. Good, kill them Ramires!

After a vicious knife thrust that Virginia felt sure would strike home yet again failed to find its target, pain exploded in her right elbow. The other woman had neatly snapped it, the compound fracture spattering drops of Virginia’s blood onto the woman’s cheeks. Virginia’s dagger skittered into the dust.

Virginia found herself on her knees. Sorry Gabriel, not going to plan. She tried to kick off and lunge at the woman but a foot struck her chin and flung her down. She struggled for breath, arcing her back in pain on the floor.

Metallic clangs and Ramires’ shouts echoed around her; he’d obviously caught the first Q-Roth warrior by surprise, the second was going to be more troublesome. Virginia knew she had to distract the woman, give Ramires more time. Through gritted eyes she saw the bitch standing above her, looking down. She spoke, her voice serene.

“We wondered how the Genning had gone. Not that impressive, really. Can’t beat a bit of Q’Roth DNA, you know.” She walked away, toward Ramires and the Q’Roth.

Virginia crawled with one hand and one foot toward her dagger, sending bolts of pain shuddering throughout her body. She glanced up and saw the woman standing with her back toward her, studying the fight, head cocked to one side, as if watching a vid. But then her head turned slightly, listening. Virginia made one last stretch and gripped the dagger’s hilt. She thought of Gabriel, of them entwined in each other’s arms, of his laugh so few ever saw or heard, and struggled to her knees for stability. The woman was still listening. Virginia’s semi-functioning arm aimed, retracted, and then… stopped. The dagger slipped from her fingers. The breath went out of Virginia and she smelled burned flesh.

The woman had turned, a small weapon in her hand, a sliver of smoke rising from its stubby barrel. At least her smile was gone. Virginia’s neck slackened and her head dipped down, and she saw the cauterised hole in her chest where her heart should be. Gabe, she thought, and died.

◆◆◆

Serena mentally filed away the notes on the Genned girl’s fighting prowess and resilience. She had actually been impressed: another ten years of training and they would have become formidable opponents. Sister Esma would want a full report later.

This one, though, the way he moved, incredible, always out of reach of the Q’Roth’s deadly claws and serrated legs; she herself would not like to go up against a Q’Roth warrior. And he had cut down the first warrior, caught it by surprise – unheard of! She’d missed that manoeuvre, distracted by the girl, but would find out how exactly he had pulled it off from the Raptor’s allcam replay later. He had the nanosword, but Sister Esma had forewarned the Q’Roth, and each had a truly expensive and rare Shrike, a hyper-dense lance, its regenerative blade capable of blocking such a weapon. The Q’Roth howled with rage and frustration as the man ducked and dodged, but she saw sweat pouring off the human’s forehead; the Q’Roth had more stamina, and would prevail.

She spoke to her comms piece around her neck. “How goes it?” “We have thirty, bringing them out now.”

Serena kept the gun in her hand, just in case. She heard something new, and a belt device around her waist confirmed it with three sharp pinpricks, their location and intensity on her waist telling her the direction and distance of inbounds. She whirled around and fired three times in less than a second, sending three bodies crashing into the dust at the edges of the plaza. Serena always hit the heart. She spoke again. “Number Four, how’s the Dome?”

“Neutralised. We are securing the second batch into the Raptor now.”

Sixty, that was all they could carry. But Casteur, the Alician Chief Medical Advisor, had said fifty would be enough. She walked to the aft of the Raptor, then spoke in Q’Roth to the warrior, raising her weapon at the blurring fight. “Move aside so I can shoot him.”

The Q’Roth growled, refusing to move out of her line of fire, instead increasing the fury of his attacks, driving Ramires backwards. Your choice. She lowered the weapon, and stood in the shade of the aft ramp into the Raptor and tapped at a control panel. Her waistband started pricking her from all directions. Too bad, she thought, glancing at the Q’Roth. Collateral. She hit a button and a green arch-shaped corridor flashed out from the Raptor’s rear entrance to the Monofaith steps, just as the four Alicians and two Q’Roth herded the thirty people down the steps. Red spots crackled on the force-field near her body as newly arrived militia fired continuously from the edge of the plaza, trying to break through. She didn’t move, instead glancing to her left, where the Q’Roth had knocked down Ramires and was trying to kill him, stamping down with his legs like a scorpion, but that man, who in the galaxy was he? And then it came to her. A Sentinel, maybe the last one alive. She considered how Sister Esma would prize him, and for a millisecond thought about taking down the barrier to capture him, but no, too risky.

“Come on!” she shouted as her compatriots hustled the people, wide- eyed and fearful, past her into the caged section in the Raptor’s belly. It would be tight, it was meant for twenty. She smiled as they filed past, downtrodden, defeated, angry, confused. Genetic material, that’s all you are, but you will cure us. She tapped a control and the corridor sealed at the other end and began retracting, even as militia advanced, still firing. The last two to board were the Q’Roth warriors, who hesitated, looking to their colleague.

She spoke clearly in Largyl Six, the official Q’Roth language. “We leave now. He stays. You don’t.” Her eyes fixed on their slits until they boarded.

The ramp closed and the ship swiftly rose amongst a sound like stones pelting their hull; more fire from the militia, of no consequence given the Raptor’s shielding.

Serena stood in front of the cage bars, staring at the humans until the noise abated. “My name is Serena. You are prisoners, but we will not harm you.” Murmurings grew, things were said, shouted. She ignored it all, waited, and searched among them to see who were the strong ones, the ones who watched carefully, saying nothing. It quietened down. “You are coming back to our homeworld. We need some of your genetic material.” Another outpouring of anger, more insults, still Serena held her breezy smile. A Q’Roth informed her in Largyl Six that both ships were aloft now and out of harm’s way. She didn’t nod acknowledgement, but addressed the caged crowd again. “We will treat you well. You will live out your lives as a small community of sixty people, isolated but in good conditions. Once a month we will extract genetic material, that is all. You will not be permitted children. If you rebel, we will induce coma and take what we need from your limp, unconscious bodies. It is your choice.”

Somebody tried to throw something at her through the bars, a dagger. She didn’t flinch, calculating in an instant that it would narrowly miss her head. The Q’Roth warrior behind her caught it in midair, and advanced. She stilled him with a flat palm. Silence followed, and as one all the humans stared at her. “Is there a leader amongst you?” Even as she said it, she gazed at an auburn-haired woman, in her early forties she judged, who moved toward the edge of the bars, the others parting before her, chin held high. Such poise, someone I can deal with.

“What is your name?”

“Antonia.”

“Well, Antonia, calm your people, we have a long voyage ahead of us.”

“What of Esperantia? What of the others?”

Serena’s smile stayed in place. “We have all that we need.”

Antonia’s eyes drilled into hers.

Good, she can smell a lie. Serena raised an eyebrow, and Antonia said nothing more, her lips tight. Perfect – political acumen, too – she cares for the others, doesn’t want to panic them, possibly wants to bide their time so they can escape.

Another, blonder woman, a little older, pushed her way to the front and stood next to Antonia, scowling as she spoke. “If you turn your back, bitch, even for a second –”

“That won’t happen. We’ll talk again soon. I’m afraid all of you must sleep now.” She touched a control and the entire cage shimmered, all the people inside frozen in stasis. Serena made her way to the cockpit and took the rear command chair. She tapped the console. “Sister Esma, two Raptors en route, sixty humans, one Q’Roth left behind presumed dead by now – the humans have some basic nano-weaponry.” There was no oral acknowledgement, simply a message ‘received’. Serena didn’t need gratitude or appreciation. She had gotten the job done, even if the loss of five Raptors had been well outside predictions. But the lack of a personal response from Sister Esma, a rebuke even, made her wonder if something else had happened back on the Crucible. Serena knew she would find out soon enough, and so leant back against the hull, and smiled. She had never seen a planet-cutter in action, and was looking forward to it.

◆◆◆

Blake sprinted across the plaza, overtaking the militia, as the human cargo was herded into the Raptor, but he was headed for Ramires. He couldn’t bear to see another comrade cut down, and the man was already on the ground dodging pounding Q’Roth feet for his life. Blake ran full pelt toward the fizzing energy shield, gambling that it would retract before he collided with it and was vaporised. It did. As soon as it was out of the way he saw Ramires pinned down by one of the Q’Roth’s legs, the warrior’s head leant back in a roar of victory, an upper leg raised high for the kill, its body lit up by red pulse fire from militia, none of which affected it. Blake, still running, raised the halberd’s shortened shaft in his right hand then hurled it tomahawk-style at the Q’Roth’s back. The effort tripped him but as he crashed down into the dust he heard a spinning sound and a crunch choking off the Q’Roth’s howl. Blake skidded to   a stop and dared to look up. The halberd’s hilt was sticking out of the warrior’s back, the tall Q’Roth wavering, blue blood spurting from the fissure in his spine. The drone of the Raptor taking off was accompanied by a sirocco of dust, and then a boom rang out around the plaza as it shot upwards.

When the dust settled, the warrior was on the ground, twitching. Vasquez hurried over to Ramires, Blake too. Ramires was in bad shape, but he pointed to the nano-sword hilt a few metres away. Blake retrieved it and passed it to him. Vasquez supported the wounded Sentinel while other militia gathered round, accompanied by people pouring out from the churches, and trios of Youngblood warriors. Ramires took the sword and hobbled over to the dying Q’Roth, refusing further assistance from Vasquez. He knelt on its chest, ignoring the blue blood bubbling from its gash of a mouth. Ramires activated the nanoblade, and placed the point on the creature’s neck.

“Bring Virginia here.”

People around stared at Ramires and then at Blake. He nodded to two militiamen who fetched her body. Blood and sweat stained Ramires cheeks, and tears joined them, a few lodging in his matted moustache, one or two falling onto the Q’Roth’s blue-black heaving ribcage. Ramires breathed in laboured rasps. Blake and Vasquez took Virginia’s limp frame and held her close to Ramires, guessing what he wanted to do.

Ramires took her dead hand and placed her fingers around the hilt. He looked up, addressing everyone, his voice carrying around the entire plaza. “This is for you, Virginia. This is your kill,” he said, and thrust the blade down, and then with an anguished cry cleaved the warrior’s head in two.

The militia, the Youngbloods, and everyone around began stomping their feet in unison. It grew until it echoed off all the churches. Blake and Vasquez took Virginia’s body and handed her to several Youngbloods, who lifted her high and took her away.

Blake helped Ramires to his feet, and the stomping died down. The three men leant on each other, and Blake quietly spoke what they were all thinking. “It isn’t over.”

Chapter 19

Crucible

Genaspa saw that all were ready. Six team leaders along with their wings of forty-nine Shrell males and females. The teams waited at six equidistant points around the edges of the Quintara system comprising Esperia, its sun, two smaller barren planets and an asteroid belt. She gave the signal, and the run began. Genaspa watched Nasjana’s wing as it broke formation, splitting into ten packs. Nasjana led her four husbands on a direct intercept toward Esperia, while four other packs headed laterally in the four directions of the outer-spherical compass. Those packs would circumscribe the Quintara sector, creating an outer shell of poisoned space, preventing any ship from fast entry or escape, and shattering any ship traversing the sector via Transpace. The density of micro-rifts inside the shell would be highest around the inhabited world Esperia, as demanded by Qorall, and requested by Hellera. Despite the environmental harm, Genaspa’s wingtips twitched with pride; it was satisfying to watch her teams in action.

The remaining packs coiled inwards from the perimeter in a fanning helix pattern, into the Quintaran sector, crisscrossing its inner space with trip-wire sub-spatial fractures, invisible ruts that would derail anything travelling at light or a decent sub-light speed.

Genaspa knew that Qorall, and Hellera for that matter, both wanted this sector locked down, presumably for different reasons, given that they were blood enemies. By the time the run was over, this area would become a general travel hazard, to be avoided at all costs, lighthouse- marked for Level Six and above.

In the longer term, a thousand years or so, the damage would affect the sun itself, which would slip into red dwarf state without going nova, and its three planets would lose orbital cohesion because of the ensuing gravity shifts. By a slow process of attrition due to the subspace rifts, the planets would disintegrate, until all that would be left would be asteroids and dust. The sub-space damage would remain an open wound.

An unpleasant frisson traced down her wing edges. As soon as this was over, she would demand the release of the Shrell captives held by Qorall in the Syntaran sector.

Extending her sense ridges Genaspa felt Nasjana’s efforts as she drove her husbands onwards. The males tried to resist, as they had been trained, the push-pull tension of acceleration against the brakes causing subspace around them to vibrate. Nasjana’s team made the first incision like a sharp hook in the curtain of space. The resultant ripping etched barbed scars in the subspace fabric behind them as they spiralled towards Esperia.

Genaspa watched the trail, knowing that mixed in with it was the males’ life essence. The run would bleed them of energy. They would end as husks, before dissipating, dissolving into the sea of sub-space.

From a strategic point of view Genaspa knew she should stay at the outer edge to supervise, waiting for the run to be completed and for her females to return before the voyage home. Shrell rarely concerned themselves with the trials and tribulations of other species, preferring to live in isolation except when called upon by the Tla Beth or Rangers for their services. But this time felt different. The sacrifice would be significant today, and she wanted to know what was so important on Esperia that it should be entombed and doomed to eventual annihilation. She signalled to her team-leaders that she was joining the fray.

◆◆◆

“Fire,” Xenic commanded.

Kilaney, in his former capacity as commander of a Q’Roth battle cruiser, had been on the receiving end of Mannekhi whip-arcs often enough. But he had never seen them from their point of origin aboard a Mannekhi Spiker. Purple fire boiled into a plume at the end of three spikes then whiplashed towards the Crucible ten kilometres away. He flinched as the pulse beams pounded the enemy ship, knowing the savage punch it would deliver as well as the high-energy radiation, knocking the occupants off their legs then incinerating them wherever the beams could penetrate the hull.

Curling residual blue energy arcs fizzed down the Crucible’s long fuselage, but they had not yet inflicted serious damage. He itched to destroy the ship, but Crucibles were very tough by design. Their shielding was far heavier than any normal warship. It had to be to withstand the tremendous energy forces executed by their crust-dissolving tendrils, as well as the frequent hailstorm of rocks and magma spewed out into space by any planet on which a Crucible operated. Kilaney racked his brains for a way to get past its defences.

He caught the eye of the female Mannekhi Fentra, who was manning weapons, and pointed. “Aim for the fifth juncture back from the main front housing.”

She stared at him.

“Do it,” Xenic instructed.

Kilaney wondered why the Crucible didn’t return fire. They had standard weapons, though usually an escort destroyer as well. Then it hit him. “They’re going to jump,” he said.

“Keep firing,” Xenic instructed. “Track them, Siltern.”

Sure enough, just as the purple beams lashed out again, the Crucible vanished.

“Siltern?”

But Kilaney had already guessed where it was headed.

“They are closing on the planet, Sir, near the larger of Esperia’s two moons.”

Kilaney was impressed – in-system jumps were very tricky, and this one had been spectacularly precise. “There are more than Q’Roth aboard that vessel,” he said, glancing to Xenic.

The tall, black-haired, red-suited commander nodded. “Bring us about. Prepare to –”

“Sir, wait,” Fentra shouted, “there’s something…”

Kilaney looked over to her, saw her eyes go wide, just before she leapt in front of him. He had no time to brace himself. Suddenly he was flung forward, and flew with alarming speed toward the viewscreen a few metres away. Fentra arrived first. He pummelled into her, unable  to do anything except knock the wind out of her, his temple striking a glancing blow on hers. There were thuds as more crewmembers hit the wall. He gathered his breath, and pushed himself into a standing position, trying to help Fentra recover. Others around him groaned, though no one looked seriously hurt. All of them rubbed their left temples where his head had connected with Fentra’s.

He supported her in his arms, but as she recovered she shoved him away, glaring. “Get off me, Jorann. As soon as that bloodworm inside you is dead –”

“Enough, Fentra,” Xenic said from somewhere behind them. “Stations everyone. Siltern, what just happened?”

Siltern regained his post and pored over his console. “We hit a tripwire of some sort… oh no!”

Xenic waited.

Siltern called over to Fentra, who had regained her post. “Check the Nara-wavelength.”

Xenic pursed his lips, then walked over to Fentra’s station and stared over her shoulder. “Shrell,” he said, and all the crew turned as one to him.

Kilaney spoke up. “That’s impossible. Why would they –”

Xenic addressed him. “It does not matter. We Mannekhi have prior experience with the Shrell. After the Yenshra’ta rebellion the Tla Beth ordered Shrell to poison two sectors of our space.” Xenic hung his head for a moment. “It is a terrible punishment to endure, a lesson that worsens through successive generations.”

The way Fentra looked up at her commander at that point told Kilaney that Xenic’s ancestors had personal experience, and Xenic himself had been scarred by it. It also told him that Fentra and Xenic were perhaps more than colleagues. But the captain collected himself and returned to his command chair.

“Siltern, is it a full run?”

Siltern tapped his console and a holomap of the sector appeared. Kilaney saw gossamer threads slowly coiling inwards from an outer ball of spider-web lines. It was as beautiful as it was deadly. He knew they’d been lucky: the Mannekhi vessel had been moving slowly when they had struck one of the space-furrows. The Crucible had been luckier still, having jumped just in time.

Xenic asked what Kilaney was thinking. “Is there a safe window through?”

Siltern nodded. “Micro-jumps, but we have to be quick. I can get us close but we’ll be delayed.”

Fentra broke in. “We’ll never get out. We should leave while we still can. We don’t owe this system anything. I’d rather die fighting for our own people.”

Xenic walked to Siltern’s station and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Plot it,” he said. He turned to face the rest of his crew, as he pointed to one of the screens showing Esperia. “Helgothora, the Eleventh Tribe.”

Fentra laughed, a few others joining her. “You can’t be serious?

That’s just a legend we tell our children after the Slapping.”

Kilaney had no idea what they were referring to. “The Slapping?”

“Tell him,” Xenic said. “He needs to understand.”

Fentra folded her arms, the humour in her voice transmuting to cold metal, her smile replaced by a somber look, even by Mannekhi standards. “We Mannekhi are born into servitude. When any child reaches the age of four, when we consider them independent decision-makers, they go with their parents to the Municipal Hall where others gather in front of one of our sponsor races’ Ambassadors. The Ambassador asks the child to do something…” She looked sideways, presumably remembering what it had been for her.

Kilaney felt sorry for Fentra already.

“For example,” she continued, taking a breath, “to run through my brother’s hand with a knife.” She straightened up. “The child refuses, of course. Then the parents – first the father, then the mother – slap the child across the face, hard. Most children do not cry, Kilaney, Jorann, whoever you are. It is their parents who weep later. Some people never –” her voice cracked, she cleared her throat “– have children, just to avoid this scarring that keeps us forever in our place.”

Kilaney could imagine how it would be one of a number of acts to break the spirit. He began to count up all the Mannekhi ships he had destroyed in the past ten years, estimating how many Mannekhi had been killed under his command.

She continued. “Six thousand years ago, the Eleventh Mannekhi tribe, called Helgothora, escaped. They were tracked down by the Q’Roth and annihilated, but a story lingers that one man, Corakadahn, a geneticist, managed to send a Seeder to a neo-fertile barbarian planet inhabited by bipeds. Every child and every parent knows this story, a dream of a Mannekhi strand that escaped and grew up free.” Her eyes burned into his.

Xenic stared at Fentra, then Kilaney. “Look at him.”

They did. Fentra folded her arms.

Xenic added spark to the tinder. “The humans built pyramids nearly five thousand years ago.”

Now the crew stared harder, their all-black eyes less harsh and more inquisitive. Fentra continued playing devil’s advocate while Siltern worked fast on the console behind the Captain. “Did the Ossyrians come?”

Xenic nodded. “Five thousand years ago. I have checked the Grid database records. The humans have the ankh.”

She unfolded her arms, her voice quieter. “Most races have the ankh.”

“They have ours, the cruciform one, blue steel.”

Siltern drew back. “We are ready, but we must go quickly.”

Xenic looked around at his crew. “I want you all behind me on this one. If anyone disagrees we turn around and leave.”

Kilaney decided he had best stay quiet. But one by one they nodded assent, until the vote came to Fentra.

Fentra gave Kilaney a hard stare. “If the others are the tribe, we can save them… cherish them. But this one… You, Kilaney – Jorann – you must die for your crimes.”

Kilaney nodded, not breaking her gaze. “I’ve paid that price before.”

Xenic turned to Siltern. “Execute.”

◆◆◆

“Damage negligible, Your Eminence, hull plating around the engines is intact, planet-cutter functional integrity one hundred per cent. It will take some time for the Mannekhi vessel to find us again.”

Sister Esma made no acknowledgement. The Mannekhi vessel was no match for a Crucible. While she would have relished dissecting their Spiker, time was of the essence. However, their presence signified both a threat and an opportunity. She clicked a message in Largyl 6 to the red-cloaked Q’Roth Commander at his console. His blue-black head swivelled toward her, all six vermillion slits waxing, but he made no reply. Nevertheless, she saw on her console that he had transmitted the message to the Krishtach Q’Roth destroyer on standby two sectors away, to approach in case of need for assistance or extraction. Hubris was a human affliction; Sister Esma knew how to hedge her bets.

She then turned her attention to the secondary screen in front of her, scratches like cobweb strands hanging in empty space. “Shrell, you say?” The Q’Roth commander confirmed it. It was going to be hard getting out. She turned to one of her lieutenants behind her. “Is Serena aboard yet?”

“Both Raptors have just docked, Your Eminence.”

It was tempting to turn and go right then, and leave Esperia to its own fate amidst increasingly poisoned space. Certainly no races would be coming to help them now, and Qorall and his worms would eventually arrive and finish the job.

But Sister Esma didn’t believe in leaving loose ends, and hadn’t gotten this far without attention to detail. Besides, she’d been waiting eighteen years to crush Micah and humanity’s remnants. “Can we reach the planet to activate the cutters?”

The lieutenant stared deep into his console before replying. “We risk being trapped there if we approach closer, Your Eminence, Shrell activity appears highest around Esperia.”

Sister Esma’s fingers curled, her sharp fingernails pressing into the softer flesh of her palms. They were behind the moon on the night side of Esperia, with Esperantia on the dayside. She could not target the city with an energy beam. Her dark red lips whitened, tightening to a thin scratch.

A door swished open behind her, and Serena waltzed onto the Bridge, beaming more than usual. “We have sixty humans. They are being processed now, and will soon go back into stasis for the trip home.”

“I asked for one hundred, Serena. And you have lost five Raptors, not forgetting a Q’Roth Legate.”

Serena’s smile didn’t falter. “They are resilient. I took notes of the Genners’ abilities, not to mention the last Sentinel alive.” Serena glanced at the screens in front of Esma. “The moon,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Sister Esma parked the reference to a Sentinel for later. As for the moon, she guessed what Serena was referring to, and should have already seen it herself.

Serena continued. “I was listening to comms while coming here. Break up the moon – it’s a much quicker job, and it will rain asteroid- sized rocks down on Esperia for weeks. Even if one doesn’t strike their excuse for a town, the impact craters and dust clouds will plunge the planet into winter darkness for decades. They will perish, especially since no help will arrive.”

Sister Esma gazed up to the Q’Roth Commander, his trapezoidal head bearing down on her. “Do we have time to do this and find a conduit out of here?”

“Esss,” the Q’Roth Commander hissed, raising a claw from under his cloak. A hooked digit slid into a recess on an inert panel in front of him. Mustard lights and lettering lit up all over the panel, accompanied by a grinding noise.

“Come,” she said, gesturing to Serena to join her at the front so as to have a prime view.

Together they watched the eight tendrils rapidly uncoil from the long fuselage, reminding her of an octopus getting ready to devour its prey. All the filaments unfurled and spirited outwards as they commenced their deadly embrace around the moon. After several minutes the Q’Roth Commander’s inserted claw flicked sideways. The threads coated in super-charged plasma flashed yellow, then orange, red, violet, and finally black and blue, the Q’Roth signature colour. A nice touch. The grinding noise on the bridge segued into a deep hum, throbbing in time with the energy spikes.

The gaps between pulses decreased, like a heartbeat speeding up, and the tendrils glowed across space to the moon. Sister Esma approached the screen, content that Serena knew not to follow without a further invitation. The hum’s heartbeat sped up further.

The flashing cords that had latched onto the moon’s mountainous surface began carving out ridges, cheese-wiring their way down towards the crust. One of Sister Esma’s staff brought up a smaller screen showing a close-up of one of the tendrils in action. It had already cleaved a mountain in two, and now burrowed deep beneath the surface, its fierce blue glow still detectable beneath the smoking lava-red fissure left in its wake. Rocks and slag billowed out, plumes of steam from deep perma-frosted water flashing into the vacuum of space. Abruptly the entire left side of the terrain shifted angle, caving in, signifying that the tendril had cut through the outer crust. The split mountain shuddered and cracked, slow motion avalanches of massive boulders tumbling down its sides. The rift snaked towards the horizon like an open wound. The image zoomed out, revealing other angry scars spreading across the moon’s surface. It was breaking up.

An alarm intruded, and Sister Esma returned to her command chair. “Report.”

“It’s the Mannehki vessel,” Serena said. “They’ve found us.”

Sister Esma never hesitated, particularly in battle. She addressed the Q’Roth Commander first. “Separate the ship, so the cutter can finish its job. Set it to auto-destruct in fifteen minutes.”

She addressed Serena. “Take the tactical station. Bring us about, all weapons ready.”

Serena leapt up the step to the central console, the lieutenant there hurrying out of her way. Sister Esma heard but ignored Serena’s whispered remark, “About time.”

Sister Esma noted the Q’Roth Marauder was now in-sector, and wondered when Louise was going to bother to contact her, and whose side she would be on, aside from her own. But Sister Esma would wait. Patience wasn’t a virtue, it was a strategy, one that had never failed her.

Chapter 20

Mutiny

The only weapon Kat could find was a knife. She didn’t know if it would be enough. Eighteen years ago, after Louise had sent one of the four refugee ships from Earth into the heart of a star, taking two thousand souls with it, Micah and the others had developed a plan to kill her if she ever attacked again. She did, and they succeeded. But Louise had arranged a back-up clone that had sprung to life almost immediately, more enraged with humanity than ever, making Louise a permanent threat. All Kat knew about the process was that there could be only one clone, as otherwise the memory back-up process became unstable. Aramisk had figured out where the clone lay hidden, inactive. All Kat had to do was kill it so that it could never activate automatically in the event of Louise’s death. No big deal, she told herself, as she perspired, scurrying through the lower corridors of the fourth deck, the sheathed knife tight in her white-knuckled hand. Kat would have complained about the complete ineptitude of the plan if it hadn’t been her own.

Arriving at the door, she found the keypad and recalled the Q’Roth six-character code the Hohash had embedded in her memory. Half- wondering whether it would work, and no small part of her hoping it wouldn’t, she waited after entering it. Nothing happened. About to try again, she stopped herself. Level Five and Six didn’t make mistakes such as simple slips of the finger or claw, and if she entered the code a second time it might trigger an alarm or worse. After a few more seconds the door slid open, and Kat stepped inside. The door swished closed behind her.

Inside the square chamber the smell of astringent disinfectant washed over her, blue light seeping out from an open sarcophagus raised on a plinth. Kat spied a pulse pistol on a rack near the door. It made sense – if Louise was killed, the clone would auto-activate and might well need a weapon. Kat stuck the sheathed knife in the back of her waistband and picked up the gun, checking its charge. She almost tiptoed over to the large bath-like basin, filled with what she guessed was Q’Roth blue amniotic fluid. Underneath the surface was a human outline, but she would have to reach in to pull out the clone’s head in order to kill it. What made me think this would be easy? At least there were no ripples, not even bubbles on the liquid’s surface. Reluctantly, she rolled up her left sleeve, took a breath and slid her fingers, hand, and then her entire arm into the body-temperature fluid. It was deeper than she’d hoped.

When the liquid was almost up to her shoulder, she touched soft flesh. Her fingers skirted around, finding a nose and closed lips. Kat needed to reach deeper to get her hand around the back of the clone’s neck to pull her out, but she’d have to put the pistol down and hold onto the edge with her right hand, and she was on her toes already. Kat cursed, but there was nothing else for it, so she laid the pistol where she could grab it in a hurry, gripped the side of the bath, took a breath and leant a little deeper, the side of her chin dipping into the syrupy fluid, praying that the clone was inert.

Her left hand slid behind the clone’s neck and, using her right hand as anchor, she began to tug the clone to the surface. As Kat hauled herself back, so that her feet reached the floor again, she grunted with the effort to raise the clone’s head completely out, against the sucking effect of the gelatinous liquid. Her right hand groped for the pistol.

Just as the clone’s face broke surface, its eyes opened, followed by its lips. Kat grabbed the gun but Louise’s arm whipped out, catching Kat’s at mid forearm, killing her grip. The pistol rattled to the floor.

“Hello Kat,” the clone gurgled, blue liquid oozing out amongst the words. “How long can you hold your breath?”

The clone’s hands snapped around Kat’s neck and dragged her down into the sarcophagus. Kat’s entire body tumbled in. Her eyes and nostrils burned, and she thrashed about, trying to break the clone’s grip. She suddenly remembered the knife, and reached back with her right hand. At the same time, the clone’s arms straightened, its hands squeezing tight, strangling Kat. The pressure on her carotid arteries triggered dark patches in her already-blurred vision, almost making her drop the knife. But the straight-arm stranglehold gave her the room to manoeuvre. With a bubbling grunt, Kat swung the knife straight up into the underside of the clone’s jaw, driving its long blade up through the clone’s throat and into its lower brain.

The hands around Kat’s neck stiffened, spasming, then went slack. Kat didn’t bolt for the surface. Instead, bracing herself against the clone’s forehead, she withdrew the knife and then slit the clone’s throat from ear to ear, just to make sure.

Kat breached surface, gasping and coughing, then clambered out, slopping out of the ooze, and sat shaking on the floor, her back against the sarcophagus, in a large blue puddle. She tossed the knife, sending it skittering across the floor. “Longer than you think, bitch,” she said, then spat out some more of the fluid.

◆◆◆

Louise was losing patience. “Why can’t we go faster?”

Aramisk said nothing, busying herself with the navigation console, feverishly swiping strands of black hair out of her vision. Tarish spoke, fingering his white goatee as he stared at the viewscreen depicting a normal star view, with Esperia’s small rusty disk dead centre. “There are Shrell here.” His voice sounded reverent. “They are poisoning space in this sector. If we move any faster than Aramisk can navigate with our scanners, our ship will be sliced in two.”

Louise didn’t know how Aramisk was tracking the Shrell, particularly as her own screens showed nothing; rumour was that these insular, Level Nine ray-like creatures lived in subspace and Transpace rather than normal space-time. In her years travelling the Grid she’d had plenty of time to catch up on its history; fully a tenth of Mannekhi territory had been devastated by Tla Beth-sanctioned poisonings, retribution for rebellions. She had little doubt the Mannekhi had developed ways to fathom the creatures’ pathways.

Louise activated a Level Six tracer in the ship’s data-core to see how Aramisk was tracking the Shrell, then addressed Tarish. The black Gel- suits they wore, prepped for battle in case of hull breaches, made Tarish look younger than his two hundred years.

“Can we fire on the planet from this distance, through these fractures you insist are there and my scanners cannot see?”

Tarish’s voice remained calm. “That would not be prudent. We can only detect the wake of a Shrell, some minutes after they have passed. There would be a risk of detonation due to collision with a fracture, perhaps close to our ship. I do not need to remind you –”

“No, you do not. Any change in the other three ships’ status?”

Aramisk answered from behind her console, voice taut. “The Mannekhi Spiker just came in range of the Crucible, which is decimating the moon. The Ossyrian vessel is nearby, but adrift and heavily damaged. The two Raptors returning from Esperia have berthed inside the Crucible.” She chewed on a knuckle, her face lit up green by the Marauder’s tactical displays. “I could finish off the Pyramid with an interceptor, if you wish.”

Louise studied the diminutive Aramisk, her thick black hair shrouding her features, making her look as if she was hiding from the world. She was the most talented but also the most unpredictable of the crew, and had been spending too much time with Kat for Louise’s liking. Aramisk clearly had no love for the Ossyrians, but that could be a feint; maybe she was looking for a way to help her Mannekhi colleagues in the Spiker ship move against the Crucible. In any event, Louise cared little for Ossyrians; they were of no consequence, and their ship would not survive long. Avoid secondary entanglements, Sister Esma had once counselled.

Louise strode toward the bridge exit. “Leave them. Their ship is no threat. Call me when we have a clear shot of the planet. Until then, no contact with any of the three ships. We destroy Esperia, then we leave, understood?”

Tarish and two of the others bowed. “As you order.” Louise hovered in the doorway, waiting. “Understood,” Aramisk added.

It sounded genuine to Louise, for a Mannekhi at any rate. She quit the bridge.

As soon as Louise left the bridge and was alone, her mood brightened. It made her realise how sick she was of her Mannekhi crew; she could never fully trust them. They were from a culture born into Patronage, taught from early childhood how to hide their true feelings. The only interesting companion had been Kat. Even if Kat wanted to kill her, at least she was honest about it. As she walked through the ship Louise realized she was sick of it, too, having spent seven years aboard this particular vessel, after the previous one was destroyed in an ambush   by the Q’Roth Ninth fleet. Qorall’s forces had saved her life that time, rescued her from capture. Even if it had been to gain information on the former whereabouts of Kalaran, the fact was that he’d saved her.

Louise paused mid-corridor. For a moment she thought she heard something, maybe Kat, who’d been recuperating from her coma; but then it went quiet. She continued walking her thoughts. Trading the past seven years of her life against Qorall’s self-serving act of saving her – it was no longer enough. The trouble was, there was no glory in Qorall’s war: those conquered were afraid, broken and subdued, and most of those not yet conquered were simply afraid. She had been a maverick for too long. She wanted a cause again, like she’d had as a Chorazin agent with Vince, and as an Alician with Sister Esma. Now, there was a cause; screw looking for Hellera. Her step lightened. She should get Qorall working for them, helping the Alicians. Now, that would be motivating. For the first time in weeks she felt clear, energized. Now would be a good time to update the clone’s memory core, just in case.

Arriving at the lower deck area, she saw the dried blue footprints on the floor, and sprinted to the chamber, found the room and entered. She touched a panel area and the body began to rise to the surface, and stared at what had to be Kat’s handiwork. Louise lifted the listless, blonde- haired head toward her, its lifeless innocent eyes open wide, a gash across its throat. Louise studied the face awhile, remembering who she used to be, a lifetime ago. Each time she’d tried to find her way back there… no matter. She let the head back down gently. There was no time to grow another one.

Kat. Probably aided by Aramisk or even Tarish. She kicked the sarcophagus. Why did everyone betray her? Leaving the door open, she headed to the unoccupied secondary battle bridge. En route, she lifted her wristcom to her lips. “Where is Kat?”

“Unknown,” came the synthetic Q’Roth computer reply, “Sensors are not functioning normally.”

“Internal or external problem?” If the former, she would choke the life out of Aramisk personally.

“Unknown.”

Louise gritted her teeth and broke into a run.

◆◆◆

Kat arrived at the bridge, bedraggled, her forehead and armpits perspiring, her hair still damp and sticky and no doubt coloured blue. She’d nearly bumped into Louise en route, and had then taken a tertiary pathway to get to the bridge. Once Louise had passed, Kat had sprinted all the way. She hated running: it sped up her pulse for all the wrong reasons – fight or flight, she knew Pierre would have said. For her it always seemed to be both. But she didn’t feel well. Dizziness threatened, and her neck hurt.

Kat raised and steadied her pistol arm. The four Mannekhi turned one by one to stare at her. All of them looked her up and down.

“Where’s Louise?” Kat croaked, addressing   Aramisk.

Aramisk walked toward Kat but a raised hand from Tarish stopped her. He placed himself in the firing line, taking command.

“She left five minutes ago,” he said, arms folded.

“You’re injured,” Aramisk said, peering at her from behind Tarish’s gaunt frame.

Kat leant hard against the wall, catching her breath. Don’t pass out now! She waved the pistol at Tarish. “Seal the Bridge, the Battle  Bridge, too.”

Tarish nodded to one of the other Mannekhi to execute the request. “Such measures will not keep Louise out for long.”

Kat shrugged. Her attention fell on the viewscreen split in four sections, showing Esperia and several ships she didn’t recognise, except for the disabled Ossyrian pyramid drifting in space. She kept the gun levelled on Tarish. “Looks like I need an update.” Her head began to throb hard, almost making her eyes water. She stumbled, her legs almost buckling, but regained her balance.

Aramisk sighed, snatched a small case from the wall, brushed past Tarish and ignored the barrel shifting in her direction. “What you need is medical attention, right now, before your carotid fails and you stroke or die or both.” She knelt down at Kat’s feet and opened the case, fishing around until she found what she was searching for. “This may hurt,” she said.

Kat laughed. “What, more than it does already? Don’t see how that’s –”

Aramisk sprang to her feet and plunged a syringe into Kat’s neck. Kat shook violently, a feeling of ice flooding into her neck and head, freezing the back of her eye-balls. She gasped, placing her left hand on her right wrist to steady the pistol, eyes misting with pain. Tarish didn’t move. Kat’s strength ebbed as the coldness flushed down her arms, and then her legs gave way. Aramisk caught her, lowered her to the floor in a sitting position, and held her there. Tarish had already snatched the pistol, moving faster than his age would suggest likely.

“Wait,” Aramisk said to Tarish. “I’ve been in communication with the Spiker Captain. It’s Commander Xenic. He just sent me a file.”

Tarish loomed over her. “That was not your place.”

She shrugged. “Check your console. You won’t believe it, but you’ll want to.”

Louise’s voice cut through to the Bridge. “Open the door down here. Now!”

Tarish pocketed the pistol, and moved to the access control panel. Aramisk placed both palms over her heart. “Check your console, Tarish! Please. Kat is of the Helgothora. I’ve verified the Captain’s analysis. It’s Xenic, for the Ancestors’ sake. My father fought alongside him in the Cretachian Campaign. We can trust him!”

Tarish’s brow furrowed, then he regained his composure, moved to his console, and spoke in measured tones to Louise as he scanned the file. “Commander, Kat is here, she tried to take the bridge, but we overcame her.” His all-black eyes suddenly widened and he turned from the console to stare at Kat, then Aramisk. His voice betrayed nothing of the revelation. “However, she temporarily locked us out of certain command functions. Aramisk is working on it as we speak.”

Louise’s tone sharpened. “You have five minutes, after which I will decide you are liars and mutineers, and I will kill you all, do you understand? I have already segregated the ship and still have control over the Nova bombs, and a way off this vessel.”

“It will be done.” Tarish cut comms. He spoke as if to himself. “She will not wait five minutes.”

Kat shivered. With a grunt, she tried to get up, and slipped. Aramisk caught her again and helped her upright. Kat felt her pulse slowing, steadying; her right carotid ached, and the puffy swelling around it was tender to her fingertips. “What was in the file? What just happened?”

Tarish looked over his Mannekhi crew, then back to Kat. He took her hand, held it as if it was priceless, and smiled. “For all the good it might do, Katrina of Earth and Helgothora, daughter of the Eleventh Tribe, we just changed sides.”

◆◆◆

Louise had been considering her next move – after Esperia’s destruction – for some time. Qorall had her running errands, and it wasn’t her style. After so many years on the move she wanted a ‘centre’, a home of sorts. No matter which way she played it over in her mind, it always came back to the Alicians. She believed in their cause, and she was still Alician.

She reached a secondary communications room and activated short- range comms, directing an encrypted beam at the Crucible. “Sister Esma,” she began, “I know it’s you. This is Louise.”

The lack of reply was expected, so Louise raised the stakes. “I have seven Sclarese Level Nine Nova bombs onboard, and I only need one to finish off Esperia. If you do not respond I will target your vessel.”

Louise tried not to react when she saw the golden skull cap framing Sister Esma’s angular face, her high cheekbones guarding a hooked nose. Her former mentor had aged. But that wasn’t all of it; she was diminished somehow, the years had taken their toll on her. In the background of the holo she heard the dull sound of explosions. Sister Esma’s large black eyes darted over unseen displays. “Louise, this was expected, but I am a little busy right now. What is it you want?”

Louise found the words didn’t come so easily. But she was running out of time. She recalled she’d never seen the new Alician homeworld. “I’ve heard Savange is beautiful at this time of year.”

Sister Esma’s head swung towards her former protégé, raven-like eyes probing. “Are you serious? After all this time you want to come back into the fold?”

Louise nodded, becoming more convinced of it with every second that passed. But she had other reasons, too, which she had discussed with nobody, ideas concerning Qorall.

“Your crew?” Sister Esma asked.

“Not invited. Clean slate.”

Sister Esma’s thick lips curled into something approaching a smile. “Fire the weapons at Esperia, then join me as fast as you can. Once we have destroyed the Spiker, we depart.”

Louise nodded again.

“One more thing, Louise.” Sister Esma’s eyes appeared to soften. “It is good to see you.”

Louise stared at the blank screen, wondering how it could all have been so different if she’d have stayed with the Alicians from the start, what she and Sister Esma could have accomplished together. There was still time. She raced down to the space deck, issuing a Commander-priority override to the Marauder’s control-mind on the way. By the time she arrived at the hangar where five Raptors lay, six of the seven Nova bombs had been loaded onto one of them; the seventh would detonate with the Marauder when it self-destructed.

She didn’t need to check the time to know that five minutes had already elapsed. The fact that Tarish and the others had not communicated with her was as clear as an outright admission. As she boarded the craft, her one regret was that she would have to leave Kat behind; she’d grown to like her. But betrayal was betrayal, and according to Q’Roth and Alician tradition, there was only one punishment fitting for treachery.

The Raptor powered up as she checked that the Shrell decryption algorithm had been downloaded from Aramisk’s console. The map of Shrell wires, as she thought of them, might not be fully accurate, but it should be good enough to get within firing range of Esperia and then reach the Crucible.

Once outside she sent the auto-destruct codes back to the Marauder. The ship’s self-destruct was intended to stop it falling into enemy hands, and would cripple the ship. But the Nova bomb left onboard would vaporise the Marauder and anything else in range.

Clean slate.

Heading towards Esperia, Louise dodged the Shrell-wires using manual control rather than autopilot. While doing so, she weighed the choice she had just made, the implicit contract with Sister Esma, who had originally saved her and then condemned her to death. Yet there was mutual respect. Besides, after such a long time, Louise wondered what it might be like to be amongst her kind again, even if she had too much Q’Roth DNA in her ever to be considered a ‘normal’ Alician. But she hoped to turn the Alicians to Qorall’s side – the winning side – when the time was right.

The Raptor’s onboard computer mind signalled that she was within firing range, and plotted six independent trajectories to see the bombs through. Probability of at least one getting through – and she only needed one to strike the planet – was 99.786%. Probability of two bombs getting through was 91%. More than adequate. She decided to keep one on board, as an insurance policy.

Micah, I was hoping for this to be a little more personal, but never mind. She touched a panel and then counted the five rapid zips as her cargo left for Esperia. Then she swung the Raptor hard about and aimed toward the Crucible. Space lit up behind her as two of the Nova bombs snagged Shrell-wires, the shock waves catapulting her Raptor forwards. Louise executed a series of manoeuvres requiring all her enhanced Level Six reflexes to avoid being sliced by the wires, and then the ship came back under control. Another ignition buffeted her craft, and then quiet. The remaining two intelligent missiles would learn from their fallen comrades, and would proceed slower, but reach their target.

Louise thought about her ex-lover Vince, how often they’d had close calls like that one. But Micah and the others had stolen Vince from her. She smiled, embellishing one of Blake’s favoured aphorisms: You reap what you sow, humanity. Accelerating, Louise slalomed through the wire mesh towards the Crucible, wondering what Savange would look like at this time of year.

◆◆◆

Aramisk bowed her head over her console, her voice resigned. “Louise has activated the Marauder’s self-destruct sequence.”

Kat moved next to her. “Can you disable it?”

She shook her head. “Louise convinced the ship’s mind that her crew has mutinied.” She cast Kat a look. “Five minutes, just long enough for her to get clear. And she wasn’t joking about segregating the ship, there’s no way to reach the Raptors. We wouldn’t have time anyway.”

Kat thought hard, wishing Pierre were there: he would think of something. But she hadn’t gotten this close to Esperia – to Antonia and Petra – to be blown to smithereens when practically in orbit. She slapped the side of the console. “We need to think outside the cube,” she said, as much to herself as to the others. And fast!

“Curious expression,” Tarish said.

Dammit! These Mannekhi – so detached… But something snagged her mind. Outside. “How far do we have to be to avoid the blast?”

Aramisk frowned at Kat from beneath her dark fringe. “With a Nova bomb added into the mix? About twenty kilometres. Wait, you’re not thinking…?”

But Kat had already moved to the rack of helmets and began tossing them to the four Mannekhi, picking up a Gel-suit for herself. “Select two Raptors, instruct them to depart and pick us up outside.”

Tarish caught the helmet, and stared at it. “Your plan won’t work.”

The others, including Aramisk, looked towards him, but no sooner had a klaxon begun its Q’Roth countdown than Aramisk spoke. “We have to try.”

Kat stepped into the self-applying space suit, feeling the cool, wet, chamois-like material race up over her one-piece and exposed flesh. She held her breath momentarily as it slowed then stopped just beneath her chin, then slipped the hood-like helmet on, feeling it connect seamlessly to the gel material. Air breathed into the suit and helmet, its black exterior toughening while remaining smooth and flexible on the inside.

Tarish placed his helmet on Louise’s chair and walked calmly to Aramisk’s station. “One of us must stay. You are relieved.”

Aramisk met his eyes, then took his hand and bent her forehead to touch his upturned palm. “Walk with the Ancestors,” she said.

Kat decided not to intervene. She squeezed his arm as she walked past him.

“Go, all of you,” he said. “I will direct the Raptors, and will signal Xenic. I will also try to warn anyone else out there as to what Louise is about to do.”

Kat considered that she was just buying time, getting a better view of Esperia being obliterated. Nevertheless, she and the others hurried to the airlock behind the bridge. As the inner hatch sealed she watched the tall frame of Tarish at the console, and for the first time decided she could maybe get to like the people she’d been stuck with the past nine months.

Aramisk activated the depressurisation sequence, then sighed. “Problem,” she said, her voice transmitting clearly into Kat’s helmet.

“What?” asked Kat, aware how fraught her voice sounded.

“The depressurisation sequence will take thirty seconds, but the ship will detonate in one minute. We’ll still be in the blast zone.”

Kat studied the airlock control scripts. Louise had taught her how to use them a year ago in one of her rare, kinder moments. “Tarish, emergency decompress in five seconds. The Raptors will have to work fast and deploy gravitic scoops.” Kat looked at her three helmeted companions. “Take a breath.”

It was like a fairground ride in the dead of night, a rollercoaster that at the height of its pitches and rolls flew off its rails. Kat spun wildly, saw the Marauder tumbling silently around her, glimpsed one of her Mannekhi colleagues head-strike an antenna and careen off in another direction, a white puff of gas from his or her helmet billowing around the head, arms and legs flailing uselessly. The sound of her raspish breathing accentuated the whirling vista, and she tried to count down. The suit’s thrusters engaged, and stabilised her, the ship rolling into view, already a kilometre away, fish-shaped and muscled with gun ports. A grey dot loomed in front of her – one of the Raptors – and the gravity net scooped her up, hauled her into the cargo bay and flung her next to another suited colleague. The aft doors started to close as the Raptor accelerated away, leaving the Marauder behind to shrink to a dull point of light.

Tarish spoke softly from the Marauder via the suit-com. He sounded so close. “Goodbye Katrina, I wish we had known who you really were. I wish I could have known you better. You have no idea what you mean to us. Live.”

Through the final chink between the closing bay doors, harsh white light spilled into the bay where Kat and one other survivor lay.

Goodbye, Tarish. Wish I could have known you better, too. I’ve never trusted father figures, but you… What a waste of the nine months she’d had onboard with them. Kat kicked herself. But maybe she could honour him. She tried to think like a Mannekhi, knew they would simply move on. Antonia, Petra, even Micah; she had to contact them somehow.

A chime told her the bay was pressurized, and she removed her helmet, as did the other survivor.

“I’m glad you made it, Aramisk,” Kat said.

From the cockpit they tried for ten minutes to raise the other Raptor, finally detecting a small debris pattern.

Aramisk spoke, her voice monotone. “Where now?”

Kat knew they wouldn’t get within a hundred klicks of the Crucible without an approach code, and they would be too far behind Louise to catch her. Besides, her mind brimmed with thoughts of Antonia and Petra.

“Esperia. If it’s still in one piece.”

Aramisk nodded, and the Raptor veered towards the planet.

Kat bit down on her lower lip, staring at the orange dot dead ahead, willing it to survive, trying not to think of it glowing nova-white, incinerating everyone she cared about.

Not quite everyone. If you’re out there, Pierre, now would be a bloody good time to intervene.

But as the craft powered toward Esperia, Kat noticed that her companion was frighteningly still, as if she might crack. Mannekhi hid their emotions well, but she knew they weren’t made of stone. Kat draped her arm around her rigid shoulders. “Aramisk, tell me about Tarish, and about the Eleventh Tribe. I’ve never been good with relatives, but it’s never too late to learn.”

Aramisk turned to face Kat, face blanched behind strands of unruly hair, lips trembling as if struggling to let the words out. Then the façade she’d built up all her life split wide open. Kat held her, and while she rocked Aramisk gently, uttering soothing nonsense, all her own anger, fears and pain breached the surface too.

Chapter 21

Tightening Noose

Jen’s exhilaration at flying the Kalarash ship had long since evaporated. She’d handed over control to Dimitri, Rashid operating tactical, sweeping aside dark worm debris as Kalaran ploughed through the latest, thickening wave. Just how many were there? Qorall had evidently been breeding them somewhere, or genetically manufacturing them, but that would require bio-farms on an almost unimaginable scale.

She tugged at her hair, let her forehead dip down and bump the console in front of her. “This is taking too long!” The other two didn’t hear her, they were both immersed, their minds hooked into the ship’s functions. Jen was supposed to be resting, not having slept in two days. Instead she accessed the Memento’s long-range scanners, but didn’t like what she found.

Jen had asked Kalaran if he could see what was happening back home, and without another word he’d let her look. Four Hohash were in the area: two on Esperia, two on the pyramid ship. These omnipaths relayed information to the Memento as it battled to enter the galaxy through the portal blockaded by Qorall’s forces. Due to the gravity weapons Kalaran was using, there were temporal effects in the data-stream. Images arrived in pulses, flashes of vision. It reminded her of old-style radar, where every sweep would give an update of what had just happened, and then fade. The gap between the updates was around ten minutes, though back home they were being transmitted every second. She’d asked Kalaran once if he could go back in time. He’d said no, but that it was possible to slow time, or give that appearance. In any case, ten minutes was  up.

With a mental flick, the image arose in her head again through the neural interface. She filtered out the deepening lattice of Shrell filaments– a quarter of the males were already dead – and focused on Esperia’s predicament. The Hunter vessel was a burial mound of twisted metal, and sixty captives had been taken – she didn’t know why. The pyramid was listing badly and looked good for only another fifteen minutes or so. That was where she kept staring, because Gabriel was onboard. Images of him stole her breath away – God, he looked like his father! Micah seemed to be badly injured, but at least the Ossyrians were patching him up.

The Crucible had lacerated the moon, and in about one local hour an avalanche of rock would start its fall towards Esperia, burying it under a hundred metres of meteoric rubble and dust. The Hohash had uncovered who was running the ship via a decoded transmission between the Crucible and the Marauder. Jen wasn’t surprised. How could humanity have such awful luck, with Sister Esma hell-bent on its eradication and Louise riding shotgun? The only active deterrent was Kilaney onboard the Mannekhi spiker; she’d never met him, but his reputation preceded him. The info-pulse faded, normal vision flooding back.

Jen stood up and paced, tugging at her hair again. She kicked the side of a console. “Kalaran,” she shouted, “let me do something! I can’t just stand by and watch them all die.” There was no answer. He was busy. They all were: Dimitri’s shut-eyed expression was deadly serious, his large hands twitching feverishly over the multronic navcon keypad. Rashid’s body was perfectly still except for his fingers dancing inside   a football-sized holosphere, each tiny movement whipping out hellfire beams from the Duality to fend off or slice through enemy flesh. Beads of sweat clung to his temples. Hold it together, Rashid!

Jen turned on her interface again and switched back to short range, seeing an augmented forward view from the Memento. There were three more enemy waves inbound, combinations of ships and worms, enemy vessels attacking as soon as they emerged from the ruptured portal. Where the hell were they coming from? Jen didn’t want to distract Kalaran, so left him to try and scorch a way through. But the tactic was obvious – Qorall wanted to delay Kalaran’s return, to ensure that Esperia fell. Not that he gave a damn about the humans. The spiders; Qorall now knew they were a threat, despite not knowing why or how. Join the club; Kalaran wouldn’t tell her either. Jen resorted to her favourite way of killing time, a karate kata where she could flex her muscles and utter a heartfelt ‘kiai’ at its end.

Ten minutes up, she switched on and stretched the scanner scale  out again, in time to witness Louise’s Marauder detonate in a shower  of white shards, two Raptors surviving, one headed to the Crucible, one to Esperia. She was unsure who had made it off alive. But just before   it exploded the last occupant had broadcast a message that Louise had Nova bombs and was going to fire them at Esperia. If any got through, the spiders and all of mankind would vanish, boiling to death on an imploding world. If that happened, she wondered if Kalaran would cease the fighting and turn back around.

“No.” Kalaran used an avatar of her father this time – she’d asked him not to use her brother anymore, not with the real Gabriel – his son, anyway – out there fighting for his life.

Jen was relieved to hear it. “But without them you can’t win, can you?”

As was more often the case, Kalaran answered a different question. “Hellera is still there. Qorall has found her hiding place.”

“Kalaran to the rescue, eh?”

Her father’s face turned to her, a flash of displeasure – she hated the way Kalaran could mimic people from her memories so damned well. “Sorry,” she said. As if to try to change the subject, not wishing to lose his attention and end up pacing alone again, she asked the question in the back of her mind. “Why did they take the hostages. I mean the Alicians, why did they take sixty people?”

Kalaran’s borrowed face smiled, the way her real father used to when he was humouring her. “I’m Level Nineteen, Jen; I always know what you mean.”

She shrugged, folded her arms. “I’m not distracting you am I? You know, from more important things?”

Kalaran’s smile broadened. “Ninety-nine and a half per cent of me is locked in battle, but the rest of me needed a small break, a diversion.”

“I’m flattered,” she said, failing to sound sarcastic, because whenever she got his attention, particularly using her dead father’s image, she never wanted it to end.

He opened his hand, and moved it as if tossing something into the air. A series of small linked balls appeared. A molecule. She’d studied chemistry, and every night Kalaran had been sleep-teaching all three of them advanced sciences, but she didn’t recognise it at first, except that the way it twisted, it could only be a DNA strand.

It rotated in midair while Kalaran spoke in her father’s grainy Irish voice. “It is tempting to imagine that one can easily move up a Level.” He said no more.

This was how it worked between them, the way he taught her. Intelligence is never about facts, he’d once said to all three of them; it is about the way you think, the questions you frame. Jen knew she had to make the leap to the next point, see the link. “The Q’Roth… they upgraded the Alicians in a matter of centuries…” Her eyes widened. “You mean they got it wrong?”

“They missed something. I had one of the Hohash run a deep bioscan of the Alicians who raided your new world.” The atomic-level model shrank into nothingness. “They will die out without this molecule in its natural state. A reproductive imbalance.”

Jen snorted in disbelief. “So, if none of us had escaped…” She shook her head. “Life can be a sardonic bitch, eh?”

Kalaran grew serious. “That has been an especially hot Level Nineteen discussion topic for eons, Jen. One of our koans, you might say.”

Kalaran didn’t usually talk more than a few sentences. She capitalised on his mood with one of her long-harboured questions. “So what do the different Levels really represent?”

“Species think that they can advance by learning a trick or altering DNA, but it takes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of years, and for higher Levels, millions. They think it is like a simple musical scale; you just need to go up a notch.”

“It’s more like harmonics, isn’t it?”

Kalaran stared at her a moment. But he suddenly seemed distracted, as if seeing something elsewhere, and was gone.

“See you around Kal. Nice chatting. I know, you’re busy.” But he’d given her an idea. The Hohash… Jen walked to one of the glass spheres the three of them used to move around the vast ship. “Take me to the Hohash.” There was a pause during which the sphere remained stationary.

Kalaran spoke to her without appearing. “Why do you want to see the Hohash?”

“I have an idea. Best if I don’t tell you, though.”

The sphere dropped through the floor into a vast, lilac-tinted empty space, making her grab onto a waist-high rail despite the gravity stabiliser, as she free-fell past the smooth, asteroid-sized globes whose function remained a mystery. Dimitri had described them as God’s marbles, as usual seeing wonder in everything. The mercury lake was five kilometres below, and she plummeted towards it. This area had been out of bounds for the past year. As it rose up towards her she realised how vast it was, its surface rippling, swirling currents underneath. She held her breath and grabbed the rail again. Are you going to stop? It was getting really close – she could see the reflection of the sphere, getting bigger. Kalaran, please!

It stopped a foot from the surface; she felt no deceleration, and stumbled out onto the squidgy surface, her heart thumping in her chest. Thanks, I think.

Jen had never stood on it before, and didn’t know if it was actually mercury or not, but decided it was best not to slip.

The Hohash she had seen only once before – Kalaran was a bit protective about it – was waiting for her. Instead of a golden rim like others she’d seen, this one’s rim was a deep red. But it was the mirror itself that was mesmerising. Most Hohash had flat mirror surfaces, and she’d found one in the caves where she’d first encountered Kalaran  that had its surface divided up into eight segments, almost like a jigsaw puzzle. But this one had five concentric ovals, making her feel drawn in, as if, like Alice, she could step right through it.

Jen had one thing, and only one thing in common with Kat. Jen had a node, however her success in accessing any Hohash had been pitiful compared to Kat. Kalaran had told her it had nothing to do with her node, rather that she had ‘issues’, a darkness inside her the Hohash didn’t appreciate. She’d sulked for a few days after that little gem, not missing the irony. But she needed to try something. Closing her eyes a moment, she reached out, trying to open her mind to it. With a shock she was ‘in’ – this had usually taken ten minutes, or much longer, and occasionally forever.

Opening her eyes, she placed the ‘call’ as she thought of it, letting the Hohash know whom she wanted to communicate with – Hellera – knowing it was a ridiculous idea. Why would Hellera even acknowledge, in her eyes, such a lowly being? But with trepidation that had her biting her lip and gripping the Hohash’s rim, Jen knew that the link from this Hohash to Hellera’s was ‘open’. Jen saw nothing, but spoke anyway. She had a pathetic urge to start with “Your Majesty…”

“Hellera, my name –”

“Is Kalaran there?” The voice was synthetic, cold.

“Yes, he…” The connection broke, leaving a stinging sensation in her head. Great. Not for the first time Jen wondered what on Earth Kalaran had done to Hellera. Dimitri had offered a few bawdy suggestions, but Jen seriously hoped that by Level Nineteen beings would have risen above such behaviour. Try a different approach, she told herself.

Hellera.

The sting was more intense this time, making Jen’s eyes water.

“I can have the Hohash in front of you eviscerate your brain. Be concise and then do not contact me again.”

Jen thought quickly, then spoke three words.

Jen escorted the Hohash back to the cockpit control area Kalaran had created for his three human guests. She counted down, then accessed the scanner again. Three of Louise’s Nova bombs had detonated as they snagged Shrell filaments. Nothing else had changed appreciably. She flicked to short-range, the view ahead of the Memento. A crimson glow mushroomed behind the enemy worms and fleets. Abruptly, ships exploded as a ruby cloud engulfed everything in its path, scattering worms and flinging space vessel debris in all directions. As the cloud faded to pink, and then the blackness of space washed back in, a single ship emerged, its deep red arrowhead facing the Memento.

Dimitri and Rashid both disengaged from their immersers, and glanced at Jen.

“The cavalry,” she said. “I thought it was about time.”

Kalaran’s voice entered the room. “You called her. What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Kalaran needs you’.”

Kalaran didn’t do pauses, but Jen was sure there might have been a tiny delay, probably in the nanosecond range.

“How did she arrive so quickly?”

Jen shook her head. “Maybe I should look over your intellect rating system. Your entire template seems to neglect emotional intelligence.”

Kalaran laughed. “As you would say, Jen, I get it. She was already on her way.”

The three Kalarash ships slipped through the portal amongst fleeing dark worms, entering the Silverback galaxy unobstructed, shoving away the debris of mashed warships. For Jen and the others it had been a year, though eighteen had sped past on Esperia. She’d heard no more from Kalaran, other than an image relayed on a central viewer showing the nebula where Hellera had been hiding until very recently, or rather, what was left of it. Dimitri reckoned it was a white hole. Jen didn’t know what that was exactly, except it was blinding white and everything in that sector had shredded and was breaking down at the sub-atomic level. The radiation was off the scale, exotic particles spilling outwards at sub-light and lightspeed. Dimitri had a hard time conceiving its power; undoubtedly one of Qorall’s secret weapons, probably not his last. Hellera had gotten out just in time.

The scanner saccades were coming more regularly now they were inside the galaxy, as they slowly segued towards ‘normal’ time. Jen’s expression grew dark, events unfolded rapidly on the pyramid ship. She called for Kalaran. “We need to get there faster, or slow time more, so we arrive before it’s too late, preferably both.”

There was no answer, so Dimitri filled in the gap. “We cannot do both, my love, you know that.”

She whirled around to her lover, her chest heaving. “But I don’t want to watch him die, all alone, when we’re so damned close!”

Dimitri deflated, offering her his hand.

Hellera’s ice-cold voice spoke, sending a shiver down Jen’s spine, making Dimitri and Rashid jump. “There is a way. Tell her, Kalaran. Or else I will.”

Chapter 22

Nova Stormers

Micah staggered like a drunken spider, ricocheting from one side of the corridor to the other. Petra folded her arms tight, as if hugging herself, biting her lower lip.

“Stop clowning around, Uncle.”

“Not funny,” he managed, smiling through pain-clenched  teeth. He knew that when Petra resorted to humour like that, she was really concerned. Chahat-Me, on the other hand, watched dispassionately, along with two other space-suited surgeons who’d just implanted the bio- mimetic spinal shunt. He still couldn’t feel his legs; that would require more intensive surgery. For now, Micah just wanted to be on his feet when he faced the inevitable.

One of the two Hohash craft had returned to Esperia carrying three Youngbloods and several wounded Ossyrians. Chahat-Me suggested he go with them, but the look he’d given her needed no translation, and ended any further discussion.

He stumbled again, trying to convince himself he was less wobbly on his feet. This field op was only possible because they had hotwired his resident to the shunt’s neuro-cluster. But every time he thought he’d got the hang of it, he veered off in near-collapse, groping for support.

After a further minute of embarrassing himself, smoother muscle control returned. Standing straight, he turned, and walked towards Chahat-Me. Relief flooded through him at simply being able to walk with normal steps, though a deep throbbing pain lurked in his lower back. “Thank you Chahat-Me.” He gazed into her quicksilver eyes. “And I’m sorry for… earlier. All of us owe you so much. These past years you’ve looked after us, I’m not sure we earned that.”

Petra joined him, hooked her arm inside his, and leant her head against his shoulder. “It’s nice when you’re not being a pain in the ass, Uncle.”

He squeezed her hand, wishing there was somewhere safe he could send her. But there wasn’t; the whole Esperian system had become a battlefield. Blake had once told him this was why loved ones should stay at home, away from the killing zone – otherwise soldiers couldn’t concentrate, and could easily be undone. Micah knew Petra was his weak spot.

Chahat-Me touched Micah’s right temple, and his vision switched to black. A flood of images poured forth through his resident, making his legs tremble. Petra supported him. He saw ancient Egypt, the construction of the pyramids, Ossyrians walking in palaces, teaching basic medicine before they departed. Then he was shown flashes of humanity’s medical development throughout history, from leaches, blood-letting and trepanning the skull to ‘let the bad vapours out’, to Pasteur and penicillin, the cure of malaria and the defeat of the nano-plague in 2038; human doctors working tirelessly. Micah guessed the Ossyrians respected this aspect of mankind’s progress.

Micah witnessed the time Kat saved Chahat-Me’s life and prevented a catastrophe, and the scene on Ossyria Prime where Pierre had given the Ossyrian High Council slender hope of reaching Level Nine status. Finally, there was Micah’s recent wake-up call for Chahat-Me to be prepared to fight once again, which she now accepted. He understood from the transmission that she saw it as a necessary precarious step to overcome their current predicament, despite its attendant risk of species regression to a more hostile state.

But there was more: he saw secret Ossyrian debates – his resident providing a basic translation – that had recurred throughout millennia, over whether to ‘reintegrate’ their original aggressive nature with their now more disciplined minds, to reach natural Level advancement.  They had been holding back, out of conservatism and fear of Tla Beth retribution. Micah realised he had forced their hand, and now Chahat-Me embraced it.

The freeflow shut off, and Micah blinked open his eyes. Frowning, he said “Some steps forward can’t be retraced,” thinking again of the human predicament, but then he smiled, and placed a hand on Chahat- Me’s shoulder, leaning on her for support. “You’ve just added a bit of yang to a lot of yin. Better that way.”

His back pain eased off, his nannites having finished some local re- engineering, and he straightened. Gabriel was two decks away prepping the Hohash craft. He turned to Petra. “Which Q’Roth ship should we head for?”

Petra studied the console displays. “The Crucible is closest. The Marauder is still far out, though… oh crap!” She raised her wristcom to her mouth. “Gabriel, a Raptor has just left the Marauder, headed for Esperia.” She glanced nervously at Micah, then listened again. “I just intercepted a broad spectrum message from someone named Tarish onboard the Marauder. It’s set to self-destruct. Louise is aboard a Raptor loaded with Nova bombs, and...”

She turned to Micah, her eyes pleading. “Kat!” she said, gripping his shoulders. “My mother must be on the Marauder, she was with Louise.”

Micah weighed the risks: if Louise destroyed Esperia, they were all doomed anyway, and if the Marauder was on self-destruct then going there would only add to the casualty list, even if they could get there in time to help, which was doubtful. He ignored Petra’s pleading eyes and put his hand at the back of her neck, pulling her face into his shoulder as he spoke into his wristcom. “Gabriel, go, stop Louise’s Raptor any way you can.”

Petra’s fingers dug into his flesh. He held her tighter. He whispered, trying to soothe her. “Kat’s a survivor, Petra.”

A klaxon sounded, and Petra pushed off. “Life support’s failing. The pyramid is dying.”

Chahat-Me confirmed it. “Time to leave. You come with us. Attack Crucible.”

Petra drew in a long breath. “You’re damned right, godmother. Whoever they are on that ship, we’re going to fucking tear them apart.” The Ossyrian leader’s quicksilver eyes drew back, narrowing, a snake-like yellow tinge backlighting them. Micah was suddenly very glad the Ossyrians were on his side.

◆◆◆

Gabriel stood legs splayed aboard the small saucer-shaped Hohash craft, and activated the gravitic brace that would secure him in place against any radical manoeuvres. Relaxing his vision, he accessed the neural interface developed by Virginia when she was just fourteen years old. He felt a sudden pang, wondering how she fared down on the planet – he didn’t believe in intuition, but he also couldn’t ignore a deep foreboding chewing away at his insides.

The Hohash on the craft sprang to life. In the few times back on Esperia when he had ‘connected’ with one during flight training, it had felt impersonal, like using a passive tool. This time there was a rapport, a synergy, and he realised they were a team – and more – he sensed the Hohash had its own ideas.

The saucers were slow but could execute micro-jumps, and Gabriel’s mind reached out, piggy-backing the Hohash sensors. At first it was too much information, and he was reminded how sophisticated these ancient, enigmatic artifacts were. Focusing on the region around Esperia, his Hohash-enhanced perception clarified. It wasn’t that he saw the Crucible, the Spiker, the Marauder and the lone Raptor heading for Esperia, rather he simply knew where and what they were, in their relative positions, like knowing where your limbs are in the dark, and what they were capable of.

Louise’s Raptor fired five of the infamous Sclarese Nova bombs. Even one of them would make light work of Esperia. He initiated the first jump to halve the distance between him and the missiles. A moment later as he returned to normal space-time, two of the bombs ignited simultaneously, which he felt through the interface-Hohash medium as heat rather than the blinding light he knew they would create, effervescent suns snuffing out within seconds. His ship lurched sideways but the brace held him in place. The Hohash remained stationary and flashed a lattice of silver threads across its mirror-like face. Gabriel had no idea what it represented.

Gabriel’s genned mind could truly multi-task, and he calculated and executed the next jump while simultaneously trying to understand what the Hohash was showing him. He didn’t get it until it showed a picture of the creatures laying the gossamer trails. Executing the jump, he perceived three remaining missiles snaking their way to Esperia. At least they had slowed down – presumably trying to avoid the threads – they were Level Nine missiles, after all. Louise’s ship doubled back, making steady progress toward the Crucible.

The image on the Hohash of the creatures laying down the threads mesmerised him. Like every Genner, Gabriel had studied Earth’s entire catalogue of life-forms, including marine varieties, and he was reminded of a ray as he watched a group of five blue-and-green spotted creatures swimming through space. Their wings were lined with semi-organic tech whose edges fizzed and glimmered with a rainbow sheen. The leader was smaller, and each of the others, in a tight square formation, exuded a thin white thread, spindling it between them before letting it stretch and drag behind. He had no idea whether this was good or bad news. Maybe it would impede the Crucible; but that made no difference if even a single bomb got through.

Gabriel jumped his ship, calculating that he could only reach one of the bombs in time, and even then it was not clear how he could stop it. When he came out of the jump, space as shown on the Hohash didn’t look normal: no pinprick stars or sprawling distant nebulas. Instead he saw fuzzy blobs of washed-out grey against a background of bulbous pockets of sepia and black. Further behind, shadows waxed and waned… Gabriel wondered: dark matter? Dark energy? Am I witnessing subspace? Genners had speculated that the Hohash could transit through subspace. But why was the Hohash showing him these images, when it had never shown anyone before?

Just as he was about to jump, the Hohash plucked his mind like a guitar string, commanding him to watch. It flicked to a normal space view superimposed on what he was now convinced was subspace. The third bomb exploded: hotter and closer, casting a normally unseen web of orange ‘feelers’ out into space, trying to make contact before they fizzled into oblivion. One of them encountered a trail of white threads from the rays, and raced along its length until it found the Shrell quintet. Gabriel winced as the five rays glowed red, blazing before effervescing into a shower of sparks. They were gone.

The Marauder, far behind him, engulfed by its own self-destruct system boosted by a Nova bomb, exploded in a flash of white. Two small craft fled from it, one caught in the explosion’s wake that he felt like a burn on his skin. He prayed Kat was on the other one, for Petra’s sake. He suddenly thought of their kiss. She’d cared for him – in that way – all those years, and never once said anything… But there was no time.

Two bombs left. He had to make a choice. Only one way to stop it. Jump right in front of it so it would detonate, taking him and the Hohash craft in the explosion. So be it. He thanked Ramires for preparing his instincts all these years, preventing him from hesitating when it most mattered. For the first time in a long while he thought of the father he’d never known, and had a Steader-like desire to make him proud. He shook it away. Picking one of the bombs, he calculated the required jump, which had to be absurdly precise, taking into account a dozen parameters shifting every millisecond. This time it required his full attention.

With the remainder of his mental capacity, Gabriel considered his existence, about to be lost. Images of Virginia, Petra, Sandy and Ramires flickered through his mind’s eye. But he found himself again thinking about the father he had never known, and realised why.

Sister Esma had killed his real father, and now he too would die, but without achieving the revenge for which he had prepared and trained all his life. It was a failure, and even his last act might prove futile if the other bomb got through, as was likely. Yet he had to try, for all the people down on the planet, and – he couldn’t ignore it – for the father he’d never known. Many Genners didn’t believe in an afterlife, but for the first time he wondered if there was one, in which case he might finally get to meet the legendary Sentinel.

As soon as the calcs were done, he didn’t waste a second, and executed the final jump. But even as he did so, he felt what could only be described as a mental jab from the Hohash, nudging one of the jump parameters by an almost infinitesimal amount. He glared at the mirror. What have you just done? Gabriel held his breath.

◆◆◆

Genaspa flapped her broad wings together so hard they slapped, sending a frisson through her body. Four teams had already been taken by the Nova bomb’s leakage into subspace. She thought-commanded: “Nasjana, all of you, stop the poisoning immediately! Retreat from the planet, return to the system perimeter.”

But five teams were already too close to Esperia, too enmeshed in their own webs. If one more bomb ignited… she had known the males would be lost, but not the females – all of who would be pregnant now… Curse these missiles, this interaction had never been seen before, never predicted. She watched the small craft sliding across hidden space toward one of the bombs. Very well, she decided, and headed for the other, the one closest to Esperia.

Nasjana thought-directed her: “First, what you do today –”

“Listen clear, Nasjana. Qorall holds the entire thirteenth and sixteenth Shrell flocks captive in the Syntaran sector. Tell Hellera they must be freed.”

Genaspa used Nasjana’s shocked pause to concentrate, drawing up close behind the missile, zooming in with her senses to see Esperia’s landscape take on detail, a scab-like mark on the Southern continent indicating a town; no, two, side by side. She thought-directed to all remaining Shrell: “Nasjana is First now. Tell true, tell all Shrell of today.”

With a painful effort she thrust ahead so she could glide, and then emerged into normal space. It felt heavy, thick, impure, cluttered. But Genaspa knew it was transitory. Wrapping her wings around the missile casing, she enveloped it, her flesh impervious to its temperature, though she could not survive long in this embrace with the bomb’s intense radiation. She exhaled a glistening cocoon, drawn from her own intestines, which billowed around her and the missile. Genaspa slowed its progress, but it had too much momentum for her to stop it in time. Far below, using her long-vision, buildings became visible, small human figures in between, running around; as if anything they could do would ever matter in the larger scheme of things.

Continuing to exhale, folding her life force around the missile, she dragged it into subspace. It was then that she felt something watching her. Impossible, we cannot be seen here. Her body shook, still continuing the outbreath, her life force failing, her body crumpling as the sheath solidified around the bomb. But the sense-presence, the basis of thought- directed communication across subspace, was irrefutable. Just before she and the bomb passed straight through the planet’s crust, she saw the spiders standing atop a ridge, watching her.

So, Hellera, this is what you lock down, this is what you protect. It was her last thought.

◆◆◆

Nasjana and two other teams found the missile sailing onwards, a turquoise sheath covering it, all that remained of their First. Nasjana collected her flock and informed them their mission was over, that it was time to go home. She instructed two teams to tow the missile back, so as to preserve Genaspa’s remains all the way to their domain, and because Shrell did not leave dangerous weapons floating in sub-space.

Nasjana had learned something on this mission: that a First does not tell all. She pondered the news of captive Shrell being held by Qorall, and Hellera’s involvement in the poisoning of this sector of space. Such elevated species would never normally listen to Shrell, let alone entertain demands.

As the remaining, worn-out teams found their rhythm under her lead, leaving the Esperian system behind, Nasjana considered that in their entire history, measuring millions of years, Shrell had never coveted anything from normal space-time, least of all a weapon. But this missile – still functional – might be useful somewhere in the near future. Nasjana had lived by two maxims all her life, as had her forebears and peers: Tell true; Tell all. Now she added a new one, by which she vowed they would make a stand, no longer idly serving the whims of their masters: Tell hard.

◆◆◆

When Gabriel emerged from the jump the craft was darkened, violet-lit. It was exactly where he had been a moment before and yet felt completely different. He took a step back, his shoulders nudging the small ship’s hull. The lozenge-shaped Nova Stormer filled the length of the Hohash craft. It hung a metre off the floor, its surface difficult to focus on, like morphing shades of grey – some kind of stealth camouflage. He blinked several times but could not resolve it. It was within arm’s reach, except he wasn’t sure where its surface was exactly, as if there was a translucent shell around it. He realised it was making a bass humming noise, just within his enhanced range of hearing. The pitch rose an octave; his instincts told him that wasn’t good.

But what unnerved him were the yellow ellipses with black diamonds inside – like eyes – that kept opening on its casing for a few seconds then disappearing, only to appear somewhere else on its shell. Sensors. Tearing his sight from the missile’s mesmerising body, he glanced towards the blunt end, a mosaic of palm-size triangular mirrors resembling Ossyrian schematics he’d seen, ion thrusters for fine manoeuvring.

Gabriel glanced at the Hohash mirror – it was vibrating – no, it was shaking. Its mirror face swirled with purples and mauves, bathing the entire ship in eerie light. He wondered if the intelligent missile realised it had been captured. The Hohash was making a supreme effort to hold the missile there, probably confusing its sensor array, and the missile’s intelligent defence systems were fighting back. The two devices were locked in a titanic, invisible struggle.

Gabriel decided to put them all out of their misery, unholstered his pulse pistol and aimed at the bullet-nosed front end. But a pain stabbed behind his eyes, and the gun fell from loosened fingers. The Hohash:  he hadn’t disconnected from the neural interface, and clearly it wanted him to do something else. Looking up, he saw blueprints flash across the Hohash mirror’s face.

“Are you serious?” he said, even as he memorised the translated instructions. One line struck him – the gamma radiation output and dosage bands for one of these missiles once launched – well beyond human tolerance levels. At that point, he knew he was dead already – or would be within an hour. He thought about Virginia in that moment, wishing he could hold her one final time. But the missile’s pitch kicked up a note, pulsing with a deep throb, and he let the thought go.

Gabriel considered what his father would have done, and went to find one of the external encounter suits, donning it to increase the amount of time he could work, and then approached the missile’s nose. A cracking noise made him turn around. With alarm, he saw a hairline fracture on the Hohash mirror’s surface. He placed a gloved hand on the artifact’s outer rim. “I’ll work as fast as I can.”

The missile’s shell near his hands glistened, and then a hole opened up, the size of a man’s head. The hole’s edges crackled, spitting sparks, as if the missile’s defences were trying to close it, and several eyes opened up on the casing, remaining open just beyond the hole’s perimeter. He reached inside with his right hand and touched the metal casing, but it felt like mud. He pushed through, until his shoulder brushed the fizzing edges of the shield, making him flinch.

Another splinter cracked on the Hohash, even as the missile’s pitch rose again, pulsing faster. But he found the device he was looking for, a studded metallic ball he needed to rotate in a series of precise movements. His hand was getting hot, even inside the suit’s protective glove. He tried to distract himself from the pain, using Genner concentration techniques, but he knew his body and brain were being irradiated, and it would soon affect his cognitive functioning. Curiously, it made him smile. Well, Micah, soon I might get to feel what it’s like to be a Steader. His smile froze. A whirlpool of emotions washed through his mind. He had always stayed away from Steaders, kept a distance, even from his parents. Too late now, and no time to indulge in remorse, or to change who he had been all his life.

The heat became too intense, and Gabriel, beginning to smell his own flesh burn, pulled his right arm out. Extracting his hand from the confines of the suit, ugly blisters laced his bloated fingers, and brown fluid oozed from his knuckles. The suit was constraining him too much. He climbed out of it, and thrust his left arm deep inside the body of the missile, searching by feel for the initiator, his head an inch from the energy field, tingling his scalp with static. At last he felt a sucking then a ‘plop’, and the ball released. He kept his thumb pressed down on a stud.

He tugged the ball through the mud-like body and it came out clean. Gabriel was surprised to find it was like a baseball, shifting grey and white hatching all over its surface, certainly the most beautiful explosive device he’d ever seen.

A few deep breaths weren’t enough to recover. He felt dizzy, and lay down on his back, unsure if he’d be able to get up again. The Hohash shook violently, a chunk of its mirror face fallen onto the floor, a web of fractures smothering most of its face. The missile’s tone had risen to a screech, and its skin was covered with elliptical, accusing eyes. He kept his forefinger on the deadman’s trigger, and gathered himself. If he let go, the device would explode – not a nova-level detonation by any means, but enough to do some serious damage.

White light flashed into the room, and when it washed away, the neutralized missile was gone, he presumed back to normal space. He rested the device on his stomach, and rolled his head to see the Hohash. For a fraction of a second he thought he saw an ivory and gold eye staring back at him through the shards; most likely a radiation-induced hallucination.

The Hohash rested on the floor, wavering like he’d never seen one do. At least it had stopped shaking. The interior lighting returned to normal. Gabriel struggled to his feet, and went over to the console. Screens were working again, even if the images were scratchy. But they seemed more complex than before, and as he tried to lay in a course of jumps, there was a fog in his mind – he couldn’t remember how to do it. He addressed the Hohash, tapping its frame gently. “You know where I want to go, right?”

Gabriel staggered to the exit portal, his left hand holding the device, his right arm hanging limp by his side. Blue, ivory and gold reflections played on the exit before him, but he was too tired to turn around. “Jump,” he said, “quick as you can.”

As everything turned quicksilver, signifying the first of a series of mini-jumps, he recalled Sandy telling him that he had an aunt, Jennifer, who had disappeared with the last Kalarash before his birth. He’d have liked to have met this woman, even once, to hear more about his father. He wondered where she was, and found himself feeling an unfamiliar emotion – he hoped that wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she was well. The feeling spread out to all he’d known, not only his Genner Youngbloods and his family, but all the Steaders, too. So, Micah, this is what it is like to be a ‘normal’ human. Gabriel knew for a fact Steaders didn’t feel like that all the time, but still. Maybe Blake was right, Micah, you sacrificed a lot when you agreed on our upgrade.

But he focused on the task at hand, clutching the detonator, though he could barely stand. Sister Esma, I have something for you.

Chapter 23

Breach

Kilaney was the only one not sweating, yet he knew the Mannekhi tolerated heat better than humans. The Ngank surgeon had said he’d made some refinements, and Kilaney once again wondered what else he had inherited from his former Q’Roth physiology.

“We’re losing this!” he shouted above the din of successive energy pulses thudding then sizzling across their battered spherical hull, the Mannekhi shields close to failing. A distant explosion signified the loss of yet another of the ship’s spikes. The stocky lieutenant with jet-black hair, Fentra, glared at him, then she and the eleven other crew-members on the Bridge turned to their Captain.

Xenic sat tall and stern-faced, his all-black eyes somehow darker than the others, never shifting from the battle-screen. He addressed his navigator. “Siltern, remember Astravia III?”

Siltern’s head jerked back as if stung then nodded and dipped to his console.

“Suits, everyone,” Xenic commanded, though he didn’t move from his chair.

Kilaney saw from one of the screens that their own energy pulse weapons had breached a section of the Crucible’s hull, but it wasn’t significant, a few square metres, barely a body blow.

Fentra tossed him one of the deep blue suits. “You suffocate, we suffocate, remember?”

Feeling bad about the bloodworms, he struggled into the self-sealing suit. Fentra sighed and came over to help him with some unfamiliar connections. “Don’t get ideas. You’re a dead man as soon as this is over.”

He made up his mind there and then, just as another thunderous boom told him they were running out of time. Reaching inside his suit he pulled out a rack of small vials. Breaking them off one by one he handed them to each of the crew, Fentra last.

He forced a smile. “You don’t think the Q’Roth developed an antidote for bloodworms? We’ve had it for three months. I made up this batch before you woke. It’s not refined. You’ll feel pain if I die, but you’ll live.”

Fentra stared at the vial and then looked to Xenic. Without hesitation the Commander pressed it to his neck. A short hiss issued the contents into his bloodstream. The others followed, including Fentra.

She whipped out her pistol, shoving it up underneath Kilaney’s chin. “How fast does it work?”

“Fentra!” Xenic said.

Kilaney held her gaze. “Immediately, though I haven’t verified it personally.”

She rammed the muzzle up higher, lifting Kilaney’s chin.

“Fentra!” Xenic stood, donning his suit.

She stared into Kilaney’s eyes, her lips curling downwards into a grimace. “Quattrail Vortex, five years ago, you led the assault, Jorann. My mother and brother’s Spiker was destroyed, but they made it to an escape pod just in time, as did dozens of others. Your forces – your command – blasted every last one of them. Do you know what it’s like to die in space, oxygen ripped from your body, your blood boiling in your veins?”

He did. How could he forget? “Go ahead, you deserve revenge. I’d pull the trigger if I were you. I’ll make it easier for you.” He closed his eyes.

Fentra’s heavy breathing competed with the thuds and crashes from the deck just below. The Bridge would be next.

Siltern interrupted. “Ready.”

Xenic shouted. “Helmets, everybody. Fentra, decide now!”

Kilaney felt the gun barrel’s warm nozzle leave his throat as a helmet was rammed into his stomach. Opening his eyes, he watched her don hers, never taking her sight from him. He sealed his own helmet, hearing Xenic’s voice clear as day.

“Spike 17 everybody. Run!”

“Follow me,” Fentra said, as she turned and bolted from the Bridge, grabbing a heavy duty weapon as she passed the rack, as did the others. Kilaney had only his pulse pistol.

Sprinting along twisting corridors, he didn’t turn around to see the stuttering detonation that made his ears ring; it could only have come from the bridge. There was a flash of silver that caught him mid-step: a close-quarter jump! The Spiker’s auxiliary control system had executed Siltern’s command and jumped into the Crucible, Spike 17 pricking its hull through the breach made earlier. It was going to be tight. Kilaney sped up, weapon drawn.

✽ ✽ ✽

Sister Esma’s claw smashed into the battery officer’s neck. There was a gurgling noise as the Alician slumped to the floor. She moved above him, her boot finishing him off with a sickening crunch. The rest of the crew first stared at her, then their consoles; all except Serena and the lone Q’Roth warrior.

“We’ve been boarded,” Sister Esma said with an air of disgust. She addressed the Q’Roth warrior. “Kah-Reich, you’d better go and make sure the cutter finishes its job, the Mannekhi are headed to the auxiliary control centre. Serena, go check our precious cargo in case these insurgents get curious.”

Kah-Reich’s scarlet cloak whirled behind him.  Serena checked  her pistol’s charge as she broke into a trot to catch up with the Q’Roth Commander.

Sister Esma turned to her communications officer, nudging the corpse with her boot. “Get this off my Bridge. And then get me our relief ship, we cannot jump shackled like this to a Spiker.” She almost spat the word; she despised the treacherous Mannekhi, they had no honour. Hopefully they would all be eliminated during the war, used by Qorall as cannon fodder on his front lines.

As the Alician body was dragged away, Sister Esma re-took her command seat, her back to her crew. “I need a new weapons officer.” She was gratified that there was no hesitation as one of her crew took the station.

“You have one, Your Eminence.”

Lorena; she recognised her voice, young and ambitious. “Am I correct in presuming that Louise’s Nova bombs have not reached their target?” It was a rhetorical question; they would all have seen the flash and red afterglow had one gotten through.

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

Sister Esma wondered if the new girl’s talent matched her ambition. “Recommendation?”

There was a pause. “Esperantia is on the other side of the planet, but only by a few hours. I can triangulate its position and send three Leveller missiles on a parabolic vector. They will incinerate everything within a hundred kilometre radius. We’ll be in range in fifteen minutes.”

“Do it.”

Sister Esma sat back. Things weren’t going to plan, but it was always about resolution, seeing it through. Everything else, the setbacks, the trials and tribulations would soon be forgotten by history. The aura of success belonged to those who delivered. In theory she could leave the Crucible, take a Raptor out through the Shrell mesh to meet the Q’Roth back-up ship. But this was also about leadership, and the annals of history always saluted those who stood there at the final, decisive moment. One day, after the war, this particular slice of history would no longer be secret, and the galaxy would congratulate the Alicians for purging yet another weed from its Society. But it wasn’t about ego, certainly not about her own reputation per se. It was about placing her Alician flock in good stead, a solid reputation in Grid Society. Future Grid leaders – whoever they may be – would know that the Alicians could be relied upon to get the job done.

The moon flickered, the planet-cutter pulsing black and blue tendrils boiling its flesh, nearing the point where it would disintegrate and turn into a hailstorm falling towards Esperia. That would take another hour, by which time she’d be gone. So, the missiles would kill the remnants of humanity, and then the moonrock would bury them forever. Sister Esma would leave nothing to chance this time, and could inform the Q’Roth queen that the human embarrassment had been exterminated once and for all.

Esperia: such a vain name, tempting fate. To her it was a blatant admission of inherent weakness that a race must rely on hope rather than its own resources and strengths. Intelligence and firepower trumped wishful thinking any day. Fourteen minutes, and humanity’s entire sorry history would be reduced to ashes, and nobody would weep for them.

◆◆◆

Kilaney and the other Mannekhi advanced steadily in combat mode through the corridors. At each junction in the dark green maze one of them would bolt to the far side, weapon raised, then signal to the others it was clear, then charge to the next junction. It was Russian roulette; eventually one of them would be fired upon. It came to his turn. He didn’t hesitate, despite his foreboding. But he hadn’t gotten more than a metre past the corner when he caught sight of a dark blur in his peripheral vision. Instinctively he dived into a roll, firing toward the enemy. Something thwacked into his left thigh, spinning him wildly and sending him sprawling into the wall.

Light erupted all around him, accompanied by a sound like a jet engine, as six Mannekhi burst into the opening using fire-cannons. Shielding his eyes with his forearm, he watched Xenic, Fentra, Siltern and three others hefting heavy guns, spewing white hot plasma-fire down the corridor. Abruptly the beams shut off, leaving a ringing in his ears. Only Xenic and Fentra were still upright. Siltern and three more bodies were on the ground, the tell-tale grey and red feathers of Q’Roth flechette darts protruding from their bodies. One stuck out of Kilaney’s leg, but the toxin had not been released, he presumed because the dart sensed his Q’Roth DNA. Down the other end of the corridor he saw a mass of collapsing blue-black flesh torn open, revealing smoking organs the colour of red hot coals, the warrior’s carcass twitching despite its head having been split open. It was a beautiful sight.

The cannons hummed, liquid fire dripping from their nozzles, oozing onto the floor into sizzling white-hot puddles. He’d not seen this weapon before, but then he hadn’t been in close combat with Mannekhi for years.

Xenic offered him a hand. “The auxiliary control room is this way.” Kilaney got to his feet, limping, and looked down at the metal dart sticking out of his thigh. Fentra grasped it and yanked it out. He winced but held in a gasp of pain, convinced she had twisted it.

He moved on to his game plan. “The humans they brought aboard, those you picked up on your sensors.”

Xenic nodded to the Mannekhi crew. “The rest of you are with me, we take out the planet-breaker control centre. Fentra, go with him.”

“There’ll be more Q’Roth the closer you get,” Kilaney warned.

Xenic headed down the corridor, followed by his crew, “That’s the idea,” he said.

Kilaney watched them go. He turned to Fentra.

She nodded at Siltern’s dead body, the cannon lying next to him on the floor. “It’s yours if you want it.”

He bent low and reverently unpeeled Siltern’s fingers from the trigger arm. Kilaney heaved the strap over his shoulder, and followed Fentra down a different corridor.

As they rounded a bend they came face-to-face with a lone blonde woman, arms folded, seemingly unarmed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the woman said, a faint smile across her lips, as if asking the time of day.

Kilaney’s human instincts not to shoot a woman in cold blood overran his Q’Roth ones to kill her on sight on the grounds she was probably Alician. Maybe she was human, a prisoner from the planet. But then…

Her eyes fixed on Kilaney, narrowing slightly, even as Fentra levelled her pistol, her own mind obviously made up. Fentra’s shot found empty air as the woman whirled out of the way like a dervish, two paces to the left of where she had been, her own pistol drawn, the smile gone.

He heard Fentra fall and tried to turn, but instead dropped to his knees, then hit the floor, his head facing his fallen comrade. Smoke rose from his chest, and he knew the smell of burning flesh well enough. Fentra had a fist-sized cylindrical hole where her heart should have been. Her eyes stared at him, their black light fading. She flicked her eyes once in the direction of the other woman, then closed them.

Kilaney didn’t move, trying to work out why he wasn’t dead. The Ngank surgeon had said something about human physiology being so fragile – no redundancy, too many single critical organs. Q’Roth had two hearts, the main one and a secondary one. The surgeon had said he’d made refinements…

The Alician woman was clearly as fast as she was accurate. He heard her walk half-way towards them then raise her arm. Kilaney had fallen on his cannon, but his pulse pistol was still in his hand. He made an effort not to blink, even though the effects of initial shock were wearing off and pain began to intrude. Holding his breath, he listened to her voice, using his Q’Roth combat training to gauge the required angle of fire without turning his head or moving his upper body. The pain helped him concentrate. With his right hand he slowly angled this pistol, hearing her relaxed tone. He knew he’d get just one shot. Kilaney focused on her voice.

“Sister Esma, the threat is eliminated down here at my end. One Mannekhi and a human. I’m heading back to help the Q’Roth defend –” Kilaney fired. He tilted his head and checked, content to see a blackened hole in the centre of her forehead, a look of surprise on her face, her weapon half-raised. Always aim for the head, he used to tell Blake; smaller target, but definitive. She toppled to the floor.

“Serena?” the woman’s wristcom crackled.

Kilaney knew that voice. He crawled over to the dead Alician and seized her wristcom. “Hello Sister Esma, remember me?”

There was a pause. “General Bill Kilaney. Or should I call you Jorann?”

“I’m coming for you.” He switched it off, removed it from Serena’s limp wrist and placed it on his right arm, so he could listen to their comms, maybe distract them. He hadn’t enjoyed his only former conversation with Sister Esma, when she’d vented him into space, and he had no intention of starting another.

He inspected the hole through his chest; it was neatly cauterized, but the secondary heart was meant only as a stopgap measure, to keep a Q’Roth warrior fighting a little longer.

Xenic came online on Kilaney’s other wristcom. “We’re pinned down, a dozen Q’Roth warriors, any aid is welcome.”

He glanced at Fentra. You’ll get your wish soon. Using the cannon as a walking stick, Kilaney trudged down the corridor. But he only got a few metres before his legs gave way and he collapsed, short of breath, his chest muscles cramping, his arms and hands shaking. Kilaney realized he wasn’t going anywhere, and would be of little use in a firefight. Reluctantly, seeing no options as a broken, soon-to-be-dead man, he wondered what a Q’Roth warrior would do in this situation. But the Q’Roth weren’t known for their creativity; rather they were good at following orders. Orders. Kilaney kicked himself for not having thought of it earlier. He began practicing; his human throat was no longer that good at simulating Q’Roth commands.

◆◆◆

Sister Esma knew, but asked her weapons officer anyway. “How long?”

“Seven minutes. All is prepared.”

The Bridge door swished open, and the corners of Sister Esma’s lips lifted. She flattened them before swivelling her chair around. “Louise,” she said. Despite being glad to have her aboard, she always maintained discipline and authority. “What happened to your Nova bombs?”

Louise shrugged. “Shrell wires happened to three of them. Two of them were on target, but disappeared just before impact. I honestly don’t know. Still, seems like you could use some help here. Your orders?”

Sister Esma knew the destruction of Esperia had become personal, her judgement biased, when it was not the Alicians’ priority. But Louise was like her; she would get the job done.

“The human cargo: take them to the relief ship and head to Savange immediately. Take the Ossyrian doctor with you, too. Alanis, go with Louise, brief her on the way. You take orders from Louise now.”

Sister Esma met her errant protégé’s eyes: defiant, confident. There was something else, too – Louise had grown. Sister Esma wondered what Level she was, knowing that if they both survived there would be a power struggle between them. Good, that was the Alician way; better for the community.

“Good to see you again, Sister Esma, it’s been too long,” Louise said, then added, “Please crush Micah and the others. See you on Savange, we have much to discuss.”

Sister Esma let her smile broaden and watched her favourite turn  to leave, interrupted by a blast of Q’Roth clicks flooding the ship-wide comms system; Sister Esma couldn’t follow it. She felt a tingling in her spine; there had been more than enough surprises for one day. “What is that?”

Louise, poised to leave, cocked her head to one side. “Largyl Nine, Captain’s privilege level for the Q’Roth High Guard.”

Sister Esma waited; she didn’t know this dialect, no Alician did; except Louise, apparently.

Louise turned to face Sister Esma after the rasping noise shut off. “Problem, I’m afraid.”

“Jorann,” Sister Esma murmured through tightened lips.

Louise nodded. “He has instructed the Q’Roth Commander to switch off the cutter, using an emergency Tla Beth priority code, which appears to be valid.” Louise glanced away.

“The rest; all of it.”

Louise wandered over to the weapons rack and pulled out two heavy assault rifles, passing one to Alanis. “They’ve been instructed to relieve you of command by any means necessary.”

Sister Esma shouted at the comms officer. “Block all off-ship comms now!”

“Your Eminence, the only way I can do that is to terminate –”

“Do it!” Sister Esma advanced on the Alician woman’s console, standing over her while the terrified woman entered a comms termination sequence at lightning speed.

“Done,” she said, her shoulders sinking with relief.

Sister Esma pointed to another crewmember. “Seal all blast doors between the Q’Roth and us, then open the escape hatches to space in the connecting corridors.”

Louise armed her rifle. “The Q’Roth will fight to the death against the Mannekhi – too much bad blood between them. It’ll keep them both occupied. You could come with us.”

Her voice had a trace of concern in it, which touched Sister Esma. “A few things to wrap up here first. We’ll be ten minutes behind you in the next Raptor. Go.”

Louise stared for a moment then left the Bridge, accompanied by Alanis. Sister Esma retook her chair. She called up a display showing Esperia, Esperantia on the other side relative to the Crucible. Overlaid on the display was a parabolic missile trajectory, the firing window of opportunity through the Shrell mesh drawing closer every second.

For five hundred years she had plotted humanity’s extinction, and it would take just another few minutes. Yet her right palm was clammy, and her claw flexed and unflexed, making a noise like grinding teeth. For the first time in centuries she had a bad feeling that her plan might fail. She never second-guessed herself, but this time her Level Five mind began cataloguing the unpredicted variables that had already transpired in the last hours. She shut that train of thought off, a futile weakness. As long as nothing else –

“Your Eminence, there’s something odd… off our starboard side.”

Sister Esma’s voice sounded like a sword being drawn. “If you value your life, girl, be specific.”

The woman coughed. “I… I noticed some debris a few minutes ago, which I assumed was from the moon’s break up. But it’s heading towards us, and… it’s accelerating.”

Sister Esma clicked her right finger and thumb, and pointed to the viewscreen. The image shifted to space, the lacerated moon glowing behind, rocks of indeterminable size drifting here and there, moving away from the moon, towards Esperia. At first she didn’t see it, but then she detected grains of dust moving like sand beneath a wave, always in the same direction, towards the Crucible.

“Magnify.”

She stood and walked closer to the viewscreen. The motes refused to resolve, which could only mean stealth tech. “Target them with charges.”

“Our weapons are offline. The Q’Roth have shut them down from their location.”

Sister Esma stormed over to the tactical console, the officer there blanching before jumping aside. “Damn them! So be it, they leave me no choice.” She began typing a long command code, her right fingers chopping fast at the console.

The tactical officer moved closer, her eyes widening. “Your Eminence –”

Sister Esma spoke calmly, her claw resting on the officer’s shoulder, close to her neck. “No one will know.” She completed the sequence that triggered a release of Q’Roth-targeted killer nannites into the ventilation system in the planet-cutter control centre and surrounding corridors. She turned to the woman. “Will they?” The officer shook her head vehemently.

One less variable. But the motes in space drew closer. She felt a trickle of ice down her spine, not a feeling to which she was accustomed. Calculating their arrival time at the hull – though she had no idea what they would do then – they would be there shortly after the missiles were launched. Yet still the foreboding hung about her. In her mind’s eye, she suddenly imagined seven billion slaughtered humans watching silently, willing her to fail, waiting for her to die so they could lay their bony fingers on her. She shook herself. Action was required; this waiting was unravelling her. “All of you leave the Bridge now. Arm yourselves and head to areas thirty through forty-five, decks seven to nine, in case we are boarded there.”

All of them except one grabbed weapons and fled the Bridge.

The tactical officer spoke. “Your Eminence, I would like to stay, to assist, in case…”

Sister Esma looked at her. Young, eager, completely devoted to the Alician cause. It reminded her of her own brief time with Alessia over five hundred years ago, and it comforted her. But then she remembered that Alessia had been slain shortly afterwards.

“Stay,” she said. For the first time in her life she didn’t want to be alone. No, she realised, she didn’t want to die alone. Her right hand slid into her pocket and clasped the wooden chess figure of the queen, given to her all those years ago by Alessia herself.

“Esperia launch window,” she said, re-taking her chair. The screen shifted again, and she enabled an audible countdown. Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight… She tapped out the last seconds of humanity’s existence with her finger on the arm of her chair. Whoever you are out there, you are too late. I may well die today, but I’m taking all of humanity with me.

Chapter 24

Revenge

Gabriel realised he was midway through a subspace jump. Usually it was instantaneous: there was no perception until one ‘exited’ the transit. Now, every surface of the inside of the Hohash ship was silver, like frozen mercury, except for the wave-like shadows shimmering in front of him on the inside of the airlock hatch. But he couldn’t move. A young woman’s voice spoke to him, clearly, as if standing right behind him – no, he thought, exactly where the Hohash mirror had been just before they jumped. But the Hohash were mute – weren’t they?

“Gabriel, please listen to me.”

He tried to clear the radiation-induced fuzz from his mind, and hypothesised: the Hohash belonged to the Kalarash; the voice sounded human, but not with the authority he’d anticipate from a Level Nineteen being; he only knew of one woman linked to the Kalarash. He couldn’t turn around, but his mouth and vocal chords worked.

“Jennifer?”

She uttered a noise somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. “You’re smart, like… your father.” Her voice stumbled over the last two words.

His stepfather Ramires had told him how distraught Jennifer had been when her brother, the Sentinel assassin Gabriel – the father he’d never known – had been killed, and the treacherous path down which it had propelled her.

Hearing her voice, that of an aunt he’d never met, resurfaced long- buried thoughts about his father, emotional dead-ends he’d walled off years ago. Sandy had often said how much he resembled his father, though she’d barely known him herself. Plenty of other kids had lost parents during the Q’Roth sacking of Earth, but they had memories, usually holos too, anchors to cling to. Gabriel had nothing, save his own reflection. He listened intently.

“Gabriel – there’s so much I want to say…”

He could sense the pain in her voice. “What was he like?”

There was a pause. “Brave and beautiful. People were wary of him, though; they sensed the inherent danger even in his teens. One of his teachers once described him as an unexploded mine.” She laughed.

He smiled, but it stirred the suppressed emotions deep inside him, chipping away at those walls. “Go on,” he said, almost a whisper.

“Serious, always looking for a cause, interested in politics when boys his age were discovering girls, though he had quite a few girlfriends in his teens. No-one close. He would come out with these profound but enigmatic sayings. My favourite was ‘where there is thought, there is power.’ Kalaran thought that was pretty deep for a human. Sorry, I’m rambling.” She cleared her throat. “Your father found his cause, the only one that mattered in the end.”

Gabriel felt the need to sit, but still couldn’t move. He tried to picture his father as a boy, as a young man back in Ireland before the nuclear devastation had blackened that once emerald Isle. He’d watched the history holos over and over, secretly searching the running, confused, screaming crowds for a face like his own. He’d distanced himself from the Steaders, but if his father had lived… He couldn’t see where that path would have led him, but he would have liked to have had the choice. For the first time he didn’t discount that Genners and Steaders could co-exist amicably, could make it work better than it had. Maybe afterwards, the rift could be healed – if there was going to be an afterwards.

Jennifer continued. “Ramires probably knew more about him as a man than I did, even though he didn’t know him personally – I thought he’d been killed in the first round of nuclear detonations. Apparently, he was the perfect assassin, no ego, played the double agent for the Alicians for years before Sister Esma unmasked him. He died fighting to save us.”

Gabriel had heard it said before, but this time, hearing it from family, from someone that actually knew his father, made it resonate. It firmed his purpose. But he guessed there was little time, and that this wasn’t purely a social call.

“You want me to do something, don’t you?”

Jennifer’s voice steeled. “The Hohash is taking you directly to the Crucible Bridge. Sister Esma is about to launch an attack on Esperia. There are only seconds remaining in real time. As soon as you arrive…”

“I’ll take my finger off the switch.”

Again a pause. “Don’t let her talk to you or anything, just –”

“Once I see her, I will kill her.” He wished he could turn around. He’d seen a holo-record of Jennifer, but wondered what she looked like now. He tried to push such questions aside, to stay focused on the task – to be like his father would have been. Besides, there was something else he wanted to know.

“Jennifer, why is this important to the Kalarash?” He heard a low, grinding noise in the background; Jennifer wasn’t alone.

“The spiders, they are important in the war against Qorall, though I don’t yet know how; Kalaran won’t tell me.”

“Can they defeat Qorall? Can… can we win this time?”

During the unwanted pause, he recalled the latent taste of defeat inherited by all Genners, the feeling of inadequacy and its allied need to prove themselves. It wasn’t even about revenge or justice. They just needed to stand up and fight, to make their mark; to achieve some victory, even if a small one. Gabriel almost laughed – how human.

“Maybe,” she said. “At least we have a shot.”

He relaxed a little. “And us… humanity? Do we figure in the Kalarash plans?”

“Definitely,” she said, in a drawn out way. “But it’s hard to –”

“That’s all I need to know, Jennifer.” That what I’m dying for is worth something, not just delaying the inevitable. If the Kalarash have a stake in humanity, for whatever reason, then we have a chance. Like his father, he’d found his cause.

“I wish…” her voice cracked.

“Me too,” he said, feeling closer to this woman he’d never met, never seen, than most people back on Esperia. But he didn’t want to die in a maudlin state.

“Where are you?”

She sniffed, clearing her throat again. “Just inside the galaxy, trying to get back. Qorall figured out where our entrance portal was – we think via Louise’s Hohash, which she coerced in some way – and sent an armada of dark worms to block us. We broke through, but they’ve slowed us down.”

The mercurial surfaces began to flicker. Time was running out. “Must this Hohash be destroyed as well? They’re not just artifacts are they?”

There was that noise again on her side of the mirror, like a distant rumbling.

“That Hohash is almost depleted, and it needs to be there because I’ve demanded a favour from Kalaran.”

Gabriel wondered how a human could demand anything from a Level Nineteen being. “A favour?”

“Yes. You see, I –” her voice cracked.

A deeper baritone voice spoke. “She cannot bear to see you die, Gabriel. Not again, like your father.”

The accent was strange. He recalled a conversation once with his mother about two men reportedly with Jennifer on the ship – Dimitri, her Greek lover, and Rashid, an Indistani. But the man spoke with tenderness; Dimitri then.

“We must all die,” Gabriel said, “and I am riddled with gamma ray damage. I will collapse within minutes once I come out of transit.” He wasn’t sure where this was going. Having accepted his death, and that it had meaning, he wanted to get on with it, fulfil his and his father’s mission to kill the Alician High Priestess. That was enough. Anger simmered at this pointless exchange. The quicksilver surfaces shivered.

Jennifer spoke again, her composure restored. “Even now, the Hohash is scanning you in ways you can’t imagine. At the point of death, in the nanoseconds before you are obliterated, the Hohash will transmit your personality string to our ship’s Hohash. Kalaran can restore you… after a fashion.”

Gabriel didn’t like the sound of it. “Like a Transpar,” he said, flat.

“No, much more than that, Gabriel.”

The mercury was evaporating fast from the hatch door, the white metal surface peering through. Gabriel simultaneously wondered just how much time had been slowed down, and if what she was suggesting was possible.

“Gabriel,” she said, “what do you say?”

“You mean I have a choice?”

“Of course! But please say yes.”

The pain in her voice touched him – and he reminded himself she was family, a concept he’d never fully grasped before. He figured his father would want him to try, for her sake. “Okay, Jennifer, but only after Sister Esma is dead.” The last traces of mercury shrank into vanishing puddles. “Look after her, Dimitri.”

She sniffed again. “Good–”

Gabriel and the Hohash materialised silently onto the Crucible’s bridge, the skeletal outline of the craft around them appearing like lines of shadow before the Hohash vehicle disappeared back into Transpace.

Two women were before him, five metres away, one standing at a console, the other sitting with her back to him in a command chair – she had a claw where her left arm should be, and was tapping in time to an audio countdown: “Thirty-seven, thirty-six...”

“Sister Esma,” he said.

The two women spun around, and Gabriel removed his finger from the deadman switch. Nothing happened. The thought-stream flashed through his mind: intelligent weapon – knows it has been violated – it is refusing to detonate. The woman at the console reached for her pistol. Gabriel dropped down to a crouch and flung the studded metal ball at her. It caught her chin with its full force, snapping a vertebra in her neck. She crashed backwards onto the ground.

The claw-arm woman – he presumed it was Sister Esma, had not moved.

“Gabriel?” she said, a sneer spreading across her lips. “Ah, his son! Come to watch mankind snuffed out again?”

Gabriel’s right arm was useless, so he reached across his body for his right-holstered pulse pistol with his left hand, just as she shot at his chest. The impact of the pulse round lifted him clean off the ground, slamming him back into another console. He ended up on the floor, coughing blood, struggling to breathe. His arm had been in the way of the pulse round and so had protected his heart from its electrical discharge, but that arm was now dead too, and enough damage had been done to his nervous system for him to know he was finished.

She walked over and towered above him.

“Twenty-one, twenty, nineteen,” the countdown continued.

Gabriel choked on some blood, tried to sit up, but her heel pushed his barbecued chest down. “You have failed, as your father did before you. Stay there; just a few seconds longer.”

Sister Esma walked over to what Gabriel assumed was the tactical console, shoving the other woman’s body away with her boot.

“Fifteen, fourteen…”

Holding his breath, he concentrated. The missile was probably set to fire automatically; he had to destroy the whole control centre where they stood. But how? Then it came to him: where there is thought, there is power. He felt a connection in his mind – the interface with the Hohash was still active, its craft just beneath them in subspace.

“Eleven, ten…”

Sister Esma had not paid the Hohash any attention – it was standing upright to her left, behind her.

Gabriel called to the Hohash, trying to communicate directly, thinking at Genner speed. “You must have a power source. When the Q’Roth invaded your world, many of you self-destructed, shattering harmlessly. But you were commanded by the spiders to do so, not to fight back, because they feared the Q’Roth might find the spider eggs. But now, the Kalarash want this woman stopped, the planet saved –”

Everything turned a uniform blue. Gabriel felt a floor beneath his feet, but couldn’t see it. He had no sense of distance. A Hohash appeared in front of him, undamaged compared to the one on the Crucible, but he guessed it was one and the same. Its surface was blank. Without warning it advanced on him. He blinked.

A vast cavern opened up before him, wide enough to hold ten Crucibles like the one where he knew his real body was dying. Fire-like tongues of coloured light spun downwards, coalescing onto an anvil-shaped plinth in the centre of the cavern floor, accompanied by a roaring sound like a waterfall. He couldn’t see upwards, as the brightness obscured his sight, but he could make out giant black, tree-like legs, massive gleaming golden quadruple-jointed fingers, dark grey tentacles, and clutches of transparent filaments that curled and uncurled every few seconds. At one point something like an eye opened, a gold-rimmed ivory pupil within an iris of lapis lazuli. It stared at him a second then disappeared. He couldn’t fit the pieces together, and realised he wasn’t meant to: Kalarash.

Columns of cascading light bathed the plinth, and he guessed it was energy and information. When the light-feeds snapped off, leaving silence underpinned by a ringing in his ears, he wasn’t surprised by what was left on the stone slab. The gleaming, freshly created Hohash lay dormant a while, then lifted off and rose upwards until Gabriel could not see it anymore.

The scene shifted and he witnessed a hundred or more Hohash mingling with reptilian Rangers and other alien forms he didn’t recognize, in a vast amethyst city, crystal towers and tubes floating above the cloud layer at sunset, with three moons hanging in a ruby sky. So, he thought, this is how it used to be. The scene shifted rapidly, showing less positive scenes – wars, destruction of worlds, of suns and entire systems. Each time a Hohash was present. Each time they watched, but did nothing. He witnessed a torrent of these scenes, unable to turn away. Last, it showed him the culling of the spider race by the Q’Roth, many Hohash shattering into fragments and glinting shards, their golden frames melting into the ground.

“I get it,” Gabriel said, “you’re pacifists. It’s programmed into you.”

He found himself back in the blue space, the Hohash in front of him. Its face swirled and a youngish woman appeared; mousy-blonde hair, a ski-jump nose, and bottle-green eyes. Jennifer. But the look on her face was strange. Not Jennifer; the Hohash wanted to speak to him through this image.

“Omnipaths listen, record,” she said.

“Your masters the Kalarash are in danger, they need you to do this.”

“Never kill,” the Hohash said through Jennifer’s image.

“But this time –”

“You are human,” the mirror interrupted, “with no concept of ‘never’. It is a very long time.”

Gabriel almost laughed. But they had very little time back on the Crucible. “The woman whose form you take is with Kalaran, one of your masters. He needs you to do this. They asked me to kill Sister Esma and stop the missiles. Protect the planet. I have failed. You –”

“Difficult to do that and save you as well; I may not be able to send you to his ship. That was the last order from Kalaran.”

Gabriel shouted. “Dammit! I don’t matter! Destroy the bridge, sever the control connection to the missiles. Protect Esperia! That’s the only –”

He was back on the bridge, struggling to breathe. Sister Esma was saying something to him.

“It is about thinking in the long term, Gabriel,” she said. “Strategy, that’s what counts, that’s what wins.”

“Eight, seven…”

He glanced over to the Hohash. It looked broken, fractured, tired. It was incredibly old.

Sister Esma stared out at the viewscreen and beamed, her eyes widening. She looked happy.

“Six, five –”

The Hohash flared a violent red, the heat scalding Gabriel’s cheeks, and he knew it had decided to do as he’d asked. Sorry Jennifer, it would have been nice to get to know you. He thought of Gabriel, the true  father he’d never known, and his stepfather Ramires, who had taught him how to live and how to die. This is for both of you, for all of us. Let the dead, all those Sentinels and others murdered by her hand, watch and savour this moment.

Sister Esma’s head swung in the direction of the Hohash, a look of indignation on her face morphing into a grimace of rage as she realized her time had come, and that her plan had failed. “NO!” She whirled around to Gabriel. “Not like this!” Her hand dove into her pocket, as if clutching something. “Aless–”

The Hohash’s surface went nova-bright. Gabriel watched her flesh ignite, phosphorous-white, a human flare, her Q’Roth claw flailing, the roar of fire enveloping her scream.

Gabriel smiled. Micah, we’re finally a team. I’ve done my part. The rest is up to you. He scrunched his eyes closed, as the Crucible’s bridge exploded.

Chapter 25

Under Fire

Micah had always secretly feared dying in space. It was worse than drowning, where at least something filled the lungs, rather than having them explode outwards. His hands were shaky and he felt his heart hammering in his chest as he sped silently through the expanse of space between the dying Pyramid ship and the Crucible. He was painfully aware that at any moment a random micro-chunk of fast-travelling space-rock could tear his suit’s membrane and introduce him to the true meaning of hard vacuum. He and the rest of the Ossyrian attack party relied on their stealth tech to prevent the Crucible’s scanners from targeting them. The one bit of good news was that Kilaney’s Mannekhi Spiker had caused a major distraction, and had finally brought down the shields of the Q’Roth warship.

Micah stayed in tight formation behind Chahat-Me’s delta wing of Ossyrian commandos, using the auto-thrusters in his suit. His resident, normally in the background unless called for, was fully activated, showing him read-outs of distance and closing speed, plus his own biometric data. Micah tried to ignore his heart rate. He glanced across to Petra on the other side of the wing, but her helmet pointed resolutely toward the Crucible battleship growing large in front of them.

The vessel made him think of a monstrous dragonfly: the tail-end comprising four grey-gold bulbs he knew to be the engines. Next was the spindly octagonal fuselage occupying most of the ship’s length, which normally housed the planet-cutting cables currently engaged in carving up the larger of Esperia’s two moons. Sporadic flashes of purple reflected on the metallic sheen of the Crucible’s boxy fore-section, signalling yet another lunar explosion spewing a shower of rock destined for Esperia.

Petra had calculated that the first barrage of moonrock would break atmosphere in just under an hour, categorizing the projected impact on the planet’s biosphere as ‘catastrophic’. Micah had been searching for a more Biblical adjective.

Just as he was feeling that anything they did now would be too late, an explosion of white light in the Crucible’s front end made him squint. When it faded, he saw a small area of the ship ripped apart, as if a giant claw had torn open the hull, exposing it to space. From its location and ruptured dome, Micah reckoned he was staring at what was left of the ship’s control centre. Kilaney and those Mannekhi are damned good! He wished he could see their Spiker ship pricking the Crucible’s hull, but it was on the other side, only three of the Spiker’s black and purple spines visible.

It felt like forever getting there, but as the Crucible loomed up ahead, Micah began to wonder when they were going to slow down.  He felt a stab of panic as he realised he no longer had manual control over his suit thrusters, and that the entire Ossyrian attack wing seemed to be accelerating; he envisioned them all swatting themselves against an impenetrable metal hull like suicidal mosquitoes. His suit thrusters aligned him behind an Ossyrian who held one of the disk-shaped ‘corers’. A cylinder of light struck out from it towards the hull, ribbons of yellow and red proto-plasma spinning faster and faster until the colours meshed. Abruptly he decelerated so fast he felt his organs shoving upwards, squeezing his throat so he could barely breathe.

Unable to see ahead properly, he gazed across to the lead Ossyrian in front of Petra. Where the tunnel of light struck the hull, the ultra-tough metal caved in like a collapsing cake. He glanced back. At the end of Petra’s line of Ossyrians was one holding a similar cone attached to her feet – a plug, he guessed. Without warning Micah found himself inside a glowing red channel of metal with smooth, steaming sides he knew better than to touch. A second later he entered the ship, his thrusters braking and manoeuvring him upright, resisting the rush of air sucking back out into space. He counted – 1 – 2 – 3 – and the last Ossyrian entered, a reassuring clunk sealing the hull breach. His suit thrusters adjusted to local gravity then shut off. A green light on the inside of his visor lit up, as all the Ossyrians removed their helmets.

They stood in an olive-coloured chamber intersected by a corridor. Within seconds Chahat-Me appeared with a small group of Ossyrians, followed by Petra. She looked as relieved to see him as he was her. Chahat- Me produced a black bag and ripped it open. Immediately, small glassy darts took flight and headed in both directions down the corridor. Another Ossyrian laid a disc on the floor, and a holo rose from it. Micah watched it unfold, stretching outwards from a central green point indicating their current position, sketching the levels, corridors and rooms of the vast ship. When one of the darts came upon something moving, it paused. Chahat-Me touched the corresponding point on the holo, and a close-up grew for a few seconds, until she touched it again and the dart continued on its way. There were heavily-armed Alicians onboard.

One of the images transmitted by the darts showed a man leaning heavily against a wall. “Kilaney,” Micah whispered, a smile forming then vanishing as he took in the state of the man. “He looks injured. We must –” But Chahat-Me had already signalled two of her team to go to him. Micah also saw Mannekhi, seven of them, in a standoff against a dozen or so Q’Roth.

Petra spoke softly to Micah. “Dumb question time: aren’t the Q’Roth supposed to be on our side?”

“Good point,” Micah noted. “Either this band is renegade or they’ve been misled into this fight, otherwise it’s bad news.”

Chahat-Me’s quicksilver eyes gazed into a floating metal orb, an Ossyrian comms device Micah had seen once before on Esperia, no doubt dispatching other teams to that area. One of the darts picked up a cluster of life-signs. When Chahat-Me enlarged the image, both Micah and Petra gasped. It was a dome, like a giant soap bubble, Inside, fifty or sixty humans stood immobilised in some kind of stasis, frozen, hands by their sides. Many of them wore terrified expressions, their faces taut and lined, others downcast, imprisoned refugees accepting their fate. The one at the front, her chin high and eyes fixed forward, was instantly recognisable.

“They have my mother!” Petra unholstered her pistol, her hand shaking as she checked the charge.

They were about to leave when Chahat-Me expanded one last image. Micah’s fists squeezed white. In the frame, a blonde-haired woman spun around just as the holo unfolded. There was a blur of light from her rifle, and then the image blanked.

“Nice shot,” Petra said. She looked at Micah. “That’s Louise, right?”

He nodded. They could see from the map that Louise was headed for Antonia and the other prisoners. Amongst their raiding party, only Micah knew how truly deadly she was, both individually and for the whole of surviving humanity. Whatever it took, he knew he mustn’t let her escape this time. His fear from the space-trip dissolved, and he felt purpose calm his perspiring and shaky hands. He made up his mind in an instant, met Chahat-Me’s eyes, grabbed her paw and pressed it to his temple. While Chahat-Me accessed his resident, learning his plan, he heard Petra demanding to know what was going on. He broke the connection, unslung his assault rifle, checked the holo-map once more and bolted down the corridor, joined by two Ossyrians at the second intersection. Petra shouted after him while Chahat-Me and the others held her back.

In his mind were three priorities, in order of importance: kill Louise, free the prisoners, and protect Petra. He would intercept Louise and take her down.

Micah and the two Ossyrians rounded a bend and came across an armed Alician male. Micah dodged sideways, a pulse shot missing him by millimetres, and returned fire. Micah sped past the man’s collapsing body even before it hit the ground. One of the Ossyrians had gone down behind him, caught by the man’s second shot, but neither Micah nor the other Ossyrian slowed.

His resident had recorded the internal layout of the Crucible based on the Ossyrian darts’ intel, and indicated which way to turn at each junction, but as he approached a right-angled bend he heard the familiar pounding of six metal-hard legs galloping his way. Slowing down he hefted his assault rifle, knowing that it might do little good, when the Ossyrian, running dog-like behind him, flicked a paw at Micah’s rear ankle, tripping his legs. Micah flew headlong across the intersection, hearing the Ossyrian’s war-scream behind him as she slid to a halt to face the approaching Q’Roth warrior. There was a sickening crunch as Micah turned around to see a flurry of black serrated legs slash and chop at the Ossyrian’s body in a frenzied attack, almost cleaving her in two, but one of the Ossyrian’s paws morphed into a syringe, spearing into the Q’Roth’s short neck. The Q’Roth sliced her limb off at the elbow, then crushed her skull, while Micah fired repeatedly at the warrior’s trapezoidal head, to no avail.

In the blaze of pulse-fire, the Q’Roth’s head turned to look at him, casting aside the shredded Ossyrian corpse. The three metre tall warrior staggered a pace forward, then collapsed onto two of its knees, its other four legs slamming onto the floor. Micah edged backwards and kept firing, but realised it was the Ossyrian who had killed it. The Q’Roth’s head began to disintegrate, mustard-coloured acid bubbling on its face, exuding a smell of rotting eggs.

Micah got up, skirted the two carcasses and raced down the passageway. His resident, tuned to Micah’s hearing and able to resolve it into sonar-like projections, detected two female humans in the corridor branching off to the left, moving away from him, about fifty metres distant. Micah accelerated, rifle ready. He knew he’d get one shot – but which would be Louise? The one in front because she always led, or the one behind because this was not her ship? He opted for the latter. They were almost at the end of the next corridor.

Taking two long strides as silently as he could, he sprung upwards and twisted, rolling in the air so as to present the smallest target, and fired at the one behind. As soon as he’d pulled the trigger he knew simultaneously that he’d hit home, and that he’d chosen the wrong Alician. Inwardly he cursed, unsure he’d get such an advantage again. Before he reached safety on the other side of his corridor, Louise had spun and fired a weapon he’d never seen before, a multi-nozzled rifle. The corridor lit up and his hand burned. Landing with a thump he searched through blotchy vision for the assault rifle he’d dropped. It sat a metre away, smoking, fused by the energy bolt Louise had fired. Adrenaline pumped through him; he was up against his worst enemy, without a weapon.

“Your shooting is getting better, Micah.” She didn’t shout, the tunnel-like corridor channelling her speech perfectly.

He heard her footsteps walking towards him, unhurried, still some thirty metres away. He got to his feet and ran the short distance to the end of his corridor. A blast door stood in his way. In frustration he thumped it, the heavy metal not even registering the blow with anything but a soft thud.

“I sealed it a minute ago,” Louise added, sauntering towards him.

Micah’s mind raced. He looked around, but there was nothing, not even a metal bar to strike her with. In hand-to-hand combat he wouldn’t stand a chance, and she had a rifle. If he dived to the other side of the corridor, he’d be dead before he got halfway. Next to the door was a panel with a Q’Roth keypad. He needed the password. lf she’d used a random one he was dead. Think! Micah knew she was warped by hatred, and this was personal to her – she would have used something relevant to both of them.

“I’m glad you’re here, Micah,” she said. “It’s good to tie up loose ends.”

His resident showed him the translated alphabet, overlaying it on the Q’Roth keypad. It also indicated that Louise was halfway down the corridor. Trying to think straight while fighting off panic, he entered ‘Louise’. Nothing happened. ‘Micah’. Still nothing. Stupid! I have to do better than this!

“Over the years I’ve thought time and time again of how to kill you, Micah. Mostly it comes down to ‘slowly’, but I don’t have much time.”

Micah tried ‘Vince’, her former partner and lover. No dice.

“So it came down to strangling you, like I…” She paused. “But of course, shooting you will do. I just need to see the light go out of your eyes once and for all.”

Micah paused. What had she been about to say? Who had she strangled? He heard her pace increase. Damn it! Who had she strangled, hated almost as much as him? She was almost there. He had seconds.

Micah thought of their last encounter at the trial, the Alician who had betrayed Louise, then tapped in H-A-N-N-A-H. There was a hiss followed by a clunk. Micah heard Louise burst into a sprint, just as the door began to move. Come on! It slid to the right and Micah curled around it, trying to get the Q’Roth metal between him and Louise. He grabbed the inner side of the door with his left hand, then a burning sensation exploded in his right shoulder, whipping him into the wall on the safe side of the door. Ignoring the pain he slammed his hand down on several keys in fast succession, letting his resident record the code. The door slid back, almost slicing off Louise’s fingers as she tried to prevent it from closing. A satisfying clunk confirmed his safety.

He slumped onto the ground, gasping, willing his nannites to combat the electrical discharge from the pulse round threatening his heart. It was like an intense heat raging across his body, and Micah arched his back in pain, refusing to cry out through gritted teeth; he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. But the nannites created a firewall in his chest, first protecting his heart, then quenching the pulse’s dissipating energy. His insides felt as if they had just been cooked, but he knew he was okay for the moment, and closed his eyes, slumping back against the blast door.

Outside there was a loud thunk, then another. Louise shouted through the wall.

“This is only a stay of execution, Micah. I brought back a little surprise in my ship. Once I’ve left I’m going to send this Crucible nova.” She waited for a reply, but Micah didn’t gratify her.

“By the way, Micah, do you like my new toy? Present from Qorall’s Level Twelve Andhrakian troopers. Highly versatile, very nasty. I’m hoping to bump into somebody you care about before I leave, to try out its full range of functions.”

Listening to the silence that followed, Micah clenched his teeth against the subsiding pain. After two minutes he entered the access code. The door wouldn’t open. Damn! He began searching his resident’s map for another pathway to where Louise was headed, but there was no quick route. Micah realised two things: first that he had burned out half his nannites to stop the pulse shot from killing him, and second that Louise would next encounter Petra and Chahat-Me. He thumped against the door again, this time hard enough to get a resounding echo. Petra. He’d got his priorities all wrong. Nursing his shoulder, he ran along the corridor in the opposite direction to where he needed to be.

◆◆◆

Petra and Chahat-Me reached the holding enclosure along with only a dozen Ossyrians – the path to get there had been bloody. The area in front widened and Petra gazed into the sepia-tinted glass dome where at least fifty humans – none of them Genners from what she could see – stood motionless, frozen in stasis. It was like a nightmarish version of one of the snow-toys she’d seen as a child, as if all the people – including her adopted mother Antonia – were encased in glass. She wondered what the Alicians wanted with them, but mostly she simply wanted to get them the hell out of there.

One of the Ossyrians stepped forward but was immediately consumed by horizontal intersecting laser beams from the walls. A flash of crimson light triggered black splotches on Petra’s retinas. When her vision cleared, she saw that not even ash remained. Clutching at her hair, she stared across to the dome and her frozen mother. “Ideas, anyone?”

Chahat-Me’s head twisted to either side of the opening, to where the lasers hid, as if calculating something, then turned to two of her taller colleagues. She gripped Petra’s wrist. “Leach lasers,” she said, “only one target at a time.” The other two Ossyrians advanced outside the inner pair, one of them placing her paw behind Petra’s back. They stood at the edge of safety, and Petra was still trying to guess what a ‘leach laser’ was when she suddenly realised what they intended. Chahat-Me yanked her wrist as the other Ossyrian shoved Petra forward. The lasers flared. Petra landed on the floor next to Chahat-Me, her eyes blotchy from the flash, then craned her neck to see… The other two Ossyrians had sacrificed themselves. Holy shit! She couldn’t believe what they had just done, so quick to die, without a moment’s hesitation or preparation.

Chahat-Me helped her to her feet. Petra knew that saying “Thank you” was futile for the two dead, vaporised Ossyrians, but she said it anyway.

They rushed over to a Q’Roth control panel. Chahat-Me’s eyes blurred as she studied it, and then began manipulating its curved, barbed controls. The sepia light in the dome faded, returning to normal. Petra walked toward her mother, who was still paralysed in stasis. The dome’s glass prevented her from touching her mother’s hand, so she stood next to her, remembering how as a very young girl she had waited after school for her two mothers to pick her up and take her home. Chahat-Me walked around to inspect the far side of the dome.

A sound like a buzz-saw rang out behind Petra and she turned to see a blonde woman firing a strange weapon. Orange fizzing beams arced outwards from Louise’s bulbous rifle and found each of the remaining Ossyrians standing on the other side of the barrier. Several of them   had managed to return fire but the woman moved quickly, her weapon neutralising the few Ossyrian shots that would have struck home. In  one second, all of the Ossyrians were down. Petra didn’t raise her pistol, but stared at Louise. Chahat-Me, stay put till I can distract her!

Louise walked towards her. Good, keep on walking! But she stopped just short of the protective line, uttered some words in Q’Roth, then walked straight through the kill-zone and up to Petra. Without warning, she struck Petra hard across the face with the butt of the rifle, knocking her to the floor. Petra tasted blood, her vision hazy. Louise crouched down, flinging Petra’s pistol to the far side of the room. “Who are you? You’re a Genner girl, aren’t you?” She put down her rifle, and noticed Petra’s eyes following it. “DNA-coded,” Louise said, “mine.”

Petra looked into her unwavering brown eyes, wondered if she could strike Louise fast enough – probably not.

Louise stood. “You remind me of someone.” She stared towards the humans, now semi-frozen, their faces and hands beginning to twitch. Her sight alighted on Antonia. “My, my. Well, this is unexpected. So, who’s the father?” She squatted again. “Micah, by any chance?”

Petra lunged at Louise with both fists and screamed at the same time. Louise fended off her blows with ease, and struck Petra’s windpipe with the blade of her hand. Petra found she couldn’t breathe, but it had created the diversion she had hoped for. Chahat-Me came from around the dome, flying at Louise, her wide-open snout uttering a death-roar, her paws extending syringes. Petra lay on the floor clutching her throat, trying to get some air into her lungs as she watched Louise twist with gymnastic precision, using her feet and arms to prevent Chahat-Me from injecting her with deadly toxins. Chahat-Me was wild, utterly feral. The pair were locked together and rolled on the floor away from Petra, back toward the entrance. Petra wheezed in a sliver of precious air and got to her feet. Louise yelled something in Q’Roth just as Chahat-Me was gaining the advantage – one of her paws slipped through Louise’s left hand, slicing into her wrist. Petra searched for her pistol, couldn’t see it. Louise pushed off with a foot against Chahat-Me’s underbelly and rolled again, shoving Chahat-Me into the re-activated kill zone. There was a flash, and Petra stared in disbelief – her godmother was gone, nothing left. She half-screamed, half-yelled and ran toward Louise, aiming to drag them both into the kill-zone. Louise shouted the deactivation code above Petra’s yell, her foot simultaneously connecting with Petra’s mid- section, sending her flying, back against the dome glass, winding her.

Louise crawled to her rifle, touched a few areas on the handle with her right fingers, and then pointed at Petra and fired. Petra saw a purple flash, then realised that she’d not been killed, merely paralysed, her lungs barely managing to inhale and exhale, air rattling in her bruised throat.

Petra stared, inert like a wax doll, as Louise’s left arm turned an ugly dark green colour, all the way up from her hand to her elbow, sizzling from Chahat-Me’s poison. One of Louise’s fingers, black and bubbling, broke off and fell to the floor. Good, die you bitch!

Louise manipulated the rifle’s controls again and swivelled it around so it pointed at her own arm just below the shoulder. Holding Petra’s gaze, lips squeezed together, she fired. It sliced off Louise’s left arm like a focused-beam blowtorch, the rotting limb splatting onto the floor, fizzing as it spread out into a decaying, grey-black, bubbling mess.

Louise dropped to her knees, uttering something between a groan and a yell, propped up by her one good arm leaning on the rifle. Her other arm ended in a stump midway between shoulder and elbow. It looked angry but neatly cauterised. Louise raised her gaze to Petra, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched in a grimace. She stood, leaning against the wall behind her. Wedging the rifle under her right armpit, she fished with a shaky right hand inside a chest pocket, pulled out something, and swallowed it. Petra guessed it was trimorph. Louise swallowed. “Never did trust Ossyrians. This rifle’s auto-med function serves me better.”

Petra glared, staring at the line where Chahat-Me had vanished, cremated. She’d known Chahat-Me all her life, the alien who had looked after her, shared her own blood to save her after the climbing accident, shown her things she ought not to have, well above Petra’s level. While others feared aliens, Petra didn’t. Her gaze hardened and swung back to Louise, who was shaking but clearly recovering on the other side of the room, now sitting back against the wall with her knees up, rifle loosely angled towards the dome. Petra had always been compassionate, not sure she could kill another being even if her life depended on it. But now the lust for vengeance ignited and spread through her entire body like a dry forest catching fire. She couldn’t move, and satisfied herself for the moment by relishing Louise’s intense pain. It helped particularly when Louise glanced at, or felt for, her missing arm.

A tingling in Petra’s fingers and toes told her the stun effects of the rifle were wearing off, and her head suddenly pitched forward as her muscles slackened. A knock behind her made her turn, awkwardly at first, to see her mother crouch down, her face at Petra’s level behind the thin dome glass. Antonia wore a deep frown, wide almond eyes darting occasionally across to Louise. Petra braved a smile, and put her hand on the glass next to her mother’s. Others behind the dome wall were also awakening, shuffling around. Petra recognised some of them, then one came to the fore – it was Sandy. She took up position next to Antonia, glaring pure venom at Louise.

Petra had just levered herself onto her feet when six heavily-armed Alicians arrived – three male, three female – entering from the far side of the room, skidding to a halt as they encountered Louise and an array of Ossyrian corpses.

“Report,” Louise barked.

The group exchanged glances, then one of the females spoke, standing to attention. “The Command Centre has been destroyed. Sister Esma could not have survived. All the Q’Roth are dead. There are a few Mannekhi survivors and a lone human with two Ossyrians, but they are all blocked behind several layers of kill-fields – it will take them twenty minutes to get here. The rest of the Ossyrians that we know of are dead. We are all that remains of Sister Esma’s crew.”

“Thank you,” Louise said, “That puts me in charge.” She stared them down till they nodded. “Lead these humans to the Raptors three decks below, then put them back in stasis. Anyone offers the slightest resistance, kill them. Leave the Genner girl. I’ll join you in ten minutes. We will rendezvous with the Q’Roth destroyer waiting outside the system.” She paused. “You know,” she said, as if speaking to no one in particular, “I actually liked Sister Esma.” She stood straighter, enlisting the Alician group. “We will continue her mission back on Savange.”

The six moved past Louise, but she stopped the last pair “Not you two. You,” she said, addressing a female, “I need you to do something for me.” Louise whispered in the woman’s ear. The woman stared a moment at Louise, then ran to overtake the others, disappearing down a descending corridor. Louise smiled at the male. “Bring the Genner girl, and follow me.”

Petra whirled around to her mother, unsure if she or anyone else inside the dome could hear any of what Louise had said. Antonia soundlessly pounded against the glass wall as the Alician male grabbed Petra and dragged her away. Petra’s last view of Antonia was of her head bowed down, whitened fists against the dome wall, Sandy’s hand on her shoulder.

Once they’d turned the corner, Petra spoke up. “Where are we going?”

Louise wasn’t too steady on her feet. “We have ten minutes to kill.”

◆◆◆

It had taken Micah far more time than he’d wanted to find an alternative route towards the holding pen and retrieve an assault rifle from a dead Alician. His resident picked up something around the next corner but it couldn’t resolve an image. Priming his weapon, he gave it all he’d got with a burst of acceleration. He saw Louise ahead and facing away from him. It took only a fraction of a second for him to decide it was her. He opened fire, aiming for her back. This time! But the shot passed straight through her. Shit! Holo –

A pulse round struck his legs and he went down, another shot hitting his rifle, making it burn red-hot so that he had to let go of it as he crashed to the deck. The hologram of Louise disappeared, as did a chameleogram that was masking the real Louise. She stood legs splayed, the bulky weapon in her hand. Micah was stunned to see her left arm cut off just below the shoulder.

“Hello again, Micah. I wanted you on your knees before I executed you. I also wanted to see if you’d shoot me in the back. Nice to see you’ve finally grown up. Vince would have been proud of you.”

Micah’s legs spasmed with cramps as the pulse charge fizzed around them. His resident was trying to regain control over them via the neural shunt. He wondered if his legs would still respond. Normally their neural pathways would be out of action after a pulse hit, but maybe not with the Ossyrian fix in his spine. He had no weapon except surprise; Louise didn’t know about the shunt, nor his nannites. He had to stall, give the others time to release the captives. He needed something to ensure she’d respond.

“Would Vince be proud of you, Louise?” He didn’t know how she felt about Vince after all these years, but if it was anything like before, he expected to experience sudden pain. He raised his head.

She looked relaxed, as always. “You continually underestimate me, Micah. I stay one step ahead of you.” She addressed someone around the corner. “Bring her.”

Micah’s questioning frown vanished as soon as an Alician male marched Petra into view. The man held a pistol to Petra’s throat, while another gun sat idle in a side holster. Micah eyed it.

Louise waved her rifle vaguely in Petra’s direction. “You dare to ask me about Vince, when it was your plan that got him killed? Does this little Genner bitch mean anything to you, Micah? Because I’d really like you to know how I felt after I lost him.”

Petra looked fragile but not wounded. Micah guessed Chahat-Me hadn’t made it. Petra looked into his eyes, slightly shaking her head. But he knew Louise better, and she was right, he had underestimated her. Again.

Micah struggled to his knees and readied his resident, hoping his legs would work; he gauged the distance. He stared at Petra, his peripheral vision taking in the man behind her. He instructed his remaining nannites to speed up his reactions, and about thirty per cent of them to steel his left hand. He would have only one attempt; this effort would expend his remaining nannites.

“This girl means everything to me,” he said. Time slowed down for Micah.

Louise laughed, began to shake her head, and was about to say something. The Alician male momentarily took his eyes off Micah to glance at Louise. Micah triggered the command, and the shunt sent a way-beyond-tolerance signal to his legs. His thigh and calf muscles almost burst as his feet found purchase and his legs kicked off with frog- like speed and power, springing toward Petra, his left fist connecting with the Alician male’s forehead like a hammer, snapping his neck, while Micah’s right hand wrenched the pistol from his grip. As they toppled – for Micah in slow motion – he fired behind him to where Louise should still be, but at the same moment another shot lit up the room.

He rolled away from Petra and came up in a crouch, trying to hold the pistol that burned red-hot in his hand. He clicked the trigger but nothing happened, and he flung it from his scalded palm. Louise was on one knee, clutching her scorched left side, grimacing with pain. He didn’t know why she wasn’t flat on the ground. She stared at the blackened rifle, tried to fire it three times at Micah, but his shot had clearly hit the rifle on its way to Louise. “Sonofabitch,” she said, between clenched teeth.

She turned the rifle around and aimed it towards her wound, and for one brief moment Micah prayed she was going to kill herself. But the rifle emitted a blue glow, and he realised it was somehow healing her.

Micah focused on Louise. He wanted to rush her, strangle her with his bare hands while she was wounded. But his legs refused to cooperate; the shunt was either fused or temporarily out of action. “Petra, are you okay?” he asked. The Alician male’s twisted body was still.

Petra tried to suppress a groan. “Please just kill her, Uncle.”

Without taking his eyes off Louise he crawled toward Petra, his legs dragging behind him. “Where did she get you?”

Petra coughed, clearly in agony. “Belly. Let me watch her die.”

He searched for the Alician’s back-up pistol, checking back to see that Louise was still in as bad shape as he was.

Louise glared at him through strands of blonde hair, sweat breaking out on her face. “I die, she dies,” she rasped.

He found the short pistol tucked under the male’s hip. Propping himself up on one elbow, he checked the charge, ramped it up to maximum. “You’ve both been hit by pulse charges; you’re both going to die. But I’m going to grant my niece her last wish.” He aimed at Louise’s head, his finger on the trigger.

Louise tapped her rifle. “I can save her with this.” Louise stood up, partly doubled over.

Micah stared. There should be no way she could stand after a pulse round to the body. He glanced at her rifle, his pistol arm steady.

Louise tossed her head back, swallowed. “You want her to live, you throw your gun over there. I save her, I leave.”

“No!” Petra groaned. “She killed Chahat-Me right in front of me!” Her last word choked off as she lay shivering with pain on the floor.

Micah waved the pistol at Louise. “I can’t trust you, Louise. You’ll just kill us both afterwards.”

Louise had regained her composure, the sweat dried from her face. “Your choice, Micah. Your little friend has about twenty seconds of life left. Then you get to feel what I’ve lived with for the last eighteen years after I lost Vince.” She looked him in the eye. “I still miss him, you know.”

It was the flash of sadness in her look that convinced him she just might be telling the truth. He glanced down at Petra. He’d lost too many people through the years. He imagined his niece dead, cold, still, silent, then with a growl tossed the pistol aside. Louise angled the rifle  towards Petra, stroked her thumb across a patch on its handle, and pulled the trigger. A blue glow encased Petra, then shut off.

Micah bent down towards her, placed his hand on her shoulder. Petra was crying.

Louise dropped the rifle and walked away, leaning on the wall for support with her remaining arm. “Relish the brief time you have left, Micah,” she said, and turned the corner.

He recalled Louise had brought back a ‘surprise’. No doubt she intended to leave and then blow up the Crucible behind her. That was her style.

Micah cradled Petra in his arms, but although still weak, she thumped his chest as he held her. “You… idiot! You should have killed her. She’ll take the hostages. Go after her!”

But although his legs were beginning to recover, he knew he could barely stand let alone walk, his muscles traumatized after that lunge to save Petra. He held her tight, thinking about what he had done. He’d wanted to kill Louise for so many reasons, for betraying humanity, for nearly killing Antonia, for sending two thousand men, women and children into the heart of a sun, and for Hannah, eighteen years ago. And for the crimes Louise was yet to commit, including stealing the human captives away. But Petra had been like the daughter he’d never had, and she was alive, her heart was still beating, her flesh was still warm, and that was all that mattered. She cried some more, and he held her.

After several minutes, two Ossyrians arrived with two Alician prisoners. One of the Ossyrians indicated that they should kill them, but Micah shook his head – he needed to know what this had all been about, where the human captives would be taken. A minute later Kilaney arrived, looking like hell, using his rifle as a crutch. Four Mannekhi accompanied him.

“Micah, you look like –”

“Status?” he said, interrupting someone who far outranked him in every way.

Kilaney raised his chin. “All the Q’Roth are dead. Planet-cutter operations have been terminated, but rockfall on Esperia is in forty-five minutes. This is Commander Xenic, by the way,” he said, nodding to the gaunt Mannekhi, “and all that remains of his crew. They’re on our side now.” He stroked his stubbled chin. “Long story.”

Micah struggled to his feet. “We have to go to the Raptor hangar while there’s still time.” He answered Kilaney’s raised eyebrow. “Louise is leaving us a going-away present.”

While they made their way along twisting corridors and down several levels via spiral ramps, Petra addressed him sternly. “You made a serious tactical error, Uncle.”

Micah didn’t stop or slow down. And I’m going to pay for it very shortly. “One step at a time. First we have to prevent an environmental catastrophe.” He imagined an avalanche of billions of tons of rock sliding towards Esperia.

Micah and the others reached the hangar where three Raptors sat, aside three empty berths; Louise had escaped with the captives. One of the Raptors had a large missile slung underneath it, its external casing glowing violet. Armed, no doubt waiting until Louise and the others had steered a safe distance away.

Kilaney, Xenic and Micah walked over to it. “Any ideas?” Micah said, fully expecting none.

“Only the obvious one,” Kilaney offered. “We get the hell out of here.”

But as they checked each remaining Raptor they quickly found they had been put into sleep mode – it would take twenty minutes for them to fire up. As the others tried to speed up the start routines, Micah double- backed to Louise’s, the one carrying the Nova bomb. Petra saw him and shouted after him but he ignored her. I let Louise live. This is my responsibility.

He sealed the hatch and got to the cockpit. His resident translated the Q’Roth console displays, and he powered up the ship. His resident also detected a countdown for the missile: 64 seconds.

On one of the monitors he saw Kilaney and Petra running over but he gunned the thrusters and the Raptor pitched forward, initially scraping along the hangar floor before he got used to the controls. A holo appeared showing fine, white striations in front of him. He had no idea what they were but decided it was wise to avoid hitting one.

Kilaney came on line. “Micah, get the hell out of there!”

“Look after Petra,” he replied, and shut off comms; he needed to concentrate and get far away fast. He snagged a filament and heard a grinding noise then a thunk, neither of which sounded good. His resident supplied the countdown so he didn’t have to look away from the holomap as he slalomed through the field of filaments into the void of space.

45 seconds.

His hands were steady, not shaking as he thought they might. In his mind images flashed of Blake, his parents, Antonia, Petra, and Sandy. That last face lingered. So much he should have said in the past eighteen years. “Goodbye everyone,” he whispered.

30 seconds.

Comms re-activated on an emergency channel, and a voice barged into his thoughts. “Micah, is that you?”

The man’s voice was oddly familiar, but Micah couldn’t place it; it sounded synthetic.

“Who is –?”

“It’s Pierre, Micah. No time to explain. You must eject now!”

20 seconds.

Micah nearly gashed the ship open on a knot of filaments. The resident said he was far enough from the Crucible.

15 seconds.

“Micah, I said eject!”

He looked around feverishly. “I don’t see how!”

“Just blow the hatch, you have very little time!”

He swung around to the cockpit hatch release lever.

10 seconds.

“But I don’t have a helmet.”

A deep, gruff voice he’d never heard before, nor wanted to again, bellowed at him. “LEAVE SHIP NOW!”

Micah grabbed the release.

5 seconds.

He took a breath, squeezed his eyes shut and yanked the lever downwards.

For an instant he heard the roaring noise of decompression followed by an implosive silence. Stinging lashed every millimetre of his flesh, at once both boiling hot and freezing cold. His lungs ballooned inside him, his throat expanded and his eyes bulged inside his head, his elbows and knees bloating with excruciating pain. Air burst from his mouth in an anguished scream that made no sound whatsoever. Then there was sound, something snapping closed, cocooning him in darkness, a fraction of a second before incredible brightness flared through his still-closed eyelids.

“You can open your eyes, Micah, you’re safe now, you’re on our ship. Another second…”

Micah’s eyes however, were frosted shut. “Pierre?” He reached out and a cool metal hand took his own. He gripped it with both his hands and squeezed hard.

“Fix him quickly,” Pierre said, though Micah couldn’t see whom Pierre addressed, and he didn’t much care.

The Ice Pick dropped Micah off into the hangar and left straightaway.

Kilaney, Petra and the others were all huddled together.

“Nice firework display,” Kilaney said, then placed a hand on Micah’s shoulder. “Good job, Micah.”

Micah wasted no time. Pierre had told him the Crucible was highly unstable, a space wreck in progress. “Commander Xenic,” he said, pointing to one of the warmed-up Raptors, “take that one with your crew, we’ll take the other one. We’ll all need the tripwire detection algorithm.”

Xenic nodded, clearly happy to be given his own ship.

“To what end, Micah? What about the rockfall?” Kilaney asked.

Micah glanced to Petra. “Pierre said he would take care of it.”

Petra’s eyes grew large. “Did you say Pierre? You don’t mean…?”

She couldn’t complete the sentence. She’d never met her father, never had the opportunity to even speak to him. Micah held out his hand. Petra moved to Micah’s side, hardly breathing.

“I want to watch him… my father,” she said, swallowing. Her eyes locked onto Micah’s, making it clear she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

Micah turned to Kilaney and the others. “Change of plan. You’re all in the other Raptor. We’ll be a while.”

Kilaney was the last to board the Raptor. “Don’t be too long, you two. Well,” he said, “I can’t wait to see the expression on Blake’s face now that I look younger than him.”

Micah and Petra sat side by side in the cockpit, her hand in his. Far away a relentless landslide of rock and dust slid through space toward Esperia. But all the way across its leading edge it was being shaved into a bright swathe of light as a small ship moved almost too fast for the eye to follow, erasing the moonfall’s wave-front, leaving glittering sparks in its place.

Petra’s head was on Micah’s shoulder. “Thank you, Uncle,” she said. “Thank you for saving me so I could see this, so I can finally meet my father.”

Micah said nothing, just squeezed his arm around her a little tighter.

She pulled away, looked at him hard. “Uncle, despite what I said earlier, don’t beat yourself up about letting Louise escape.”

He frowned. “Easier said, Petra, and you know it. Antonia –”

“Would thank you, and you know that. Kat, too.” she said, quieter.

“But you have to get Antonia back, and the others. You know that don’t you?”

Micah nodded, and she settled back into his shoulder.

He thought about it. Strategically, letting Louise escape with the prisoners was a disastrous decision. Kilaney and Blake should bawl him out for it, though they probably wouldn’t. But together, they’d held Esperia safe. That was the main thing for now.

Silently he swore to get the captives back or die trying, even if he had to damned well do it alone. It would mean going to the Alician homeworld. And why not, he thought. We’ve always been on the defensive, first on Earth, then Eden and now Esperia. Time to take the battle to them.

Pierre’s ship suddenly zipped to intercept a massive boulder the size of a mountain travelling faster than the rest. The Ice Pick vaporised it neatly then resumed at the wave front. “Impressive,” Micah said, “nice save.”

Petra squeezed Micah’s palm, with a gleam in her eyes Micah hadn’t seen for years.

Chapter 26

Cracked Sky

The ground crunched underneath Micah’s boots as he made the steep climb up Silent Hill, his breath frosting in the chill air. In the pre-dawn light he was unable to see if anyone else had arrived at what had become a dawn ritual. The sound of a Nightjar, one of the few species of bird rescued from Earth, made him look up, catching sight of the three Kalarash ships close together a kilometre above Esperantia and Shimsha. Pausing, he took in their sleek, elongated crossbow shapes. The three silhouettes resembled the beginnings of an Escher mosaic.

But the Kalarash had arrived too late. Sandy, Antonia, the others… taken to be used like lab-rats; Gabriel, Virginia and Chahat-Me dead. He halted his ascent, squatted down, and dug his fingers into the earth, his breathing laboured. Logically, it wasn’t his fault. And yet… He’d let Louise slip away again. She’d never rest until mankind was gone. Micah knew what he had to do. But he would have to hide it from the others, including Kalaran if he got to meet him. Subduing dark thoughts, he stood up and continued his way.

He stared up again to the ships. It was too early to see the colours of their hulls, but he could just make out that one was blue-green – Kalaran’s – the other violet-red, housing Jen, Rashid and Dimitri, and the third red- green, Hellera’s ship. His eyes slipped back to the stony terrain in front of him; he’d see Jen soon enough at the War Council meeting, hopefully to get some explanations.

On the hill’s summit, as he’d expected, a dozen people stood between waist-high alabaster tombstones, and he again felt the heaviness he’d been unable to shake off despite it being eight days since the mass funeral. For him and the others, this daily vigil was important not only to honour the dead, but because the deceased were somehow a link with the living captives kidnapped by Louise, already on their way back to Savange.

Without being conscious of it, Micah went straight towards the plots of Gabriel and Virginia. Small rocks laced with quartz delineated each rectangular grave, but a few days earlier Petra had removed the stones separating those two, so that they merged into one. Everyone understood.

Ramires was already there, Petra kneeling on the damp earth, Blake over at Marcus’ grave. A few other Genners and Steaders whispered around the buried ashes of loved ones. Micah placed a hand on Petra’s shoulder, and without looking up she laid her fingers on top of his. As one, all those present lifted their gaze as dawn arrived and the sky shifted from dark lapis to aquamarine. Micah drew in a long breath, still not used to what he saw. The sky was cracked, crisscrossed with hundreds of gossamer white lines, as if it had been shattered. He knew they only witnessed a fraction of the extent of the Shrell filaments that stretched all the way to the periphery of Esperia’s solar system. Initially invisible, they had been transformed – energized – by the Kalarash ships as soon as they had arrived three days earlier. He didn’t know why. It was one of the items on his list as soon as Jen returned.

But he and Ramires had the same priority on their agenda – they wanted a ship to go to Savange, to recover the captives, and preferably eliminate Louise and the rest of the Alicians. Chances of success were remote at best. But since the battle for Esperia had ended, there had been a change in the Steader and Genner populace – there was now far more mutual respect and collaboration. Every day and through the night Genners and their parents gathered in the Monofaith, and… just talked to each other. He’d seen several trios of parents and a Genner child where the young boy or girl was patiently explaining something complex, breaking it down till they grasped it. Petra had been instrumental in this social rapprochement, working with both the Genner and Steader sides, arguing that each had something to offer, that Genners needed emotional intelligence and empathy, too, if they weren’t to end up like the Alicians.

One unanticipated outcome from recent events had been a public outpouring of grief, and repeated demands that the sixty captives be rescued. So Micah had heard, when the Alicians had come to take them, many stalwart and well-known citizens had come forward, volunteering themselves rather than letting other more frail or fearful men and women be taken. Micah suspected that had been the case with Antonia and Sandy. The Alicians would have accepted such propositions, yielding stronger stock for their genetic extractions. His thoughts shifted to those two women and their predicament, wondering what exactly had become of them. According to the two Alicians Kilaney had caught, they would be kept alive, though the conditions of their imprisonment were unclear. Micah realised he was grinding the soil with his boot; Petra saw it too, and squeezed his hand, reminding him that this was a burial ground. He stored his anger for another time and place. Blake came over, standing close to him and Ramires. “It’s time,” he said. Petra got up and led the way back down to Esperantia, and the War Council. Micah trudged down the escarpment, his mood gloomy. He had no doubt the Council would support the venture, even if it was purely a political judgement reflecting the emotion of the moment. But the ones they really had to convince were the Kalarash. Only they could grant them their wish by furnishing them a warship for the voyage, but he couldn’t think of one reason why Kalaran or Hellera should oblige. But he would find one.

The Council Chamber, one of the few structures untouched by the Alician raid, was bustling for this time of the morning, hundreds milling about the plaza outside, the smell of fresh flatbreads and clove-spiced Cafarino softening the chill morning air. As the four walked towards the entrance, the chatter around them subsided.

Kat stood in the arched doorway. Micah had barely seen her since her return in the Raptor with the Mannekhi female, Aramisk; Kat spent most of her time since then with Pierre and Petra, and Micah let them be. She kissed her daughter on both cheeks, and then, for the first time ever, gave Micah a hug. She’d not spoken a word to him since she’d heard the news about Antonia, but now she whispered into his ear.

“Get her back, Micah, get a ship from them, no matter what it takes.”

She released him. Micah held her gaze a while. Petra had already relayed what Kat had said about Louise’s behaviour during these past two years, her actions and decisions increasingly unpredictable, her moods full of darkness, and that she was working for Qorall. Louise was more dangerous than ever.

As they were about to go inside, there was a flash behind them. Where they had walked moments before were three figures: the reptilian Ranger Ukrull, the flow-metal Pierre, silver except for his normal, brown eyes, and Jen. He was struck again by the fact that she hadn’t aged due to relativity effects: mousy-blonde hair skirting a shy face with its ski- jump nose and wary, sideways-looking bottle-green eyes. She wore a tan jumpsuit that didn’t flatter her figure, and evidently didn’t care, which meant she was also more self-assured than when he’d known her before. He reminded himself that she’d been with Kalaran for that year, and almost certainly knew far more than anyone else present, save possibly Ukrull, as to what the hell was going on.

Pierre walked up to Petra and Kat and the three of them embraced as if alone in their home. These past ten days Petra had spent a lot of time with her father, who was apparently better emotionally equipped than when he’d left. Pierre had told him it had been a gift from another Kalarash called Hellera. Ukrull swept past them with his powerful lizard- like gait, his scaly muscular tail flicking from side to side making people stumble out of his way, a smell of rotting grass in his wake.

Jen approached. “Micah, we’re ready.”

He wasn’t quite sure who ‘we’ included, hoping she represented Kalaran in some way. They all turned and followed her through to the chamber. Micah knew that her two companions Dimitri and Rashid had not yet come down to the planet. Apparently, teleportation was possible, but was incredibly difficult except across very short distances in the vacuum of space, and consumed vast amounts of energy, even for the Kalarash. Their massive ships were said to need a day to recharge after each single teleportation. Blake harboured a suspicion that one or two of the spiders had been taken up to the ships, though Jen denied any knowledge of it.

Vasquez and Kilaney were already seated along with the two remaining Ossyrians and the Mannekhi Commander Xenic. Everyone took their seats, except Micah and Jen. Micah waited until a hush settled over the War Council representatives in the inner circle of twelve, and the packed audience seated behind them.

“Jennifer,” he said, “please…” He’d prepared a short speech, but suddenly thought better of it. “Just tell us what is going on.”

She pulled something out of her pocket and tossed what looked like a handful of dust and glitter into the air. It didn’t fall, instead spreading out as it took the shape of the Milky Way. She had everyone’s attention. “Here,” she said, moving to a single point of light, “is where we are today.” As her finger approached the single mote, that area of the ‘map’ expanded, and they saw a small solar system: Esperia’s sun as an orange ball, a small grey uninhabited planet closer to their local sun, their home Esperia, and one gas giant and an asteroid belt further out.

“This was before. And this is now.” She snapped her fingers and the Esperian system suddenly looked as if it had been encased in a    ball of glass and dropped repeatedly on the floor; cracks and fractures everywhere. “As some of you have heard, the Shrell were sent here to poison space. Qorall knew the spider population represented a threat, though he did not, and still does not know the nature of that threat. By poisoning space he ensured their containment and ultimate extinction on Esperia –”

Blake leant forward and interrupted. He was the closest the spiders had to a representative on this Council. “Are you going to tell us what threat they do pose?”

Jen stared at Blake, and Micah noticed again how she’d changed from when he’d known her eighteen years ago – more confident, but also less egotistical.

“No,” she said. “I honestly don’t know if they constitute a weapon, only that they are important to Kalaran’s plans to defeat Qorall.” She continued. “Louise had been tasked by Qorall with destroying Esperia, but she failed, thanks to the valiant efforts of many of you here today, and a few no longer here.” Her voice almost caught, but she masked it by clearing her throat.

Micah knew Jen had been very cut up about Gabriel – in fact no one else had known what had happened to Gabriel and Sister Esma until Jen had arrived five days ago with the news. Petra had been inconsolable for two days, Ramires tight-lipped but proud. Micah felt he owed Gabriel a debt he could never repay.

Jen regained her composure. “However, Kalaran also wanted the Shrell to proceed, because, you see, Qorall’s back-up plan was this.” She tapped an apparently empty region of space just outside Esperia’s system and Micah’s breathing shallowed. A slug-like creature undulated, its black hide glistening with deep blue crackles of energy. A darker mouth opened, revealing a hint of scarlet fire deep inside its body.

Kilaney shifted in his seat. “Dark worms, our worst nightmare. We still have no idea how to kill them.”

“The Kalarash do,” Jen said. “However…” her forefinger traced a circle around the Esperian system and the image enlarged again.

Shit. Micah saw hundreds of worms patrolling the perimeter. He guessed Kalaran’s strategy, even as Jen confirmed it.

“Once the Shrell had done their work,” she said, “Kalaran’s ship and the other one we brought back, together with Hellera’s, were able to energise the Shrell network into a defence grid. Before, the worms would have cut through the strands like a whale ignoring a fishing line. Now… they cannot pass.”

Micah spoke what he presumed others were also thinking. “Then we, too, are confined here.” Again. And we’ve only just come out of Quarantine!

Ukrull grunted something to himself. Jen glanced at him, then carried on. “Not entirely, but getting in and out will be dangerous. Now Qorall knows there are three Kalarash ships here, he will focus efforts on Esperia.”

Micah watched Jen carefully. There’s something she’s not telling us.

He walked towards the map. “Show us Savange,” he said.

All in the circle leaned forward, Kat and Ramires rising from their seats.

Jen touched a far-flung region of the floating star-map and a blue- mauve planet blossomed out of the star-map. Micah’s brow widened, then furrowed. It was beautiful, rich in water and foliage compared to Esperia. Glinting lights told him there were several small but advanced cities and infrastructure scattered along the oceanic edge of the main continent. A single large orbital station hung above the largest patch of light, presumably where they did commerce with other races. They had come a long way in eighteen years, undoubtedly aided by their Q’Roth patrons. He clenched his jaw – it wasn’t damned fair! He felt his blood pressure rising. The fact that Sister Esma had been killed wasn’t nearly enough consolation. “Close it,” he said, his voice stone. Jen obliged, Savange collapsing back into a small point of light.

She raised her voice above the growing chatter. “Here are Qorall’s forces.” Half the stars in the galaxy – excluding the central orb of light where the stars were too densely-packed for any sustainable intelligent life – turned red, and on a galactic scale they were already close to Esperia. Savange, in contrast, was far away in neutral space.

“This is what Kalaran predicts will happen next,” Jen said. Qorall’s wave front held off from Esperia but continued around it, like a closing fist. The far edges of the circular front missed Savange, though not by much.

Micah interrupted. “We need a ship, Jen, to go and get our people back. One of those hanging above us right now would do, or else something pretty damned close.” Others around him nodded and voiced assent.

She pursed her lips; evidently she had been expecting the question. But she said nothing.

Micah was about to speak when he found he was somewhere else.

He stood on a giant marble, swirling grenadine beneath his feet, mixed with crystalline violet and vermillion striations like blood vessels. Under a pea-green sky he saw other globes, none of them moving. Micah guessed where he was.

“I thought teleportation used up a lot of energy.” Micah said it to the wind, not expecting a human voice right behind him, especially not that one.

“But then you ain’t really here, Micah.”

Spinning around he saw Zack standing two metres away: not the Transpar version, but the original burly friend he’d briefly known and cherished after the fall of Earth.

“Zack is that –”

“No, Micah, he’s gone, but I chose this form – forgive me – because you trusted him, and I need you to listen carefully.”

Micah wanted to shake his hand, even hug Zack, but Micah knew he was being manipulated. He stood back. “I’m listening.”

Zack squatted. “To defeat Qorall requires an intricate strategy. A rescue mission to Savange would risk everything.”

Micah squatted too. “I was expecting Jen – or in this case, you –   to say that. The bigger picture, sacrifices must be made, etc.” Anger simmered inside him, stoked up by the images of Savange. He tried to keep his voice even. “I – and we, the people of Esperia – don’t care. Help us to do this if you expect cooperation from us.”

Zack’s bald head swung in Micah’s direction and gave him a searching look. Micah saw through those eyes and Zack’s expression the sad wisdom of a truly ancient being, one who had seen it all before, countless times. “Micah, is it worth risking trillions of beings’ lives, possibly mine as well, in order to bring sixty souls back, when they may well perish here anyway? The Alicians will side with Qorall under Louise’s leadership. Your friends may be safer there.”

Micah stood up and walked away a few paces, biting down on his lip. He turned around, folding his arms. “A ship, that’s all we’re asking. One ship. We can’t desert them. We’ve already lost too much.” Micah felt his muscles tense; he wanted to strike something, but there was nothing to hit. “First, our entire race is almost extinguished. Then we barely make do on a difficult world, scratching out a living on an almost barren planet, and then we’re attacked again, all the while co-locating with a species we can’t relate to who obviously have more importance in your grand scheme than us. We’re just a damned pawn –” He stopped himself, aware he was ranting, unfolded his arms and put his hands in his pockets. The real Zack wouldn’t be impressed, even if he understood Micah’s anger. Kalaran had indeed chosen the best personality from Micah’s mind for this ‘interview’. Micah tried a different tack. “If they had been killed, or were going to be killed, it… it would be easier in some respects.” He withdrew his hands, and pointed away from him. “But they’re not dead. They’re out there, they’ll be kept alive for decades as genetic factories, allowing the Alicians to procreate so their progeny can come back one day and finish off the job they started.” Micah softened his voice, stared directly into Zack’s eyes, trying to reach the super-being behind the façade. “If one of yours was taken – a Kalarash – wouldn’t you go after them?”

Zack stood up, gazed out to one of the distant spheres, and spoke. “What do you think?”

Micah was nonplussed until he heard another voice, distant, distinctly female, an unholy choir whose intonations were all off-key. It didn’t sound human.

“Show him,” the unseen female said. “He needs to see it.”

Zack pointed to the floor beneath Micah’s feet. As Micah looked down, the swirling cocktail haze cleared into a black space. But it wasn’t empty. He saw a ball, dull ochre in colour, drifting towards a green planet. Micah’s resident supplied a name and details for the indigenous species – Wagramanian, Level Seven, forest-dwelling tripeds, famed artists, fierce soldiers. He recalled that this race were to be the relief for Esperia in three months’ time. Micah saw gigantic ships like indigo fir trees on intercept towards the ball. But he guessed they should turn about and flee.

“They never run,” Zack said. “Even when they know what is coming.”

Micah watched the ships fire at the ball, but all that happened was that it brightened and grew fractionally. Several ships rammed it, but were absorbed as if it was liquid. His resident – no doubt being controlled by Kalaran – told him that that was exactly what it was: fluid organic metal, but highly processed: intelligent; nascent; hungry. Micah shivered.

As the indigenous population realised they could not stop the ball and that it was on a collision course, massive transports lifted off from the planet’s surface. But even those on the opposite side of the planet were caught in powerful gravimetric tides that either sent them plummeting back to the ground or tore them apart, spilling their occupants into space.

The ball broke into a shower of billions of droplets that rained down on the planet. The view zoomed in. The inhabitants ran, hid. But each time one was touched by a droplet, the poor wretch froze, transforming, silently screaming before their skin turned an ochre colour and their eyes turned blood red. It worked fast.

“They are Qorall’s now,” Zack said, head bowed.

Where the drops touched the ground, they dispersed into gas, spreading faster. Their former kinsmen hunted those Wagramanians who went into hiding, until the entire population was Qorall’s. The floor resumed its cloudlike haze, and Micah was relieved.

“This is what is coming, Micah. It has taken Qorall this long to perfect the weapon, to adapt it to the template underpinning this galaxy’s species. But from here on his progress will accelerate.” Zack looked beyond Micah, behind him. “Micah, it is best if you don’t turn around.” The other voice sounded to Micah as if it was right behind him. The skin on the back of his neck crawled. He’d had a debriefing from Pierre, and guessed who or what was speaking; Hellera, the other Kalarash. “The Scintarelli are still ours. I will send a ship. I must attend others, try to protect them.” There was a pause. “I am glad you came back, Kalaran.”

There was a sudden stillness behind Micah, and he knew she was gone, if she’d ever really been there at all.

Zack’s heavy eyes tracked back to Micah. “You will have your ship. But you will have an additional task, one that must take priority.” Zack walked a few paces away and beckoned. Micah wasn’t that surprised by what he saw walking towards him. The four-legged spider stood next to Zack/Kalaran, who stroked its black, furry top fondly. The spider’s communication band soothed a tranquil turquoise, a colour Micah had never seen on any of them before.

Zack’s gaze returned to Micah. “The one called Louise sent one of her crew to kidnap a spider and take it with her just before she left. Quite a smart move. It will be a strong bargaining chip with Qorall.” Zack’s eyes grew fiery. “You must bring it back, Micah, or it must be utterly destroyed, so that nothing remains. Not a single strand of its DNA can be allowed to fall into Qorall’s hands.”

Micah thought about Qorall’s weapon, transforming races into his own. He imagined those ochre balls spreading across the galaxy like a virus. When he had talked to Pierre, Kat had been there, too, and said that Qorall favoured biological weaponry. Something clicked in Micah’s head.

“An antibody. The spiders, they’re like an antibody, aren’t they? They can’t be transformed by Qorall.”

Zack’s face did not react. “The ship you will have is far faster than the Q’Roth destroyer carrying your friends and this one’s brother.” Zack patted the spider. “You will arrive a few days after they reach Savange. Louise cannot contact Qorall while onboard the Q’Roth vessel.” Zack approached Micah, within arm’s reach. “You will have three days for your rescue attempt. If you have not succeeded by then, I will send another, and it will be best if you are no longer there.”

Micah’s mind raced. “How will you know if I’ve succeeded?”

“You will have a Hohash onboard. Besides, Hellera is giving you a sentient ship.”

Micah sensed an opportunity. “If we do succeed…” Micah turned and paced. It had been on his mind the past few weeks; no, the past eighteen years. He faced Zack. “Will you overturn the Tla Beth ruling on us, that all our children, all future generations have to be upgraded?”

Zack smiled. “This is a first, I believe. You don’t want elevation?” Micah held his course.

“We want the choice. Some – including me – now feel the price may be too high.”

“It will be difficult for your people without such advantage.”

“We’ll manage.”

“Very well – if you succeed, Micah. Now, is all that I have said to you clear?”

“Yes, and… thank you.” Micah gave a small bow.

“Good, we are finished here. We will not meet again.” He paused. “It is customary when we meet someone to offer a gift in these circumstances.”

“You’re giving me a ship,” Micah said.

“Hellera is giving you a ship.”

Zack’s eyes closed, his face relaxing, and suddenly he looked so much like the real Zack again. He beamed at Micah and held out his hand. Micah took a cautious pace towards Zack, and shook the warm, fleshy palm. Zack pulled him into a bear hug, then let go. “Well, look at you, Micah, starting to go grey!”

All the things Micah wanted to say collided, and got stuck in his throat. Before, when they’d lost Zack to the trial, there were two words he’d not had time to say.

Zack grinned, laid his hands on Micah’s shoulders. “Don’t sweat it, Micah, it was for the best. Hey, make sure you toast that bitch Louise next time, okay?”

Micah found himself back in the Council Chamber, his lips apart as if about to speak. He closed his mouth. Goodbye, Zack. All eyes were on him, though it seemed barely a second had passed since he’d ‘left’ the Council chamber. He collected himself, and held up his hand until there was silence.

Jen gave him a knowing look – she’d obviously had similar encounters with Kalaran, and had presumably been forewarned of the result of this one. She spoke. “You will have your ship in three weeks, Micah. Pick five crew.”

She left, followed by a bored-looking Ukrull. In the ensuing noise Micah found Kat and Ramires next to him. “Of course,” he said, “with pleasure.”

“Good,” Kat said, “as otherwise that ship would be looking for a new captain.”

He smiled, glanced over to Petra, but she looked away; he’d have to talk to her later. Micah moved over instead to consult Blake and the others. By the time he’d finished, Petra was gone.

Micah found her at the top of Hazzards’ Ridge. She sat on the coarse grass, her legs stretched out in front of her, propped up on straightened arms.

“I’d have signed you up if you’d have asked,” Micah offered.

“Liar,” she said. “Anyway, I have other plans.”

He squatted next to her. This was the only vantage point from which to take in both Esperantia and Shimsha. He thought of the spiders, all this time Kalaran’s secret weapon.

“So, who’s your crew, besides my mother and Ramires?” Her voice had an edge.

“Well, not Kilaney, he plans to work with Xenic to bring the Mannekhi over to the Kalarash side.”

She idly plucked at the ground, uprooting tufts of grass.

Micah studied her. “Blake wants to stay here, to work with the spiders, he says he owes it to Glenda.”

She stared straight ahead.

“Vasquez will lead the militia here, and run things –”

“With me,” she said flatly.

Micah cocked his head. “Excuse me?”

She got up, dusted herself off, and gazed towards Silent Hill on the other side of the valley. “We Genners have been pretty stupid, considering how intelligent we are. I’m going to act as Genner liaison on the Council. It’s what Gabriel and Virginia would have wanted.” She turned to him, eyes fiery and misty at the same time. “I felt so useless on that ship. Louise killed Chahat-Me right in front of my eyes…”

Micah stood. “Petra, there was nothing –”

“I’m no warrior, I know that now. But here… people listen to me.” Her voice quietened. “Maybe I can make a difference. I’ve studied you over the years, how you ran the place.”

“So, you can avoid all my mistakes.” He smiled, and her strained look eased off, but only a little. She said no more. Micah decided on the direct approach. “Why are you angry with me, Petra?”

“Tell me your crew, Uncle, and stop saying who isn’t going or we’ll be here all night. I’m presuming your selection technique was not entirely a process of elimination?”

That was better, a return to form. “As well as Kat and Ramires, I’ve invited an Ossyrian, Vashta, especially as we learned the Alicians are planning to use Ossyrian genetic techniques on the captives. One of Xenic’s people, a woman named Aramisk, whom Kat trusts. She’ll prove useful as there are Mannekhi outposts between here and Savange.” He paused. She was looking away from him, trying to mask the tension inside.

“That leaves one,” she said.

He realised the source of her angst. “Rashid,” he said. “He’s been with Kalaran for a year –”

Petra turned her head, her face a mixture of confusion and relief. “What?”

He stood, walked up to her, and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I would not have chosen Pierre.”

She tried to brush his hands away. “You should have, he’s the obvious choice: Level Ten, hangs out with Rangers and Tla Beth. Christ, Micah, you’re a bloody fool.” She said it with tenderness.

He pulled her towards him. “I don’t know how long Pierre will stay with you, Petra, before the Kalarash call on him again, but I hope to bring both your mothers back before then.”

Micah had been something of a father toward her, but Pierre was back, and Micah wanted Petra to experience the real thing. “He’s been looking for you, Petra, and you still have a few weeks before Kat leaves with me.”

She nodded. “First, I have to ask you something.”

Micah had the feeling it wasn’t going to be an easy question. “What are your real plans when you get to Savange?” She stared straight into his eyes.

Micah checked himself. He’d been worried that Kalaran, Jen or Blake might ask him; he’d not expected it from Petra. In the past few weeks he’d done a lot of thinking, and had come to an unassailable conclusion. He had faced Louise and Sister Esma before, and had learned enough about them to know how Alicians were wired. Kilaney and Ukrull had confirmed it when they questioned the two Alician prisoners. Kilaney hadn’t gotten much information out of them, whereas Ukrull had, though they hadn’t survived his interrogation. Micah now had detailed schematics of Savange and intel on where the captives were to be held, as well as the planet’s defences. But both Kilaney and Ukrull had confirmed the innate Alician hatred for humanity, the desire to erase mankind at any cost. The galaxy might be a big place, and it was tempting to think that there was room for everyone, but…

Before he could answer, she continued.

“I mean after you’ve rescued Antonia and the others. And don’t say ‘come home’, because I know you, Uncle. You’re hiding something.”

In some ways he was relieved; he had hidden it, and it would be good to tell somebody. He took a breath. “I’m going to neutralise the Alician threat for good. Take revenge for the billions they helped slaughter. I’m… going to destroy Savange.” He felt pressure in his chest and throat, and raised his voice. “They’re a perennial danger, Petra, and not just Louise. Their whole existence is predicated on exterminating us.”

Petra shook her head. “You’re talking genocide.”

“I’m talking about protecting our people, taking away the Alician threat for good.”

“It’s still genocide. The old, the young, children, mothers. It’s a very ugly word, don’t you think?”

“But –”

“Blake’s a soldier through and through. Even he wouldn’t go that far. Why don’t you go and ask him? In fact, why haven’t you discussed it with anyone else?”

Micah stared at her, then the ground. Why hadn’t he? He’d wanted to assume responsibility for this himself, not implicate anyone else.

“Look, Uncle, right now you’re hurting, in every way. But if you do this, you bring shame on all of us. Ask the dead. Ask –” Her voice cracked. “Ask Gabriel and Virginia if that’s what they really want.” She stood up, dusted off her pants. “Go ahead and kill Louise, Micah. You have my and the dead’s blessing, because she’s one sick bitch that needs to be put down. Bring back our people and send the Alicians a message they’ll never forget, so they’ll leave us alone for good. But no more than that, Micah. If you wipe them all out, there’s no place for you here. And I for one will never want to see you again. Am I being clear?”

He stared at her, a young girl no more, then nodded.

“You know, us Genners know all about survivor guilt; it’s practically hard-wired into us. So I recognise the symptoms. I think you came up here for a reason, and not just to find me. Sometimes you need to speak the words; thinking them isn’t the same thing.” She chewed her lip a moment. “And try to come back, Uncle. I don’t want to lose anyone else. As Pierre… as my father would say, keep your sang froid, and keep your head.” She turned and started her descent.

Micah watched her for a long time, mulling over her words. He’d felt his convictions had been made unassailable, but all his arguments just collapsed, undermined by that single ugly word. He would have to find another way. Walking over to Gabriel’s headstone, he knelt beside his and Virginia’s grave. “Petra just did you both proud; all of us.”

Micah’s anger had evaporated, but there was nothing to replace it, except a sucking, hollow feeling; grief began flooding in. In the past few weeks he’d not truly grieved for those lost during the battle, not shed a single tear. Speak the words, she’d said. His breathing became heavy, but this time he didn’t fight it, didn’t run from it or mask it with anger. He sat down, and leant back against Virginia’s tombstone, his fingers resting on the soil covering her grave, and hung his head. “I’m so sorry.”

It began to rain.

Blake and Micah gazed at the Scintarelli Scythe-ship hovering silently a foot off the ground like a massive, dark crescent, while they waited for Jen to arrive. There were no windows, protuberances or even ridges or exhaust holes anywhere on the smooth, matt black exterior. Where they stood, near one of the two ‘blunt ends’ as Blake had put it, the ship stretched upwards about four decks in human terms. Earlier, they had walked to the middle of the curved vessel, to the ‘sharp end’ that was about one deck high, where Micah presumed the bridge to be. The ship’s entire leading edge tapered to a razor’s width that he didn’t want to put to the test with his finger. The vessel looked powerful enough to slice through another ship and remain intact. Jen had told him that the Scintarelli, legendary master ship-builders, hated all other ship designs so much they ensured their own could reap them like wheat. Evidently the Scintarelli wanted their ships to live up to their names.

Blake patted him on the shoulder, and almost grinned. “Looks mean, Micah.”

Standing at the rear end of the ship, Micah wanted to touch its dark hull, but Ukrull had been very clear on that matter, and so he and the gathered crowd stood away from the ship. There were no visible signs of thrusters, engines, or gun ports, though he knew it had formidable weapons. When asked, Jen had confirmed that it had no teleportation – only Kalarash ships and Ukrull’s Ice Pick had such capability, as well as Ngank surgeons whose physiology was extraordinary even by galactic standards. But there were two heavily- armed Rapier shuttle-craft in the aft sections, which they could use     to descend to Savange. Also, the Scythe’s shields were coated with a specific form of strange matter, impervious to anti-matter and most other weapons; something Hellera had added, apparently.

Jen carved her way through the throng, making a bee-line towards him. “Touch the craft, Micah,” she said in a business-like fashion. He stared at her a moment then walked toward the closest rear-end of the ship, the crowd stilling as he raised his hand and then pressed his right palm to the metal. It was cool, but quickly warmed to his body temperature. He felt something, almost heard something calling as if from far away, like the distant shriek of an eagle. His resident blurred into action, numbers and strange alphabets whirring through his mind’s eye. Images from the recent past flashed by in subliminal fashion for several minutes, before settling on Louise’s face when he’d last seen her, Antonia and Sandy, and the location of Savange on the holomap Jen had shown them three weeks earlier. He withdrew his hand, understanding – it was an intelligent ship, now attuned to his way of thinking, his goals, even his values and ethics. It would anticipate his needs, and never disappoint.

Micah stepped back and saw that the ship had changed colour to a deep blood red, with blue and violet serifs from an alien language. A name flushed onto its body in numerous human alphabets. Shiva, the Hindu god, the destroyer, but also the transformer, Micah recalled. Somehow, the ship conveyed the impression of being eager, ready for battle. He looked for Jen but she had moved off to join her partner Dimitri, and merely nodded back to him that her part in this was over for now. He had no doubt that she and Dimitri would have some mission from Kalaran, as would Ukrull and Pierre sooner or later. They were all being enlisted, he realised, as his vision swept in Blake, Kilaney and Xenic, Pierre, Petra and Vasquez, all caught up in their own war with the Alicians, within a far larger war with Qorall.

His crew – Ramires, Kat, Aramisk, the Ossyrian Vashta, and Rashid joined him, all wearing the cobalt flight suits of the same design as Blake’s original mission to Eden, the golden crest of Daedalus on the left chest pocket.

Micah raised his voice, addressing the crowd. “We haven’t had an easy time of it.” He looked around at the sea of faces, happy to see the Genners, normally in a separate group, standing with their parents. “We lost Earth and Eden, were nearly extinguished as a race. But we have prevailed, and fought off yet another attack. They’ve done their best to destroy us, and we’re still here. Our worst enemies have always been the Alicians, who originally betrayed us to the Q’Roth, and now they have stolen our loved ones.” Micah felt his own emotion stoking inside him again. “Well, no more. Now we take the fight to them, and when we return, there will be blood on our hands.”

Cheers and foot stomping erupted from the crowd. His gaze shifted to Petra, Pierre behind her, holding her. He raised his hand, and the noise died down. “We hope to be back soon, with those dear to us, dear to you. In the meantime, take care of each other.” His gaze fell upon Blake.

Micah cleared his throat, addressing everyone but also speaking directly to Blake. “Eighteen years ago I forced a decision on us, to save us, resulting in all children being Genned. I know many disagreed with this, and still do.”

Blake’s eyes narrowed.

“I have agreed with Kalaran that if we succeed in our mission, they will release us from this condition. We will have free choice again. Our children can be Genned, or not.” Everyone stared, silent. “Think about it while we’re gone.”

As people started murmuring, Petra dashed up to him. “Bravo, Uncle. I’ll keep that Council seat warm for you.”

He kissed her once on the cheek, then turned back towards Blake, Kilaney and Vasquez, all three of whom were standing to attention, saluting. The crowd hushed, and Micah and his crew saluted back, then he strode towards the ship, his crew following.

Out of the nearest blunt end of the ship an arched doorway opened, a ramp extending to the ground. As they marched up into the vein-like corridor, the hatch sealing silently behind them, enclosing them in its innards, Micah’s resolve solidified. He had three goals. Get the prisoners back, rescue or destroy the spider captive, and contain the Alician threat, gaining their respect in the only way they would learn – albeit without committing genocide. The ship had sensed it in him, too, and of the two meanings of the god Shiva, Micah knew which one applied.

Shiva had many weapons, but it had shown him one in particular, a Level Twelve device that would do the job. But it had to be deployed manually by someone on the ground. He fully intended to be standing with the weapon, right in front of Louise on Savange, when he activated it. The others would return to Esperia, and humanity would become the masters of their own destiny again. But Micah already knew that for him, this was going to be a one-way trip.

Acknowledgements

A special thanks to Dimitri Keramitas and Chris Vanier for in-depth reviewing at all stages of this novel, and other members of our Parisian writing group (MWP), Mary Ellen Gallagher, Gwyneth Hughes, Vivienne Vermes, and Marie Houzelle. Thanks to my ‘touchstone’ pre-readers Andy Kilner and Jacob Bergsteiger, SF writer Mike Formicelli for some great suggestions on scientific aspects, Gideon Roberton for some ‘scene direction’ hints, and of course my publisher at Summertime. Thanks also to SF writer Sophia MacDougall for some excellent structural suggestions, and SF writer Gary Gibson. And last but by no means least, a special thanks to all those readers who kept asking me where on Earth (or elsewhere in the galaxy) they could get their hands on Book Three.

Continue the series:

EDEN’S ENDGAME

Eden’s Endgame is the stunning climax to the Eden Paradox series, bringing to a close the galaxy-shaking events of The Eden Paradox, Eden’s Trial and Eden’s Revenge. Humanity is depleted and marginalised, and its principal allies, the Kalarash, are losing the Galactic war. In an effort to hold back the enemy Qorall’s relentless armies, a formerly vanquished and deadly machine race is unleashed, but can the machines be turned off once they have served their purpose? On the human scale, humanity’s refugees take their fight to the Alician home planet, Savange, but Sister Esma left a nasty surprise for them. Who will win the war, and at what cost? How will the Alician-human conflict be resolved? And who will be left standing at the end of this ground-breaking series?

Praise for Eden’s Endgame

Eden’s Endgame is a terrific read! Kirwan takes us on a wild ride that ties together earlier storylines yet reads well as a stand-alone. From spiders to Hohash, I loved it! Emmie, USA

Plotlines from the earlier books re-emerge in a way that shows the books were intensely planned by the author. This is now my favourite book in the series! TFL reader, Florida

No stone is left unturned as all the plotlines draw towards a satisfying climax. Would another series like this be too much to ask for? Lynne, USA

What started off as a blog tour has turned into an emotional rollercoaster across four books. Characters have come and gone, grown and regressed. Humanity faced more perils than they could ever imagine and prevailed. The characters really shone in the previous book. But in this one, they were given the chance for one final fight to protect humanity and this time, the stakes, and outcome, were higher than ever. Without naming names, quite a few of the characters from book one don’t make it through. Part of me expected this – there has been loss along the way already. But oh my word, I think my heart broke numerous times, which was awkward considering I was on a train. What made every sacrifice so moving, however, was knowing they all went out the way they would have wanted to: exploring new worlds; in a blaze of glory; the ultimate scientific experiment; fighting to protect those they love.

Lindsey, UK.

www.barrykirwan.com

EDEN’S ENDGAME

for Chris and Dimitri

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to my writing colleagues in Paris (MWP): Dimitri Keramitas, Chris Vanier, Mary Ellen Gallagher, Marie Houzelle and Gwyneth Hughes. Thanks also to my pre-readers, reviewers and proofers: Andy Kilner, Lydia Manx, Mike Formicelli, Jacob Bergsteiger, Gideon Roberton, Ruth Sims and Joanne Crawford, and to artist John Harris for the truly inspiring front cover artwork. Last but not least, thanks to all those readers who kept demanding this fourth and final book in the series.

Abbreviated Galactic Historical Timeline

2 billion years ago

War between Kalarash and Qorall in Jannahi Galaxy. Qorall believed dead. Galaxy destroyed. Seven Kalarash escape to Silverback Galaxy (human name: “Milky Way”).

The Dark Age

Various civilisations rise and fall. Five Kalarash leave Galaxy. Only Kalaran and Hellera remain.

10 million years ago

Grid Society founded under Kalarash guidance. Grid is a transport hub traversing a third of the galaxy. Grid Society strongly hierarchical based on Levels of intelligence. Kalarash are Level 19 [Humanity is later graded Level 3].

2 million years ago

Kalarash disappear. Level 17 Tla Beth (energy beings) left in charge, supported by Level 15 Rangers (reptilian).

50000 years ago

Anxorian (Level Sixteen) Rebellion threatens Grid. Tla Beth genetically alter Grid species 195 [Q’Roth] to become galactic foot-soldiers. Rebellion quashed. Anxorian species extinguished.

40000 years ago

Ossyrian (Level 8) race patronised by Tla Beth, become Medical race for the galaxy.

Every 1000 years

Due to their genetic alteration, Q’Roth new-borns must feed on life energy of unsponsored species Level 3 or below, occasionally (where sanctioned by the Tla Beth) Level 4. Such species are becoming rarer.

1000 years ago

Q’Roth harvest pacifist spider race on Ourshiwann (renamed Esperia), but fail to discover hidden egg nests.

1000 years ago

Q’Roth scouts land on Earth and broker a deal with the future Alician sect. In exchange for upgrading Alicians to Level 5 and promised sponsorship by Q’Roth, Alicians must keep humanity from advancement and from maintaining weapons harmful to Q’Roth (nuclear/nanotech)

900 years ago

Ranger Shattrall crash-lands on Earth. Realises humanity targeted for culling, despite early signs of Level 4 evolution. Warns local Tibetan tribe who become Sentinels. Sentinels engage in silent war with Alicians.

500 years ago

Q’Roth terraform Eden, plant egg nests, then enter hibernation period.

40 years ago

Alicians secretly release nanoplague on Earth. 50 million people die. Nannite technology banned.

30 years ago

Third World War on Earth. Environment sent into irrecoverable global warming. Nuclear weapon stockpiles dismantled. Alicians gain widespread power via the religious sect known as Fundies.

20 years ago

Eden discovered. Blake and crew arrive and find Q’Roth eggs hatching, and Hohash artefact, whereby they discover Q’Roth intent. Micah uncovers Alician plot on Earth. Battle ensues. Earth decimated, refugees flee to Esperia. Alicians escape.

19 years ago

Alician known as Louise hunts down and destroys one refugee ship, killing 2000. Attacks Esperia. Humanity prevails.

19 years ago

Qorall and his forces attack, break through the galactic barrier, and bring dark worms inside the galaxy.

18 years ago

Micah and crew enter the Grid. After the self-defence killing of a Q’Roth ambassador, humanity is put on trial by the Tla Beth. Humanity acquitted but placed in protective Quarantine for one generation. All children to be genetically upgraded by Ossyrians.

18 years ago

Kalarash presence detected on Esperia along with spider egg nests. Kalarash ship disappears with three humans on-board. Believed to have left galaxy, reason unknown.

Past year

The Tla Beth, aided by the Q’Roth and other races, have lost half the galaxy to Qorall’s armies. The eldest human ‘genned’ child is now eighteen. The Spider eggs have long-since hatched and live in Shimsha, near Esperantia.

Two months ago

As Quarantine fell, the Alicians led by Sister Esma attacked Esperia. Humanity prevailed but with significant losses, and sixty captives were taken back to the Alician homeworld, Savange. Kalaran has returned to wage war against Qorall, who has unleashed a new weapon.

PROLOGUE

Bangkok, 2252, Eve of WWIII

Thirteen years before the Fall of Earth

Louise fidgeted in the long silk dress with the red dragon pattern; give her combat fatigues any day. But Nick had never seen her in a dress – naked, sure – and they were being called up tonight, so it was now or never. She shifted her weight in the bamboo chair, sipping her second Lao Pane, a kiwi whiskey shake, and mopped her brow with a paper serviette; it was forty-five in the shade, and the café aircon was bust again. Nick was already an hour late, but she’d wait. It was the fourth day in the past month they’d been put on high alert, the difference this time being that the tactical nukes had been armed, their mid-range delivery missiles prepped.

Through the dusty window she watched people in bright colours and straw hats scurry past. Bangkok always bustled, but there were fewer smiles and animated interchanges than usual. Everyone knew a third world war was just around the corner. According to the indie sav-minds, half the population would perish. Many still didn’t accept it, but she did. Man had always waged war, on increasingly large scales. All you needed to make it go truly global was to interconnect everyone and everything. Nowhere left to hide or run to, nowhere neutral. The screen behind the counter blared out the latest last-ditch peace talks, another excuse for a barrage of rhetoric whipping up normally sane people into a frenzy. One trigger-happy finger, one inflammatory event, and the world would ignite.

Louise leant forward, caught her reflection in the glass table-top, saw the hardness behind her features. Her state of mind wasn’t the best brochure for humanity. Twenty-two years of life had been pretty shit so far, more than her fair share of uninvited adult attention as a teenager, and once she could fight back, she’d tried and failed to reinvent herself as a teacher. Instead she’d ended up a marine after one of her few real friends pointed out she had a killer instinct, having witnessed her break a guy’s jaw in a nightclub punch-up on her eighteenth birthday.

Her sex-life had been a disaster zone until a few weeks ago. Nick, a Canadian commando monitoring the US war games in Thailand. Love at first fuck. And now gung-ho politicians and insanely radicalised religious leaders were going to blow it for them, and for everyone else. She could forgive them all if she and Nick could have one last afternoon of passion. Staring over people’s heads outside, she searched for his six-six frame. Come on, Nick, don’t keep a girl waiting.

She took another sip as she watched a woman in a burka enter the café – must be baking alive inside – and take a seat opposite a man with slick black hair, shiny business attire and mirror sunglasses, none of which suited him. He looked like one of the Green-Shirt politicians who’d been warmongering over the Thai vid channels. The two of them made an odd couple, especially as she seemed to be the one running the meeting. The woman’s eyes suddenly locked onto Louise, so she turned back to gazing out the window.

Across the busy street she spied Nick, taller than the locals, sailing towards her like a yacht cruising into harbour. She stood up to show him the dress. His shades were down but when he saw her he stopped dead and lifted them and mouthed “Wow.” He walked faster, waving his hands in the air, pretending to be exasperated by the constant flood of people and biofuel tuk-tuks in between him and the café; it made her smile. Wait till he saw what was underneath her dress.

Another man crossed her gaze as he glided towards the café entrance ahead of Nick: athletic frame, bald, no hat, no sunglasses, and grey one-piece jumpsuit despite the heat. Her instincts kicked in as he cut effortlessly through the crowded street, his features concentrated and alert; he was on a mission. She noticed a tattoo on the side of his neck, like a cross but with an oval at the top; the ankh symbol, she recalled. Then she remembered a briefing three days ago: a US politician had been killed in broad daylight right outside the Senate; there had been a photo of the assassin’s body, riddled with bullets, the same tattoo on his neck… She glanced down at the bag at her feet. No pistol, just her knife.

The door tinkled as the man stepped inside, his eyes an intense emerald green. He took one brief look around, reached into his pocket, then sprang towards the woman in the burka, brandishing a metal rod. The woman, without even turning around, flung herself flat, as a thin blue blade whipped above her, finding instead the neck of the politician who was rising to his feet, a gun in his hand. The politician dropped his weapon and clutched at his throat, unable to speak or scream, only gurgle as blood gushed through his fingers. He crumpled to the floor.

Louise stumbled backwards as the speed of events caught up with her; she couldn’t move properly in that damned long dress. Cursing, she fell to the floor, amidst the scraping sounds of furniture being kicked aside, swishes of the assassin’s ultra-thin sword, and high-pitched screams and shouts of the clientele as they clambered for the exit. Louise glanced up while her left hand dived into her bag and unsheathed her stiletto. Nick burst through the door, almost taking the frame with him, and thank god had his pistol drawn. Louise found the knife, grasped its smooth handle, and got to her feet.

Nick was right behind the assassin, who seemed oblivious as he hacked his way through tables and chairs towards the woman in the burka, who was far more agile than she looked. Nick shouted at the guy to stop, or he would fire. The assassin didn’t turn around, just flicked his blade backwards, its blue edge slicing first through Nick’s pistol arm before it carved a line through his chest; Nick went down. The woman in the burka had her back against the wall.

Louise darted forward and flung the knife at the killer just as he raised his sword. The stiletto plunged into the side of his neck, severing his carotid artery, a curtain of blood spraying over the wall. The woman in the burka dived to the floor. The assassin staggered backwards a pace, glared at Louise once, then tapped the sword hilt with his other hand as if entering a code, ignoring the blood spurting from his neck, and collapsed.

Louise didn’t see him hit the ground.

Everything turned blinding white, and she heard a deafening crack as a wave of searing heat scorched her entire body, lifted her off her feet and threw her to the other end of the café. She landed in a puddle of melting plastic furniture and burning bamboo. Her left eye still worked, the right was fused shut. She looked down her body: the dress was largely burnt off, her skin a hideous landscape of red and black, the flesh on her right arm barbecued to a crisp. Flames licked her legs, the only saving grace being that she couldn’t feel them. She was glad she couldn’t see her face. Acrid fumes made her cough and her eye water. Getting up wasn’t an option. Through the smoke and fire she tried to make out Nick’s remains.

A tall figure walked over: the woman in the burka. Steam poured off the black material that now looked more like very fine chain mail. It flickered silver and white as if there was some kind of tech underneath. The woman was unharmed. She removed her hood and facemask, and bent forward, her eyes the blackest Louise had ever seen. Two sets of footsteps rushed in, speaking urgently in foreign accents, not Thai.

“Your Eminence, are you alright? Thank Alessia! We must leave straightaway, the police will arrive quickly; you cannot be found here!”

The woman did not answer them. She spoke instead to Louise.

“You saved my life. But you have fourth-degree burns over most of your body.”

Louise coughed, tried to speak, couldn’t, her throat and tongue dried leather, tasting of charcoal. That extent of burns meant only one thing. Louise closed her eye as the pain asserted itself with a vengeance, as if she was being boiled alive. Her body began to shudder. A single whimper of agony escaped through clenched teeth.

The woman continued, amidst shouts and wails outside, and the crashing of the burning roof caving in all around them.

“The assassin who did this to you – and murdered your friend – is called a Sentinel. There are fifty of them roaming this doomed world. You have a choice: I can put you out of your misery here and now, or I can save you – if you agree to join me and help kill the rest of the Sentinels. The choice is yours. If you wish to die, keep your eye closed. You have ten seconds.”

Louise thought of Nick; he deserved to be avenged. But what if this woman was evil, and the assassin had been trying to kill her for a good reason? No way to know. And right now, the world could go to hell as far as Louise was concerned. Besides, if she was dead, there was nothing after, of that she was convinced.

She opened her eye.

The woman touched Louise’s neck with something metallic that made a short hiss, and her body numbed as if she was wrapped in a cool cloud.

“Bring her,” the woman said.

Rough hands grabbed Louise’s listless body, lifted her from the sticky floor. The sirens grew louder.

“What about the Minister, Your Eminence?”

“Leak a report that the Fundies assassinated him. It is the spark we have been waiting for. The war starts tonight.”

Louise’s head tilted back as she was bundled out of the café into a hover car. Behind her, in amongst the smoking carnage, she glimpsed Nick’s cremated corpse. In that moment, she hated the world and everyone in it, and was prepared to watch it all burn, until there was nothing left but ash.

Thirty years later

PART ONE

KALARAN

CHAPTER 1

Vortex

Louise could hold her breath a long time. Thirty seconds earlier she’d been standing on the bridge of a Q’Roth Battlestar with three of her Alicians and ten Q’Roth warriors, including the captain. They’d begun a routine Transpace jump, the last on her journey to the Alician homeworld Savange, taking back their precious cargo of sixty human captives. Three seconds later the front part of the ship had been breached by a vortex of unknown origin. Now she clawed her way toward an auto-sealing hatch as air roared past her, dodging equipment and anything else not lashed down as it flashed past. She snatched a breath then held it again. The doorway to the next section of the ship, where sanctuary lay, was closing. In fifteen seconds she’d be locked into a vacuum.

Louise’s face stung with the cold. She slit her eyes almost closed to stop them freezing, and pounded her Q’Roth claw into the metal floor to prevent herself sliding into oblivion. A sharp-edged metal object hurtled towards her, ricocheted off the corridor wall and narrowly missed her face. It caught her second-in-command, Arteus, who screamed as he tumbled into the vortex devouring the ship. Louise hauled herself forward, her eyes set on the closing hatch.

The Q’Roth captain overtook her, his six powerful legs and sharp claws finding better purchase. The exit was almost sealed, but they both kept going, moving faster as the airstream diminished. The captain punched a claw into the last sliver between the closing hatch and its frame, and roared as he brought all his strength to bear against the motors trying to protect the rest of the vessel. He forced open a narrow gap, his upper legs shaking violently with the effort. Louise scrambled over his blue-black trapezoidal head and squeezed through, landing hard on the deck.

She made a quick assessment: the captain was wedged in the crack, unable to get through, while air continued to bleed out of the ship. Grabbing a handhold with her Q’Roth claw, she drew her pistol with her human hand, and fired repeatedly at him until he began to lose his grip. Louise let go and slid towards him. She braced herself, one foot on the hatch, the other on the frame, and fired point blank at the two remaining claws keeping the hatch open till they glowed red. Her pistol’s charge ran out. The captain still clung on.

She yelled through the wind, feeling the tug on her lungs. “You’re already dead, don’t take the ship with you.”

The captain’s six vermillion eyes flared once, then settled to a deeper red.

“It’s yours, for what little time you have left.”

He let go.

Through the sealing hatch, she watched him topple backwards, then regain his footing and rise almost casually, then stride towards the vortex that had already swallowed his entire bridge crew and three of her Alicians. Its swirling blue and white surface crackled with sapphire arcs of electricity that lashed out at the captain, flash-frying him before it sucked him into its depths. He did not cry out.

She wondered if the vortex was some new weapon. There were no stars behind it, which meant the Battlestar was outside normal space. She had a hunch what was causing it. Just before the hatch sealed, she calculated how quickly it was eating the kilometre-long ship, how much time she had before the next breach, and the one after that, which would wreck the Battlestar and empty all its occupants into the vortex. Twenty minutes, call it eighteen to be on the safe side. She began a background mental count, a trick she’d learned from her Alician mentor, Sister Esma, a lifetime ago.

At last the hatch clunked into place. She sat with her back against it, her chest heaving, and checked herself over: ears ringing from the decompression, all exposed flesh seared with frostbite, lungs raw. Good enough. The air was thin and cold, so she took a few long breaths, then got to her feet. She stared down at her new Q’Roth claw; it had been meant as a temporary replacement, though it had probably just saved her life.

She ran along the corridor, but as she reached the next hatch two Q’Roth warriors emerged and barred her way, towering a metre above her.

“You killed our captain. We watched you on the monitors.”

She stood her ground. “He put me in charge, you heard that, too.”

Their eye-slits pulsed a brighter shade of red. “We heard, though we do not know why.”

She took a deep breath. “We’re foundering in Quickspace. The ship will be catastrophically breached in sixteen minutes. I know what is attacking us and how to stop it.”

They said nothing, but she knew Q’Roth psychology: she had to give them more or they’d kill her, and one of them would become captain, though not for long.

“All remaining crew must assemble in the battle bridge in the aft section,” she said.

Still they barred her way. “And where are you going?”

“To my two ships, in your hold. That’s where the problem is. If I don’t join you in fourteen minutes, void them into space and fire on them. Destroy them and everyone on board.”

They let her through. Louise sprinted down the corridor leading to her two Raptors, knowing that the Q’Roth wouldn’t wait fourteen minutes.

Louise stopped at the first Raptor holding thirty human captives from the raid on Esperia, all perfectly still, frozen in stasis. She’d been away from her fellow Alicians for so long, and had known nothing of the Plight: genetically-upgraded Alicians had barely been able to breed since Earth’s demise, and needed a steady influx of DNA from their human predecessors. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Louise. Alicians had twice tried to wipe out their genetically outdated cousins, only to discover that without them they would perish within a generation.

The unmoving humans were huddled together like a pack of frightened goats. Like Sister Esma before her, she’d prefer to be rid of them. Humanity had squandered its chances, and as far as she and other Alicians were concerned, had long ago forfeited the right to exist. But for now – and the next fifty years – a few would be kept alive in order to replenish Alician society. Qorall’s armada sweeping across the galaxy would eliminate the rest of humanity back on Esperia.

Her gaze settled on two of the women at the front: Antonia and Sandy. She reckoned their leader, Micah – responsible for Sister Esma’s death and her own missing arm – still cared about these two. Good; he’d come to Savange on a fool’s errand to rescue them, and she would finally be able to kill him. She hated long goodbyes.

Could these humans have stopped a Q’Roth Battlestar dead in Transpace? No. She exited the first Raptor and walked quickly to the identical short-haul transporter next door.

Twelve minutes.

Inside the second storage cell a single large black Spider hung upside down, its four legs clamped to the ceiling. Wires and tubes smeared with blue blood hung in loops from the Spider’s flattened cylinder body, and fed into a console. One of the two remaining Alicians, a tall male of fair complexion – Jura, she recalled – manned the console and pored over the latest readouts. Jura didn’t know what was happening to the rest of the ship, and Louise wasn’t about to distract him from his task.

“No change,” he said. “We still can’t scan it. It disrupts any form of electromagnetic wave. We can only see where we penetrate its flesh, and then not much that makes any sense.”

His baritone voice soothed her. She’d missed Alician contact. Eighteen years away from her people, most of it spent with alien species who bore no resemblance to her own kind; aliens often stank, were visually repulsive or else grated on her ears.

A human corpse was strapped to a nearby chair, the deceased woman’s face streaked with sweat and tears.

“What did you get from the human?”

Jura turned from his displays to Louise, his eyes steady. “Not much. The current batch of Spiders hatched on Esperia sixteen years ago, but they have lived apart from the humans. What the human subject knew was mainly myth and supposition.”

“Indulge me.”

He cleared his throat. “The human subject – we picked her at random and pulled her out of stasis – believed the Spiders were originally raised by the Level Nineteen Kalarash being known as Kalaran, though she didn’t know why. Apparently no one does.”

Louise thought while Jura talked. Qorall wanted one of these Spiders at all costs. He, like his Kalarash enemies, was from another galaxy. Qorall was currently winning the war, but what if the Spiders were also from another galaxy, a secret weapon brought here by the Kalarash aeons ago? Evidently these Spiders could influence space and Transpace without technological aid. That was unique as far as she knew.  But she wanted to know more before she handed over this prize to Qorall.

“… the Spiders communicate via the coloured band around their bodies. Otherwise, they appear to be deaf and mute. They are also non-violent. They’ve never been known to kill anything, even when provoked. I’m afraid we’ve learned as much as we are likely to.” He glanced at the corpse. “She died under the interrogation. Their hearts are so fragile.”

Louise ignored the dead woman and stared at the Spider. The Q’Roth believed they had eradicated the Spiders centuries ago, yet now they flourished again on Esperia, sharing that dustbowl planet with humanity. They looked docile, but no one except the Kalarash knew their purpose and their capability, and now one of them had stranded a Q’Roth Battlestar in Transpace. The most important currency in the galaxy had always been information. But she was running out of time.

Eight minutes.

“Send in borers,” she said.

Jura’s brow creased. “It will die.”

Louise said nothing. It had to die anyway, she was convinced of it, to free the Battlestar. But this was her last chance to understand this species, and a dead but intact Spider would still be of considerable value to Qorall. Jura nodded, and went to fetch the burrowing micro-cameras.

Kaarin, a female Alician who had been quietly listening, spoke up, her eyes sharp. “If it dies while we are in Transpace, what will happen to us? And why are we conscious in Transpace anyway? We always believed Transpatial travel was instantaneous. What did you see on the Bridge?”

“I saw nothing,” Louise lied. “This is an anomaly, nothing more. When it ends we will wake up on arrival at Savange.” She spoke with complete conviction; Alician leadership required overt self-assurance. Yet Kaarin was right; all species experienced Transpatial travel as instantaneous. That didn’t mean it was. The Spider didn’t want to be taken to Qorall, and had somehow snagged them in mid-flight – there were no stars outside – and had opened up a vortex that would kill them all. They would disappear without any trace.

Seven minutes. At four she’d have to kill it.

Jura returned and injected the Spider with six borers at equidistant locations around its body: they would navigate their way through it, chart the Spider’s anatomy and neural activity, and then invade its brain. The Spider’s legs tensed, then began to shiver. Blue blood spattered onto the metal floor, like the first heavy drops of rain in a brewing storm.

Jura returned to his console. Louise joined him, looking over his shoulder, his face reflected in the screen where numbers and curves scrolled past. Suddenly his eyes went wide.

“Well I’ll be dam –”

Louise felt the familiar chill – like a sudden ice breeze – of entering Transpace. Every surface, every line on Jura’s face, every hair, turned silver and froze, as did everything else Louise could see, including her own hand resting on his shoulder. She could no longer move. This was all expected when travelling through Transpace, except she should have been unconscious. She guessed the Spider was dying, but not yet dead. She wondered if Jura and Kaarin were conscious too, but she had no way of knowing.

She heard a thud as the Spider dropped to the floor amidst the sounds of wires and tubes ripping from its flesh. It hobbled over and stood next to her, its soft fur brushing against her thigh. Its communication band, dark until now, lit up, and a focused beam of amber light swept over the console. When the beam shut off, all the complex analyses and data had disappeared from the screen.

The Spider leant against Louise, then tilted its body, and one of its legs kicked with ferocious speed at Jura’s head. Louise heard his neck snap. She would have gasped if she’d been able. From all she knew, what she’d just witnessed was unheard of. The Spiders had always been peaceful, not even defending themselves when the Q’Roth had culled them. Had the Spiders recently changed in some fundamental way? She doubted it; species rarely changed that much, even over millennia. No, they had been waiting, biding their time, until Qorall arrived. Somehow they were a real threat to him. Louise was glad she hadn’t seen what Jura had gleaned from the data: the price of such information was clearly too high. But the intel that the Spiders could manipulate Transpace, and were capable of extreme violence, would be highly valuable to Qorall.

The Spider sagged next to her, heavier than she’d imagined. Something pricked her calf, cold seeping into her veins. The display screen was now silver like everything else, and Louise watched as the Spider staggered away a couple of paces before its legs buckled and it collapsed, its body twitching on the floor in a spreading pool of blood. Good, it was dying, which meant the ship and all aboard would be saved. But what had it injected her with? Even as she thought about what she had just witnessed, and the need to tell Qorall as soon as they arrived at Savange, her mind began to fog. She struggled to hold onto the past few minutes’ events, but they slipped from her memory’s grasp. Louise heard a gurgling sound she presumed to be the Spider’s death rattle, and slipped into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER 2

War Council

Blake had never trusted aliens. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them. It was just that when it came down to it, there weren’t that many habitable worlds in the galaxy. Viable planets in the so-called Goldilocks Zones were few and far between. Pierre had said one in a thousand worlds was capable of evolving and sustaining intelligent life. Given the size of the galaxy, the statistics should have made it easy pickings once Transpace travel had been discovered. But there were plenty of races out there. Once you subtracted all the planets destroyed in countless wars over the aeons, even if you added in those rare terraforming successes, prime real estate was still a rarity. Each race looked out for its own; altruism wasn’t a winning trait when it came to galactic survival. But there was one species he trusted, who his wife had given her life for, and he would too: the Spiders.

Blake stood on Hazzards Ridge with two of them. They each had four sturdy legs and a fat round body that also served as a head. When they’d first hatched, growing to full size within a year, the tops of their furry bodies barely reached Blake’s elbow. He’d joked to Glenda that they looked like walking charcoaled hamburgers, which wasn’t such a smart idea around a hungry human population. She’d scolded him, rightly so. Now, laying a hand on the top of the one he considered his best friend, he stroked the soft velvety fur. The Spiders didn’t speak or utter any sound, they communicated with colours via a jagged three-sixty band around their bodies, and right now his friend – he’d never named any of them, out of respect for their own way of life – emanated a waxy, shimmering purple. It signified concern. Blake wondered how the Spiders could read him better than his own kind.

He and Glenda had raised the Spiders on Esperia as soon as the eggs, stored in deep caves, had hatched, bringing them back to the small town where their ancestors had been slaughtered by the Q’Roth a millennium ago. The two of them built pens so the puppy-sized fur-balls didn’t go wandering off into the desert, or come into contact with humans, most of whom couldn’t handle cohabitation with an alien species. He and his wife led the young to the underground feeding stations, where the infant Spiders waited patiently in silent queues for hours till all of them had fed. Together with the rapidly-maturing and fast-growing Spiders, Blake and Glenda tried to work out how the homes and other buildings in Shimsha, the Spiders’ ancestral home, functioned.

The task had brought him and his wife closer. After they’d lost their son in WWIII three decades earlier, their love had turned platonic. Blake had accepted it, and never once looked elsewhere, even though Glenda had even pushed him towards the idea once or twice. But the energy of the Spiders, their exuberance when at play, had rekindled fires in both of them.

The Spiders became family. He smiled, recalling happier times with Glenda when they’d got it all wrong, the most embarrassing case when they watched what they thought was some kind of athletic display, only to realise it was an annual group mating. But what had amazed him was how fast the Spiders learned; he only had to show a single Spider anything once, and it would transmit to the others, until the whole society knew it as if they’d been shown first-hand. Glenda taught them to lip-read human speech – something he’d never told Micah, and in return they had taught Blake and Glenda how to read their colour language. He and Glenda could have left at any time and gone back to the nearby town of Esperantia to re-integrate into human society, but they didn’t. Instead they watched the Spider society grow and flourish.

In the mornings the Spiders farmed the land, producing a single crop, a bitter sorghum that could be pulped into an oily yellow residue, bland but nutritious. In the afternoons most Spiders met in groups of nine – never less or more – for several hours, usually out in the open in the ubiquitous broad plazas. Blake had tried to attend such meetings, but the way they flashed colours to each other was too fast and complex; they were Level Four, after all, more advanced than most humans, him included. Once or twice he had been gently ushered out of such discussions. At first he’d thought nothing of it, assuming it was maybe something more personal to them, but as Qorall’s armies neared Esperia, the frequency of such events increased, and since Kalaran had come back, many more secret meetings occurred all over town, less in the plazas and more behind closed doors. Good for you, he thought. He knew they were fundamentally pacifist, but he hoped the Spiders might put up some kind of fight when the time came.

At night they painted the sky with fluorescent displays, sometimes abstract, other times evoking battle scenes from forgotten wars. He had no idea how they knew anything about history, but occasionally a few Ossyrians had come to watch, and they would tell Blake and Glenda about wars in distant times. When he’d asked them how the Spiders knew, the Ossyrians didn’t answer. Recently, the Spiders had constructed six towers around Shimsha’s perimeter to create new night-time displays; one of the few remaining things he’d been looking forward to.

After Glenda passed away, he stayed in Shimsha; they’d shared too many memories for him to ever leave this place. Besides, the Spiders were so at ease with each other, and with him. Whenever he visited his own kind, he quickly tired of the complex social interactions, tensions, and egos. Humanity was fatally self-obsessed.

Blake had been feeling increasingly burned out – not in a bad way, he’d just had a very full life. He missed Glenda every day; the passing of time made no difference. And the Spiders; well, he had the feeling their time was coming, and they didn’t need him anymore. They would look after him in his old age, if it came to that. But he’d never wanted to be a burden. And in his heart, despite all this time in a pacifist society, he was still a soldier. Blake wanted to die on his feet.

Emerging out of his reverie, he noticed his friend’s jagged band was now a warm green. But the other Spider shimmered red, reminding Blake it was almost time. He gazed upwards.

The noon sky above Esperia was criss-crossed with a chaotic web of milky lines. Filaments left by the Shrell stretched all the way out to the edge of Esperia’s system, preventing any normal ships – and Qorall’s dark worms – from entering. Looking up, Blake saw a single ship, ten kilometres long and shaped like an elongated crossbow, with an arrowhead for the cockpit. Its hull rippled scarlet and emerald, shapes emerging then disappearing into the general flow of colour. It suddenly struck him that it wasn’t for decoration – it was talking, perhaps to the Spiders, perhaps to someone or something else.

The ship hung silently in low orbit above the two towns of humanity’s refuge planet: Esperantia, the human one whose roofs glittered in the sunlight – zinc being the one metal found in thick, accessible veins inside caves nestling in the Acarian Mountains – and alabaster Shimsha, or as Micah had once dubbed it, Spider Central. The ship belonged to Kalaran. Blake didn’t trust him, even though the legendary Level Nineteen being had protected the Spiders for half a million years, and now preserved humanity. Blake reckoned Kalaran had his reasons, was playing the long game, and that in his case altruism was a ‘nice-to-have’ characteristic that could easily be sacrificed if needed.

Blake’s friend nudged him, as if sensing his slipping back into a sombre mood. Blake patted it, then used the light glove on his left hand to flicker a message to both of them: “Okay, I’ll make an effort.”

No sooner had he said it than his skin prickled and his vision turned first grainy, then black, as if he’d blinked, and he found himself on the ship he’d been looking at. He felt dizzy for a moment, as if the outside world was whirling around him, and then it felt more as if he was spinning on the inside, behind his eyes, the merry-go-round sensation accompanied by a rushing noise, the sound of his own blood coursing through his veins. He blinked hard and the visual and auditory after-effects vanished. Blake felt a shiver as the tingling dissipated, and shook himself. Whisking. He’d heard that very few ships could teleport, none below Level Fifteen, and that it used up a tremendous amount of energy, and even then only worked at short range and in line-of-sight. He wondered why Kalaran had expended such resources on him.

He was inside a vast pearl bay where forty or so shuttles of varying sizes and description stood, many floating a half metre above the hangar deck. Some appeared outlandish, others sleek, and several looked downright hostile and tooled-up with gun ports to prove it. Most had large semi-transparent tubes – some empty, others filled with viscous liquids or opaque gases – snaking into the walls of the hangar.

A diminutive figure approached, and as she got closer Blake recognised Petra, Esperia’s President, in matching beige pants and jacket, very smart and formal, though she didn’t look altogether comfortable. She had the same short-cropped, unruly salt and pepper hair, the same crooked smile across her lips, and the same slate-grey eyes as her mother, Kat, far away on another of the galaxy’s outer spirals with Micah and the others. They’d gone to retrieve the sixty human captives, and to kill Louise. The thought flashed through Blake’s mind that he should have gone with them, then he dismissed it; he’d made his decision, and had never been one for second-guessing himself.

“Still in one piece, Commander?” She grinned, then threw her arms around him, her head against his chest. He stiffened at first, unaccustomed to human contact, then relaxed, and hugged her back.

“The others are already here,” she said. “We had to come the conventional way, by shuttle. Only you got the luxury treatment.” She folded her arms.

“Good to see you, Petra. How are you enjoying being President?” Blake hated small talk.

Her face grew serious. She hooked her arm in his, and started walking towards the opposite end of the hangar. “After only a month of this job I can see why both you and Micah resigned. Come on, the others are waiting. Oh, and…” she paused, turned to him again, mock-conspiratorially. “Some of them smell a bit weird; try not to let it show.”

He knew what she was doing, trying to put him at ease. Blake reminded himself she was a Genner, genetically advanced by the Ossyrians to Level Four, approaching Level Five, more intelligent than he was. Petra also had more emotional intelligence than most Genners. He wondered if she sensed the dark thoughts in his head. The Spiders certainly did; the past few weeks they never left him on his own, one of them even sleeping at the foot of his bed. He patted her arm, the same way he’d patted the spider; Petra was special, one of the few humans he still really cared about. She let go and separated from him, walking towards a doorway which he was sure hadn’t been there earlier.

“Follow me, and don’t look down.”

He should have taken her advice. As soon as he passed through the opening into ship’s dazzling interior daylight, he had to cross a long and narrow glass bridge. Inevitably his gaze dropped to what was below, and vertigo swept through him. There was no frame of reference but he was sure it was kilometres straight down towards a bubbling mercury lake. Pierre had warned him how vast the ship was, but still…

“Keep your eyes on my shoulders, and you won’t fall.”

She said it like an order, and it worked; he was a soldier, after all. He lifted his gaze and tried to keep in line with her, like he’d learned a lifetime ago in boot camp back in Montana. The bridge twisted slowly in the air. Unfortunately his peripheral vision worked just fine, and he could see that they were slowly rotating, defying gravity. After a hundred metres, he reckoned they were upside down from where they had started.

“Don’t look up, either.”

He did, of course, and sure enough the boiling lake was there, confirming his suspicion about their orientation. Looking ‘down’, he saw a dozen spheres floating or hanging, all different colours, like giant marbles drifting in a pale azure sky. Daring a glance sideways, he couldn’t see the walls of Kalaran’s ship, only a hazy blue with no horizon. He tried to make his jaw relax, and focused on her shoulders as instructed.

He and Petra were half-way to a rust-coloured sphere. From this angle he could see tubes that wound their way vine-like from the hangar behind him, reaching across the ship’s internal sky until they pierced the sphere’s outer shell. Curiosity trumped his nagging nausea, and he sped up, almost treading on Petra’s heels. She didn’t slow down as they neared its metallic surface, and passed straight through it. He hesitated a second, then followed her.

It felt like a veil over his eyes, a small jet of cool air blowing on his skin, and then he was on the inside. He stopped dead. An assortment of creatures were sprawled around the inner surface of the sphere. A few species he recognised, most he did not. But his eyes were drawn to the centre of the sphere. He tried to process the creature he was seeing. Its body reminded him of a sea anemone, fleshy tentacles waving lazily in every direction from a central mass lost in a brown fog. At the end of each undulating tentacle was a mouth that, when opened, revealed a glinting ruby eye. One of those eyes was staring directly at him.

Take your seat.

Petra grabbed his arm, tugged at him.

Blake didn’t move; he needed confirmation. “What did you just say, Petra?”

She flicked her eyes to the anemone. “I didn’t say anything.”

Blake let her lead him along the inner curve of the sphere. They weaved between several alien species he didn’t recognise, each on a clam-shaped recliner, facing the anemone. Blake was looking up and nearly tripped over a brown scaly tail. Ukrull, he thought, the Ranger.

“Manota,” the Ranger said, correcting him, and sure enough he realised it was not Ukrull; the tone of voice was lighter.

“Female,” she confirmed, flicking a manicured claw in the direction of the anemone. “Translator for Kalaran. War Council meeting started. You late.”

He stared at her awhile. The rumour of Rangers being telepathic appeared to be true. When he looked away, Blake was relieved to spy his former mentor, Kilaney, who looked remarkably feisty despite his seventy-two years, a full head of white hair and bushy eyebrows atop smouldering brown eyes. Blake reminded himself that trying to apply age comparisons made little sense anymore. Kilaney was technically seventy-two, but had been killed, then his memories and DNA had been downloaded into a Q’Roth warrior, and only recently had he been restored as ‘mostly human’. Underneath his human skin were a number of Q’Roth organs. Kilaney was allegedly as strong as an ox, and very fast. Added to that, everyone aged more slowly on Esperia, something to do with its weaker sun and more oxygenated atmosphere and benevolent if dry climate. A number of people in their eighties and even nineties still worked Esperantia’s outlying farms every day.

A shimmering, platinum avatar of Pierre was present, too, Blake’s former science officer aboard the original Eden Mission, now half-human, half… well, no one really knew, since Pierre’s nannites had been constantly rearranging his body chemistry for two decades. Yet despite his enhanced Level Ten intelligence, Pierre still had that look of scientific wonder on his face. At least his eyes had become a decent human blue again, and his hair was only partly silver, the original jet black colour reasserting itself. Pierre looked enthralled by the alien menagerie all around him.

Pierre addressed him. “Take a seat, Commander, so far it’s only been introductions.”

“An hour of them,” Kilaney added.

Blake’s former mentor was trying to sit up straight in the clam, but it was clearly meant for a reclining position. Petra nodded to an empty one and Blake climbed in. It had a spongy feel and moulded to his body. Despite lying down, he felt clear-headed. He heard Kilaney grunt and guessed he’d finally settled in. Petra also took her place in an adjacent clam.

“So, how exactly does this work?” Blake asked.

No sooner had he spoken than he found himself sitting in a dark, lozenge-shaped room around a white table with Petra, Kilaney, and Pierre. The walls were opaque and soundproof. Pierre looked more human, more normal, though Blake reminded himself Pierre wasn’t really there.

“This is a construct,” Pierre said. “The actual meeting place is disorienting, and most of it is going to be impossible for you to follow, a lot of it is too much for me, to be honest.”

Petra took control, her prerogative as President.

“But you’re Level Ten, Pierre.”

Pierre’s face had a residual tinge of platinum – he was still undergoing his transformation back to being human – and when he smiled at his daughter, Petra, whom he had only met a month before, cobwebs of tiny silver lines etched around his mouth and eyes.

“Ten is the average level back there. Thankfully, Ukrull is on the Ice Pick and is listening in. He’s translating most of it, though the speed of communication is giving me a headache.”

Blake didn’t want to interrupt. He knew Pierre and Ukrull were off on a secret mission for Kalaran in the Ice Pick, heading towards the outer edge of the galaxy, along with Jen and Dimitri. Pierre momentarily seemed elsewhere, as if someone was talking to him, no doubt Ukrull. Kilaney broke the silence.

“So why the hell are we here, Petra? What possible use can we be in a War Council with aliens far more intelligent than we are? I don’t recall inviting ants into my strategy meetings back on Earth during our little war.”

Blake smiled. Although their ‘little war’ had been horrendous and had almost destroyed Earth, back then he’d always known who he was, what to do, and who the enemy was. His smile faded. Now he and the rest of humanity were caught up in something far beyond their comprehension; legions of aliens warring on behalf of two titanic races, Kalaran on one side, Qorall on the other. Kilaney was right. Blake felt like an ant on the Somme battlefield. He realised Petra was staring at him, about to speak.

“Kalaran said we have a role to play. Us and the Spiders.” She touched Blake’s hand.

Pierre ‘returned’. He looked agitated. “Okay, a lot has just been discussed. Qorall’s new weapon is being used all along the front. They’re discussing combative measures to –”

Blake found he was no longer in the lozenge, but back in the clam on the inner surface of the sphere. He sat up. The others were all still immersed. One of the anemone’s eyes watched him, but he ignored it. On impulse he stood up, and began walking around the inner surface of the sphere. None of the other aliens paid him much attention, except the Ranger Manota, whose yellow eyes flickered once in his direction.

He passed a pack of Ossyrians, mankind’s guardians on Esperia these past eighteen years. The collie-like aliens, in full ceremonial headdress of horizontal bars of gold, garnet and lapis lazuli, were huddled together in a single clam, snouts upright, quicksilver eyes flashing shapes at almost subliminal speed. One of them turned its head towards him. Its eyes stilled. Blake walked on.

Next he came upon a Finchikta; a birdlike upper half atop a forest of centipede-like legs. The third eye on the top of its head opened, a sad pale blue, and watched him independently while the bird’s beak emitted squawks and shrieks.

He stopped dead two metres from a Q’Roth Queen, her swollen, armoured blue-black belly resting on the floor, curling upwards to end in a square head with six blood-red slits serving as eyes, her gash of a mouth open, hissing in the direction of the anemone. A Q’Roth warrior appeared in front of him, barring the way. Blake’s hand automatically slipped to his holster only to find it empty; his pistol hadn’t whisked with him. That figured. The warrior wasn’t armed either, not that it needed to be with those mandible-like upper claws and six-inch thorns along its middle and lower pairs of legs. Blake took another path.

After passing a dozen other alien species too weird even for drug-induced nightmares, his eye snagged on something on the opposite side of the sphere, almost back where he had started. Blake didn’t know if it was one alien or many. A set of pale globes the size of soccer balls were joined together by arm-width purple blood vessels, and each globe had fronds sticking out of it, waving in the air, puffing out short jets of green gas. Blake moved closer. It reminded him of an ancient Greek fable about a woman with a head full of snakes; Medusa. The creature shied away from him, then advanced. Blake didn’t move. There was something unsettling about it…

A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye made him turn. One of the Spiders was walking on a parallel path. Blake recognised him, the friend who had been down with him on the surface. The Spider scuttled along in his usual stop-start manner, which should have attracted attention from the other aliens, but it didn’t. They can’t see him. The Spider passed Manota, but even the Level Fifteen female Ranger seemed oblivious. The Spider’s communication band was a dull brown, when suddenly it flashed a message to Blake. It took Blake a half-second to translate, then he dived to the ground as several of the Medusa’s fronds lashed out, spear-like, to where his head had just been. Blake looked up to see the Q’Roth Queen looming over him, all six eyes blazing. The Medusa withdrew.

“Not safe here, human.” The Q’Roth Queen’s voice was like the rustling of dry leaves; Blake didn’t speak Q’Roth, and assumed the anemone was translating, which should be a two-way process. Good, he’d always wanted to address one.

Blake rose to his feet fast, fire in his veins, confronted by the leader of the race who had culled both humanity and the Spiders. He thought about punching her jaw, knowing he would break his hand in the process. The fact that she might have just saved his life didn’t stop him calling her to account.

“You destroyed my world. Seven billion dead.”

She reared back on her hind legs, her mouth opening slowly like a razor cut.

“One more, then,” she hissed.

One of the central tentacles swung down between them, its eye facing first the Queen, then him. Blake got the message. He looked for his Spider friend but he was gone. On his way back to his clam, Blake pondered what the Spiders’ role in all of this was, and why the other aliens had not seen the one walking in their midst, but no sooner had he laid down than he was back in the lozenge.

He expected them to ask him where he’d been, but they carried on as if he’d never left. Pierre had just finished speaking. He gave Blake a sidelong look. “What do you think, Commander?”

With a shock, Blake realised he knew everything they’d been discussing, though he hadn’t been there. Obviously Kalaran didn’t want them to know he’d been absent. Blake decided to play along. “Sounds good to me, Pierre.”

Petra narrowed her eyes. “You’re sure?”

Kilaney folded his arms, grinning. “Well, why don’t you run it past us again?”

Much to Blake’s surprise and relief, the words poured out of him.

“We’ll take two ships to sector 143-511-873 first thing in the morning. Kilaney will command a Q’Roth Battleship with a complement of Genner Youngbloods. I’ll take a Scintarelli Dart. We’ll join the local forces and try to fend off the Orb en-route for the planet, or failing that, gather as much intel as possible and return here inside the Shrell-wires.

“Good enough for me,” Kilaney said. His avatar vanished.

“So,” Blake said, “an hour for introductions and five minutes for the main agenda?”

Petra’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean five minutes?”

Blake cleared his throat, guessing more time had passed than he’d thought. “Never mind, an old Earth joke.” But even as he smiled and waved a hand dismissively, he wondered if he’d been somewhere else as well as back in the chamber with the other aliens; had Kalaran done something with him, or to him?

Pierre spoke. “The others are leaving. Kalaran suggests we leave last. Quite a few of the alien species registered formal protest at having such low-breds – that is, humans – present. Kilaney is ex-Q’Roth and wanted to have a word with the Queen out there, presumably about borrowing a ship. I have to go in any case, the Ice Pick is almost out of range.” He faced his daughter Petra, and Blake turned aside, trying not to listen to the words spoken in hushed, urgent tones.

When it became quiet, and Pierre’s avatar had left, Blake turned back to Petra. “What really happened here today?”

She inspected her fingernails. “Newly forged allegiances, alliances that will dissolve as soon as the war is over, promises of Upgrade as well as territories if and when we win and get to pick up the pieces.” She faced him. “Mostly they were here to meet with Kalaran, to know he’s really here and means business, because if he and his Kalarash mate Hellera leave, then most other races won’t even attempt to stand up to Qorall – they’ll pledge allegiance to him.”

“But that’s –”

“Survival.” Her face became stern. “Once you cut through the politics, rivalries and envy, they’re all scared, Blake. We were in quarantine for eighteen years. They’ve watched Qorall’s progress unchecked for that same amount of time, and he already controls half the galaxy. And now there are these damned Orbs…” She folded her arms, and sat back. “They’re also here to see which races might defect; there was an awful lot of posturing out there before you arrived. But the news that Qorall is going to attack the Tla Beth homeworld stunned all of them.” She got up and paced. “Think about it; for two million years the Tla Beth have ruled Grid Society with no serious challenge.” She sat down again, looking older than her years.

“Leadership can do that to you,” he said.

“Do what?”

“You carry too much responsibility, so when you think you’re going to lose, you feel guilty. Doesn’t make any sense, and stops you from being the leader people need.”

Petra leaned back, a thin smile across her lips. “Getting philosophical in your autumn years, Blake?”

He parried the remark, focusing on her again. “How are you doing?”

She laughed. “Try ‘what am I doing?’ I seem to be making this all up as I go along. Want your old job back?”

Blake shook his head. “I meant how are you doing with Pierre gone God knows where, and your mother gone to Savange to rescue Antonia and the others?”

Petra grew serious again, her voice colder. “I keep myself busy, Blake.” She fixed her eyes on him, and then banged her fist down on the table. “I won’t allow us to be snuffed out or turned into Qorall’s slaves.”

Blake nodded. He made to stand up, but she leaned forward and placed a firm hand on his arm.

“We still need you, Commander. War is almost here, on our doorstep.”

He didn’t reply and tried to stand up again but her arm pressed down harder.

“I’m not reaching you, am I? Then let me try another tack: the Spiders need you. Especially when Qorall’s troops arrive here, which we all know is going to happen eventually, despite the Shrell wires.”

He laid his hand on top of hers. “I know my duty, Petra.”

She let go. “You could take my place as President in the wink of an eye; but I could never take yours.” She stood, glanced aside as if deciding whether to say something, then spat it out. “One of the Spiders came to see me.”

Blake found he was standing, too. “But you can’t understand them!”

“We’re Genners, remember? We worked out their colour speech years ago, and Virginia made a translation device.”

Blake’s heart pounded. “What did it say?”

“They’re worried about you.” She swallowed. “But they respect you, and your wishes. You’re like a father to them, and they want what’s best for you. The way they expressed it, your mind’s made up, even if you think it isn’t. They have a concept somewhere between mathematical psychology and karma; quite interesting, actually.” Her voice quavered, and she cleared her throat. “They said you were near cusp time, a cliff edge on your karmic trajectory. All the probabilities of a terminal conclusion converge.”

He stared down at the table. Hearing it second hand, even if couched in psychobabble, made it ring true. He’d been denying it, but even the Spiders had confirmed it. “And what do you think, Petra?”

“You’re tired of it all, you’ve given way too much already, and you want out, to be with Glenda, or simply not to be without her anymore.” She softened a little. “I don’t blame you, Blake. As for me, I don’t want to lose you. None of us do. You mean too much to us.”

Blake knew it was a lifeline being thrown in his direction. But he didn’t take it. He pursed his lips. “And what does the President think?”

She let out a hollow laugh, then pressed her fist down onto the wooden table as she looked him in the eye. “The President expects you to make it count, Commander.”

Blake smiled, then stood to attention, something he thought he’d given up a long time ago, and saluted.

“Then we’ll both play our parts, Madam President.”

“See you back on the surface, then,” she said. Her avatar vanished.

Blake waited. Nothing happened. He got up, walked around, and still nothing. For a while he wondered if he’d somehow been forgotten. Then someone appeared, and Blake fell back into his chair with a gasp.

A large, bald black man stood before him in a cobalt Eden Mission uniform, grinning.

“Zack,” Blake whispered, then caught himself. “Kalaran,” he corrected, and folded his arms.

“Sorry, Boss, he made me do it.” Zack belly-laughed.

Blake knew he was being manipulated, that this was Kalaran, not Zack, but dammit to hell, it was good to see his best friend in the flesh after all these years. He resisted the urge to return Zack’s beaming smile. It wasn’t easy. To compensate, and to register protest, he spoke with a tone just short of contempt.

“What do you want, Kalaran?”

Zack nodded. “You giving up, Boss?”

Blake felt anger welling up inside him: the recent battle, the last vestige of Zack finally gone, Marcus, Virginia and Gabriel all dead, along with most of the Ossyrians. He’d thought they’d have some peace on Esperia. Why couldn’t the galaxy just leave them the hell alone? He closed his eyes. At least Kalaran wasn’t using Glenda.

Zack’s voice softened. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Boss.”

Micah had told him Kalaran did this; picked an avatar that was so close to you it made it difficult to retain emotional control.

“What do you care about me, about any of us? Why are you taking an interest exactly? Us fighting Qorall? It’s a sick joke, might as well use bows and arrows against a nuke. What’s the point?”

Zack frowned. “You’re a soldier. You want to fight, but you feel impotent, is that it, Boss?”

Blake stood, thumped both fists on the table. “Stop calling me that. You don’t deserve to be Zack. Stop this charade, show yourself to me right now or send me back to Shimsha!”

Zack disappeared, the lozenge too, and Blake stood on a small jade sphere, still inside the ship, but much lower down, near the boiling mercury lake. Something was rising out of it, something huge.

It was hard to fathom. A sphere, definitely, but the outer surface was like a layer of cigar-shaped clouds, the layer underneath an electric green mesh of shifting shapes – squares, diamonds, triangles, and other more complex polygons; and beneath that, swirling red blobs against a black brick-like mosaic… Blake felt he was falling inside it, the effect was so hypnotic. He tried to count the layers, but there were too many. He stopped trying, as two words bubbled to the surface of his mind: kaleidoscope and Babel.

You are on the right path – a long way to go, of course. Your species has no adequate conceptual metaphor. Not yet.

However, Blake intuited that he was looking at the equivalent of the brain, the central core, whatever it was, of Kalaran. But there was no body. He remembered something Micah had said, and decided to verify it.

“You merged with the ship, didn’t you? So, you control it with your mind, and it does everything you want? The ship, those other spheres, everything else, it’s you, isn’t it?” Which meant that if the ship was destroyed, Kalaran died along with it.

Correct. We have not had independent bodies for aeons. All Kalarash elect this path.

There was no voice, the thought came straight into Blake’s head. It felt strong, not just communication, but the direct imparting of knowledge. Blake almost felt violated, as if someone was trespassing in his mind, someone who could rearrange things in his head, even re-write his mental software.

Do you want Zack’s avatar instead?

“No,” Blake said. “Just me and you.”

The brain rose level with him, rivulets of mercury – or whatever it was – cascading down its sides, falling and splashing into the lake below, sending puffs of silver steam into the air. Something gelatinous oozed out of the pores every few seconds, pulsing.

In front of Blake, between him and Kalaran’s brain, an image arose of the War Council. Various aliens flashed past in the moving vista, until it paused on the one Blake had settled on, the Medusa creature consisting of white globes.

Level Sixteen. Nchkani. Why did you stare at them?

Blake’s anger at Kalaran ebbed. At the end of the day they were on the same side. But those Medusas unnerved him… “I don’t trust them,” he said.

Instinct?

Blake thought about it. It must be true, he had nothing else to go on. But any field commander knew that gut feelings could be just as important as more objective intel.

A grating voice came from behind Blake. “Concur.”

Blake whirled around to see the reptilian Ranger, Manota, on all fours. A pink forked tongue whipped out between hook-like incisors, wiping over her yellow eyes.

“Treachery planned. Next in line if Tla Beth fall.”  Manota took two diagonal steps towards Blake, ending up with her snout inches from his face. He resisted the joint urges to retreat out of reach of those teeth and flinch at the smell of rotting food.

“Ukrull told other Rangers about humans. I studied files. War with Qorall like your chess, far more complex. But also like poker. You wild card. Keep you in deck. Play you when need.”

Blake should have been outraged: he was being used. But instead he smiled. Soldiers are pawns on a chessboard, there to be played. Besides, a pawn can take down a queen, sometimes even a king.

Manota. Go to the Tla Beth homeworld. Hellera will join you when the time comes.               Manota vanished.

The heaviness that had been dogging Blake for weeks lifted. He watched the brain descend back into the lake. Now that Manota was gone, he felt he could ask the question that had been dogging him.

“The Spiders; what is their role, Kalaran?”

It must be a surprise to Qorall.

Blake shook his head, feeling as if he were a kid again in a school playground.

“Suppose I promise not to tell?”

Kalaran’s voice took on an edge. Time will prove otherwise.

Blake bristled, and raised his voice. “Then how come I could see the Spider in the chamber when no one else could, not even Manota, who is Level Fifteen?”

You have some of their DNA in you. I implanted it before sending you back to the chamber. You will understand soon.”

Blake’s temporary indignation dissipated. Kalaran was going to use him, just as Manota had said, as the wild card in the deck. So be it. He was a soldier, this wasn’t the first time he was being sent on a mission without full disclosure.

Are you in the game again, Blake?

Blake knew he was. “Yes, Kalaran, I’m in –”

Petra and Kilaney were staring at him, outside the Dome in Esperantia. One of the Youngbloods had joined them, a tall hulk of a teenager. Blake tried to recall his name; he’d given a eulogy at the mass funeral for the fallen Genners: Brandt.

“Where’ve you been, Commander?” Petra asked.

He shook his head, then spoke to the Genner warrior. “Brandt, assemble six of your men and women who are ready to fight and die if necessary. You will lead them and report to Kilaney.” He turned to Kilaney. “Did the Q’Roth Queen grant you a battleship?”

Kilaney nodded. “Destroyer, waiting just outside the system.”

“Good enough. Get them ready. We leave in four hours.”

Kilaney and Brandt exchanged glances then headed off.

Petra was smiling. “Kalaran. You met him, didn’t you?”

“We have work to do, Petra.”

She shrugged. “Don’t I know it. Nice to have you back, Commander.”

A thought struck him. “Promise me you’ll look after the Spiders, Petra.” He paused a little too long, then added, “While I’m gone.”

Her smile faded. She was a Genner after all, and no doubt guessed the implication. “What happened up there?”

He told her about Kalaran infusing him with some Spider DNA.

“Interesting. But – as usual with Kalaran – not the whole story.”

Blake gave her a level stare. “Meaning?”

She leant against a balustrade. “A Spider came to see me half an hour ago. Caused quite a stir, as you can imagine, walking down Main Street right up to my office. There was quite a crowd.”

Blake’s mind whirled. A Spider had never entered Esperantia, not since they’d hatched. He waited.

“It said that Kalaran put some of your DNA into the Spider you saw on Kalaran’s ship.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Part of the plan, I guess.”

“I have to go and talk with them.”

“You can’t.”

“Excuse me? I know you’re President, Petra, but –”

“It told me to tell you that you would meet one more time before the end.”

Blake felt blood rush to his head. “Well, Madam President, I think I’d like to hear it from them. I have many friends there, I need to say my goodbyes.”

Petra remained cool. “That’s what it said you would say. But when I said you can’t, I meant it’s not possible.” She handed him a pad. It showed Shimsha underneath a glistening dome.

“Vasquez has been trying to break through for the last half hour. It’s impervious.”

Blake didn’t understand. “But they don’t have any tech…” He recalled the new towers going up around the perimeter, the ones he’d assumed were for the night-time displays. The Spiders had erected a shield.

Sixteen years raising them, living with them; he’d thought he’d known them, been part of their family. But they were alien. Blake suddenly felt empty, and very alone. “Is this Kalaran’s doing?”

“Maybe. But I can’t ask him either.” She flicked her eyes upwards.

Blake followed her gaze. Kalaran’s ship was gone.

“Hellera’s ship is on the outskirts of our system, still keeping the dark worms at bay, though I don’t know for how long. We’re on our own, Commander. The Shrell-field surrounding our system will keep out most aliens, but not Qorall if he pays a visit.”

“Why should Qorall come here?” Blake asked, then glanced back at the pad. The Spiders. Qorall would come for them.

“Precisely,” Petra said.

CHAPTER 3

Awakening

Jen and Dimitri shot towards the planet, helmeted heads first, like two silver bullets. The timer in the corner of Jen’s visor indicated ten minutes since they'd torpedoed out of the Ice Pick parked safely above them in orbit, another ten till touchdown. Ukrull had refused to land, and as usual declined to explain why. The planet had no atmosphere, so there was no need to worry about burning up. But the silence was eerie: no rushing wind, only her own measured breathing and Dimitri’s ragged gasps.

They were on the galactic rim. To one side there were no stars, on the other a disc-like swathe of light. It gave Jen vertigo whenever she glanced towards the inter-galactic void, so she focused instead on their destination below. The planet was dark, even though this was the side facing the system’s red dwarf. As she tried to make out details, her helmet visor sensed her eye muscles’ effort and zoomed in. But there were no distinguishing marks, only a frozen ocean of metallic dust, all that was left of the Xera, the hyper-intelligent machine race that had almost taken over the galaxy two million years earlier. The other galactic species had barely survived, but had finally conquered the Xera, leaving nothing but this tomb planet, ten kilometres deep with metal ash. It was a memento, and above all a warning. And now she and Dimitri were there to find a machine race remnant if one still existed, and bring it back to Esperia for examination, without waking it up.

The planet grew large beneath her, the terrain stretching far and flat in all directions, and she took one last look towards inter-galactic space. She and Dimitri knew pretty much nothing about the Xera; apparently such intel was only fit for Level Fifteen and above. When they’d arrived, however, she’d asked how the Machine race had started at the galactic rim; it seemed unlikely. Ukrull had replied, “Before Machines, galaxy bigger.” She guessed the Xera had somehow chewed up entire star systems for resources. Either that or the purge of the Machines at the end of the war had necessitated a clean-up operation on an unimaginable scale. She felt a chill, and adjusted a control to put a little more heat inside her suit.

Jen glanced across to Dimitri, his bulkier space suit looking awkward, his arms waving in jagged movements as if to stabilize himself, when there was as yet no appreciable gravity, his gloved fingers splayed as if for protection against an imminent fall. Dimitri’s helmet visor, like hers, only showed half his face, from nose to eyebrows, but she could see his eyes were wide.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She knew him better. While she was enjoying the thrill of the ride, he was clearly terrified. This was taking too long. “Pierre, how close are we? I can’t see the entrance.” She waited, wondering if Pierre and Ukrull, sitting in the Ice Pick, were paying attention, or were involved in deep discussion about tactics in case Qorall had tracked them.

“Twenty klicks to the right, Jen.” Pierre’s voice still sounded synthetic, although he had most of his humanity back. “I’m adjusting your suits’ course direction. When we blasted the drop-shaft there was some blowback debris. It should be safe now.”

“Should?” She knew Dimitri could hear Pierre, too.

Ukrull’s gruff voice boomed inside her helmet. “Safe.”

The altitude readout said one hundred twenty klicks to go. Abruptly her suit-thrusters kicked in, and her head and internal organs squeezed to the left as she and her lover tacked to the right. Within thirty seconds she saw the gaping hole in the dust sea, blacker than its surroundings.

After several minutes she felt the top of her head press against the helmet as they began to decelerate. “Lights, Pierre,” she said.

The drones sent down earlier activated, and the ten-kilometre chasm beneath them lit up like a glistening, bottomless shaft, its smooth lipless mouth rising slowly toward them.

“Piece of cake, Dimitri,” she said.

Dimitri, normally loquacious, grunted something. Jen had thought the light might help, but it only emphasized how fast and deep they had to go. The decel continued as they plunged into the borehole lasered by the Ice Pick, thirty metres across, its cauterised wall a polished coal mirror reflecting two blurred shapes tearing downwards. She tried to breathe normally. Dimitri’s arms started to flail.

“Pierre, can you slow us down?”

“We’re on a tight schedule, Jen. You know as well as I –”

“Pierre, just do it.”

She thought she heard Ukrull’s grunting laugh, but there was no other response. They began to brake hard. Firing her micro-thrusters, she drifted towards Dimitri, within arm’s length. The halo of small helmet lights around his face accentuated his dark bushy eyebrows and wide, eager eyes, but covered his dark moustache and goatee. He looked tense. She selected private comms so Pierre and Ukrull would not hear.

“Take my hand, please,” she said.

He stared straight down, his eye-brows connected. “I am fine, my love, it is just –”

“I’m not. Please. Take my hand.”

Without facing her he reached across and clutched her hand. She didn’t flinch, though it hurt at first. She saw him blink hard.

“I must seem a big fool to you,” he said.

She said nothing, the best way to get him to talk.

“I’m afraid of heights, my one weakness. That is, I’m afraid of falling.”

She laughed, not unkindly. “But you lived on Santorini, high above the Mediterranean waves. And for the record, you have plenty of other weaknesses.”

He let out one short staccato laugh. “I left that isle as soon as I could.”

“We’re nearly there,” she said.

“It’s okay, I’m feeling better, we can go a little faster. Pierre is right, we’re on a tight schedule.”

“Just because Pierre is never wrong, doesn’t mean he’s always right.” She flicked a comms switch at her waist. “Pierre, half-speed, please.”

Jen gazed downwards into the blackness. She tried to suppress a gnawing intuition that this was going to be a one-way trip, and squeezed Dimitri’s hand, glad he was with her.

Suddenly two steady blobs of light appeared on the floor below; their reflections.

"Pierre?"

Decel was severe this time. Her head rammed into the top of her helmet. At first she flailed her arms as Dimitri had done earlier, then she punched the thruster controls on her heels, flicking herself upright. With relief she saw Dimitri execute the same manoeuvre, but they continued to drop too fast, their reflections still a blur on the sides of the shaft. Pierre should have been precision-controlling their descent from the Ice Pick to minimize drop-time, but this was cutting it too fine.

"Pierre! Slow us the fuck down!" She felt Dimitri's arm tug around her waist, pulling her against his larger frame, trying to protect her. Abruptly their suit thrusters fired a plume of blue flame, and Jen felt herself slide down inside her suit, compressing towards her heels. Dimitri let go; just as well if they were to avoid an uncontrolled tumble.

Three seconds later she hit the ground. She attempted to roll but instead sprawled, her visor whacking against the smooth metal floor, banging her forehead hard against the padded helmet interior. She ended up on her back, panting. At least the visor hadn't cracked. Her partner loomed over her, holding out his hand. You're tougher than you let on, Dimitri. Accepting his help, she got to her feet and checked herself. Nothing broken or sprained. Dimitri was smiling; now that they'd landed and he could go play the explorer.

Jen wasn't smiling.

"Fucking hell, Pierre, you almost –"

"Jen, are you both alright? There was an energy surge down there, off the scale, blocked us for fifteen seconds."

The concern in his normally unemotional voice stalled her anger. "So, something is still down here," she said. The weight of what they had been sent to do finally hit her. She'd thought it was most likely a dead end, it seemed so fantastical, that part of the Xera – the galactic equivalent of an urban myth – could still be alive. How could the other species have been so reckless? How could they have left the job unfinished two million years ago?

She nodded to Dimitri. "Okay, Pierre, we're going in."

“This way,” Dimitri said, his voice regaining some of its customary exuberance. He pointed, and she saw the circular tunnel off to the left. Ukrull’s precision impressed her: thirty thousand kilometres up, he’d sunk a hole to exactly where he’d detected an underground maze and a single, very faint, heat signature. Inside she felt a shiver again; the Machines had been supposed long dead. There should have been no tunnels, no heat signatures, and no power surges. Jen wished she'd brought along a tactical nuke.

“Let’s go, my sweet!” Dimitri said, and bounded towards the tunnel's mouth.

She smiled, happy with his return to form as an eager explorer, but then pursed her lips; she knew how often his enthusiasm got them into trouble. “Wait for me, Dimitri.” Jen ran after him, the low grav allowing her to take long leaps as he disappeared from view. She flicked on the finder to locate the heat signature, but it registered nothing. Not good. Staring down the tunnel’s entrance she saw that it divided in two, but couldn’t see any light; Jen didn’t know which way he’d gone.

“Hey, Dimitri, I said wait up!”

◆◆◆

Pierre didn’t need to look at a clock to know they were on borrowed time. This was the vulnerable phase, with Jen and Dimitri deep inside the ten-kilometre maze of tunnels they’d detected eight hours earlier. If trouble arrived, there was no fast way to get them out. And if they found a live Machine, they’d probably both be killed anyway, and he and Ukrull might have to go to Plan B and attempt to destroy the planet, though they wouldn’t have been the first to try. But Kalaran had been specific, as always. Retrieve a dormant Machine relic. Don’t activate it, just retrieve it. Pierre assumed Kalaran could control it, dissect it, and get what he wanted from it, without unleashing the plague of Machines again. But then he didn't entirely trust Kalaran, even less his mate, Hellera.

He glanced across at Ukrull, his two and a half-metre-long lizard-like travelling companion, who was chewing on something unsavoury, some kind of meaty bone that didn’t smell too good.

“You miss daughter,” Ukrull said, in his rock-grinding bass voice.

Pierre had hoped to have more time with Petra before leaving again, having only just rediscovered her after all these years. But the war was headed their way, its front nearing Esperia where Petra and the rest of humanity lived.

Pierre stared at his hands, nearly back to normal, fleshy on the outside, some hairs even starting to grow. Hellera’s gift, or punishment; it wasn’t clear which way she’d intended it; a retrovirus that was making him human again, though so far his intelligence clung to Level Ten. He suspected that would change as his physiology reverted. But for now his palms were still platinum flow-metal, as was half his nervous system. He had more in common with the dead civilization beneath him than most. He wondered; if Hellera hadn’t intervened in his ongoing metamorphosis, would he have become like the Machine race? But then he’d never had any desire to rule the galaxy or purge it of ‘organic impurity’ – something of a hypocrisy given that the Machines apparently relied on a tiny amount of organic metal for their higher conscious processes. Nor had he arrived at the conclusion that order and logic were better than the semi-chaos of most living species. But perhaps Hellera had done it because he reminded her of the Xera, and though the probability of his evolution into pure machine intelligence was small, the consequential risk was too great.

“Do you remember them, Ukrull?”

Ukrull crunched through the bone, shattering it, a brown jelly-like substance oozing around his yellow incisors. “Not that old.” He munched noisily.

“But you have ancestral memories, don’t you?” Pierre knew it was true; all species above Level Twelve had such memories to avoid repeating former mistakes. One of Kalaran’s gifts to the advanced species in the galaxy.

Ukrull put down the bone, flicked his rust-coloured tongue over his lips and eyes, and settled back, his three-digit fore-claws resting on his tan underbelly. His crescent-shaped pupils narrowed till his eyes were almost pure yellow. “Bad time. Almost lost all. Machines relentless. Cell and DNA principle. Each Machine made of smaller ones: nano-size to Titan, inter-stellar city-ships. Machines originally hard-coded to defend galaxy at any cost." Ukrull looked distant for a moment. "Lost perspective. Spread fast. Mined gas giants for Trancium, hyper-conductive flow-metal, very tough, memory structure in-built at atomic level. Organic species got in way.”

Ukrull had never talked about it before. Pierre guessed he did so now due to the proximity to the planet where the final battle had taken place. “What happened then, between the Tla Beth and the Kalarash?” This was what both Kalaran and Hellera had refused to tell him. The Kalarash, Level Nineteen, had been the progenitors of the galaxy, seeding and nurturing life for eight million years, and had just handed over power to the Level Seventeen Tla Beth, when the Machine race emerged, Level Eighteen. Either the Kalarash or the Tla Beth must have created them, or at least fostered their development. Pierre had his suspicions as to who had unleashed them.

“Mistake,” Ukrull said. “Misjudgment.” He shifted position, his equivalent of sitting up, leaning forward. He fixed Pierre with snake-like eyes. “The Tla Beth –”

A klaxon sounded and their heads both snapped towards a holo-display that popped up in the front of the cramped cabin, showing seven bright red dots at the outer limits of their sensor capability. Pierre and Ukrull both uttered the same word.

“Incoming.”

◆◆◆

Jen was growing impatient, but at least she’d found Dimitri. Together they walked along black empty tunnel after black empty tunnel, the path always twisting and turning, their lights shining twenty metres ahead before a curve cut them off. “How long has it been, Dimitri? Any sign of those two drones?”

They’d dispatched six fist-sized drones to explore the network, and one had gone missing. They re-directed another to take its place and… ditto, which was why they were walking in the direction both drones had taken. It didn’t seem a super-intelligent plan to her, but they had none better. The other four drones were painstakingly mapping out the catacombs, as she thought of them, far more extensive than she’d first estimated.

“Switch off your lights,” Dimitri said.

“Getting romantic all of a sudden? There’s a time and a place, you know, not to mention a near vacuum down here.” She smirked beneath her visor, but she complied and turned off the helmet torch beams. At first she saw nothing, but then she detected a faint turquoise glow up ahead. They both stood, watching. The pale light strobed, very fast, almost imperceptibly. It struck her as odd, because she wasn’t sure the Machines would need light. Was something else down here, also come to find a relic? But it didn’t add up. The tunnels had been here a long time. If the Machines were active again they’d have replicated and the tunnels would be brimming with them. They weren’t. And then it struck her: what if, after the Machine-Organic war, something had been left here to guard the planet and its secrets? It would have to be something very old, a long-lived species. She had a hunch which one.

“Whatever it is probably already knows we're here,” she said. Flicking a switch, she directed comms back along the tunnel pathway to the bottom of the shaft, where she’d left a relay to the Ice Pick. The channel was dead. Now there’s a surprise.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, Dimitri.”

“I’ll go first,” he said.

She sighed. “Dimitri, you’re the brains, I’m the merciless killer, remember?”

He laughed, but moved aside to let her pass as they both re-activated their helmet lights. She took the nanosword from her belt and held it ready in her right hand. As they rounded a second bend the light grew stronger, flooding from the entrance to a larger chamber. On the ground were two silver smudges. So much for the drones. Jen stood behind them, realised what was inside the chamber, then stepped across the threshold, Dimitri a pace behind her. Before them was a Tla Beth.

Jen had heard about these Level Seventeen creatures, erstwhile rulers of the galaxy after the Kalarash had largely disappeared two million years ago, right after the battle that had ended where she and Dimitri now stood. She’d seen fuzzy images of the Tla Beth, but had never met one before. It floated a couple of metres above a raised dais. The Tla Beth at first sight was spherical, with vertical metallic strips rotating around its core, some clockwise, some anti-clockwise. The bands looked sharp, giving her the idea that if she tried to reach inside, her arm would be sliced off. The bands also shifted colour and brightness, creating the strobe effect, so that she had to concentrate to see the Tla Beth’s ‘body’. It looked like a rounded hourglass, the top half almost pure white, the lower half almost pure black, tiny motes of black and white drifting in the respective halves.

She knew Dimitri would be thrilled, and sure enough he strode past her to get a closer look. She put her nanosword away; it would be of no use against a Level Seventeen being. But a cacophony erupted inside her head, making her reel backwards, eyes squeezed shut with pain, as if a shard of ice had just splintered through her skull. It shut off, and she found herself in Dimitri’s arms – he’d caught her, his dark brows meshed, his face a picture of worry.

“It accessed your node?” he asked. “It tried to communicate with you, didn’t it?”

Jen watched excitement break through his concern. She didn’t mind; besides, talking to a Level Seventeen being was pretty cool. Letting Dimitri help her back to her feet, she nodded gently, the pain melting from her forehead. Then the Tla Beth tried again, slower, less compressed.

<Drones tech, cannot let them near husk. Why are you here? Who sent you?>

Husk? She stared at the dais, and noticed something on it, a flat oblong shape, the size of an old-style briefcase. Christ, they let one survive! Her instinct was to slice through it with her nanosword. But she understood what the Tla Beth had transmitted. No tech must be allowed to touch the remnant, as it could be used by the dormant Machine as an energy source – no wonder Ukrull had refused to land his ship. On reflection, tech probably included her nanosword. Better to bury the damn thing then.

But the Tla Beth had asked her a question, and their imminent survival might depend on her answer. Focusing, with eyes closed, she thought a reply: <Kalaran>, imaging his ship in her mind – since she had never actually seen the Level Nineteen being in the flesh.

A shot of black ink spurted into the upper half of the Tla Beth, and the creature descended towards them. Jen’s head spun, then the Tla Beth calibrated properly for her brain.

<Is it time?>

“It’s asking me if it’s time,” she said to Dimitri, who was excluded from the conversation. “Oh, and we have to keep any tech away from that.” She pointed, and watched Dimitri’s eyes sparkle. He took a step toward it but hit a force field and bounced back off. She wasn’t surprised: Pierre had told her the Tla Beth used force fields all the time, even for fine manipulation tasks. This one could kill her and Dimitri in an instant, if it so chose.

“How long has it been here? And what are the tunnels for?” Dimitri asked, massaging the spacesuit material around his right knee.

She concentrated on Dimitri's questions, so the Tla Beth could perceive them. But it wasn't easy; Jen wasn’t a natural at nodal communication.

“Same response,” she said. “It asked if it is time.” Jen didn’t add that it was probing her memory, images from recent and past events flashing past in the background of her mind. It had also asked her about the other ships, but she didn’t know what it was referring to.

Dimitri’s gloved hand went to the lower edge of his helmet – she knew he wanted to stroke his goatee, as he often did when deep in thought.

“We need to give an answer, Jen. It could mean time to destroy the machine, time to activate it, or time to transport it somewhere else.”

A tremor beneath her feet rocked her, so she had to steady herself. “Did you…?” But she could see from Dimitri’s expression that he’d felt it too.

Before she had time to ask what was going on, the Tla Beth supplied the answer. A holo appeared. The Ice Pick and the planet were both under attack from seven large ships whose design she didn’t recognize.

<Confirm which ones are friends> the Tla Beth transmitted to her.

She whipped out the sword and flicked the electric blue nano-blade to point at Ukrull’s craft, which was jumping around like a mosquito, avoiding heavy weapons fire. <Friend> she transmitted.

A tactile alarm on her belt told her the other four drones had just stopped transmitting. Within seconds, the holo showed silver ellipsoids spiriting upwards from the planet’s surface, from the borehole, homing in on the seven ships. Each of the enemy vessels was quickly engulfed by a blue cloud that crystallized around its host. She’d originally trained as a biologist, and it reminded her of an antibody attacking an uninvited pathogen. The firing stopped, the encrusted ships drifting in space, dead or dying. She blew out a long breath. Now she knew what the tunnels had been for – they hid defences, ones she and Dimitri had not been allowed to see.

She transmitted again to the Tla Beth: <Can I talk with our ship?> Then added. <There is also a Ranger aboard called Ukrull.>

After a few seconds Pierre came online. “Jen, Dimitri, are you okay? Ukrull says you’re with a Tla Beth. Is it true?”

Jen looked at the creature, its black and white halves stabilized again, its bands rotating calmly. “It’s a Tla Beth alright. Has some cool toys. Think it wants to share?” She noticed Dimitri circling the dais, his hand by his hip, testing the force field with an outstretched forefinger. She tried to ignore what he was doing.

“What species just attacked us?” she asked.

“We didn’t recognize the ships at first, but the Tla Beth confirmed they were Level Sixteen, Nchkani, more powerful than the Ice Pick, but no match for Tla Beth weaponry.”

Jen mentally filed away the intel of a Level Sixteen race joining Qorall’s side; bad news indeed. “Pierre, it keeps asking if it’s time. Does Ukrull know what it means?” Jen waited. She guessed the Tla Beth and Ukrull would be communicating at a far greater speed than humans could tolerate.

“Jen, Dimitri,” Pierre said. “You need to run back to the shaft. Go now.”

Pierre’s voice sounded shaky. Jen swallowed.

“What’s happened, Pierre? Why –”

“Just run! Holy –”

The channel went dead.

Jen whirled around to see Dimitri staring at the Tla Beth. Its bands had stopped moving, and the air around it shimmered. Abruptly there was a screeching, banshee-like noise in her head. Her hands went uselessly to the sides of her helmet. Her legs buckled and she dropped to her knees. Tilting her face upwards she saw a micro-storm of jagged jade lightning surrounding the Tla Beth. Its hourglass body swirled black and white, and then Jen felt like she’d been stabbed in the stomach as a deep scarlet cloud mushroomed inside both halves of the Tla Beth’s body, swirling like blood in water. The Tla Beth screamed through her node, sending her head crashing backward onto the floor. Jen’s instincts told her it was fighting for its life. She shook violently as if her entire nervous system was in spasm. She bit down on an urge to vomit; throwing up inside a space suit would hardly help matters.

An arm scooped around her waist and picked her up as if she was a rag doll. The ground skated along underneath her to the rhythm of Dimitri’s powerful stride, making easy progress in the low gravity. She felt something warm and sticky trickle from her nose and her ears. But tears also came; the connection with the Tla Beth was still there. It was in terrible pain, shocked at what was happening, and the realization that the external attack on the Ice Pick had merely been a lure to find and kill it. A cascade of images, some making no sense to Jen whatsoever, flickered in her mind’s eye. The Tla Beth had lived for aeons, and yet she sensed that same dread of any being about to die, who still had so much to do. This Tla Beth had been a star engineer, painstakingly creating new systems where life might take root and flourish. She saw nebulae condense into star fields, planets sculpted into habitable worlds, oceanic habitats precipitate in open space, held together by force-fields while they were ferried to barren waterless star systems, Dyson spheres the size of Earth’s solar system, and even a ring-world slowly turning around an ice blue star; wonders she had never imagined. But there was something else.

For the last period of its life – the time-frame impossible to gauge accurately but possibly tens of thousands of years – it had been the guardian of this tomb planet, and its secret. And then its mind remembered she was there, and Jen had the feeling that a god-like creature was staring at her, seeing everything she was, her life, her thoughts, her very being, and through her the species she represented, all in an instant, judging her and humanity. It transmitted a fast thought-stream through her node:

<You must survive. Will protect you as long as able, will mask your life signs. Planet ninety-eight per cent Trancium, very tough, hard to destroy, even for Qorall. You must hide. Message dispatched to Kalaran>.

She felt its life-force sputter, then it seemed to rally one last time. It said two more words to her, then with a feeling she equated with compassion, it cut her mind loose. Jen's body stilled, sadness welling up at the loss of such a super-being.

Dimitri was almost knocked off his feet by a massive quake. A curtain of blue flame rushed over them, burning itself out in a second, never really hot, she gathered, instead pure energy on some wavelength she’d probably never comprehend. A whirlwind of black and white confetti flushed through the tunnel as if expelled by one last gasp of life. Myriad tiny motes settled on her and Dimitri before melting like snowflakes, until the space around them was clear again, and Jen knew simultaneously that the Tla Beth was dead, and that they were hidden from Qorall’s sensors.

They reached the drop shaft, and Dimitri set her on the ground. Nothing happened for a while. If Pierre and Ukrull were still in control, they’d have lifted them out of the hole using the Ice Pick’s gravitic scoop. She gazed upwards and thought there must be some visual after-effect from the nodal transmission. The entrance, ten kilometres above them, was green. Space itself was green, if it was still normal space. She’d heard about Qorall’s fondness for ‘liquid space’.

“He’s changing the rules of the game,” she said, still feeling weak.

Dimitri knelt next to her. “I fear Qorall himself is here. Only he and his ship could do this.”

Then we're screwed. That was when she noticed what Dimitri was carrying in his other hand: the husk, a dull, harmless-looking slab of grey metal, the last remnant of the Level Eighteen Machine race, the Xera.

“We can change the rules of the game, too, if we so desire,” he said.

She thought about it, as another impact rocked the planet. “Qorall’s trying to destroy it, along with us in the process.” She took a breath, staring at the remnant. Kalaran, I hope this is the right thing to do.

She got to her feet, remembering the last words the Tla Beth had transmitted. And deep down she felt it was right, even if there would be hell to pay later. Probably sooner.

“It’s time,” she said.

Dimitri nodded, his eyes flattening, so she knew he was smiling. “You know me, my love. I’ve always wanted to open Pandora’s Box.”

She handed him the nanosword. Re-activating the blade, he gingerly touched the black, flat object with the tip of the nanosword. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then the blade blazed purple and was gone. Dimitri studied the hilt, but Jen already guessed it was drained. She watched the box, waiting. A single point of light shone faintly, dead centre on the top side, then began to stretch into a line, reaching towards the edges of the box. She knew what it meant. It was going to open.

“Dimitri, time to go.”

They set off, jogging back into the tunnels, following the last map the drones had provided, heading down to the deepest level. As she began to sweat with the effort of running, she thought of Pierre and Ukrull, and prayed they’d escaped. But her mind kept swinging back to the Machine husk. Although there was no sound or light behind them, and she was sure nothing was following them, at least not yet, the back of her neck prickled, and she had trouble controlling her breathing. She lengthened her stride.

“Faster, Dimitri. We need to run faster.”

CHAPTER 4

Failsafe

Sandy wondered if the concept of a cell was universal, or at least galactic. She and Antonia occupied a drab room just large enough to pace in: low ceiling, no windows, a wall-length glass front, and no apparent door. An uncomfortably narrow marble-hard bench, impossible to fall asleep on, tempted Sandy to sit but then made her want to stand. A seated contraption in one corner, with various controls neither Sandy nor Antonia had any idea about, had an obvious function which they’d both avoided so far; the fact that they’d had no food or drink for some time helped in that respect. The overall package put her on edge, and she guessed the set-up was aimed at priming them for interrogation.

They had both awakened there, a few blurry days after the long trip to Savange. Neither of them had spoken much; they’d never been friends, exactly. Yet Sandy knew they had to work together, even though they were almost certainly being watched. She decided to test how well they were being monitored, by saying some things openly, and others more secretly. She made eye contact with Antonia, who still looked immaculate – tall yet slight build, two-tone hair, perfect skin, classic almond eyes and high cheekbones – aside from a faint puffiness around the eyes. Sandy hated to think how she herself looked, and was grateful the thin glass wall didn’t offer her reflection.

She could see why Micah liked Antonia. She stopped herself, and switched tracks to her husband Ramires, who loved her unconditionally, never looked at another woman, let alone... She closed it all off. Micah was ancient history. Ramires was the perfect husband. She’d made the right choice. He would come to rescue them for sure. Sandy paced.

“They’ll come for us,” she said, unsure if it was a good or bad thing, since if they did, they might be captured or killed. But it was as good a place to start a conversation as any.

Antonia’s eyes stared back a moment at Sandy, unblinking. The look conveyed openness and honesty, but to Sandy it was a mask dating back to Antonia’s aristocratic upbringing; she had no idea what Antonia was thinking. Nonetheless, it looked as if her porcelain façade might finally crack.

“You mean Micah?” Antonia said, then her face flushed a little, and she said in a quieter tone, “and Ramires of course, and your son, Gabriel.”

“Kat, too,” Sandy added. She tried not to say the next thing on her mind, but it slipped out on account of her trademark ‘mouth’, as her long-dead brother used to call it.

“If any of them are still alive.” Sandy knew she was inflicting as much pain on herself as on Antonia. Immediately Sandy thought of her son; the last time she’d seen him, Gabriel had gone with Petra and Micah to defend Esperia against the Alician attack force. Somehow she knew he hadn’t made it. She’d dreamt of him, and in her case that only meant one thing.

Antonia looked aside. “They’ll come.” Her eyes pressed closed, lips squeezed tight, and her face closed like an antique China doll.

Sandy had a fleeting urge to sit next to Antonia and put an arm around her. But that would break the habit of a lifetime.

“Do you buy that bitch’s story, about why we’re here?” Sandy knew saying such things openly might get her into trouble, but she didn’t care. Besides, that should get some kind of response from whoever was watching them.

Antonia opened moist eyes, drew her knees up to her chest. “The need for genetic material? Well, we’re alive, and Alicians don’t normally take prisoners.”

Sandy thought about it. Her right fingers were twitchy. She really needed a stimlette; the withdrawal was making her antsy. At least Ramires wasn’t there to tell her off about her minor addiction. But images of Gabriel growing up on Esperia flooded unbidden into her mind: as a young boy running around the farm chasing pigs, then as a young man doing martial arts with Ramires, and being heroic in the last sim-battle with Micah. She was convinced he was dead, such intuition a mother’s curse. Turning away from Antonia, she walked up to the glass, took a deep breath then hammered her fist into the barrier. The glass wobbled slightly, a dull boom quickly fading, her two front knuckles stinging where they had just connected, leaving a bloody smear on the glass.

“That’s normally a guy thing,” Antonia said.

Sandy gave a short, humourless laugh. “Try living with a Sentinel for eighteen years.”

“We need a plan, Sandy.”

Sandy turned around. She sucked noisily on her knuckles to stem the flow of blood, then swallowed. “We also need to be realistic. This is the Alician homeworld. Their chances of getting us out of here alive are remote.”

Antonia folded her arms. “So what’s your plan?”

Sandy sat next to Antonia, cupped her hands around Antonia’s ear, and whispered very softly. “Deprive them of the genetic material. Then they’ll die out.”

Antonia cupped her hand around Sandy’s ear and whispered back. “You mean we kill ourselves?” She drew away, her brow furrowing before it smoothed. It was her turn to utter a mirthless laugh. “God, Sandy, that’s what Zack used to call Plan F.”

“Exactly, when there are no better plans.”

Antonia took her turn to stand up and pace, and shook her head. “You really have been living with Ramires too long.”

Sandy approached her, made Antonia stop and face her. Again she whispered, close. Antonia was clearly uncomfortable with Sandy’s proximity; too bad. “But this way we’re not victims, we’re actually a weapon.”

Antonia grimaced. “Listen to yourself.” She placed a hand on her shoulder. Sandy flinched, so Antonia withdrew it.

“The answer is –” Antonia enunciated each word slow and clear – “no – fucking – way. There’s always hope. The others are coming to get us, and they won’t give up. We owe it to them –”

Sandy grasped Antonia’s shoulders, holding her there. “They’ll die if they come here. We could save them.”

Antonia stood there, then spoke in a quiet voice, her eyes narrowing. “No. That’s a word you should understand, Sandy, you’ve used it often enough in the past.”

Sandy let go. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Antonia shook her head again, and returned to the bench. “Forget it. Forget I said it. But the answer will remain ‘no’, and in any case you’d never convince the others to go along with such a plan. At the first whiff of trouble the Alicians will put us back in stasis and harvest us when they need to.”

That was the problem. Sandy knew her plan was shit. But sometimes better ideas grew out of bad ones. Shit makes good fertilizer, her Gramps used to say, and a wrong track can lead to a new perspective, and a better path. She just hadn’t gotten there yet. Besides, she was worried her intuition about Gabriel was right, and wanted anything to take her mind off it. She decided to try to salvage something out of this exchange. Maybe Antonia could help her think around the problem.

“That’s what I don’t get; why they allow us to be awake.”

Antonia looked up. “You think they need us awake?”

“Maybe they’re not sure. It all sounds precarious, this genetic extraction process. And they’ve only got one shot, sixty of us. They botch it, they die out: no kids.” Which was why her idea of revenge tasted sweet.

Antonia nodded. She did the whispering thing in Sandy’s ear.

“We need to try to find out where all the other captives are. If the Alicians split us up around the planet, rescue will be next to impossible.”

Sandy had thought about it. She whispered to Antonia, this time without Antonia shying away. “We’re lab rats. They’ll be analysing everything, comparing, looking for the most successful genes. We’ll be kept close together, at least to begin with, in the same complex.”

“Then we need to find a way of communicating with the others, when we find them, so that we can all react when rescue comes, so –”

Sandy shushed her by drawing a line across her throat with her fingers, and nodding to the other side of the glass. Someone was coming. The two women moved apart on the bench.

Louise came into view from around a bend, blond ponytail swinging from side to side as she strode purposefully towards them. Sandy raised an eyebrow when she saw that Louise had a Q’Roth left arm, black with a dark blue sheen, ending in a crab-like claw.

“Hello girls, bonding nicely?” Louise walked straight into and through the glass shield, slowing slightly as it traced the outline of her body then sealed again behind her. “It’s coded for my DNA,” she added.

“Latest Alician fashion?” Sandy said, staring at the Q’Roth arm.

Louise lifted it to shoulder height, opening and closing the claw, making a sharp clicking noise. She was clearly proud of it.

“Sister Esma had one. When I lost my own arm, I decided to be symbolic, given that I was taking over from her as leader. By the way, you should be proud, Sandy; your son Gabriel killed Sister Esma, sacrificing himself in the process.” She shrugged. “Got me promoted.”

Sandy’s breath went into overdrive, her fists closing tight. She focused on Louise’s pretty face, wanting with all her might to smash it into bloody pulp, to turn it inside out, to let her brains see daylight. Suddenly Antonia locked her arms around Sandy, part consolatory hug, but Sandy knew it was primarily a restraint.

Louise smiled. “I see you two are getting on. That’s good; you’re going to be together a long time.”

Sandy remembered Ramires’ training. Calming her breathing, she gathered saliva in her mouth by swirling her tongue around, and swallowed, repeating the process three times. Her arms relaxed a little, and Antonia let go. Sandy didn’t take her eyes off Louise. She felt her son’s presence next to her, telling her to wait, reminding her that a wise warrior never lets the enemy dictate the moment to strike.

Antonia broke the silence and stood up. “Where are the others? Why have we been separated? And what do you want from us besides genetic material?”

Sandy only half-listened. She was thinking tactics. When Louise departed, she would turn and slow as she passed through the glass; one lunge and a precision tiger punch to the vertebrae sticking out at the base of her scrawny neck. If she was quick enough, she could kill Louise.

“You two have been separated from the others because I want you to lead them, to do what’s best for them, to keep them in line.”

Antonia snorted. “And why would we do that?”

Sandy studied Louise; the bitch had an ace up her sleeve.

“Because then I will allow you to raise your child.”

Antonia folded her arms. “Child? Are you deranged, Louise, I –”

“You are pregnant, Antonia. Guess who the father is?”

Sandy watched Antonia’s face blanch, saw her stagger back a pace, the backs of her knees meeting the edge of the bench, making her sit, her mouth open, her eyes wild, as if searching. Sandy’s rational mind wondered for two seconds who the father could be, but she already knew in her heart whose baby it was. Damn Micah again. He hadn’t changed.

“What about me, Louise,” Sandy said, “why should I cooperate?”

Louise walked up close, far less than spitting distance. “Don’t you still care for Micah, Sandy? He escaped, you know. I’m hoping he comes here to rescue both of you. We have unfinished business.”

Sandy willed herself not to react. “My question still stands, Louise.”

“Alright, then. I want the Sentinel Ramires alive. On Esperia he beat two Q’Roth warriors in close quarters combat, something no Alician can do, despite genetic upgrading. I have a vid of him fighting; impressive, even by my standards. If you cooperate, I’ll spare him when he comes for you. He can train my people.”

Sandy laughed. “He’ll never –”

“But he will. If he was Alician, he would not, because we rise above what you call love. Honestly, you humans are so sad, so easy to manipulate. You’ll cooperate to keep him alive, and he’ll do the same.”

Sandy tried to keep the words in, but they edged out. “And Micah?”

Louise walked away. “You prove my point.” She turned back around, and waved her hand in Antonia’s direction. “But as your new best friend recently said, ‘no – fucking – way’. If he shows up, he dies on sight. You’ll have to settle for Ramires; which is what I hear you’ve been doing these past eighteen years.”

Sandy lunged forward straight for Louise’s throat, but instead something that felt like a sledgehammer – Louise’s claw – smacked into her right cheek, knocking her clean off her feet. She hit the stone floor, her right shoulder thwacking the edge of the bench. She gasped for breath, unable to see clearly, dizzy from the blow.

“One more thing,” Louise said. “While you were all in stasis, we implanted a failsafe device in your heads, a neurotoxin. It induces frontal brain death in three seconds, while leaving the core and brain stem working. We prefer to have you alive and functioning, but you might call it our ‘Plan F’. Every fifteen minutes a signal is sent out that prevents the toxin from being released. If you were to escape, you’d have that long to enjoy your freedom. And by the way, if I am killed, the signal will stop.”

She crouched down towards Sandy’s face. “Your suicide plan won’t work. You’re right, we don’t know all the variables, but we’ll have enough genetic material from your limp flesh for it to begin to work. We live long lives, so even with a small number of fertile men and women we can replenish our society.”

Louise stood up. “Think about what I said. You can live relatively content lives here, or I can put you all back in stasis and you’ll never wake up, never see Ramires, or watch Micah’s son – it’s going to be a boy, by the way – grow up.” She paused, as if deciding whether to say something or not, then she stared at them both, her remaining human hand on her hip.

“How long do you honestly think Esperia will survive? It won’t see out the next month. Qorall has already dispatched resources to take it down. The only relics of humanity will be here on Savange. I’ve studied galactic history and trust me, every single time a race evolves its predecessor disappears. It’s the natural order of things. Do you give a shit what happened to the generations that preceded Homo sapiens? Didn’t think so. The other Grid races, all they’ll see is that humanity shifted from Level Three to Level Five, which is no mean feat. And you two – you three – will be part of that evolutionary process.”

Sandy tried to get up but it wasn’t happening. She said nothing. At least her breathing had recovered. Antonia also kept quiet.

Louise turned and passed through the glass.

Sandy struggled to her knees, and managed to lever herself up onto the bench. She checked her cheek and shoulder; no breaks, but she was going to be bruised for a while. Antonia had her head down on folded arms atop her knees. Sandy could think of nothing to say. She shuffled along the bench until she was next to Antonia’s trembling frame. Sandy decided it was time to break a lifelong habit, and put her arm around Antonia.

She wondered if Ramires and Micah were already on their way. For the first time she truly hoped they were not. All would be killed except Ramires, the last living Sentinel, and he would be trapped into aiding his sworn enemy. But memories of Gabriel flooded into her mind, his entire life from an infant to a child to an adolescent to a man. Such promise, erased out of life so early. She realised he’d died at the same age as her brother. A single tear spilled. Then another. She couldn’t stop them. Antonia clasped her hand, and Sandy clung to it, squeezing hard. The full sting of Gabriel’s death – that he was really gone – washed over her. Antonia manoeuvred herself so that she held Sandy, uttering soothing noises. Sandy’s rage fell away, a gaping hollowness replacing it, a vacuum inside her belly, as if her womb remembered what it had given up to the world for safe keeping, and was now forever lost.

“Is she right about us, Antonia? Love makes us pathetic, weak?”

“No, she’s all wrong. And I know you, Sandy, you’re hurting now, but you are the strongest woman I’ve ever met, besides Kat. I know that right now you want to kill Louise despite everything.”

Sandy sat up, wiping her sleeve across her eyes and face. “If I do, we’ll all end up vegetables, barely-alive cadavers in an Alician lab.”

Antonia leaned close, whispering into Sandy’s ear. “At least I won’t have to go back to my previous job.”

Sandy frowned. Antonia had been a Council member on Esperia. What did that have to do with anything? But then she remembered: before that, back on Earth, Antonia had been a comms expert for the Eden Mission, working with carrier waves slip-streaming from Blake’s ship, the Ulysses, all the way back to Earth. She thought about it. The signal preventing the neurotoxin being released would be a carrier wave. It was a long shot, but if Antonia could gain access, maybe she could disrupt it…

And there it was, the alternative path born from a dead-end. Sandy sniffed once, wiped her face again, and sat up as straight as she could.

The two women sat side by side on the uncomfortable, too-narrow bench, backs against an unyielding wall. Neither of them spoke. The only connection between them was Sandy’s left hand, pressed onto the cool marble of the bench, and Antonia’s right hand, covering Sandy’s.

CHAPTER 5

Recode

Seven minutes to intercept.

Cocooned in the cockpit of a Scintarelli Dart, Blake acknowledged the automated message, and watched the asteroid-sized ochre sphere enter the local solar system at a leisurely pace. It was the first time he’d seen one of Qorall’s Orbs. It didn’t look like a horseman of the apocalypse, but for the inhabitants on the planet he and twenty-seven other captains were trying to protect, Armageddon had arrived.

The Zlarasi were Level Six: their role in Grid Society was that of aqua-farmers, providing a vast range of seafood, essential oils and underwater tech prized throughout the galaxy. Their world, Alagara, was nine-tenths water, with most of its civilization covered by oceans, the three bare land-based continents reserved for air-breathing traders. Blake had seen a Zlarasi via holo-conference – the creature resembled one of Earth’s defunct sea-based dinosaurs, the plesiosaur. At one point during talks over defense strategies they all knew to be futile, the Zlarasi had fixed Blake with stark, unblinking purple eyes. These locals understood perfectly well that their forty-thousand years of peaceful existence was at an end. Blake found he had to turn away. When he looked back, the delegate no longer met his gaze. For the first time in many years Blake experienced a sense of shame.

Six minutes to intercept.

He focused back on the current task. Zooming in via the Dart’s visuals, he noticed the Orb’s surface ripple. Lines like writing floated to its surface, only to submerge moments later. No one knew what it meant, except perhaps the Kalarash, and they wouldn’t say. If it was language, it was presumably in Qorall’s tongue. Perhaps it was better not to know.

They’d been losing the war against Qorall ever since he’d unleashed these genetic Recoders, asteroid-sized balls that entered a system, spilling golden rain onto the planets they targeted, rewriting organic ‘software’ at the chromosome level, turning every sentient being into Qorall’s minions. The defensive armada’s mission parameters were to defend the planet and evacuate as many as possible before the Orb unleashed its contents onto the doomed world. They would of course attempt to destroy the Orb, but similar engagements were ongoing at fifty locations across the front line, with aliens far more advanced than humanity in charge, and so far all attacks on the Orbs had failed, with heavy casualties.

Blake had received special instructions from Kalaran: to capture some part of an Orb so they could study it and develop counter-measures. He hadn’t told Kilaney about this, for two reasons. First, Kalaran had imparted it to him and him alone, and that had to be for a reason. Second, Kilaney would intervene if he knew, and broaden the strategy, pouring more resources into it, which would make it more visible to Qorall. Blake understood Kalaran’s tactic, he’d used it himself on more than one occasion during the Third World War: sometimes you send one man alone behind enemy lines to get a particular task done – like the assassination of a local enemy leader – while the battle raged on all around.

Kilaney would recognize the strategy, too. When Blake and Kilaney had worked together back on Earth they’d nicknamed it ‘one-shot’. However, Blake had no idea how to achieve this particular mission. Any sentient being touched by Qorall’s liquid virus was turned within seconds. The few robot ships and drones that had managed to scoop up some of the golden rain and escape with it, found that the substance degraded into raw elements moments after seizure.

Five minutes to intercept.

Blake checked the other screens, and frowned. Few worlds could evacuate fast enough. Blake tuned in to the elevated chatter from the planet, translated automatically for him by the Dart, but he hardly needed to understand the words: the general cacophony screaming through surface comms told him it was panic beneath the smooth ocean waves. If he’d been down there, he’d be sitting with a pulse pistol in one hand, a whiskey in the other, ready to make sure Qorall didn’t add him to his army.

Staring at the pristine Zlarasi world, its turquoise oceans shimmering in the sunlight, knowing it would soon be gone, his mind drifted back to Earth’s own demise. He’d managed to help twelve thousand souls escape, but seven billion had been slaughtered. Kilaney had kept the Q’Roth occupied long enough for the transports to escape, only to be captured and turned into a Q’Roth warrior. Luckily, though it had taken many years, they’d gotten Kilaney back. With his Q’Roth battle experience, Kilaney was now more valuable than ever.

Something snagged in Blake’s head. What if…?

Four minutes to intercept.

The fledgling idea dangled on the edge of his mind. Rather than chase it, which in his experience only pushed it away, he concentrated on something else. Whenever Qorall took over a race, the virus brewing inside the Orb adapted to the intelligence level of the indigenous species. When the Orbs had first appeared a month earlier, they targeted any species in their path, no matter what level. Now Qorall was being more strategic, sending them to worlds inhabited by higher-level races, such as the Level Six world below. Blake also knew that was why he and Kilaney’s small human contingent had been sent here; higher-level allies had been sent to attack the Orbs bearing down on Level Nine, Ten and Eleven worlds.

Apparently a Level Twelve fleet had managed to stop an Orb, by working with the Shrell to cause it to founder in Transpace, costing the lives of a thousand Shrell in the process. But the Orb had exploded, emitting a burst of epsilon radiation over a twenty light year radius, annihilating three species inhabiting unshielded planets, including those on transports fleeing the system.

He imagined the near future as the inhabitants below were killed or turned. All the indigenous species’ ships, and the planet itself, had self-destruct systems; no one wanted to be corrupted. Of course, it didn’t matter to Qorall. Blake had always loathed terrorists, whom he unequivocally branded cowards, as they targeted civilians. But Qorall had taken it one step further, turning those civilians into his army. Blake squeezed his fist hard inside his palm, then changed hands, repeating the move. Soldiers like him were supposed to be able to protect civilian populations. He took three deep breaths to calm himself down. It didn't work.

Three minutes to intercept.

Movement on the central display came as a welcome distraction. At least the local inhabitants had impressive ships – half of them upgraded with Level Nine tech – skeletal green diamond shapes with a burning white anti-matter core at their centre, held in check by a magnetic brace. Ten of the ships engaged the Orb at the outer edge of the system. Their particle beams and missiles had no effect. Atomics were used next, then anti-matter cluster-bombs. The view screen on Blake’s Dart automatically dampened visuals so the blast flashes didn’t blind him. He tapped a pad on the console to contact Kilaney, once again his Commander-in-Chief, housed in the Q’Roth Destroyer hanging above the planet.

“The Orb’s trajectory hasn’t been deflected or even slowed down. How is that possible?” Blake asked.

Kilaney’s voice was gravelly, serious in a pissed-off way. “We think they use some kind of contained micro-black hole to power the shields and resist gravimetric attacks.”

Blake watched as new Zlarasi ships – massive affairs shaped like conch sea-shells – spewed megatons of rock at the Orb. Mass drivers were crude, but it made sense to try, since shields were usually designed to resist high-energy beam attacks rather than those from kinetic energy. But again, there was no deflection of the Orb’s trajectory. Instead the avalanche of rock was parried around the Orb and then compacted, making it glow under heat stress. It briefly gave the Orb a comet-like tail.

Two minutes to intercept.

“They should retreat," Blake said, knowing they wouldn't. He wouldn't if he were there. "Maybe they can salvage more people from below.”

“We need to fall back, Blake. I don’t see what else we can do here.”

Blake made a steeple with his fingers and stared at the ochre sphere. The diamond ships were still firing, when an alarm signified an intense gravimetric shock wave. All of the Zlarasi vessels were sucked violently towards the Orb’s surface. Their commanders’ shouts and screams tore at him, but he didn’t shut them off; that was part of his code, to stay with soldiers when they died. He watched as the ships were engulfed, disappearing without a trace. Sonofabitch. He’d commanded troops plenty of times before, but never seen such wasteful deaths.

Kilaney came online again, his voice scratchy. “We have to leave now while we still can, take the intel we’ve gathered back to base.”

“How many, Bill?”

There was a pause before Kilaney answered. “I don’t count them anymore, Blake, not since –”

“How many?”

“Dammit Blake… fourteen hundred and fifty-seven souls. But that’s a piss in the ocean compared to the billions still on the planet.”

Blake closed his eyes as if in silent prayer, then opened them again. “But they were soldiers. Their death has to mean something.” As does mine. The idea crystallized in his mind, and as soon as it had formed, it made obvious sense. His mind made up, his anger congealed into purpose. “We’re not leaving empty-handed, Bill. This can’t all be for nothing.” He touched a panel, and his ship pitched forward, then accelerated towards the Orb.

One minute to intercept.

“Blake, what the hell are you doing? That Dart won’t even get its attention!”

Blake had wondered why Kalaran had suggested he take a Scintarelli Dart, while Kilaney commanded a Destroyer. Now he understood. Probably Kalaran had planted the idea in his head. It didn’t matter. Time to play the wild card.

“We need a sample to study, Bill. A live one. In ten seconds I’m passing command override to you. The Dart has antigrav, remember? If the Scintarelli are as good as their word, this little ship can slipstream out of a black hole’s event horizon, so it should be able to escape the Orb’s local gravity.”

There was a pause. “Wait a god dammed minute, Blake. Are you suggesting what I think you are? Hell, you’re asking me to watch my best friend get turned into one of Qorall’s soldiers. I won’t do it, Blake. There has to be another way. We could come back later and capture one of the others who’ve been turned.”

“Later isn’t now. So far none of those turned have been captured alive, and the code unravels after death. Bill, in war, intelligence is paramount.”

“Blake, dammit, I –”

“One shot, Bill. I can do this. We can do this. That’s why Kalaran sent us. That’s why he sent you and me.”

Kilaney remained silent. Blake continued, committing his friend to the plan.

“Once I’ve been infected, take me back to Esperia, to Kalaran, or to the Spiders if he’s not there.”

Kilaney’s voice lost its edge. “You think they’ll be able to fix you?”

The Orb occupied a third of Blake’s view screen. The writing began to look tantalizingly familiar, but he still couldn’t make sense of it. Blake wanted to spit, but his mouth was dry. Could he be turned back later, become himself again? He pushed the idea away; he’d never indulged in wanton optimism.

“Both Kalaran and the Spiders have scanned me physiologically and cognitively; they know me well. They can work out how the pathogen functions, maybe derive a defence.” He doubted there would be an antidote, not for him at any rate.

Blake’s aft screens told him the last transports of local inhabitants had jumped out of the system. They carried only fifteen per cent of the population, but it was better than nothing. They were headed to a water-based planet at the edge of the galaxy, where they would try to start afresh. He programmed a fly-by loop towards the Orb, then sat back.

Ten seconds till intercept.

“Bill, get out of here, recover me from long range. Don’t let me die for nothing. No words, either, we’ve said them all before.”

Kilaney stayed silent. Blake was relieved to see the General’s ship wink out and then reappear at the far edge of the system, outside the known range of the Orb.

Finish this one without me, Bill.

The Orb filled his screen. Blake watched the writing appear and disappear, wondering again what it meant, and who would read it. Eventually he was so close its surface appeared flat. A fissure opened up beneath his Dart, a golden flare lashing out at his ship.

“Now, Bill!”

The normally-silent Dart engines whined, then roared. Deafening klaxons barked in the cockpit as the pathogen breached the hull, the air around him taking on a golden hue. The ship shook violently as it strained to pull away, and Blake had to clamp his jaw to protect his teeth. The engine pitch rose to a screech, then descended as the Dart catapulted away from the Orb. Blake raised his hand to salute his commander, but halfway his hand stopped. It was golden.

He turned it around to see his palm, the cracks and lines appearing in sharper relief against its golden sheen. It spread beyond his wrist, crawled up his forearm, icy veins sketching a web at first, the area between the veins quickly filling in. It was almost beautiful, save for the ice-burn sensation that had now reached his throat. He thought of Glenda, while he still could. Pray for my soul, my love.

His vision blurred as the freezing wave reached his scalp and lanced behind his eyes, which he squeezed shut. Nausea gripped him and he dry-retched, then it passed. His mind felt like it was being squeezed through a sieve. He found it difficult to focus, impossible to think in anything except loose fragments. Through an effort of will, he remembered Glenda, long gone, their wedding, a younger Bill Kilaney with a full head of jet black hair congratulating him, but then the image lost cohesion. Bill who? He struggled to recall the name, knowing it was important, something was really important, he mustn’t let it go. But what was it? His whole body, from skin to core, felt like it was made of ice. Yet it no longer felt cold, it felt… pure. It had been so dirty before, so confused, all that detritus in his head, floating like scum on the surface of his mind. Impure thoughts drained out of him until his mind was clear as water.

Suddenly he felt powerful, incredibly strong. Opening his eyes, everything was in sepia. It didn’t matter, colour was a distraction. For a few seconds he had no idea who he was, where he was, and why he was. Looking at the view screen, he saw and read the writing on the Holy Messenger. It sang to his soul. Qorall’s sacred scripture, the call to war. He knew immediately what he must do. Hands dancing over the controls, he tried to disable the command override. He shut off the noise from the planet full of infidels about to be saved, deliverance upon them from all their woes. Why did they always protest?

A voice intruded. “Goodnight, Blake.”

Whose voice was that? A face appeared in his mind, someone he once knew, back then a comrade, now an enemy. He shook his head to clear the image; all the past heresy of the biological receptacle he now inhabited must be purged. But none of the ship controls responded. The mother ship was far away, and he suddenly recalled the barbarian Kilaney’s plan, to capture a holy soldier in order to develop a counter-weapon. It could not be allowed. Death rather than capture; the writing was very clear on that. He pulled out his pulse pistol, but his arm grew sluggish. Struggling, he raised the barrel to his temple. His index finger slid into place in front of the trigger. One death to protect the cause, preserving the integrity of Qorall’s swelling army of trillions. An easy choice. But his vision glazed, and he could no longer feel his arm, or move. His last conscious thought was the realization of what this heathen Kilaney had done to him.

◆◆◆

Kilaney closed his eyes and uttered a silent prayer of thanks; he’d activated the stasis field in Blake’s ship just in time, paralyzing him in a temporary state of hibernation, slowing his bodily functions down a hundred-fold. The Dart gathered speed, shot past the planet, and headed to join his Destroyer and the rest of the Zlarasi refugee fleet. As he waited, he watched the planet on the screen. The Orb was almost in orbit, from where it would disintegrate and rain over the doomed world. He was patched through to the planetary commanders.

“It is your decision, but if you want to act, you must do so now.”

A holo appeared of the Zlarasi military commander, her smooth grey-green body with its long neck and small head undulating slowly in a vast ship-based water container, her four paddle-like fins wafting gracefully. A reply came through the onboard Q’Roth translator system.

“None of us can bring ourselves to do it. It is against our… religion. We ask your assistance.”

Kilaney winced as the command codes flashed up in front of him. His bridge crew all turned towards him. It felt like genocide, wiping out a whole planet. Hell, it practically was genocide. Glancing at the other screen, he noted Blake’s Dart land in his holding bay, where it was locked down. “I’m not sure I –”

“End this. We would do the same for you. We will do the same for you when it is your time. Can you not hear them?”

Kilaney touched a control, and for a moment the auto-translation switched off. Keening cries echoed around the bridge, like a choir of tormented whale song; it was the saddest noise he’d ever heard. The Genner Youngblood leader, Brandt, rose from his chair, but Kilaney shook his head. Kilaney began entering the code.

A hissing sound interrupted him, and his finger poised as the noise morphed into words.

“Return the Holy Soldier you have stolen, and we will leave this world untouched.”

Brandt turned around. “It’s coming from the Orb, Sir, though I’m not sure how it’s interfacing with our comms system.”

Kilaney played the words over again in his head, then stared at the screen. The Orb hung silently, motionless above the planet. It should have begun its attack by now.

As Kilaney expected, the Zlarasi came through on comms a second later.

“Commander, this is an unprecedented chance. Return the one they want.”

Kilaney barely breathed. He glanced at Brandt, and said quietly, off-comms, “Raise our shields.”

Brandt frowned but entered the command.

The hissing voice came through again. Kilaney had no doubt the entire fleet and planet could hear it.

“One man in exchange for billions. This is not a ruse. We will leave this system and proceed to the next engagement. This world will be declared neutral territory for the duration of the war.”

Still Kilaney said nothing. He stared down at the flashing panel beneath his hand that awaited the final three digits to destroy the planet.

The Zlarasi communicated again. “Commander Kilaney, you must hand him back. The potential benefits far outweigh the risks. If this was your world you would not hesitate.”

Blake’s words drifted back to Kilaney: This was why Kalaran sent us, Bill, you and me.

Brandt stood up. “Two Zlarasi ships are now on an attack vector towards us, Sir.”

Kilaney nodded. He glanced at the screen showing Blake’s Dart in the hangar.

Brandt posed the question that Kilaney guessed the entire crew was pondering. “Can we trust Qorall? It sounds insane, but there are billions of lives at stake, Sir. Tactically speaking –”

“I’m a General. I don’t do tactics, I do strategies. You’re a Genner. Do the math. Why would Qorall make such an offer, even assuming it is legitimate?”

The Zlarasi commander came online again, her voice elevated. “Commander, we order you to –”

Brandt cut them off, staring at his Commander, standing to attention. “Your call, Sir.”

A boom signalled the first Zlarasi shot impacting the Destroyer’s shields, shortly followed by another.

“I assume we don’t return fire, Sir?” Brandt said.

Kilaney gazed at the hulk-like Genner. This was the young man’s first time in a military engagement, and yet he already made a good first officer. “Correct.”

Kilaney knew there wasn’t much time. His humanity made him hesitate, no matter the brutal logic behind his actions, but he had been Q’Roth for a long time, used to decisions that could mean you never slept soundly for the rest of your life. He entered the final code for planetary self-destruct.

The hissing came through again, despite blocked comms. “You have made a mistake. Your world will pay soon.”

The Zlarasi ships stopped firing, as the Orb lost cohesion, shedding a golden aura of death around the planet.

Ugly scarlet gashes opened up on the planet’s continents as Devourer Class bombs – used for demolition of unstable planets – ignited under its crust. The two small poles blazed white, as the vast oceans first turned from blue to a sickly green, then began to boil. It was fast, but then it had to be. Inwardly, he saluted a race who could make such bold preparations for the greater good, and wondered how mankind would fare when it was their turn.

All his Genner crew stood, transfixed by the image on the screen, except Brandt, who had his head in his hands. Kilaney made himself watch. The planet seemed to swell, as if trying to hold something in, then its entire surface turned lava red, and the world burst apart. He’d seen planets explode before, but never a heavily-inhabited one. For a moment he felt vertigo from what he’d just done, and gripped the armrests of his command chair.

“Open comms to the Zlarasi Commander,” he said, and cleared his throat.

“Commander, I fear I have made an enemy this day, but you must understand my decision.”

“We are Level Six. We understand. One man for billions, one planet for the galaxy. But you must understand that you have lost an ally today. Leave now, take your prize back to Kalaran, and pray your plan works.”

Four Wagramanian vessels appeared, scorching towards Kilaney’s Destroyer from the opposite end of the sector. Kilaney recalled that this Level Seven warrior race had recently been turned by Qorall. It was definitely time to leave.

The Zlarasi Commander continued. “When Qorall’s forces come for your world, we will be there to ensure your integrity.”

That sounded ominous. But in a flash the Zlarasi fleet was gone. Kilaney didn’t bother engaging the Level Seven Wagramanians – he was no match for one of their ships, let alone four.

He leant back into his command chair as the Destroyer prepared for a long range transit. The awful truth of what he had just done settled on him like a crushing weight; billions had just ceased to exist. Despite the strategic advantage, it felt like he had just committed a war crime of unimaginable proportions. His gaze fell again upon the image of Blake’s Dart in the bay. Kilaney knew what it was like to be transformed into the enemy. But this was different; Blake was no more, what was left was a fervent Qorall follower. Whereas Kilaney had wanted to exact revenge for years on his Q’Roth captors, Blake would now willingly die for – and kill for – Qorall. Kilaney had earlier considered going down to the bay and putting a pulse bullet in Blake’s brain, so he could bury the man while his memory of him remained untarnished. But after what he himself had just done, that was no longer an option. He would see Blake’s idea through to the end, including terminating what was left of Blake if – when – necessary.

War was always like this in his experience; terrible deeds, tragedies, injustices, and crimes. Only in peacetime did any kind of justice and morality reassert itself. Those who called for war never understood until it was too late. And now he had committed one of those terrible deeds, and even if it was for the greater good, Kilaney knew there had to be a personal price to pay. The only course of action left to him personally, the only path to any kind of redemption, was to die in battle.

Brandt attracted his attention. The Wagramanians were almost in firing range.

Though Kilaney was sure he’d had worse days, none came to mind.

“Brandt, get us out of here, quickest route home.”

Kilaney sank back in his command chair, wishing he could crawl out of his skin. But he would see this through. Kalaran, time for you to show us what a Level Nineteen being can do.

CHAPTER 6

Savange

Micah couldn’t deny the space station was impressive. Staring through a view screen the width of Shiva’s command bridge, he studied the Alician stronghold floating in space three kilometres away, tethered to the planet Savange, and was thankful for the null field hiding Shiva from any external sensors. The slowly rotating disc-like station was studded with metal spires and flying buttresses, and peppered with particle beam turrets. A surrounding oval bubble glistened in the distant sun’s orange rays; the Alicians’ orbital spaceport was well-shielded. A taut silver thread attached the station to the planet’s equatorial region; this tether was the most obvious target. Two Q’Roth warships patrolled the region, completely black except for Spartan green lights that slowly pulsed. The ships would no doubt react to any incursion with extreme force. Micah hadn’t yet tested Shiva’s capabilities, but a fire-fight at this stage would jeopardise the mission. For now, silence and invisibility were the best strategies.

His eyes traced the tether downwards to the Alician home world Savange, to the purple and green continent edging its way out of darkness, a smudge of yellow light marking the city where the human captives were most probably held. He walked over to the view screen, felt its cool surface first with his fingertips, then his forehead. “Hold on; we’re coming,” he said, his breath momentarily misting the screen. In his mind’s eye two faces arose, tugging him towards the planet’s surface. Micah would have come halfway across the galaxy if there had only been these two women – or even just one of them – amongst the sixty stolen by the Alicians. No matter that neither of them was his. He had to assume they were unharmed, or else he couldn’t function, and would endanger the mission. Do your job, he told himself; stay focused.

Pushing off from the view screen, he returned to his command chair set apart from the other seats and consoles, all currently vacant, arranged in an arc behind him. The lights were always low on Shiva, and the ridged, mottled brown ceiling made him feel he was inside a powerful whale. It suited his mood.

Ash entered through the arch at the rear of the bridge. The ship’s innards were a maze of corridors connecting larger enclosures, no doors anywhere. None of them were used to it yet. Ash walked barefoot, as usual, hands clasped behind his back. Ash reminded Micah of a priest; no, not a priest, a holy man. Micah had asked him why he’d changed his name from Rashid to Ash. He’d replied it was a diminutive form, but Micah didn’t buy it. There was something else. Ash had seen marvels on his inter-galactic ‘sabbatical’ before returning to this galaxy, and clearly they had left their mark on him, so much so he’d altered his persona, and his name. Yet Micah was accustomed to it now, and felt it suited him better.

Ash’s head jiggled when he spoke, an Indistani habit. He flicked a hand toward the view screen. “They do not know we are here?”

Micah shook his head. “They’d attack if they did. We’d look small and relatively defenceless.” He glanced at the command holosphere hovering to his left, each convex square on its gridded surface showing a key parameter, one of them the field around Shiva keeping the ship invisible to sight and scans. It indicated a stable shade of green. He frowned. “However, sending a Rapier down to the planet’s surface might be problematic.”

Ash’s voice was unperturbed. “Ramires is working on it. He will find a way.”

Micah’s gaze returned to the space station. Although Alicians were just two genetic steps ahead of humanity, and only one ahead of Genners, their tech level was far more advanced. Back on Earth scientists had long dreamed of – but never been able to construct – a ‘skyhook’, an orbital platform tethered to the planet by a single thread of super-strong alloy. Like an upside-down plumb line, the planet’s rotation kept everything in place. The tether also served as an elevator, able to transport people or goods up to the station and down to the surface. Micah decided it might prove useful later as an escape route, so it was best left intact.

The stark beauty of the space station irked him. The Alicians had achieved so much in the past eighteen years since they quit Earth’s charred corpse, whereas mankind’s remnants barely survived above subsistence level, having returned almost to an agrarian status. The adage ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’ evidently applied at the galactic level; the Alicians had powerful allies, willing to share advanced technology. At least the Kalarash being named Hellera had provided Micah with Shiva, a ship way beyond Alician and even Q’Roth technology. Still, it was all so damned unfair, not that fairness had any currency when it came to galactic survival.

Ash cleared his throat. “Perhaps Ramires was right about the Nova bomb.”

“No,” Micah said. He’d been very clear on that issue.

Ash’s head stilled, bowing a fraction. He turned to leave.

“I’m sending you both down to the surface.”

Ash’s head turned back towards the purple and green ball hanging in star-speckled darkness on the view screen.

“I want you to try the cloak, Ash. See if it works.” Micah smiled. “We have no privacy aboard this ship anyway.”

Ash nodded and walked to the arch. Micah called after him, still staring at the station, wondering how many Alicians were aboard.

“Ash, you must have seen so many strange things on your travels: wonders, horrors. You never talk about it.” He broke away from the screen to face Ash’s skinny frame, and stared straight into his all-black eyes; Mannekhi eyes given to Ash by Kalaran, the reason only recently made apparent.

“What most affected you?” Micah asked.

An air of sadness imbued Ash’s words. “The rarity of compassion.”

Micah didn’t buy it, guessing that Ash’s response was intended as a message. I’m not the one you need to convince. He watched him leave, then reached out for the holo-cube, twisted it, and tapped one square. It expanded into a single table-top sized square of information: weapons status. The Nova bomb was still there, locked down in the weapons bay. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Ramires…

He decided to check in with him, Shiva instantaneously opening up a one-to-one channel between him and Ramires, so that no one else heard. Micah presumed this was based on the use of Ramires’ name, as well as context and the tone of the speaker’s voice.

“Ramires, any prog–”

“I’ve found a weakness in their detection grid. We can get a Rapier down there, next window eight hours.”

Ramires’ voice was cutting and urgent; fair enough, given that his son had been killed only a month ago and his wife was one of the captives down on Savange. Micah took a breath, and broadened the communication parameters. “Listen up everyone, briefing in six hours. Until then get some rest.”

There were no replies; he didn’t expect any. Like him, everyone wanted to act, not hang around in orbit. Although he’d told the others to get some rest, he pulled out a small rectangular patch from his chest pocket and pressed it to the side of his neck. A cold flush bristled across his face and neck, then trickled down his spine. He shivered once, discarded the patch, then began planning strategies and tactics, back-up plans, and back-ups to the back-ups, using the resident in his brain to help him store and compare the scenarios. In his training back on Earth as an Optron analyst he’d learned that chess masters thought five moves ahead; less and they got beaten, more and it made no difference due to the unreliability of predicting that many steps ahead. But he was dealing with Alicians, so he pushed out the boundaries to seven. His resident informed him there were in excess of two hundred and fifty credible scenarios of varying likelihood. “Thanks,” he said, to the echo-less walls.

Involuntarily the faces of Antonia and Sandy crystallised again in his mind, making him pause. Shiva, constantly scanning Micah’s resident, interrupted him.

<Inquiry: the first one was briefly your lover, and is the wife of Kat; the second is the spouse of Ramires. Yet both women trigger a significant increase in emotional resonance when you think of them. Which of these two women is more important to you?>

Micah clamped his lips shut, tried not to get angry, the soft option given the broiling cocktail of emotions lurking just beneath his skin. His close connection with the ship mind left him even less privacy than the rest of the crew. Before leaving Esperia, he’d been told that Shiva was designed to anticipate its captain’s wishes. He figured Shiva wanted to know his priorities, especially in case not all of the captives could be rescued, and a choice had to be made. But Micah didn’t want to answer, and wasn’t sure he knew anyway.

“It’s a dynamic variable, Shiva. If that decision comes up, I will decide at the time.”

<Understood.>

Micah almost laughed. I doubt it. He nudged the images of the two women out of his mind and got down to work.

◆◆◆

Ash stood in his quarters, holding the cloaking device in his hand, a small yellow rod the size of a cigar. He had asked Shiva how it worked, its scientific principles, but the ship’s mind had replied by asking how good his hyper-math was, at which point Ash had shrugged. It had practically no weight. Attaching it to his belt, he activated it and felt absolutely nothing, no change, no tingling on his body. Walking up to the mirror he used each day for shaving and brushing his teeth, he saw, instead of his face, the opposite wall and the archway to his room. After moving left and right to check that he was definitely in front of the mirror, he laughed aloud. He tweaked the control to attenuate any further sounds he might make: his breathing, footsteps, even disturbance of the air around him. Then, with an almost mischievous grin, he set off.

The first cabin he came to was occupied by Vashta, the Level Eight Ossyrian doctor, sitting on her hind legs at a small console, mercurial eyes in her dog-like face dancing over an alien script Ash didn’t recognise. He’d only met Vashta a week ago, but had been impressed by her complete and selfless concentration on whatever task she was set. She had a mane of jet-black fur. Her Pharaoh-like headdress made up of horizontal bars of gold, red and blue, was propped up on a chair next to her cot; he’d not seen her without it before. Her pointed ears remained back, not detecting him, not even his scent. With a shock Ash realised she was naked; never mind that she was an entirely different species and covered head-to-paw with fur. Feeling his face flush, he backed out of the room. At least the cloak-field worked. But he needed to test it on more subjects.

Next he headed to the cabin of the brunette Aramisk, the stocky, not unattractive but somewhat abrasive female Mannekhi, the only other humanoid race any of them had encountered. He shared one thing in common with her and all other Mannekhi: all-black eyes, including the irises. But he was surprised to find Kat in the room, and intrigued to find the two of them standing very close, Aramisk’s hands on Kat’s slender waist.

“Aramisk,” Kat was saying, “I told you before. It was just once. You know I’m here to rescue Antonia, to bring her back so we can be together again.”

Aramisk’s firm hands glided up Kat’s thin, almost boyish torso, then one hand reached up and stroked her face and black, short-cropped hair. Kat didn’t pull away.

“And I will help you find her. But we Mannekhi work differently, we separate the present from the future. Here, let me show you.” Aramisk pulled Kat towards her and kissed her full on the mouth. Kat resisted at first, but Ash could see it was only half-hearted, and soon Kat had her hands locked around Aramisk’s neck, kissing her back.

Ash found himself outside the cabin, his head reeling. He recalled that two days earlier Vashta had made a seemingly innocuous remark over crew dinner, that Mannekhi pheromones were far stronger than humans were used to. Now he understood, though he had no idea how Vashta had put it together so quickly. He wondered if he should tell Micah; it could affect the mission. But he knew he wouldn’t.

Composing himself, he found his way to Ramires’ cabin, where the last-surviving, grey-moustached Sentinel was dressed only in shorts, performing a martial arts kata with a metal staff, a thin sheen of sweat over his muscled torso. Abruptly, eight metallic holo-spheres appeared, surrounding Ramires, each with a single blue meridian running around them. They flew towards the warrior. Ash was mesmerised. Ramires dodged and struck them exactly on their equatorial lines, with two ice blue, ultra-thin foot-long blades that flashed out from each end of his staff. Ramires’ feet left the ground, and he twisted through the air. The only sounds were sharp, ringing clangs as he guillotined the spheres one by one. Ramires landed in a semi-kneeling position, head down, one arm stretched outwards, the other gripping the staff, its nano-blades retracted. The last of the hemispheres rolled to a stop on the floor and vanished. Ash, trained in martial arts himself, but nowhere near Ramires’ level, resisted a strong urge to applaud. Then he reminded himself that on Savange, if it came to hand-to-hand combat, Ramires would be surrounded by an entire population of Alicians, all faster and tougher than humans; he wondered how many Ramires could fight off if it came to it. An image formed in his head of a battle scene with a lone Sentinel defending himself against appalling odds. Ash shook himself; it felt too much like a premonition.

Ramires hadn’t moved, and his breathing didn’t seem laboured. The only sign of effort during the exercise had been his greying ponytail flinging out behind him as he’d spun through the air. But Ramires’ head jerked upwards suddenly, and he glared toward the archway where Ash stood. Without warning, he flung the staff at the doorway. Ash ducked, the bar brushing the hair on the top of his head before clanking against the corridor wall. Ramires’ eyes glared at the entrance, as Ash slowly moved to one side. Then Ramires seemed to relax. “I must be getting twitchy in my old age,” he said. He walked over to retrieve the staff. Ash decided not to push his luck, and departed.

His last port of call was back at the bridge, where he found Micah poring over a luminous console, an array of images of all sixty captives decorating its surface. Ash’s brow creased, and he felt the heaviness in his shoulders that he supposed Micah carried all the time. Added into the mix was the risk factor: they might simply fail in their mission, or lose some of the people in the extraction. But at least the captives were alive for now. Micah’s fingers touched one of the images softly, a woman’s face; Ash was surprised to see who it was. Then the images vanished and Micah spun around.

“It works, then,” he said, looking straight into Ash’s eyes.

Ash was nonplussed. He disabled the field, then he got it. “Shiva, yes?”

Micah tapped his temple. “When you entered the bridge she patched your image through to my resident. Now go get some rest, Ash, and keep it turned it off. Shiva says if you use it for more than a couple of hours you’ll begin to fade.”

Ash nodded; he disliked subterfuge. “That must be a joke, yes?”

Micah shrugged. “You think Shiva, Level Fifteen sentient tech, has a sense of humour?” He shook his head. “Something to do with cellular fatigue.”

Ash jiggled his head, and decided a few hours’ sleep might be a good thing.

“Oh, and Ash… The image I was looking at, just now. Don’t tell Ramires. He’s got enough on his mind already, and –”

Ash held up a hand and smiled. “What image?”

Micah nodded. “Right. See you soon.”

Micah turned around again, summoning tactical holo-displays and maps of Savange’s only city, where they believed the captives were being held. As Micah was engulfed by translucent displays, Ash took one last look, remembering what an uncle had once told him, that if you wall off your heart and deny its feelings, it turns in on itself, and eventually seeks its own destruction. The Buddhist solution was to let go, but few could, and he doubted Micah knew how. Ash left the bridge.

Back in his room, he recalled some of the things he’d seen on his travels with Jen, Dimitri and Kalaran: the birth of a new star, the rainbow planets of the Hasrian galaxy, and the heart-wrenching death-song of the Daphnaea males, to name but a few. He’d witnessed horrors, too, and now they had one in their own galaxy: Qorall. Ash wished this business on Savange could be over soon; there were larger stakes to consider. He hadn’t been entirely truthful when Micah had asked him what had affected him the most. It had been something that had left an indelible imprint on his mind, one that would be with him until his end.

Kalaran had taken them to the Jannahi galaxy, the place where the Kalarash had evolved two billion years earlier, where Qorall had last waged war. Ash had witnessed the utter desolation of a dead galaxy. There had been no light, all the galaxy’s suns long since extinguished in the death-throes of the war. Kalaran’s ship had lit up space around it like a lonely flare as they coursed through fields of asteroid-sized debris that stretched across thousands of light years, occasionally finding blackened chunks of unknowable technology drifting amongst the space-dust. They’d spent two weeks there, during which time Kalaran refused any contact. Jen had become distraught, worried about Kalaran, but Ash had understood: it had been a lesson, a vision of what could happen if they lost the current fray with Qorall.

After they left, he asked the others to call him Ash from then on. Asha, meaning ‘hope’, had been his middle name, he told them, and they bought it. The truth was different, however; he never wanted to forget what could happen if they failed, that an entire galaxy could be reduced to ash.

Kat interrupted his thoughts, knocking on the entrance to his quarters, looking a little sheepish. As usual she tried to brazen it out.

“Hi Ash. Can’t sleep either?”

He ignored her dishevelled and wary look, and beamed at her. “I was just about to make some herb tea, would you like some?”

She nodded, wandered over to a large orange cushion and plonked herself down on it.

“Ah, not there,” he said, “I was about to meditate. Take the bed.”

Kat didn’t hesitate, and flopped onto it, the way a child might: face down, arms spread wide. By the time he’d brewed the tea she was fast asleep. He sat in a lotus position on the cushion, setting the cracked china cup on the floor before him, staring into the steam, inhaling the smell of cinnamon and cloves, letting it cleanse his mind.

What had also affected him on his travels was the sheer, incomprehensible vastness of the universe. People, and most aliens too, rushed around as if anything they did really mattered in the larger – or longer – scheme of things. But Qorall had to be stopped, and it seemed humanity had a role to play. His gaze drifted to Kat’s inert form. She had met Qorall, after a fashion, though she would give few details. Only one other human – that is, he corrected himself, Alician – had had that dubious privilege: Louise, the new Alician leader, just returned to Savange.

He picked up his cup, closed his eyes and inhaled the aroma, then sipped the spiced tea, letting the cup’s heat warm his hands, and considered their situation. Qorall knew about humanity now, they had moved out of obscurity into the foreground, either because they were the guardians of the Spider-race on Esperia, or due to their association with Kalaran; probably both. He sipped some more tea, then set down the cup. He thought of his long dead wife and two daughters, the love they had all shared, and the more recent affair with Zack’s wife – now widow – Sonja. The hollowness he’d been running away from for the past year took root once more. This time he held back from closing it off, didn’t deny it; he refrained from walling off his own heart. How easily we see our own faults in others. Ash had had little to live for in recent years, but plenty of others did. He let his grief and anger wash through him, he let them have their voice. His lip trembled, but he maintained his upright posture. After a while his inner storm abated, but it left behind a residue of conviction. He chastised himself for having been aloof and self-centred; it honoured neither his family nor his ancestors. Quietly he rose from the cushion and stole from his room.

He met Aramisk in the corridor coming out of her quarters, the unruly state of her hair and half-fastened clothing suggesting she had just woken. He barred her way.

She looked a little flustered. “Have you seen Kat, she’s not in her –”

“Kat is asleep in my room. If you truly care for her, leave her wits in one piece before we engage the Alicians.”

Aramisk’s mouth fell open, but Ash walked on before she could reply. He heard her retreat back towards her quarters.

At least Ramires and Vashta were asleep in their chambers.

He entered the bridge and walked straight through the holograms swamping the command chair and its lone occupant.

Micah looked up, surprised. “Ash, I thought I told you to get some rest?”

“When I am dead, I will rest. Now, show me your plans, Micah, all of them, including those for the Spider Louise captured, whom I assume you intend to destroy rather than rescue.”

Micah folded his arms, and cast Ash a quizzical look. “First, a question.” Micah paused. “I know you used to be a commando back in the war on Earth, but, well… Look, there’s no easy way to say it. While you and Jen and Dimitri were travelling outside the galaxy with Kalaran, for you a year passed, for us it was eighteen. But you seem to have changed more than us, you seem more, I don’t know… philosophical?” Micah pushed himself up straighter in his chair. “Ash, it comes down to this. Are you willing to kill if necessary? Because if not, I’ll send someone –”

“I will kill if required, Micah. Now, please, the plans.”

Micah nodded, and began rearranging holos so Ash could see them in the right sequence.

As Ash studied them, he realised close-quarters combat was almost inevitable, and he knew the Alicians would fight to the death to retain the captives, as their very existence depended upon it. Now that he saw the scenarios right in front of him, including some where they might have to kill guards in cold blood, he wondered if he had just lied to Micah.

CHAPTER 7

Insurance

Louise didn’t like surprises; life already had enough of them. She entered the glass booth replete with monitors on each side of a bay window looking over a darkened arena.

“Why am I here exactly?”

Lexa, one of her new Achillia, the six-strong elite personal guard inherited from Sister Esma, gave a faint smile. “Sister Esma kept this secret from almost everyone, Your Eminence –”

“Don’t call me that. Louise will do fine.”

Lexa nodded slowly, then continued. “Sister Esma called this her insurance policy, in case she didn’t make it back.” She cleared her throat. “You will see.” She touched a pad and the lights in the booth dimmed, while those in the arena came on, lighting it up as if it was in daylight.

They both stared through the glass to the sim-floor below, a reconstruction of a section of the human’s sprawling city, Esperantia. Single storey buildings with white walls and zinc roofs lined a dusty unpaved street beneath a hazy orange sky. Louise was a little surprised at the basic amenities, compared to the beauty and technological complexity of the Alician metropolis on Savange; she’d assumed humanity would have done better. You’ve disappointed me again, Micah.

Human figures stood motionless, lifelike automatons she presumed had been fabricated from a Q’Roth training ship: expensive to fashion, easily damaged and usually non-repairable. Whatever this insurance was, it wasn’t cheap.

Lexa activated a holo-field and donned a black sense-glove. She clicked her finger and thumb, and as one the people began to move. The noises of day-to-day humdrum lives flooded Louise’s ears through the monitors. She watched them; none of the automatons were alive in any real sense. But Louise recognised a few faces, and guessed the function of the simulation. She held up a hand, and Lexa paused the simulation.

“Show me the principal targets.”

Lexa’s fingers danced and twisted in the holo-field. The sky dimmed. Five stalactites of light shone down on four men and one woman in different locations in the town. Louise glanced from one to the other as Lexa used focusers to zoom in: Blake, Vasquez, Ramires, Jennifer, and Micah. Louise understood. The first and last were the leaders, the priority targets. Vasquez and Ramires were military, the first a colonel, the second a Sentinel, the last left alive. There was a readout next to each figure, and this particular automaton, Ramires, had been programmed with a very high level of fighting skills, as much as human muscles, tendons and skeletal structure could handle – which was less than an Alician. Louise didn’t know why the woman Jennifer was there.

Lexa took a breath. “A man is about to enter. He is a clone who has been kept in stasis for some time, and doesn’t know this is a simulation. Once he enters, I cannot pause the simulation. You will see why.”

Louise eyed Lexa, who busied herself with her monitors. “Continue,” she said.

The five lights shut off and the scene resumed. A man with goat-black hair and a taut body walked onto the scene. Louise stood up, and uttered his name. “Gabriel!”

Lexa spoke. “Sister Esma said you met him once, back on Earth. As I said, he is a clone, not the original. Before Sister Esma had the real Gabriel killed, she cut off one of his fingers so as to have enough DNA, and downloaded his memories using a Q’Roth extractor. But he has been grown here, and is Alician in his mind, though he has the reflexes, knowledge and partial memory patterns of the original. The danger, however, is that his memories overwhelm his Alician conditioning, hence the simulation. But if he succeeds –”

“We send him to Esperia. He would be the perfect assassin.” Louise knew about this process, being herself a clone. If you tried to partition the memories, the process usually failed, and you ended up with a walking vegetable. But the risk was that he reverted to the original Gabriel’s morals and loyalties. Then he would be very dangerous to Alicians, especially Louise.

“Yes, but to be clear, he is not an automaton, he is real flesh and blood. The simulation below is real, and they can kill him.”

Louise smiled. Insurance policy indeed, Sister Esma had considered all the risks, all the outcomes, as ever. She regained her seat, then leaned forward as Lexa zoomed in to the action.

Blake and Vasquez were discussing something as the clone – Louise decided to think of him as Gabriel for now – approached them.

Blake faced him. “Can I help you? You look lost. I don’t recall seeing you before.”

Vasquez moved to one side, his right fingertips making contact with the hilt on his pulse pistol.

“You’re Blake, aren’t you?” Gabriel said.

“You have the advantage, son. What’s your name?”

Gabriel didn’t squint or shade his eyes, despite the simulated late afternoon sun shining on his face. “Gabriel.”

Vasquez spoke while his fingers slipped around the pistol’s hilt. “Nobody of that name lives here. Gabriel was a hero, revered by us all, his acts in the last days of Earth –”

“That was me.” He inspected the ground for a moment, then looked back up at Blake. “I am Gabriel.”

As he finished the sentence his left foot whipped out and snapped Vasquez’ wrist, his fist ramming at the same time into Blake’s solar plexus. As Blake doubled over, trying to grab his own weapon, Gabriel snatched it and fired at Vasquez without looking at him, catching the white-haired Colonel with a blast to the face that punched him off his feet, dead before he hit the floor. Gabriel’s right arm wrapped around Blake’s throat, then he dropped to his knees, snapping Blake’s neck with a sickening crunch.

Louise watched. This was basic, not yet a real test. Any Alician warrior would have gotten this far.

Gabriel crouched behind Blake’s crumpled corpse and fired six times at the militia men and women running towards the scene. For a moment everything stilled as their bodies skidded into the dust. Then Gabriel walked calmly to the nearest house, where a family stood watching, too bewildered to run inside. Knocking the father down, Gabriel dragged the woman and daughter into the house, slamming the door shut behind him. A monitor to Louise’s left lit up, showing the view inside the room. She watched as he signalled to the woman and girl to stay quiet, placing a forefinger across his lips.

The door burst open, a tattooed warrior stripped to the waist framed in the smashed doorway, holding a thin metal rod in his hand.

Louise stood; this would be a good test. She wondered if the nanosword was real, then decided it couldn’t be, it must be a simulation – no Alician, not even Sister Esma, had managed to capture one.

Gabriel touched the girl’s forehead with the barrel of the pistol and nodded his head toward the nanosword.

Ramires frowned, and tossed the sword to the floor. “Gabriel, if that’s really you… what the hell are you doing? You fought to save these people. We’re on the same side. You and I had the same Master, Cheveyo. You’re a Sentinel!”

Gabriel tossed the pistol towards the nanosword. He approached Ramires, stood in a loose boxing stance, and held up his right fist.

Ramires shook his head, but followed suit. Their wrists touched lightly.

“This is madness, Gabriel. What have they done to you?”

Louise stilled her breathing, and didn’t blink.

For several seconds neither man moved, then Ramires’ fist blurred forward like a piston, but Gabriel deflected it and his left fist pummelled into Ramires’ stretched ribs. A monitor to Louise’s left showed that Gabriel had just driven two of Ramires’ ribs into his lung. Ramires tried to counter with a savage back-hand strike to Gabriel’s temple, but Gabriel ducked low, as he spun around, sweeping his leg into Ramires’ ankles, sending him crashing onto the floor. Gabriel’s open hand axed into Ramires’ windpipe, crushing his Adam’s apple. He then pinned Ramires to the floor while Ramires simultaneously choked to death and drowned as his lungs filled with blood.

“They showed me the truth,” Gabriel answered.

Louise doubted it would be so easy to kill the real Ramires; she’d seen a vid of him dispatching two Q’Roth warriors back on Esperia. Still, the clone was good.

The woman and girl ran shouting and screaming outside, and were joined by many voices, including one Gabriel should have recognised from his childhood.

Louise sat back down again. Now she understood why Jennifer was there. “If he fails to kill his sister?”

Lexa didn’t take her eyes off the scene. “Then the conditioning has failed, and we will terminate him.”

Louise watched.

“Gabe,” Jennifer shouted, “they’re going to kill you. There’s no way out. For God’s sake come out and surrender. Gabe, let me see you at least. They told me you were dead. Whatever has happened –”

Lexa touched a pad and studied a Q’Roth display, speaking softly. “We implanted a reader in him, to know what he’s thinking more or less – he doesn’t know it’s there, by the way. It wouldn’t work on a normal subject, Alician or human, but we built the infrastructure into his brain while he was being grown.”

Louise smiled. Just like Sister Esma: insurance on the insurance.

Lexa continued. “Right now he’s remembering playing with Jen when they were children. But he judges that she picked the wrong side, killed thousands of the Chosen Ones. He does care for her, but considers it’s better to end her confusion before she can do more damage. She’s been seduced by Micah and the others.” Lexa frowned.

“What?”

“He’s struggling with the decision. This is Jen, his sister, his one true soul-mate.” Lexa sighed.

“He’s not the first clone, is he?”

Lexa shook her head. “The first four failed here or earlier. He is the last, there’s not enough original DNA left to fashion another clone.” She brightened. “His confusion has passed. There!” Lexa pointed at a display of his physiology – his breathing deepened. Louise recognised it: Sentinel breath, long, deep and slender. He waited behind the door. A crowd had gathered outside.

“Is Micah there?” he said, not bothering to shout.

“I’m here Gabriel.” There was a pause. “It’s been a long time.”

Lexa nodded to Louise and pointed to a line on the thought monitor, confirming that Gabriel remembered their brief encounter back on Earth.

He picked up the nanosword, activated a control to make the hilt more pliable, anchored it inside his left sleeve against his bicep, where it stuck and moulded to his flesh.

“I’m coming out, Micah.”

Louise stood up.

Lexa joined her this time. “He’s almost there,” she said, not concealing her excitement.

As soon as he was through the door, heavy arms took hold of him, bent him to the floor, cuffed his hands behind his back, and clamped his feet together. He was dragged in front of Micah. Jennifer was there as well, a picture of anguish. She started to say something to Micah, pleading for her brother’s life.

Lexa zoomed in on Gabriel. He flexed his bicep and straightened his left arm a little, and the hilt of the nanosword detached and slid down into his left palm. The cuffs looked tight, but he activated the nanoblade, and with a flick of his wrist he sliced through the wire chaining his hands and feet, then whipped around and flashed the blade in front of Micah, who stared a moment, trying to work out what had just happened, before his head and body separated, both toppling to the ground. Jennifer’s eyes went wide as Gabriel sunk the blade into her heart, then rushed forward to catch her collapsing body.

“Lexa,” Louise said.

A dozen pulse barrels pressed against Gabriel’s head, their tell-tale whines rising as they charged...

“LEXA!”

The scene froze, all except for Gabriel, who let go of his sister and stood up, searching. Lexa touched another control and Gabriel staggered a few steps before falling to the floor, unconscious.

“Apologies, I was caught up –”

“Never mind. You’ve done well. Debrief him. Tell him everything, then bring him to me.” After a moment she called after Lexa. “I can’t call him Gabriel. Does he have another name, or do you have one for him?”

“You honour me… Louise. We could call him Toran,” Lexa said. “My father’s name. He was killed during the Liberation.”

Louise had almost forgotten the Alician name given to the sacking of Earth, since for them it had meant the freeing of Alicians after centuries of living in the shadows, hunted down by Sentinels.

“So be it. Tell Toran his new name. And you are no longer part of my Achillia.”

Lexa bowed her head. “I have disappointed you.”

“Not at all. I need someone as a personal aide. I’ve been away too long. You see, I don’t even know what title you should have.”

Lexa bowed deeper, then stood straight. “I will be your Hara.”

Louise watched Lexa depart, then leant forwards, her fingertips on the glass as she gazed down at the frozen scene, focusing on the corpses. Micah would come to Savange, probably Ramires, too. After they’d been dealt with, she would send Toran to Esperia. Insurance was a waste of money unless one day you cashed it in.

CHAPTER 8

Machines

Jen felt a trickle of sweat run down her spine inside her spacesuit. She panted, her re-circulated air hot from all the running. She leaned against the smooth wall for a moment’s respite and glanced at Dimitri. He was bent double, large hands planted on his knees, chest and shoulders heaving; he wasn’t cut out for this. But the husk was closing on them. She checked the pad again: two choices as always, now that they were in the bottom layer of the maze of tunnels left by the Tla Beth caretaker: left or right. It had been thirty-five minutes since they’d woken the Machine remnant, and now it was hunting them down.

Left or right? She had to decide quickly, the maze wasn’t infinite, and they mustn’t get caught in a dead end. But it could move faster than them – it didn’t have to choose at each juncture, merely follow their path. Luckily, two of Jen’s drones were still working, and were tracking it from a safe distance. She didn’t know what it looked like now, but from the blip on the pad she could see that it had grown in size, larger than her and Dimitri put together.

She checked the map on the pad, planning the next five turns ahead. It was tricky, because according to the drones, the husk was leaving some kind of residue behind it, and she didn’t want to risk entering any tunnels it had already been down. She could almost laugh; it was as if they were stuck in a child’s cheap holo-game, trying to stay ahead of a monster eating the path as it chased them. And now they were on the last, deepest layer in the game, and she couldn’t see a way out, except to keep running.

Without warning, the ground shook, knocking her to the floor, Dimitri just managing to stay on his feet. She assumed it was another hit from Qorall; the strikes were arriving more frequently. Ukrull had said the planet had unusual properties, making it hard to destroy using ‘conventional’ weapons, whatever that meant in Level Fifteen parlance. But Qorall was Level Nineteen; so it was only a matter of time. She hoped Ukrull and Pierre had made it out of the system.

She got to her feet. “Left,” she said, and they sprinted down the tunnel. They came to an open chamber, and she slid to a halt. Before them was an array of upright, shiny cigar-shaped objects, each one about six metres in length. She recognised them as the weapons the Tla Beth had used against the Level Sixteen attackers. There was no obvious means of propulsion, nor any device to launch them, nor hatches leading to the planet’s surface. Level Seventeen, she reminded herself; why should she understand how they worked? And in any case it wasn’t her priority.

“Do you think it might prefer these to us?” She doubted it; in her experience good fortune usually slid downhill out of her grasp.

“No, if… I am right… it is… hunting organic material,” Dimitri said, between pained gasps, as he blinked hard and tried to catch his breath.

He didn’t complain, nor did he look at her. Yet she knew him well. He would be feeling ashamed he had never kept fit, that he was endangering her. She kept expecting him to tell her to go on without him, which was exactly when she would tell him to go to hell and keep moving. But he said nothing.

“Let’s go,” she said, and set off at a slightly slower trot.

She knew he was right about the husk. It wanted them: the only organic material on this dead planet. They’d passed other stashes of Tla Beth equipment earlier and it hadn’t even slowed down to take a look. Pierre had briefed them before their descent that it would need an energy source to re-awaken, and Jen’s nanosword had provided that. But the power of the Machine race was in their ability to replicate, and the planet was ten kilometres deep with inert metal residue. So, given that the planet was under attack from Qorall, she’d assumed the husk would simply replicate and engage in battle. Wrong. And now she and her lover were running out of both time and tunnels.

Next junction. She glanced at the pad. The husk had just entered the section behind them. “Right!” she shouted, and dashed down the tunnel. Dimitri’s wheezing rattled over the intercom. Just keep running, Dimitri, please.

Jen tried to reason it out for herself; she was sure Dimitri already knew, but he needed all his oxygen for his muscles, not speech. The Machines were based on organic metal; she didn’t really know what that was, presuming it was a metal that was literally alive and grew. But what if it needed a small amount of living organic material, either as a base or as a catalyst in order to replicate? If it took one strand of DNA per replication, then she and Dimitri would offer the husk the chance to replicate billions of times.

Her helmet torch-beams lit up a cathedral-like chamber ahead. But she skidded to a stop as the floor disappeared. Cave-in. Shit. She glanced at the pad; the husk was in the tunnel behind. Dimitri bumped into her, almost sending her over the edge, and peered over her shoulder. The floor had collapsed, no doubt due to Qorall’s bombing, and she couldn’t see the bottom. Her mind raced.

“Thrusters, Dimitri. We have to go down now. Are you ready?”

“Always, my love.”

She should have heard it in his voice – the way he said it like an epitaph – before she leapt downwards. But no sooner had she started falling, her thrusters almost depleted from the initial descent to the planet, than she knew Dimitri was not following.

Panic seized her. She flipped around and stared upwards. “Dimitri, don’t you fucking dare! Come on, we can still escape!”

She saw his helmet peering over the ledge as she tried to flare her thrusters to ascend again, but it was no use.

He gasped a few more urgent words. “Tla Beth… must… have…”

No. Not like this. No, no, NO! She tapped her visor to zoom in as she fell, not caring where the floor was, her thrusters sputtering. Something was behind him. His body stilled. Shadows of black dust grew up his legs, over his torso, creeping towards his helmet. On maximum zoom she could just make out his large eyes, baleful, remaining open until dust encrusted his helmet and took on a shinier, metallic form. Through the intercom, she heard his last breath being sucked out of him, and she knew the Machine had taken him.

Jen screamed, an anguished, deafening cry inside her helmet. She couldn’t believe it; the one thing about Dimitri was that he was always so full of life. A flood of memories of their life together skated across her mind: seeing him for the first time lecturing in Athens University when he captured her heart; seducing him a week later in his office; cramped together in a submersible in the depths of the Mariana Trench where they located the first Q’Roth ship; finding Dimitri looking so ragged and alone in the caves on Esperia after she’d sent him away; and in Kalaran’s vast ship where they’d spent the past year, a year she’d never wanted to end. The galaxy had just stupidly thrown away a brilliant, vibrant mind. It didn’t make sense.

She called out to him again, somehow hoping he would reply, knowing it was futile. Jen found it hard to breathe. She wanted more than anything to get out of her damned suit.

And then she decided.

Still falling, barely able to see Dimitri up on the ledge, Jen’s hands moved to her helmet seals. She’d never been religious, but she’d always believed that if your lover died, there was a short moment when maybe, just maybe, you could go with him, be with him forever. The time with Dimitri eclipsed everything else. Besides, the husk would get her soon. Better to go this way. She knew he’d stayed above to give her a chance, but it was her life, hers to do with as she pleased. She hooked her index fingers under the release catches and took a breath, just as the ground slammed into her, knocking her out cold.

When Jen roused, she lay there, not moving, as if dead on the rocks. For a moment she forgot what had happened, and turned left and right searching for her lover. Then she remembered, waking fully into her nightmare. Her breathing became ragged, and a wave of pure grief rose through her chest and up into her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, as her gloved fingers clawed at the ground, her body trembling.

She didn’t know how long she stayed there. Eventually three thoughts seeped into her mind; first, that the window of opportunity to join Dimitri had closed. He would be glad of that, and would have chided her for even considering suicide. Second, the husk had not come to harvest her as it had her lover. Third, Qorall’s shelling of the planet had stopped. She reckoned the last two were linked; the husk had enough genetic material – for now – to begin its defence against Qorall. But if the legends of the Machine race were true, its appetite for replication was insatiable, so it would return for her.

Jen got up slowly, and checked herself over: bruised, but nothing broken. She’d been lucky. But her one remaining torch beam faltered. A passageway far across the field of rubble beckoned. Memorising the rock pattern between her and the opening, she turned off her torch to conserve power and began making her way across the boulders. She had no plan, but Dimitri had sacrificed himself so she could live a little longer. After several slips, trips and falls, she reached the mouth of the tunnel, and glanced back upwards to the cliff edge. All was dark.

Her drones hadn’t entered this hidden fifth level, so she had no map, and her pad was smashed from the fall so there was no way to call them. She paused, recalling Dimitri’s last words. He’d been trying to tell her something, something about the Tla Beth. It had built these tunnels. Why had this level been sealed off from the others? What was down here? She played back Dimitri’s words in her head. The Tla Beth must have… And then it came to her: a ship.

Thank you, Dimitri.

The LED on her wrist flashed a dim red; her oxygen supply would fail soon. She ignored it. With one hand stretched out in front of her, the other touching the wall, she walked forward in darkness, in search of the Tla Beth ship. Jen didn’t know if she would be able to access it or use it, assuming she even reached it before her air ran out, but as Dimitri used to say to his students, one leap at a time.

◆◆◆

Pierre had never seen Ukrull so concentrated. His tail was perfectly still, his muscular shoulders hunched over the controls, eyes closed as he mind-plexed a distress call via the Hohash. Pierre held onto his seat, the Ice Pick shaking violently as they tried to outrun Qorall’s black hole. The grinding noise from the engines told him they weren’t going to make it.

Pierre glanced at the display, the dark, insatiable mouth of the vortex, the deadliest natural phenomenon in the galaxy, continuously sucking them towards it, as if it only ever breathed in. As an astrophysicist back on Earth he’d studied black holes, and had always found their awesome power fascinating. But soon it would crush them, absorbing them into its singularity. No being, no matter what Level, had ever come back from one.

This black hole sat amidst a translucent dark green swathe of space, like a negative image of a moon reflecting in a lake. This was Qorall’s liquid space – not truly a liquid, but not empty space either – a feature imported from his own distant galaxy, which even the Kalarash hadn’t yet fathomed. Every few minutes gravitic shock waves emanated from the black hole, colliding both with the Ice Pick and the planet, before they swept back towards the singularity. Each wave buffeted them, then yanked them backwards.

Whatever Qorall had done to normal space, it prevented the opening of Transpatial conduits, so the Ice Pick could not simply jump out of the system. Pierre nudged a control and switched displays to see the planet. It was cracking up, fissures opening on the dead Machine world’s formerly smooth surface. The planet no longer had a molten core, so at least there were no volcanic eruptions. Pierre presumed Qorall didn’t want to get too close to it, knowing what was there, not wanting to awaken it. Staring at the slowly lengthening trenches, Pierre wondered if Jen and Dimitri were still alive on this tomb planet. He juggled the probabilities and uncertainties in his head. Whichever way he analysed the available data, their prospects didn’t look good.

But there was one curious thing: towering dust tornadoes were flashing up from the planet’s surface, rising kilometres above the surface. He had no idea why this should be happening, since there was no atmosphere. It could be due to the black hole, but he didn’t think so; they looked too uniformly spaced. But a sound like metal tearing apart reminded him of other priorities.

“No use,” Ukrull grunted. “Abandon ship.”

At first Pierre thought he must have misheard, then he remembered the Ice Pick could teleport the two of them across a short range; in all their travels they’d never once used it, as it required so much of the ship’s energy, but that hardly mattered now. Ukrull stood up on his hind legs, his bony head brushing the ceiling, and began donning a self-sealing suit. Pierre stepped onto the suit-forming platform, the black gel crawling over his feet and up his legs, like cool wet leather, until it reached his neck. Ukrull tossed him a helmet and back-pack. While his helmet auto-sealed, Pierre watched Ukrull interfacing with the Hohash, gripping its rail-like outer edges with both fore-claws. Ukrull slipped on his own helmet, with an elongated visor to accommodate his snout, and turned to Pierre.

“Ready?”

Pierre didn’t know exactly what to expect, but he nodded. Besides, the noise from the ship suggested strips of the hull were shearing off; it was time to leave.

The ship around Pierre appeared to dissolve, and for a moment his mind seemed to catch, as if someone had pressed ‘pause’ in his head. For a tantalising fraction of time everything was a uniform grey, featureless and silent, and he wondered where he was. Then he found himself standing on the planet’s surface, next to Ukrull, watching a tiny dot streak across the dark green sky towards the black hole. Pierre’s helmet visor magnified, tracking the Ice Pick’s trail. For the first time he saw something else, a black disc on the edge of the event horizon – Qorall’s ship. The image continued to magnify and Pierre became aware of the spherical shape of the ship, the size of a large asteroid.

“Watch,” Ukrull said.

Pierre didn’t know how this level of magnification was possible, unless... ah, the Hohash – it was in space, transmitting to their visors. He followed the Ice Pick  as it attempted to ram Qorall’s ship. Suddenly the closest wave to the black hole grew in size, a ghostly green tsunami. It closed around the Ice Pick like a vice, then crushed it until the ancient craft was nothing but debris.

Ukrull let out a long hiss, his booted foot stomping against the ground.

Pierre didn’t know what to say; Ukrull had forged a deep attachment to his ship over thousands of years; it had been a gift from someone special, though Ukrull had never said who.

“What about the Hohash?” Pierre asked.

“Is okay. Not affected by gravity.”

That was something Ukrull consistently refused to explain, but Pierre decided now was not the time. Besides, they had new priorities. Perhaps this was all simply a stay of execution. The planet did not have long before it would be torn apart, them along with it. Or else the Machines might find them in order to replicate – Ukrull had explained about the organic catalyst requirement only after Jen and Dimitri had gone down to the planet’s surface.

Pierre scanned the broken horizon for dust tornadoes, but saw none. But as he looked upwards again, he was sure he could see less stars than should be visible. Stars were winking out, Qorall’s green, liquid space being slowly occluded by a spreading black curtain. Within a few minutes there were no stars, although a dull grey light emanated from somewhere. The Machine must have awakened, and erected a shield. No sooner had Pierre thought it, than a section overhead glowed green briefly, then returned to black. Other green splodges peppered the shield, but none of Qorall’s attacks broke through.

“Not shield,” Ukrull said. “Shell. Protect new-borns.”

Pierre realised that they were both safe and trapped at the same time.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

Ukrull snorted. “Run from those,” he said, flicking a gloved fore-claw to Pierre’s left.

Pierre stared into the darkness and detected giant beetle-like objects scurrying towards them, fast. He turned back to Ukrull, who was already bounding away in the opposite direction.

Pierre didn’t need to be told twice.

CHAPTER 9

Spies

It felt odd to walk unseen amongst others, especially to Ash. He had been blind for a whole year before Kalaran had given him his Mannekhi all-black eyes. Ash recalled how it had felt knowing others could see him while he saw nothing. Initially, before learning to use his other senses, the over-riding feeling had been one of helplessness, of utter dependence. Now he felt the reverse, the raw power of the disguised assassin, the camouflaged predator surrounded by prey. It was narcotic. Ash forced himself to concentrate on his mission: to find the entrance to the shaft leading to the sixty human captives held underground.

Trained long ago to move without making a sound, Ash slipped between Alicians as they went about their business. Even in the noon sunlight the citizens of Savange were oblivious to him. He was cloaked so effectively that there was neither shadow nor shimmer of air as he made his way through twisting streets that wound up a gentle slope towards a cluster of gleaming glass and metal towers, and Savange’s central spire.

Alician men and women – he’d seen no children – strode through sun-drenched streets, the ground a pale terracotta muffling their brisk pace. He was surprised to see a wide range of skin colours and features; North and South American, European, African, Chinese, and even one wizened, Indistani-looking man. That stopped him; so few of his own nation had survived the Alician-Q’Roth purge that had left Earth a barren, airless lump of rock. His breathing grew heavy. They had tried to exterminate humanity, yet here in this citadel they had preserved a wider gene pool than the human refugees Ash had left behind on Esperia.

Yet this appeared to be a truly merged society; he could see it in their posture. All held themselves upright, confident to the point of arrogance. And they were agile: he paused to watch a group of twenty or so performing some form of slow martial art in a gravel courtyard; long, slow, sweeping movements and deep crouching postures, all of the Alicians, young and old, in perfect synchrony. Their tan clothing – no skirts, all men and women sporting skin-tight pants – did not hide these genetically-advanced humans’ powerful yet graceful gait, as if they were all gymnasts.

Ash noticed something else: few of them spoke as they passed one another, looking each other in the eye for a split second before walking on with firm purpose. Yet there was no tension in the air. They appeared to trust each other, with no need or desire to indulge in idle banter. Alicians weren’t conflicted – as humanity was and probably always would be – they embodied unified purpose, and so would be harder to take down. Ash shivered; the air was cooler and damper than on dry, semi-desert Esperia, and the field keeping him cloaked chilled him, something he’d been warned about. He remembered his mission and walked on.

Suddenly there was a commotion off to his right. A couple with a child were mobbed in a friendly manner by other Alicians whose demeanour shifted gear, becoming softer, almost sentimental, especially the women, as they crowded around this utter rarity, an Alician infant. Ash knew this was the reason the sixty humans had been captured, to serve as a genetic catalyst to fix the faulty Alician genome, so they could reproduce again. He listened to the soothing, cooing noises, and for a moment there seemed to be a bond between this species and Ash’s own. Then he remembered his two daughters and wife lost in the Q’Roth invasion of Earth, perpetrated by these same Alicians who had lain low, plotting humanity’s demise for centuries. He turned his back on the near-human scene and continued onwards.

As he made his way up curved streets towards the centre, the style of buildings around him altered. He left behind the functional two-storey terraced houses, and strode between tall towers, many with high, open terraces without railings, speaking simultaneously of a gentle climate and a people who did not age appreciably, and knew neither infirmity nor suicidal tendencies. He wondered what went on in those buildings, what industry they housed, but he had no time.  Gazing upwards through a gap in the maze of increasingly tall buildings, he spied the distant orbital tether, at least twenty kilometres away, its sleek outline hazy as it stretched up into the sky like a silver arrow, glinting in the afternoon sun. He knew that Micah had Shiva’s weapons locked onto its base, in case a distraction was needed.

Seeing Alician society up close, rather than simply considering them as a distant enemy, made him wonder about his mission. He’d seen many species on his travels, almost none of them humanoid. Qorall’s army and fleets were overcoming entire species on a weekly basis as they raked across the galaxy, and it seemed hopelessly tribal for two so closely-linked species – human and Alician – to be warring at such a time. He wished there were an alternative; but he knew that Ramires, for one, would love to Nova-bomb the entire planet once the captives were recovered. Even if Micah had ruled it out, that decision was borne mainly from a moral code than any compassion for the Alicians. Ash stopped walking. He had never thought of it before, but now he wondered if humans and Alicians could fight alongside each other, against Qorall, if it became necessary. It seemed a ridiculous idea, yet the question held him; something Kalaran had said once, long ago. Not for the first time Ash felt that humans and Alicians, and a number of other species, were all pieces on Kalaran’s chessboard, and that Kalaran would use them as he wished.

He heard something: the sound of someone stopping suddenly, sandals braking to a stop on the pavement. Ash began paying more attention to his surroundings. At that very moment, despite being effectively invisible, Ash’s instincts told him he was being followed. He didn’t see how it was possible, since the cloak was Level Nine tech and Alicians only had access to Level Six, but the prickling hairs on the back of his neck insisted. Without turning around or altering his speed, he set off again and branched down a shaded alley in between two squat blocks, and sure enough quickened footsteps followed. At least it was only one. The scene around him looked normal, relaxed even, as people went about their business. But he suspected that if he were unmasked, they would tear him apart and ask questions later via brain autopsy.

Rounding a corner, Ash froze as he saw a three-metre-tall Q’Roth warrior barring his way, blue-black serrated thorns decorating its three pairs of legs. The footsteps behind sped up, but Ash stayed where he was. The Q’Roth did not seem to be aware of him, but Ash couldn’t be sure. Its waxy eye slits gave no indication of what it was looking at, and it was so still it could almost have been a statue. Ash didn’t feel like squeezing past the warrior, who could kill him with a single slash of its claws. But the footsteps were just around the corner.

Ash made up his mind, and quickly stepped through an archway into a passage barely wider than a man’s breadth, and a good thirty metres to the other end. He glanced at the ceiling; about a foot below, on either side was a small ledge that could serve as a handhold. It had been a long time since he had wall-climbed, but he had been training intensely with Ramires throughout the voyage from Esperia; he was fitter now than he had been for years. Added to that, Vashta had injected him with an energetic booster based on an ancient Ossyrian soldier recipe – adapted to humans – that temporarily augmented his physical prowess and healing faculties, and dulled his pain receptors. It was time to put it to the test.

He took a breath and pushed against both walls with his palms and soles, and scaled his way upwards, manoeuvring his back flush against the ceiling, feet and hands balanced precariously on the narrow ledges. He was face-down, his arm and leg muscles straining to keep him from falling. Breathing out slowly, he took a deep breath, and held it.

An urgent voice on the street spoke Q’Roth. Then a fair-haired Alician male walked into the passage a metre beneath Ash, squinting in the dim light, a pistol drawn. He shouted “Stand clear!”, then fired, its laser pulse crackling the air, a faint metallic burning smell from the gun’s barrel reaching Ash’s nostrils. Nothing happened. The man walked a few paces forward and stopped.

Ash’s muscles held, but tremors began in his biceps and thighs, and the strain to keep them firm made him clench his jaw. The urge to suck in a breath clawed at his lungs. Ash suppressed it, remembered his apnoea training, and let a small amount of air expire silently from his nose. The Q’Roth warrior joined the man, with a clumping sound of its hoof-like feet, right underneath Ash, the top of its head a mere hand’s breadth under Ash’s chin. A bead of sweat ran from Ash’s right temple to the centre of his forehead. He resisted the urge to swallow.

The Alician walked a few paces further, turned and said something to the warrior, then sprinted to the far end, disappearing out into the next street. The Q’Roth warrior didn’t budge. Shaking began in Ash’s biceps, and the bead of sweat threatened to fall, so he lifted his head slightly, whereupon the drop slid to the bridge of his nose. The warrior shifted, turned around, and made to leave, just as the drop left Ash’s nose and fell towards the floor. As it did so, Ash recalled three things: first, what it was like to be blind; he would have heard such a drop hit the tiled floor. Second, that a Q’Roth warrior’s hearing was superior to that of a human; and third, that the warrior’s reactions would be quicker than his own. Ash simultaneously let go with his hands and kicked off hard with his legs, frog-like, away from the warrior. He felt wind on his feet as the warrior spun back around and slashed upwards into the ceiling, making the brickwork explode as if hit by a shell. Ash rolled as he hit the floor then sprang up and sprinted away from the warrior, gasping in air. The warrior didn’t give chase, and for a moment Ash thought he would escape, until the light at the end of the passage was cut off by another Q’Roth warrior barring the way. Ash slid to a halt, panting.

The warrior in front began walking towards him on its lowest pair of legs, the other two pairs slashing up and down, chopping through the air from floor to ceiling. There was no way past. It came as no surprise when he heard an identical air-whipping, thrashing noise behind him. Think, Ash said to himself. Think fast!

◆◆◆

Ramires joined the small group of Alicians near the passage. He’d been watching from afar, ready to intervene, but the Alician male had made his move on Ash too quickly. If he’d had his staff with its nano-blades he could have taken down the Q’Roth, but then he’d be discovered, and the mission would be finished.

Though he had been walking amongst the Alicians, and even acting like them, his insides were aflame. His adopted son Gabriel and so many others had been killed by Sister Esma’s third attempt to wipe out humanity, and now his wife Sandy was amongst the sixty captives somewhere beneath his feet. He’d been proud when he’d heard how she’d volunteered to go with the Alicians to save more fragile people from being taken. Their marriage hadn’t always been smooth, and he knew he loved her more than she loved him, but she’d been loyal all these years, and the perfect mother to Gabriel. It was her safety, and hers alone, that kept him focused.

He didn’t expect the others to understand, not even Micah who had lost so much since Earth’s fall – including losing Sandy to him. For the others, the Alicians had appeared twenty years ago. But Ramires was the last of the Sentinels, whose war against this genetic abomination had endured nine centuries. Micah had said their mission parameters were to take the captives and leave. Ramires had done something rare, something he was ashamed of; he had lied, agreeing with Micah. Once the captives were safe, Ramires would target this planet with the Nova bomb on board Shiva – he already had the access codes.

Right now he had to rescue Ash; he’d seen too many comrades fall in battle. Calming his breathing, he tried to think like an Alician, and sauntered up to the fair-haired man at the alleyway entrance.

“Louise may want to question whoever is in there.”

The man turned around, his eyes a startling blue, offsetting a chiselled Nordic face. “I don’t know you.” The man’s right arm, holding a weapon, tensed.

Ramires held his gaze. “Rodriguez, Keftan Sector.” He nodded to the alleyway, the noise of threshing claws scraping the walls getting louder. “A spy always has a watcher,” he said, citing an old Alician proverb.

The man relaxed a little. “You call them off, Rodriguez. Let’s see how good your Q’Roth is.”

Ramires did not smile or show any indignation; such traits were human, and might give him away. Instead he bellowed a Q’Roth command, adding a colloquial swearword for added effect. The whipping noise ceased amidst a guttural response from the nearest warrior, which included its own far more severe curse.

Ramires moved to the entrance, and shouted in clear English. “You have five seconds to make yourself visible, after which time they will recommence until blood bursts from your shredded corpse.”

The fair-headed man and a few others craned their necks to see beyond the Q’Roth warrior. Ramires didn’t bother. Micah’s plan had five back-ups, though Ramires judged they were already on Plan C. He counted the Alicians around him: fifteen, too many to skip to Plan F, which was barely a plan in any case.

Ash was man-handled out by the Q’Roth warriors, lacerating his forearms in the process. One of the warriors swiped at the back of his legs whilst pressing down on his shoulders, dropping Ash to his knees.

“Mannekhi,” Ramires said, with disdain, pointing to the all-black eyes. “I’d hoped for a human.”

The lead Alician drew his right arm back, then punched the side of Ash’s face with full force, knocking him to the ground. “That’s for my brother, pathetic Mannekhi Q’Tach! One of your Spikers took out his ship while he was on a med-evac run!”

Ramires turned to the rest of the crowd. “Anyone else? He needs to be able to talk, otherwise, feel free.”

Ash lifted his head from the ground. Blood mixed with saliva spooled from his mouth into a small puddle on the terracotta ground.

A slightly older woman moved to the front. “My husband,” she said, her voice shaky, “his name was Anton.”

Without hesitation she kicked at Ash’s ribs with surprising power. Ramires held his face poker-neutral, as Ash rolled over, clutching his sides, his face contorted in pain. Ramires hoped Vashta’s elixir lived up to its reputation. He squatted, held out his hand.

“The field emitter.”

Ash struggled onto his hands and knees, then snapped a button off his belt, and handed it to Ramires without looking at him. Ramires stood, and passed it to the Alician male. He took a gamble.

“Lucky the new detector worked.”

The man studied Ramires. “How do you know about it?”

Ramires kept his face serene, but he was making it all up as he went along. In his Sentinel training in the Himalayas – a lifetime ago – he would often be put in situations like this, having to talk his way out of situations, like a lobster bartering its way out of a pot of boiling water. He knew he had to gain this man’s trust, get away from the crowd, and lose the two Q’Roth warriors. He banked on an old piece of Sentinel intel, that Alician leaders were notoriously secretive about their plans, even to other Alicians. Information was power, and was often on a ‘you don’t need to know’ basis.

Ramires puffed out his chest a little. “I was a member of Louise’s Achillia.”

The man drew back, even as some of the others moved closer around Ramires.

“We were told Louise acted alone,” the man said, eyes narrowing.

Ramires nodded, then turned to face the crowd, catching their eager eyes. “That is what Louise wanted people to believe. How else could she gain the trust of Qorall?” He turned back to the Alician male to clinch it. “It was, of course, Sister Esma’s idea all along.”

The man’s brow furrowed, then smoothed, against a background of chatter from the others; the lie resonated with their adulation for their recently deceased leader.

“Her Eminence always played the deep, long strategy.” He gazed at the floor.

Ramires continued, sealing it. “Such a loss. But Louise – whilst not Sister Esma – is her rightful heir.”

“Yes,” the man said, the others murmuring agreement. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he said, “My name is Torkell. It is an honour to meet you, Rodriguez. Do you wish to take the prisoner to Louise yourself?”

It was tempting, but it would cut across their traditions. “No, Torkell. The capture,” he flicked a hand towards Ash, still on the floor, “and the kill, are yours. But, with your consent, I will accompany you.”

Torkell nodded, almost graciously.

Two Alicians hauled Ash to his feet, and the Q’Roth moved in to follow. Ramires stood in their way, then spoke Q’Roth. “The tether. He or his accomplices have probably rigged explosives to it, to serve as a distraction. You will be fastest to secure it.”

Torkell nodded, adding his own supporting instruction. They galloped away on all six legs, Alicians scattering in front of them as they sped around a corner. Ramires had forgotten how fast they ran.

Torkell and four others, weapons drawn, escorted Ash to the central spire, amidst a growing crowd of Alician onlookers pointing to Ramires as much as Ash. Ramires knew his lie had worked too well, and that gossip had spread like wildfire. He could have made some excuse and departed, but then he would probably never see Ash alive again.

He and Ash were now on Plan F, as Zack used to call it. He had a nano-sword in an inside pocket, and a small triggering device for the explosives on the base of the tether. Ash looked beaten up, but was tougher than he seemed, and Ramires trusted Vashta’s skill. However, once he and Ash met with Louise, they would be quickly undone.

The central, gleaming spire, two hundred metres tall, almost all metal with narrow slits instead of windows, loomed up ahead, and Ramires knew he was out of options. Micah, whatever you’re planning, now would be good. But they kept walking, and nothing happened. They crossed the threshold guarded by six Q’Roth warriors and entered the building that housed Louise and her true Achillia, the elite personal guard inherited from Sister Esma, and Ramires knew that he and Ash were on their own. Sandy, I fear I’ve screwed up; forgive me. He and Ash had run out of options; it would be up to Micah now.

A small group walked briskly toward them, led by a woman with a blonde ponytail and pretty but hardened features. Louise. It felt to Ramires as if all the deceased Sentinel masters suddenly sat up out of their graves, and watched intently. As if guided by their chilled, ghostly fingers, Ramires’ left hand slid into his pocket, the one holding the nanosword. He strode forward, past Torkell, as if to greet an old friend.

CHAPTER 10

Tunnels

Jen drifted along yet another dark tunnel, having managed to cross-connect power to get one of the helmet torch beams working again, at least for the moment. According to her wrist monitor she had thirty minutes of recyclable air remaining – it was already hot and stuffy inside her helmet, and there was only so much the oxygen recycler could do. She’d been walking in a daze for nearly an hour, and a stubby rock protruded from the normally smooth floor, the first she’d seen since leaving the chamber where Dimitri had… Anyway, it was too inviting a chance to miss. She sat down, and acknowledged that she might never get up again.

Jen was tired. No, she decided, she was weary. She knew enough psychophysiology to understand that grief was depleting her resources, her motivation, and her will to live. Added to that was a sense of futility. She’d given up on her idea that a ship was down here, having wandered endlessly through the subterranean maze using a grid-based search pattern that should have found something by now. Pile on top of that the bleak darkness and slow but inevitable loss of oxygen, and, well... She didn’t need to finish that thought process.

Jen figured there were two alternatives. The first was to take off her helmet. It would be painful for a couple of minutes, then she’d be gone, it would be over. Sooner or later it was going to happen in any case. The advantage of sooner was that she was fully conscious now, but as the oxygen molecules disappeared from her micro-environment, she’d enter a semi-conscious fugue; it might be better to die fully awake.

The second alternative was to go to sleep. It should work. She could activate a delta wave inducer in her helmet. It was there to induce a pseudo-coma and save oxygen in case a rescue mission was on the way, which wasn’t the case. Going to sleep sounded pretty appealing. She could lay down, think of Dimitri, and slide into the arms of Morpheus.

<Not yet.>

She sat up. At first Jen thought she was hallucinating. But it had the feel of nodal communication, a light pressure like a breeze on the left side of her brain where the speech centre housed her node. She closed her eyes and concentrated on nodal communication, which was a different process for each individual. For Jen, it was like imagining a slow-moving but wide river, and she had to keep it flowing without letting it speed up or stop. Given that she was deep underground, Jen guessed at the only person it could be

<Kalaran? Where are you?>

Six sentences came in ‘choired’, all hitting her node at the same time, like sudden turbulence in the river:

<Not far from your sector. I am unlikely to arrive before your air runs out. I’m calling via Ukrull’s Hohash, though there is interference from the Machines. Thanks for waking them, saved me the task. Sorry about Dimitri, I liked him. You can’t die yet, Jen, I have plans for you.>

That’s what it was like with Kalaran, multiplexed communication all the time. Jen knew he was having to slow things down dramatically for her, and even then the thought stream was intense, but she’d gotten used to it during her one year sabbatical with him. Kalaran always jumped ahead, covering a lot of ground in a short space of time, leaving her to play catch-up. He didn’t do small talk, and conversations with him were usually short and sticky, leaving her to ponder about them for hours afterwards. So she always kept her side pointed as well.

<Qorall is here.>

<Which is why I’m coming. He wants to destroy the Machine race, the Xera, which must not happen. The Xera are essentially inorganic, they can fight Qorall’s Orbs; their matrix won’t be susceptible, and they are powerful enough at Level Eighteen to inflict some damage, if they get the chance to reach maturity. But Qorall’s vortex is very strong. There isn’t much time until planetary shield breach. I need you to find the Tla Beth ship. It’s hiding from you.>

Normally, Jen would try and infer what Kalaran meant; it had become an educational game during her stay on his ship. But she was very tired. <What?>

<The ship is there. You have passed it twice. It is in stealth mode. I need to alter your brain chemistry. I’m sending harmonics through your node. You must keep the nodal channel open until I speak again. This will hurt a little. Actually, a lot. I’ll slow it down so you don’t go into neural shock. >

<Thanks, I think.>

Jen waited, idly wondering what she saw in Kalaran. At the end of the day, he was a taker, using her for his own ends. But he was also the smartest being in the galaxy, so she cut him some slack.

The first wave hit, literally like a surge of flood water flowing down her river. Not so bad. Then she felt the next one building, a tidal wave that made her want to shut off nodal comms and hide behind the boulder.

Jen found herself on the floor, face down, her helmet lights showing the dusty ground centimetres from her eyes. There was a terrible smell.

<Jen, I’m not finished. Don’t move. You’ve vomited, and if you roll onto your back you will choke. The microbes in your suit are cleaning you up. Take a breath.>

She no longer had control of the node, otherwise she would have cut it off as a freezing ocean fell on top of her. She began to convulse, as if being electrocuted, and all she could think of was getting her tongue out of the way so she didn’t bite it off.

After a while, the pain abated, and she imagined herself on the riverside, the waters calming down.

<It’s over, Jen, you’re fine. But Qorall’s nearly ready to destroy the planet, and the Xera’s shield is faltering; I don’t know how much longer communications will last. I need you to get up, and to go and find the ship. Now. >

<Fuck you, Kalaran.>

It was the first time she didn’t get an immediate response from Kalaran. When she did, it wasn’t what she was expecting.

<I’m not a taker.>

<Prove it.>

Again, there was a delay. She’d meant it as a rhetorical question. What the hell could he do for her that would matter?

<I have done something for you. You will see. But only if you live.>

<Bastard.>

Again no response.

<What have you done for me? What could you possibly do that could persuade me to get up after I’ve lost everything that matters to me?> It was difficult to rant in nodal comms, or imbue the words with anger, but Jen made a good effort.

<Your nephew.>

Gabriel? Sandy’s son? But he was dead. She’d never met him; while she’d spent a year with Kalaran outside the galaxy, eighteen years had slipped by on Esperia, so he’d grown into a full adult and been killed before she could even meet him. She’d only had a short chance to talk to him right before he’d died, and she’d seen him once via the Hohash. He had looked so much like his father, her brother of the same name. And the way he had died… He deserved that name, his father would have been proud if he’d still been alive.

Jen got onto all fours, then stood up. For the first time she could feel the interference on nodal comms, as if the water level in the river was dropping rapidly. Not now, dammit! Time was running out, and for the first time ever, Jen ‘choired’ a message back to Qorall.

<What about him? He’s dead. You tried to download his personality string and memories but the Hohash link was destroyed when he killed Sister Esma. Are you saying you can bring him back?>

<Hellera got some of it. It can only be a partial reconstruction. It will take some time. He may not remember you, or much at all. He will be an approximation.>

Jen’s eyes misted. The riverbed was almost dry, just a trickle now. <Doesn’t matter, do it.>

<Hellera will do it. She is better at this than me. Goodbye Jen. I’ll miss you.>

She didn’t understand. <Kalaran?> She paced in a circle, wondering at those last three words. She tried one more time, using all her mental effort. <KALARAN!>

She waited, but there was no reply. She closed her eyes a moment, recalling the good times with Kalaran, Dimitri and Ash on the ship, exploring other galaxies. Who could have asked for more? Thank you.

Jen took three deep breaths, despite the stink from her vomit. She began walking. After ten minutes her torch sputtered and failed. She stopped, tried to get it working again, but it was no use. Then she realised she didn’t need it; she could see in the dark.

Nice one, Kal.

CHAPTER 11

Prisoner

Blake walked towards the wall of fog, his bare feet sinking into the soft sand, then stopped. He looked back. The mist completely encircled his private beach – for want of a better word – which was the size of an old football field. Hazy light filtered through to where he stood, while the slowly swirling fog wall was impenetrable. He reached its edge. It was as if there was a barrier keeping it out, or keeping him in. He raised a hand and let his fingers sink into the mist. Cold, damp. Like fog. Not a barrier then. He looked back one last time at the beach. Nothing there. “So be it,” he said, about to take a step.

“I wouldn’t do that, Boss.”

Blake spun around. Zack. But Zack was dead. Kalaran?

“No, Boss, just me this time, sort of. Kalaran put me here, in your head, to stop you going in there.” Zack waved a finger at the fog. “Walk away from it, over here, that stuff gives me the creeps.”

Blake took a few steps towards Zack. It looked like him: a burly six foot guy, black, bald, with an infectious grin and a voice to match. Blake hadn’t said what he’d needed to say to Zack last time, because then it had really been Kalaran. He knew it still wasn’t the real Zack, but better than nothing.

“Where are we, Zack?”

“Like I said, Boss, in your head. Qorall’s Orb attacked you, it’s trying to re-write you. Kalaran created this hiding place in your mind, though it won’t last long.”

It didn’t make much sense to Blake, so he focused on what did, on some unfinished business with his best friend.

“Zack, I’m sorry about what happened to you back on Esperia, when Louise attacked. I should have seen it coming, should have read the signs. I already suspected Louise had put the implant in your head.”

Zack stood just out of arm’s reach, and squatted down. “Ancient history, Boss. I almost killed you, then went travelling with Micah to see the galaxy.” He dug his fingers into the sand, pulled them out, and watched the sand fall back through them. “Point is, Qorall’s Orb has done something similar to you.”

“Where am I, Zack?”

“A bubble in your mind. Kalaran put it there. Well, actually the Spider did.”

Blake sat down, crossed his legs. “You’d better start at the beginning. We have time, don’t we?”

“Some, anyways.” Zack looked up, grinned, stretched his legs out in front of him, and leant back on his elbows. “Once upon a time…” He belly-laughed, then shook his head. “Okay. Seriously, because this is serious. We need you to fight what Qorall’s done to you.”

“How, exactly?”

“There’s the problem, Boss. You’re not in conscious control, so how do you fight something you’re not aware of?”

Blake stared at Zack and waited, then realised that what his former friend had said wasn’t meant to be rhetorical. “I don’t know.”

“No. So, this is how we have to do it. I need to plant something in your head that will help you fight back emotionally, when the time comes.”

“This isn’t making much sense, Zack. You’re beginning to sound like Kalaran.”

Zack got to his feet. “Better move, Boss.”

Blake felt a chill down his neck. Stepping forward, he turned to see why. The fog was right behind him. “It’s expanding.”

Zack sighed. “Actually, the bubble’s shrinking. Come on. It’s exponential, I’m afraid, we’ll have more time in the centre.”

Blake followed Zack further into the middle of the beach. The beach had lost around thirty metres in diameter.

Zack talked while they strolled. “Emotional trauma can cross the boundary between conscious and unconscious.”

Blake looked over his shoulder. The fog was following. “If you say so.” A thought struck him. “Are we in Transpace?”

“Bingo! Well, kind of. Kilaney’s ship is travelling in Transpace with you locked down in stasis in the hold, and the Spiders can access you, ‘cause you have some of their DNA. Qorall can’t touch you here, but as soon as you exit Transpace, this bubble will close.”

“And you’ll be gone.”

“Along with your consciousness, Boss, which will dwell in that fog until you die, so back to the reason I’m here.” Zack surveyed all around them. “This’ll do.”

Blake reckoned they were dead centre.

Zack squatted again. “You’re going to kill a Spider.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of your friends. Your best friend. You’re going to kill him. You know, the one you and Glenda secretly called Robert, after your son.”

Blake stepped backwards. “Jesus Christ, Zack. I will not! What the hell are you saying?”

Zack remained unperturbed. “You’re going to claw Robert apart with your bare hands, and rip him to pieces.”

Blake felt his heart race, his skin grow clammy. “Zack. I would never… I’d rather die, you know that!”

Zack stood up, came closer to Blake. “You’ll sink your teeth into his flesh like he was a hamburger, then spit it out.”

“For God’s sake, Zack, stop this!” Blake tried to back away, but Zack grabbed his shoulders, pinning him there.

“But you will do it, Blake. Or something like it. Hell, we don’t really know. But that’s what being taken over by Qorall means. Like when I attacked you because of that implant. I’m sorry, Boss, really.”

The fog accelerated. With a rising hiss it swept towards them over the sand.

“What can I do?”

Zack shrugged. “It’s already done. Most – well all of Qorall’s minions – don’t know what they’re doing when they do it. Now you do, or you will. You’ll understand at the end.”

“Will I? How will I see in the fog?”

“Just don’t move from that spot. Try to hold on, Blake. And think of Robert.”

The fog enveloped Blake, a frigid embrace. It chilled his lungs. He couldn’t see his friend anywhere. “Zack?”

But Zack was gone, and the fog became denser. He couldn’t see anything, or even feel his body, and then he couldn’t think.

◆◆◆

Petra tapped the black oval object on her antique wooden desk.

“General?”

Kilaney answered, and began his report. She didn’t interrupt, as this wasn’t instant Hohash communication; Kilaney was just outside the Esperian system, and while the ten minute lightspeed delay had been compressed, the lengthy pause and echo were both noticeable. His report didn’t improve her mood. She’d asked Blake to act, but she hadn’t anticipated this.

“How are his life signs? His EEG?”

Again, a short delay. “He’s strong as an ox right now. Thank God he’s in stasis, I don’t think restraints would hold him. His metabolism has sped up three hundred per cent, heart rate one-ninety even in the stasis tube. We’ve suspected for a while that the turning does this to those it infects. Makes them exceptional warriors, and they don’t sleep. It must shorten the host’s lifespan, though, there has to be a cost.” He paused, but Petra kept quiet.

“As for his EEG, that’s the strange part. All the normal waves – alpha through delta – are gone, replaced by a square wave, very strong. For a short time there was a sinusoidal wave, but it diminished, then flat-lined about half an hour ago. We have no idea what it all means.”

“Bring him here, General, a contingent of Ossyrians and an Ngank surgeon are setting up a lab.”

There was a longer pause, so she broke it. “General… Bill. Is there something else?”

“Yes, Madam President. It’s Hellera. Her ship is gone.”

Petra stood up. “The dark worms! Are they still –”

“… worms are gone, so… Sorry, you are speaking, please continue.”

Petra deliberately slowed her breathing. “No, General. Please continue, I need to know everything, including your suppositions.” She sat back down again.

“Her ship is gone, but so are the worms. According to the intel from the satellites we placed around the system perimeter, the worms left first, then Hellera’s ship followed them.”

Petra scratched at a knot in the desk wood grain. Why did the Kalarash never tell her what was going on? “So, we’re defenceless.”

“No, Madam President. The Shrell field will keep out invaders. No one knows how to get in except…”

Petra waited. Then waited some more.

“Sorry,” Kilaney said, “I was just checking the hourly data-stream I saw earlier, something snagged my memory.”

She heard him sigh.

“The Mannekhi, their twelve worlds were hit by a dozen Orbs in a coordinated attack five days ago. That’s not all. The Mannekhi worlds weren’t at the war front. Their planets shouldn’t have been attacked for another month. I saw the spike in Qorall’s front line but neither I nor the other commanders knew what to make of it.”

Petra didn’t need Kilaney to join the dots. The Mannekhi knew how to navigate through Shrell wires, since the Shrell had poisoned their space many times in the past.

She leant closer to the oval transmitter. “Bring Blake here, General, as soon as you can without slicing your ship in two on a Shrell filament.”

Kilaney acknowledged, then broke the connection.

Petra needed to think. It would take Kilaney a couple of hours to arrive. She knew where she had to go.

On Silent Hill, Petra stood over the graves of Gabriel and Virginia. She wanted to cast off the mantle of President, if only for a short while. She missed her friends. Rather, she missed Gabriel.

“Gabriel, you’d know what to do. They’re coming again.” She sat on the rough grass, drew her arms around her knees. “They’re never going to leave us in peace, are they?” She stared up at the cracked sky. At night the stars were no longer visible. Somewhere up there were her mother, Kat, and in a completely different direction, her father, Pierre, whom she’d only just begun to get to know.

“Petra, are you okay?”

She got up quickly. Brandt, the leader of the Youngbloods following Gabriel’s death. Her cheeks flushed at the interruption. “Are you following me? And it’s Madam President to you.” She knew she was over-reacting, displacing her anger.

Brandt approached until he also stood over the two graves, towering above her.

“I miss them, too, you know, especially Gabriel. I can never replace him.”

“You’re right about that.” She almost spat it out, then berated herself. “I’m sorry, Brandt. That was uncalled for.” She folded her arms. “Things are closing in on us again, and it sits heavy on my shoulders.”

“You’re not alone, you know. You only…” He stopped under her glare.

“But I want to be alone, Brandt. That was the point of coming here. Why did you follow me?”

Brandt shifted from one foot to the other. He cleared his throat. “Petra, all those years you… I knew how you felt about Gabriel. You hid it well, but I knew, Virginia too. You see, I knew because –”

“Stop! Don’t say it, especially not here.”

“Why? There are no lies here, Petra. You can’t lie to dead people. Here we have to speak the truth.”

“Look, Brandt, I can’t deal with this right now. Maybe later.”

Brandt gazed up to the sky. “There probably won’t be a later, we both know that.”

Petra turned away from him. “I’m sorry, Brandt.”

She heard his feet turn to go, then he paused. “If I could swap places with him, Petra, I’d do it in a second. You’d be happy, and we’d all be better off.”

He left. She waited a long time before she turned around to see him descending back to Esperantia, then spoke to one of the graves.

“I know what you would say, Gabriel. But it wouldn’t work. Maybe if there was more time.” She took another look. Brandt was almost at the Dome. “Anyway, I should leave you two alone, you’ve both earned some peace.”

She began her trek down the escarpment. Despite the undesired encounter, or because of it – she didn’t know which – she felt lighter, and began planning defensive strategies. They included the Youngbloods, so she’d be dealing with Brandt again, but she could handle it, and so could he. She called Vasquez. “Commander, we need to meet. My office in fifteen, please.”

CHAPTER 12

Releasing Angels

The doors to the atrium closed, sealing Ramires and Ash inside the Alician headquarters. Ash had his hands bound and was surrounded by six guards, so Ramires couldn’t count on any help from him. He walked calmly towards Louise, his left hand on the hilt of the nanosword inside his jacket pocket, his right hand concealing a skin-coloured wafer. Louise stood at the head of six armed Achillia, her personal guard. Ramires estimated that with the advantage of surprise he could take her down and maybe three of the others, though he and Ash would not survive. A fair trade.

Time slowed for Ramires as he neared his target; he and countless others wanted Louise dead on account of her crimes during and after the fall of Earth. Her succession of Sister Esma only served to underline that objective. His son Gabriel had killed Sister Esma, now he would be the one to execute Louise.

Diagonal shafts of sunlight from high windows bathed the Alician leader and her entourage in an orange glow. She looked younger than he’d expected, but then Alicians barely aged once re-sequenced by the Q’Roth. Her eyes, though, reminded him of some of his fellow trainees back in Tibet who had gotten a taste for casual killing. His Master, Cheveyo, called them ‘shark-eyed’, because they had lost perspective, and were highly dangerous. Ramires noticed the claw where her left arm should be; no matter, the nanosword would slice through it, he’d tested it on enough Q’Roth.

Louise’s eyes narrowed, as if she recognised him, though they’d never met. Two more steps and he’d be close enough. He froze; she’d drawn a pistol unbelievably fast – one moment it wasn’t there, the next it was – her arm steady, the weapon aimed at his face; quicker than a normal Alician, quicker than a Q’Roth.

“Ramires, isn’t it? I’ve heard so much about you.”

Guns ripped out of the guards’ holsters, and pointed at his head. The moment had passed. He let the nanosword slip back into his pocket and stood, feet splayed, ready to spring in any direction. Ramires folded his arms, one palm concealing the wafer. He recalled a Sentinel maxim: never converse with the devil.

Louise spoke again. “I watched the vid of you fighting two Q’Roth warriors back on Esperia. Impressive. The last Sentinel.” She put away her pistol. “Well, not quite the last.”

Ramires kept his poker-face, but wondered what she meant. All the other Sentinels were dead.

Her demeanour changed, a little more tension around the eyes and lips. “Where is Micah?” she said in a flat, controlled tone. “We have some unfinished business.”

He stayed silent.

“We could torture you, but I’ve studied the history of our so-called Silent War. Sentinels are notoriously resistant, almost as if you relish pain.”

There were twelve Alicians around him and Ash, all armed. Too many.

“Or we could torture this one,” she said, nodding towards Ash. “Looks like someone already started.”

Ramires wondered if Ash would hold up under torture. Perhaps he should kill him now with the sword. But Ash was four paces behind, Ramires wouldn’t get close enough in time.

“Or your wife, Sandy.”

Ramires outwardly showed no reaction. Inside, his heart slowed, and his muscles loosened. In nine hundred years of unseen war between Sentinels and Alicians, there was one maxim both sides shared: better to die than be captured, because the latter path never ended well. So be it. He was less sure he could kill Louise, but he could take out several of the guards. Better to die on his feet than chained to an interrogation rack.

Without moving his eyes, he pictured where each man stood, and their most likely pistol aim trajectories, given that the wafer would catch them off-guard. He envisioned the layers of pulse-fire. In the initial confusion, blinded by the flash as soon as the wafer ignited, they would fire towards his trunk or head; he would have to duck low. A second later he would need to be above three intersecting layers of pulse fire. He estimated that there was a sweet-spot where the guards’ lines of sight would be conflicted: they would hesitate, in order to avoid killing each other in the crossfire. It would require a high leap but he could do it. Next he calculated the place where he would be least easy to target, but from where he could still shoot Louise. After that it didn’t matter.

The assessment had taken two seconds. He’d trained blindfolded hundreds of times back on Earth, and had continued to practice with Gabriel and the other Youngbloods on Esperia. His right hand gently squeezed the wafer inside his fist so that it split open. Now it just needed a little air.

Louise studied him, then the corners of her mouth lifted a fraction. “Let’s see how good you are, Sentinel.” She took a step backwards then spoke to her personal guard. “Take him.”

Ramires took in a sliver of air, and then held his fists out in front as if to be cuffed, but as two of the Louise’s personal guards seized his wrists, he blinked hard and dropped the wafer. It burst into a curtain of blinding light that smarted his retinas even through closed eyelids. He locked the wrists of the two stunned guards, then drove them into each other. Ramires ducked amidst a sizzling eruption of pulse-fire that fried the two guards. Two down. He leapt up high and spun mid-air, flailing the nanosword around him, decapitating two more guards and slashing the arm off a third, releasing a pistol that he snatched before it reached the ground. He breathed in more air. Five down. He landed behind one of the collapsing bodies, and used it as a shield while he fired at the two guards on either side of Ash, striking them in the middle of the neck, sending them tumbling to the floor. Seven. A pulse strike speared through his pistol arm, rendering it useless. He took another sliver of air as he dropped the sword and grabbed the pistol with his left hand and fired at Louise, who had vanished. The pulse round found another of her guards; they moved in a zigzag pattern aimed to defend and distract. Four left. They shot Ramires’ corpse-shield again and again, blowing off its head and limbs, leaving Ramires with only the torso as a barrier, the tang of ozone and charcoaled flesh sharp in his nostrils.

Two more of Louise’s guards toppled backwards; Ash, hands still bound, had fired two weapons from a prone position. Two left.

Ramires’ legs exploded with pain, making him gasp in air. With a grunt, he flung the charred torso away from him and rolled to the right, firing two quick shots, dropping the last two guards.

Louise was nowhere to be seen. He reached for the nanosword, but it was gone. There was a ‘pfft’ sound, and Ash slumped forward, a feathered dart sticking out of his neck. Ramires fired towards the likely point of origin, but only hit shadows.

“Here,” Louise whispered, behind him.

Ramires made to turn, but felt ice on his neck, and found he couldn’t move. His chest muscles locked, and he rocked forward, his forehead striking the floor with a thunk, his eyesight growing blotchy.

She whispered two more words to him. “Not yet.” With her boot, she flipped him over onto his back.

Ramires struggled to remain conscious; whatever Louise had used on him was powerful. He let his face muscles, closed eyelids and neck go slack. He heard soft footsteps, like those of a cat, approach Louise.

“I didn’t need you to fire the dart, Toran,” Louise said, “everything was under control.”

“This one is good, very good. I admit I could learn from him. I have the knowledge, the latent memories. Sparring with this one would activate them, translate them into real skills and reflexes. Your next set of guards could do with more training, though. They were complacent, unattuned to the shock of a sudden, violent attack. They have grown soft.”

Ramires listened to Toran’s voice. He didn’t recognise it.

Louise nudged Ramires with her boot. “That’s why he isn’t dead,” she said.

“I doubt he’ll help you, Louise, even if you use Sandy as leverage. He’ll just as likely kill her quickly. It’s what I’d do. It’s what we were trained to do if the situation ever arose with a partner or children. We call it ‘releasing angels’.”

Ramires’ mind sprinted. Louise had implied there was another Sentinel. And this man knew one of the most guarded secrets. Ramires thought about opening his eyes. But Toran started to walk away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Louise said.

“He’s still awake. Some of the training school memories from my original host are still intact. I heard rumours about this particular Sentinel. We never knew each other’s names, but during early training nicknames were common. His was ‘possum’.”

Ramires opened his eyes in time to see Louise crouch over him, and he felt the ice cold touch of something on his neck again. This time there was no resisting it. But as he slid towards unconsciousness, he quickly put the pieces together. Toran must have been cloned from a Sentinel, probably with Alician enhancements to make him even tougher. An abomination, yes, but that was irrelevant now. He could only exist for one reason: to infiltrate Esperia. Infiltrate and assassinate. Yet Toran was not ready; borrowed memories are not the same as honed skills. If Ramires could kill him, then the problem was solved. But if they fought and Toran survived, that could catalyse Toran into the strongest Sentinel ever.

Ramires’ mind clouded, and he gave up on thinking about the never-ending war between Alicians and humans that had already consumed so much of his life, and thought instead about the one woman he cared for, the only person who had ever given him some respite, and happiness. He prayed he would see Sandy before the end.

◆◆◆

Kat stared down at the Q’Roth carcass at her feet. “Vashta’s rifle works.”

Aramisk finished inspecting the second bubbling corpse and joined Kat. “Of course it works. You have to stop thinking Level Three. The higher intelligent races – and Vashta is Ossyrian, Level Eight – don’t brag or exaggerate.”

Kat hated lectures. “Whatever.”

Aramisk held a hand under Kat’s chin, the Mannekhi way of saying ‘listen to me’. It was aggressive, but Kat liked it, because with Aramisk it was often followed by a kiss, sometimes more.

But this time Aramisk’s demeanour was serious.

“Not ‘whatever’, Kat. It is never ‘whatever’. You humans must look deeper, seek understanding, or else you will remain at the bottom of the galactic heap.” She sighed and removed her hand.

“We Mannekhi are precise because we deal with higher Grid species.” She glanced down at the fizzing Q’Roth mass as the nannites turned its body into mush. “When higher races visit your world for the first time, they assess you quickly; culling and enslavement are never far off their agenda.” She met Kat’s eyes. “First impressions count in the galaxy; you have no idea.”

Kat knew of the Mannekhi’s ‘patronage’ by their Masters – not far short of enslavement – for tens of thousands of years. She lay a hand on Aramisk’s shoulder. “I’ll try.”

Kat touched her wristcom. “Micah, there’s been a development. She angled her wrist downwards, showing the two dead Q’Roth.

“So I see,” he said. “I’m checking sensors. No one else is around you, but they’ll be missed for sure. I want you to enter the city, Kat.”

“Aramisk can’t, her Mannekhi eyes –”

“Aramisk needs to stay with the Rapier, keep a target lock on the base of the tether.”

Kat turned to look at it, a hundred metres away, a cylinder of glistening metal as wide as a house sunk kilometres into the ground, rising impossibly straight, disappearing into the haze of blue sky above.

“Ramires and Ash?” she asked.

Micah’s voice sounded taut. “Captured. That’s why I’m sending you in. Plan D: recon only, Kat, nothing more, understood?”

“Sure,” she replied, a crooked smile playing across her lips as she caught Aramisk’s eye. Aramisk shook her head.

“I want open comms, Kat, and continuous cam-feed. And don’t forget the Spider, we need to locate it as well as the captives.”

“Okay, I just need a minute.” She broke the connection. Aramisk had her back to her. “Are you okay?” Kat asked.

Aramisk spoke but didn’t turn around. “Ash told me to leave you alone.”

Kat flared “He had no right –”

“But he is right, Katrina. Go find your wife and the others. Concentrate or you will perish here, dragging the rest of us down with you.”

Kat suddenly felt foolish; she’d been behaving like a teenager; it was her way of dealing with intense situations, always had been. Aramisk and Ash were right. Still, she’d developed feelings for Aramisk these past few weeks. Kat lowered her voice. “Let me see your eyes one more time, please.”

“When you return.” She walked away and left the clearing.

Kat watched her go, then walked to the camouflaged Rapier’s airlock, and stepped inside, putting down Vashta’s Q’Roth-killer rifle – she couldn’t very well walk into the city toting it. She picked up a set of stiletto blades and a single barrel device which she stuck in her pocket, and switched on the cam bracelet, as well as the mike, lodging the micro-earpiece in her left ear.

“Okay, Micah, I’m heading in.” Kat walked back out, half-expecting to see Aramisk there to wave her off, but she’d disappeared into the bushes.

“Fucking Level Six,” she muttered.

“What?” Micah said.

Kat broke into a trot. “Nothing,” she replied.

Threading a pathway through the foliage towards the city’s outskirts, she began thinking about Antonia, who she’d not seen for two years. Images of happier times coursed through her head. Though her body had occasionally begged to differ in the past, Kat knew in her heart that she could only love one person at a time. Reaching the top of a hill, she glimpsed the central tower where Ramires and Ash had last been seen. She took one last look behind, toward the Rapier, the tether, and wherever her alien lover was hiding. Thanks for saving my sanity.

Kat launched herself down the other side, gathering speed with each long pace.

◆◆◆

Ramires awoke with his head in Sandy’s lap. She stroked his hair.

“You didn’t kill the bitch then?” she said.

With an effort, grimacing from residual pains in his legs and right arm, he sat up. They were in some kind of glass-fronted cell. Antonia sat at the far end of the same narrow marble bench, watching him.

“How do you know?” he asked. His head cleared. “And how long have I been here?”

“Six guards brought you about an hour ago.” She gave him a smile. “An impressive escort given that you were lashed to a stretcher and unconscious.” Then her smile faded, and she filled him in on the failsafe chemical device implanted in all the captives, and the fifteen minute fuse if they left the compound or Louise died.

“That complicates matters,” Ramires said.

“Or simplifies them,” Sandy replied.

Ramires drew back. “I didn’t come all this way –”

“You’re a Sentinel. That’s why I fell in love with you.”

Ramires considered their options. The failsafe was unanticipated. None of their plans took it into account. And he and Ash – where was Ash? Being interrogated probably, or more likely mind-scanned, so they’d find out about Micah and Shiva soon enough. Louise had too much leverage now. The time-proven Sentinel solution to such a scenario was clear. Sandy was right.

“Why did she keep me alive?” he asked.

Sandy spoke to the floor. “She wants you to train the Alicians to be better fighters, so that they are ready when the war reaches Savange.”

He got to his feet. “Train the enemy? A Sentinel training Alicians? She… Louise is deranged! We’re not just blood enemies, our war goes back almost a thousand years.”

Sandy stood up. “And I don’t want her to have any hold over you. I know your DNA is practically hardwired to fight Alicians, and Louise is the sickest –” Sandy cut herself off, and turned away.

Ramires studied her a moment. Most people hated Louise because she’d sent one of the refugee ships into the heart of a sun, two thousand souls vaporised in an instant. But for Sandy, Louise had taken her prior lover, Vince. It was personal. One of Sandy’s traits was that she never forgave; it meant she had fewer friends than most, but from his point of view it made her the perfect partner for a Sentinel.

She turned back, laid her hands on his shoulders, and cleared her throat. “She can’t...  mustn’t have a hold on you. It would destroy you, and me.” She bit her lip. “Do you… do you remember what you told me once, about… releasing angels? We have to show her we can’t be controlled like… like goats, being nourished until the day they slit our throats.”

His mouth opened, but no words came out. Though he’d considered it earlier, now, with her right in front of him… Ramires swallowed, then clasped her shoulders, pulling her close to him.

“Do it now,” she said. “I don’t want that bitch to control you, not for one second. Just make it quick.”

He inhaled the scent of her hair, felt the soft warm flesh of her cheek against his. He kissed her neck, felt the pulse in her carotid.

“Now,” she whispered.

His left hand moved to her neck, her body trembling against his. He closed his eyes and imagined that his master Cheveyo was standing there. ‘Release this angel’, he’d say. Ramires took a deep breath, brought his other hand up to the back of her head. His hands shook. They’d never shaken before, not once in all those kills. He began to apply pressure, Sandy not resisting in the slightest.

Antonia collided with him, her elbow jabbing into his ribs with more power than he’d have given her credit for. Pushed aside, he let go of Sandy.

Antonia stood, red-faced, and howled at him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” She turned on Sandy, who stood like a statue. “Both of you. Stop this crap right now!”

Ramires took a step towards Antonia, raising his palms. In all the time he’d known her he’d never once heard her swear. Before he could speak, she shouted again, clenched fists shaking by her sides.

“I don’t want to hear it, Ramires, whatever you’re going to say.” She pointed to the glass wall. “They must be… pissing themselves laughing at us.” Her voice quavered. “We’re giving them quite a show, don’t you think?”

Sandy reached out for one of Antonia’s wrists. Antonia slapped her hand away.

“Antonia,” Ramires said, “You don’t understand –”

“And I don’t ever want to. You’re a warrior, the last and best one alive so I’ve heard. Well, prove it to me. Damned well fight them. Find another way.”

Ramires glanced from Antonia to the glass wall, then back to Sandy, who stood bolt upright, but was trembling. He gently put his arms around her.

Antonia moved back to where she’d been sitting earlier, drew her knees up to her chest, and locked her arms around them, eyes glaring at the glass wall.

Ramires brushed a lock of Sandy’s blonde fringe out of her eyes, and spoke softly, nodding his head towards Antonia. “Is she normally like this?”

Sandy tried to laugh, but it caught in her throat. She buried her head in his shoulder.

A while later Ramires walked across to Antonia.

Without looking up, she addressed him, anger in her voice. “We’re being monitored, you know.”

“Then sing,” he said, “sing loudly.”

She glared at him once, then complied, something in Russian, from what he could tell. He bent forward and whispered into her ear that Kat had come for her. Antonia’s voice cracked and descended into a cough.

He wondered if he could find another way, wondering if Micah had moved to Plan F yet, in which case it would all be over soon.

Ramires heard heavy, booted footsteps. Ten armed guards arrived. They fired at him point blank through the glass wall and he buckled onto the ground, fizzing blue arcs of electricity dancing over his body. Amidst shouts of abuse and hammering fists from both women, the guards disengaged the glass door and took him from the cell, binding his hands and feet with mag-cuffs. As he was dragged away, he saw Antonia on the ground, her lip split. She met his eyes, defiant, and he recalled her words.

Half an hour later, Ramires was shoved through a doorway into a circular pit with high walls. He landed roughly on a sandstone floor, tasting dust, and was nearly deafened by angry jeers from spectators above. The cuffs around his wrists and ankles opened and fell to the floor. He brushed himself off as he got up, and kicked them aside. He stared upwards at the faces peering down at him over metal railings.

The door opened again and three young men sauntered in, muscular, tattooed, brimming with bravado, each brandishing two curved knives. They were greeted by cheers. The door closed.

Eight seconds later they were on the floor, one dead, the other two wracked by spasms as blood spurted from slashed throats. The crowd hushed.

“Lesson number one,” Ramires shouted to the audience above. “If you want them to survive long enough to learn anything, don’t give them weapons.”

Scanning a sea of hostile faces, he found the one he was searching for: Louise. It wasn’t too hard. She was the only one smiling. And then he saw someone sitting next to her. Their eyes locked in recognition, one Sentinel to another.

CHAPTER 13

Titans

In Kalaran’s judgment there was no such thing as a good day to die. And yet here he was, about to challenge Qorall, one-on-one. As a Kalarash, he felt responsible; when they’d first come across Qorall, he had been an outsider from a backwater sector of the universe, Level Eighteen, an incredible find, a prodigy. They’d taken him in, and Kalaran and the others had helped him advance. Only Hellera had urged caution, but she’d been over-ruled. That had already cost them their home galaxy, and although there were plenty of galaxies around, Kalaran wasn’t going to let it happen again. Even so, it wasn’t easy after two billion years of sentience to contemplate one’s own demise. It wasn’t simply about ego, either; how do you sacrifice for the higher good when you are the higher good?

His plan had been running in the background for millennia. He had been the only one of the seven remaining Kalarash that had developed a contingency plan in case Qorall had survived the last war, the others believing him dead. Unfortunately, Qorall’s onslaught had been far more vicious than anticipated, with many new weapons, and a base that seemed impregnable. High stakes required bold moves, and Kalaran accepted that at the end of the day, the Kalarash weren’t Gods, weren’t permanent fixtures in the universe, they were just players in the game who had a limited time like everyone else, just longer than most. Still, it was difficult to make his final move knowing he wouldn’t be there to see how the game ended.

His ship held the full spectrum of weapons, from molecular scramblers and subspace mines to dark-energy disruptors and star-imploders, but when fighting an equal, the small stuff didn’t count. Both his and Qorall’s ships had vastly resilient immune systems capable of identifying and rejecting invasive organics. It came down to who hit the hardest and the smartest. And in Kalaran’s case, just how much he was willing to sacrifice.

His ship punched into the system where the Xera homeworld was in the process of resurrection. Qorall had flooded the sector with liquid space rendering it a ghostly green. Four of Kalaran’s allies – Ukrull, Pierre, Jen and Dimitri – remained in play. He vowed to get them out before the battle got too hot. He trimmed his ship’s shields and drives to adapt to the liquid space properties that would otherwise leach power from his weapons.

Six Level Sixteen Nchkani vessels took up position at the outer edge of the system. Kalaran held a tinge of admiration for their design, there was a certain panache about them – obsidian ovoids festooned with feather-like spines, each holding a dizzying arsenal. But the Nchkani were only Level Sixteen, and did not yet possess the ability to manipulate gravity, unlike the Tla Beth, whom they aimed to replace if Qorall won.

It was never easy to kill a species he’d helped evolve over millions of years, but the Kalarash always squashed rebellions, one of their few rules. He dispatched a gravity weapon Qorall knew well enough but was unheard of in this galaxy, a Hell-Class weapon he’d not used for aeons, and had once argued should be banned. But the rules of war were bound only by three factors: the laws of physics, ingenuity and sheer force of will. He had to send a message. Besides, the weapon had a side-effect that fitted his plan. Kalaran watched, knowing any Nchkani caught by it were already dead, their short ten thousand year lifespans about to be snuffed out.

The net, a purple veil, fluoresced through space as it sped toward the ships. Three of the captains had the sense to jump their ships out of the system. The other three separated but were sucked back together. As the net closed around them, first their spines crumbled, melting like wax, then the hulls cracked apart, spilling their occupants into a gravity gradient that pulverised them. A torrent of explosions erupted in a spasmodic and futile fit of rage, then all three ships melded into a ball, becoming smaller, harder, silent; a uniform brown speck that flashed crimson, a stunning bloom of what humans called Hawking radiation, before collapsing into a pin-prick black micro-singularity.

A communiqué arrived from Qorall. That was unexpected. It said <Leave>, meaning quit the galaxy. Qorall wanted Hellera, in order to build the foundation, his progeny.

Not going to happen.

He considered the field laid out between him and Qorall: the gaping black hole; Qorall’s asteroid ship hovering just above its event horizon; the Machine planet; and the red dwarf sun, all set in a jade haze. Nothing else around, the nearest star system well out of harm’s way in one direction, and in the other, the shimmering galactic barrier. Ukrull’s ship, the Ice Pick, was missing. Kalaran extended his senses and found the subspatial trace signature that told him the ship was no more. He tried to see beneath the planetary shield the resurrected Xera had erected, but could not penetrate it. Interesting. A solitary Hohash drifted nearby. Kalaran pinged it with an info-burst, and it shot towards the shielded planet. As it reached the barrier, it morphed into subspace to slip through, but was blocked. That was also unexpected, definitely on the wrong side of ‘interesting’. He signalled it to wait there.

Hellera contacted him from the other side of the galaxy, her ship inside the nebula sheltering the Tla Beth homeworld. Accessing her sensors he saw dark worms and Nchkani ships swarm.

“I should be there, with you, Kalaran. Together we stand a better chance.”

“If the Tla Beth fall, other species will surrender to Qorall. And if you come here and we lose, Qorall will be unstoppable. Once he conquers this galaxy, he’ll go after the rest of the Kalarash.”

Several nano-seconds slipped past, a long pause for Hellera. “These humans. You still believe they are important.”

“A catalyst for the Spiders.”

“I’ve been in their heads; chaos and conflict.”

“Sometimes they’re happy for a fleeting moment.”

“An illusory and pathetic state we abandoned a billion years ago, with good reason.”

“Do you remember, though? You and I were happy once.”

Again, several nanoseconds pause.

“I remember.”

“I have to go now, Hellera. Are the Hohash in place?”

“Of course. Are you sure about this, Kalaran?”

“Never surer, Hellera.”

“Then do it.” She broke the connection.

Two billion years alive. As Jen would say, he’d had a good run for his money. Kalaran readied his ship. Its ten kilometre-long outer hull shifted from its usual scarlet and green hues to a deep blue, except for a single ivory ankh, the sign of the Kalarash. His ship sprang towards Qorall’s, and opened fire.

◆◆◆

Jen staggered along a passageway of gnarled rocks and boulders seen in ghoulish shades of grey in the utter darkness, courtesy of her new visual capability, Kalaran’s parting gift. She sucked in the last morsels of oxygen from her suit, holding each skinny breath for as long as she could before gasping another. It was tempting to lie down, to accept that life had finally kicked her ass, to give up. But she kept going, for Kalaran. Dammit, she was worried about him.

A faint glow rippled ahead, like a light underwater, so dim she thought at first that it must be an illusion, her new vision playing tricks on her. But no, it was there. She breathed out, and breathed in, having to suck hard, and realised this was her last breath from the suit. If nothing else, she wanted to see the ship before she died. The glow led her around a corner, and there it was.

A gyroscope was the first image that sprang to her mind as she gazed at the ship hovering just above the floor, the size of a three storey house, emanating blue light that pulsed like a heartbeat. Similar to the Tla Beth themselves, it had four vertical rings of shifting rainbow hues, turning slowly, two in one direction, two in the other. The inner part was diamond-shaped, its swirling surface masking any doors or windows that might offer her a sliver of hope.

The aching in her lungs grew to breaking point, and she exhaled a little, glancing at the red dial on her wrist indicating zero oxygen. Jen wanted to touch the ship, to try and make contact, and staggered a few paces forward. She exhaled some more as the onset of dizziness began. The thirst for air yanked at her lungs, and waves of nausea swept over her. One of the rings collided with her, knocked her off her feet, and spilled the last air out of her chest.

Jen tried to breathe, but there was nothing. Her mouth gawped uselessly, like a fish tossed onto dry land. She knew the pattern: muscles would fail from the extremities inwards, her brain being the last organ to shut down after the others stopped. Her body started to convulse, but even through the tremors she saw something silver above her, snaking its way towards her. It touched her helmet. She tried to sweep it away but her limbs refused to comply, and she watched a mouth open on the outside of her visor, reminding her of a lamprey, an Earth-based sea creature that latched onto fish and ate their intestines. She tried to push her head back inside her helmet, but her muscles ignored her.

Without warning, it pierced her visor, writhed into her mouth, and slithered down her throat. She wanted to scream, to fight this last violation, grab the worm and smash its head against the floor. But she was practically catatonic; even her gag reflex was inactive due to the oxygen depletion in her cells. Her body stilled, and Jen waited to die, thinking about Dimitri. She guessed she had a little time before complete brain death; maybe thirty seconds.

Jen felt a sharp jab inside her head, and found herself thinking about the Tla Beth, though she didn’t want to. She relived those last moments before it was destroyed by Qorall, images playing back in her mind of its accomplishments. She could still see its ship above her – but that wasn’t right – her vision should have faded by now. In fact, coherent thought should have ceased altogether. And then she breathed in the sweet taste of pure oxygen, just once, her chest suddenly rising, her back arching off the floor before collapsing again.

A surge of information screamed into her mind, she presumed via her node.

<Where?>

It wanted to know what had happened to its master. She mentally imaged Qorall’s attack on the planet, so the Tla Beth ship could see all that she had seen.

Another blast of oxygen. This time, her fingers and legs went into intense cramp, but she relished it; the Tla Beth ship was saving her. But again, just one breath. Jen gathered this was some kind of bargaining: oxygen for information. But the silver worm began to retract out of her gullet. She guessed why. She had nothing to offer it. Its master was dead. She was nothing to it. But she realised she wasn’t ready to die. Her arms still weren’t working, so she clamped her teeth down on the worm just as it was pulling out of her. Her head lifted from the floor as it tried to extract itself. Jen knew this was her last chance. She focused, transmitting via her node: Kalaran; her time on his ship, fighting the dark worms, accessing the Hohash; anything she could think of. The worm paused, its head just inside her mouth, as if deciding. Then it shot back down her throat, and pumped her so full of oxygen that her gag reflex returned.

◆◆◆

Pierre tried to keep up with Ukrull. He’d never realised how fast his reptilian colleague could run, covering ground easily with his zig-zagging gait. Pierre activated his suit rear-cam, to see behind him rather than turn around and risk tripping. It showed an image of what was chasing them, displaying it on the upper right section of his visor.

Beetle-like machines loped toward them, with eight legs and empty sockets where eyes might have been, and coiled protrusions on their skulls that could have been antennae. At least they had no wings, since there was no atmosphere, and no wheels either since the terrain was too broken up. Pierre had no doubt that the Machines could fabricate any form they needed. But the antennae were stretching in his direction. With alarm he saw more of the mechanized creatures to his left and right, closing in.

At last he was catching up with Ukrull. On second thought, Ukrull was braking, and Pierre saw why – a gaping fissure had opened up in front of them, too wide to leap across. A ship rose up from its depths, but it wasn’t black like the other Machines; rather, it glowed blue. It lifted level with them just as the beetles arrived. A hatch opened, and a space-suited, helmetless figure stood in the doorway: Jen.

She waved to them to enter, though there was no need; Pierre and Ukrull bolted for the hatch. They dived in and the doorway disappeared as if it had never been there. As he got to his feet, Pierre found he couldn’t focus on the interior, it was like being inside a liquid, pinks and blues and other coloured shapes forming and deforming, sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque. Secrecy. All he could resolve visually were Jen and Ukrull.

“This way,” Jen said.

Pierre had a hundred questions, but an objection got there first. “Qorall has shielded the planet; we can’t get off.”

Jen turned. “It’s good to see you both alive. Really.”

Pierre slowed down a second: Jen looked like hell. He dared to ask. “Dimitri?”

Ukrull turned to look at Jen, too. Her eyes teared up, then she raised her chin to stop any from falling, and placed her right palm over her heart. Pierre understood. But it was hard to accept: Dimitri had been the closest human to a Level Five Pierre had known, smarter than most Genners. And Dimitri and Jen had been besotted with each other; that much had been clear. But before Pierre could speak, Ukrull emitted a low growl that grew into a roar; it fit how they all felt, a mixture of loss, anger and respect. But mostly anger.

Then Ukrull spoke, though it wasn’t any language Pierre recognised. A Hohash arrived – not theirs, its frame metallic blue – it must have belonged to the Tla Beth guardian of this planet. It showed them an external view: ten or so of the beetles were clambering all over the Tla Beth ship, their antennae trying to syringe into the Tla Beth’s exterior, but they couldn’t penetrate the hull, and so instead they locked their legs around the external rings. Pierre wondered why the ship didn’t rotate its rings to break free.

Jen, rather than Ukrull, answered his unspoken question. “It wants them. We’re taking them with us.”

The certainty in her voice led him to another question. “Are you in touch with the ship? Via your node?”

She nodded, then added, “Kalaran is out there, though apparently he can’t break through this planet’s shield. The good news is that Qorall can’t either. We only know what’s going on because this Hohash is communicating with one just outside the shield. Subspace movement is blocked, but not communication.” Jen frowned. “According to the ship, the Machines aren’t supposed to be able to do what they’re doing.”

Pierre suddenly felt optimistic. “Never mind, Jen. Kalaran is here! That’s great news.” Yet she didn’t look happy, and neither did Ukrull. Pierre’s optimism dipped. “Isn’t it?”

Ukrull loped off through curtains of colour. Jen held out her hand. “Come on, Pierre, it’s time to go.”

They turned a corner and the colours dissolved, revealing a circular hatch leading to empty space – normal, not green – full of stars. Pierre didn’t get it; had they left the planet and moved outside the shield? And if so where were the beetles? As he got closer he saw that there was a gossamer tube-like corridor leading from the hatch, twisting out into space, its walls like thin transparent plastic. He paused at the threshold.

“Jen, is this what I think it is? An inter-dimensional corridor? It shouldn’t be possible.”

She shrugged. “Level Nineteen, remember? Kalaran still has a few tricks up his sleeve. Just think of it as an escape chute, Pierre. You go first.”

He didn’t move. “We should stay and help Kalaran.”

She shook her head. “You’re not thinking. At best we’d be a distraction, mostly a nuisance, and at worst a liability. He wants us out. Now.”

“Where’s Ukrull?” Pierre stared into the infinite, empty corridor.

“Behind you,” Ukrull grunted, and shoved Pierre in the back, knocking him over the threshold.

Immediately, with that single step, Pierre found himself flung far along the corridor, landing on hands and knees. The corridor’s floor had a damp, spongy feel, his fingers making indentations; it felt terribly flimsy, as if it might tear and disgorge him into open space. He got up and looked behind, and could just make out Jen and Ukrull staring from the hatchway. Yet outside the corridor he’d moved a great distance; he estimated twenty thousand kilometres from the planet. He tried to step back toward Jen, but a single pace in any direction thrust him further down the corridor. Now he couldn’t see either the hatch or Jen or Ukrull. But what he could see took his breath away, as this section of the corridor appeared to run close to the heat of battle.

Kalaran’s ship jetted a stream of blazing violet fire at Qorall’s asteroid-sized vessel. Most of it was deflected into the mouth of Qorall’s black hole. Qorall’s ship spewed forth jade-coloured forks of dark energy throughout the entire system. Pierre turned to see the Machine planet, in the path of those arcs of destructive power. The planet’s dull shield came down long enough for a single ship – the one he’d been standing on a minute ago – to sprint out of the system towards a crimson mouth at the edge of the sector that swelled for a moment then swallowed the ship and vanished.

“Wormhole,” Jen said, suddenly next to him. “Kalaran created it out of enemy ships and exotic matter. Hellera has opened the other end deeper inside the galaxy, at the Tla Beth homeworld.

“Why didn’t we travel through it?”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Turned out Dimitri was right about that. Wormhole travel is possible in theory, but most matter gets pulped and cooked during transit. But the Xera are very tough. They adapted last time around – using some kind of Level Eighteen shielding – when they tried to escape this battle-field two million years ago.”

Pierre saw the irony in what was happening. “Kalaran blocked them last time, didn’t he?”

She nodded.

He turned back to the planet. It was being drawn into Qorall’s black hole. But some of the Machines had escaped. Kalaran’s plan all along.

Ukrull arrived. “Must go. Conduit sealed behind us. Won’t last.” Without waiting, Ukrull took another step and disappeared down the corridor.

“We have to go, Pierre,” Jen said.

She held out her hand. He looked at it but didn’t take it, not meeting her gaze. “I’ll be right along, Jen.”

She studied him a moment. “I don’t think…” Her voice caught. She collected herself, and tried again. “I don’t think Kalaran’s going to make it, Pierre. Qorall is too strong. I’ve lost one person I care about today, I’m about to lose another. Please don’t make it three.”

He had to force himself not to step back. Kalaran about to die? Impossible. Kalaran was way too smart. “I’ll be there, Jen. I promise. You go.”

She shrugged, took a breath and a step, and vanished into the distant swaying, cord-like corridor.

Pierre didn’t believe Kalaran would, or even could, die. He was Level Nineteen, a sublime intelligence. For sure he had some trick up his sleeve, and Pierre wanted to see it; the scientist in him demanded it, and he still had a little time. He glanced back towards where the ship had been: the corridor undulated in space like a long rope cut loose. He swallowed, but stayed put.

Kalaran’s crossbow-shaped vessel was closer to Qorall’s now, the latter’s asteroid-sized ship glowing red under Kalaran’s relentless fire. The Machine planet whipped past both ships, arcs of green lightning skittering across its surface. It plunged towards the maw of the black hole, shattering into fragments before spiralling downwards. Its descent appeared to slow down, due to relativity, but Pierre knew the planet was already gone.

Pierre glanced back towards the corridor’s original entrance, only to find it was rushing toward him, like the end of a deflating balloon. He stumbled backwards and found himself thrown way down the corridor, but the loose end was catching up fast. He got to his feet and was about to run when he saw in the distance the unthinkable: Kalaran’s ship was engulfed in green shards of energy. This can’t be happening! Turning to his right, open space was almost upon him, and he dived left just in time.

The scene was far away now, hard to make out. The whole sector was like a ball of green electricity. He heard Jen’s voice as Ukrull’s claws locked around him.

“Out of time.”

Pierre was hauled off his feet, as the trio bounded towards the safe end of the corridor. He didn’t struggle. The last glimpse he saw of the battle scene was a series of eye-searing flashes before it went dark. But in the afterglow Pierre witnessed the unmistakeable remains of Kalaran’s shattered ship spinning into Qorall’s black hole.

As the trio spilled into an empty white room – Pierre hardly cared where they were – Ukrull planted him on his feet. Pierre gripped Ukrull’s claw and Jen’s wrist.

“Kalaran’s... dead.” Pierre still couldn’t believe it. Surely Qorall would win now; Hellera alone could not stand up against him. She would leave, and the galaxy would be lost. He felt dizzy, wanted to sit on the floor, to sink through it. Ukrull should have left him in the corridor.

In the silence punctuated only by Ukrull’s raspish breathing, they stared at each other. Ukrull let his head roll back towards the ceiling, his fore-claws raised above his head like fists, as he began hammering the air, emitting the loudest roar Pierre had ever heard. Pierre glanced at Jen, then sat down, his back against the wall. He didn’t have the energy to roar. Instead he stared into the floor, trying to make sense of it, to see the way out, but all he foresaw was their doom.

All his life he’d believed intelligence to be the only thing that mattered, and spending the last eighteen years travelling in a galaxy whose very basis was founded on the supremacy of intelligence had vindicated that perspective. But now the most intelligent being in the galaxy, perhaps the universe, had been felled. The universe had changed with Kalaran’s passing, and Pierre wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in this darker one.

Ukrull’s roaring ceased, leaving a ringing in Pierre’s ears. Jen joined him sitting on the floor, and took his hand and held onto it, while Ukrull paced, occasionally stomping or kicking at the walls.

Jen leant her head against his shoulder. “We’re totally screwed, aren’t we?

PART TWO

BLAKE

CHAPTER 14

Experiment

Petra stared at the plazglass, wondering if it needed to be thicker. Blake – the golden version – was quieter now, finally. Kilaney had brought him back in a stasis capsule, a grim moment for the people of Esperia, seeing the one-time saviour of humanity sedated in a transparent casket surrounded by heavily-armed guards. Word spread quickly as to what had happened, that Blake had been contaminated – corrupted – and was now on Qorall’s side. He’d been brought to Esperantia’s hospital through the streets; most people had looked at him not so much with pity, but with fear. If Qorall could turn Blake…

That was yesterday. Since then a contingent of Ossyrian doctors and an Ngank surgeon had landed their egg-shaped ship right outside Esperantia’s hospital. That was where Petra stood right now, staring at Blake, separated by a reinforced glass wall.

When they first woke him, he broke through his restraints – apparently by dislocating his shoulder – and managed to bite one of the Ossyrian doctors, infecting her. The others had evacuated and vaporised their comrade, even as her fur had begun to take on a golden sheen.

Sedation was no longer working. He just sat there, staring.

Kilaney entered through the Egg-ship’s airlock. “Any change?”

She shook her head.

“The Ossyrians want to take him into orbit; less risk of contamination up there.”

“No,” Petra said. “He’s my jurisdiction. He stays.”

Kilaney took in a breath, as if about to give a speech, then apparently thought better of it. He walked up to the glass, fingertips of one hand resting against it. With speed that made Petra recoil and almost topple from her stool, Blake leapt forward and rammed the glass with his head. A dull boom filled the room. Kilaney didn’t flinch. Where Kilaney’s fingers met the glass, there was a golden smear on the other side. Blake returned to a standing position, his head apparently undamaged, and resumed his stare at Petra.

“He’s no longer Blake, Petra. He’s a rabid dog. Back home we shot rabid dogs.”

“Not going to happen. We need a cure for this type of rabies, or else we’ll all be infected sooner or later.”

Kilaney turned his back on his erstwhile protégé and friend, blocking her view. “I’m no use here, Petra, not to him, not to you. I’m heading back out.” He pursed his lips. “There are battles to be fought, and –”

“How long have we got till one of Qorall’s Orbs arrives?”

He leant back against the glass. Petra winced as Blake became animated again, pounding the glass wall right behind Kilaney, his punches sounding like soft footsteps. Kilaney stayed where he was. She didn’t know if he could feel it or not, but she reckoned he could.

“There’s one traversing space at high transit speed, heading in our direction. It’s already bypassed several sectors, which is unusual – Qorall doesn’t normally leave any gaps in his advancing front.”

“So, how long?”

“It isn’t like the others. It’s black, for one thing. We think it’s been designed to get through the Shrell wires.”

Petra snatched at a glimmer of hope. “The Shrell, could they –”

He shook his head in a way that told her they’d already tried and paid a heavy price.

She waited, lips pressed tight.

“A week at most,” he said. “I’ll be back before then.”

Petra felt like slumping, but she didn’t. The pounding ceased. Blake stood directly behind Kilaney so she couldn’t see him at all. “No word from Kalaran?”

Kilaney shook his head. “Hellera is still in contact, though.”

Petra stared at the floor. For some reason, nobody trusted Hellera as much as they trusted Kalaran, which wasn’t much in the first place.

“Go,” she said, wishing she, too were a soldier and could go with him. But as he moved past her she laid a hand on his arm, and he paused.

“None of us want to become like this.” She nodded her head toward the glass. “If it comes to it, if Council decides, and gives the order… You understand me, don’t you?”

“Understood, Madam President. But I doubt they will. Most likely Council will let individuals decide for themselves, and given human nature, that means if we’re overcome we’ll end up swelling Qorall’s ranks.”

“We will of course abide by what they say, though I already know my personal choice.”

“As do I.” Kilaney took a hard stare at Blake, then looked away.

She retracted her hand, and Kilaney stepped through the airlock. Petra returned to her vigil, watching Blake stare at her. She sensed his contempt – bordering on disgust – for the infidel he believed her to be, and wondered how she might reach him, all the time knowing there was no way she could. She’d already talked to him for hours, trying every counter-conditioning technique in the book, and a few Genner ones, too. It was no longer Blake, that much was clear, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to accept it. Despite being a Genner and having no truck with amorphous concepts like souls, she wondered if, deep down, there was some vestige of the real Blake, wounded, aware of his state and screaming to get out. She almost hoped not, because for him this would be hell.

With that thought, she turned and headed to another compartment where the Ngank – a squid-like creature who never seemed to touch the floor – was communicating with the three remaining Ossyrians doctors.

“He’s all yours,” she said.

They barely paid her attention, so she spun around and left the vessel through the same airlock as Kilaney. Outside in the bright sunshine, on the dusty main street of Esperantia, she breathed in the dry air, picking up traces of lavender, one of the few Earth plants that flourished in Esperia’s cool sunlight. She had work to do, a meeting with Vasquez and the militia to prepare, futile as she knew their defences would be. One week. Not enough time. She left and proceeded at a brisk pace to her office.

Brandt intercepted her. “Petra, we need to talk.”

She knew what he wanted. “Not now,” she said, and tried to out-pace him, pointless given his gargantuan size.

He blocked her path, though remaining at arm’s reach. “Petra, you need to listen to me.”

After two attempts to walk past him, she stopped, folding her arms. “Then how about ‘Madam President’, for starters?”

“That title doesn’t mean anything to us Genners, and you know it.” But he lowered his gaze.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have voted for me.” But he looked hurt, in a way she thought only very large men could. “Well, go ahead, I’m listening.” But her anger from the last two days boiled over. “On second thought, you listen, Brandt.” She pointed back to the egg-ship. “I told Blake to go and do something and make it count. Have you seen him? Have you seen what they did to him? What they’ll do to us in a week’s time? Genners, Steaders, it won’t make a damn of difference.”

Brandt lowered his voice. “The Youngbloods are not going to wait.”

Petra couldn’t believe it. “They want to go and fight the Orb and die early, is that it? Then they’ll be in the front line attacking us. Even Steaders aren’t that stupid!”

Brandt shook his head. “They want to evacuate, Petra.”

She thought she’d heard it wrong. “What?” The anger fled from her voice. “Where to?” It didn’t make sense. The Youngbloods were warriors at heart; surely if anything they’d want to stay and fight. Petra realised she’d been spending so much time looking after the Steader population that she’d lost touch with her own people.

“Come to my office, Brandt, you’d better fill me in.”

An hour later, Brandt had left, and she sat in her utilitarian alabaster office that was bereft of ornamentation, not even a pad lying on the antique oak table, the last of its kind. It had served four Presidents in eighteen years. She didn’t see how there would be a fifth.

Vasquez sat on the other side of the table, frowning. “Evacuate? Where to?”

She told him the plan, and the reasoning, while gazing out the window, past the curve of the Dome to the cracked sky beyond. She ran through it quickly, summarising, because she didn’t like it, despite its logic, due to a ‘gut feel’, something they’d all believed had been bred out of Genners. Brandt and the other Youngblood warriors had run the calcs. Qorall was coming for the Spiders, and even if Hellera could hold him off, humanity was likely to get torched in the process. Several Ossyrian vessels were going to pass by the system in a matter of days. They’d recently lost their homeworld and were going to fall back to a proto-world a hundred and fifty sectors away. They had room on their ships, a lot of room...

“What about Micah and the others?”

“If they succeed, we can send a message via the Hohash, and Shiva can rendezvous with us.”

Vasquez stroked his stubble. “I don’t know about this, Petra…”

She got up, then perched on her desk. “Tell me about it. But part of me wonders why I didn’t think of it, or why no one else in Council has raised it.”

“Kalaran and Hellera are two reasons. They’re relying on us, though none of us truly understands why. And for the past eighteen years this ball of rock has been our home. We ran away before, Petra, the Steaders don’t want to run again. And the Spiders are still here. And so is Blake. That’s five reasons.”

“Five reasons to stay here and die? Not a compelling business case, Colonel.” Petra felt like the galaxy was closing in on her, the Shrell-wires a trap rather than a protective cage.

Vasquez stood tall, despite his years. “Call the Council. Put it to them.”

She nodded, then something occurred to her. “The Spider’s shield around Shimsha. You were trying to break through.”

“No way we can, and we still don’t know what it’s for. Which is why I’m here, Petra. Three Spiders emerged an hour ago, I followed them here.”

Petra was on her feet. “Where…? Blake?” She was out the door before Vasquez answered.

She walked fast to the ivory egg-ship, Vasquez a little way behind, as always maintaining his composure; she remembered Blake once joking with her that no one had actually seen Vasquez run, because when he did, it was too fast. As President, Petra knew she should also maintain a certain level of decorum, so she maintained a steady pace. Up ahead she saw a small group of people who had set up some chairs and a couple of tables in the forecourt nearest the Ngank surgeon’s ship. Various religious groups were holding a vigil for Blake, some on their knees, palms clasped together in prayer.  Petra doubted any of them knew Blake personally; this was symbolic, for everyone’s survival. She’d never been religious, but right now she’d take any help she could get. Her heart pounded – what if the Spiders could cure him? To hell with decorum; she broke into a run.

A single Ossyrian sat at the hexagonal airlock entrance, its jet-black mane flowing out from underneath a platinum, sapphire and emerald headdress. Petra could read their shifting mercurial eyes a little, having learned from her godmother Chahat-Me. The Ossyrians and the Ngank surgeon had exhausted all options. She braced herself for what she might find inside.

The Ngank, two Ossyrians, and two Spiders crowded at the quarantine cell observation window. Vasquez had said there were three Spiders. She nudged politely in – the Ngank obliged by floating above one of the Spiders – and saw the third Spider through an inner airlock portal; it was about to enter. Blake sat motionless, staring at one of the Spiders next to her. The Spider began to stream light towards Blake, trying to reach him.

Vasquez arrived and took up a place directly behind her, and brought her up to date.

“The Ossyrians said it probably won’t work, as the change has done something to his eyesight; he can’t see colours anymore. Still, it’s worth a try.”

Petra ground her teeth together. That bastard Qorall thought of everything. Of course he did, she chided herself – he’s Level Nineteen. And she’d heard that the Spiders weren’t the only species communicating by colour. But she also considered that it ran deeper than that: in order to change the way people think, you have to change how they perceive. As if to prove her point, Blake looked away from the Spider, momentarily caught her eye with a grim smile, then turned to face the airlock. A sense of panic gripped Petra.

“No!” she shouted. But there was a hiss. “I said –”

The Ossyrian to her left placed a paw on her arm, something Chahat-Me used to do when she’d wanted a younger Petra to be quiet. Out of respect for her deceased Ossyrian godmother, Petra shut up, despite guessing what would come next.

The hatch between Blake and the Spider opened. With a sinking feeling, she noticed a slightly darker pear-shaped patch on its left rear leg; it was one of Blake’s friends, the one she’d seen most often with him. She folded her arms, as if holding herself. Please, Blake… She felt Vasquez’ hand on her shoulder. Normally she’d have shrugged it off, but for once she didn’t.

The Spider ambled into Blake’s chamber. Its comms band rippled a soothing aquamarine. Blake was a statue. Around her, everyone else remained completely still.

Blake moved so fast, almost a blur, one moment sitting, the next a ball of fury attacking the Spider with fists and feet and elbows and teeth. The Spider made no response, not even defensive reflexes kicking in. One of its legs collapsed as Blake’s foot shattered a knee-joint, and Blake’s rigid golden fingers drove into the Spider’s comms band like blades, again and again, until blue liquid spurted out. Petra’s breathing was frantic, no one else seemed to be reacting like her, except that Vasquez held her shoulders firm. One of her knuckles went to her mouth and she bit hard as she watched Blake gouge and tear his best friend to pieces.

It lasted five minutes – she never once closed her eyes to it – before the Spider was on the ground, still twitching, but almost certainly dead. Blake’s arms dripped blue gore. He stood, facing away from them, surveying his handiwork. Now Petra understood how Kilaney had felt earlier. She wanted to shoot this abomination, right here, right now. But she channelled her anger in another direction, as she turned around.

“Well, what was the point of that? We all knew what was going to happen, didn’t we?”

The Ngank drifted down level with her face. It had two pink holes she assumed were eyes, and a spout on its face she hoped was a mouth. It surprised her by speaking English.

“Experiment successful.”

For the second time that day, the anger inside Petra reached boiling point. “Are you out of your mind? He just tore his best friend to pieces. What kind of sick success is that?” She turned to the Ossyrians. “What is wrong with you all?”

Vasquez raised a hand. “Petra –”

“What? Since you seem to get it, Colonel, please explain it to me. In which galaxy does what I’ve just had to witness count as success?”

He pursed his lips, and took his time, presumably waiting for her to calm down, to listen. She didn’t want to hear whatever he had to say, but his tactic worked, and she recovered a little. She spoke in a quieter voice, regaining some composure.

“Tell me, Colonel.”

“What colour is the Spider, Petra?”

She stared at him as if he’d asked some ridiculously banal question, then spun around to the glass. It was black. Not gold. So far, every single being of any race that had been touched by one of Qorall’s minions had been contaminated and turned in seconds, ending up gold like Blake, like the Orbs. Until now.

“How?” she asked.

The Ngank came close to her again. “Unknown. But breakthrough. Must prepare for autopsy.” It drifted away, then came back. “Apologies for harm.”

“I understand,” she said, her voice quieter.

The Ossyrians and the Ngank disappeared into an adjacent room with the two remaining Spiders. Vasquez stood silently behind her. She stayed facing the glass. Blake still stared at the corpse, so she couldn’t see his face. She turned to Vasquez. He held out a handkerchief. She stared at it and then remembered, and wiped the blood off her chin.

“Thank you, Colonel, I’m sorry for my behaviour just now. To be honest I don’t feel fit to be President anymore. I’m too involved in all of this, I can’t step back. Could you –”

“Nothing to apologise for. What we all just witnessed was… harrowing. You expressed what I felt. And no, we need a President who is involved, frankly, and your judgement and decisions have been sound so far.” He smiled. “Besides, I’m not averse to some theatrics every now and again.”

His smile infected her. “I can see why Blake had you as his right-hand man.” Her smile faded. “Please call an Emergency Council meeting in an hour in the Dome, ask Brandt to address Council with his evacuation proposal.”

“Will we see you at the Meeting?”

“I’ll be there.” She stopped him near the exit with a question. “Why doesn’t Blake turn around?”

Vasquez shook his head. “He’s gone, Petra, there’s nothing left of him in there.”

Vasquez quit the observation chamber. Alone, she returned to stare at the scene. Vasquez was right. If the autopsy was successful, they could terminate Blake – this zombie – and bury the man who had died inside it several days ago. Out of pure frustration, Petra walked up to the glass and punched it hard with her left hand, hurting her knuckles. She was about to walk away when Blake turned his head slightly, as if listening, then turned back again. She thought she noticed something. Yet it couldn’t be; a trick of the light, perhaps, but she had to be certain. She called to the Ossyrians. One of them came in, its quicksilver eyes displaying more than a little irritation.

“Show me the view from that camera.” She pointed to a camera located inside the cell, high up on the opposite wall.

The Ossyrian’s eyes glittered dissatisfaction.

“Just do it!”

The Ossyrian moved to a console and activated a screen. Petra moved towards it. The Ossyrian was about to depart when it stopped, staring at the view of Blake’s face. It called to the others, but before they arrived Petra barged in front of the display. She gripped the screen with both hands.

Blake’s golden face was splattered with drying blue blood and pieces of gore, some of the Spider’s fur matted to his chin. His expression was still as grim as it had been earlier, full of spite and hatred. But his cheeks showed unmistakeable streaks where tears had run, and his eyes were red.

As the Ngank arrived she seized two of its tentacles. “Blake’s not lost,” she cried. “He’s still in there!”

The Spiders entered, and everyone moved out of their way so they could see the display. Petra’s pulse quickened. She knew in that moment that whatever Council decided – even if it voted for evacuation – she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d put Blake on this course of action, and was determined to get him back or else die trying.

She lifted her wristcom to her mouth, and was about to call Vasquez, when she changed her mind.

“Kilaney… Bill, I need you back here. Blake… he’s still buried in there.”

There was a pause.

“I’m on my way.”

As the Ossyrians and the Ngank used robot arms to extract the Spider’s corpse, the other two Spiders stood on either side of Petra, watching the operation. Without thinking about it, she rested a palm on each one, and patted them.

CHAPTER 15

Plan F

Micah hadn’t slept in two days straight. Vashta had given him something to keep him going, but it made him edgy and gave everything around him a slightly yellow tinge. She’d told him to take half an hour off the Bridge, so he sat in his quarters on the bed, his back against the wall, contemplating his next move now that Ramires and Ash had been taken. Clearly Plan F was called for, but he needed to be sure, and he needed to be focused. He wasn’t, and he knew why.

He recalled an event some years earlier that led to him resign as President, an event he’d never told anyone about. He’d bumped into Sandy – an event in itself since she’d managed to avoid him for a long time – and they’d actually talked. She hadn’t had much choice, as her son Gabriel, a mere boy then, had been seriously injured in a training bout, and Ramires had been away. Micah had gone to the hospital to see the boy, bringing one of the Ossyrian doctors with him, and Micah and Sandy ended up sharing an empty waiting room while the doctor performed emergency surgery.

After some pained pleasantries, they talked, over cups of tea. The talk had been mainly one-way, her talking, him listening. It had reminded him of a painting he’d seen somewhere in a virtual museum showing a saint tied to a tree, with many arrows sticking out of his body…

“I just don’t think you’re the right one to lead us if there’s an attack,” she said.

First arrow, a light one. He took a sip. “Of course not; there’s Blake, Vasqu –”

“But you’d be commander-in-chief. You’d make the final call.”

“I’m not sure I see –”

“You don’t have the killer instinct, Micah. If Sister Esma attacked us again, and you had the chance to blow her to smithereens, would you?”

“Well, that would –”

“Thought not. You’d hesitate, she’d recover, and then come back better prepared next time, and we’d all pay the price for your decision.”

Second arrow. He took another sip.

“And what about Louise?” She folded her arms.

Micah’s breathing slowed. He felt he was turning to stone. He put down his cup. “What about her?”

“Well, if you’d screwed a hundred women, it wouldn’t be so bad, but Louise – was she your first?” That arrow narrowly missed. His thirst deserted him. He shook his head.

“Let’s be honest, Micah, you’ve probably had very few lovers, and Louise was one of them.”

Another arrow. “Once,” he said quietly. “We had sex once.”

“So, here’s my point. Look me in the eye and tell me you’ll kill her.”

He looked her in the eye. “I’ll kill her.”

She shook her head. “You’re lying and you don’t even know it. Do you know what your problem is Micah?”

He had a few ideas.

“You’re too compassionate. You care too much about others, to the point that you’re self-deprecating. That’s okay if it only affects you, but when you’re leader of the human race…”

He couldn’t take any more arrows, and got up and left. That evening he resigned from the Presidency.

The next day Sandy came by his house, a first, but he refused to answer the door. She talked to him through it for two hours, saying it had all been displaced anger, that she’d been worried about Gabriel, that she hadn’t meant him to resign. Micah didn’t say a word, and eventually she left.

Antonia took over for two years as President before Kat came and told him it was burning her out, and persuaded him to take back his job.

He thought he’d be free of Sandy after that whole episode, but each time he heard about her his ears pricked up. She’d been well-respected amongst the outer communities, and especially with the Youngbloods, not only because she was married to Ramires whom they practically worshipped, but because she counselled them on a range of social problems, helped the fast-growing Genner kids deal with their Steader parents, relate to them. She’d worked unseen for a decade, creating a much-needed social glue that kept a fractious society from flying apart, though she never once appeared in or before Council, never took any credit.

He glanced at his watch. Five more minutes.

He knew why Sandy was angry with him, it wasn’t just about Louise. There’d been Hannah, too.

Most people couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment their lives took a course for the worse, but Micah could. On board a stolen Q’Roth vessel, roaming the Grid with Sandy, back when they’d been friends and on the cusp of becoming more, Sandy barely pregnant with Gabriel. Late at night they’d been talking, she’d come to see him, but he’d misread the signs, only realising it later. Unfortunately, the Alician Hannah called on him later that night while he was asleep, and crawled into bed with him; on top of him to be precise. Hardly awake, he’d thought she was Sandy. Then, fate being not merely cruel but vicious as it sometimes was, Sandy had arrived, and found them together. From that point on Sandy turned away from him, and towards Ramires, and Micah did nothing to stop it, confirming her later assessment of him.

Zack once told him that the whole point of life was to overcome your main flaw, which, funnily enough, could also be your strength. Micah hadn’t thought too much about it until now, because of Plan F. Plan F would spill blood. He would have a lot of blood on his hands. Had Sandy been right about him? Was his compassion going to stay his hand when it came to the necessary, or if he was faced with Louise? Had he lied to Sandy and to himself on that day?

It was time, and he was out of time. He headed to the bridge, determined to be the man that the situation – and the whole of humanity – demanded him to be.

Micah sat in the command chair, Vashta at Tactical behind him. He replayed the scenario in his head again. Plan F – Ash’s strategy. When he’d first heard it, Micah had winced, but it made sense, though he’d had a hard time hearing such an aggressive manoeuvre coming from someone as philosophical as Ash.

The Alician space station, a gleaming crystal city, lay ten kilometres dead ahead, hanging in space like a jewel, a marvel of engineering. Four Q’Roth battleships were docked there, while two Marauder Class vessels patrolled the perimeter. He checked the ship’s chronometer.

“Fire,” he said.

There was no recoil, no sound as the intelligent missile Shiva called a Bleeder shot like a flare towards its target, not seeming to be in a hurry. Micah counted down. Ten, nine, eight… A Q’Roth Marauder jumped into its path, pulse cannons blazing, lighting up space. The bleeder punctured the ship’s shields and hull. The Marauder’s on-board lights flickered then went out, the vessel suddenly inert, adrift, all its energy haemorrhaging into a subspace rift left by the missile. The Bleeder emerged from the other side, homing in on its prize.

Five, four, three… It breached the space station’s translucent shield, which flashed silver once, then vanished.

One.

There was no explosion. The only noticeable change was that lights began to fade and go out all over the space station. Two of the Q’Roth battleships had managed to detach before the Bleeder made contact, and tore towards Shiva’s position, which hadn’t deviated a centimetre.

Micah touched a panel. “Approaching Q’Roth ships, break off immediately or be destroyed.”

The screens in front of Micah stuttered white and yellow as Shiva was bathed in plasma fire.

“Final warning,” he said, not bothering to check Shiva’s hull integrity.

The larger Q’Roth ship fired an anti-matter projectile; it was relatively small, but then if it had been even medium-sized, say twenty kilograms, the backwash from the energy release would have fried the Q’Roth ship. Micah tapped a remote cam and watched the illegal weapon scorch all the way around Shiva’s elliptical shield, space dust erupting like fire-crackers around the hull before evanescing into gas, giving the impression Shiva had been dropped into boiling water flashing to steam.

“Take them out, Vashta.”

It was like watching two trucks race headlong into a giant hammer swinging the other way. He’d heard about gravity weapons, but never imagined what they could do; this one had been Hellera’s gift, an upgrade for Shiva.

The two battleships were first flattened, then turned inside out, as if a giant arm had reached down their throats, grabbed their tails, and pulled hard. Amidst the carnage, hundreds of Q’Roth warriors, most of them unsuited, flailed their limbs in cold space. Vashta targeted all of them with a dazzling shower of laser fire. In two seconds they were all dead.

Micah closed his eyes. “Was that necessary?”

Vashta spoke, the sound of her voice an unholy choir of out-of-tune fingernails scraping down an antique blackboard. “Better for them. Dying in space is agony.”

He glanced back at the display. A single Marauder was intact. He touched the pad again. “Q’Roth vessel, the people aboard the station are still alive, but all power is gone, including life support. You may proceed to rescue –”

The ship jumped out of the system. Micah scratched his chin. The Marauder had gone for reinforcements, for sure. The whole point of Plan F, Ash had said, was brutality, creating shock in the enemy, to throw them off-balance, to make them realise you meant business. But Micah was at the helm, not Ash, not Ramires. He stared at the city, imagining hundreds of Alicians and Q’Roth beginning to chill, local gravity nullified, oxygen recycling ceased. They’d all be dead in thirty minutes. His earlier self-debate about compassion versus the killer instinct arose in his mind. The station was incapacitated, he’d sent a message. There was a difference between spilling blood and creating a bloodbath.

“Switch it off, Shiva.”

“Are we on a new plan, Micah?” Shiva’s voice often had an aloof, slightly mocking tone.

“No. Switch off the Bleeder. Now.”

A few lights flickered back on inside the station. Vashta arrived next to him, her voice grating louder than usual.

“Do you wish me to take over? You have reinstated a threat. If you feel unable to execute the plan –”

He tapped another panel while he looked Vashta in the eye. “Aramisk, blast the base of the tether.”

Vashta’s fast-moving quicksilver eyes stilled for a moment, then she returned to her station.

They waited ten minutes before seeing a wave like the curl of a whip travel up the tether. When it reached the orbital city, it snapped clean off, shunting the city out of orbit. The two Q’Roth ships powered up and undocked from the station.

“Your orders, Micah?” Shiva asked.

He imagined Vashta’s eyes lasering into his back. And Sandy’s.

Micah stared at the vessels, recalling the final battle for Earth, when he’d watched from a distance as the Q’Roth slaughtered billions.

“Ram the closest one.”

Shiva’s inertial dampers were so good that he felt nothing, simply watched the screen show wild movement as Shiva, a Scintarelli Scythe-ship, lived up to her name. Shiva tore away from the closest ship before looping back at terrifying speed. Micah barely had time to register the Q’Roth ship rushing towards him on the screen, then there was a flash of grey followed by open space again. The aft screen showed the two halves of the guillotined ship careening away from each other, internal explosions sputtering briefly before both halves grew dark. Micah doubted there would be survivors.

The last ship had moved off but had not yet jumped out of the system. Its commander hailed Micah.

“Enemy ship, identify yourself.”

Micah and the others had discussed this at length. Technically humans and the Q’Roth were on the same side – Kalaran’s – in the war against Qorall. But certain Q’Roth tribes had allied themselves with the Alicians. Micah didn’t see any point in subterfuge.

“We are humans. This is a private matter between us and the Alicians. I suggest you stay out of it; you have seen what this ship can do. Return now to your Queen. Tell her that Kalaran favours us rather than the Alicians, and that she must choose her allegiances carefully. You can return for your colleagues tomorrow.”

“Your name, human?”

“Micah.”

The battleship jumped out of the system.

Micah relaxed a little, then took a breath. He’d spilled blood. But he knew it was one thing to do it from a ship, using superior firepower, and quite another to kill someone right in front of you. He had a nasty feeling that fate would test him, presenting him with the question Sandy had asked years ago. He felt certain he would face Louise.

“Take us down, Shiva. Prepare for ground assault.”

◆◆◆

Ash wondered why he was still alive. He couldn’t feel his head, and could only see out of his right eye. What he saw was Louise. She hadn’t spoken for ten minutes, just perched on a stool alternating between watching him and a screen to her right. He was strapped down to a semi-reclined operating chair; the restraints seemed unnecessary given that his muscles had been anaesthetised. He presumed they were there for another reason: Louise had operated on him, on his head. But he felt calm. He was more than prepared for death.

“I didn’t recognise you at first, Rashid; or should I call you Ash? What’s with the Mannekhi eyes, anyway?” She glanced at the screen. “No matter, the procedure is finished.”

Curiosity got the better of him. “Call me Ash, please. What procedure?”

“I’ve split your brain, blocked the corpus callosum that joins your two hemispheres, so I can interrogate you. I perfected this approach a few years back; nice to have an opportunity to use it again.”

That was why he could only see out of one eye. The right one. So, his conscious mind was active – the left hemisphere connected to the right eye. The analytic, linguistic half of his mind. The rational one. Which meant she was going to access the right hemisphere, the creative part, the truthful half that did not know how to lie.

“Actually, your two names make it easier to do this. I’ll call you Ash, and the other one Rashid. Let’s get started, shall we? What is your crew complement, Rashid?”

Ash heard his mouth list Shiva’s crew. It was startling to hear his own voice as if spoken by another person. He tried to think of some way to stop this, to stop telling her everything.

“Good to know Micah’s coming. Also, Kat owes me an apology. And another Ossyrian doctor might come in handy.” She crossed her legs, leaning forward with her forearms atop her knees. “What is the plan, Rashid?”

Ash tried to stop talking, to hold his breath, to stop his mouth working, but to no avail. At least his right brain gave only the broad brush strokes, no details. But it was small comfort. During their travels together, Kalaran had once offered him a mental trigger, a way to think a series of thoughts that would initiate neural shutdown. Ash wished he’d accepted the offer.

“Ash, this Plan F, destroying Savange if you can’t release the captives… it’s a bluff, correct?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because your alter ego doesn’t seem to be clear about it.”

Ah, of course. Plan F was complex, and that wasn’t the domain of the right hemisphere. “It is not a bluff.”

She got off her stool and walked closer to him. “Bring the woman,” she said.

Ash hoped it would not be her, but sure enough, Sonja was marched in by an Alician male.

“I believe you two know each other?” Louise went back to her seat, and crossed her legs again, looking relaxed.

Ash stared at Sonja, whom he’d not seen for a year of his time, eighteen of hers. But she hadn’t aged appreciably, except that her short afro had touches of grey here and there. Her eyes were the same, but her expression was one of shock, presumably at seeing some contraption strapped to his head. Seeing Sonja rekindled emotions he’d convinced himself were long dead.

“Rashid,” Louise said, “how do you feel about this woman?”

Ash heard his alter ego confess thoughts and feeling he’d denied for a long time. Yet despite the anger at Louise for this gross violation, Ash was surprised at the passion in his voice as he professed love for Sonja, and watched a tear trickle down her left cheek. Eventually his counterpart grew silent.

Louise stayed quiet.

Sonja’s head bowed, then lifted, proud and honest as he remembered. “Is it true that you love me? Louise explained what she’s done to you. I want to hear it from the other side, I need to know, Ash. Is it true?”

“We must not entertain Louise’s games, Sonja. You know –”

Sonja stamped a foot. “Is it true? All these years while you were gone I’ve been wondering and waiting. Answer me, yes or no!”

She looked as if she might shatter. Eighteen years for her, one for him, unfair to the point of being tragic. Was it true?

“Yes,” he said.

Louise got off her stool and moved behind Sonja, locking an elbow around her neck, her other hand on the back of her head.

“So, Ash. Is Plan F ultimately a bluff?”

Ash stared into Sonja’s defiant eyes. He realised he no longer wanted to die, that he did have something to live for. Louise had outplayed him.

He closed his eyes. I’m sorry Micah.

“It’s a bluff.”

◆◆◆

Shiva burst through the cloud layer, and raced down towards the purple savannah studded with green pines that led to Savange City. Micah found himself edging backwards into his chair as the tree-line rushed upwards.

“Er… Shiva?”

At the last millisecond, Shiva pulled up and cleaved a furrow between fir trees, bolting forwards at an altitude of twenty metres and a speed of five hundred kilometres an hour. The aft screen showed pine trees ablaze.

“Was that necessary?”

“I needed to verify certain subsystems were functioning optimally.”

“Of course you did,” Micah said, trying to breathe normally.

To the East, the orbital tether continued to fall from orbit, coiling giant loops that pummelled into the ground, flattening trees, sparking fires, and shattering boulders into plumes of dust. The city was to the South, so the natural spin of the planet meant the tether fell away from the inhabitants; Micah presumed they’d planned it that way, just in case.

“Kat,” Micah said. “Are you in position?”

“Almost,” she said, panting.

He looked at the timer. Ninety seconds. “You have –”

“I know!”

He leant back, tried to slow his heart rate, which his resident was inconveniently displaying in the corner of his right eye. “Vashta, you have all their life signs and locations?

A display next to Micah opened up: the terrain ahead, the city, and beneath, where all except Kat were. There was something wrong with Ash’s signature: it was slightly out of phase, presenting a double image on the screen.

“Where’s the Spider? I don’t see it.” This was the added complication to their mission – to recover or destroy the Spider at all costs; it must not fall into Qorall’s hands.

“Unknown,” Vashta shouted.

They flashed over a lake, and Shiva dipped lower, sending a fountain of water up into the sky behind them.

Micah cleared his throat. “We’re not going for subtlety then, Shiva?”

“They are tracking us Micah. In fact they are firing at us.”

“Let’s see what they’ve got against a Level Fifteen Mind-ship.”

The display blazed white, then red, then white again. Then the screen readjusted, filtering out the high energy plasma fire so he could see the tracer lines coming from two towers at the edge of the city. At first they reminded him of battleship towers, as if some giant vessel had been buried just below ground level. Each tower had an array of weapons turrets and cannons, almost all of which were firing simultaneously. The intensity of the energy bearing down on them was igniting everything between Shiva and the towers, creating a tunnel of fire. He wondered how they protected the city from the heat and backwash radiation, then he saw it; a shield, similar to the one around the orbital city.

“Take down their shield.”

A mauve circle spat out ahead of them, unperturbed by enemy beams, and grew in size, then narrowed into a cone that sped off and disappeared. A second later, the shield fizzed and died, and the enemy beams cut off; an intelligent protection system, since there was no point having a defence grid that killed most of Savange’s population.

Shiva slowed so fast that thunder roared around them, then she slewed lazily between the two towers. “Drop-zone,” Shiva said.

“Okay, bore the hole.” Micah turned to Vashta. “The Bridge is yours.” He ran to the aft of the ship, knowing that Shiva was tilting to a vertical position, from whence she would core a deep shaft.

“Kat, tell me you’re ready.”

“Almost!”

Micah leapt aboard the sled as the aft door opened. Steam flushed in, then cleared, revealing a smoking hole, five metres in diameter. He engaged the sled engine and dropped out of Shiva, circling once, scanning the rim of the hole. “Kat, where the hell –”

She slammed into his back, and locked her arms around his waist, just as Shiva roared off to combat another weapons-tower.

“Go,” she said.

He let the sled drop like a stone, no lights, his resident projecting an image of the polished cylinder around him, and the floor a kilometre below to the fiftieth level; where Sandy, Antonia and the other captives were, where Ash and Ramires were, and, he knew, where Louise would be waiting.

◆◆◆

Ash watched Louise dart between displays and controls, like a wild bird suddenly trapped in a room, barking orders on her wristcom. She strode over to him.

“How do they know where we are, where you are? We’re shielded.” She looked away. “And even if they can track you, they couldn’t know where the captives are, unless…”

Ash was sure of the next question, and glad she hadn’t posed it to Rashid earlier. Hopefully now it was too late.

She stared at him. “Your eyes. They’re not Mannekhi, are they? Tell me Rashid.”

Ash heard his alter ego tell her they were a gift from Kalaran, and that they could link with a Hohash via subspace. There was no known shield in existence that could block subspace. Ash guessed what was coming next. It was okay, he told himself, he’d been blind before. The pain cut through his eyes like a jagged knife, even though he knew Louise had probably used a laser scalpel. Hot fluid splashed onto his cheeks and temples, then ran down his neck. Sonja screamed. It’s alright, he heard Rashid say. This is how we met, remember? Sonja was sobbing. Ash hoped Louise wouldn’t kill her.

He listened, a blind man’s skill not easily forgotten. But Louise said nothing, furiously tapping displays. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of explosions, sonic grenades, and flashbombs further down the corridor, and the hissing of the gas canisters that would knock out all Alicians.

Plan F was right on schedule.

Micah and Kat had arrived.

CHAPTER 16

Siege

In the bowels of the Kalarash ship, Pierre stared into the bubbling pool that had just swallowed Ukrull and Jen. Pierre had always hated water, and had never learned to swim, a fact he’d managed to conceal during his astronaut training back on Earth. He hadn’t told Jen or Ukrull either. But swimming through water should be easier than staying afloat. Besides, Kalaran was gone, and they needed to start working with Hellera. He checked his face-mask one more time, and plunged in.

The green-tinged fluid was warm, the visibility good. He saw Ukrull, so ungainly on land, tuck his fore-claws by his side, and use his long tail to swim easily, like a marine iguana back on Earth. Jen swam with a practical breast stroke and occasional dolphin kick, while he clawed his way through the fluid like a dog. He stayed at the rear.

The inside of Kalaran’s ship, from what Jen had told him, had been as vast as Hellera’s, filled with sweet air and small asteroids each with their own gravity field, with a mercury lake at the bottom. By contrast, Hellera’s ship, though equally vast, was filled with liquid. Instead of the asteroids, there were purple or red bulbous masses that slowly changed shape from sphere to ovoid to long, flat tongues that occasionally broke and split, forming two new spheres. It was mesmerising, and he had to concentrate on keeping up with Jen rather than staying to watch and wonder what these masses were. He had no idea of the surrounding liquid’s function or chemical composition.

Swimming upward through the water – he decided to think of it as water for now – was not easy, and it reminded him of their situation. He watched Jen; she had lost the most, first Dimitri, then Kalaran. Yet she swam onwards. He tried to mimic her actions, and after a while found a steady rhythm. He wondered why Hellera was making them do this, there must be an easier mode of transport. It occurred to him that a liquid made for good internal defence.

During the next twenty minutes Pierre saw shapes in the water, always just a little too far off to make out their details; human-sized, moving independently, swimming fast through the fluid. Several times Ukrull paused their ascent, waiting for something to pass overhead before continuing. Pierre’s headset had no comms capability, so all questions would have to wait.

At last he saw the ship walls tapering to a neck above him. He tried to recall the external form of the Kalarash vessel: crossbow-shaped with a narrow shaft ascending to an arrowhead at the top. He guessed that was their destination. After another few minutes, he saw a ceiling. A hatch irised open and the three of them swam through it into darkness. It sealed beneath them, and then the water began flushing out through grooves beneath their feet, and the lights came on.

Jen was first to take off her mask. “Well, I needed a workout. It’s made me hungry though. Glad there’s a cockpit, I was beginning to wonder.” She climbed a circular ramp up and out of the wet pit onto a dry upper deck. Pierre followed suit, Ukrull crawling out of the pit on all fours.

Ukrull illuminated consoles, and view-screens sprang to life. Pierre studied each one in turn. A holo arose showing a supernova. There were few in the galaxy, and Pierre had visited this one before, with Ukrull. “The Tla Beth homeworld,” he said.

“Where?” asked Jen, suddenly at his side.

He pointed to the centre of the nebula-like explosion of green, scarlet, yellow and purple light, and almost immeasurable radiation. “Inside, masked in some kind of null-field. They live on an asteroid at its heart.”

Jen walked closer to the screen. “How old is this supernova? They can last millennia, can’t they?”

“This one far older,” Ukrull grunted. He laid a fore-claw on Pierre’s shoulder. “I go there now.”

Pierre met Ukrull’s yellow reptilian eyes. They didn’t waver, or grow or shrink as they often did, and Pierre understood that they might not meet again. He gripped Ukrull’s fore-claw as hard as he could. Ukrull grunted something in his native language, and all Pierre could do was nod and say “Good luck, my friend.”

Ukrull crawled back into the pit, filled it with fluid, and disappeared through the hatch.

“One by one,” Jen said.

“What?” Pierre asked, unsure he’d heard her correctly.

“Nothing.” She busied herself with one of the consoles, fixing something to her temple. She seemed at home.

Pierre studied the holo of the supernova, Hellera’s ship at its leading edge and, much further out, other ships, and something else.

“Nchkani, Level Sixteen, and dark worms,” Jen said without looking up.

“Nchkani? But weren’t they on our side?”

“Right tense, Pierre. They were our allies.”

There were a lot of ships. But he’d understood that the higher the Level, the fewer in number, like the Kalarash, the Tla Beth, and even the Rangers.

Jen pored over her console, and answered his unspoken question. “One ship, one Nchkani.”

The sensors in front of Pierre counted three hundred ships, and more were still arriving. Even at only one Nchkani per ship, this was possibly their entire race assembled in one place for one battle. And most of the Tla Beth were here, too. For both species it was about dominance. Nchkani and Tla Beth committing everything to the battle for second place after either Qorall or Hellera; only one of those second-tier species would walk away from here.

Pierre sat down. He was happier in the cockpit as Jen called it; the rest of Hellera’s ship was too vast after years of travelling in the Ice Pick.

“Are there enough Nchkani to mount an attack?” Jen asked.

He stretched the ship’s sensors far outwards to pick up inbounds, while he pondered. Hellera had presumably created this place just for them, based on Jen’s travels with Kalaran. But Jen’s question was the wrong one. She was thinking of a normal attack by hordes of worms and Nchkani vessels. Besides, what would you attack a supernova with? Hellera’s ship was well inside the supernova remnant field that fluxed with intense, off-the-scale radiation, but only because her ship’s super-dense alloys were from another galaxy; the Nchkani could not approach closer – yet.

“The question is what can they do with this many ships and worms,” he said.

“Kalaran would have liked you; you talk like he does – did.” She cleared her throat. “So, what do you figure is their game plan?”

Pierre had narrowed it down to three candidates. “They could try to feed energy into the supernova to destabilise it, causing it to emit a shock wave and collapse into a black hole or a neutron star, or even a Magnetar, a rather nasty neutron star variant; any of which could terminate the Tla Beth sanctuary.”

“Wouldn’t the Nchkani ships get caught in the shock wave?”

“Yes; it travels at ten per cent of the speed of light; pretty hard to outrun. Two is that they use the dark worms as shields, and penetrate the supernova itself. I don’t have enough information on the Nchkani vessels, but the worms are very large, and very tough. I’m pretty sure Qorall has tampered with their physiology.”

“Sounds like that kid’s vid-game, Meteorite Shower.”

“I agree,” he said. He’d mastered it when he was six, which lost him most of his school friends that year. He re-focused. “Hellera could certainly pick enough of them off to break such a manoeuvre. Third is a straightforward, old-style siege, keeping the Tla Beth and Hellera here while Qorall methodically tips the balance elsewhere.”

Hellera’s voice cut through, jarring him. It was the first time they had heard from her since arriving.

“It is the third. They are also hoping that to break the stalemate, the Tla Beth themselves will initiate the shockwave.”

Hellera sounded so certain. “How can you be sure?” Pierre asked.

A holographic image of a Nchkani flashed up in front of him. Jen walked to Pierre’s side. It wasn’t a pretty sight; the octopus-like creature squirmed, its tentacles writhing, each one tethered.

Hellera spoke while they stared. “Qorall injected all Nchkani with a virus preventing me from downloading its memories, hence the use of old-fashioned but ultimately efficient methods.”

The creature’s central body mass shook violently, excreting steaming yellow pus from its pores. Its beak opened and closed sporadically. Pierre was glad there was no sound. A single metallic pole drove into what looked like its eye. Pierre swallowed. He was about to say something when Jen placed a hand on his arm, and shook her head. He understood. Hellera would see squeamishness on his part as weak. They were at war. Hellera snapped her finger and thumb and the Nchkani stilled, presumably dead. The hologram dissolved, much to Pierre’s relief.

Jen filled the ensuing silence. “So it’s a question of timing, right? The risks and advantages are shifting: more Nchkani ships and worms arriving here, Esperia vulnerable, Qorall doing who knows what, and the Tla Beth – what are they up to, by the way? I can’t believe they are just sitting there.”

“Your friend missed some variables, Pierre. Explain the battle math, I’m busy.”

Hellera was gone again.

“She didn’t mention Kalaran,” Jen said.

Pierre was not surprised; he’d met Hellera once before. “We don’t know anything about Kalarash emotional attachments, if they have any. Besides, I’m sure Ukrull has already briefed her.”

“Still, Kalaran would have said something about her if the roles had been reversed.”

Pierre gave her a look to convey that he, too, was busy, and Jen went back to her console. But she didn’t stay quiet.

“Tell me how you are doing it.”

Pierre sighed, then began articulating the mathematics. “I’m mentally constructing a four dimensional geometric plane that operationalizes real-time and predicted evolution of key dynamic variables – the ones already mentioned plus a few others – and looks for cusps or spikes in two opposing value utility factors; our favour and Qorall’s. It will tell us the optimum time to… Oh.”

“What?”

He turned to face her. “The optimum time for us passed thirty minutes ago.”

Jen shrugged. “So when’s the next one in our favour?”

“No, that’s just it, there isn’t one. From here on it’s downhill. The odds get progressively worse for us, and Qorall’s get better and better.”

Jen got up, and headed toward the pit, picking up her mask.

He followed her and stood as the water rose over his feet and ankles. “Where are we going?”

“To get some answers. We’re going to find a Hohash, and then to talk to Ukrull on the Tla Beth homeworld. Something’s going on there. A variable Hellera hasn’t told us about, and isn’t going to.”

“Do you even know how to find one? And what makes you think any of them will talk to us?” The water reached his knees.

“I’ve been touched by Kalaran, Pierre. They sense it. I’m guessing even Hellera does, which is probably why she let me on board. She’s not very sociable, is she?”

“What if her plan is too complex for us?” The water rose above his waist.

“You’re a well-behaved Level Ten being, aren’t you, Pierre, fitting nicely into the Kalarash’s intelligence apartheid system called Grid Society.” She splashed water in his face. “Wake up, Pierre. We have to stop playing their game, assuming what they are doing is best for us, or else we’ll never be anything other than pawns. You’re the bloody scientist, not me, you work it out.”

He stared at her, then slid the mask over his face just in time.

She smiled at him, her mask sealed, and spoke through the intercom. “That’s more like it. More like Dimitri.” She touched a pad and the door opened, flushing them down into the ship’s internal sea.

It took nearly an hour to reach the bottom. Pierre wondered if Hellera would intervene, but she didn’t. They reached a surface layer between water and air. It rippled, mirror-like, and they passed through to the other side, then half-drifted, half-fell as gravity re-asserted itself and they stood on dry sand, looking around.

“This way,” Jen said.

Pierre followed her gaze and spied something. As they approached, he recognised it as an ornate throne, which was odd, as whoever sat in it would survey nothing but desert. Hovering nearby was a Hohash mirror, in the shape of an elongated diamond. While Jen tried to access it with her node, Pierre wandered around the throne, careful not to touch it. On the way, he’d been considering the Grid hierarchy: its flaws and its benefits. Clearly the societal system worked, in that there were few wars; Pierre remembered Hellera’s ‘history lesson’ showing how most space-faring civilisations sputtered into existence for tens of thousands of years before fizzling out. There had been no social fabric to bind different races together cohesively, leading to anarchy, wars, and species obliteration or obsolescence; until the Grid system. The intelligence Levels locked species into a role for a very long time, preserving the status quo of the hierarchy. It was sustainable, but it was also stagnant. Little evolution, few surprises. He wondered what Darwin would have thought about it all, or Fiyong Choh for that matter. The ultimate choice seemed to be between rigidity and chaos.

“I’m through,” Jen announced.

Pierre walked over and stood behind her, and gazed at the Tla Beth homeworld, its tan surface against a violet and steel sky that raged like a brewing hurricane. In the foreground was Ukrull, with three Tla Beth and a robed female figure whose skin and long hair blazed white. Ukrull was gesticulating wildly, his tail thrashing. He didn’t look happy. The woman was unmoved.

“Hellera?” Jen said. “I thought Kalarash couldn’t leave their ships?”

“An instantiation of her.” But his eyes were drawn to the background. It was some way off, but it was definitely a Kalarash ship, on the ground. He recognised the colouring, and assumed Jen did too.

“Jen, when you came back with Kalaran and brought the extra Kalarash ship –“

“Darkur’s ship.”

“Yes. Did you ever leave the cockpit?” But he already guessed the answer.

“She’s there, isn’t she, inside the supernova with Ukrull and the Tla Beth, and her ship. We’re on Darkur’s ship, on the front line between them and the Nchkani.”

The woman in the image walked closer, staring at them through the Hohash connection. Her eyes were pure grey, the colour of slate. She opened her mouth, then the image vanished, the Hohash resuming its oil-film colouring. Pierre was relieved she was gone, but suspected the worst.

“What did she say, Jen?”

Jen stared at the mirror, her voice quiet. “We’re alone on this ship, Pierre. It doesn’t matter what we do. We’re a decoy. We’re…”

A sacrificial pawn. He placed a hand on Jen’s shoulder, knowing this could tip her over the edge. But inside, he felt something boiling up into his chest. All his life, he’d been manipulated by others: first his father had genetically engineered him to be smarter and less emotional, then he’d been altered by the Ossyrians, and last time he’d met Hellera she had changed him yet again. But he was living proof of the fallibility of Grid Society’s founding principle, that species stayed within their assigned Level. He was a Level Ten variant of a Level Three race. He was the scientist’s infamous black swan.

“Come on,” Pierre said. “We have to make our way back to the cockpit.”

“What for?” Jen looked as if she was ready to crack.

Pierre held her by the shoulders. “We’re going to make some chaos, Jen.”

She stared at him a while, then a smile dawned across her face. “Finally, something in which I excel.”

They swam back to the far end of the ship. Pierre felt lighter. Glancing downwards, he noticed the Hohash following. He’d often wondered about them; servants of the Kalarash, yes; but they also seemed to have an independent existence, perhaps even their own agenda. He didn’t understand their role, and considered that they might simply watch from the sidelines as the war unfolded, recording everything no matter who won. But he reckoned they would act decisively at some point. Like him, they would stop being played, stop being pawns. He hoped he would be around to see it.

CHAPTER 17

Sentinels

Ramires paced up and down like a caged animal in the glass-fronted cell, while Sandy and Antonia sat close together. An explosion rocked the ground, but he remained standing.

“How deep are we?” Sandy asked.

“A kilometre, more or less.” He waved a hand dismissively. Not a problem for Shiva; she could sink a hole that deep in seconds. He resumed pacing, counting down the seconds based on the estimates Ash had made back on the ship.

The hiss of gas canisters venting made him pause. Sandy came to his side, put her arms around him. He should tell her. No secrets, ever; that had been their agreement. A single lie and it was all over. A secret was a lie by another name.

He turned, took her wrists. “They have fashioned another Gabriel, like the original one back on Earth.” There, he’d said it. It sounded like an epitaph. His.

She tensed, her sandstone eyes transmuting from soft to hard in an instant. Still he held her wrists. A look of comprehension dawned across her face. It wasn’t the prettiest face he’d seen in his lifetime, but it was the only one he cared to gaze upon.

“Clone?” She mouthed it rather than saying it aloud, in case the Alicians were still monitoring, though Ramires knew it didn’t matter anymore. Micah’s assault had begun, and Kat should arrive at any second, which was why he had to prepare her.

“He’s on their side, so it isn’t really Gabriel, just a shadow.”

Her wrists slipped from his grip using the Bagwa move he’d shown her years ago, making him smile, and she put her hands on his waist. “Is he a Sentinel?”

Ramires’ smile vanished. It was the only question that mattered. No secrets, no lies.

“Not yet,” he said.

Sandy’s breathing quickened, and she embraced him, just as Kat arrived. Antonia leapt up from the bench and dashed to the side of the glass closest to her.

Sandy didn’t let him go, so he watched as Kat bent down and used something that looked like a pencil to scrape a door-sized arched groove in the glass. Kat stood back, but Antonia didn’t wait, intuiting what the pencil did, and shouldered the impromptu glass doorway outwards, where it fell as if in slow motion and smacked onto the floor. In a second Kat and Antonia were locked in an embrace, too. Ramires unpeeled himself from Sandy.

“Seconds count,” he said, another Sentinel phrase he’d taught Sandy. She let go, and nodded. She placed two fingertips to her lips, then to his. It almost made Ramires crack; Sandy knew, guessed what he foresaw. No secrets was a two-way street.

Sandy touched Antonia’s shoulder. “You have to go now, deactivate the chemical weapon planted in our brains. Give me that device, Kat, I’ll find and release the other captives.”

Kat looked first at Sandy, then Ramires. “All the Alicians in the complex are down; nerve gas tailored to their physiology, based on the two we captured on Esperia.”

Ramires nodded. “Go quickly. Remember that Louise is hybrid; it may not work on her.” He watched Sandy depart, followed her spring-like gait, her hair bobbing up and down as she moved. She didn’t turn around. He touched his fingertips to his lips, and then held them out in her direction. Then he lowered his arm, and stepped through the archway, and spoke to the person he sensed was just around the corner.

“They are gone, Clone.”

“My name is Toran,” he said as he emerged, carrying a staff, a sword and a knife in each hand. He tossed one set onto the floor in front of Ramires.

“The Alicians haven’t been able to teach me anything useful for some time. Perhaps Louise could. But you can hone my Sentinel fighting skills.”

Ramires surveyed his opponent. Know your enemy. The clone of Gabriel – this Toran, since he preferred that name to the one of a warrior he respected – had the eagerness of any avid student. But it was more than that; unlike Louise, also a clone but with her original identity and assuredness intact, Toran acted as if he’d been born yesterday, unsure of who or what he was. It was as if he craved anything to make him feel like true flesh and blood, to make him feel like a real person, not something engineered in a lab. Ramires guessed that whereas Louise had kept topping up her clone’s memory frequently until she needed it, Toran had been grown years after the loss of the original Gabriel. Added to that, the Alicians had interfered with his values and morals, disrupting the original personality construct. It wasn’t Gabriel. Yet the way Toran moved and held both himself and the sword, Ramires had no doubt that the martial arts memories were mature and coherent.

Ramires picked up the sword, hefted it in his hand, gauged its weight, and then picked up the knife, holding it so the blade pointed behind, its sharpest edge down.

“I will teach you how to die. You should never have been brought into this world. You are a shadow, nothing more. You have no soul.”

Toran dropped the staff and held onto the sword and dagger, mirroring Ramires.

“We shall see. But you forget how much I know, how many memories I have, things Sister Esma downloaded from the real Gabriel before he died. That gesture you just performed with that woman, it is the final goodbye of the Sentinel. It is you who will die, Ramires, you know it already. But not before you teach me your fighting secrets.”

Ramires reflected a moment. Toran didn’t know who ‘that woman’ was, what she had meant to the original Gabriel. It didn’t matter. Clearing his mind, he held both weapons, making them extensions of his arms, and circled to the right, pointing the sword’s blade at Toran’s eyes so its length could not be gauged.

“Knowledge is not the same as skill, Toran. But either way, today I’ll teach you how to die.”

Ramires attacked.

◆◆◆

Micah held a small ball in his right hand, one of Shiva’s more gruesome devices. A surprise for Louise. He walked along the corridor, stepping over inert bodies of Alician guards – unconscious rather than dead, despite Vashta’s recommendation. He paused at each intersection, ready for an attack, but none came. His resident had been feeding him telemetry from Ash’s vision, relayed via the Hohash, until Louise had used a laser scalpel to blind him. Micah heard voices up ahead, and sped up.

As he rounded a corner, he was confronted by the sight of Ash inside a large lab, strapped to a chair, his eyes slit, black streaks down his face. He looked like a nightmarish clown. Sonja talked softly beside him. Two Alicians lay prone on the floor.

Micah didn’t enter. His resident detected a shimmer in the air in front of him, just inside the chamber, and enhanced the image: humaniform mostly, except for one arm; female; advanced stealth camouflage. Micah tossed the ball towards the image.

Louise cried out as a silver net wrapped itself around her. Her stealth field stuttered then failed, and she came into full view, in black one-piece coveralls. Micah didn’t move. He watched Louise struggle to break free of the mesh, her Q’Roth claw snapping uselessly at the tightening fibres. Micah wrested the pistol from her grip as some of the fibres slid across her face, sealing her lips and forcing her eyelids closed. She staggered forward a pace then froze, locked down, barely able to breathe, an ungainly statue.

Micah’s resident reminded him that if he didn’t stop the process, it would begin to cut into her flesh, then her bones, then her organs. It would dice her. He watched its progress a few seconds longer, recalling all his encounters with Louise, flashbacks that usually ended with many people dead, people Micah had cared for, had sworn to protect, until the first thin traces of blood etched across her forehead and hands, then he sent the command for it to halt; at least until Kat confirmed that the device linking Louise’s survival to the fate of the captives had been deactivated. Then they would decide, though he had no doubt how Kat would vote; it was his own vote that was in question. Sandy had been right about him. It was difficult to kill someone in cold blood, no matter what they’d done. Despite that, he vowed to do it when the time came. She was too dangerous to stay alive.

Micah had thought many times of all the things he would say to Louise when he next saw her, when he fulfilled his promise to kill her, but he said nothing. Instead he walked past her to Ash and Sonja.

“I’m sorry it came to this, Ash.” He placed a hand on Sonja’s shoulder. “We’ll fix him, don’t worry.” He sliced through Ash’s restraints with the same bloodied laser scalpel Louise had used earlier.

Sonja drew aside to look at Micah’s handiwork on Louise. “Don’t worry, Micah. I’ll describe every aspect of that bitch’s death to him in intricate detail.”

Ash sat up. “Thank you, but I have witnessed more than enough death. Micah, we are not out of this yet. I have a bad feeling.”

“Vashta will patch you up, Ash, and then we’ll get you some new eyes, human ones this time.”

Micah smiled, and for the first time in a long while felt a lightness, that humanity had turned a corner, had won an important victory, shown the Alicians they had met their match.

Shiva tapped into Micah’s resident. We have an incoming enemy ship, Micah; we must move fast. Micah glanced back at Louise, blood welling in a line across her brow, a single drop threading its way over silver threads down her cheek. Enemy ship? Shiva sounded concerned. It couldn’t be Alician, or even Q’Roth, they were no match for Shiva; in fact no ship for light years around posed a threat. For an instant he went into denial. He was tempted to allow the mesh to resume its work on Louise, but at that moment Shiva supplied more information: a Level Sixteen Nchkani warship is nearing the planet. It is far more powerful than I, Micah, and we have used our only gravitic weapon. I will be destroyed on detection. I am also sorry to inform you that it has already destroyed the space station we cut loose; there were no survivors. We have five minutes, Micah. Where are the captives?

Micah was still trying to process the sudden turn of events, when Kat and Antonia dashed in, nearly knocking Louise over.

Kat regained her breath first. “It’s deactivated, Micah, the captives are coming. You can kill her, and we can all get the hell out of here.”

He raised his wristcom to his mouth. “Aramisk, bring the Rapier as quick as you can.”

Micah weighed things up. He guessed why the Nchkani had arrived: the Spider. They had come for it, to take it back to Qorall. But he still didn’t know where it was, and the Nchkani clearly meant business and would turn the planet inside out to find it. He stared at Louise; she knew its location.

His eyes met with Antonia’s, knowing she belonged to Kat again. “It’s really good to see you,” he said. “You look well.”

Antonia nodded, her face taut, as if something else had happened, something he needed to know. But now wasn’t the time. Aramisk’s shouts echoed down the corridor.

“Sonja,” he said, “Get everyone to safety, including Ash. You too,” he said to Kat and Antonia.

Kat stood her ground. “She’s going, I’m staying till we locate the Spider.” She held up both hands. “No arguments from either of you, there’s no time. I met Qorall once, remember? If he gets the Spider, dead or alive, the war is lost.”

While Kat and Antonia embraced one last time, Micah turned away and spoke to Aramisk and Shiva.

“Captives en route. Shiva, once they’re aboard, get them out of the system; that’s an order. We’ll take care of the Spider.”

He turned back to see Antonia departing. Micah stepped out into the corridor to watch them go, and to catch sight of someone. But she wasn’t there. He came back in and walked up to Kat.

“Where’s Sandy?” he asked. “And where’s Ramires?”

◆◆◆

Sandy watched from a distance, barely breathing. Ramires fought like a dervish, but each time he appeared to be about to kill the clone, the Gabriel doppelganger managed to escape by a hair’s breadth.

Earlier she’d run to each of the cells holding the captives, carving out doors as quickly as she could, all the time hearing the clangs of sword on sword in the background. At one point it had stopped, and she almost crumbled, fearing the worst. But then the sound of wood striking wood reverberated down the corridor. She’d released the last of the captives, told them which way to go, then double-backed to her cell. The two swords, daggers and staves lay on the ground; it was down to hands, feet, elbows and knees. She didn’t care if Micah left without her, didn’t care if Louise’s device released a toxin inside her head. She just wanted Ramires to survive. But it wasn’t looking good. No human, even a Sentinel, could keep up this pace. But an Alician could. No doubt Sister Esma had been unable to resist upgrading the clone with a few adjustments.

Sandy hung back only out of fear of distracting her husband at some critical moment. He’d fight better if he believed her to be safe. She’d been biting her lip for some time, realised it was bleeding, and forced herself to stop. She glanced toward the nearest sword. Back on Earth she’d been a competitive fencer. If Ramires lost she could attack the clone… It probably wouldn’t make much difference, she wouldn’t last more than a second, but… for so long now she had allied herself to Ramires. He’d once told her that Sentinels almost never took wives, because usually they also died fighting Alicians. She edged closer.

She’d watched Ramires train the Genner Youngbloods often enough to know which way it was going, and her breathing became heavy. The clone had one hand around Ramires’ throat. They were both on the floor, Ramires’ face away from her. The clone was choking him, pinning him down in a wrestling grip. Ramires’ legs thrashed around but the clone was well-anchored behind him. Ramires’ one semi-free hand tried to reach backwards to the clone’s face, but it was no use.

Sandy darted forwards, sprinting for the closest sword. Ramires’ legs were slowing down, his free hand clawing at air. She snatched up the sword and flung herself forwards, raising the blade high as Ramires had trained her years ago, and brought it downwards, aiming to decapitate the clone.

But the clone moved with incredible speed, simultaneously dodging the cut and tugging Ramires throat into harm’s way.

The blade sliced through Ramires’ neck and thwacked into the stone floor and lodged there, a sound like a gong ringing loud in the air, before fading into silence.

The sword’s hilt slid from Sandy’s fingers as she knelt next to her dead husband, his blood soaking her knees and shins.

The clone got up.

“He was already defeated. You hastened his departure by a few seconds, nothing more.” He walked off a few paces.

Sandy stared, unbelieving. Dead words escaped her mouth. “Kill me. Now.”

The clone walked towards her, then knelt next to Ramires’ corpse.

“He was an extraordinary fighter, like nothing I’ve ever encountered.” He prised the sword from the stone floor and flung it away. “There is a Tibetan prayer for the fall of warriors. We must honour him, but my memory is not perfect on such things.”

Sandy placed three unsteady fingers on Ramires’ bloody, cooling brow, closed her eyes and began the chant, tears streaming down her cheeks.

The clone joined in as best he could.

◆◆◆

Micah tried to contact Shiva for the tenth time, with no luck. He had to believe they had made it. In the last few minutes a loud, pulsing hum could be heard everywhere. He had no idea what it meant, only that it couldn’t be good. Kat was head down, jade light reflecting off her brow as she interrogated the Alician main computer, trying to locate the Spider.

“Do you know anything of these Nchkani, Kat?”

Kat shook her head, and pointed without looking. “She might.”

Micah turned to the locked-down figure of Louise. He closed his eyes a second and gave his resident the command to release the wires around her head, so she could speak.

Louise gasped for a few breaths. She wasn’t facing Micah, but spoke as if he was in front of her. “Nasty toys you have these days, Micah. Release me and I’ll tell you –”

“Tell me in the next five seconds or I’ll silence you forever. Don’t think I won’t do it, Louise.”

“What’s in it for me, Micah?”

“I know you, Louise. You still believe you can somehow turn this situation around, get free, re-capture the hostages and kill me into the bargain.”

“When did you become a telepath?”

“Kill her now, Micah,” Kat said.

Louise raised her voice. “Nchkani, Level Sixteen, changed to Qorall’s side exactly a week ago. Their warships are impregnable except against Tla Beth Grazers, Level Seventeen Goliath Class ships, none of which have been seen since the Anxorian rebellion fifty thousand years ago. Nchkani warships are known colloquially as Shredders; they have kilometre long spines protruding from their hulls. One of their ships can take down an entire planet in a matter of minutes.”

Micah moved in front of her, so he could see her eyes, and watch for lies. “Where is the Spider? Is it alive?”

She looked at him directly, though her head was bent slightly toward the floor. “Four kilometres deeper than we are now, a shielded chamber. It’s dead.”

Kat joined Micah. She put three fingers under Louise’s chin, a Mannekhi gesture Micah had heard about, and lifted Louise’s neck back against the wires at the base of her head, razor-slicing the flesh there, making Louise blink and take in a sharp breath. Micah didn’t intervene.

“Did you kill the Spider as easily as you did Tarish and the rest of the Mannekhi crew who had served you so well?” Kat’s fingers weren’t particularly steady.

“We tried to study it, I guess it knew what we were doing, and it just shut down, though not before it killed one of my aides. I thought they were supposed to be pacifist? Anyway, when we arrived here, as we exited Transpace, we found it was already dead; I’m a little hazy on the details.” Her voice softened. “I had planned to save you, Kat. You know that, don’t you?”

Micah stored the intel that a Spider had killed, for later. It seemed unlikely, but if true it was a positive development; the Spiders could finally join the war effort. Micah saw Kat ease off the pressure, then remove her fingers from Louise’s chin. He didn’t know what exactly had happened between Kat and Louise during the two years Louise had kept her prisoner on board the Q’Roth Marauder. He guessed it was complicated; he didn’t want to know more, and he didn’t want to judge. But the clock was ticking. He changed tack.

“How do we get out of this, Louise?”

Louise spat a drop of blood onto the floor. “Tricky. I knew Kalaran would send someone, because of the Spider. So I contacted Qorall as soon as I could, said I would bring it to him. Evidently he has other plans.”

“We can’t give them the Spider, there must be –”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Louise shouted. “If we don’t give them the Spider immediately, they’ll destroy this planet, and they’ll make us pay first. They believe in crushing an enemy’s spirit, their entire culture, before annihilation. They will destroy our defence infrastructure from orbit, then they will send a single soldier down to tear us apart, piece by piece, after they flood these tunnels with fire. They will leave nothing: no memory, no DNA, not a single artefact. They eradicate their enemies from history, Micah, consigning them to oblivion. We have to give them the Spider.”

He could tell she was sincere. “Not going to happen, Louise. Qorall gets the Spider, the Kalarash plan fails, and we lose the galaxy.”

“Your opinion. Change sides, Micah, you’ll see it differently. I’m serious, you set me free, and I’ll tell them humanity helped. They’ll leave you alone.”

Micah laughed in disbelief. “You’ll say anything, won’t you?”

“Think about it, Micah, it’s all you’re good at, but that’s okay because in this universe it’s all that matters. Hellera won’t be able to stop Qorall alone, and then –”

“Kalaran –”

“IS DEAD!” Spittle dripped from Louise’s lips. “You don’t even have good intel, do you? He’s gone, Micah, and Hellera is on the run. You want to save humanity? You’d better think really fast, because one of Qorall’s Orbs is on its way to Esperia. Either way, your species is joining Qorall.”

It was a reflex. He told the resident to silence her, and the wires gripped her lips, forcing them closed. Micah’s hands shook. Kat took one of them.

“Micah. She’s telling the truth.” Kat’s voice was fragile, like he’d never heard her before. “I just deciphered an info flash sent to Louise two days ago. She’s still one of Qorall’s spies, it seems, and… Kalaran was killed in a battle with Qorall, and… Hellera has left Esperia.”

Micah felt he was losing his grip, as if everything was suddenly spinning out of control. He yanked a chair towards him, sat down and gripped Kat’s hands. “How, Kat? We… we were so close. How can he be dead?”

Kat crouched in front of Micah, the strength in her voice returning. “Micah, whatever we decide, we have to act quickly. What do you want me to do?”

He recalled his one and only meeting with Kalaran, who had said they would not meet again. Micah had assumed that was because he would not make it back from Savange. But perhaps Kalaran knew of his own imminent demise. And if he did, then there was still a slim chance. Micah clung to it, because the alternative was something he couldn’t face. At least Hellera was still around. But if Qorall got the Spider… Kalaran had told him to prevent this at all costs. Micah could only see one way out. Blake wouldn’t do it, Vince would have in a second, Ramires… probably not. But he reminded himself he needed to do whatever it took to save humanity, to step up to the task. He made his decision.

He stood, and gave the command to his resident. The wires began loosening from Louise.

“Micah, what are you doing?” Kat backed off from Louise, aiming a weapon at her. Micah turned to Kat, his back to Louise, and mouthed a single word. Wait.

“It’s okay, Kat. Louise, you guarantee our safety?”

Louise staggered out of the bonds as they fell to the floor, rubbing her neck.

“Agreed.”

“However, I don’t trust you, as I’m sure you understand. So, the only way out of this is if I tell the Nchkani the location of the Spider.”

Louise bristled, her claw raising until a wave of Kat’s pistol made her lower it again.

“They are expecting to talk to me.”

“They are expecting to receive the Spider, and they will find they have a new ally standing alongside you, an already-trusted one.”

Louise eyed him. “I don’t trust you either, Micah. Why the change of heart?”

“All the things you said. Kalaran told me it needed two Kalarash to take down Qorall. Hellera will desert us. I don’t want to return to Esperia and find nothing but Qorall’s golden minions. I just freed the captives, but why bother if there’s nowhere for them to go?”

The sound of an explosion echoed down the corridor.

“Not very patient, your Nchkani friends, are they?”

Louise looked tenser than Micah had ever seen her, breathing fast.

“I want your word, Micah; you’ll hand over the Spider.”

Micah kept his gaze level. “You have it.”

“Say it. I need to hear you say it.”

He felt he’d passed the point of no return, and hoped he was doing the right thing, or at least the wrong thing for a good enough reason.

“I give you my word, Louise. I’ll hand over the Spider to the Nchkani.”

Louise turned to Kat, and spoke a nine-digit code. “Enter it and you’ll find the location.”

Kat handed Micah the pistol, which he kept trained on Louise.

“Found it,” she said.

Micah ramped up the power rating to maximum on the pistol. It hummed.

Louise glared. “What are you doing?”

“Kat,” Micah said, “Is there a failsafe bomb in the same location? I’m betting there is, in case anyone tried to steal the corpse.”

“Yep. A small anti-matter device. Won’t leave anything.”

“Micah,” Louise said, taking a step forward, “Don’t do this. I know the Nchkani, they’ll destroy my people, all of them. And for what? You must hand over the Spider. The war’s already lost!”

Micah didn’t take his eyes off Louise. “I have to believe it isn’t. I’m sorry, Louise. I’m breaking my word, which I don’t do lightly, but I already promised Kalaran. Kat, detonate the device.”

Louise’s eyes went wide. She screamed “NO!” and leapt forward towards Kat. Micah fired. Louise used her claw to take most of the pulse round’s energy, and was thrown backwards against the far lab wall, next to an open hatch. The floor shuddered, a dull boom like a deep gong resonating until it was silent. Louise was on the floor, but conscious. Three sharp cracks announced more explosions topside.

“It’s done,” Kat said. She turned to Louise. “Finish her, Micah.”

Micah stared at Louise, raised the pistol, his finger on the trigger.

“Kill her!” Kat shouted.

He took a breath, imagined Earth’s charred corpse, a Q’Roth transport carrying two thousand humans flown into a sun, Hannah’s head rolled onto the floor in front of him, Vince killed back on Esperia, Chahat-Me vaporised during the struggle on the ship during the attack only six weeks ago. He squeezed the trigger, felt a tiny recoil.

Electric blue arcs skittered around Louise, leaving her undamaged. She didn’t blink.

“Shit, her shield is working again,” Kat said.

Micah fired several more times, with the same result. Kat picked up the laser scalpel.

Louise struggled to her feet, weakened from the pulse strikes. “I have to go now, try to save my people. But I’ll be back, for both of you. And like the Nchkani, I’ll cause as much pain as possible before I eradicate humanity once and for all. On that, you have my word.”

Kat advanced with the scalpel, but Louise ducked through the hatch and sealed it behind her. More explosions and the sound of weapons fire echoed down from the surface.

“What now?” Kat said, slumping back against the ledge of a table.

Micah couldn’t believe he’d let her escape again. The repercussions could only be bad. But the autopsy of his leadership decisions would have to wait.

“We’re not safe here. The Nchkani will send down soldiers or drones for sure. I’d rather take our chances topside.”

They made their way along the corridor until they found an exit leading to a drop shaft, a tiny pinprick of sunlight way above them. After his lie to Louise, possibly sentencing Savange’s population to death, he felt as if the surface way above him was who he’d been just minutes earlier, and now he had fallen far from the morals that had guided his entire life. He felt worse for it, though he couldn’t see what alternative he could have taken. He’d destroyed the Spider – primary mission achieved – and most of the hostages had gotten away.  He began climbing the ladder, wanting not only to escape, but to return to who he was, even if only for the short time he had left.

Micah wondered if, by destroying the Spider, Kalaran’s plan – whatever it was – was still salvageable by Hellera. Logically, the planet Savange, including him, Kat and Louise, would be destroyed by the Nchkani, but the escapees still had a fighting chance if they could make it back to Esperia. He hoped Ramires and Sandy had escaped and found Aramisk; he didn’t want to think about losing anyone else. Yet he had a gnawing hunch that Louise would somehow survive, and do her utmost to make good on her promise to make him and mankind pay.

CHAPTER 18

Preparations

Defence was going to be a nightmare. Petra, dwarfed by Vasquez, Kilaney and Brandt, surveyed the holo of the terrain surrounding Esperantia and Shimsha. It stretched far beyond the Acarian mountain range, all the way to Lake Takamaka, two hundred kilometres distant, and included the tiny outlying settlements currently being evacuated. The residents there had not wanted to move, but the quartet leading the defence had all agreed they could not defend such a wide area. A few of the residents had refused, and so remained, or had fled to the caves. Petra already considered them lost. She nudged a control and the holo zoomed in to focus on a zone with a five-kilometre radius.

“General, walk us through the aerial defences again.” They’d been through it three times already with nothing new emerging, but she was evaluating her chiefs of staff, looking for cracks that could splinter her leaders at crucial moments when the attack came.

Kilaney looked weary, a heaviness around his chest and shoulders, the way he leant on the table for support, eyes hooded; he was holding himself together with brute force of will. But this man had will by the bucket-load. Part of his fatigue was no doubt due to Blake’s condition, unchanged since the experiment. It made it worse for Kilaney to know that the real Blake was trapped inside, screaming to get out. As for the general’s genocidal choice back on the Zlarasi homeworld, she guessed that was a burden that would never leave him. But he was a born commander, and knew how to channel every emotion into cold professional logic. She interrupted him.

“At what point will you give up on the aerial defence and join the ground battle?”

The others all looked at her. She was implying they would lose. If it came to a ground assault, the invading hordes would be unstoppable.

Kilaney smiled. “Back on Earth, Petra, I’d have recruited and groomed you to replace me. You’re right, of course. There will come a decision point when I’ll have to either order my men to run suicide attacks on the inbound vessels until we are no more, or enter the atmosphere and strafe as many as we can until we are shot down.”

Petra stared at the image of Esperantia, her home her entire life.

“At what point will you land, General?”

Kilaney moved back a pace and sat down heavily in a cushioned chair. He gazed at the map of the town, and pointed, speaking in a low voice. “If I am not dead, and my ships are of no more use in space or above ground, and the invaders have breached the outer perimeter, and if you give me no further order, I will land and stand next to Blake, and I will make sure they do not take him alive.”

Silence hung in the room after those tombstone words. This was what Petra had wanted. To know the absolute truth, where their devotions lay. “Good. That is what I was hoping you would say.”

Kilaney looked up at her, studied her a moment, then got up again, and continued detailing his battle strategy with more vigour in his voice.

The rest ran smoothly. Vasquez would have men and automated defences in the mountains and outlying terrain, Brandt’s Youngbloods would patrol the outer perimeter and the town itself. At Council, she had been outvoted on the idea of self-annihilation rather than being absorbed into Qorall’s ranks. She had to admit that knowing Blake was somehow still alive on the inside had weakened her position. Maybe even if they were all converted, if Hellera, against the odds, defeated Qorall, they could be restored. But that felt like clutching at straws. She carried a vial of fast-acting poison in her pocket, as did Kilaney and Vasquez, and a number of others. Freedom of choice for individuals, in case they were overwhelmed.

A single ship had almost left Esperia to flee the system. But few had signed up for it, and in the end it had been too late, the enemy already inbound, nearing the system. Any humans on a refugee ship would be picked up early, and become part of the invading force. All of them were in this together now. She’d expected recriminations, anger at her for not organising something earlier. But people understood. While Hellera had been in orbit, they’d seemed protected here. Her unannounced departure had changed the game, with little time to react. Petra berated herself for not seeing that one coming, but for now she had to focus. It helped that everyone seemed determined to fight, and she knew why.

When Earth had fallen, it had come as a surprise attack, most people not even grasping what was going on until it was too late. This time, if nothing else, they could prepare, and put up a fight, even if futile. And Genners like her, born on Esperia, also wanted to fight, carrying the scars of the previous generation in their hearts. They were angry, a new breed of humanity whose chance at life was about to be snatched away from them. But Genners channelled their emotions as Kilaney did. She knew they would all fight and die well.

They were done, and Kilaney and Vasquez left to go over the fine details, countless contingencies, and final preparations with their lieutenants. Brandt stayed behind. During the meeting he had stood upright, like the Genner warrior he was, second only to Gabriel. She knew Brandt had feelings for her, and like all Genners he was under-equipped to deal with or even express them. Now the others were gone, his posture was hunched over, accentuated by his size. He somehow looked like a giant child, who knew he couldn’t have what he wanted. She reminded herself they were all still so young, she just eighteen, Brandt sixteen. For Genners, that meant the intellectual equivalent of a forty-year-old professor at his peak. Emotionally, though… that was a different story. Still, she did not want to lose her focus. Eventually he broke the silence.

“The Youngbloods are ready.”

She nodded. Part of her wanted to dismiss him, before he could say more. But another part held her tongue. She thought about Gabriel, how long she’d loved him from afar, unable to tell him how she’d felt, not until the very end. So she understood this particular pain. Brandt seemed to read her mind.

“What did you say to him, Petra, at the end? Did he know?”

Now she wished she’d dismissed him. “Not fair, Brandt. Anyway, I said nothing, Micah spoke.”

Brandt was very still, unlike his usual boisterous self. He looked her in the eye.

“What did he do when he realised how you felt about him?”

She looked away, remembering how Gabriel had held her on the disintegrating ship, embraced her, and kissed her while she wept like a little girl. Most nights she fell asleep thinking about those moments. “That’s between us.”

“Of course.” Brandt got up, and headed for the door.

“Brandt, I need to know I can rely on you. Are we okay?”

He opened the door, and stood framed there, blocking most of the daylight, his back to her.

“Yes, Madam President.”

She watched the door close with a soft click. Petra thought she’d feel relief, but instead, those words stung. Dammit! She got up to go after him. Midway to the door, the radio crackled into life.

“Petra, it’s Bill. Xenic is here. You’d better come.”

“I’m on my way.” She rushed outside, her eyes sweeping the area for Brandt, but he was gone.

Petra didn’t know Xenic well. He was a Mannekhi commander Kilaney had teamed up with during Sister Esma’s attack on Esperia. He was tall, not an ounce of fat on his tanned body, with all-black eyes, a zero-nonsense manner. Xenic looked as if he’d come out of his mother’s womb issuing orders.

“The enemy is inbound,” he said, after a cursory nod of introduction. “No Orb this time, because of the Shrell wires, but fifty enemy ships are about to transit to this system. The black Orb was a decoy to give you a false sense of how much time you had; it has already attacked another system.”

Petra didn’t yet trust the Mannekhi; until a month ago they had all been working for Qorall.

“How did you get here without us detecting you?”

“Mannekhi can navigate through Shrell-fields. We also recently acquired Level Eight stealth-tech from an evacuating race.”

“Evidently it works.” It came out more aggressively than she’d intended.

Kilaney held up a hand. “Petra – Madam President – you need to hear him out.”

Petra pulled up a chair and sat in it. “Please, Commander Xenic, you’ve come a long way. Tell me.”

“The Mannekhi homeworlds – all twelve of them – were recently hit by Orbs in an unprecedented coordinated attack. It seems Qorall learned we had changed sides, and lost no time in absorbing us into his obedient ranks.”

It was as she and Kilaney had feared. She stared into those black pits of eyes. “Then the fifty ships inbound are –”

“Mannekhi. Ten thousand soldiers, all gold.”

“The Shrell field. It won’t stop them, will it?”

Xenic shook his head.

Petra looked to both men. “I’m open to options, gentlemen.”

Kilaney and Xenic exchanged a glance.

“There is one tactic that might help,” Xenic said. “Mannekhi smugglers, when being chased by police vessels would use unorthodox tactics to nudge the ships giving chase into the wires, disabling them. I can show Kilaney how to do this. Together we can stop ten of their ships getting through.”

“Leaving only eight thousand troops, any one of whom can turn us.” Petra didn’t bother to rinse the bitterness from her words.

“I can leave if you prefer,” Xenic said.

She gazed up at him again. “I’m sorry, commander.” She stood up. “Did any of your people escape the Orbs?”

“Some ships, here and there. Not many, and not nearly enough.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way; I’m glad you came. But why did you come here? You could be trying to find surviving Mannekhi vessels, or joining other allies.”

Xenic turned to Kilaney, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “In the last battle in this system, we learned that Mannekhi and humans have an ancestral link. You are as precious to us as our own kind, though I don’t expect you to understand. Strategically you are important. Qorall’s latest offensive is marshalling significant resources to take Esperia. There are battles going on in a hundred systems right now, but this is the one that matters.”

Petra smiled. “We should feel flattered.” Her smile faded. “But the truth is, we don’t stand a chance, do we?”

Xenic laughed, causing Petra to frown.

“We have two sayings – had two sayings – back on Mannekhi Prime. The first is that the only certainty in battle is uncertainty.”

Petra waited. “And the second?”

Xenic grew serious. “When you are convinced you will lose, the gods will desert you.”

Petra nodded. “Understood. I will leave you two to make preparations. How long do we have?”

“They will be here tomorrow, by noon.”

“Then I wish us all the luck your gods can spare.”

Xenic tilted his head slightly. “Wait.” He walked up to her and placed his fingers under her chin. Her mother Kat had told her of this gesture, and she knew she had to stay quiet and listen.

“Mannekhi eyes see more than human ones, and I read people. You have something eating away inside you. Make peace with your soul tonight.”

She made to speak but he lifted his fingers, and shook his head.

“I am telling you, one commander to another. You need to be diamond clear tomorrow. My men, Kilaney’s men, and everyone else need you to be one hundred per cent focused. Do you understand me? Whatever it is, fix it.”

He removed his hand. Petra felt her cheeks flush, but Xenic had already turned away and called up a holo of the Shrell field, pointing out particular junctures to Kilaney, who glanced at her once or twice but said nothing. She left the Rapier, and marched back towards her office near the Dome. The light was beginning to fade.

Vasquez met her halfway, driving a skimmer.

“You’d better get aboard,” he said.

Petra didn’t conceal mounting frustration. “What now?”

Vasquez’ face, with its cheekbones that normally looked as if they’d been chiselled out of marble, softened. “Would ‘please’ or ‘Madam President’ help?”

She climbed aboard, sitting behind him. He accelerated so fast she had to put her arms around him. He sped towards Hazzards Ridge, hit the incline and rocketed up the slope. Above the rushing wind, she heard two ships lifting off; Kilaney’s and Xenic’s. She had no idea what could be so urgent up here, but as they reached the crest, she saw. He slewed the skimmer to a halt, and she leapt off, unable to believe her eyes.

“The Spiders are leaving.”

Vasquez passed her a viewer, but with her Genner eyesight she didn’t need it. Small ellipsoids, like flattened pearls, were rising from Shimsha, piercing the shield and zipping straight up into the sky.

“Where the hell did they get those ships? They have barely any technology.”

“Kalaran, most likely,” Vasquez said.

It was dusk, and Petra lifted the viewer to her eyes. “They’re not all leaving,” she said, lowering the viewer. “Some are headed this way.”

As she’d expected, Kilaney called in. “Petra, are you seeing this?”

“Unfortunately I am. Vasquez is with me. Most are airborne but a small group appears to be staying here. Make me happy, Bill. Tell me these ships are going to join you in defending Esperia.”

“No such luck. They’re heading clean out of the system, zig-zagging through the Shrell field like nothing Xenic has ever seen, accelerating all the way. They’re gone, Petra.”

And not coming back. She spoke to Vasquez, while watching the small procession of Spiders wind their way up the hill. “Ironic, isn’t it? Qorall is coming here for the Spiders, and they’ll be long gone by morning. Any chance the recoded Mannekhi will leave us be?”

But she guessed the answer.

Petra and Vasquez waited for the Spiders. There were fifteen of them. Four at the back steered two broad levi-panels stacked with short, stubby cylinders. She wondered what they were for, they looked oddly familiar. Then she remembered. They’d been at the top of the new towers surrounding the Spider city. She glanced back toward deserted Shimsha.

“The shield is down,” she said.

Vasquez took another look. It was nearly dark. “I guess they don’t need it anymore, they seem to be abandoning their home. Unless…”

But Petra had already set off down the hill to meet the Spiders. At last, some good news.

It took several hours to set up the shield emitters, get everyone inside Esperantia, and power up the shield. For the first time in weeks, Petra was cautiously optimistic. Vasquez was busy trying to find the Spiders somewhere to spend the night, what was left of it.

She wandered the streets a while. Xenic’s rebuke played heavily on her mind. Whatever it is, fix it, he’d said. Most lights were still on. Few could sleep knowing what the morning would bring. She found herself in the Genner part of town, in the street where Brandt lived. She walked up and down it a few times, then approached his door. She lifted her hand, made a loose fist, then knocked gently, half hoping for no reply, or to hear another female voice inside mixed with Brandt’s, laughing or worse. Instead she heard his heavy footsteps. He opened the door, saw her, and opened it wider, inviting her in. Petra looked down at her feet, poised at the threshold of the doorway in front of her. She took a breath, and stepped across it.

CHAPTER 19

Resurrection

He awoke, not knowing who he was, where he was, or how he had come there. He couldn’t move or feel any part of his body. All he could do was see, and remember. He had killed someone.

“She deserved to die.”

The woman’s voice was cold, synthetic, like a discordant choir. But she was beautiful, tawny hair cascading over tanned shoulders, sitting in a high-backed metal chair like a throne. They were outside, on an emerald sea whose ripples faded as it stretched in all directions towards a blue horizon. The legs of the throne made dimples in the water, but it didn’t sink. Her toes dipped into the emerald fluid but no drops clung to them; not water then. Two suns hung in the sky, the higher one blood red, the smaller one purple. But the light was white and grainy, like twilight, so they weren’t suns. Nothing was as it should be. He turned his attention back towards her, and realised she was naked, her knees slightly apart. He looked away.

“Ah, I forgot.”

She was suddenly clothed, a pale blue wrap barely disguising the contours of her body.

“Better?”

He knew the body before him intimately. His mate, his lover. But he could not remember her name. The persona was all wrong. This was not his mate, this was someone else. Something else.

“She died in battle. So did you. But your memories were salvaged. Most of them. Perhaps not those that mattered to you most. We are having this discussion to see how much you remember. If there is enough, I will reconstruct you. If not…” She shrugged.

His mind flooded with an urgent jumble of images and facts at the ready, his survival instinct strong. But then he stopped this information avalanche, as if pressing ‘pause’ on a vid. He knew he should be afraid of the implied threat, but he realised he cared less about his own survival than his dignity. He would not be intimidated. His mind emptied, then filled again, this time brimming with questions, one overriding all others. Who am I?

“Later. I respect your lack of fear. That alone may make you worth saving.”

He knew he should feel anger at her complete power over him, but something about being disembodied was affecting him.

“Correct. You have no organs at present, no flesh, no hormonal systems. You are not visceral, so you are more detached.” She cocked her head. “Your mind is clearer than it has ever been. Would you like to remain this way?”

He recoiled from the idea.

“I didn’t think so.”

He wondered if he was being ‘stored’ in some kind of computer.

She laughed. It was a grating noise, as if she was out of practice, or didn’t know how it was really done. “Nothing so primitive. Here.”

A gold-rimmed oval mirror approached across the wavelets, taking up position a few metres to the right of her throne. A Hohash. He’d been with one just before he’d died, before he’d killed and been killed. Who was his interrogator, then?

“Hellera.”

The name meant nothing to him.

“I am the same species as Kalaran.”

There was something off about the way she said ‘Kalaran’, an emotion he couldn’t discern, but at least he recognised the name. One of the Kalarash, allegedly the most intelligent and powerful beings in the galaxy. They owned the Hohash. He remembered something else: Kalaran was at war with Qorall, the invader ravaging the galaxy, whose armies would soon reach Esperia, where the last human survivors lived.

“Kalaran asked me to resurrect you, but I haven’t decided yet. If you are too incomplete, you will be of no help to anyone, a burden even to yourself.”

He sensed a callousness about her, an indifference to killing. But his memories were degraded. He tried to recall the people he had grown up with, but it was like seeing a crowd from a distance; he couldn’t make out their faces.

“How did your people arrive on Esperia?”

Her voice was sharper; the real test had begun. He recalled his lessons. It had started with the Alicians, a human tribe in the Himalayas who met visitors from another world – the Q’Roth – back in the eleventh century. They agreed to prepare humanity for culling over the next thousand years while the Q’Roth hibernated. Another group – the Sentinels, learned of this pact and tried to stop them, but failed. Then it all came to a head, Earth and Eden were lost, except for twelve thousand refugees who escaped to the planet Esperia, where they’d been protected by a quarantine while all human children – including himself, he remembered – underwent genetic advancement. He was a Genner.

“Factual memory usually fares best. Recent events now.”

That was like trying to see through smoke. He had taken control of a ship, an Ossyrian pyramid vessel. The Alicians – they had come to Esperia to finish the job they had started, waiting for the quarantine barrier to come down. He’d tried to launch a pre-emptive strike. It had all gone badly wrong. Images reared up in his mind of dead Ossyrians and fellow Genners scattered across the battered ship’s floor. He’d screwed up badly.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you had not acted Esperia would have been lost, Kalaran’s secret along with it.”

Secret? Ah yes, the human population wasn’t alone on Esperia. The Spiders. Nobody really knew anything about them, except they mattered to Kalaran a great deal.

“Now, enough of your history. What do you know of ours?”

He stared, his mind blank. Almost nothing. Then he recalled a school lesson. Two billion years ago, the Kalarash had welcomed Qorall into their territory – the Jannahi galaxy – but Qorall had risen up against the Kalarash. A war had ensued, and as the Kalarash were about to win it, Qorall unleashed a terrible weapon, one that destroyed the galaxy itself. The Kalarash, all seven of them, fled to this galaxy, believing Qorall dead.

She let her head fall back, laughing again, doing a better job of it this time. Watching her, he recalled the name of the girl he had loved – Virginia. He wished he could somehow give his life to bring her back. The laughing ceased.

“No,” she said, her voice cold steel. “Not possible.”

He felt – organs or no organs – a deep well of sadness. He stared at the floor.

Her voice softened. “Kalaran’s little lie.”

That got his attention. The legend of the battle with Qorall was known by every race in the Grid. It was a lie?

She stood, then paced a little, tracing a small circle around the throne, hands clasped behind her back. “After all this time, perhaps someone should know the truth.” She returned to her throne and sat down, once again facing him.

“We Kalarash number seven. We cannot procreate. We took Qorall in because he was Level Eighteen, the last of his kind, bordering on becoming Level Nineteen.”

He understood. They had adopted him. But that meant…

“Qorall for us was… well, you would say ‘a breath of fresh air’. We were on the verge of becoming obsolescent. He gave us new hope, our little project, and for the first time in aeons it bound us together again. And then he did something remarkable.”

He waited, but he had a suspicion.

“Yes. He learned how to procreate, to make others of his kind.” She looked away. “But he needed our help. In particular, he needed mine.”

The skin on her face grew taut, and he understood. Hellera was female, whatever that meant in Level Nineteen terms.

She nodded, staring into the emerald depths at her feet. “Kalaran and the others didn’t like the plan.” She laughed, for the first time sounding right, but tinged with regret. “I considered it, but we were a democracy back then, and I was out-voted. They banished him, or tried to.” She stared back at him again. “Qorall – there was a viciousness to his character we’d never perceived. His rage erupted in a war against us, the likes of which no being had ever imagined… and he was winning.”

She stood. “Qorall didn’t destroy the Jannahi galaxy. We did.”

The Hohash moved closer to her, its silver mirror surface darkening to show an image. Seven ships shaped like elongated crossbows, each one a pair of rippling colours; sleek and beautiful, hurtled through space, leaving behind them a swirl of stars around a pure white central ball.

He heard a plaintive voice – Hellera’s, he realised – from one of the ships.

“We cannot do this!”

A choir of voices from the others: harsh, definitive. “We must.”

In the image, Hellera did not reply.

Glancing briefly away from the Hohash, he saw the present-day Hellera facing away from him and the record of the past.

He turned back to the history lesson. The central core of what he guessed was the Jannahi galaxy began to shrink as the seven ships vanished into the inter-galactic void. As the white hot ball shrank it turned red, then grey, then black.

The view shifted so he was ‘above’ the galactic centre, which continued to shrink. He could almost feel the unimaginable power building. It seemed to disappear, and for a second he hoped… But then stars closest to the centre began to flash and wink out, and a radial wave swept outwards, extinguishing the galaxy from inside out. When it was done – he had the impression it had been speeded up for him – he witnessed the remains: ash, space dust, unrecognisable shreds of scorched tech and debris floating in space. Nothing left alive.

“So we thought,” Hellera said, turning back to face him.

His mind freefell as the enormity of it sank in. Qorall’s lust for revenge was in some ways a just cause. Qorall could have come all this way to exact revenge on Kalaran, and that would be more than understandable. But Level Nineteen beings were ultra-advanced, and it was just as likely Qorall had come here for another reason: Hellera. To breed. But if Hellera could fashion a human clone…

“It is not so simple with higher Levels, and almost impossible above Level Fourteen. But Qorall originated from a galaxy where understanding of organic science far exceeded our own, and he found a way. Still, he needs a specimen. He would kill me afterwards, of course; in fact he does not even need me alive to procreate, just a sufficient sample of my DNA. Unlike all the other Kalarash, except Darkur, I never fully merged with my ship. I am Qorall’s best chance.”

She folded her arms. “Then, he will hunt down the other five Kalarash, erasing their galaxies, too. Make no mistake, he will leave nothing of your precious Milky Way other than space dust, because higher Level species exist here in abundance, as in all galaxies the Kalarash have fostered. In the end Qorall will tolerate nothing above Level Six, because even if turned by him, they may one day rebel.”

She circled the throne. Her hand briefly caressed the top of the Hohash.

“He will take his children to new galaxies where sentient life has not yet begun, or is in the fallow stage after the collapse of space-faring civilisations, and he and his progeny will expand his empire across the universe. With us gone, he will have time.”

She sat again. “What we did may have been wrong, but we are Progenitors. We Kalarash breathe life into galaxies, cultivate civilisations and encourage species advancement to higher levels. Qorall will exterminate such species, and create followers who will be devoted to him and his children. He will build a homogenous universe, where he and his kind are so far beyond other species that they will be treated as Gods. They will be unassailable.” She gazed toward the horizon. “Perhaps this is why even universes have a limited time-span.”

He is what you made him.

Her eyes flared. “Careful!”

Why are you telling me all this?

She touched the throne and it vanished. “I have decided you are worth reconstruction. There is a task you must fulfil. I have embedded it in your subconscious. When you are in the right situation, it will override everything else and you will execute it. Although it may interfere with the plans of the humans, it is imperative that you carry out this mission, no matter who gets in your way. You will remember all we have discussed, except where it concerns this hidden task.

My name?

“It will be the first word you will hear upon awakening.” She vanished.

The two suns turned grey, and the sea became absolutely flat calm. The Hohash faced him. He studied his reflection: he knew his body, but still could not recall his name.

As the sky around him turned to night, he tried to hang on to the memory that he harboured a hidden task. But he grew sleepy, knowing that when he awoke it would be gone.

CHAPTER 20

Massacre

Micah recalled the adage ‘be careful what you wish for.’ The Nchkani were attacking Savange, perhaps from their ship in orbit, perhaps via ground troops, he didn’t yet know. The air above him in the drop shaft brimmed with sounds from outside: explosions, buildings collapsing, energy-beam fire, and Alician shouts, cries and screams. He and Kat reached the top and found themselves halfway up one of the seven hills surrounding Savange City. Micah scanned the area but there was no sign of the Rapier carrying Aramisk and the freed captives. For now he took that as a good sign.

“We’d best stay here, Micah, at least for now.”

It was hard not to agree. Citizens of Savange were scurrying about the city, a large number heading to the West. At first he couldn’t see why, then he noticed the black and white crab-like vehicle making its way down a main street. His resident zoomed in, so he could count the eight legs and see the turret at the top, spinning and unleashing fire in all directions. The Alicians tried to stop the crab with all manner of beam and projectile weapons, but it was shielded, and ploughed through manned Alician barricades like an armoured tank crushing sticks and ants. Occasionally, one of its legs lifted and fired at the base of one of Savange’s many towers, sending a white hot wave up its length, leaving a charred structure in its wake with liquefied glass dripping down like rain. Micah glimpsed cremated corpses through some of the gouged windows.

Five craft Micah didn’t recognise lifted off from the Western side of the city and headed to meet the Nchkani crab. They banked skilfully around the towers left standing then deluged the crab with high energy plasma beams. Undamaged, it let loose fireflies that tracked down the airborne craft, no matter their avoidance manoeuvres, and blasted them into glowing embers of ash as soon as they made contact. Micah noticed a single male spring up from a heap of corpses in the crab’s wake and run towards it, holding a ball in both hands. Others attacked from the front, aiming to distract it, and were mercilessly cut down. The male reached the trailing legs and leapt up to the turret, banging down the ball on its cover.

The whole city was drenched in blinding white light, making Kat cry out and reel away, an elbow across her eyes. Micah’s nannites instantly applied filters, protecting his retinas. A cylinder of light projected skywards. He reckoned it was some kind of channelled fusion device, as nearby buildings melted and crumbled, and people burst into flame. Six seconds later crackling thunder, accompanied by a blast of scorching heat, swept through the air for several seconds, before dissipating, leaving a ringing in Micah’s ears.

The crab was motionless but intact, a heat haze shimmering all around it. The surrounding ground had sunk into a crater, and a new wave of Alicians ran towards the pit, some with wide hoses. They doused the crab with a glistening liquid.

Kat groped for his arm. “Micah, I can’t see!”

He took her hand. “You’re flash-blinded, it will pass in a few minutes.” He recalled the aerial detonations over LA that left many flash-blind, unable to run from the shockwave that incinerated them. He recalled the last days of Earth, how quickly the Q’Roth overran the entire planet. Defensive nukes launched by desperate governments probably did more harm than good, but at least they tried.

“What’s happening?”

He told Kat, relating the Alicians’ actions. He presumed the liquid was some kind of crystalline polymer; they were trying to vitrify the crab in solid glass, probably liquid diamond. He almost hoped it would work, but he kept remembering how the Alicians contributed to Earth’s demise, disabling its defences as the Q’Roth vessels appeared, even sending people to Eden for the first Q’Roth feed.

Turning to the West part of the city again, he saw children – precious few of them due to the Plight rendering most Alicians sterile – shepherded into rapid ground transports. His gaze caught on one particular figure, and again his resident zoomed in. It was Louise, overseeing the evacuation. He was surprised, he thought she’d be leading the defence, or even running to save her own skin. He unslung the rifle, and brought her into his sights. It was a difficult shot, but he could make it. But others kept running past in front of her, and several times she picked up children to put them into the transport herself. He waited, finger on the trigger.

“What’s happening, Micah? Why have you gone quiet?”

“Louise,” he said. “But I don’t have a clean shot.”

Through the targetter he saw Louise suddenly look to the East, just as he heard a massive explosion that spat fragments high into the sky. “Shit,” he said, as his resident auto-tracked shrapnel headed his way. He dropped the rifle and pulled Kat towards him.

“Trust me,” he said.

She clung to him, eyes scrunched closed. “Like I have a choice!”

A tumbling clump of jagged metal was falling towards them, but it was difficult to judge its size and final impact trajectory. In the last two seconds his resident worked it out and told him to dive left. He picked up Kat and threw them both sideways as the metal meteorite slammed into the earth, showering them with soil, and bouncing them off the ground. He landed on top of Kat in order to protect her, and rolled off, spitting out dirt and wiping it from his eyes.

“Thanks Micah, I think.”

He sat up and looked to where the rifle should have been, but it was buried under a mass of twisted girders.

“I can see now,” Kat said. “Where is she?”

Micah scanned the area where Louise had been, but there was no sign of her. He saw two dust trails heading to the West, but he couldn’t see Louise.

“There!”

Micah followed Kat’s pointing arm and saw Louise sprinting with a half-dozen Alicians to the base of one of the large defence towers cut in half by the Nchkani warship beams in the first seconds of the assault.

“What’s she up to?” Kat asked.

A good question. Micah tracked east and saw that, as he’d expected, the crab had survived the fusion bomb and escaped its glass casket, and was on the move again. Fully half the city had been reduced to smoking ruins. No one was putting up a defence anymore. The crab killed anyone in its path.

“I hope you’re not feeling sorry for them, Micah. It’s rough justice, I know, just remember what they did to Earth. Seven billion dead; don’t forget that for one second.”

Micah wondered what the opposite of a conscience was. He wanted to ask all Earth’s dead if they were enjoying watching this. He wasn’t. If this was justice, it tasted bitter. But he knew he shouldn’t be distracted by it, and he couldn’t help them anyway. The Nchkani were clearly going to exterminate the Alicians. Micah decided he’d seen enough.

“We have to get moving, try and rendezvous with the others.”

But Kat didn’t budge, instead gazing to the West. “Micah, what was in those two transports?”

“Chil–” The breath went out of him. Two plumes of smoke and fire billowed from the vehicles. The Nchkani ship in orbit must have targeted them. His resident zoomed in for a second, before he asked it to zoom back out. There could be no survivors.

“Bloody hell! Now even I’m sorry, Micah.”

He scanned the broken tower and found several figures half way up, staring out. Louise was one of them. She darted back inside.

He and Kat spent twenty minutes on the high ground, occasionally glancing down to the ongoing demolition of Savange, its surviving inhabitants pouring from its main gates and fanning out, presumably to offer too many targets to the orbital enemy. Yet they weren’t in panic, instead moving methodically, helping each other. Micah respected them for that.

When he turned to see the crab, he stopped dead. Kat followed his gaze. Louise was standing in its path, holding some kind of bulky rifle. His resident identified it, and he told Kat. “Anxorian; Level Sixteen.”

“I thought the Anxorians were extinct? Qorall must have given it to her.”

Louise hefted it onto her shoulder, then fired a jet of mustard-coloured liquid at the advancing Crab. It stopped dead in its tracks. Nothing happened for ten seconds. Then its armour began to melt: the turret collapsed first, then the legs dissolved into muddy puddles. Soon the entire vehicle was reduced to mush dripping off the single Nchkani occupant, who floundered amongst the steaming residue. Louise raised an arm then dropped it. Out of the ruins men and women emerged with weapons ranging from pulse rifles to spears and knives. They fell upon the creature and butchered it. A long, ululating cry rang out across the city, echoed by all who heard it, until it reached the exterior, and those fleeing the city stopped and turned. Micah asked his resident to count the survivors. Savange had had a population of eight thousand. His resident counted two hundred and eighty-four.

Micah gazed upwards, waiting for the Nchkani response, which could well be planetary obliteration.

“Well, it’s been nice knowing you, Micah,” Kat said.

He braved a smile, then they waited for the killing blow to fall upon Savange. But it didn’t come. Instead, a small, boxy craft descended, no noise whatsoever, until it hovered above the Nchkani carcass. Metal claws unfurled from its underside and scooped up the remains, forcing several Alicians to leap out of the way. Once collected, the ship rose into the clouds. Micah had the sense that everyone left alive was holding their breath, but the final strike still refused to come.

Aramisk contacted Micah via his wristcom. “Micah, there’s been a development.”

He almost laughed; a development. The city was decimated. “Where are you, Aramisk? Did you make it to Shiva?”

“Not yet.”

Her voice sounded tense, but then, to Micah, she always sounded that way.

“We’re hiding in a dormant volcano about a thousand klicks south of your position, but we’ve been watching everything via the remote cams Shiva sent out before the rescue. I’m in touch with Shiva, and she’s intercepted a message from the Nchkani. They sent it broad spectrum, but I doubt the Alicians can translate it.”

“What’s the message?”

“The Nchkani want the weapon, the one the woman just used to kill a Nchkani soldier.”

“It’s just one rifle.”

“You’re missing the point. This is about technology. The Nchkani were Level Fifteen, the Anxorians were the Nchkani’s patrons; quite good ones apparently. When the Anxorians were eradicated by the Tla Beth, there was almost nothing left of their culture, their science, or their weaponry, which rivalled the Tla Beth’s own. With the rifle, the Nchkani could reverse engineer a whole arsenal, updating their capability at a pivotal moment in the war.”

Micah didn’t like where this was headed. “Why don’t they just take it by force?”

“It has a self-destruct, a nasty one. The woman seems to know her way around it.”

“And if the woman – Louise – gives it up?”

“They’ll leave. They’ve already determined the Spider has been destroyed, and they’ve laid waste to the place and decimated the population. But they’ll have to destroy the planet, Qorall would be angry with them otherwise; in his mind the Alicians screwed up by allowing the Spider to be destroyed. A planet-killer is already implanted underneath Savange’s crust. However, they can set a delay on it.”

“Otherwise?”

“Shiva might escape. The rest of us…”

Kat kicked a small rock, sent it tumbling down the shaft. “A bloody rifle. Unbefuckinglievable.”

Micah reflected. The Alicians had paid a heavy price today. He looked upwards, trying to see any sign of the warship, but there was none.

“Aramisk, contact the Alicians. Tell them I’m coming down to sue for their surrender.”

Kat folded her arms. “You’re going to talk to that bitch again, aren’t you?”

“Stay here, Kat, no point…”

But Kat had already moved in front of him and started scrambling down the escarpment towards what was left of the city.

Micah and Kat walked through the rubble, the only sound their footsteps and the creaking of metal still under heat stress, and every now and again a crash as yet another tortured building collapsed. He coughed once or twice, acrid fumes mixed with dust lacing the air. Alicians lined their path, creating a corridor that closed behind them. As they approached, he couldn’t help notice that Louise looked like hell. But there was something else. In all the time he’d known her, she’d never cared for anyone else, except maybe Vince. Nothing fazed her emotionally. This time, however, she seemed devastated by what had happened, her manner less confident. But he’d learned not to trust anything about Louise.

She gave Micah a long hard stare. The rifle hung from her human hand. ”Give me one good reason to believe all this.”

Aramisk had relayed everything to Louise.

“How about two hundred and eighty reasons?”

“We’ll die out soon enough. The children are dead. We can’t have more.”

“Alicians live for centuries. That’s a long time to find a solution.”

“There’s nowhere for us to go. Besides, your fancy little ship will shoot us down as soon as the Nchkani are gone and we try to escape.” She took a step forward. “That’s what I’d do, Micah.”

“We won’t. I give you my…” He stopped himself.

“Exactly.” She hefted the rifle.

Another voice cut in. “You have my word, Louise.”

Micah turned around. It was Ash, being led by Sonja through the rubble. He stumbled, nearly fell over, but Sonja caught him, and he carried on walking.

“Ash,” Micah began, “let me –“

“No, Micah. Let me.” The Alicians moved aside as Sonja steered him in front of Louise, within reach of her claw.

“I’m listening,” Louise said.

“I will come with you,” Ash said. “Micah will not fire on your vessel with me aboard.”

Kat reacted first. “Ash, excuse me, but have you lost your fucking mind? Sonja, talk some sense into him.”

Sonja turned to Kat. “Where he goes, I go.”

Ash continued. “We will head far from the front line, find a world, and a doctor who can perform the necessary genetic extraction. Sonja and I will give you some of our genetic material voluntarily.”

Louise lowered the rifle, and stared at Ash a long while. Then, without another word, she deactivated the rifle and held it out to one of her aides, who took it. “Take it up to the hill, and leave it there.”

Louise studied Ash and Sonja, then turned to another Alician, a female. “Call the southern post. Tell them to bring the ship once the Nchkani have left orbit. Take… escort these two to the boarding tower.” She touched the Alician with her claw. “Treat them carefully. They are our future.”

Kat muttered behind Micah. “This is a mistake.”

Louise heard her. “Possibly. But death leaves one with so few options.”

Micah noted that Louise was returning to form, becoming more dangerous again. But his prime concern was Ash. Micah pulled a hand out of his pocket and laid it on Ash’s shoulder as he passed, depositing a comms micro-patch on his jacket.

“Are you absolutely sure about this? Do you want us to come and retrieve you?”

“Yes, I am sure, and no, Micah. It is time this rift was healed. The Alicians have paid for their crimes. I would ask you to take Sonja back, but she won’t accept that, and the truth is, I need her.”

Sonja spoke up. “As Zack would say, damned right on both counts.”

Micah removed his hand. “Good luck, both of you. If you can send word –”

“No, it will be better to break contact. And I’m sorry Sandy didn’t make it, Micah. She stayed behind, made sure all the other captives were freed. We think she went back for Ramires.”

Micah had barely had time to think about it, but Ash was right, she must be dead, buried in the underground complex. He felt unsteady on his feet, but tried not to let it show.

As soon as they had gone, Micah and Louise faced each other again. She spoke first.

“We have preparations to make, I imagine you do, too.” With that she headed back through the throng, the Alicians following her. Micah and Kat were left alone.

“I’m so sorry about Sandy and Ramires, Micah.” She touched his arm, and lowered her voice. “I know how you felt about her.”

“Do you?” His own voice sounded distant. He’d only just realised exactly how much she’d meant to him, now she was gone. All those years he’d never told her. Too late. It occurred to him to remain on Savange; after all, she was here, somewhere. Maybe she was still alive… But the tunnels had been flooded with fire during the Nchkani attack. Nobody could have survived, not even Ramires, and certainly not Sandy. He knew he wasn’t thinking straight.

A screeching sound made him turn towards the hill where Louise had sent the rifle. A column of purple light shone down and then vanished. Micah presumed the Nchkani had taken the rifle.

Micah leant on Kat’s shoulder a moment. She still had Antonia, and he had to get the other captives back to their loved ones too.

“Let’s go find Aramisk and the others,” he said.

◆◆◆

Louise entered the tower. Toran stood with his staff, next to Sandy, who was cuffed, gagged and strapped to a chair. He spoke as Louise entered.

“I heard the deal with Micah on the Allcom. What do you want me to do?”

Louise regarded Sandy. “Carry on as planned. Take her with you. It will weaken Micah believing this one is dead, and unravel him when he finds out she is still alive. He still cares a great deal for her.”

Sandy struggled in her restraints, but to no avail.

“Excuse me, but didn’t Micah just save us?”

Louise lashed out with her claw. Toran blocked it with his staff, but it drove him back a pace.

“If he hadn’t prevented me from handing over the Spider, all our people would still be alive. Use her as you like, to throw him off guard. Kill Micah and the girl-President, Petra, as well as Blake, too, if he still lives. Bring ten captives, then release the virus on Esperia.”

“And what of this blind man, Ash?”

Louise’s claw opened. “You are testing my patience, Toran. Thank yourself lucky I don’t have a replacement to hand. Ash will be spared, his woman, too. Now go!”

◆◆◆

Micah was glad to be back aboard Shiva. It was going to be pretty cramped, with sixty passengers – fifty-nine he reminded himself, with a pang. Shiva had run deep scans but found no trace of life in the caverns. Yet he kept seeing her face, expecting her to come sauntering around the corner with her buoyant smile, just like she used to back when they’d been friends. Somehow it didn’t feel like she was dead. His head had accepted it, but his heart hadn’t caught up yet.

Micah shook himself, and realised he’d not seen Antonia amongst the freed captives, nor Kat for a while; she’d disappeared somewhere.

He accessed Shiva via his resident. <Where are Kat and Antonia?>

<Medical bay. Antonia is undergoing surgery.>

Micah bolted from his chair and ran to the medical area, only to find the door sealed, with Kat outside.

“You can’t go in, Micah, but she’ll be fine.”

“What happened?”

“As the captives were escaping the initial assault, the Rapier was hit by a plasma bolt. Antonia was next to a conduit that exploded outwards. She and three others were struck by fragments. Vashta is operating on them right now. They will all live. But she has to operate quickly, before we enter Transpace.”

Micah leant against the door. “Where was she hit?”

Kat avoided his eyes, and took a moment before replying. “In the abdomen. She’ll be fine.”

Something about her reply made him wonder what she wasn’t telling him. But he let it go. “I have to get back to the bridge. Please, when she wakes, give her my… best wishes.”

Kat nodded, her face ashen.

“Don’t worry, Kat, she’s in good hands.”

“Thanks. Now go, Micah. Get us away from here; get us home.”

Micah glanced over to Ramires’ empty tactical station. The last Sentinel, a legend, killed somewhere on the planet. They’d never been true friends, as there had always been underlying tension between them, but Ramires had been steadfast throughout. Micah felt it would have been a better result if Ramires had survived and he had perished. At least Ramires had helped bring the Alicians to their knees, eliminating the threat, perhaps for good. He didn’t know if warriors who fought all their lives craved rest afterwards, but he whispered the words anyway: “rest in peace.” Maybe Ramires and Sandy would be together again now; even if Micah didn’t believe in an after-life, he didn’t rule out the possibility. It would make sense out of such a senseless loss.

Aramisk stood in front of him. He gestured to Ramires’ station. “Would you mind?”

“Thank you, I need something to do.”

The central screen showed the planet from a safe distance, the Nchkani long gone, the sole Alician transport vessel also waiting to observe the destruction of their world. Micah guessed they needed closure.

Shiva informed Micah and Aramisk that it had begun, then added, “You might want to look away. This is a Hell-Class weapon. It is so named for a reason.”

Micah took his command chair, stared at the screen, and braced himself mentally.

A red spot appeared on a major continent, and grew until it looked like a super-volcano. Magma spouted with such violence it shot into space. The volcanic mouth collapsed, leaving an even larger caldera, while red hot molten rock spewed upwards at a terrifying rate, as if the planet was vomiting its core. After several minutes the planet’s surface began to crumple, dimples and gashes appearing on its spherical surface. The caldera imploded and the hole became an open wound, the planet’s interior gushing relentlessly into space. After another minute the stream died down, and sputtered to a dribble. But it wasn’t over. What was left was a shell of a planet, like a cracked and emptied egg. The edges caught fire, burning with a bright blue flame that ate up the shell until the last shred of the planet vanished into blackness.

It didn’t seem right that Sandy and Ramires perished here, no trace of them left to take home. He vowed to make a grave for them as soon as he got back, and then head out into battle, wherever Hellera thought he and Shiva could be useful.

He noticed the Alician vessel preparing to leave, and wondered if any of them recalled departing a dead Earth almost two decades ago.

“Micah, it’s Ash.”

“Ash – are you alright? I wasn’t sure the comms patch was working.”

“It is, but I’ll be out of range any second.”

“Are you okay?”

“We are, so far. Micah, there’s something you need to know, about Louise. She isn’t here. She’s not on the ship.”

The Alician vessel jumped into Transpace. Micah asked Shiva to track them, but they were gone.

CHAPTER 21

Breach

Kilaney stared at the star-filled screen, squinting to see the first indication of inbound Mannekhi ships. The dull beat of the TACAS, a device to detect opening Transpace conduits, pulsed steady as a heartbeat. Kilaney knew he had to wait. He got up from his command chair on the Q’Roth destroyer, and turned around to check his crew at their stations. They were all Youngblood volunteers: Siras at the helm, Janine at Tactical, Willem at Systems, and Annie on Comms. Siras was the eldest at seventeen, Janine barely fifteen. Kilaney had taken Vasquez aside when they’d been proposed as the skeleton crew.

“They’re kids, for God’s sake! You know as well as I do, none of us are likely to make it back.”

“You’ve been away too long, Bill. They’re Youngbloods. Do you remember when your blood was young, what it felt like?”

He hadn’t answered. But watching them now, Kilaney had to admit they were all quick studies, having picked up the skills required to navigate and defend a mesa-class Q’Roth vessel in just a few days. Advanced spatial concepts that had taken him years to master were understood at the first telling by these Genned youngsters. He’d been unimpressed by Micah’s decision to allow the Genning of all human children. Now, for the first time, he could see the point. The inbound Mannekhi turned by Qorall were Level Six; with a normal human crew he’d be overrun quickly, but with Genners aboard he had a fighting chance.

He returned to the command chair built for a Q’Roth general. The three metre recliner dwarfed him, made him seem like a child in an adult’s chair. But he used to be Q’Roth, and though he no longer possessed the six limbs necessary to make full use of it, he knew his way around its controls. He tapped a pad.

“Xenic, any sign yet?” Kilaney glanced at a holo of the entire Esperian system covering twenty light minutes of travel. Xenic’s Mannekhi Spiker was closer to Esperia, embedded well inside the Shrell field. Two ships against fifty didn’t seem like good odds.

“We will know when they arrive. Never hasten an enemy’s arrival; only see that he comes to you.”

Kilaney wasn’t a fan of military epithets, but they were preferable to Xenic telling him to relax. The TACAS pulse increased in pitch and frequency. Then it jumped again, a harmonic of the original steady tone. The Mannekhi were close.

Kilaney decided to air a question he’d harboured since Xenic’s arrival. In battle, your life depended on your brother-in-arms, and he had to know he could rely on the Mannekhi commander.

“Xenic, I know they have been changed by Qorall, but they are – were – Mannekhi. Are you sure you can go through with this?”

There was a pause. “You would not understand. We Mannekhi have not been free for fifty thousand years, always managed with an iron claw by our patrons, any resistance met with brutal punishment. But in our hearts, our very DNA, that resistance, a simmering rage, is always there, deep down. This turning, what Qorall has done to my people… it is too much. I am freeing them.”

Kilaney left it there. He spoke to Janine. “Prepare the Ricochet.” That’s what Kilaney had named it. Hellera had left it behind, cloaked in space until yesterday, when it had suddenly revealed itself, with a message for Kilaney. He’d seen one of these weapons in action before, when a Tla Beth had used it against Mannekhi Spikers. The trouble was, Qorall had seen it, too, and might have developed a counter-measure. Hellera’s message had said it had to be combined with surprise. That meant hitting the enemy as they emerged from Transpace, when they would be vulnerable for a second or two. Kilaney had already primed it for Mannekhi ship signatures.

“Xenic, I want you well out of harm’s way when I launch it.”

“On that you have my complete agreement.”

Kilaney stared at the star-field again, small pinpricks of light, serene, innocent, passive. The TACAS kicked up an octave, the pulses much faster, separating into three closely-matched tones. The TACAS was only approximate; it was difficult to predict exactly where and when ships would emerge from Transpace, but it already told him the Mannekhi attack plan.

“Xenic, they’ll arrive in three waves.”

Kilaney got up from his chair, and stood right next to the large screen. There was a flicker of space, as if a transparent film had momentarily shimmered. “There, Janine,” he said. “Fire.”

At first he couldn’t see the Ricochet’s trajectory, since the studded black sphere had no after-burn, but Willem was able to track it via its transponder, and Annie overlaid its course on the star-field. The TACAS pitch ramped up again, a shrill whine.

Annie shouted above the din. “Sir, do you want me to diminish the alarm?”

He shook his head. The Ricochet accelerated. Where were the Mannekhi ships? Come on. He only had one Ricochet, one shot. The sphere reached the designated area and slowed down, then stopped. Kilaney breathed a sigh of relief. Smart boy!

The bridge was filled with the TACAS alarm, when suddenly it shut off. As Kilaney had hoped, in the area where he had glimpsed the approaching bow wave of the Transpace conduit, ten ships, stretched cones of silver, sprang into view, popping back into normal space-time. He barely had time to make out any details before the Ricochet flared into action. A beam struck one ship, then bounced onto another then another. Within a second, a lattice of orange fire connected all ten ships. One by one they burst into crimson flame then snuffed out.

Thank you, Hellera.

Almost immediately the second wave arrived, this time twenty ships. The device fired at the first ship, but it alone was damaged. No ricochet effect. The other nineteen fired purple beams at the sphere, which exploded silently; shreds of orange splattered across a vast area of space before they dissipated. The nineteen ships charged onwards, heading straight for Kilaney.

Xenic came online. “They’re Dropships, Javelin Class, used for invasion. Once they land they cannot take off again.”

The final wave of twenty ships burst into the sector.

“Back to the Shrell field,” Kilaney said to Siras. The destroyer leapt forward in a single short-system jump.

“Janine, give me an outside view, one million klicks to starboard, enlarged focal area.”

A holo showed a sideways view of the approaching fleet, and the Shrell field with Esperia at its core. The Dropships spread out, a hundred kilometres apart, spearing towards the field. He approached the holo, held out his hands, and flipped it around to get a frontal view. The Dropships were in concentric ring formation: the first ring comprised three ships, the next ring seven, the two outer rings twelve and seventeen respectively. But they were staggered, and they had shields. No beam could hit more than one ship, and no detonation from any of the weapons he had aboard had an effective blast radius larger than fifty kilometres against a shielded ship. The enemy had done their homework.

“Take us out of their path, Siras,” he said.

“Sir?”

Kilaney hadn’t had time to brief his crew on all the contingencies, and now wasn’t the moment to start. “One thousand klicks should do it. Lateral, you choose the direction.”

The helmsman complied, asking no further questions.

Kilaney tapped the ship-to-ship comms pad again. “Xenic, you’d better be ready, they’re coming in hot.”

“I am ready.”

The Dropships seemed uninterested in deceleration, despite the fact that they could almost certainly see the Shrell wires that would razor through any ship, shielded or not.

“Siras, prepare to loop behind them and then chase them in.”

“Sir, there’s no way this destroyer can dodge the wires at their speed. They’re smaller and far more manoeuvrable.”

“I’m aware of that, son. Just follow my orders.”

He watched as the first few Dropships neared the densely packed field that made him think of a ball of barbed wire. Halfway between the outside of the ball and Esperia was Xenic’s ship. But the Dropships were designated Javelin Class for good reason. Travelling point first and at high speed, they were difficult targets, like trying to shoot at an arrow flying towards your face. Still, he would stick to the plan, because he had no better idea. If he’d stayed in their path, he’d have probably taken out three before the others blew him to kingdom come.

The first five ships flew straight into the field like needles.

“On my command.”

He watched the holo, and waited until more than half the ships had entered.

“Now, Siras.”

Although the destroyer was half a kilometre long, it could move very fast in open space, and its inertial dampers worked just fine. Kilaney collapsed the holo with his hands, and got back to his chair.

“Siras, take us in as fast as you can go. Janine, use the forward battery, don’t stop firing till it’s depleted. Willem, let me know if ship integrity is compromised. Annie, no in-comms except from Xenic, but stream our telemetry to Petra and Vasquez.”

The destroyer plunged into the Shrell field. Siras made fine adjustments that Kilaney knew no ungenned pilot could manage at this velocity, even in a smaller ship. A wash of yellow spurted ahead of them as Janine ignited the main particle cannon, and it gushed forth the heat of a sun’s core, seeking out the rear of the Dropships. Within thirty seconds Kilaney counted five hits. The others accelerated to get out of range, just as Xenic had said they would.

“Don’t let them get away, Siras.”

The destroyer accelerated, the forward view snapping to and fro even though Kilaney felt no movement. Then there was a grating noise and a jolt.

Willem shouted. “Sir, we just lost a piece of the aft superstructure.”

“Keep going, keep firing.”

More clanks, and two more hits. Make that three; no, four. The Dropships were shifting to try and escape, but Siras clung to them. And then Kilaney saw it – a funnel of wires dead ahead. The Dropships slipped through, but they were much thinner… The bastards had lured him into a trap. Dammit, these Mannekhi knew their way round a Shrell field. His destroyer raced towards the wires. He gripped the arms of the chair.

“Siras –”

“No good, Sir,” Siras said. “Willem, now!”

A glistening cocoon ballooned around Kilaney and the chair, snuffing out all noise. Kilaney had forgotten about it, a device on Q’Roth ships to protect the commander, in case… He tried to stand up but the bubble didn’t give him enough room. The destroyer braked hard but there was no saving her. The end of the funnel rocketed towards them. He turned to see Siras hunched over the controls, trying to minimise the impact – no, he was trying to save his commander. The other three also worked feverishly, despite knowing they were about to die.

The upper half of the bridge was shorn off, and Kilaney found himself hurtling through space in the bubble. It rolled, and he saw his ship carved into chunks, like meat through a grinder. He could no longer see the wires; this was an escape pod, nothing more. He tried to catch sight of his crew, but he was already too far away, and the ship fragments sputtered briefly with violet flame before going dark. He saluted his crew, intoning each of their names. As he continued to sail forwards at speed, he toggled the chair’s inertial controls to stabilise the bubble and orient his view towards the planet, the remaining Dropships, and Xenic.

Now it’s up to you, my friend.

◆◆◆

Petra watched the holoscreen, Vasquez at her side, a skeleton crew with them in the cordoned-off room in the Dome, their hastily arranged Battle HQ. The waves of Mannekhi ships tore towards Xenic’s lone Spiker. She zoomed in to see the front line of Javelins.

“Those three,” Vasquez said, pointing.

She saw them. Three of the very front ships had altered course, converging towards Xenic. They were going to ram it – pierce it, slice it apart. “How do they keep managing to dodge the wires so easily?”

Vasquez rubbed the stubble on his chin. “The Mannekhi were born into this kind of briar patch. Nevertheless, it’s impressive.”

She wondered what Xenic was going to do. He hadn’t told anyone. Nor had he fired a single weapon.

It was as if Vasquez read her mind. “Whatever he’s going to do, it had better be fast.” Vasquez walked closer to the holonet, then stepped inside, first through the planet, into the patch of scribbled wire filaments, until his face was right next to the image of Xenic’s ship, needles sprinting towards his eyes. It unnerved Petra, though she knew it was just a holo. Still…

“Commander, please.”

He turned around, looked her in the eye, and then walked back to her side.

“Ten seconds,” one of the aides said.

They watched. Come on, Xenic, whatever you’re going to do, do it now.

But the ship just sat there. Petra’s hand went to her mouth as the three Javelins plunged into the Spiker, at first splintering it, then, as they passed right through the other side and continued on their way, the Spiker shattered.

Petra took a step backwards, but Vasquez took a pace forwards.

“Zoom in,” he barked.

Petra stared, confused. All she saw was debris spilling in all directions, the second and third waves accelerating towards the debris field, and Esperia.

Vasquez grinned. “You sneaky son of a…”

Petra stepped forward. What? What was he seeing? She focused. The debris pattern. It was shifting. Then she noticed the spikes. They were all intact. She moved closer, in front of Vasquez, and like him, stepped inside the holonet, needles flying toward her face.

None of them touched her.

All the drifting spikes except one suddenly flared, each homing onto a Javelin, a needle against a needle, the combined speed destroying the spike but gouging the hull of each Javelin. Flowers of flame blossomed right in front of Petra’s eyes.

A cheer arose from behind her, and Vasquez arrived at her side, his hand on her shoulder. With his other hand he pointed at the single remaining spike.

“No offence Ma’am, but I want to work for that man.”

She let out a short laugh. “If we get through this, remind me to create some medals.”

They both walked out of the net back to the central console.

“Zoom out,” she said. “How many got through?” She tried to count the ones that had been on the periphery, too far for Xenic’s spikes.

“Seven,” came the reply.

Fifty down to seven. Bravo, even if it might not be enough.

She touched a console. “Commander Xenic, are you there?”

“Of course,” came the reply.

She smiled. “That was truly exceptional, Commander.” She cleared her throat. ”What is your status?”

“I wish I had gotten more of them. My crew and I are in a single spike. We are trying to rendezvous with Kilaney. We may be late.”

She thought about telling them both to stay up there, where it might be safer. But she didn’t want to insult them.

She turned to Vasquez. “How long?”

“Twenty minutes till the Dropships land.”

She nodded, then touched another button. “People of Esperia, know that Commanders Kilaney and Xenic have, against incredible odds, destroyed forty-three enemy ships out in space.” She paused, waiting until she could hear cheering outside. “There are seven ships still inbound. The odds are still not even, but far better than before. Prepare yourselves for battle.”

She clicked off comms, and turned to Vasquez. “Commander, I now hand tactical over to you.”

“Yes, Madam President.” He saluted her.

She made an effort to stand to attention, and saluted him back.

Vasquez spoke in a lower voice. “I need your access code, Petra.”

She looked around at the seven aides, who were also standing to attention. “Are you sure?”

“We are all sure.”

“Alright.” She approached a panel, placed apart from the rest, and tapped in the code. Two small circles, a foot apart, lit up, pulsing yellow. Vasquez typed in his own code and their colour shifted to red. Now all it required was to touch both circles simultaneously, and the Battle HQ would be obliterated. They both stepped away from the panel.

Vasquez spoke to his men. “If they breach the Dome, they won’t be adding us to their army.”

Petra nodded. “I pray it doesn’t come to that. Good luck, Colonel.” She held out her hand, and he shook it. She walked to each to the seven other men and did the same, turned to go, then paused.

“Colonel, you’ve not asked where I’m going, what my plans are.”

“You’re going to stand with Blake and the Spiders.”

She smiled as she walked to the exit. She’d left the right man in charge.

CHAPTER 22

Star Storm

Pierre had never killed anyone. That hadn’t been easy, having endured the Third World War on Earth, the fighting against the Q’Roth on Eden and Earth a decade later, and all those years gallivanting around a war-torn galaxy with Ukrull. The Ranger, being telepathic, knew Pierre’s value structure, and had done the necessary whenever they’d been in a tight spot. But Pierre had kept it a secret from his human colleagues. Until now. Jen was fuming.

“What do you mean you won’t take Tactical?”

She got out of her immerser chair where she’d been controlling Navigation, and walked right up to his face, then shoved him backwards, so that he fell into the seat controlling the ship’s weapons. Jen was smaller than he was, but right now he’d prefer a Q’Roth warrior in front of him.

“It’s… against my morals, Jen. I’ve never in my life –”

“Look out the window and tell me what you see.” She shoved his chin sideways so he faced the screen at the end of the compact cockpit set in the front of the Duality, the ship Kalaran had ‘borrowed’ from the Kalarash entity known as Darkur.

Pierre stared at the screen, and felt the blood drain from his face. Three hundred and thirty Nchkani warships, black and white ovoids with feather-like blades brimming with weapons. They circled the supernova concealing the Tla Beth homeworld, in opposing directions, like a coordinated ballet of electrons circling a nucleus. Beyond this inner ring of hostiles were swarms of the immense dark worms, their pattern more erratic, the very randomness more menacing, offering no escape. He couldn’t see how even Hellera could fight her way out of this, and then the galaxy would fall into Qorall’s hands.

“I see our doom, Jen.”

“All the more reason to fight!”

“Jen, I’m sorry, I can’t do it.” He levered himself out of the chair and tried to push past her.

Jen slapped him hard across the face, the shock of it more than its force making him sit back in the chair. Red-faced, her lips quivering, she pinned him to the chair with a firm hand on his chest.

Her voice quavered. “You –” She closed her eyes a moment, sucked in a deep breath. “Listen to me, Pierre. Dimitri is gone, Kalaran, too. They died to save us. They didn’t die so we could lie down and offer our throats to the wolves. You can’t operate Nav. You’re more intelligent than me, but you have no experience flying one of these.”

He studied the interface in front of him, its array of symbols and displays. A touch here, a tap there, and lives would be snuffed out. Why was his life more important than theirs? He had no right…

“You still have a daughter, Pierre. Petra is on Esperia. They’ll go there next.” Jen pushed off from his chest, and turned away from him, folding her arms as if holding herself. She stood immobile, and the cockpit grew quiet.

Pierre tried to remember who he used to be, before being accelerated to Level Ten, to know what he might have decided then, before he’d set off around the galaxy ignoring Kat and the daughter he still barely knew. But not that long ago Hellera had put him on a downward course, restoring his humanity. He’d thought it had been done as a rebuke, but now he wasn’t so sure. Feelings he’d almost forgotten had been returning. He didn't know if he could rely on them, but Jen was right, Kat and Petra were relying on him, and he owed it to Ukrull, Jen, and to Kalaran…

He took a deep breath, and placed a finger on the interface in front of him, making it come to life.

“Take your station, Jen. I’ll do what I can.”

They patrolled the circumference of the supernova once an hour, checking that the Nchkani had not approached from their own farther orbit. The Nchkani and the dark worms stayed out in the blackness of space, whereas Jen and Pierre skated along a perimeter of purple and blue ionised clouds of deadly radiation that concealed a dwarfed star at its heart. The star itself sheltered the Tla Beth homeworld – or asteroid – using unknown spatial manipulation techniques for shielding. Pierre guessed the Level Sixteen Nchkani would prize such know-how, wanting to steal the secret from the Level Seventeen Tla Beth before exterminating them. Perhaps that was why they hadn’t yet attacked. No new ships had arrived in the past two hours, and he assumed their fleet had reached full strength.

He glanced across at Jen, her brow smooth, eyes closed but twitching as if in REM sleep, her mind immersed in the neural interface. Occasionally the corner of her lip lifted a fraction, coinciding with the ship threading through a loop in the cloud layer, or surfing a wave of radiation unleashed from the ongoing starburst reaction. She was clearly enjoying the challenge. Good, take what pleasure you can from all of this, Jen. He turned back to his instruments, unable to use a neural interface because of his nannites; the ship didn’t trust them, though he wasn’t sure why.

There was the usual outpouring of higher atomic weight molecules, the denser metals only given to the universe by supernovas. But there were odd concentrations. He found a particularly dense metal, far heavier than plutonium, streaming out and pooling in the neutral zone between them and the Nchkani, forming a molecular cloud. As the Duality completed the next circular tour, he identified six such streams and clouds, equidistant from each other.

Pierre hadn’t heard from Hellera or Ukrull for some time. He wondered what they were up to. Ukrull’s face suddenly appeared on the Hohash, making Pierre jump.

“Telepathic, remember?”

It was good to hear the reptile’s growly voice. He recalled Ukrull once confiding that telepathy attenuated less over distance than other forms of communication, though he’d never disclosed its range. He’d also said that the longer a Ranger was in close proximity to another being, the stronger the bond became. That was why all Rangers ended up becoming nomadic, usually travelling alone. Pierre had asked Ukrull how he could tolerate his presence. He had laughed, saying that Pierre’s thoughts were so dim, being only a measly Level Ten, that he could tune them out as random noise.

For the first time, Pierre began to wonder.

“So, Ukrull, are you going to tell me the plan?”

“No. If works, you see something always wanted, since small.”

Ukrull never talked of Pierre’s childhood, saying that the intellectual difference was so minimal, he could only discriminate between a human adult and a child in terms of physical size. Pierre had always appreciated Ukrull’s sense of humour. A knot formed in Pierre’s stomach, as he realised how much he would miss Ukrull, having spent nearly half of his ‘tall’ life with him.

He’d once asked Ukrull why he spoke such broken English, given his intelligence level. Ukrull had replied, “Less words, you listen harder. Redundancy comes from emotional weakness.”

Pierre had pondered that a lot. He’d also tried Ukrull’s form of speaking a number of times, but Ukrull had laughed off every single attempt. He thought of trying now, since this might be their last conversation, but he gave up on the idea.

“What do you want us to do, my friend?”

“Live.”

Pierre smiled. “Is that all?”

“To live, must kill many worms and destroy one hundred Nchkani vessels.”

“Oh.”

Ukrull’s yellow slit eyes narrowed. “Up to it?”

“If it’s what I have to do in order to see what I have apparently always wanted to see, then yes.” The knot in Pierre’s stomach tightened. “What about you?”

Ukrull glanced at something Pierre couldn’t see, then turned back to face Pierre. “Tell Manota…”

Pierre leaned forward. “The female Ranger? Tell her what?”

Ukrull flicked his forked tongue over his eyes. “Have to go now.” The image vanished on the Hohash. Pierre’s worried face reflected on its mirror surface. Take care, Ukrull.

“Pierre,” Jen said, eyes open, her features soft. Had she been watching him?

“Pierre, they’re coming. I’m bringing the Duality about.”

He turned back to his console, and watched as a section of the outer layer of Nchkani ships moved aside, leaving a circular gap. Dark worms poured through, straight towards him.

“Do we retreat back into the nebula’s clouds for cover?” He still couldn’t see a way out of this, nor any practical offensive move they could make. It all felt futile.

“Pierre, look at me.”

He tore his gaze from the screen.

“This is the Duality. It is a Kalarash ship. Today we fight for the Kalarash, the most powerful beings in the universe. We do not retreat. Ever. Is that clear?”

He nodded, reminding himself she’d been a captain of one of the refugee ships that escaped Earth. For the first time he could see why.

“I’m immersing now, I won’t be able to talk to you until… after. And, Pierre, if you can’t fire, I under–”

“I will fire.”

She gave him a measured stare. “See you on the other side of whatever.” She closed her eyes again and was immersed, in direct mental contact with the Duality’s navigation and engine control systems.

Pierre shrank back into the chair as they burst forward towards the flood of leviathans. Wondering which weapon to fire first, he noticed a red disk light up in front of him. It said “Assist?” He almost laughed. Kalarash indeed. He pressed it.

It was like swimming up a waterfall. Each worm was three times the length and breadth of the Duality. The ship’s weapons punctured the space around them, fans of light cascading from the ship as it twisted, its crossbow arms flailing superheated plasma beams like whips, lacerating the worms as they tried to engulf the ship. The aft of the Duality sprayed beams in its wake, aiming to finish off wounded worms. But there were so many. The screens could hardly see beyond the worms’ huge hides. Pierre noted an indication of shield integrity. The worms were leaching energy, a few per cent a minute, not helped by the deluge of weapons fire, but if he stopped firing, the ship would be trapped, drained, and crushed. The bar already showed only fifty-five per cent of reserves left.

He selected an external view from a probe they’d released earlier, and saw that many of the worms had bypassed them and were heading straight into the heart of the supernova. The Nchkani were also edging closer. Jen must have noticed it too, because suddenly the Duality swung sideways away from the avalanche of worms, vectoring towards a group of Nchkani warships.

A panel indication lit up: gravitic net. He knew what it was, and recoiled at the idea. But he took a deep breath, and launched it. He watched it writhe its way toward the ships. That was when it all went wrong.

At around halfway point, the net slowed, stopped, and then headed back toward the Duality. Merde!

“Jen!” he shouted. At first he thought she hadn’t heard him, but the Duality suddenly veered toward the flood of dark worms. With the gravity net on their tail, she aimed straight for a worm cluster. Pierre fired at them to get their attention, to bore a hole through them. It worked, just, and as they sped through the gap, the worms closed behind them. He switched to aft screens, and saw a group of worms caught in the net, squirming as they shrank together, crushed into oblivion.

“You told me Kalaran used a net on a group of Nchkani before he was killed, but at least one ship got away. They must have recorded data, taken it back to Qorall, and –”

“Hellera is using us to test their defences,” Jen remarked, temporarily out from immersion, rubbing her eyes. “Makes sense, though she’s off my Christmas card list.”

Pierre stared at her. “How can you be so blasé at a time like this?”

“I hung around with Kalaran for a year. He had a very subtle form of humour I’m finally starting to appreciate. Back to work, Pierre. No more nets, please. Think of something else.”

She was back ‘in’. He recalled studying battle tactics during the American civil war. Often there would be two lines facing each other across a wasteland, neither side wanting to charge. Occasionally a lone rider would be sent out into no man’s land to draw fire, and to try and goad the other side into attacking. Of course, in most cases the rider was shot dead before he got back.

Jen slung the ship around for another pass. The ‘assist’ button lit up again, but he didn’t press it. They drew closer to the Nchkani ships. The assist disc changed colour from green to red. Still, he left it. He wanted to draw their fire, deciding that was what Hellera needed, and that it made strategic sense, even if he and Jen were the bait.

The four closest ships all fired at the same time, but it wasn’t a plasma weapon. Instead, they sprayed the Duality with a gelatinous material, a mucous substance that tried to bind with the ship’s hull. Jen instinctively pulled away, and Pierre fired at the matter streams. Single beam-fire didn’t work, but he found he could use two intersecting beams to scissor through the mucous streams, choking off their momentum. Yet still enough of it reached the ship, and clung to it. Pierre called up the hull resilience display – those defence systems had gone into overdrive, but it was clear the organic material was eating its way through the hull, one molecular layer at the time. This had to be Qorall’s artistry, it was way above the Nchkani level. Pierre knew Hellera would be seeing this, and they all knew now that this was no siege, the attack had begun in earnest.

Pierre perceived the genius in Darkur’s design of his ship. As the sludge ate through the hull, the ship’s internal fluid metamorphosed, creating more hull material. It couldn’t stop the invasion, but it bought them time. Luckily, or through Jen’s flying, none of the material had latched onto the cockpit area in the arrowhead at the front of the ship.

Jen raced the ship back to the supernova, twenty of the Nchkani ships in hot pursuit. Pierre now saw the sting in the Nchkani strategy. The worms that had already passed them earlier now moved to block their path, creating a wall. The intention was clearly to corral the Duality and destroy it. The Nchkani no doubt preferred to capture and study such a ship, but then they would have to answer to Qorall. Pierre looked at the two screens, the pack of Nchkani ships behind, and a swarm of worms in front. No way out.

But he did notice something: one of the dense molecular clouds, full of heavy metals, was nearby. His display listed the metals, and as he’d suspected, Trancium was amongst them. He had no better idea. “Jen, take us into the cloud!”

Pierre.

He looked across to Jen, but she was still immersed in the neural interface. Besides, the voice saying his name had been inside his head, and had sounded… synthetic. He ignored it, whatever or whoever it was, now was not the time. He checked the hull again. The attacking agent was voracious. They didn’t have much time, and they were beginning to lose power. Abruptly the engines closed down, and the Duality drifted into the cloud. Jen let out a gasp as she was dumped out of immersion; there was nothing more she could do. The Nchkani ships took up positions all around them, readying for the kill. Pierre watched them on the screens.

“This is it,” Jen said.

He noticed movement in the cloud, black on black, hard to make out.

“Pierre, Jen.” This time the voice was clear: Hellera. “Why do you think our ships are fashioned in the shape of a crossbow?”

Before he could think the answer, the screen blurred as the arrowhead containing them bolted out of the cloud, a long shaft of intact and uncontaminated hull behind them. They blazed out of the supernova region at terrific speed.

Pierre and Jen watched the main screen, where they could finally see the big picture, and Hellera’s strategy. Something was happening to the six molecular clouds around the supernova. The Nchkani ships had been fleeing the one where the Duality had foundered, and were now adrift. The screen zoomed in. First, Pierre’s heart sank as he saw the Duality: listless, blistered and corroded, as if attacked by leprosy. The ship was dying. But the Nchkani ships were clearly in trouble themselves. Black sores grew on their hulls, scabs stretching up their spines. Jen voiced what Pierre had already surmised.

“Machines. They were in the cloud, waiting.”

“They’re feeding on the Nchkani ships,” Pierre added. “Hellera used the supernova to create nutrient pools the Machine race couldn’t afford to ignore; they need heavy metals. The clouds were the bait, all along. Kalaran must have sent what was left of the Machines here.”

“Funny, Kalaran and Hellera were working as a team all along,” Jen said.

The Nchkani ships were in disarray, slowly succumbing to the Machines that would assimilate them and discard almost all the organic content as waste. Mucous streams fired at the Machines had little effect, because the Machine assailants were too small to target, until they mushroomed in size on contact with the Nchkani hulls. Pierre realised how like nannites the Machines acted, and felt a strange affinity with them – nannites had been an integral part of him most of his life, courtesy of his father’s genetic engineering experiments on his own son.

Leaderless, the worms scattered. Hellera’s ship emerged from the centre of the supernova, weapons blazing, carving through worm flesh. But Pierre sensed there was more to come. Hellera’s ship fired six missiles, each one snaking towards a molecular cloud. Then everything happened at once: Hellera’s ship tore out of the system; the supernova collapsed as if being sucked in, pulling the worms towards it. Nchkani ships struggled to break free of the gravitational force but they too slipped backwards. Pierre could barely imagine the energy being condensed, easily enough to create a black hole, or… He suddenly remembered what he’d always wanted to see. He jumped out of his seat.

“Jen, get us out of here!”

She didn’t ask questions, but slipped back into the neural interface and executed emergency thrust. What Pierre witnessed in the aft screen was something he’d always wanted – and dreaded – to see, the birth of a white hole. At first he saw the six micro-stars Hellera had created from the Machine-infested clouds, the heavy metal explosions briefly burning hotter than normal stars; he guessed that was to exterminate the Machines rather than the Nchkani, as the former were tougher to kill. The six stars looked like the points of a diamond, with a white light growing hotter in its centre. Then the white hole expanded until it engulfed the micro-stars. It continued to grow all the way to the outer perimeter where the Nchkani had originally been. He doubted anything survived. With a shock, he realised an entire race, the Nchkani, had probably just been wiped out, maybe two if he included the Xera.

“She used the Machines, then destroyed them,” he said.

Jen shrugged. “Kalarash are ruthless. They have to be that way to stay on top. Just remember Qorall is far worse. Be grateful Hellera’s on our side.”

He hoped Ukrull was aboard Hellera’s vessel. The Tla Beth, too; he knew there weren’t that many of them anymore, and their ships were small, though incredibly powerful. But their base had been destroyed; they would have to find a new home.

Pierre.

There it was again. Jen hadn’t reacted. Only he heard it, inside his head. The Hohash came to life. As far as Pierre could tell, Ukrull was grinning.

“Well played,” Ukrull growled.

Pierre shrugged. “Hellera’s strategy was impeccable, not to mention her timing.”

Ukrull’s snout swung left and right, then he spoke in a quieter growl. “Twice, noise stopped. Hole in your thoughts. What happened?”

Pierre had forgotten Ukrull was monitoring his mind. So, twice, when someone had tried to contact him, Ukrull had not heard it. Somebody, or something, had blocked a Level Fifteen telepath.

“Don’t know,” Pierre said. There was no point lying to Ukrull.

“Later,” Ukrull said, and broke the connection.

Pierre, we need to talk.

“Well,” Jen said, “I have to say I’m pleased to be alive.” She looked at him. “You did well, back there.” She tilted her head. “What was Ukrull referring to?”

“Like I said, I don’t know. Probably nothing.”

Now, Pierre. We are running out of time.

Instead of being exhausted, Jen seemed to have been energised. “I’m going down to see what’s left of our ship. Want to come and explore?” Her voice dipped. “Dimitri would.”

“No, thank you, Jen. I’m going to rest here a while. Why don’t you take the Hohash with you?”

She cast him a quizzical look, but decided it was a good idea. He watched her don a facemask and slip through the waterlock, the Hohash following her.

I’m alone, he thought. Can Ukrull hear me?

No. You know who we are, don’t you?

He hadn’t been sure until that moment.

Yes. The Machine race. The Xera.

We have a proposal for you.

Pierre listened, knowing that the longer he did so, the more concerned Ukrull would be. Eventually, the Ranger, despite the friendship between them, would be compelled to tell Hellera. Then Pierre knew he would find himself on the wrong side of the last remaining Kalarash in the galaxy.

Still, he listened.

CHAPTER 23

Antigen

It rained on Esperia. Petra stared up through the transparent barrier erected by the Spiders, the protective dome made visible by rivulets chasing down its outer surface. It hardly ever rained on Esperia, but when it did, it was relentless. Several drops collected on her upper lip despite the peaked cap Vasquez had given her. She blew them off, and continued to search the sky. She wasn’t alone. It seemed the whole town of Esperantia was gazing upwards, watching and waiting. But they often glanced in her direction. She recalled what Vasquez had said to her.

“You’re the CIC, Petra, our Commander-in-Chief. This is a Military Op, the population is under imminent threat, and need to see their President out there. But you must stay out of the fray. If you enter it, then no one is in charge, and we’re lost. I need to be here to manage the aerial situation and organise our ground troops, but you are the eyes and ears on the scene. Stay close to the battle, but don’t be drawn into it. If things go bad, I’ll be there before the end.”

A raindrop entered her eye, making her blink. The barrier didn’t stop all of the rain; she had no way of asking the Spiders how it worked, but guessed it had some basic intelligence. It made sense; such a shield could be used for an extended period – a siege – in which case it would be useful to allow rain to pass through while keeping out enemies and biological agents.

She glanced at the four Spiders standing behind her. They looked soggy, but otherwise unperturbed. In their midst was Blake, locked inside a grey metal body glove that came all the way up to his eyes. He could stand, but was otherwise immobilised. He was still golden; they had no idea if the medical procedure had truly worked, and until now had no way of testing it. Blake was potentially an antigen, a catalyst to trigger a reversal of the Orb virus that had already turned trillions of aliens into Qorall’s minions. The Ngank surgeon had said that if it did work – and there were no guarantees it would – then it would activate on physical contact with a recoded individual, and would work faster than the original recoding, because the individual – like Blake – would be fighting it from the inside. But Blake was still golden, and was still infectious. She felt the device in her pocket that would release him from his bonds, noting that the nearest people – a trio of Youngbloods – were a good ten metres away, and returned to observing the sky.

Vasquez called on her wristcom. “Thirty seconds.”

Loud cracks made her flinch: sonic booms, but she couldn’t see the Mannekhi Javelin ships. Xenic called them Dropships; released from their Mother-ship just before entering Transpace. They’d fallen like needles navigating their way through the Shrell-field, and would barely slow as they entered the atmosphere, and would pound into the ground. More difficult to shoot down that way. The recoded Mannekhi inside would be in deep stasis, encased in inertia-dampening gel, but would emerge very shortly after landing, to invade the town.

More cracks stretched into scraping noises that grated in her ears, and then she heard shouts from behind. “There!” At first she couldn’t see them, but then narrow glints of silver caught her eye. She counted: four, five… then all seven. The shield darkened, as if polarised, dampening light and sound. Yellow blotches erupted on its surface, accompanied by dull booms as the Javelins fired on the town. She heard children’s’ screams in the background, quickly hushed. The Spiders didn’t move. The shield continued to darken, until Esperantia was plunged into night, fireworks billowing all around them. The ground shook, and Petra wondered how deep the shield penetrated Esperia’s surface.

She could barely make out the Javelins amidst the bombardment. But then a bright object, like a comet, grew in size. She braced herself. One of them was going to try and break through the shield. The impact was like a sonic boom, and made her clamp her hands over her ears. The shield lightened, revealing the awful carnage of a ship flattened into an amorphous slime of blood and metal. A second later there was an earthquake as the six other ships slammed into the area outside the shield, knocking Petra off her feet. The shield became transparent again as rock and soil spurted high into the air, then rained back down. As Vasquez had predicted, the ships had landed in the valley just south of Esperantia, the closest one a few hundred metres from her position. The open landscape favoured a large ground force. She recalled that Blake had once told her that decisive battles in wars often came down to infantry. Break the infantry, win the war. But how could you defeat an invading force you could not afford to touch?

She got to her feet and noticed that the shield had stopped letting the rain through. Blake remained standing, his eyes looking toward where two of the ships had struck home.

Vasquez called her. “Now, Petra.”

She used the translation flashlight device to ask the Spiders to open a hole in the shield for thirty seconds, long enough for four tactical groups to sprint outside and engage the enemy before they emerged from their ships. Two skimmers powered up behind her. She raised her hand until one of the Spiders flashed back in the affirmative, then she dropped it. The skimmers zipped past, one carrying three Youngbloods, the other a trio of Vasquez’ militia, both teams loaded with heavy ordnance. The rush of wind from their wake blew her hat off. She let it go. Twenty seconds later another two skimmers dashed past – they had been stationed in the middle of town, just in case. She was relieved that Brandt wasn’t among the Youngbloods, reminding herself that his size would have worked against him for this type of hit-and-run mission, as the skimmers were mainly designed to carry two people, not three.

The buzz of the engines powering the four teams towards the ships keened and then diminished. She turned back to the Spiders, and they raised the shield. Along with others, she approached the inner edge of the barrier. She stared through the rain coursing down its protective skin. Brandt arrived next to her, panting from having sprinted across town. She resisted the urge to embrace him, or even reach for his hand.

Craters smoked from where the two closest Dropships had landed, and through a viewer she saw the skimmers race towards them. Go faster. The Youngbloods arrived first, two of them crash-rolling off the skimmer, deadly packages clutched to their chests, while the driver slewed the skimmer to a halt. The first two ran to the crater and leapt over the edge. Seconds later they re-emerged and dashed back to the skimmer.

Nothing happened, and the Youngbloods waited.

She zoomed in on the second skimmer, crewed by Vasquez’ militia, as it headed to the next crater. Before they arrived, Mannekhi burst out of the pit like angered ants from an anthill, armed and firing. The militia returned fire but were cut down.

She swung to the left and then to the right to see the third and fourth skimmer meet similar circumstances, in the latter case the skimmer was able to turn around in time. The Youngbloods still waited, despite a growing number of Mannekhi emerging from the other Dropships.

As she realised what they intended, she spoke to Brandt, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Tell them to come back.”

“It was their choice, Petra.”

She knew there was no point in further discussion, and put the viewer to her eyes again. The Youngbloods had booby-trapped the Dropship to explode as soon as its hatches opened. The Mannekhi inside knew that, but could afford to wait for reinforcements. She switched to the last remaining skimmer, racing back towards sanctuary. She judged the distance. They would make it. Then she noticed some kind of weapon emerging from one of the far craters, shaped like a cannon.

Vasquez came on line. “Petra, don’t drop the shield. We don’t know what that cannon does.”

“They’re your men, they can get back here in time.” She could just make out their faces.

“They understood the risks. You put me in charge of tactical ops for a reason.”

She watched them. The militia men might understand the risks and sacrifice with their heads, but they looked terrified. She turned to the Spiders, and used the flashcoder.

“Petra, what are you doing?” Brandt asked.

She didn’t answer. She turned back to the last skimmer, raising her hand. But the skimmer changed course. She could see one of them touch an earpiece, and shout something to the other two. Dammit, Vasquez! The skimmer raced back towards the advancing horde, firing as they went. She saw one picked off, then another, rolling to a stop on the sandy ground. The driver, hunched behind his protective windshield, accelerated toward the advancing Mannekhi.

The front line of Mannekhi soldiers suddenly split, like a golden sea opening, leaving a passage in front of the skimmer. She didn’t understand why until she caught sight of the cannon, which now had a direct line of fire at the skimmer. A long corridor of shimmering air lanced forth from the cannon, and enveloped both skimmer and the driver. The driver must have detonated the ordnance, because the corridor became a conduit of fire, stretching all the way to the shield. Flames bounced off a point just in front of where Petra stood, though there was no sensation of heat. The corridor vanished, leaving no trace of the skimmer or its driver.

Not a single Mannekhi had been killed.

“They were brave men, as brave as our Youngbloods,” Brandt said.

She touched his hand, and zoomed in on the three remaining Youngbloods who had moved away from the crater into the horde’s path. Each Genner warrior stood with arms outstretched, holding two daggers.

“What the hell are they doing?” she asked. “They’ll be shot to pieces.”

But they weren’t.

“It’s a Mannekhi fighting ritual,” Brandt said.

“But they’re Qorall’s minions now.”

“We’ll see. We need to know.”

The leading edge of Mannekhi slowed to a walking pace, then stopped in front of the three warriors. Three Mannekhi attacked them, and were quickly dispatched by the Youngbloods. Petra could feel the tension all around her, as everyone drew closer to the barrier for a better view. As another three Mannekhi fell to the floor, a hissing sound arose on her side of the barrier, in Hremsta, an encouragement Genners used in sparring matches to cheer their fellows on. Petra took a breath and made the same noise between tongue and teeth.

Three more Mannekhi died, but the blood of one of them spattered onto a Youngblood’s face. He wiped it away, then buckled as if punched in the stomach, his face lined in pain. Petra zoomed in, and saw the first cracks of gold etch down his cheeks. She screamed a single word in Hremsta, cutting off the hissing, hoping her voice would carry on the breeze and be picked up by the Youngbloods’ superior hearing. Brandt glanced at her with a look of surprise, then echoed her command in his far louder voice.

A fellow Youngblood moved to the infected warrior and slit his throat. A roar erupted from the Genners, chanting the same word Petra had used. Many of the Steaders tried to imitate the word, neither knowing nor caring what it meant. But the two remaining warriors were set upon by the Mannekhi until Petra could no longer see them. The chanting ceased, the crowd craning their necks to see. After a minute, the two Youngblood warriors emerged from the Mannekhi horde, their skin golden. They walked towards the lip of the crater, as the Mannekhi drew back. Petra grasped Brandt’s hand, and squeezed hard. The turned warriors calmly disappeared into the crater. Five seconds later flame and dirt mushroomed from the crater up into the air.

Even before the dirt had come back to the ground, the Mannekhi from the last ship emerged. As one, the golden infantry advanced. Petra noticed armoured vehicles, several with serious-looking hardware and cannons of varying sizes.

She stood her ground. Everyone else did, too.

At last the invading army stood some ten metres from the shield. One golden man walked forward, only recognisable as Mannekhi by his eyes of pure black. He stopped at the other side of the barrier from Petra. At first she thought he was staring at her, that this was some other kind of pre-battle ritual. But it was always hard to know what a Mannekhi was looking at, and it dawned on her that he was studying Blake. The man returned to the front line, a mixture of male and female soldiers, all golden, and various vehicles and artillery.

“Now what?” Brandt asked.

“We see who blinks first.”

Within the hour, Kilaney and Xenic had landed on the opposite side of town, but there was no way to let them in. Petra still faced the unmoving wall of Mannekhi, who were by now thoroughly drenched from the rain. It didn’t bother them. Funny thing was, the rain seemed to be only on them, not on the shield directly in front of her.

Vasquez had informed her there were twelve hundred turned Mannekhi outside the barrier. Only a few needed to get through, and then the chain reaction of contamination would begin. She had to admit, this conversion ploy of Qorall’s was brilliant, since in most wars even the winning side usually suffered devastating losses to its numbers, but this way, battles actually swelled Qorall’s armies. Three ranks of heavily armed Genners and militia had taken up position in front of the horde, and the crowd of Esperian onlookers were ordered back to the town.

One of the Spiders nudged her hip, startling her. She tried to read its flickering comms band.

“What’s it saying?” Brandt asked.

She stared at it. “I’m not sure.” She whirled back to the cannons. They were silent. “Oh crap!” she said.

Brandt touched her shoulder, holding her in place. “Petra, speak to me. What did it say?”

She held his gaze while lifting her wristcom to her mouth. “Colonel, can you tell me the integrity of the shield? No? Can you detect if there is any energy signature from the cannons. Check all frequencies.”

She sighed. “It said three minutes until barrier failure.” She cursed herself. The Spiders assumed the humans knew; the cannons had probably been firing steadily since they’d taken up position.

Vasquez came online. “Sorry Petra, you’re right. It’s on a frequency we weren’t monitoring and can’t see or hear. Convergent beams from all six main cannons are focused on a spot right in front of you. You’d better move out of the way. I don’t know if the whole barrier will come down, or if it will only create a small opening for the soldiers to come through.”

She stared at the cannons, the Mannekhi soldiers standing in the rain, and the clear – and completely dry – barrier.

“The rain,” she said. “That’s why we can’t see rain on the shield in front of us!” Stupid! I should have seen that.

She and Brandt moved back, but she noticed the Spiders remained where they were. A thought struck her. “Vasquez, tell me the moment the cannons stop firing.” She switched channels. “Kilaney, Xenic, get ready to come through.”

There was a sound like glass cracking, then fissures appeared in the shield. They spread outwards like ferns, then cracks opened up, stretching until a crude arch formed.

“They’ve stopped firing, Petra.”

She whirled to the Spiders, gave them the command. “Kilaney, Xenic, you have five seconds.” The Mannekhi soldiers began filing toward the arch. She signalled to the Spiders to raise the shield, just as militia took up position in front of her, armed with pulse rifles. Vasquez must have ordered them to open fire, because suddenly the noise of constant pulse fire deafened her. Backlash heat seared her face as Brandt dragged her backwards, away from the fray, though she watched, horrified as a mound of charred corpses built up in the arch. But more soldiers continued to pour through, despite appalling losses.

Eventually one made it through and flung himself towards the militia. They caught him in crossbeams, igniting him like a flaming torch, but that allowed two more to try the same tactic. The front rank of militia fell back, as the second rank opened fire.

“It’s not working,” she said. Brandt held her tight while she gripped the handle of her pulse pistol. The ten metre distance between the arch and the militia was strewn with burning bodies. There was a surge though the arch, and even though the militia caught the front wave, the ones behind continued the charge, carrying their dying comrades, and fell upon the front militia row. The second row paused a fraction of a second then opened fire on their fallen colleagues, trying to stem the flow.

Kilaney arrived, out of breath. He surveyed the scene. “Petra, what are the Spiders saying?”

She looked at him, not understanding, then followed his gaze to the Spiders, who had remained exactly where they had always been, Blake still in their midst. She read their comms bands, then reached into her left pocket, and clicked the release. The Spiders parted, and Blake stepped free of his restraints.

Petra found the scene surreal. The yells, screams, the buzzsaw of pulse rifles in freeflow mode, solid beams of yellow streaming outwards, devouring the soldiers, the searing heat, the stench of charred flesh, frenetic animalistic fighting on a carpet of corpses and boiling blood, and a single golden man walking right into the melee. The Mannekhi seemed to ignore him. Until he touched the shoulder of one of them, at the edge, and the man flinched, then staggered backwards, falling in amidst other men, the golden sheen on his face giving way to mottled patches of grey. Blake touched another, then another. The fighters at the front remained oblivious to Blake, but those at the back were not; they began to notice him. Three of them faced Blake, and crouched. Before Petra could react, Kilaney snatched her pulse pistol and drew his own, and sprinted forward, while Xenic yelled at the militia to restrain their fire in that direction.

Blake glanced at Kilaney for a split second and – she was sure of it – the corners of his mouth lifted a fraction. Blake began fighting, Kilaney protecting his back as golden Mannekhi soldiers swarmed around them. Those at the front line stopped advancing, and joined this new focus.

“Cease fire!” Xenic shouted, with such force and presence of command that the militia stopped, even though he wasn’t their commanding officer.

Petra couldn’t see. “Lift me up,” she said to Brandt, and he hoisted her up onto his shoulders.

Kilaney and Blake were back-to-back as the Mannekhi soldiers tried to stab them both without being touched. Kilaney used his pistols sparingly; the object wasn’t to kill them, but to convert enough to stem and then turn the tide. But each time Blake touched one and he began to turn, his comrades slaughtered him. She saw Blake shout something over his shoulder to Kilaney, the latter nodding, and then Blake dived forward, touching as many faces as he could reach, taking several knife thrusts in the process. Kilaney spun around and picked up Blake like a battering ram, his half-Q’Roth physiology keeping him upright long after any human or Genner could have survived, pile-driving Blake through the soldiers until too many knives in his back and legs brought him down. And then Petra couldn’t see; Blake and Kilaney were on the ground.

“Down,” she said, then turned to Xenic and the militia. But Vasquez had arrived. A pulse cannon hanging from his shoulder.

“Ready, people,” he said.

All the militia and Youngbloods stood in a single rank, weapons raised. Petra watched the crowd of Mannekhi soldiers. They shuffled this way and that, and then collapsed to the ground. No more Mannekhi pushed through the arch, and she saw the mottled grey affecting others outside the shield, spreading backwards through the Mannekhi ranks like wildfire. The antigen was working. She walked forward, shaking off Brandt’s attempt to hold her back. By the time she reached the throng, most were on all fours, gasping, retching, all of them losing their golden sheen. She walked through them until she found the two men she’d been searching for.

Kilaney was dead, his eyes wide open but a grimace on his face she felt sure concealed a smile. Vasquez, Xenic and Brandt arrived, but she didn’t look up. Instead she rolled Blake onto his back. His blood, still warm, soaked her tunic. Three knives were driven into his torso up to the hilt.

To her surprise, he was still alive, just. Blood oozed from his mouth, and his breath came in short sharp rasps. She knelt down next to him, no longer caring what happened to her. She tried to speak, but her throat choked up. But he looked at her, and the words came forth.

“You did it Blake,” she said. “Like you always said, break the infantry, win the war. The tide will turn now.”

He smiled, and made to speak, but blood poured from his lips. He looked up to the sky.

Petra bent forward and spoke softly into his ear. “Go to her, Blake. Go to Glenda.” She kissed his forehead, and as she lifted away from him, saw that he was gone, and closed his eyelids with her fingertips.

The Spiders gathered around her and Blake. Petra bowed her head, as drops of rain coursed down her cheeks.

PART THREE

MICAH

CHAPTER 24

Goliaths

Pierre stood on the surface of the Machine asteroid as it hurtled through space. He was on an intercept course with one of Qorall’s Orbs, standing inside a small bubble of tailored atmosphere shielding him from cold vacuum and hard radiation. The asteroid-sized Machine remnant – all that was left of the race after Hellera’s deception – was solid metal, so there was nowhere else for him to go. The ground beneath him was flat and featureless. Since his childhood, he’d always looked to the stars; they had been his friends, the constellations a landscape sketching his hopes and dreams. But it was different seeing them this way, with the naked eye as opposed to via a screen or porthole back on Ukrull’s Ice Pick, or through layers of atmosphere back on Earth. Now the stars looked starker, stabbing at him through silent space. Somehow they felt hostile, accusing, as if they knew what he was planning. He started walking on the grainy metal surface. There was nowhere to go, but he needed to move to help him think this through one last time, before there was no going back.

He started from when Jen had dropped him off, literally.

Jen had come back up from the lower part of the sliver that remained from Darkur’s ship. As soon as she entered the cockpit, water dripping from her overalls and hair, he sealed the hatch, blocking the Hohash from entering. Frowning, she stared at him.

“Please don’t tell me you want privacy, Pierre, because I’m really not –”

“The Machines, they’ve been in touch with me.”

She froze, and glared at him through her wet, mouse-coloured fringe. Pierre had known her long enough to realise that she thought things through before she spoke – jumping several steps ahead. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Your nannites? That’s how they made a connection?”

He nodded.

She moved over to her chair, swung it around so she was facing him. She closed her eyes. “Dimitri – is he somehow..?”

He didn’t answer. She opened her eyes again.

“Okay. So, some of them got away from Hellera’s trap. What do they want?”

“Me,” he said.

She cocked her head to one side. “How did the interview go?”

He decided to play it her way. “I got the job.”

She folded her arms. “What’s the pay like?”

“With their help I’m going to try and destroy the Orbs. All of them.”

She studied him. “What do you want me to say to the three women in your life, Pierre? You remember them, right? Petra, Kat… Hellera?”

“I’ll miss them.” He cleared his throat. “Well, not Hellera, obviously.”

She leant forward in her chair. “I don’t think she’s the forgiving type.” She got up, tried to pace, gave it up as there was no room. “I’ll need to give her a reason not to hunt you down, Pierre.”

“Bishops.”

Jen sat back in the chair. “Excuse me?”

“It’s like chess. She knows chess. There are four enemy layers: rooks, bishops, pawns, and the king.”

Jen folded her arms. “Let me see: the Nchkani are rooks, the Orbs are bishops, the turned races pawns, and Qorall, well, that’s obvious. Hellera has just wiped out the rooks, and you think together with the Machines you can eliminate the Orbs. What about the pawns? And for that matter, who is Qorall’s queen?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure who the queen is.” But a name arose in his mind: Louise. Could it be? She was a lowly pawn, and yet… no, he had insufficient information, and it was too unlikely. He got back on track. “As for the pawns… not my jurisdiction any more. If the Machines go after the pawns – the organics as they think of them – they’ll do more damage than Qorall.”

Her smile faded. “What about after? What’s your endgame, or for that matter, that of the Machines?”

That was the big question. If they survived the first Orb contact, the Machines would grow and attack others. But afterwards, they might decide to purge the galaxy of organic species again.

“Thought so,” she said. “How much of a head start do you need? And on that subject, how are you going to get to work?”

He smiled. “An hour. And, out the airlock. They’re outside. I’ve been working furiously to stop the ship’s immune systems attacking them.”

She raised both eyebrows. “Won’t need a suit, then?”

He shook his head and stood up. Without warning, she got up and embraced him.

“I’ll tell Petra and Kat that you did it for them, for all of us.” She released him.

“It’s not exactly true... But you understand my decision, don’t you?”

She walked him to the airlock hatch. “Sure. Dimitri would have been tempted to join a hyper-advanced race. You scientists value intellect and exploration above everything else; it’s your heroin.”

She activated the hatch, which slid open without a sound. “But I’ll lie to Kat and Petra, because they won’t fully understand otherwise.”

“I’m not sure –”

Her voice became firm. “Kalaran once told me that perception is the only reality that matters.”

He acquiesced. Who was he to disagree with Kalaran?

She held out her hand, shook his. “Now, go and destroy all the bishops, and when you’re done, take the Machines out of our galaxy, and never come back. Hard code it into them, Pierre, they must leave and never return.”

He stared at her a moment. “You’re a dark horse, Jen, far smarter than you let on. Only now can I begin to see why Dimitri loved you, and why Kalaran spent time with you.”

“We all have our moments. Now, get out of here.”

That had been an hour ago. He stopped walking, squatted down, and touched the hard surface. Did he trust the Machines? Of course not. That made no sense, they were logical creatures. Jen had used the right words – it needed to be hard-coded into them. But how? The Machines were in survival mode. Kalaran had awoken them, Hellera had used them and tried to eliminate them immediately afterwards. But the Machines would not feel anger, nor would they feel any remorse if they took over the galaxy by killing a few trillion organics, and not just those turned by Qorall. For the Machines, it was all about utility, propagation, and logical order rather than chaos. The idea of a new galaxy was an enticing prospect, and they had originally been designed by the Tla Beth to explore remote galaxies, but there was a lot of risk, and why should they leave this galaxy when they had what they needed here? The Orbs were a significant threat, but if they could be destroyed, then the Machines could sit and wait out the final battle between Qorall and Hellera and then make their move. Pure, cold logic.

The ground beneath his fingers rippled, and he glanced upwards, and saw it, a star that looked brighter than any other, with a golden light. He stood up, and opened his mind.

<Are you ready, Pierre?>

<Yes. You may begin.>

He tensed. This was the agreement. He wouldn’t sign the contract with blood, but with his DNA, and his organic mind’s force of will. That’s what they needed to survive and defeat the Orb, which was nothing more than a super-virus that worked by re-writing organic software. Most organic species – following Kalaran’s ankh template – had strong will, but their emotional and intellectual ‘software’ was beneath their conscious control, and so was vulnerable; their coding was weak, so re-coding via the Orbs was easy. In contrast, the Machine race’s coding was very strong, ultra-disciplined, and had inbuilt intelligent monitoring and resistance. But the Machines lacked any organic sense of will; they had been designed by the Tla Beth to be servants, and so it was only a matter of time before the Orbs exploited such a basic flaw, a trap-door in their metal-clad coding.

That was where Pierre came in. He’d asked earlier why they hadn’t used Dimitri to achieve the same effect, but at the time they had taken Dimitri purely for sustenance, a catalyst for their propagation, nothing more. Besides, they needed a tech interface, and Pierre had nannites. He’d also asked them why they hadn’t considered this option before, during their brief reign of terror two million years earlier. They’d believed they could win by pure logic alone – they needed a miniscule amount of genetic material to propagate, but they abhorred organics with their clumsy and chaotic thought processes. However, the Orbs had presented a new challenge to the Machine race, requiring a new response. Logic dictated that a new strategy was needed. But to Pierre it was more than that; it was Darwinian evolution writ large, a new threat in a species’ environment that would either kill it or make it stronger. And there was the risk: he was about to try to help a dangerous force become even more powerful. The lesser of two evils? He couldn’t be sure. But he had made up his mind, he was committed.

He felt pressure on his feet, and glanced down. It had begun. Black metal vines crawled up his calves, his feet and ankles already encased. There was no turning back now. He took one last look at the Orb, at the stars he knew he would never see again this way, then closed his eyes, and held the vision of Kat and Petra in his mind, knowing he would never meet them again. The metal around his legs invaded his flesh, freezing pinpricks stabbing into him, making his upper body shake as his core temperature freefell. He opened his eyes, gasped and cried out. He could no longer feel his legs, only a wave of ice creeping up his chest. He lifted his arms in front of him, watched metal gloves wrap around his hands, and felt the ice-metal on his neck. Whichever way he analysed it, he was dying, there would be no more Pierre after this. He just had time to taste the names on his lips of the two women who had meant more to him than anyone else. He spoke their names into the echoless void.

“Petra, Kat, forgive me.”

He could no longer see, the metal ice tightening like a tourniquet around his face, freezing tendrils drilling through his skull, skewering inwards. Pierre concentrated on one last thought, with all his being, with all his will, one single line of code.

◆◆◆

Jen stood with Ukrull and an avatar of Hellera inside her ship, watching the event as if standing in space, as if they were right there.

The Orb dwarfed the Machine asteroid. As the two neared collision, the leading surface of the Orb bled outwards, reaching out to embrace the ball of solid metal. It slowly engulfed the Machine world, their entire race, until all that was left was a slightly larger Orb. Ukrull walked forward, to the other side of the scene, and growled at it, his tail thrashing behind him. Jen knew he wanted to help in some way, but they were all powerless in this particular struggle. The Orb paused, then continued on its way, steady against Ukrull’s massive figure, stars whiplashing past in the background and foreground as it accelerated towards its next target. Jen felt her heart sink. But Hellera and Ukrull waited, saying nothing, so Jen stayed. She’d just decided to sit on the floor when a chair appeared. So, Hellera wasn’t totally pissed off with her. It didn’t look too comfortable, but Jen knew when not to be impolite, and sat down.

After what seemed like an hour, Ukrull snorted – she didn’t know what that meant, but she sat up and paid attention. The apparent movement of the stars tearing past the Orb slowed, then braked to a dead halt. She saw a single ripple disturb the Orb’s smooth surface. More followed, waves building; something was emerging. It was black.

She was out of her chair, standing next to Ukrull, staring. Cube-like black insects crawled out of an open sore on the Orb’s surface. On closer inspection they were compact flat boxes with legs, reminding her of nannites, though their actual size must have been that of small ships. Her breath quickened. Waves grew on the Orb’s surface, became tsunamis that smashed down on the giant nannites. But the Machines were unharmed, and more and more swarmed over the Orb from wounds splitting all over its surface. They scalpelled its flesh, skinned it alive, flinging swathes of gold-turned-brown matter into empty space. Jen squeezed her fists. Kick its ass, Pierre.

The core of the Orb could be seen, and it was metal. Gradually the Orb was completely shorn of its golden flesh, leaving the original black Machine asteroid shrouded in a cloud of detritus. Her only wish was that there could have been some blood as well. But she narrowed her eyes as she gauged the size of the Machine world.

“It’s grown,” she said, guessing that Ukrull and Hellera were well aware of it. The Machine asteroid morphed into the shape of a lozenge, then separated at its mid-point, creating two smaller asteroids. The process repeated itself. Four asteroids, and from her reckoning, each one was the same size as the original. Three of them flashed silver and disappeared into Transpace, no doubt in search of more Orbs. The last one hung there, not moving. A light gold spot appeared on its surface. It moved up, then down, etching a figure on the asteroid’s surface. Not a figure, she realised; writing. As it continued, both Ukrull and Jen moved aside, so that Hellera could see – not that she needed to, given her faculties – but out of deference, because the first word had spelled out her name.

Jen reckoned Pierre was somehow still there, since it was too ironic an act to use the Orb’s penchant for writing on its surface; a pure Machine intelligence would have found another way. It was a message for Hellera, but it also told Jen that Pierre had survived the process in some way. At last the message finished.

<Afterwards we will leave this galaxy and never return.>

The words glimmered a few moments in the cool starlight, then dissolved into black. The metallic asteroid vanished into Transpace. Jen caught one last glimpse of Hellera’s avatar, poker-faced as ever, before that, too, vanished, leaving her alone with Ukrull.

“Pierre was pretty exceptional, wasn’t he?”

Ukrull grunted.

“I didn’t really get to know him,” she said.

“Will tell you about him on way to Esperia.”

Jen’s heart quickened. She had mixed feelings; it was home to humanity, but she had nobody there who really cared for her.

“Wrong,” Ukrull said.

“What?” She suddenly remembered Ukrull was telepathic.

“You will see.”

Jen stood next to the screen of Ukrull’s brand new ship, which he hadn’t yet named. It had taken her nearly a day to get the full facts out of Ukrull, and now she couldn’t sleep or even sit down. Hellera had sent a clone of Gabriel to Esperia. She knew it wasn’t the real Gabriel, but part of it was him, his thoughts, his personality; whatever Kalaran had been able to download before Gabriel – the Genner Youngblood leader who was also her nephew – had blown up Sister Esma and himself into the bargain. And she was terrified of something happening to him; she’d lost too much these past few days.

Her skin itched on the inside. “Can’t we go any faster?”

Ukrull laughed, as far as she could tell. “Like old times. Want? Will hurt.”

“Has your telepathy stopped working?” Last time she’d missed Gabriel by a hair’s breadth, only to find him dead. She wasn’t going to let that happen again.

Ukrull’s forked tongue flicked over his eyes, then he kicked a control with his claw. Jen found herself on all fours, a hammering inside her skull, gut-wrenching nausea in her belly, blotches before her eyes, and a roar in her ears like a rocket engine at full thrust. She ended up curled in a ball, forehead on the cold floor, hands over her ears, but she said nothing, and bit back the urge to scream. Hang on, Gabriel, we’re coming. She swallowed with difficulty, then shouted a single word to Ukrull.

“Faster.”

CHAPTER 25

Gabriel

Sandy was thankful Toran hadn’t harmed her, but that small vestige of gratitude didn’t stop her wishing him dead. He’d killed her husband in front of her – that was the only way she could reconcile what had actually happened – and was set to take out the remaining human leaders. But there was nothing she could do. She’d been bound and gagged in her chair most of the six days it had taken his small ship to reach Esperia. She couldn’t feel the back of her head; something was plugged in there, as evidenced by periodical drops of her blood dripping onto her neck, zig-zagging down several vertebrae before they congealed. At least he’d told her his Alician name, Toran; she couldn’t bear to think of the clone as the original Gabriel, her one-time lover from those last fateful days on Earth.

But at last they had arrived back on Esperia, Toran’s ship perched on the Acarian mountain range sheltering Esperantia. She tried to see as much as possible over his shoulder as he surveyed the chaotic town scene via the ship’s viewer. It looked like a war zone, bodies scattered on the perimeter, some in small mounds. But the town buildings and streets were intact.

“They have prevailed,” he said.

“We’re not as stupid as you Alicians take us for.”

He turned to her. “No, you are not.” He returned to the scene, zooming in to see individual faces. She glimpsed Petra and Vasquez, and then flinched at seeing Blake’s corpse being carried away by four Youngbloods, Brandt leading the way.

“I do not see Micah in the crowd,” Toran said, “which means he has not yet returned. I need other targets.”

“Go screw yourself,” Sandy said.

He faced her again, framed by three frozen images on the screen. He touched a pad on the arm of his chair, and Sandy’s vision became grainy. She heard a dispassionate voice, female. With a shock she realised it was hers.

“Petra, President; Vasquez, Commander of the Militia, Brandt, leader of the Youngbloods.”

Her vision became normal again. She spat in his direction, but it failed to reach him.

Toran’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. “Normally I would have killed you for that, before your saliva reached the floor. But I want you alive when Micah arrives, to throw him off balance. I shall wait for him.”

Sandy had turned away from Micah a long time ago, but knew he mattered to the war effort. She didn’t want to see him executed. Toran had dispatched Ramires, so Micah wouldn’t stand a chance. Besides, if he waited for Micah, Toran would have the element of surprise, whereas if she could get him to act early, Micah would arrive and maybe salvage the situation.

“He’s not coming back,” she lied. She felt a stab of pain behind her eyes. What had Toran done to her? She continued her lie, despite her vision almost shutting down, and a feeling like somebody drilling through her temples. She squeezed her hands behind her, sinking her fingernails into her palms to try and counter the pain in her head, and swallowed down an urge to retch. “Ramires told me, Micah is taking Shiva to join Hellera to battle Qorall. That ship is pretty advanced, remember?”

Toran studied her. She felt sweat run under her armpits, but the pain abated a little, and she could see again.

Toran turned back to the screen. He didn’t seem that interested in Micah. Sandy understood; Toran was a warrior, not an assassin. He would rather fight hand-to-hand against a worthy adversary; his focus on Micah was purely on Louise’s orders. Sandy stayed quiet, letting him digest the lie. Silence could sometimes shore up a lie better than further words.

“Louise told me he loves you,” Toran said, turning back to her. “That concept doesn’t mean much to Alicians; it is mostly foolishness. We Alicians care for each other, respect each other, and of course make mating decisions according to preferences. Did you know Alicians mate for life with a single partner, and such relationships endure for hundreds of years? Would any human relationship last so long? There is no such thing as infidelity in Alician society.” He turned back to his display. “You know so little about us.”

Good, he was moving away from the Micah topic. She decided to push him, to goad him; something she reluctantly admitted she was good at.

“What I know is you’ve also wanted to destroy us for hundreds of years. Besides, you’re a clone. How old are you, clone?”

He paused. “One year.”

She tried to detect any emotion underneath that sad statement, but there was none. He was a cipher, little more than an automaton, filled with propaganda. But he clearly wanted to be more. That was his weakness. She attacked it.

“Then you know only what you’ve been programmed to know. You’re a killing machine, that’s all.”

“I am Toran,” he said. “And I know what I am. There are almost no clones in our society, even though we have the technology, and I of all… people, understand why.”

“You have no soul, clone, you will never know love, or be loved, or even cared for.” She hated that her husband had been killed by such a creature.

He fixed her with a gaze, and for an instant she thought she detected something real about him, a flicker of bitterness.

“Then I will have no guilt over what I am about to do.”

Good. He was going to act, though she hated to think what he was going to do. At least Micah should arrive soon, taking Toran by surprise, or upsetting his plans.

He stood up, gathered several weapons together, including Ramires’ nanosword.

“This human love keeps your species weak. Yet I am curious. Do you love Micah?”

She tried to turn her head away, but couldn’t move, and her vision went grainy again, and she heard a single word escape her lips before her vision returned to normal. She needed to get him off that particular track.

“My turn to be curious,” she said. “Why the lone assassin walking amongst them? Why don’t you attack with this ship? You could do more damage.”

“Three reasons. First, values: I am not an assassin, I am a warrior, as your mate was. I fight and die with honour. Whatever else you may believe, I have Sentinel values, albeit with a different allegiance. I look my enemy in the eye before killing him. Second, psychology: a ship attacking is one thing, but a lone man walking into the midst of human society and killing its leaders creates a deeper fear. Third, there is some kind of shield around the town. I need to dismantle it.”

Sandy didn’t like the sound of that. “Why?”

“If I survive I will take ten human captives – enough to facilitate successful Alician procreation, and then leave the planet, discharging a human-tailored toxin into the biosphere. Then I shall join the other Alicians.”

“And Louise.”

“No,” he replied. “She has another mission.” He turned away from her, studied the screen again.

The way he’d said it made it seem like a secret. “What mission?”

He didn’t answer, and busied himself at the ship console.

She knew it must be important. “You said you had Sentinel values. I invoke Charok-Nor. You are going to kill me one way or the other, and you killed my mate, as you call him.”

He paused at the controls, then told her. Sandy would have shaken her head if she could have. Louise was going to see the Q’Roth High Queen; the leader of all the other Queens spread across the galaxy; the ultimate ruler of all the Q’Roth tribes. Louise was going to offer the High Queen a deal to persuade her to work with Qorall, and she had the perfect bribe to clinch the deal. If the legions of Q’Roth turned against Hellera now… Sandy stored it for later.

“And if you perish?” she asked.

“In four hours, unless I send a signal, the toxin will be released automatically.”

Sandy cursed under her breath. Micah, wherever the hell you are, hurry up and arrive!

“You Alicians truly are humanity’s bastards. I wish the Nchkani had blown Savange to pieces with us still on it.”

Toran’s face remained neutral. “The feed in your head is wrapped around your upper spine. If you pull really hard, you may break loose, but you will be paraplegic and you will transect your vagus nerve, after which you will asphyxiate within two minutes.”

He departed via the airlock.

Once he was gone, Sandy tried to let her head hang, but it wouldn’t budge very far. Then she noticed he’d left the viewer running, and she scanned the sea of faces. She’d isolated herself the last fifteen years or so, and most of the people she saw were strangers. She’d never integrated. Now, for the first time in a long while, she felt a kinship towards them, and wanted to protect them, but there was nothing she could do. The only hope would be if Micah returned early. Reluctantly, she pondered the single word she’d spoken to Toran earlier, in response to his question about how she felt about Micah. It hadn’t been the answer she’d expected. She’d thought she no longer cared for him. Evidently she did.

◆◆◆

Petra was busy; she had to be to stay sane. Xenic and his small Mannekhi crew rounded up the restored Mannekhi soldiers, most of whom seemed bewildered and in shock. The Steaders and Genners had largely headed back into town, but she stayed near to the spot where Blake had died. The thought stopped her cold. She closed her eyes and took three deep breaths.

She heard Vasquez’ sharp, clear voice.

“You should get some rest, Petra.”

She opened her eyes. “The Spiders have left the shield up except for the breach. Why?”

Vasquez squinted in the direction of the invisible large hole, the sun dipping towards the Acarian Mountains.

“I assume you’ve asked them?”

“Of course. They chose not to answer.” She glanced back towards the town; the Spiders had followed Blake’s body an hour ago and not returned. Brandt had said that many people had walked next to them, trying to see the fallen heroes, the first time most had ever been close to a Spider.

She took in the hundreds of Mannekhi milling about in the near distance. “What will Xenic do? Where will we put all these Mannekhi? Their ships can’t take off again.”

Vasquez touched his earpiece. “Two ships have entered the Shrell field.”

Petra’s breath stalled; she couldn’t weather another attack.

Vasquez paced while he listened, then he stopped and faced her. “Thank you,” he said. “Keep me informed.”

He walked to Petra and placed his hands on her shoulders, as if to steady her. “One is Shiva. Micah, Kat and Antonia are aboard.”

Petra found that his steady hands were welcome, as she stifled a gasp of relief.

“The other ship?”

“Unknown, a small vessel already in orbit. There’s a third vessel on long range sensors coming in at a terrific speed, broadcasting a Ranger’s code.”

“Rush hour,” she said. “The Spiders must know, somehow.”

She saw Brandt walking towards them, but he was being followed a few paces behind by another man she didn’t recognise, though he looked somehow familiar. Brandt waved to her, then stopped and spun around. Petra saw something in the other man’s hand. Dread filled her, and she burst into a sprint towards them. But even as she approached, the two men had already become locked in a struggle. Brandt was much larger, but the other man moved like no one else she’d ever seen, barring Ramires. Vasquez followed her, bellowing orders, but most of the militia had already gone back to the town.

Brandt appeared to be winning, his tree-trunk arms wrestling with the man, but suddenly his head shot backwards and she heard a snap, and his body flopped onto the ground.

Vasquez, right behind her, tripped her, sending her sprawling to the ground, as he opened fire with a pulse rifle on freeflow, taking no chances. But the man stood unperturbed, the beam flowing around him like a river round a boulder; he had a personal shield, a defence she’d never seen. He stepped over Brandt’s corpse and walked towards Vasquez as if taking a stroll. He pulled out a hand-held weapon and rapid-fired at six militia men approaching from the town. There were six staccato sounds as darts struck each man in the centre of the forehead. All six men crashed into the dust, eyes still open. Petra got to her feet, but Vasquez split away from her, the man following him. Petra dashed over to Brandt, keeping one eye on the killer and Vasquez. Brandt was dead, his neck snapped. Petra closed his eyes, and touched his lips with her fingertips.

“Old style,” the man said to Vasquez.

“It never grows old,” Vasquez replied. He unsheathed two commando knives, and carved the air before him in circular and spiral movements difficult to foresee. The man faced Vasquez, his hands and arms spread wide, inviting attack. Vasquez lunged but at the last second pulled back, avoiding a ferocious roundhouse punch. The intruder was incredibly fast, and spun like a dervish, savage kicks flicking outwards, forcing Vasquez to retreat even while he jabbed at the man’s feet and legs, finding no flesh to cut. The outer edge of the man’s foot whiplashed into Vasquez’ right forearm then the left, sending both knives spinning from his hands. Vasquez recovered and his right fist smashed into the man’s jaw, but the punch had little effect. Vasquez stilled, face-to-face with the attacker, then he looked down. Petra followed his gaze; the man’s hand had punctured Vasquez’ trunk just below the sternum, his fingers buried in Vasquez up to the knuckles. She got up as Vasquez collapsed to his knees, glanced at her once, and shouted a single word before he fell forwards:

“RUN!”

The man faced her, his right hand red with gore. Pulse shots ricocheted off the man’s shield as Xenic’s men raced towards them, but Petra knew they wouldn’t make it in time.

“My name is Toran,” he said. “I will make it quick.”

Petra could have run, but she recognised this assassin’s tactic, to instil fear in those around her, and so she stood her ground as he walked towards her. He pulled out a thin rod she recognised; so, he had killed Ramires. The electric blue nanoblade stretched from its sheath, as his arm curled in a backswing. She refused to blink, and stared him in the eyes, squeezing her lips tight so they wouldn’t tremble. Her body tensed, but the blade stopped centimetres before her neck, a tanned fist locked around the assassin’s wrist. Petra turned to see who had just saved her life, and then nearly stumbled as she saw the face of the new arrival. She whispered his name. “Gabriel!” She knew it couldn’t really be him, but he looked so like the Youngblood warrior she had loved all her life, and whom she knew to be dead.

Toran whirled back into a defensive position, for the first time not looking serene, and faced Gabriel. Xenic and his men arrived, carrying heavy weaponry. Gabriel held up an open palm, and they lowered their weapons, instead forming a circle around the two men. Petra forced her way inside, and stood next to Xenic.

Gabriel looked different somehow, there was no fire in his eyes; they looked vacant, and he hadn’t recognised her. She stared from Gabriel to Toran; the resemblance was clear as day, now she saw them together. There were no photos of the original Gabriel from Earth, but it must be two clones, father and son. And they didn’t know. She made to move forward, to say something, but Xenic seized her arm and shook his head.

Toran launched into an attack with the nanosword, shrieking a fearsome warrior’s kiai as he flashed the sword down, but the younger Gabriel blurred out of the way, the electric blue blade missing him by millimetres, while his fist shot like a piston into Toran’s chest, sending him flying backwards. Petra knew no ordinary fist could hit that hard; the blow had sounded almost like metal on flesh. And no human or Alician could move that fast. The clone of Gabriel had been enhanced.

“Are you a Sentinel or an assassin?” Gabriel said. “It makes no difference to me, but to you it may matter how you die, who you choose to be when the killing blow comes.”

Toran coughed on the floor, discarded the nanosword, and stood. He attacked with a flurry of blows almost too fast to see, Gabriel moving equally fast, evading and counter-striking each fist, foot and elbow, the impact sounds like a frenetic drumbeat, the last one a hammer fist down onto Toran’s head, knocking him to the ground. Petra winced at the sound of his skull fracturing.

Toran got up, but could barely walk, as blood pumped from the top of his head, and ran down his face in streaks. Gabriel punched the man so hard in the chest even Xenic flinched as everyone heard Toran’s chest-cage shatter, blood spraying from his mouth. He collapsed onto the ground, then managed to get to his knees and half stand up. She had no idea how he was even still alive. Gabriel walked over, locked his arms around the man and dragged him over to Petra.

“Finish him,” he said.

Again she wanted to say something, but Xenic squeezed her arm.

“Do not speak, Petra. End this now.”

She stared first at Gabriel, and then the broken man trapped in his arms. She wanted to tell Gabriel that this was his father, even if he was only a clone. Xenic released her and she stepped forward, her chest heaving. She looked Gabriel in the eye, but saw only a warrior’s resolution. Toran looked up to her, his eyes drenched in blood, struggling to breathe. He closed his lips and nodded.

Petra knew the mechanics of it. She planted her right hand on the back of Toran’s skull. He didn’t struggle, but Gabriel held him tighter. Warm blood trickled over her forearm as she gripped Toran’s chin with her other hand. She braced herself, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“For Brandt,” Gabriel said. “I remember him. He was my friend.”

Without taking her eyes off Gabriel, she thought of her one-night lover lying in the dust, and snapped Toran’s neck, feeling the inner crunch, and then let go at the same time Gabriel did, so that Toran crumpled to the floor. She lowered her blood-soaked hands and stared at them. She’d never killed before. She felt sick to her stomach.

A sonic boom followed by a ripping sound announced Shiva’s return. She knew that later she’d be glad to see them all, that the mission to Savange had been a success, and that both her parents had safely returned, but right now she felt as if she’d lost so much, and she felt ashamed for taking another’s life. She wanted to tell Gabriel that they had just killed a clone of his father, but to what end? She knelt down and touched Toran’s head, and for the third time in the space of an hour closed dead eyes.

“Bury him with honour,” she said. “Whatever else he was, he deserves a warrior’s burial.”

A group of militia ferried his body away, and she accepted a hand from Gabriel to get to her feet. She wiped her eyes, glancing over to Brandt’s body, also being carried away by four Youngbloods.

“You look like Gabriel, but he was killed,” she said.

“The Kalarash downloaded as much of me as they could before… I do not have good memories, though I remember Brandt. I am only sorry I did not make it here earlier. The one called Hellera sent me here in a capsule that whisked me to the surface, the Spiders dropped the shield for an instant to let me through.”

She said nothing, just stared at him, trying to remind herself that those beautiful eyes were those of a clone, that the Gabriel she had loved was dead.

“You are Petra, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“You meant something to him, the original. But there was another, Virginia. Is she…?”

Petra shook her head. “Why are you here?”

He looked up at the sky, to the growing dot that was Shiva. “I have a message from Hellera, for the one called Micah.”

◆◆◆

Sandy heard voices. “In here,” she shouted. “Come quickly.” She’d seen Toran killed, but the four hours was nearly up, the toxin about to be released.

Micah entered along with the Ossyrian female doctor, Vashta. Micah came over to her straight away.

“No time, Micah, there’s some kind of auto-release of a toxin about to happen, you need to stop it.”

He and Vashta tried to read the console, but everything was encoded, except a digital countdown that registered five minutes and ten seconds remaining. He raised his wristcom to his lips.

“Shiva, tractor us up into space, as far from Esperia as possible.”

Sandy heard a thunk as the hatch sealed, then felt her stomach freefall as they shot up into the sky.

“Free her,” he said to Vashta, grimacing as he inspected the back of her head.

As they ascended, Micah seemed preoccupied, saying nothing until the blue of sky faded to black, and the stars became visible through the criss-cross pattern of Shrell filaments.

At last she was free, and could stand again, as long as she held onto something.

Micah moved closer. Without warning he hugged her. She stood stiffly, her arms refusing to embrace him, and he let her go.

“I’m sorry, Sandy I’m just relieved to find you alive. We all thought… But you must be grief-stricken over the loss of Ramires. He was... unequalled.” He turned to the screen. “Did you see –?”

“Gabriel, yes. Is it really him?” She didn’t dare to hope.

“I honestly don’t know. Petra is trying to find out. She said he’s a clone. I came straight to this vessel. To be honest I thought Louise might be here.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Micah.” She mentally kicked herself. Why did she always do that?

He frowned. “What? No, I mean she escaped –”

“Stop, Micah. Please.”

He looked crestfallen, and turned back to the screens. Vashta started patching up the back of her skull, and for the first time she felt pain rising like heat inside her head.

The countdown reached zero, and she heard a click from beneath the floor.

“Shiva,” Micah said, “let us know when it’s finished.”

Sandy watched him from the back, wondering what to say; her head was a mess, filled with Ramires, and now Gabriel. She needed time. But she knew there wasn’t any left. She cleared her throat.

“Micah, Toran told me something, something you need to know.”

He turned his head a little, not enough to see her, just enough to show he was listening.

“About Louise.” She hesitated, knowing what his reaction would be.

Vashta moved in front of her, quicksilver eyes dancing. She spoke in her grating choir voice. “There is a complication. What this Toran did to you. It is a Q’Roth interrogation technique, and works on the human left hemisphere, creating a short circuit to a particular part of the right brain and limbic system. Usually the subject dies eventually, but I have fixed you, mostly. You will live.”

Micah turned around, looking concerned.

“Mostly?” she said.

“You must not lie, at least for the next week, as it may cause a neural cascade failure. If you do lie, either by telling a lie, or even by not speaking the truth and remaining silent, your vision will alter, you will notice it.”

“Are you joking?” Her heart began to beat faster.

Vashta’s quicksilver eyes stopped moving, just for a fraction of a second.

“It doesn’t matter, as long as you live,” Micah said.

But Sandy was terrified he’d ask her the same question Toran had asked. “Promise me you won’t ask me anything, Micah.”

His brow creased. “What? Why?”

“Just promise me.”

He shook his head. “Fine,” he said. He took his chair again, facing away from her. “You were saying something about Louise.”

“Yes.” She relaxed. This was safer ground. “Toran told me her plan.”

“To join with the other Alicians –”

“No. To go to the Q’Roth High Queen.”

He stopped moving. “Why?”

“To persuade her to switch sides.”

Micah snorted. “What could she possibly offer the Queen to persuade her?”

“Nchkani technology.”

Micah spun around. “But how?”

“When Louise surrendered the Anxorian rifle to the Nchkani, apparently there was a coded message to Qorall. The Q’Roth are only Level Six, but they’re still the most formidable warriors in the galaxy. Imagine if they had Nchkani hardware…”

Micah paced, then suddenly slammed his fist into the hull.

“Micah, this is Shiva. The toxin release is over. I am going to decontaminate your vessel, then you can dock with me.”

He slumped back into the chair, rubbed his hands down over his face. “I should have killed her.”

“You know, I’m tired of hearing you say that, Micah.”

But she watched him, saw how fatigued he was, how he was on the very edge. She wanted to say something to him, to let him know that she still cared for him, that she’d buried it all these years, but it was still there, deep down. Instead she said nothing, just watched him as her vision became increasingly grainy.

CHAPTER 26

Missions

Micah counted the nine empty chairs at Council: Blake, Kilaney, Ramires, Dimitri, Vasquez, Brandt, Pierre, Ash and Sonja. He couldn’t quite believe it; he could see their faces as clearly as if they were right in front of him. Wars displaced people, he knew that; some died, some went away for good. But three quarters of Council… It was one thing imagining the worst, and quite another staring it in the face.

Two emotional roller-coaster weeks had flown by, most people of Esperantia elated that they had survived the attack of the recoded Mannekhi, and plenty of happy reunions for the returned captives from Savange. Then one sorry funeral after another, uncertainty over what had happened to Pierre, and worry over how Ash and Sonja would cope surrounded by Alicians. Micah had left most people to their own grief, because he didn’t want to trigger his own personal crisis over the loss of Blake, his mentor for so long.

As for the three women he cared about, Sandy had avoided him, Antonia had reunited with Kat, and Petra was befriending the new Gabriel, introducing him to the Youngbloods.

Jen had initially tried to get close to the new Gabriel, but there was no connection, everyone had seen that, he guessed because the original Youngblood had not known her, and this new version seemed less capable of emotional attachment. For the first time since he’d known Jen, he felt sorry for her, and also as if they finally had something in common: both back, yet both alone. He’d spent most of his time with her and Xenic, another outsider, focusing on the war. That was what held him together.

Petra caught his eye, and he nodded. She called the meeting to order.

“Please take your seats; all except that one,” she said, indicating Blake’s chair in amongst the circle of twelve.

Micah counted. Jen, Xenic, Sandy, Gabriel, Kat, Antonia, Aramisk, Vashta, Petra and Micah. So, we are ten. He added Shiva, who was listening in via his resident. Eleven. And he felt that if there was anything after, then Blake would be watching, too. Then we are twelve, after all. He raised a hand, and Petra nodded. He took the central floor.

“I’d like to summarize our position and that of the galactic war.” Jen and Xenic were sitting side by side. He acknowledged them. “If I miss anything out, please jump in.”

He clicked finger and thumb and a holo sprang forth from a vid-projector, coalescing shimmering photons to form a white-centred spiral galaxy, more than half of it red, with small golden dots on the edge of Qorall’s wave front signifying Orbs. A blue ring highlighted Esperia, almost at the red frontier.

“This is how it was two weeks ago.” He clicked again, and heard gasps from some of the others. The red area had retreated, and the Orbs had entirely disappeared.

“We have this intel from the Hohash, and from occasional links with Hellera. The Machines have eliminated the Orb threat. As far as we can tell, all of them have been destroyed.” He met Petra’s eyes, and glanced at Kat. “We believe Pierre is to thank for this.” Kat’s face remained calm, though she took Petra’s hand.

“As you know, almost immediately after…” His words stalled for a moment. “After Blake and Kilaney restored the Mannekhi, Vashta formulated both an aerosol and a Transpatial version of the antigen, and Ossyrian triage vessels and Shrell have been spreading it across worlds all along the front. As each race is freed from Qorall, they rejoin the war effort on Hellera’s side, hence the reversion is proceeding exponentially.”

“A double-whammy,” Sandy said. She smiled, holding his gaze.

They were the first words he’d heard from her since rescuing her from Toran’s ship. The first smile in his direction he’d seen in nearly two decades. He almost lost his thread.

“Actually, a triple. The Nchkani were defeated – that is, annihilated – at the battle that destroyed the Tla Beth homeworld. Other species who were wavering are now falling behind Hellera.”

“So,” Petra said, “are you saying we’re winning this war?”

He turned back to the holo, and clicked his fingers again. A black gash appeared at the edge of the galaxy.

“Not yet. Jen?”

Jen stood and walked inside the holo. “Qorall is still here,” she said, standing on tip-toes, just reaching the gash with her forefinger. “Hellera fears he has a doomsday weapon, one that could destroy this entire galaxy.”

“He goes down, so do we?” Sandy asked.

“More like he goes, and we go down,” Jen said. “He’s remained at the edge of the galaxy for a reason.”

“What about the Machines?” Sandy countered.

“Hellera feels if they approach, Qorall will cut and run. Her hope is that they leave the galaxy, along with whatever’s left of Pierre.” Jen re-took her seat.

Micah glanced at Kat, saw her lips tighten. But Petra remained stern. Her Genner emotional control no doubt came in handy, or perhaps her ability to see the larger picture.

“So,” Sandy interjected, “Hellera and Qorall slug it out while we all wait either to cheer or weep?”

Micah shook his head. “No. Xenic will be leading his people and a growing armada to fight on Hellera’s side, races all the way from Level Five to the Rangers, Level Fifteen, alongside the few remaining Tla Beth. The ultimate battle will be between Hellera and Qorall, but Qorall still has some species on his side.”

“Those races will be defeated.” Xenic was on his feet. “The Mannekhi, the Wagramanians, the Zlarasi and other restored races will make sure of that. Micah, I must leave. My new ship is calling. But first I need an answer.”

“Ah yes,” Micah said, and faced Petra. “A number of Mannekhi wish to come here, as protectors. They believe we are the descendants of a long lost Mannekhi tribe. They would be quite upset if anything happened to us.”

Kat turned to her daughter and whispered something Micah couldn’t catch.

Petra’s eyes widened, then she cleared her throat. “How many are we talking about?”

Xenic answered. “We propose a mere ten thousand to begin with.”

Antonia’s mouth dropped open. “But we don’t have the infrastructure, the food, the –”

Xenic raised his hand. “We will bring city crystals.”

They all stared at him, uncomprehending. Micah’s resident elaborated, and he filled them in. “They can fabricate – that is grow – cities in a matter of weeks, with everything from power cells to sewage treatment.”

Antonia was about to speak again but Petra shook her head. She stared first at Micah, then back at Xenic. “Two thousand to begin with. That’s one tenth of our population. We’ll see how it goes from there.”

“Acceptable,” Xenic said, a smile stretching across his face; Micah had never seen him smile.

“They will be here tomorrow,” Xenic said, then departed, the sound of his boots echoing after him.

Petra waited till he was gone. “Crystal cities, eh, Micah? Trying to do Antonia out of a job?”

Antonia smiled at him too, then looked away as if remembering something. Micah wondered what was going on. But that was for later. He cleared his throat. “Our part isn’t over yet, I’m afraid. Sandy?”

She looked surprised, glared at him, then gathered herself. “Toran told me… Micah, why don’t you tell it?”

Petra addressed her. “Sandy, why not address me? Or Gabriel?”

Sandy’s eyes flicked to the reborn Youngblood, then back to Petra. “Louise is going to try and enlist the Q’Roth to fight for Qorall’s side, with the promise of the spoils of war.”

“But haven’t they been fighting for the Kalarash all this time, on Hellera’s side?”

Sandy stayed quiet.

Gabriel broke the silence. “Hellera downloaded a good deal of Grid politics into my brain; she said it would come in useful, and that there was room, given so many holes in my memory.”

Micah noticed Sandy staring at him. So he’d heard, the two had said little to each other, although she had been the real Gabriel’s mother. She watched him intently, no doubt searching for her son. But studying her, he realised it was the reverse – she wanted to convince herself this was not her son. And yet the way he looked at Sandy, he clearly had memories of her, fond ones.

Gabriel continued. “The Q’Roth were altered by the Tla Beth to become dogs of war. Their allegiance has never been one of choice, and in the past eighteen years they have lost trillions of warriors in battles with Qorall, nearly ninety per cent of their population dead. No other species has willingly sacrificed so much in the war effort.” He stared at the floor, as if viewing the memories there, or making sense of the stored information.

Petra was hanging on every word. “Please, Gabriel, continue.”

He looked at her for a moment, then spoke. “In fact, the whole of Grid Society is rather feudal. It has not been a particularly happy society, even though it has endured ten million years.”

Sandy cut in, her voice taut. “Is that Hellera speaking or you?”

Micah realised these two women had opposing feelings for this clone. He judged it best to stay out of it.

“Both, moth –” Gabriel stopped himself. “It is my assessment, but I believe both Kalaran and Hellera had already begun to see the flaw in what they fostered here.”

Micah decided to end this. “Louise has to be stopped,” he said. “Once and for all. The Q’Roth are still legion in number. And if, as Toran said, they gain some of the Nchkani technology and arsenal, who knows how much damage they could do. We have to go to the Q’Roth homeworld. Louise is probably there by now.” He expected objections, shock, or something, but Petra took it in her stride.

“When are you leaving, and who are you taking?”

Micah was caught off guard; he hadn’t exactly planned it yet. “Tomorrow,” he said. “A small crew. Volunteers.”

“Count me out,” Jen said, rising from her seat. “I’m going to join Hellera. She’s asked me to handle what’s left of Darkur’s ship.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why, I’m sure others would be better at it than me. But she’s asked, and I owe it to Kalaran. Ukrull is in orbit. I don’t do goodbyes.”

With that, she faded from view and was gone.

Micah had never gotten used to whisking, though he wished Shiva had the capability to teleport.

Aramisk stood, silent until now. “Xenic has asked me to stay, to liaise with the incoming Mannekhi.” She sat down again.

Micah noticed Antonia glare at Aramisk, while Kat studied the floor.

Gabriel stood, and was about to speak.

“You’re staying here,” Petra stated flatly.

Micah, along with all the others, stared at their President. Her face was stone. He realised he hadn’t really talked to her since getting back.

“The Youngbloods need you here,” she added. “They’ve lost so much, first you, I mean the other Gabriel, then Brandt…”

“I should go with Micah,” Gabriel answered, utterly calm. “Who else here can fight a Q’Roth warrior, or even this Louise I have heard so much about. I believe Hellera fashioned me for this.”

Micah was torn. Of all the people present, he needed Gabriel most. But Petra looked ready to crack.

She spoke slowly, with precision. “I… need… ”

“I’ll make sure he comes back, Petra,” Sandy said.

Petra swallowed, puffed out her chest. “And how will you do that, Sandy?”

“I’m going along.” Sandy looked at Micah, held his gaze. “Besides, somebody needs to make sure Micah pulls the trigger on Louise this time.”

The Ossyrian, Vashta, also stood up and volunteered. Petra said nothing more, as Micah steered the meeting to a close. At last he and Petra were the only two in the room. She still sat in her Presidential chair. He approached.

“Micah, promise you’ll bring him back.”

“Of course,” he said, knowing, as he knew she did too, that the likelihood was that all four of them were as good as dead.

“I mean it, Micah, if he doesn’t come back I’ll never forgive you.”

“Petra –”

She got off her chair, and stood right in front of him, shouting. “You could have intervened, told him to stay here, he would have listened to you. I lost my Gabriel two months ago…” She turned away from him, and spoke in a quieter voice. “Don’t come back without him. Promise me.”

That was a promise he could keep. “I promise, Petra.”

She walked away, leaving him alone in the chamber. He sat back in his chair, and again recalled the faces of former council members, and then added those of Zack and Vince, whose counsel he could really use right now, but there was only him and an empty room.

He realised that he and Vince had something in common, despite having totally opposing personalities: Vince had been decisive, a man of action, and ruthless to boot, cutting through all the emotional bullshit as Vince would have called it, to what mattered. Vince always got the job done, including killing Louise twice. Vince apparently had had a long affair with Louise, before the fall of Earth, and had slept once with Sandy on Esperia, the night before he’d been killed. Micah, by comparison, had had one disastrous fling with Louise, but had longed for Sandy for years, his realisation that she was the one he wanted gaining strength as time passed rather than weakening, despite her complete avoidance of him. He idly wondered why she’d never had more children with Ramires. Then he chastened himself; she was still in mourning, and one brief smile in his direction didn’t mean anything. Besides, soon he would need to face down Louise again, finish the job this time, and almost certainly die on the Q’Roth homeworld. Vince would have told him to quit dreaming and get to it. Good advice. He got up and left the chamber.

Having made his preparations, Micah knew there was one last affair to be put in order. He wanted to know what was going on with Antonia. Feeling a tad idiotic, he picked some wild flowers he knew she liked, and marched over to her place as evening began to fall. Kat would be there too; all the better, he wanted to make it clear that ‘it’ was all behind them, his one night stand with Antonia before Kat had reappeared, and before Sandy had resurfaced. Approaching from the side of her small house, he heard raised voices. He slowed down, and though he knew it was wrong, stood by the exterior wall next to the open window so he could hear.

“You should have told him, Antonia. Part of me can’t believe I’m saying this, but he deserves to know.”

“He’s about to go off to battle. It… It will undo him, Katrina.”

Listening, his back against the wall, he mined the facts from the conversation. He slumped down until he was sitting on the ground, the flowers hanging limp from his loosened grasp. She’d been pregnant by him, until the battle on Savange. A son. Micah would have been a father. He’d given up the idea of having children a long time ago, but now, to have come so close and then have it ripped away from him... All sorts of images arose of how life could have been different, raising a son… Antonia was crying. He desperately wanted to comfort her, to share in her grief. But she’d chosen not to tell him, and she was back with Kat. He would get in the way, complicate matters. It would be best if he went off to the battle and never…

Quietly, he got up, taking the flowers with him, and stole into the night.

When he arrived at Silent Hill, the remnant of the moon that had been broken up during Sister Esma’s attack on Esperia cast a pale light over the graveyard. Earlier he’d found two flat pieces of wood and nailed them together, the best he could do at short notice, and planted it in the ground near the fresh graves of Blake and Kilaney. He’d lasered onto the crosswise piece ‘To the unknown soldier”, so no one would know, and laid the flowers before it. He found he couldn’t think straight until he gave the unborn soldier a name, even though he vowed never to tell another soul about it, not even Antonia. A traditional choice like his father’s name was out of the question; they’d never got on, and he’d had no favourite uncles either. Blake and Zack sprang to mind as options, but that didn’t seem right somehow. He recalled Zack saying that parents often wanted their kids to be better than them, to make up for faults the parents couldn’t overcome. A single name came to mind, and resonated. It somehow fit, and it was about time. There had been a solider, an unsung hero who had helped save Earth and Esperia without a second’s thought for his own survival, someone Micah wished he could emulate, though he knew he would always fall short. Antonia had barely known him, but Micah thought she’d be okay with the choice.

He remained on Silent Hill until the first rays of dawn, thinking of the life his unborn son could have had, then got up and faced the cross one last time before heading back to town.

“Rest in peace, Vince.”

◆◆◆

Micah stood at the ramp with Kat; the others had already boarded.

“Part of me is sorry you’re not coming, Kat,” he said, trying to sound upbeat.

Kat had seemed tense, and answered with some evident relief. “Me too, if I’m honest. But you saw how Petra is. And I can’t leave Aramisk and Antonia alone together, they’d end up killing or loving each other, probably both.” She tried to grin, gave up, grew serious.

“Come back, Micah. And do as Sandy says, kill Louise this time no matter what.” She mock-punched him on the arm.

Micah nodded, though coming back wasn’t on his agenda. She gripped his arm.

“What?” Micah asked.

She stared at him, hard. “Crap. You know, don’t you?”

There was no lying to her; they’d been through too much together. “Tell her how sorry I am. That I wish…”

“I’ll tell her, Micah. Truth is, I’m glad you know. But now I’m worried about your state of mind.”

“Don’t. It makes me all the more resolved to get the job done.”

She searched his face. “Come back, Micah. Promise.”

“Gotta go. Look after her.”

She let go.

Micah took one last look towards the small crowd, waved once to Petra, and saw Antonia next to her. He held up his hand, braved a smile, then turned and walked up the ramp. As soon as the hatch sealed behind him, he leant heavily against the wall. Gathering himself, he walked slowly to the bridge, the purr of Shiva’s drives beneath his feet. They’d already taken off. He quickened his pace.

When he arrived, Sandy took one look at him, then told him to sit down. Gabriel was in the pilot’s chair, and the screen showed the blue fade to twilight, then to night, the Shrell wires looming close as Gabriel threaded through them at a dizzying pace.

Micah cleared his throat. “Is he flying manually?”

“Said he wanted to practice. Shiva’s got override, just in case.”

He nodded towards Gabriel, a few metres in front of them. “How are you and he…?”

Sandy had her arms folded. “He’s not my Gabriel, Micah. Petra might convince herself.” She lowered her voice. “He’s a creature of Hellera, remember that, Micah. Kalaran might have promised Jen to restore Gabriel, but it was Hellera who actually delivered the goods.” She spoke louder again. “Gabriel and I talked about it, actually – he’s painfully honest – and he recalls my husband more than me…” Her voice caught.

He reached a comforting hand towards her but she drew away from it. “Sandy, I’ve not had a proper chance to say to you how sorry I am about Ramires.”

She jutted out her chin. “The best man that ever was.” Her eyes welled up.

“You’ll get no argument from me on that point.”

They said no more for a long time, as they watched Gabriel slalom his way out of the Shrell field encapsulating Esperia’s system.

Micah stood. “Listen up, everyone. We need to talk strategy, we meet in the mess in five minutes.”

“Aren’t we going into Transpace? We won’t be conscious until we arrive.”

“Yes, and no,” Micah replied. He touched a pad. “Vashta?”

The Ossyrian medic entered the bridge, followed by a Hohash and a lone Spider.

◆◆◆

Scattered across the galaxy, all the remaining Hohash gathered. They temporarily phased out of normal space and morphed into subspace. Hellera’s mind connected to each of them, as well as the Spiders. There was no speech, only a river of coherent thought. Hellera asked for an update, and each Hohash funnelled fused data cascades to her on the war, casualties, politics and alliances, army strengths and movements, weapons capabilities…

She took it all in. The tide of the war had turned; Qorall was losing, and losing fast. There would be one last major battle with his remaining armies, the decisive one between him and her. She presumed his original objective to capture and mate with her, or to use the DNA he would harvest from her dead and gutted ship for the same purpose, was off the table. She had pushed him into a corner. His game plan now would be either to win the war or destroy the galaxy. Then he’d hunt down and kill the other Kalarash one by one. Whilst her DNA was most favourable – because she was female – to create a line of descendants for Qorall, it wasn’t beyond his ingenuity to adapt male Kalarash DNA for the same purpose; at least Kalaran had thought so.

The single unstable variable for the upcoming battle, the one that could tip the balance in Qorall’s favour, was the potential Qorall-Q’Roth alliance. She had programmed Gabriel to deal with it, but knew it might already be too late due to Louise, a factor she’d underestimated. Another uncertain variable was the Machine race. They would leave the galaxy if Pierre stuck to his word, or rather, if his will still held enough sway with the Machines, now they had regained full strength. One Machine ship was still in contact with her, the one containing what was left of the mind of Pierre. Most of the other Machine ships were swarming at the outer edge of the galaxy. The deal stood, so far.

The main hazard was Qorall’s doomsday weapon, the galaxy-breaker. The Hohash stationed in the galactic core had confirmed that Qorall has passed through the centre a year earlier, and left something there. No doubt a device for triggering a super white hole, one that would feed on the boundless energy there and trigger an explosive force with so much harmful radiation it would wipe out all life before spinning depleted stars and incinerated worlds into the inter-galactic void. If it ignited, she would have to abandon the galaxy, leaving most species behind; there would be insufficient time to build new ships capable of inter-galactic travel.

The Spiders were ready, their small ships cocooned within the depths of her own. She ordered the Hohash into position. Ukrull and Jen arrived, joining the fifty other Ranger scout-ships and the remaining Tla Beth vessels. Hellera commanded the armada forward, to Hell’s End, where Qorall awaited.

CHAPTER 27

Upgrade

Louise stayed perfectly still. One of the Q’Roth High Guard stood by her side with his mid-claw lightly closed around her throat. She avoided gulping; any sign of weakness might trigger a nervous twitch and end all her plans. The High Guard were taller than normal warrior Q’Roth, reaching four metres, and rarely left the Queen’s side. Louise had learned that there were two types of Queen; those who journeyed out into the galaxy and set up hives, and the homeworld-based High Queen, supreme leader of all Q’Roth tribes. She was the one Louise had dared ask to see. But as soon as she had landed on the northern ice cap of the Q’Roth home planet, Korakkara, her ship had been impounded. Louise had been stripped and decontaminated, and made to stand naked for two hours with her neck on the line.

Losing Savange had been a cruel blow. She could blame Micah, but Qorall had been unnecessarily brutal, and Micah had actually saved the last Alicians from oblivion. The Queen had not sent reinforcements when Micah’s ship had first attacked, nor had there been any offer of help with the Alician refugees. Louise knew how it went with the big players: no empathy, certainly no clemency; you stayed on their chessboard only as long as you were useful. After that, you were in the way, and not for long. Luckily she had sent a message prior to arrival, otherwise her ship would have been blown to pieces before it reached orbit.

She felt cold. One of her calf muscles began to tighten, as if it might cramp. She breathed deeper, willing her muscles to relax, so she could remain still – after all, the guard hadn’t moved a millimetre, and Louise was sure she was being watched for any sign of weakness, at which she might be killed; they had the tech to extract the deal offered by Qorall from her dying mind, at least they thought they did.

At last she heard a rhythmic thumping sound, compounded by a dragging, scraping noise, like a horse dragging a sack of rocks along the floor. She’d never seen the High Queen; few had. She was brown, and there was a pungent smell like rotting fruit that caught in Louise’s nostrils. But it was the Queen’s girth that surprised Louise, the swollen ribbed belly that rippled with internal movement. Not eggs, that was for sure. Louise lifted her gaze instead to the Queen’s head, an inverted triangle tapering to a sturdy neck. At the other end was a lizard tail with mace-like clumps at its end. They looked lethal, and although the Queen’s movements seemed sluggish, Louise had no doubt this five-metre Q’Roth could react with lightning speed.

The Queen took up a standing position between two metal pillars, leaning on them with her upper claws. That was when Louise noticed something else, ultra-thin folds of skin tucked away below her armoured shoulder blades, stretching down behind her belly. So, the legend was true.

“State your proposal,” the Queen said, each Q’Roth syllable razor-sharp.

The claw around Louise’s throat loosened, allowing her to speak clearly.

“Level Sixteen Nchkani tech and weaponry in exchange for tactical support in the battle to be fought at Hell’s End. After victory, the Q’Roth will be upgraded six Levels and become overlords in this galaxy.”

The Queen’s belly stirred, something writhing inside. Louise tried not to stare, and waited for the response to her proposal.

“Qorall’s recode strategy is failing. The tide will turn. The Orbs have all been destroyed by the Machines.” Her triangular head leaned forward, her six eyes flared. “He is losing.”

Louise raised her voice. “Kalaran is dead. Hellera alone cannot defeat Qorall. The Tla Beth are few, the Rangers inconsequential. The recoding was a ruse, an experiment, nothing more. When Hellera is defeated, and you have Nchkani ships, Qorall will rule this galaxy the traditional way, a strong hierarchy, with the Q’Roth keeping everyone else in their place.”

“Why us?”

“Despite considerable losses during the war, your Q’Roth warriors have time and time again proven their worth, often against Level Nine or even Level Ten species with far superior technology. Q’Roth resilience and tactical ingenuity are both legendary and feared.”

The Queen didn’t seem convinced. Louise remembered something else she had told Qorall about the Q’Roth. “You are also the species whose character is most like his own.” She could go further, that the Q’Roth and Qorall were both defined by malice, and an unquenchable thirst for aggression, in Qorall’s case forged through aeons of bitterness and a need for revenge, and for Q’Roth intentionally bred into them by the Tla Beth, and ultimately the Kalarash. What goes around, comes around.

“Tell me of the galaxy-destroyer.”

“All I can tell you is that it exists, and it is located in the galactic core. A super white hole will ignite, and will burn its way through this galaxy, devouring all star systems.”

“At the speed of light. We are very far from the core. It will not reach here for thousands of years. Why should we care now?”

Louise had asked the same question, though Qorall had inflicted severe pain in exchange for an answer. She’d barely grasped the math.

“Transpace carriers, subspace harmonics. Shockwaves, ripple effects. I already forwarded the simulation to your fleet Admiral in orbit. The galaxy will be gone in a year.” And the Alicians along with it. Qorall had to be stopped, but if no one was up to it, he had to be helped in order to avoid his terrible endgame, equivalent to tossing the entire chessboard into the fire. There was a third way, of course, but she dared not even reflect on it in front of the Queen.

Something moved violently inside the Queen’s belly, a savage kick. The Queen’s head rolled back a moment as she emitted a hissing sound, then pitched forward again. There was a splitting noise emanating from the Queen’s loins. Louise tried not to watch as something dark and gelatinous began to emerge from between the Queen’s lower legs. She was giving birth.

“Why you?”

The question took Louise aback, but she knew she had to answer immediately, even as a body slumped to the floor, twitching inside a transparent sack. She saw a mustard-coloured claw stretch the interior of the sheath and pierce it.

“I am but a messenger. I proved useful to Qorall before, and I am part-Q’Roth.” Louise left out the fact that this switching of allegiances was her idea.

The Queen paid no attention to the hatchling. Louise wondered what it was. There was something different about it. Louise felt a shiver run down her spine. Hatchlings needed to feed almost immediately. The guardian’s claw was still around her throat, and she had no weapons.

“The Nchkani fleet is destroyed,” the Queen said, a nonchalance in her tone, as if the interview was boring, irrelevant, coming to a close, and the real purpose of Louise’s presence about to be revealed. The hatchling, yellowish in colour, tried to get to its feet, and slipped in its own amniotic fluid. Its claws looked sharper than usual.

Louise watched the hatchling. It had a longer belly than a warrior, and was taller than normal, its mid-legs also longer, more spindly. With a gasp, Louise realised it was a Queen. No one – even Q’Roth she had worked with – knew where the Queens came from, the assumption being that they hatched from eggs like all other Q’Roth. The Queen who had given birth to this one must be special, and possibly very, very old. The new Queen stood awkwardly on its six legs, and faced Louise. It staggered a step towards her. The mother leaned forward, eager to watch her offspring take its first feed.

“The Nchkani had a secret process they called Resurrection,” Louise said. “I can bring back the Nchkani ships, give you a fleet of them. Today. In your system.” She glanced at the new-born. “Or not.”

The claw tightened around her throat, almost choking her.

The Queen lurched forward from the pillars and landed right in front of Louise, pounding into the floor, making it shake. Her left mid-leg grabbed the hatchling at the neck, holding it in place. It acquiesced, and became docile.

“If you are lying, I will extract your mind before my new-born feeds on your carcass, and leave you in a torture loop for millennia. You will drown in your screams for eternity.”

Louise had heard of this process, reserved for traitors and those who fled from battle; one reason the Q’Roth warriors were so disciplined and ready to die rather than suffer defeat.

The claw eased off a little so Louise could speak. “I never bluff. I carry the re-genesis material on my ship, but it needs my codes, cross-correlated with sixteen random memory fragments.” You won’t get all of them by post-mortem memory extraction, and you’ll have nothing. “The sixth planet in this system will serve for re-genesis purposes.”

The Queen lowered her head close to Louise’s face, her six eye-slits waxing the colour of congealed blood. Then she lifted away again, shepherding the infant Queen to Louise’s left. Louise heard the sound of feet. She tried to see, but could barely turn. Three chained, naked Alicians came into view, a male and two females. They had not been treated well. She recognised the male, Astara, the commander of the space station that had been tethered to Savange. These three must have been aboard the Q’Roth warship that escaped when Micah attacked the station. Astara’s eyes locked onto hers.

“Ustraxia,” she said. It was the name of a place from Alician history, a famous battlefield. Astara and the others stared a moment, then one by one nodded to Louise.

The Queen released her child who pounced on the trio. They did not defend themselves, nor resist, understanding Louise’s command. The young Queen fed on them one after the other, its mouth clamping onto the top of Astara’s skull first, sucking the life force out of him. The two women waited their turn. There were no screams. Louise watched till the last was taken. Her remaining human hand trembled, and Louise found she couldn’t stop it, until the last was dead. The new-born Queen tilted its head back, and Alician blood sprayed from its mouth as it roared, its bellow echoing throughout the chamber. It departed.

The Queen returned her focus to Louise. “You have twelve hours. If you attempt to jump out of system, we will track you down, as well as your Alician refugees, and feed on you all.”

“You will have your ships,” Louise said. “I will go with your fleet to Hell’s End.”

The Queen raised herself and strode out of the chamber, her belly dragging on the floor as before. The guardian released Louise.

She walked to the three corpses and stood over them. She had never been religious – Alicians weren’t, believing there was nothing afterwards – but she began to intone the Alician death ritual, then said it aloud, then louder, until it echoed around the chamber.

Aboard her vessel, she stared first at the harmless-looking doughnut-shaped object in the holding bay, the gift sent to her by Qorall himself, then at the holo of the dwarf planet below, originally an asteroid enlarged by the Q’Roth, who had used a process of accretion over decades, building a planet from a former asteroid belt; easier to mine that way. Six thousand Q’Roth, more or less, worked on this factory-planet rich in ores and complex alloys. The Queen hadn’t warned them or given them time to evacuate, knowing that the resurrection process would require organic material. Louise had scanned the entire system prior to arrival, and this one had a 97% fit for the re-genesis requirements. She touched a control and the doughnut dropped from her ship down towards the planet.

The doughnut exploded at low orbit, sending a shimmering aurora around the planet. Rain the colour of rust fell all the way to ground level, nano-harvesters that broke down everything they touched, the Q’Roth included. She’d never seen Q’Roth warriors overwhelmed before, and wondered if they screamed in bewilderment as the bio-mechanised acids dissolved their flesh. Many raced to their ships but were unable to break through the aurora locking the planet down, their frantic calls for help unanswered. There was a time when Louise might have been impressed by the Queen’s ruthlessness, her commitment to purpose, but not today.

She quit the bridge and headed to her quarters, and took a long shower to wash the three Alicians’ blood from her feet. She sat naked on the floor, cold water drizzling over her, as she pondered her next move. She thought about the place she’d mentioned to Astara and the others: Ustraxia, the battlefield five hundred years earlier on Earth where Alessia herself had been overcome. It had been a ploy to make the Sentinels complacent, and fifty years later the Alicians had risen up and gained the upper hand, crushing all but a few of the Sentinels. Louise had invoked this name to persuade Astara and the two women that this was a worthy sacrifice, that their deaths would help Louise turn things around later.

For the first time ever, Louise considered that perhaps the Q’Roth were now their enemies, too. At the least, the Queen could no longer be trusted. The Alicians had outlived their usefulness to her; she could order her soldiers to cull all humans and Alicians left alive, and in so doing clean up her chessboard. Louise had fought alongside many Q’Roth warriors over the years, and found them to be honourable warriors; she respected them. But at the end of the day they did their Queen’s bidding.

But did it matter to her? Unlike her mentor Sister Esma, Louise had never been that interested in Alician history, instead playing the renegade. But now she’d come back into the fold, and felt kinship with her fellow Alicians. With something of a shock, she realised she had found a cause other than her own survival. The image of the three Alicians being killed, their broken corpses on the floor, kept coming back to her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way… but then she could. Vince.

Louise had refused over the years to think about it, about him. They’d died together back on Esperia, courtesy of Micah. When her clone had awoken afterwards, she’d wept and raged in equal measure. She’d always seen Vince as her last chance at going back to any kind of normal existence. With him gone, she’d run around the galaxy for almost two decades, fuelled by cold anger. She closed her eyes, recalling times back on Earth – nothing remotely romantic, Vince hadn’t been the type – but still, they’d looked out for each other, and that meant… She dared to think it, to let it surface: they’d cared about each other. She drew her thighs close to her chest, rested her brow on her knees, and recalled all their missions together, one by one, it made her smile.

She sat up, her head against the wall, the cold water numbing her back, and wondered what Vince would think of her choices over the years, all the bad things she’d done, knowing what his reply would have been. He’d have looked at her with those ice blue eyes, and said, “Louise, it only matters what you do next.” She bit her lip, then whispered into the shower’s drizzle. “I miss you.” She started to shiver, and drew her arms around her shins.

Reluctantly, the other person who mattered in her life, if only as counterpoint, came into her mind. Micah. Since Vince’s death she’d wanted nothing more than to watch the light fade from Micah’s dying eyes. It was no longer important. For the first time they had a common enemy. She switched off the shower and towelled herself brusquely. Not having eaten for some time, she headed to the galley.

When she returned to the Bridge, the entire planet was coated in thick metallic mush that quivered as shapes swirled beneath the surface. Precisely two hours before the Queen’s deadline, the first ship emerged, looking like a mechanical fish rising from a swamp. At first she couldn’t see the trademark Nchkani spines, but as the ship climbed into orbit, slipping unhindered through the aurora, the black and white spines flexed outwards from its hull.

A Q’Roth Battlestar approached to intercept the Nchkani vessel. Louise let the vessel fire its full arsenal of weapons, none of which had any effect. She thought about instructing the commander to abandon ship, but knew it would do no good. Q’Roth tested everything through blood.

She instructed the Nchkani vessel to attack. A light-sphere riddled with electric blue arcs spat out from one of the spines and chased after the Battlestar, which tried to evade and fire at it, to no avail. The sphere engulfed the Q’Roth warship as the arcs dissected it into small chunks, as if the ship had been squeezed through a sieve. Individual Q’Roth warriors flailing in space were boiled alive inside the sphere. Eventually the sphere collapsed to a small ball, and returned to the Nchkani vessel, nourishing it.

The Nchkani had been brilliant. At Level Sixteen, they were few in number, but long ago had moved away from having dockyards to build ships, and had developed the re-genesis process, able to manufacture a fleet in less than a day. And when they fought in battle and won, they recycled the enemy’s energy and raw materials, rather than allowing their own resources to become depleted. From a war logistics point of view, it was pure genius.

And yet they were dead, gone, after who-knew-how many million years of existence.

The Queen contacted Louise. “How many more ships will we have, and when?”

“One hundred and eighty. By tomorrow. I will transmit command codes for all the others except this one, which I will command. They each need only one commander, no other crew are necessary. We should proceed straightaway to Hell’s End. Qorall is waiting, and Hellera is on her way.”

The Queen didn’t acknowledge.

Louise watched the second ship emerge, then another. She wondered where Ash and the Alician refugees were by now, not missing the cruel irony of events, now that Alician society had suffered the same fate they had inflicted on humanity.

The fleet was ready to leave. A Q’Roth High Commander was in charge, Louise was to be at the rear. The Nchkani bridge was smaller than she expected, but then everything was done by neural interface. She was about to cut connection with her own ship when it informed her of an inbound vessel in Transpace. She had been given some of Qorall’s tech to monitor Transpace, and had asked for notification of two signatures, the first the Alician flotilla led by Ash, the second, Shiva. It was the latter.

The Q’Roth/Nchkani fleet powered up.

Louise made up her mind, her adrenaline spiking as she did so. The third way. She’d received a visitor while in Transpace two days earlier: a Spider, and a Hohash. It was only then that she recalled clearly, for the first time, what had happened on her trip to Savange several weeks ago, how a Spider had interrupted her journey and stranded a Q’Roth ship in Quickspace, and in so doing, killed a number of her crew as well as Q’Roth. Qorall still didn’t know the Spiders’ capability, and she hadn’t told him.

She presumed the Spider and Hohash had been sent to kill her. Instead they’d made an offer. She hadn’t answered, and they’d left, and she’d woken up on arrival at Korakkara. She’d even wondered if she’d dreamt it, and had put it out of her mind while dealing with the Queen. Now, for the first time, she considered the offer, and Vince’s favourite adage.

It only matters what you do next.

She transmitted an encoded message to her former ship, and ordered it into Transpace, where it would detonate and send an information spurt to Shiva. At Level Fifteen, Shiva would be able to intercept it, though no Q’Roth vessel could. A short message, captain’s eyes only. She was convinced it would be Micah, despite the fact she had sent Toran to kill him.

Louise felt better than she had for days. She’d always believed in burning bridges behind her. As her vessel and all the others slipped into Transpace on the long journey to Hell’s End, the message echoed in her mind. It had been simple, and above all it had been clear.

Kill the Queen.

CHAPTER 28

Ghost in the Machine

Pierre no longer knew where he was. His consciousness was distributed across eight hundred and forty-three sectors, wherever the Machines roved the galaxy, though nine-tenths had already assembled at the perimeter, awaiting the signal to depart. His thoughts were clear and pure. No more time spent self-guessing or worrying or considering the rights and wrongs of actions and decisions. No more self. Efficiency. Clarity. A larger perspective. But he could still speculate; that was one of his functions inside the Sublime Logic.

The Orbs were destroyed, and had nourished the Machines. Qorall’s tentacles reaching across the galaxy had been slashed. Indigenous inhabitants everywhere were returning to normal, though many had become vengeful, and a motley armada of ships of all manner of alien species was making its way to outer spiral N117-E2, colloquially known as Hell’s End, to do battle against Qorall.

The Machines had not interfered, simply eradicated the Orbs and aided in the distribution of the antigen, and so the local inhabitants did not fear the colossal black metal poly-structures sailing through their systems. Indeed, many alien infants had created toys mimicking the many forms of Machine city-ships traversing the galaxy.

It had not been like this the first time, Pierre knew. The Level Eighteen Machine race had been reviled, an object of terror and hatred, leading to a massive battle at N117-E2 two point zero three million years ago; which was how that region of space had gotten its name, where the last vestige of the once mighty Machines had been consigned to oblivion on the nameless tomb planet.

Things were different this time, and difference bred opportunity. The Machines were already spread too far and wide to be easily contained. Their closest rivals on the Intelligence scale, the Nchkani, had been obliterated. The Tla Beth were too few in number to resist, and only one Kalarash remained. The Machines could sit out the battle between Hellera and Qorall, then make their move and assert order. But there was a fluctuation in Pierre’s thoughts, an asymmetry. He had promised Hellera and Ukrull that the Machines would leave the galaxy. And there had been individual aliens, certain personalities – he had difficulty recalling their names and faces – whom he had sworn to protect.

But that was before. It was more logical to stay. Order was protection. The Kalarash idea of a hierarchy based on intelligence was flawed. Resentment built up at lower levels and led to unrest and wars, or else stagnation. Organic species inevitably hated any overlords precisely because they saw that they could one day be in their place, so why should they serve them? But if Machines were the overlords, the psychology would be different. A vastly superior intelligence – a benign one that demanded nothing more than harmonious order and commerce, one that stayed in the background except to quell any unrest and to protect respectable citizen races from extra-galactic influences – would be god-like. The toys would in time become religious artefacts. With a Machine citadel on every inhabited world, ensuring justice and order; the galaxy would thrive.

Another discordant asymmetry arose. What if, no matter how benign, they saw us as oppressors? What if one day a race matched our own intelligence, and sought to replace us? Pierre tried to find the origin of this disharmony, but knew it could only have come from his own self. He felt schizoid: part of him had fully embraced the Machine intelligence’s love of order and logic, its utter purity, but another part of him still clung to inchoate organic thinking patterns. It would be far easier all around if that smaller voice were silenced. My point exactly, the larger Pierre – the one distributed across half the galaxy – heard the smaller, less significant voice say.

Small Pierre continued. Why not play God more seriously? Eradicate all life in the galaxy and start again. Create life in the Machine image. A Machine galaxy. Though the larger Pierre knew this was being suggested more with irony than with sincerity, the thought had occurred. But the Machine race had always been designed to serve. It was written into their base code, their collective soul. It was who they were.

Code can be re-written, small Pierre said.

The distributed form of Pierre became aware of an external disruption. Contact with twenty Machine entities in sectors well inside the inner galactic rim had been lost. He had no idea why. The smaller Pierre seemed to know something.

I’ll get back to you, small Pierre said.

Pierre found himself in human form again, with normal flesh, not even silver-tinged as it had been before. But he knew it was an illusion, first because the environment was a depthless blue, a floor with no walls or ceiling, and second due to the three others present: Kat, a Hohash, and a Spider.

“Hello, Pierre,” Kat said. She looked worried. “How are you holding up?”

“Not too well, actually. Tell me, are you… real? I mean the real Kat here via node, or just another reflection of my mind?”

“Real. That is, I’m asleep back on Esperia, but the Hohash is by my bed. Anyway, it’s me.”

Surprising both himself and Kat, he rushed to her and embraced her, kissing her with a passion he’d rarely known during his physical life.

She gave him a crooked smile, her face flushed. “Wow, Pierre, being a Machine suits you. I feel a little embarrassed, knowing that back home I’m lying naked next to Antonia.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Her smile lingered. “Ah, there you are, that’s more like it. Don’t apologise. In any case, I think we have business to do.”

He glanced to the Hohash and then the Spider. “I gathered. First, how is Petra?”

“She’s strong, that’s what matters.” She winced, squeezed her eyes closed, and put her fingertips to her temples. She opened her eyes. “Okay, the meeting has started. The Spiders want to know why you haven’t left the galaxy.”

Pierre nodded. “I’m losing that one, I’m afraid. The Machines are re-evaluating. They’re in a strong position now.”

“Interesting you say ‘they’, not ‘we’.”

“It’s complicated. Part of me...” He didn’t know how to explain it.

“It’s alright. I know you’re not coming back. I’m guessing you have no body anymore, and I can’t exactly keep you hidden in a Hohash for an occasional secret midnight rendezvous.”

He checked to see if she was mocking him, but although she was smiling, her eyes were sad, as if that was exactly what she’d like to happen.

He blurted it out. “They want to take over the galaxy, become our and every species’ overlords.”

“Of course they do, Pierre. That’s why Kalaran got rid of them first time around, and why Hellera is terrified of them.” She shook her head. “Funny, no matter how intelligent you are, you always remain naïve. Quite endearing.”

She staggered forward a pace, as if someone had shoved her in the back, eyes squeezed shut, hands pressing her temples. She recovered. “Ouch. The Spider is getting impatient, and now I know why. Qorall has placed a device in the central core of the galaxy. Something about a super white hole, Transpace relays… Ah, this will be better. A Hohash scanned it so you can take a look.”

Pierre watched the Hohash’s mirror surface flash a set of detailed images in ever-increasing resolution, from macro to pico. The device was intricate, but with an elegance of design that was impressive, beyond the reach of his and the Machine’s own intelligence level; Pierre felt a tinge of admiration. Its defences were impregnable; any aggressive or insidious attack would trigger the device; there would be no way to stop it. Though Pierre wasn’t a physical being anymore, he felt like he needed to sit down.

“A doomsday device,” he said. “We have to act now.”

She frowned. “Why now? Surely Qorall will wait until the battle, and then decide whether or not to use it?”

Pierre paced up and down, thinking. “Not necessarily. We’ve been running data analyses on everything he has done since his arrival, gaining an insight into his psycho-pathology. But we didn’t know about this device. Now I do, there’s a ninety-eight per cent chance he will activate it now, but leave the relays open. That would start the white hole explosion, but without the Transpace relays the outpouring of radiation could only travel at lightspeed, and would take thousands of years to consume the galaxy.”

Kat shook her head. “Seems crazy to me. What if he can’t stop it? Thousands of years is the blink of an eye to Qorall.”

Pierre recalled his earlier conversation with the larger Machine persona. “I’m afraid we might have been too successful. The whole galaxy is turning against him. The Orbs won’t work again now that the antigen is everywhere.”

“You think he’ll cut and run?”

“He may yet try to capture Hellera during the battle, but if he is losing he will leave and burn the galaxy behind him. Even if he wins, he may quit this galaxy and start afresh somewhere else, incubating his young during the inter-galactic voyage while all life here slowly roasts to death.”

Kat looked crestfallen. She turned to the Hohash and the Spider, closed her eyes.

Pierre watched and waited. Kat became very still. When she opened her eyes again they were black; not like Mannekhi eyes; Kat’s eyes were like holes in space. Pierre knew it wasn’t Kat anymore. He glanced at the Spider. Then he noticed the Hohash showing a very odd vista with iridescent, multi-coloured contours. It looked like a different kind of space, and he wondered if he was looking at a different galaxy, the original home of the Spiders. In it were many Spider vessels, sleek rainbow-sheened ellipsoids.

“One who was called Pierre, six of your Machine vessels that were travelling in Transpace have been diverted into the central core. They will emerge near the device. They must surround it. Do it now.”

Pierre was about to raise objections when he found that his mind was connected to those ships. The ‘larger’ Pierre, as he thought of him, wasn’t present, or else six ships were not enough to allow larger Pierre’s emergence. He morphed into the Machine ships’ local intelligence and saw through their scanners. The device was shaped like a star, six pearl prongs glistening against a background of pure white. The heat and radiation were at the limit of the known scale; his Machines would not last long, the outer edges already deteriorating, metal vaporising in the heat, sloughing off layers at a tremendous rate. Transpace had been deactivated, no doubt the Spiders’ doing. Under Pierre’s control the six Machine cities began to flatten, growing thinner, until they were like sheets, lamina a few tens of metres thick, eroding fast. He guided them to connect and enshroud the device. That was when he noticed another object in the white haze, a single Hohash, dwarfed by the device and the shroud. It, too, was melting, cracks on its mirror face. He suddenly realised that this Hohash was keeping his consciousness there, and was also his lifeline back to where he had been moments before, outside the core. If the Hohash broke…

Via minimal remaining sensors he completed the shroud. Mentally joined to their sensors, he noticed from their internal chronometers that time slowed dramatically, or rather, everything was happening at a much faster rate. He knew why. They now had only pico-seconds in which to act, though he still did not see what they could do. As he’d predicted, the anti-tampering triggering system activated. In slow motion he saw the device begin to implode, like a balloon deflating.

“Switch off the Machine cities’ intelligence now,” the Spider said via Kat. “It will be more… humane.”

He didn’t question anymore, just complied, as if shooting a horse with a broken leg. He felt sadness, an emotion he’d almost forgotten.

The device had shrunk into a small pinprick of white. He knew what came next. It was as if the device had taken in a huge breath, and was about to explode outwards, endlessly, a silent scream that would engulf everything. The shroud was barely a metre thick.

But something happened. A slit in the brilliant white opened up, not quite dark, but a dim twilight that by comparison was almost night. The slit opened further, as if being peeled back, held apart by invisible hands against terrible pressure to close again. There was noise – though in space there shouldn’t have been – the sound of a hurricane rising in pitch to a banshee. Pierre glimpsed ships, four of the Spider ellipsoids he’d seen earlier, stretching open the skein between two space-times. The shroud and the device were sucked through the grim portal, and a picosecond later it snapped closed.

The pure bright white returned, rippling at first, then becoming uniform again. The scorched Hohash, with only one small mirror fragment remaining, winked out of normal space. Pierre found himself back in the wall-less room.

“Where?” he said. “Where did you send the device? The intergalactic void? Another galaxy?”

“Another universe.”

Pierre definitely needed a chair. One appeared, and without thinking, he sat down.

“How?”

“The Big Bang, as you call it, spawned multiple universes. There is one that is… darkness. It was stillborn, no stars, only gas clouds that failed to ignite, simmering at the low level of what you call the EM spectrum. The device can do no harm there, other than bring light.”

“The four Spider ships, can they return?”

“A necessary sacrifice.”

Pierre’s mind was reeling. Who were these Spiders? Until now, he’d believed they were from another galaxy.

Kat was back, her eyes returned to normal. “Hello,” she said. “That was a little weird. They had to take control, because the action was taking place too fast for my dumb little brain to keep up.” A chair appeared for her, too, and she took it, and gazed at the Spider. “They’re not from another galaxy. They’re from another universe.”

Pierre stared at her.

“One of the Kalarash found a way to cross over, Pierre. When he did, a Spider scout ship came through.”

Pierre shook his head. “All this time, I’ve been exploring the galaxy when the most interesting species there could ever be was living next door on Esperia.”

“There’s more.”

He looked into her eyes, and guessed it. “Kalaran. When he was in his ship in Esperia’s underground oceans, he wasn’t sleeping for those half million years, was he?”

She smiled, a non-crooked one. “I still love that you’re smart.”

“He crossed over, didn’t he?”

She nodded. “Time runs differently there, so for him it was more like a year.”

He remembered the brief vista the Hohash had shown him of Spider ships, in what must be their home universe. “Transpace is natural to them, isn’t it?”

“Yep, that’s how they can manipulate it. That’s their last message to the Machines, by the way. If they don’t leave, the Spiders will deactivate Transpatial travel in this galaxy. They can do it, something about interfering with the subspace harmonics that open up Transpatial conduits, via super-excitation of some exotic particles I’ve never heard of, probably because they’re not from this universe… I couldn’t follow it all. Sorry. They would need cooperation from the Shrell who inhabit subspace, but they already have it.”

Pierre stared into the floor. “That would mean we – and anyone else – could only travel at sub-light speeds. Wormholes occasionally, but they’re unstable, unfit for organics, and they chew up subspace.”

“Exactly. It would kill trade and commerce, sending this galaxy back to an almost primeval state. But it would also negate the Machines’ pan-galactic plans for a Sublime Order.”

“This was Kalaran’s idea, wasn’t it?”

“Actually, it was theirs. And the Shrell’s. They’re pretty fed up with all of us invading their territory. Some of the Shrell are already defecting to the Spider universe.”

Pierre stood up. “The Machines will leave. Tell them that, Kat. There would be no point in them staying. There are other plenty of other galaxies…”

“You were right, Pierre. They should re-write their base code. Find an empty galaxy, and fill it with Machines.”

The Spider vanished.

“Meeting over?” Pierre asked. “I guess I should get back. They need me, I’m afraid.”

“I know.” Kat stood, looking a little sheepish. “But first… I asked for a little privacy.”

“But the Hohash is still here.”

She shrugged. “No Hohash, no us.”

She walked towards him, put her arms around him, and kissed him.

Pierre felt other feelings rise up inside him that he thought he’d forgotten. Logic be damned, he thought, and kissed her back.

◆◆◆

Kat opened her eyes and found herself back in bed next to Antonia, who was leaning on her elbow staring at her.

“Hello sleepy-toes. You’ve been dreaming.”

“Oh,” Kat said, blushing. “Sorry.” She noticed the Hohash through the door in the next room.

“No need to apologise, especially as you were fondling me in quite an interesting way.”

Kat’s blush deepened. But she and Antonia hadn’t had sex since they’d gotten back from Savange. Antonia had said she couldn’t. Which meant they’d not made love for over two years, ever since Louise had taken Kat prisoner. Kat bit down on that thought, and made to get up out of bed.

Antonia caught Kat’s shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going?” Antonia slid on top of Kat, pinned her wrists to the pillow, almond eyes gleaming. “Promise you’ll never leave me, Katrina.”

“I promise,” Kat said. “Anything else?”

Antonia released her wrists, and began kissing Kat’s body.

Kat lay on the bed, listening to Antonia moving about in the bathroom next door. “Don’t worry, I’ll never leave you,” she said quietly, more to herself, as the noise of a bath running masked her words.  She got up and tiptoed to the Hohash in the living room. She leant her head towards it and connected via her node, searching. After a while, she smiled, and kissed its golden outer frame.

“Our little secret,” she whispered, and headed to join Antonia.

CHAPTER 29

Lair

Micah pondered the message from Louise, trying to see the deception. But he couldn’t. Nor could Sandy, Gabriel or Vashta. “Kill the Queen,” was all it said. Hard to read between the lines when there were only three words.

“Kill Louise first,” Sandy offered.

“Shiva believes it was a parting message,” Micah replied. “Transmitted just as she entered Transpace. Louise is probably long gone.”

“Then go after her,” Sandy replied. “Maybe Shiva can pick up her scent and we can change direction. She’s enemy number one, Micah.”

Micah wasn’t so sure anymore. The last time he and Louise had met, he’d sensed a change in her. She’d seemed genuinely upset about what had happened to her people on Savange. Her people. She’d become loyal.

Gabriel joined in. “We came here to the Q’Roth system to find out what deal she has brokered with the Q’Roth High Queen. It might only concern Louise, or the Alicians, or Esperia, or the fate of the entire galaxy. All we know is what Toran told Sandy, but Louise may not have told him the whole story, or may have even lied to him. We need to know. Hellera needs to know. The final battle with Qorall is coming.”

Sandy folded her arms. “I’ve watched this bitch lead men around her before, drawing them into her game. It never ends well – except for her.”

Micah tried not to stare at Sandy. The past few days, awake in Transpace, he’d seen more of her than in years. Although he’d given up hope years ago, he swore he’d caught her looking at him once or twice. He dismissed it; he needed to focus. Sandy was right, Louise was treacherous. But Gabriel’s line of argument was more immediate.

“We go in hot,” Micah said. “Most likely they’ll try to destroy us on the spot. Louise is half-Q’Roth, she may have gotten an audience. The only way we’ll get one is by a show of strength.”

Gabriel clutched the silver hilt of the nanosword in his hand. “I know I am a clone, that my memories – fragmented as they are – are not truly my own, but…”

“You want justice,” Micah finished.

He nodded, addressing both of them. “It is odd. The Gabriel you know – your son, Sandy – wanted so much to avenge his father, slain on Earth. I can… see some of those thoughts. It is like reading a letter: I can see how he felt, but these are not my feelings. Nevertheless, I have a strong sense of duty.”

Sandy walked up to Gabriel. Micah knew it was difficult for her: the clone looked just like her dead son, and his features resembled the original Gabriel, but it wasn’t him. In the past few days Sandy had kept her distance from this Gabriel even more than from Micah.

“Then do your duty,” she said, then added, “Gabriel.”

He nodded, as a son to a mother. This time she didn’t look or walk away.

The interaction reminded Micah that he himself had just narrowly missed becoming a father, and he felt a gnawing in his guts. Shiva contacted him via his resident.

<Are you alright, Micah? Your blood pressure just dropped, and several of your emotional centres spiked. Vashta noted it as well. We need you at peak performance.>

Micah turned his head to Vashta, who stood regally as usual, her mane of black fur framing quicksilver eyes that betrayed nothing. He gave her a small nod.

He turned back to Sandy and Gabriel. “Let’s do this,” he said. “Everyone take their stations.”

Shiva emerged from Transpace to find herself surrounded by a dozen Q’Roth warships. They bathed her in fire without warning. As instructed, Shiva returned fire only to disarm the warships. Three Crucible Class vessels lashed out their anti-matter cables, trying to saw through Shiva’s shields, but her artillery chopped off each strand at its base. More warships joined the fray, some jumping in from outside the system. Transpace conduits opened up like silver rips in space, disgorging ships around Micah and his crew.

Micah thought it was excessive, but then he recalled what Shiva had done to the Q’Roth warships guarding the orbital space station above Savange, cleaving them in two. They think we’ve come to strike at their homeworld.

“Stop firing,” Micah said.

“Are you crazy?” Sandy asked.

“I want to talk to the Queen. I need to get her attention. How long will our shield hold, Shiva?”

“A while,” Shiva answered.

“That was a little enigmatic,” Sandy said. “I think Shiva’s sulking, Micah. She’s a warship, too, remember.”

Micah said nothing, knowing that Shiva was Level Fifteen, augmented by Hellera herself. The shields were multi-layered, poly-phasic and regenerative, capable of shifting at the pico-second level, and harnessed a percentage of the inbound energy to reinforce themselves. It reminded him of the old aboriginal trick of cyclical breathing, which enabled ancient musicians to play wind instruments continuously, as if always breathing out. But it wouldn’t last forever.

Gabriel left his station, stood next to Micah, and stared at the viewscreen, hundreds of ships now deluging them with beams, missiles, and anti-matter cables. Some of the frontline ships had to draw back or risk being fried in the radiation backlash.

“What are you searching for?” Micah asked him.

“I am not sure. I sense something out there, in the background, waiting.”

“You sense something?”

“I am a creature of Hellera, Micah. Sandy is right on that point. You should not trust me. Sometimes…” He tore his vision away from the screen, and stared intently at Micah.

“Sometimes it is as if I can sense my mind hiding something from me. Other times it is as if someone is watching behind my eyes, seeing what I am seeing.” He returned to searching the enemy fleet.

Micah rubbed the stubble on his chin. Then he got up, gestured for Gabriel to take his seat, and walked to the arch leading to the common room.

“Where the hell are you going?” Sandy asked.

“I need to think, and the battle is distracting me. I’m going to get an ultresso. I’ll be back in a while. Want one?”

Sandy looked exasperated, but followed him.

He sipped the bitter, grainy coffee while he leaned against the wall, facing Sandy. There was a distant hiss, the only sound generated by the onslaught of Q’Roth enemy fire impacting Shiva’s shield every second.

“How long are you going to keep this up?” Sandy asked.

“Until the Queen makes her next move, or Shiva tells me we need to fight back.”

His resident was processing Sandy’s body language and other parameters, analysing her. He switched it off. Micah sensed his own death approaching, and he needed some closure if he was to focus. He put his cup down, and spoke softly.

“Why, Sandy?”

Sandalwood eyes blazed beneath her fringe. “Why what?”

“For years you’ve refused to talk to me.”

“Really? You want to do this now?”

He said nothing.

She clutched her cup near her lips without taking a sip, and spoke to the floor. “You had plenty of company, Micah, plenty of lovers over the years once you ran out of Alicians.”

He placed his cup down on the table. “Louise and Hannah. Is it about them? My God that’s ancient history, Sandy. Don’t tell me you’re still living there?”

She slammed down her cup and went to leave, but the door wouldn’t open.

“Not my doing,” Micah said.

“Shiva!” she shouted. But the door remained closed. She faced it, her back to Micah.

“You had plenty of lovers on Esperia, Micah.”

“Two,” he said, hearing the pathos in his own voice.

She uttered a single staccato laugh. “I heard it was eight.”

“I didn’t know you were listening.”

She didn’t reply for a time. “Antonia. You were always interested in her. You –” She cut herself off.

Micah felt blood rising to his head. Sandy must have known about Antonia’s lost baby.

“What? Say it, Sandy. Or shall I say it for you?”

“Drop it Micah. Forget it.” She banged her fist on the door.

He walked up close, right behind her. “At least you had a son. And you have a second chance. He’s standing on the bridge right now.”

“That… clone… is not my son.” Her voice was quiet. “Please ask Shiva to open this door.”

Before he had a chance, the door slid open. Sandy stepped into the corridor then paused, still facing away from him.

“I’m sorry about what happened to Antonia. And you, Micah. Really.” She reached out a hand and grasped the doorframe, as if for support, her voice unsteady.

“I will tell you something I’ve never told anyone, Micah. All these years, Ramires and I wanted another child. He deserved it more than any man I know, and I wanted so much to give him his own son... But we couldn’t. That is, he couldn’t.”

“But the Ossyrian doctors, surely –”

Micah saw her grip tighten. “They couldn’t help, not this time.”

Micah’s mind reeled as he tried to imagine what that must have been like for them, for her.

“So, Micah, I have an inkling of what you must be feeling, to almost have something you might have wanted for a long time and then lose it.” Her grip loosened. “But sometimes, even when your life turns to shit and everything seems lost, then out of the blue fate throws you a second chance. But if it’s not the real thing… sometimes you just can’t settle for it.” She let go of the frame. “This Gabriel isn’t my son. He’s Hellera’s. You’ll see, Micah, before the end, of that I’m sure. So, please drop it.”

All of Micah’s angst had evaporated. She’d been through too much all those years, he’d had no idea. He wanted to comfort her, to hold her. But he had no right.

“It’s dropped, Sandy. Thank you for telling me what you just did. It couldn’t have been easy.”

“It’s never easy, Micah.” She paused a moment, then left.

Shiva re-activated Micah’s resident. <Micah, please come to the bridge, there is a development.>

He started walking. “Don’t ever do that again, Shiva.”

<Understood, Micah.>

Just before reaching the bridge he realised the continuous hiss of fire against Shiva had ceased. Gabriel vacated the command chair and Micah took it. The front barrage of Q’Roth warships parted, revealing a single black and white ship with long chequered spines.

Nchkani.

“Shiva, can you take it on?”

“Technically, no. The Nchkani vessel is more powerful. But Hellera sent me certain enhancements while we were on Esperia, Level Nineteen algorithms for new shield harmonics. Nevertheless, the odds are not in our favour.”

Sandy moved next to Micah. “I thought their ships were all destroyed? I know Toran said Louise would offer them technology, but a ship?”

Her proximity distracted him.

“Shiva, is there only one?”

“That I can detect.”

That was something. Also, it wasn’t firing; a definite bonus, given that Shiva’s shields had taken a battering in the past quarter of an hour. Shiva fed Micah’s resident with a piece of Level Fifteen-only information from Hellera, concerning the ability of the Nchkani to replicate fleets in a matter of days, something about a resurrection protocol. Micah joined up the dots: Qorall’s plan with Louise as messenger, the Q’Roth Queen as recipient, and Nchkani ships as payment. A fleet of Nchkani ships was an offer the High Queen was unlikely to refuse. He had to do something to make her wary of the deal.

“Vashta, transmit a message to the Q’Roth commanding that vessel. Tell him the following message is for the Queen: ‘Louise lied: she is going to betray the Q’Roth.’ Transmit as corroboration the message Louise sent us.”

Sandy stood in front of Micah. “You’ve changed, Micah. That was… Ramires would have approved; Vince, too.”

He gave a small nod to acknowledge the compliment, but knew full well it could be premature.

“That depends on what happens next.” Micah noticed the Spider and Hohash enter the bridge, the Spider taking up position directly in front of the viewscreen.

The Nchkani vessel retreated slowly, and opened up a path through the Q’Roth fleet, towards Korakkara, the Q’Roth homeworld. Shiva followed through a seemingly endless tunnel of Q’Roth warships, until a planet emerged in front of them. Micah had seen an image of the Q’Roth homeworld once before, during humanity’s Trial. But seeing it grow large on the viewscreen was something else. The world was dark, scarred by a dozen lava rivers, scarlet curves scratched across thousands of miles of black desert, terminating in magma seas; open wounds, as if pockets of flesh had been gouged from the planet’s face. Extinct super-volcanoes rose tall enough to breach the upper atmosphere.

“How can even Q’Roth live there?” Sandy asked.

Gabriel answered, reciting something presumably lodged into his memory by Hellera.

“Their homeworld was once beautiful, purple oceans and forests of bluewoods that reached two kilometres in height, green snows in winter flushed away by rainbow rains leading to the amber period, when the forests produced a highly nutritious honey prized as a delicacy throughout Grid Society. This planet was once one of the galaxy’s jewels. But it was attacked by the sole survivor of a Level Nine species the Q’Roth had helped to eradicate during one of the Grid Wars; one reason Q’Roth culls tend to be complete. The damage to the planet could not be repaired, nor could the degenerative terraforming process be reversed. The Tla Beth offered them a new homeworld, but the High Queen refused. The Q’Roth became nomadic, this planet a badge of honour. The core of the planet is now hollow, the High Queen living underground in catacombs with only a handful of guardians.”

Micah studied Gabriel. At first the information seemed technical, but the last part was tactical. He would definitely have to keep an eye on him.

The Nchkani vessel hovered next to a gaping hole leading down inside the planet.

“Take us in, Shiva,” Micah said.

Sandy put her hand on his shoulder. Whether it was for his or her benefit, he didn’t care; he was glad for it.

As Micah suspected, the Nchkani vessel stayed behind, blocking the only way out.

They set down in a vast cavern bathed in green light, several tunnels leading away from it, one directly in front barred by the largest Q’Roth warrior Micah had ever seen.

“Vashta, Sandy, stay here, I have a feeling we might need a rescue and a quick getaway. Shiva, please work out how to destroy the Nchkani vessel.”

He nodded to Gabriel, and they departed.

The air outside in the cavern was dank but breathable. They approached the guardian; Micah was sure its six eyes were a deeper red than those of a normal Q’Roth. The four-metre-tall warrior turned and led the way, Micah and Gabriel having to break into a trot to keep up. The tunnel twisted and turned, always descending, as they threaded their way through many intersections; Micah hoped his resident was keeping track of their pathway through the catacombs. As he’d expected, it grew hotter the deeper they went.

Finally, they emerged into a dome-like chamber, empty except for a square dais upon which stood two black pillars the height of a tall man. Four guardians stood in front of the dais, each carrying a three-metre barbed spear that shone like titanium.

There was a dragging, clomping sound, and Micah turned to see the High Queen enter, taller than the guardians. Her ribbed belly reached all the way to the ground and tapered off a couple of meters behind her in a coarse tail with three spikes. Her back was different to other Q’Roth he’d seen: two long bony rods hung straight down from either shoulder, corrugated translucent skin nestling in between. Wings. He hoped they were defunct, a throwback to a former Q’Roth age. She hauled herself onto the dais and leant on the two pillars using her mid-legs, leaving her forelegs free.

“The one you call Louise has given us Nchkani ships. You say she will betray us?”

She spoke in Q’Roth, Micah’s resident translating; he hoped Gabriel understood. Glancing at the Youngblood clone, he noticed something odd about the way he was standing: completely relaxed, and his face… his expression was as if he wasn’t really there.

“We are enemies of Louise,” Micah said, “but the message we relayed to you comes directly from her, just as she left this system.”

The Queen didn’t seem surprised. “I will send word to have her killed as soon as the fleet reaches Hell’s End.”

The pieces fell into place for Micah. His tone didn’t hide his disappointment. “You are changing sides, joining Qorall’s ranks against Hellera.”

“An offer of accelerated enhancement to Level Twelve, taking over from the soon-to-be-annihilated Rangers and intermediate species. And if Qorall loses, he will destroy the galaxy. It was not a hard decision.”

Micah said the words, though he guessed they were to no avail. “You could have honoured your commitment, stayed loyal to Hellera.”

“I fail to see why the Tla Beth allowed you humans to survive during your species’ trial. You revel in Level Three thinking. I studied your world before we culled it; your lions and antelopes had a better grasp of the true order of the universe than you humans. You will not endure for much longer as a species.”

Gabriel stood next to Micah, then spoke to the Queen in a strange voice; the intonations were all wrong, rising and falling randomly. It sounded so… inhuman. Micah had heard someone speak that way once before. Hellera.

“The Tla Beth re-engineered you, bred you for aggression, the perfect soldiers. They should have explained the rest: that you would never progress beyond your Level.”

The Queen rose from her pillars to her full height, her upper legs flexing outwards. Ebony wings, like those of a bat, began to unfurl. “Enough! Qorall has given us Level Sixteen technology. No one can stop us now!”

The guardians began to close around Gabriel and Micah. Without warning, Gabriel placed a hand on Micah’s chest and pushed, sending him flying across the room, until he landed and skidded across the floor. On his back he saw a second Queen, smaller and yellow in colour, high above Gabriel, hanging upside down from the ceiling. Winded from the push, Micah tried to warn Gabriel, but barely a croak emerged.

Gabriel continued to speak, unrushed, in Hellera’s oscillating tones. “Technology does not equate with intelligence. These lowly humans, as you think of them, will dance on your unmarked graves.”

The guardians attacked. Micah’s vision could barely keep up with the blur that was Gabriel; frenetic movement interspersed with images of decisive slices from his nanosword, blue blood spraying in all directions as Gabriel decapitated each guardian in turn. But the smaller Queen hanging high above him dropped silently, her six claws stretched out, ready to thresh Gabriel to pieces, while the larger Queen watched.

Micah knew that although Hellera might be viewing events from inside Gabriel, she was still limited by his perceptual abilities. He yelled, but Gabriel stood his ground, and in the last instant threw the nanosword in Micah’s direction.

The yellow Queen crashed onto Gabriel. Her lower claws nailed his torso to the ground while her mid and upper claws made short work of severing his arms and legs from his body.

The hilt of the de-activated nanosword rolled next to Micah. He picked it up as the yellow Queen’s gash of a mouth yawned wide then clamped down on Gabriel’s skull. A gruesome sucking noise reverberated around the chamber. Micah began walking backwards toward the entrance, unable to take his eyes off the scene. The Queen released Gabriel’s cracked open head and swiped his corpse aside in the pool of human and Q’Roth blood. Her head tilted back as she emitted a roar that sent chills down Micah’s spine, then turned her head to look at him. But the larger Queen spoke.

“This one is mine.”

Micah turned and sprinted for the exit, his resident snapping into action, showing him the way forward into the catacombs. He heard the slow beats of giant wings flapping in the windless chamber, but dared not turn around. Micah increased his speed to maximum, barely able to breathe in, desperate to reach the temporary sanctuary of the tunnel.

A strangled cry erupted behind him, and the beats changed, faster, and he realised the Queen was hovering in mid-air above him. Then she suddenly turned and flew back to the centre. Micah raced through the tunnel entrance and skidded to a halt. Forcing air into his lungs, he dared to pause to see what had happened. The yellow Queen – he had an intuition she was young – staggered left and right as if drunk, clawing at her head wildly before collapsing on the ground, legs twitching and flailing as her head bubbled and disintegrated, chunks of flesh sloughing off until she stopped moving. Micah understood. Hellera had used Gabriel as a weapon to take down the Queen, most probably using nannites. Sandy had been right all along. But Hellera hadn’t factored in the appearance of a new Queen.

Micah knew what came next. With a sense of dread, he took a deep breath and bolted down the tunnel. He heard a long, gut-wrenching scream of anguish from the larger Queen, followed by the beats of powerful wings, and a heavy thud as she landed at the tunnel entrance. Micah then heard a sound he’d not heard in a long time; the jackhammer galloping of a Q’Roth running him down. Micah pumped his arms to run faster, navigating each turn as his resident showed his progress towards Shiva, and the Queen’s position behind him, closing very fast. No chance. He needed a Plan B.

Micah’s muscles strained to maintain his speed. The Queen was right behind him, and he imagined her raising her sharp upper claws for a slash that would stop him in his tracks without killing him. His resident flashed a sharp left turn. He didn’t question it, darted to the side and ricocheted off the wall where, a moment later, a single Q’Roth claw slammed into it as the Queen skidded noisily behind him. Micah dashed through the passage. It was narrowing, but not enough.

He entered a bowl-like chamber, its walls sloping slowly upwards from the floor to a flat ceiling. A dead end. He tripped over something and ended up in a pile of bones and rotting hides. His panic peaked as he clambered over skeletons to the other side of the bowl.

He searched the walls frantically, but there was no other way out, only the entrance. He imagined the Queen chasing prey in here, watching them run up the walls in fear, only to slide back down to their doom. The Queen’s steps were measured; she knew he was trapped. Micah willed himself to push down his fear and think. He wasn’t Ramires, nor Gabriel. His only weapon was his brain. He focused. One entrance at the base of the bowl, the walls behind the entrance also sweeping up slowly to the ceiling. A blind spot.

At first he hoped she wouldn’t be able to squeeze through the passage, even though the morgue around his feet testified otherwise. Her head appeared through the opening, and tilted towards the ground, then peered at him with all six eyes. One claw reached through the hole, then another, leveraging against the inside wall, readying to pull her body through. Micah knew it was now or never. He gripped the nanosword hilt, and ran around the rising edge of the bowl, obliquely at first, gathering speed. He ran up the sloping wall as he neared her, going high enough to be out of reach of her claws, then slid down the wall behind her, and activated the sword. He landed with his two feet either side of her neck, and rode her as he plunged the sword through the back of her head. She thrashed wildly, trying to reach backwards with her claws, but Micah held on, and dragged the sword to the left, and then to the right, until the top half of her head toppled to the ground.

He fell off the quivering body, and landed in the pile of bones now slippery and steaming with blood. He got to his feet and then chopped at her head again and again, recalling the billions killed by her command. Her body stilled, but it blocked his exit. Taking a deep breath, he used the sword like a machete, and hacked and chopped his way through her carcass so he could get back out into the tunnel. To keep going, he intoned a name with each slice, someone he knew and cared about who’d been butchered back on Earth twenty years ago. Tears ran down his face for all the people who’d been snuffed out. He continued to hack. It took him five minutes to get through. He didn’t hurry.

As soon as he was through, his sword arm shaking, his breath ragged, he sagged to the floor, his back against the wall. He guessed there would be more Q’Roth warriors waiting for him outside, and that these were the last moments of his life.

While he waited, and his body calmed down, he recalled his father, the famous Grey Colonel, the WWIII hero who’d branded his fifteen-year-old son a coward all those years ago, during the first bombing of LA. Ever since, Micah had looked to role models like Blake and Vince, knowing he could never be like them. They’d had courage hardwired into them, Micah didn’t. But for the first time in a long while, he thought of his dead father, wondering what he would think now.

Micah got up to go and meet his fate. There were four more Q’Roth Guardians outside, but they were all dead. The Spider stood over them, one of its legs twitching, the Hohash hovering behind. It flashed historical images from Shimsha, showing the Q’Roth invasion and culling of the Spider’s ancestors a millennium earlier. Micah knew they had let the culling take place and offered no resistance, in order to protect their hidden egg fields on Esperia, as well as the whereabouts of Kalaran’s ship; he’d been vulnerable at that time. The Tla Beth, who would have sanctioned the cull, must not have known about the Spiders’ true nature, or that Kalaran was there, his ship hidden in the underground ocean. Strategy and sacrifice. Micah still didn’t know the final role the Spiders – Kalaran’s secret weapon – would play. But it was harrowing to watch an entire generation of them being slaughtered, their once-rainbow city bleached in the process. As if sensing his discomfort, the images shut off.

Micah glanced at the Q’Roth, trying to see how the Spider had killed them. The only clue was that their heads seemed to have caved in, as if their brains had been removed. He walked up to the Spider and placed a hand on top of its body, and stroked it. Then he gazed back towards the chamber where Gabriel had died. The clone had been less than a week old. Micah knew nothing of Sentinel protocol, but he bowed, then turned and led the Spider back towards Shiva.

At the bottom of Shiva’s ramp, he noticed gossamer strands around the outside of the ship, almost like a web; the Spider had been busy. Both the Spider and the Hohash remained apart from the vessel; they weren’t coming. The Hohash showed Micah an image, and tapped into his resident, depositing a sizeable chunk of information there, which made Micah stagger for a moment. At first Micah couldn’t make out what he was being shown, but then he understood.

“I don’t blame you,” he said, then walked up the ramp and sealed it behind him.

When Micah entered the bridge, Sandy paled at the sight of him, and Vashta rushed to his side to check him over.

“Gabriel?” Sandy said.

“Dead. The Queen, too. We have to go. Now.”

Vashta replied. “The Spider and the Hohash are still outside, and Shiva has not yet determined a way to destroy or evade the Nchkani ship.”

“They’re staying,” Micah said. He took his position and activated the neural interface.

Shiva contacted Micah directly via his resident. <Micah, it would help if I knew your plan.>

Micah didn’t reply, as the info-packet from the Hohash was still unfolding in the background of his mind. Shiva gave him manual control.

“Are you alright?” Sandy asked.

Micah lifted Shiva off the cavern and tilted her until she was vertical, facing downwards. He fired two missiles back up the shaft towards the Nchkani ship, and at the same time lasered into the rock below. The ground beneath crumbled and melted away, until a pit opened up. Micah drove Shiva straight down into it.

“The lava is on the outside,” he said. “The planet is largely hollow.”

He slalomed his way through a honeycomb of caverns, Sandy grabbing onto his shoulder despite the inertial dampers doing their job; there was no appreciable G-force – yet. A beeping commenced, signalling the Nchkani vessel chasing after them.

They passed several subterranean installations, one or two of which fired at them, but Micah had no intention of slowing down, and when his reactions were too slow or the turns too hard even for Shiva, he blasted through solid rock, carving a way through the planet.

The beeps grew closer in time, the Nchkani ship almost upon them, and then there was a succession of flashes, throwing everything into grey relief.

“Shiva, give it everything you’ve got, get us out of here on a direct vector, maximum speed.” He concentrated on an image the Hohash had shown him, and transmitted it to Shiva via his resident.

This time there was a sudden thrust forward. Micah grabbed Sandy’s wrist to prevent her flying backwards, and felt himself squeezed back into his chair. He heard a grating noise as Vashta extended metal claws to grip the floor. Micah’s shoulder tore at him as he hung onto Sandy.

Rocks exploded in plasma fire up ahead of them, and they roared right into it, Shiva lasering an escape route through liquefying rock. It was like staring straight into the sun, and then suddenly there was the darkness of space in front of them; they had broken through the other side of the planet. The acceleration eased off. Shiva wasn’t slowing down, but had reached her maximum in-sector velocity.

Sandy got up from the floor, and Micah rubbed his shoulder.

“What’s going on, Micah?”

He touched a pad to bring up the aft view. The planet still occupied most of the screen, and the Nchkani ship chasing them was visible, but slipping backwards. Planetary rivers and seas of boiling magma were fading, and then were gone.

“Talk to me, Micah!”

But Micah didn’t feel like talking. Instead his chest felt heavy, as if he was being sucked back towards the planet. For sure the Spider and Hohash were already dead.

Vashta drew alongside Sandy. “A black hole is forming,” she said. “Inside the planet.”

Blotches of red mushroomed on Korakkara’s surface, then vanished, as if the planet was being shot from within, its blood immediately sucked back inside itself. Micah knew what came next. The Nchkani vessel tried to open a Transpace conduit, a bad idea, one the Hohash had made clear not to attempt until well away from the planet. The Nchkani ship shimmered for a second, then plunged like a silver nugget deep inside the planet.

Sandy whacked Micah’s shoulder. “You did this! You’re destroying their home planet, like they did to us. We should be better than them!”

“Not my doing, Sandy. The Spiders are exacting revenge.”

The planet had grown smaller and without warning shattered, briefly exploding before imploding into a smooth black disk – a black hole. Shiva’s engines strained with a grinding noise that increased to a shrill whine. In reality it was the Spider’s web that would save them: the Hohash had conveyed the idea that it would help act as anti-gravity against a black hole, since the strands were from a different universe, exotic matter that didn’t behave according to the local laws of physics.

Micah was still gaining knowledge from the Hohash transmission; it felt odd, as if he was remembering facts he had forgotten, but in reality had never known. The Spiders were from a different type of space, a different universe, one where violent gravitic storms were commonplace. Over countless aeons they, and several other indigenous species, had adapted to be able to counter gravity. He realised that Kalaran’s interest in the Spiders hadn’t necessarily been altruistic; he had probably wanted to learn from them, to understand how they could manipulate gravity and space so effectively.

He judged that the black hole was far enough away now, but still he watched, knowing what came next.

The fleet of Q’Roth ships that had engaged him earlier were dragged towards it. Many of them also tried to jump into Transpace, only to be pulled in faster. In the end, it made no difference. Micah knew that the other two planets and asteroids in the system, and eventually the sun, would suffer the same fate.

“Genocide,” Sandy said.

Micah recalled something the Queen had said, and adapted it. “Lions like the Q’Roth will never stop hunting antelope,” he said. “This was the Spiders’ plan all along, and Hellera’s too, I believe. We’re barely a pawn in this war, and Hellera has just taken out a Queen and a whole host of her pieces.”

He checked the distance. According to the equation the Hohash had shown him, it was safe. He signalled Shiva to prepare to enter Transpace for Hell’s End.

After a while, Sandy spoke again. “The clone… Gabriel... How did he die?” She seemed closed in on herself.

Micah stood up, and dug something out of his pocket. “On his feet, fighting.” He handed her the nanosword hilt, offering it holding both palms upturned, one of the very few Sentinel gestures he knew.

Sandy stared at it, then placed her hands on its smooth surface. Her fingers closed slowly around the hilt, remaining in contact with his palms. Micah closed his own hands gently around hers, and she looked into his eyes, just as her face and every surface around her turned quicksilver as they slid into Transpace.

Hell’s End, Micah thought. This is where it all ends, one way or another.

He was ready.

CHAPTER 30

Hell's End

Hellera surveyed the warscape. Qorall’s asteroid ship hovered just off the event horizon of his customised black hole, a few million miles from a rip in the galactic barrier’s fabric. Surrounding him in space tinged a ghostly green were three fleets, the first two cannon-fodder, Level Seven and Eight species she no longer cared about. Some had very large, Mega-Class ships, ten times the size of her own Crossbow, but after Level Fourteen one learned that bigger ships only meant easier targets. The third fleet was more of a challenge: Nchkani vessels, a hundred and eighty of them. They were manned by Q’Roth, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous, and Qorall’s greenspace neutralised Hellera’s gravity-based weapons.

On her side were a dozen fleets, the ones that mattered being the twenty-seven remaining Tla Beth Gyroscope ships, forty-seven Rangers in assorted small but well-armed scout ships, and fifty Ossyrian Diamond ships. The latter had drawn her attention, not because of their fire-power – they were no match for Nchkani – but because the Ossyrians had obviously retrograded, escaping their pacifist yoke, and had quickly fabricated war ships that had terrorised the galaxy sixty thousand years earlier. Each Diamond ship was fashioned from the joining of the bases of two hospital pyramid ships. Hellera reflected that directive evolution was painstaking, requiring careful steps over hundreds of millennia, whereas species regression, by comparison, was as easy as falling off a cliff.

She waited for one more ship to join her armada. She switched her sensors to show the Spider ships and Hohash in the underlying subspace, contingents of Shrell accompanying them. Qorall could probably see them too, and must be wondering about their capability. At least he appeared to have no soldiers in subspace.

Hyper-assessments had yielded uncertain results: the emergent predictions of who would win remained unstable. Reluctantly she downgraded into a more basic analytic framework. Kalaran had trusted these humans, and had confided in her that there was something about the crude and undisciplined nature of their thinking processes that had tactical value, so she uploaded one of the templates Kalaran had extracted, Blake’s, and fed it with data using a ridiculously small bandwidth.

The black hole: that was the problem. Neither she nor Kalaran had been able to fathom what it was exactly, as it was certainly not a normal singularity. Each galaxy she had visited – quite a few during her lifetime – tended towards a maximum number of black holes, reaching an equilibrium. They were nodes, intersections between universes, but not necessarily portals. Only twice had the Kalarash broken through to another universe, the first time it had been a one-way trip and their colleague was never heard from again, and the second was one where the laws of physics were different, the habitat of the Spiders. Their universe was smaller and ran faster – it would end long before this one – hence the Spiders had also been keen to explore other universes than their own time-limited space. They had travelled to fifty other universes, but few contained the conditions for sentient life; some had already fizzled out, others would stretch endlessly without organic species, bland space deserts spattered with dark stars in an endless ocean of space marred by vicious gravitational fluctuations.

In strategy terms, she held more firepower than Qorall. She should win. But since Qorall had defeated Kalaran, she had doubts. Qorall had been a game-changer since starting this current war: penetrating the Galactic Barrier, using organic weapons, the Orbs… Perhaps he had not yet run out of surprises.

Shiva arrived. Hellera contacted the ship mind and downloaded all its data. All had gone according to plan, except the second Queen, but Micah had handled that one. She was about to dissolve Blake’s template, but elected to keep it running in the background.

She signalled all her fleets to prepare to engage. On a whim, one that was possibly a hangover from Blake’s template, something to do with honour in war and some ancient surprise strike against a place known as Pearl Harbour, she sent a message to Qorall. It was a question, a warning, and a challenge. It was also a single word:

<Ready?>

She wasn’t expecting a reply, but she got one.

<Ultimate stakes>

Hellera stared hard at his black hole, his fleets of ships, and his greenspace. She realised she was missing something. He must know by now that his super white hole device at the galactic core had been neutralised. Yet Qorall had never bluffed before. He had, as Blake would have said, something else up his sleeve. She had no idea what it was.

◆◆◆

Micah stared through the clouds of ships, unable to fathom any pattern or formation. “Vashta, what do you see?”

The Ossyrian’s mercurial eyes danced for a few moments before pronouncing.

“Intersecting helixes on our side, recursive phalanxes on theirs. An old argument in space battle strategy.”

Sandy interjected. “Did that mean anything to you, Micah?”

He laughed. “I wish it did, Sandy. Shiva, what’s our role in all this?”

Shiva spoke bridge-wide. “Hellera wants us to hang back.”

“But you’re Level Fifteen.” Micah said. “We could inflict a lot of damage.”

There was a pause, and Micah knew it was for his benefit, for him to reflect, as Shiva thought far quicker. “She said to wait, Micah. There is an unknown variable at play, she wants us in reserve.”

Having seen Gabriel killed, and having just hacked his way through a Q’Roth Queen, he wasn’t in a patient mood. And since Hellera’s ruse with Gabriel, he wasn’t sure he trusted her anymore.

“How about we leapfrog behind enemy lines? A short Transpatial jump? I know in-system jumps are very tricky, but you could do it, couldn’t you?”

“Qorall’s greenspace prevents any jumps; no conduits will open here.”

Shiva switched to private comms, for Micah’s ears only, via his resident.

<Micah, Hellera has sent a subspace message to all her commanders. Because information is crucial in battles, and Qorall must not be able to anticipate our moves or our capability until we are deployed, and also because she cannot predict his moves, she will only release tactical instructions as events unfold. However, she expects instant response on your part, and no unnecessary comms.>

Micah shook his head. Great. Management by surprise. But he couldn’t fault her logic, and knew she could take in all the real-time data from the ongoing battle, even anticipate up to a point, and make immediate and optimised tactical decisions. Still, he would have liked a task.

Shiva spoke bridge-wide again. “Micah, Hellera said to keep an eye on this ship.”

Micah stared at the screen as Shiva highlighted one of the Nchkani vessels. It was the lead ship in the last arrowhead formation of Nchkani vessels.

“Louise,” Micah guessed. “I still don’t get what her game plan is.”

“Kill her, Micah,” Sandy said. “Then extract it from her brain afterwards. That’s what the Alicians would do.”

She walked in front of Micah, obscuring his view.

“Whatever she does, Micah, it will be for her benefit and ultimately our loss, she has to go down. You told me what she did to Hannah, remember? Not forgetting the two thousand on Ash’s ship that she plunged into a sun.” She leant forward. “And not forgetting Vince, either.”

Micah held her gaze a moment then looked aside. He hadn’t forgotten any of it, and her mentioning Vince’s name rattled him. He zoomed out, and studied Qorall’s massive fleet. Of all the people he’d like to be here with them now, it would be Vince, even more so than Blake, because Vince had been a ruthless tactician, and because it had taken Vince to bring down Louise last time. He envisioned all the carnage Louise had wreaked over the past twenty years, and what else she might do if she survived this war. Yet he recalled a conversation a lifetime ago, back in his Optron lab before the fall of Earth, before he’d known she was Alician, when he’d seen a glimpse of another Louise. Sandy must have read his face, seen a crack of doubt, because she moved right in front of him, close to his face.

“You know why I chose Ramires instead of you? One of several reasons, actually.”

It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over him; Micah’s senses snapped to attention.

Sandy held the nanosword in her hand, weighing it. Her voice unsteady at first, then solid as rock.

“You’re an analyst. Analysts always leave their options open, playing the uncertainties, the angles, retreating into nuances. Ramires was a man of action, Micah. He swore a blood debt. Warriors make a decision and stick to it, ignoring the shifting sands around them. I’m telling you this because soon we’ll be in the heat of battle, and there may be a crucial moment when you can either act decisively, or reflect and analyse, and the window of opportunity will be lost.”

Her voice softened a little. “Maybe it’s an inferior way of thinking, maybe it locks us into Level Three, I don’t know, but you have a choice to make today. There’s a Sentinel saying that how you die defines you. In any case, now you know how I feel. And we, too, are in your hands, Micah.”

Micah wanted to respond that all this was probably futile, that Qorall would destroy them, and that Louise’s ship might be blown apart by another vessel, but such arguments would only confirm everything she’d just said. All verbal options sounded hollow, so he said nothing. He thought of that split-second when Gabriel had looked to him just before he was killed by the Queen. Micah’s mind cleared, the analyses, the hypotheses and counter-hypotheses, all of it stopped.

Sandy spoke more quietly. “You slew a Queen back there, didn’t you? On your own.”

He nodded.

“Then whatever else happens, I’m proud of you for that.”

Vashta intervened. “All ships are powering weapons and maximising shields.”

Sandy returned to her comms console. Micah touched a few pads to bring up multiple displays. Shiva contacted him via his resident. <A gift from Hellera.>

Another view superimposed itself onto the screens, via his resident, so that only he saw it. Around thirty Hohash were arranged in a sphere around a white funnel, which he realised from normal view was Qorall’s black hole. Next to each Hohash was a stubby cigar-like rainbow ship – the Spiders. Shrell swooped around them in undulating arcs. He’d never seen them before; they reminded him of manta rays, the edges of their wings waxing silver.

Only three hours ago, the Spider and the Hohash back on the Q’Roth homeworld had opened up a black hole. It occurred to him that it must have needed both of them to do it, perhaps the Spider affecting space and the Hohash amplifying or stabilising it somehow. But here were thirty! All he knew about the Shrell was that they could lay down tripwires in space, as they had done around Esperia. But he recalled someone saying that most of the time Shrell repaired sub-space, after it had been damaged by too much Transpatial travel. Like him, they were all waiting to be brought into play by Hellera.

He focused on the foreground, in particular the Ossyrian Diamond ships, and addressed Vashta.

“I didn’t know Ossyrians still had weapons tech. It’s been aeons since you last waged war.”

Vashta took a few moments to reply. “After Level Seven there is never species memory loss. That is why when certain species rebel, they are completely eradicated.”

“You were lucky, then.”

Again, there was a pause. “It did not feel lucky, Micah.”

Micah was about to apologise, when Sandy interrupted.

“Xenic has just arrived with the remains of the Mannekhi fleet. He’d like a word.”

Micah nodded, relieved to see a fleet of black and purple Spikers enter the system.

“Xenic, glad you could join us, but there’s some pretty heavy firepower out there.”

“Do you see the black ships with two prongs at one end?”

Micah did, they reminded him of scorpions.

“Those are Tazani, our overlords for fifty thousand years. As Kilaney would have said, it’s payback time.”

Micah felt he should point out the obvious. “They are Level Seven, Xenic.”

“We brought along some new friends.”

Micah peered at the viewscreen and at first saw nothing, then massive Transpace conduits opened, revealing snake-like ships in the lead that rippled aquamarine. Shiva informed him they were Zlarasi Serpent-ships. He knew what Kilaney had done to them, destroying their home planet in order to salvage Blake, and was about to ask Sandy to contact their Commander when the Zlarasi commander opened a channel.

“Do not worry, human, we know who the enemy is. And Kilaney’s actions have proven effective.”

Micah was relieved, and wondered whether humanity would have been so forgiving had the roles been reversed.

Wagramanian Hammer-ships arrived, behind the Zlarasi Serpent-ships, and Micah recalled that the Wagramanians – the first to be recoded – had recently been restored. When he saw what they were towing, however, he stood and walked up to the viewscreen.

“Worms? You brought dark worms here?”

Xenic’s sharp laugh cut across the bridge. “The Zlarasi tamed the ones Hellera didn’t kill; that’s why there’s not been much activity.”

“What do you propose to do with them?”

“Use them as shields, Micah. And if we get close enough, as mass-drivers. You’ll see.”

He doubted they would perturb the Nchkani vessels, and Qorall could use his black hole to swallow any amount of matter spewed in his direction. Then he remembered something; the worms, whose natural habitat was the inter-galactic void, could excrete anti-matter. That might make a difference.

“Have you told Hellera?”

“She’s the one that made it happen, Micah, she’s been calling in favours across the galaxy. Kalarash aren’t above a little politics now and again.”

Of course. Micah kept forgetting that humanity was just a pawn, and there were more skilled players.

“Don’t get killed, Xenic. I’ve buried too many friends recently.”

Xenic replied in Mannekhi and broke the connection. Micah glanced back to Sandy for a translation. After a second she looked up from her console, a small smile on her face.

“He’s been reading up on Earth culture. ‘Only the good die young.’” Her voice caught on the last word, and she locked her face onto her displays again.

Micah focused on the arrays of ships again, imagining a gigantic chessboard: Hellera and Qorall at opposite ends, their armies lined up ready for the battle, waiting for one or other side to make the first move. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be particularly subtle.

A klaxon sounded aboard Shiva as Qorall dispatched three waves of Tazani battle-cruisers and attendant fighter ships towards Hellera’s position. The Wagramanians launched the worms – presumably anaesthetized – towards the first wave. Three Hammer-ships skulked behind each dark worm, hidden in the giant folds of the creatures. Micah zoomed in on one, and saw a pulsing green cable protruding from the worm’s neck; the Zlarasi were controlling them directly.

Mannekhi Spikers accelerated towards the attacking front, over-taking the worms, their purple spines spitting fire at the Tazani. In return, each of the Tazani ships’ two prongs forged a beam between them that launched lozenges of energy at the Spikers, ignoring the worms. Space lit up like a firework factory exploding, but without sound. Shiva filtered out the glare. Micah saw the Mannekhi suffering heavy losses, many of the Spikers blown apart by the energy impact, spilling Mannekhi into space. None of the Mannekhi ships retreated, and nausea gripped Micah’s stomach. But as the worms reached the centre of the battlefield, the Wagramanian Hammer-ships engaged, living up to their name as they spun like tomahawks towards the less manoeuvrable Tazani battle-cruisers, weathered the defensive energy lozenges, and smashed headlong into and through the cruisers. Once a Tazani cruiser was damaged, Spikers descended on it like vultures, to finish the job.

Bronze ships that looked like giant squid entered the fray, and Shiva tagged them as Level Eight, Hushtarans. They began capturing the Wagramanian Hammers with long tentacles of antimatter, burning their way through the Hammers’ fuselage. Hellera deployed the Ossyrian Diamond ships. Micah didn’t actually know what weapons the Ossyrians possessed, only that they had once been feared across the galaxy.

The crystal diamonds approached the squids and split into two pyramids, then began cutting each Hushtaran vessel, slicing through its hull, twisting and turning, the two halves of the diamond working together, gouging and dismembering the ship. Soon the Hushtaran fleet was listless in space. Micah zoomed in to one that was in pieces, but detected no bodies. Shiva informed him that Hushtaran pilots merged organically with their ships; they were one and the same.

Micah knew that this battle, though terrible, was all a preamble to the real one, and at the moment a ploy by Hellera to get the Nchkani vessels to enjoin battle. But it wasn’t working. Instead, Qorall fired his famed spatial lightning bolts, criss-crossing the space with green plasma arcs of awesome power. Any Spikers, Diamonds and Hammers that didn’t make it quickly enough to the leeward side of the worms were vaporised, as were the remaining Tazani and Hushtaran ships, evidently collateral damage as far as Qorall was concerned. Micah prayed that Xenic was still alive.

Sandy must have been thinking along the same lines. “Xenic’s ship is still intact, Micah.”

He nodded a thank you, then turned to Vashta. “Sorry for the Ossyrian casualties, Vashta.”

“You have no idea, Micah, how proud we are to be here, fighting, after so many millennia of enforced pacifism. We are complete again.”

Micah stared at her awhile, and realised that whatever happened here today, whoever won, ten million years of ordered Grid Society was going to be torn down. He wondered if Hellera knew, and then decided that of course she knew, she was Level Nineteen.

The Rangers’ assortment of small scout ships swept in like fireflies, dodging the green lightning bolts with faster-than-eye movements, and for the first time Micah appreciated how physically robust the reptilian Rangers must be to survive such manoeuvres. Still the Nchkani hung back. Instead, hundreds of copper-coloured vessels shaped like corkscrews appeared out of nowhere, reminding Micah of old-style solenoids.

For the first time ever, he felt a jab from Shiva via his resident, and guessed it was her equivalent of a flinch. He interrogated, and Shiva replied: <unknown – this ship unseen before now>.

Micah paced the length of the screen, thinking. Unknown and some kind of stealth tech. It only made sense if Qorall had concealed them all this time, during nearly twenty years of war. The discipline behind his strategy was breath-taking.

“Are we out-manoeuvred, Micah?” Sandy asked.

He mentally flicked to the subspace view. The Spiders, Hohash and Shrell remained in position.

“Not yet,” he replied.

The corkscrews took up a network formation, a lattice barring the way through to Qorall. Inside each corkscrew, orange beams formed, ready to fire. Micah saw what was coming. But Hellera’s fleets remained in place. Why didn’t Hellera do something? The beams grew brighter, building up power. Still, no command to attack or retreat. It suddenly dawned on him that Hellera might be willing to let numerous ships be destroyed in order to let Qorall think he was winning; a feint, but at huge cost in lives. He had to do something, he wasn’t about to watch Xenic and countless others fried. Maybe he could prompt Hellera…

He dashed to Sandy’s station. “Give me fleet wide comms!”

“But Hellera –”

“Doesn’t care about collateral damage, Sandy. Do it now.”

She tapped feverishly. “Channel open, though Qorall will hear it too.”

As he’d hoped. “All vessels, those corkscrew ships are about to deluge the battlefield with fire.”

There was a sharp burst of comms that sounded like a chainsaw snagging on metal.

“What was that?” he asked.

Shiva answered. “Hellera ordered her fleets to fall back, except the Zlarasi and the Rangers.”

He heard an ice-cold female voice. “Do not do that again, Micah.”

But myriad ships retreated from the worms; not the Zlarasi, and he knew why. If they disconnected, the worms would be Qorall’s again.

He walked to the centre of the bridge as the corkscrews continued their advance. The light of a sun ignited inside each one, then flamed out either end like a giant double bladed nanospear. The solenoids began to rotate and twist, synchronised, a pattern designed to flail every millimetre of space.

He looked towards the fleets of ships allied to Hellera, many still in the kill-zone.

“They’re going to die,” he whispered, but then something happened he hadn’t anticipated. A new ship arrived out of nowhere. It looked like a stocky arrow, and he recognised from its rippling coloured shaft that it had to be a remnant of a Kalarash Crossbow ship: Jen. She launched toward the front in a looping manoeuvre, and swept up a hundred assorted ships inside her leeward shield, even as the light blades slammed into her, scorching her hull. Micah sat back in the command chair and gripped its arms, waiting for the ship’s shield to falter, but it held, and she escorted the ships to safety. He breathed out, and had an urge to punch the air.

“Sandy, contact –”

“I’m okay, Micah,” Jen said on intercom. “I managed to save some of our allies, but my ship is crippled. I’m out of the game.”

“Take them out of the system, and get to safety, Jen.”

“With all respect, Micah, get real, I’m staying till the end, but I’ll send the allies out of the sector.” She broke contact.

Sandy caught Micah’s eye. “She hasn’t changed.”

He laughed. “I don’t care, she saved them.” He turned back to the screen. “Shiva, would we –”

“No, Micah, we would not survive. We must wait until Hellera plays us.”

The entire space between the two sides was engulfed in energy, like a sprawling sun. Grey saccadic anti-matter flashes told him the worms were being systematically destroyed, no doubt taking most of the Zlarasi ships with them. Then the super-sun flamed out. Through blotchy eyes Micah counted half the Ranger ships still on course. There was no sign of the worms or any other ship except the Nchkani on Qorall’s side. Finally, the Level Sixteen black-and-white, feather-bladed ovoids began to edge forward, spreading out like predators: the Nchkani ships piloted by Q’Roth warriors, and in one case, Louise.

The Rangers closed ranks, briefly presenting a single target, before they burst apart, each one attacking a single Nchkani ship. At that exact same instant, the Tla Beth ships speared forward, heading straight for Qorall’s asteroid ship. It caught the Nchkani ships off-guard, but quickly half of them raced to intercept the Gyroscope ships. Micah realised the odds were two-to-one in Qorall’s favour.

For the first time, Micah truly faced the likelihood that Hellera was going to be defeated. He stood back from it all, imagining again the battlefield as a giant chessboard, Hellera and Shiva held back on one side, Qorall on the other, the middle of the board awash with ships and carnage. He realised Hellera could still cut and run, but decided there and then that whatever happened, Shiva was not going to desert her allies.

Micah didn’t know how long it lasted, maybe three minutes, maybe five, but he watched fifty duels play out, trying to guess what weapons were being used and what counter-measures were employed in response, while space shimmered and rocked, spilling sprays of raw energy into space, sometimes ending in a Nchkani vessel exploding, but more often a Ranger vessel turned incandescent before vanishing from sight, or a Tla Beth vessel shattered into a cloud of fragments that flared scarlet before fading to dust.

He checked with his resident, and with Shiva, and then pronounced what was staring them in the face. “We’re losing this.”

Sandy spoke quietly. “Are you thinking of –”

“We’re not leaving,” he said, “until we either win this or are destroyed.”

“That’s more like it,” she said.

“We’ll give Hellera a little more time.” But not much; soon it would be too late to have any effect. His left hand hovered near the thruster control panel.

Then one of the Nchkani ships began attacking its own kind, neutralising fifteen of them in a single coordinated fire-burst. The targeted ships had been well-chosen, too, saving Rangers about to be defeated, and breaking both the Nchkani attack and defence lines, freeing up Rangers and Tla Beth ships, who rallied to their colleagues’ defence. The tide of the battle turned. Micah could scarcely believe it. It must have been her. Louise had made a decisive move. Five of the Nchkani broke off from fighting the Rangers and circled Louise’s ship, determined to destroy her vessel, spraying it in blue fire. Micah found his hands hovering above the engine controls.

Sandy shouted from her console. “Don’t, Micah. Let them kill her.”

His outstretched fingers curled into fists, then he folded his arms.

The battle became a rout. Several Tla Beth slashed their way through the remaining Nchkani ships, until all of them were laid to waste or – like Louise’s – inert and drifting in greenspace. There were no more intermediaries.

The Tla Beth and Rangers re-grouped, then sped directly towards Qorall’s asteroid.

Micah felt what happened next, as Shiva and all other ships were savagely tugged toward the black hole. At this distance, Shiva and the others could resist, but he knew the Rangers and Tla Beth would find it harder given that they were already accelerating towards it. Qorall’s asteroid ship, inactive until now, began to glow green. The black hole was no longer pure black, like an unfathomable iris. Instead, its surface had texture, like a black-and-green sea of deep ocean swells. An enormous wave started from its circumference and swept toward the centre of the hole, until it collided with itself. A second later, Micah was knocked out of his chair as the entire ship lurched forward in space.

“What just happened?” He glanced over to Sandy, who was getting back to her feet; Vashta too.

“Ripples in space-time,” Shiva said, “of immense power, not normally seen except…”

Micah’s mind leapt ahead as his resident showed him the energy levels. Qorall was tapping into the most primal energetic event ever.

“A Big Bang. Shiva, the black hole, it’s a doorway to another universe, isn’t it, one that’s being born, or dying?”

“This is known as a never-event, Micah,” Shiva said, “because it must never be allowed to happen. It is of ultimate risk. No beings, neither Qorall nor Kalarash, can control such forces. He must be stopped.”

Micah did a full sensor sweep. At least twenty ships in greenspace had been crushed, flattened into wafer-thin disks. The Ranger ships and even the Tla Beth Gyroscopes had been blown back and scattered like flotsam as if struck by a tsunami.

Hellera’s Crossbow sprang towards Qorall’s asteroid-ship. Micah was out of his seat. At last!

His resident activated, and he saw that the Spider ships and Hohash lying in subspace around Qorall’s black hole were moving. Then they disappeared, and the subspace image vanished. He couldn’t believe it? Had they deserted Hellera? Where had they gone?

Another wave began on the circumference, and just afterwards, the rainbow-hued cigar-shaped Spider ships appeared there, dotted around the lip of the black hole.

He heard Hellera’s ice-cold voice again.

<I am leading the attack now. Evacuate all ships below Level Fifteen.>

He’d been hoping for such an instruction, it was down to the heavy-hitters now.

“Shiva, tell all the ships around us to get out of here. Transpace should work if they are heading out of the sector.” But he wondered why she’d called him, not a higher-ranking commander. Then he understood. Shiva was Level Fifteen, Micah and his crew were staying.

He watched the wave sweep inwards, growing in size. He wasn’t sure, but it looked bigger than the first one. On another screen he saw ships flare briefly and wink out of the sector. But the Tla Beth and Rangers were still inside Qorall’s greenspace; they could not escape. Hellera’s Crossbow reached the leading edge of the attack when the second gravitational tsunami struck. Micah thought he’d been hit by a hover car. Sandy had managed to anchor herself down, and Vashta had clamped her claws onto her console.

The sensor displays flashed erratically, some of the pictures distorted.

“Shiva?”

“I have sustained… damage... Micah. I can no longer control flight, I have handed over full manual control to you. We do… not have long. Lost… contact with Hellera.”

Micah got back to his seat. Hellera’s ship was stationary, firing a continuous red and white beam at Qorall’s asteroid. The few Tla Beth and Ranger ships that weren’t dead in space had joined her, belching forth a torrent of fire that looked like a waterfall in space, drowning Qorall’s vessel. But the next wave had already started. It was colossal this time, taking longer to build.

“Sandy, Vashta –”

“Whatever you’re going to do, Micah, just do it,” Sandy said. “We’re with you.”

He hit full thrust, and Shiva sprinted towards the titanic struggle between Hellera and Qorall. The wave was still building, grey froth boiling at its top, and then it started to move.

But something else was happening. Blue dots appeared around the black hole, well inside the event horizon, and began to expand, all in the same rotational direction, until a ring of sapphire surrounded the hole. Micah made an educated guess as to what was happening. The Spiders were opening up a rift into another space, the Hohash acting as amplifiers, the Shrell most probably stabilising the rift or preventing it widening too much. He’d heard of Quickspace, an anomaly that had occurred a few times every million years, and led to a few unlucky ships disappearing out of Transpace, never to be seen again. That had to be Hellera’s game plan: not to destroy Qorall – he reckoned she couldn’t – but to send him elsewhere.

As Micah sped towards the asteroid, he kept one eye on the wave. It was nearing the centre, but now thin blue lines stretched forward from the edge of the hole, spiralling inwards. The wave foamed, then lost cohesion as the black and green sea suddenly caved in, and a sapphire vortex opened up, spanning the entire width of where the black hole had been. Rainbow-sheened arcs reached upwards towards Qorall’s asteroid ship and looped over it, criss-crossing each other in a grid. Not a grid, Micah thought: a web.

Qorall fought back, streams of energy whipping against Hellera’s Crossbow and the Tla Beth ships, two of which exploded in bright flashes and were gone. Milky tendrils grew from the asteroid and reached away from the vortex, hooking onto Hellera’s ship. Neither her firepower not the Tla Beth or Rangers had any effect on the tendrils. Slowly, Qorall’s asteroid ship reeled Hellera towards him.

Micah brought Shiva’s still-active weapons to full readiness, particularly the forward shear system – effectively a giant nanoblade – and accelerated to maximum speed. Shiva was a scythe-ship, after all; time for her to live up to her name. Klaxons sounded, warning of imminent collision.

“Sandy, sorry it has to end this way,” he shouted.

“I’m not,” she replied.

Shiva dove down beneath Hellera’s ship and headed straight for the tendrils. Micah reaped tendril after tendril while Vashta fired at Qorall, and tried to neutralize his weapons fire on them. Micah kept one eye on the main battle display; Qorall’s asteroid was still resisting the tug of the vortex and the Spider net. Micah ploughed on through the last line of tendrils even as Shiva was rocked back and forth by enemy fire.

“It’s Hellera,” Sandy shouted.

<Micah, prepare to be whisked to my ship as soon as you have cut the last tendril.>

He stared at the battle display again, and made up his mind. He turned to Sandy and shouted his reply to Hellera.

“Take these two now, Qorall needs a little distraction.”

Sandy’s eyes flared, and she was about to voice complaint but then she and Vashta vanished. He activated tactical at his console, and slewed Shiva around, banking briefly before aiming her straight at the asteroid.

“See you in hell, Qorall,” he said, and hit full thrust.

The screen blanked as Qorall switched his main beams onto Shiva, and all Micah saw was brilliant white. He heard a metallic scream like a battle cry, as his resident told him the front hull sections had almost boiled away. He squinted as the asteroid’s surface raced towards him, and then Shiva broke clean through its outer crust. Kat had once told him Qorall’s asteroid was hollow, and now he saw it with his own eyes. Instinctively he pulled Shiva up from its dive straight towards what looked like a boiling lava sea. Sure enough, above him was a gaping hole, showing blackness criss-crossed with deep blue lines. The inner surface of the protective shell surrounding Qorall’s ship was grey rock, with patches of orange where Hellera and the remainder of the fleet were still firing at it.

He skimmed Shiva just above the surface of the lava sea, and headed towards a land region of steaming boulders. Random fire tornadoes coiled upwards from the sea, and it took all Micah’s concentration to dodge them. The tactical display warned that something was following him, and gaining, though he couldn’t see anything. He accelerated again. Then he saw what he’d been looking for, in the distance. It fit Kat’s description of Qorall: a colossal skeletal structure, like femur bones joined together into the rough shape of a cube, each strut or bone partly covered by flesh, but no evident head or torso. It clumped along slowly, and as he sped towards it, a slit formed on the closest upper bone, and a mouth opened. Micah fired at it with everything he had.

A tactical alarm whined, and Micah knew that whatever was chasing him was about to make contact, but he held his course.

Shiva came back on-line. <Thank you, Micah.>

He didn’t understand but without warning his command chair shot upwards and backwards out of the ship. He felt searing heat as Shiva simultaneously struck Qorall and was blown to smithereens by his defences.

The chair he was in careened to the side, and rocketed towards a narrow gulley between two oversized boulders. He bumped, bounced, and skidded to a landing, ending up thrown out of the chair, rolling onto the rocky floor before coming to a halt. He tried to get up, as every surface was red hot, but his left arm refused to work, and he saw a bone protruding through bloody flesh on his forearm. Just as he was wondering why it didn’t hurt, searing pain burst through with a vengeance. He staggered through scalding steam that rose from cracks in the rocks and smelled strongly of sulphur, making his eyes water, and managed to make it to the remains of the chair, whose fabric had already started to smoulder. He touched his face and found blood there from a gash in his forehead. He could just see Qorall moving off in another direction, one of his upper bones fractured where Shiva had struck home. No doubt Qorall was more concerned with Hellera and the vortex. Micah would not even register on the nuisance scale now that Shiva was gone, and would soon be dead in any case. He clutched his left elbow, trying to find a position that minimised the pain.

A sound like thunder made Micah look up to the ceiling. Large metallic flakes, a light blue colour, stuck to the asteroid’s shell, triggering cracks and fissures in Qorall’s primary defence. The first flake broke through, and fell until it plunged into the lava sea, fizzing and steaming before disappearing below the surface. Another broke through, then another. Energy beams flooded through the resultant holes in Qorall’s protective shell, one of them vaporising a boulder not far from Micah’s position. Micah could barely see, but a turquoise metal fragment sailed downwards and crashed into the landscape not far from him. Before it settled, Micah saw part of a symbol on one side: an ivory ankh. Kalaran’s ship.

A roar exploded all around him, the heat intensifying, and Micah covered his face with his right hand as his skin began to blister. Something nudged him, almost knocked him off the chair, a section of which had just ignited. He turned and saw a Spider, and behind it one of the Spider ships, the hatch open. Micah ran, the soles of his feet burning with each step, and threw himself into its dark interior, trying to protect his left arm as much as possible. The hatch sealed behind him, and with a shock he realised the Spider was still outside; there was only room for one. The last thing he saw was the Spider climbing a boulder, its fur aflame, possibly to get a better vantage point of the battle as it died. Then Micah decided it was probably helping Hellera target Qorall.

The small ship lifted off the ground and oriented itself towards one of the holes in the roof and shot upwards. Micah hurt all over, but as he panted, his flesh stinging, hands and forearms covered in blisters, and his scalp singed, the ship spun around so he could watch Qorall’s crumbling asteroid descend into the sapphire vortex, dragged down by the Spiders’ net. Fragments from Kalaran’s ship – they must have been there all along, waiting just beneath the event horizon of the black hole where even Qorall couldn’t see them – continued to attack Qorall’s asteroid-ship. Micah caught one last glimpse of Qorall himself descending into the lava sea. A few seconds later the entire landscape, and what was left of the roof, boiled off into space in a series of startling flashes that hurt his retinas, leaving behind nothing but a black pearl, which Micah reckoned to be the core of Qorall’s ship. It looked impregnable.

Hellera stopped firing.

The remnants from Kalaran’s ship had been vaporised, but the Spiders’ blue net was still intact. The black pearl sank into the vortex, foundering in Quickspace. It was like watching a setting sun, one Micah hoped would never, ever rise again. At last it was gone, and the vortex snapped closed, leaving behind a dozen Spider ships and Hohash. The greenspace had vanished. Stars re-appeared, and his ship turned and headed towards Hellera’s burned and battered Crossbow.

He sat with Sandy and Vashta. Sandy had tried to give him a hug when she first saw he was alive, inflicting great physical pain, and had then berated him for having her whisked off the ship. Vashta had silenced her by simply saying, “Thank you.” Vashta had injected him with something, so he felt no pain whatsoever, and said she would patch him up later. She’d also explained how Qorall, in a last fit of rage, had tried to send trigger signals to a hundred and fifty homeworlds throughout the galaxy, all booby-trapped with planet-breakers. The Hohash had intercepted and neutralised all the carrier waves, saving trillions of lives.

The avatar of Hellera appeared. He had to admit she’d played everything flawlessly.

But she hadn’t been alone, at least not at first. “Kalaran?” he asked.

Her ice cold voice answered, for the first time tinged with sadness. “This was his plan all along. We knew we could not destroy Qorall’s ship. But we could send it to another universe, a very short-lived one.”

Micah pondered: Qorall had planned his conquest for millions of years, but then so too had Kalaran, with the aid of the Spiders, all the time waiting till the last moment. Micah found he had to pose the question…

“Is Kalaran really gone?”

Hellera stared into the distance. “Yes. And perhaps, no. He imbued the Spider race with traces of his consciousness. He believed they could fast-track their development, surpassing even us and reaching Level Twenty within a million years. When they reach Level Nineteen, the embers of his consciousness may coalesce, and his mind will live again.”

“He’ll come back for you.”

Hellera stared at Micah with all-grey eyes. “You humans truly embody pathos: it is your defining characteristic. Though I begin to see why Kalaran tolerated you.”

Micah countered: “You took a risk when you whisked Sandy and Vashta onto your ship. Any such transport drains significant energy from your ship. I’m surprised you did it. It wasn’t tactically sound.”

“You humans infected Kalaran’s mind with compassion. I told him so. But at the end, I knew what he would have done. It seems I am not immune either. I left Blake’s template running, and it said ‘We don’t leave people behind.’ Besides, your suicide run towards Qorall distracted him – made him blink – at a crucial moment. Kalarash always reward merit.”

“Then, I have something else to ask. The Nchkani ships, are they all –”

“The Rangers have destroyed all the surviving ships, except the one that rebelled.”

Sandy folded her arms.

Micah pressed. “The one called Louise, she –”

“I made a deal with her, Micah. Her rebellion was part of the plan.”

“She has committed atrocities –”

“I am aware. But the deal stands. Kalarash do not break their word, either. You will not harm her. You may ask something else, but not this. I will send you a Hohash. You have a week to decide. After that I am leaving this galaxy. Louise and all her Alicians are coming with me. I will find them a new home, in a distant part of the universe.”

It sounded final, and non-negotiable, but Micah wouldn’t let it go.

“I’d like a word with her first.”

Micah found himself standing on an endless sandy beach under a stark sun, with nothing present but a Hohash, and Louise.

“Before you get any ideas, we’re not really here,” she said. “If we were, you’d be dead by now.”

He studied her. She looked weary, older. “Why did you change sides?”

“Don’t get your moral hopes up, Micah. It was survival, plain and simple. After Qorall’s tactics on Savange, I realised that even if we helped him win, afterwards we’d be squashed or abandoned, and if he lost…”

“If you ever come back –”

She laughed. “You share humanity’s biggest flaw, Micah: you think you’re more important than you actually are. I have no intention of ever returning, and Hellera is sending us far away across the universe. Given relativistic travel, even if we did return one day, it would be thousands of years in your future, possibly millions.”

He hadn’t thought of that, but it was true. “Be kind to Ash and Sonja,” he said.

“I plan to.”

Micah realised she was sincere. He recalled her trying to save Alician children during the bombardment of Savange. “Something has changed in you, Louise.”

She shrugged. “Not that much. For example, I’ll live another five hundred years, maybe longer, and I’m happy to know that I’ll still be young when you’re dying of old age.”

Micah countered. “And I’m happy to know that if you or any other Alicians ever come back we’ll be far more advanced than you by the time you arrive.”

“Unlikely.” She paused. “You’ve changed, too, Micah. It suits you.”

There was nothing more to say. Their eyes met once, and then he was back with Sandy and Vashta.

“She won’t bother us again,” he said.

After an hour, a door slid open and a bruised but grinning Ukrull arrived, a Hohash at his side. There was another Ranger with him, Micah reckoned a female.

“I take you home,” he growled. “This is Manota,” he added. “She’s coming too.”

As they boarded his cramped ship, Sandy, who had said nothing since Hellera’s last words and Micah’s encounter with Louise, finally spoke to him.

“Do you know what you will ask of Hellera?”

Micah nodded.

She sat next to him, laid her head on his shoulder, and fell asleep.

Micah stayed awake as long as he could, but exhaustion crashed over him, and he slipped into a dream of what he was going to ask for.

CHAPTER 31

Diaspora

Micah and Petra watched the Youngblood sparring match, as they sat in the top row of one of the four wooden pavilions erected in front of the Monofaith church, each stand packed with onlookers for the tournament. The sun beat down on everyone present, the cracked sky finally dismantled by the Shrell. This was the last stage of the tournament, the other trials including a simulated space battle, won convincingly by a single individual. Micah hadn’t been surprised. This last stage, though, was about martial abilities, in honour of Ramires.

The four white stands encircled a crude arena of sand, where a row of young men – some Youngbloods, some Mannekhi – waited in line to try and beat the new champion. Xenic was loudly berating two of his warriors who’d just been defeated; Micah thought Xenic looked perfectly at home.

Petra’s eyes lingered on the undefeated recent arrival. “He’s even less like Gabriel than the one before,” she said.

“Best Hellera could do,” Micah answered. “She was reluctant to even try it a second time, something about breaking a Kalarash rule, though she wouldn’t explain why.”

“It’s alright, I’ll take it – I mean him.” She then lowered her voice so much that Micah wasn’t sure he was meant to hear. “If he’ll take me.”

He touched her hand. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Petra.”

She turned to him, eyes narrowed. “You didn’t ask Hellera to… to make him…?”

“What? No, of course not. I’m not even sure she could...”

Petra stared at him a long moment, then returned her gaze to the match. Micah hoped she couldn’t see the relief on his face. Hellera had not been impressed by the suggestion, but had agreed to ‘tip the scales a fraction’. In Micah’s mind Petra had suffered too much already; losing a third Gabriel would wreck her.

Another Youngblood hit the deck, cheers rising, with many people on their feet cheering at the prowess of the clone. Hellera had said he was Level Six. Micah hadn’t told Petra that either, but she’d figure it out soon enough. It was necessary for mankind’s evolution, although it would take at least a thousand years for the rest of humanity to catch up. If there was one thing he’d learned from the Kalarash, it was the value of thinking long term.

As the energetic applause died down following a young Mannekhi’s defeat in the latest bout, Petra regained her Presidential tone. “So, she granted you three wishes in the end. How exactly did you manage that?”

Micah laughed. “Ukrull helped, actually, as did Vashta, given what I asked first.”

“How is that going, by the way?”

“The few Rangers who agreed to stay are fast-tracking the Ossyrians’ augmentation to Level Nine. It will take a few centuries, but they’ve already started to take up their new role as galactic peace-keepers. They’re going to try and undo what the Tla Beth did to the Q’Roth tribes, too, those who survived.”

Petra gave him a look. “Heavily armed doctors; you have a strong sense of irony, Uncle.”

She hadn’t called him that in a while. He squeezed her hand. Gazing across to the pavilion opposite, he spotted Kat and Antonia sitting close together, talking, ignoring the match, ensconced in each other’s company as if sitting alone in a park.

“Will the other higher races accept it?” Petra asked.

“The Grid hierarchy is finished. Races will advance at their natural speed, no longer held back, locked into intelligence Levels, and the Ossyrians are going to help that process. In any case, most species are busy licking their wounds and re-building; several are heading off with Hellera, certainly the Tla Beth, what’s left of them.”

“With Louise and the Alicians.”

Micah stared at the latest bout, five Youngbloods circling the new Gabriel.

“And Ash and Sonja,” he said. He forced himself to be more upbeat. “Hellera will deposit them in a distant galaxy to fend for themselves. Then she’ll go exploring, maybe force a reunion of the remaining Kalarash.”

“With Jen.”

He nodded. He’d really thought Jen would stay, but she’d said she wanted to remain with the Kalarash, that Dimitri would have wanted her to explore the universe. And the latest Gabriel didn’t really know her. Micah never thought he’d miss Jen. “Hellera accepted in an instant; after all, Jen had been with Kalaran for quite a while.”

“Won’t she miss human contact?”

Micah arched his eyebrows.

“Okay, silly question. Maybe she’ll push Louise into that mercury lake at the bottom of Hellera’s ship.”

Micah grinned.

Petra grew serious. “So, Micah, she gave you a new version of Gabriel, and has left the Ossyrians in charge. How long before your third wish?”

Micah drew in a long breath. “There’s no fast-tracking that one, I’m afraid. We won’t see it, Petra, nor your grand-kids.”

Another cheer erupted from the crowd, who began chanting Gabriel’s name. He thought he detected Petra blush. She cleared her throat.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Uncle. Anyway, that reminds me. What’s the deal with you and Sandy?”

“There is no deal,” he said.

She nudged his elbow. “Ask her.”

He gave Petra a look. “And what do I ask, exactly? She’s avoided me since we got back.”

Petra laughed. “Still hopeless in that domain, I see.”

He shrugged. “I aim for consistency.” But his eyes searched the crowd, and he found Sandy, down on the arena floor. She handed a thin rod to Gabriel, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Sandy then turned and glanced surreptitiously in Micah’s direction; he thought he detected a smile.

Micah stood up. “I think I’ll go and congratulate him, too.”

“Sure,” Petra said. “What happened to consistency, though?”

Micah didn’t reply, and took the steps down to the arena two at a time.

EPILOGUE

Anca and Jolan stared down through the skyship’s portal to the planet’s surface below. The terraformers had finally returned to orbit a few weeks earlier, after two centuries of painstaking work. Now it was up to the planet.

A break in the cloud layer allowed them to see. “There,” Anca said, feeling a stab of excitement as she pointed to a slash of lush green in the ruddy landscape, a small herd of brown quadrupeds grazing on a hillside. “It’s taking.”

“I admit I had my doubts,” Jolan said.

“It means we are only days away.” She resisted taking Jolan’s hand. Their relationship had not yet been announced, and now was not the time. “We’ve dreamed this dream for so long.”

He nodded. “Your great-great-grandfather would have been proud.”

She glanced at her lover, the leader of the Youngbloods, his all-blue eyes signalling his mixed human-Mannekhi heritage. But this was an official trip, and they had not been able to sleep with each other for a week. She mind-de-activated the cams for a moment, took his hand and kissed it, keeping eye contact. Then she let go, and re-activated the cams. She was President, after all.

Jolan asked the question publicly, the one they had debated privately in her bed chamber before the journey.

“How many will move here?”

“Not all, not at first.” Even she would miss Esperia, though she longed to set foot on the virgin planet below.

“Do we name it Earth, as it was before?”

She shook her head. “No. The time-seal on the file opened this morning.” This part had not been choreographed; nobody had known what Micah had decided two centuries ago, the name for his famed third wish. Anca knew the revelation had to be authentic, and so had not told Jolan. Everyone on the ship, back home, and in the Colonies was watching.

Jolan was clearly surprised, perhaps a little hurt, but if so he masked it well, and played his role. “What name did he propose?”

She was about to speak when the gravity of it all swept over her, and Anca found she had to suppress her emotions more than usual. She paused, not for dramatic effect, but rather she wondered if Micah had been right to give it this name. But it had been his legacy. And he had added in the file something she didn’t quite understand, which she would have to check with the historian later: third time lucky.

She allowed the cams access to her emotional state, so those watching could feel what she felt, if they so wished; it was part of her duty, and might persuade more to come here. She waved a hand, and the cams captured the view through the portal, down through thinning clouds, to the sparkling blue waters underneath. So odd to see ocean rollers above ground, glittering in the sunlight, unlike Esperia’s grey underground seas. Remote sense-cams nearer the surface relayed the sight, sound and smell of waves crashing onto the shore, followed by the hiss of surf retracting over pebbles, mixed with the salty tang of seawater. Somewhere out of view a bird called in a high-pitched shriek.

To hell with decorum. Anca reached out her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, Jolan clasped his fingers in hers, and she knew it was the right name for the planet, and spoke it aloud for all to hear.

“Eden.”

About the Author

Barry Kirwan was born in Farnborough, England, home to the fast-jet Red Arrows. He did a doctorate in Human Reliability Assessment, which concerns predicting future behavior using psychological techniques and data. He has worked on the safety of nuclear power plants, offshore oil and gas platforms, and more recently aviation, and publishes in the safety arena. He now lives in Paris and is working on a new scifi series, When the Children Come, which he hopes to see released later in 2019. He also writes crime thrillers under the pen name J F Kirwan, but that’s another story…

(www.barrykirwan.com)

(www.jfkirwan.com)

Eden’s Aliens, Artefacts and Ships

Achillia – personal guard of the Alician Supreme Leader.

Alicians – neo-human race genetically altered by the Q’Roth to increase intelligence, resilience and longevity. Alicians are named after Alessia, their founder, who brokered a deal with the Q’Roth in 1053 AD to prepare humanity for culling, and to eradicate Earth-based nuclear and nano-based weaponry, in exchange for genetic advancement and patronage. Alicians are Level Five, and are led by Sister Esma. Louise is an Alician renegade imbued with too much Q’Roth DNA.

Anxorians – Level Sixteen race, originally patrons of the Nchkani, who were annihilated in a rebellion fifty thousand years ago by the Tla Beth and the Q’Roth, for reasons that remain unclear. The best hypothesis relates to their military prowess, which possibly began to threaten the Tla Beth. The Nchkani took their place.

Dark Worms – leviathan-like creatures that live in the space between galaxies, feeding off both dark and normal energy sources. They are very difficult to kill. Normally they are kept outside by the Galactic Barrier, which was breached by Qorall’s forces.

Esperantia –the principal human town on Esperia, population circa 20,000.

Esperia – formerly Ourshiwann – the Spider planet serving as mankind’s home after the fall of Earth and Eden, with only two major cities: human-occupied Esperantia, and Spider-occupied Shimsha.

Finchikta – Level Nine bird-like creatures who administrate judicial affairs for the Tla Beth, e.g. during the trial of humanity in 2063.

Genners – following the trial of humanity, prosecuted by the Alicians and the Q’Roth, mankind was quarantined on Esperia for its own protection and all children genetically upgraded to Level Four (with Level Five potential) by the Ossyrians. ‘Genners’ surpass their parents intellectually by the age of twelve.

Grid – ring-shaped ultra-rapid transport hub that runs around the inner rim of the galaxy, for ease of commerce. Grid Society: established by the Kalarash ten million years ago, based on a scale of levels of intelligence running from one to nineteen, with Kalarash at the top. Mankind initially graded Level Three.

Hohash – intelligent artefacts resembling upright oval mirrors, designed by the Kalarash, known as omnipaths due to their powerful perception, communication and recording abilities. Their true function is unknown.

Hushtarans – Level Eight race with squid-like ships that use anti-matter cables similar to Q’Roth Crucible ships.

Jannahi Galaxy – original home galaxy of the Kalarash; destroyed during the first war with Qorall.

Kalarash – Level Nineteen beings originally believed to have left our galaxy. Only seven remain in the universe. Little is known about them. They are called Progenitors by many Grid species, as the Kalarash fostered civilisation in the galaxy, based on a strictly hierarchical intelligence-ranking system. The Kalarash never leave their Crossbow ships.

Korakkara – volcanic Q’Roth homeworld, partly destroyed by an enemy race, largely uninhabited except for the High Queen and her personal guard.

Mannekhi – Level Six human-looking alien race except for their all-black eyes. They sided with Qorall in the ongoing galactic war, due to millennia of oppression by the Tazani under Grid rule. Mannekhi use Spiker ships for war, as well as Javelin Class Dropships for incursions.

Nchkani – Level Sixteen warrior race infamous for their brutality in war and insurrections, especially with their ships known as Shredders, and tank-like Crabs for ground assault.

Nganks – full name Ngankfushtora – squid-like Level Twelve cosmetic surgeons whose services are usually reserved for higher-level species. Their hospital ships are known colloquially as Lozenges, and smaller triage vessels are known as Egg ships, both due to their shape.

Node – an implant developed in 2050, shortly before WWIII, that allowed direct interaction with the web and all social media. Banned due to psychotic and fatal accidents. Kat and Jen each have one. They allow direct communication with the Hohash.

Orb – deep space vessel with gravity-based and organic viral weaponry, mode of propulsion unknown; new weapon unleashed by Qorall.

Ossyrians – dog-like Level Eight medical race, charged as humanity’s custodians after the trial, their eighteen-year long stay on Esperia led by Chahat-Me. Their hospital ships are known as Pyramid ships. Such ships visited Egypt five thousand years ago. Rapier ships are used for short in-system transit.

Ourshiwann – Spider name for the planet Esperia.

Qorall [kwo-rahl] – ancient enemy of the Kalarash, and invader of our galaxy. His ship is embedded inside an artificial asteroid the sits just above the event horizon of a black hole. His weapons include ‘greenspace’, which changes the nature of local space, preventing Transpace conduits from opening, and using the black hole to trigger gravitic shock waves.

Q’Roth [kyu-roth] – Level Six nomadic warrior race who culled Earth as part of the maturation process for its hatchlings, in a deal with the Alicians. Currently engaged as soldiers trying to stop the progress of Qorall’s forces across the galaxy. The Q’Roth are the formal Patrons of the Alicians. Q’Roth have a number of warships from the Mega Class Battlestar and Crucible warships, to Mesa Class Destroyers, inter-stellar Marauders and Hunters, down to the short-haul Raptor.

Quickspace – very rare spatial phenomenon (the spatial equivalent of quicksand) where the fabric of space breaks down due to external factors. Ships and beings caught in Quickspace founder and slip into other spatial realms, usually destroyed by spatial riptides, and are never seen again.

Rangers – Level Fifteen taciturn reptilian creatures working for the Tla Beth.  The Ranger Shatrall crash-landed in Tibet in the early part of the twelfth century and realized the Q’Roth had targeted humanity for culling. He was unsure the Level Three assessment of humanity was correct, and so unofficially warned a local warrior tribe who became the Alicians’ principal adversary, the Sentinels.

Resident – an internal alien-designed symbiote implanted in Micah’s head prior to the Trial of humanity, which acts as a semi-intelligent Level Five translator, with various additional survival-based functions.

Savange – new home planet of the Alicians, ruled by Sister Esma.

Scintarelli – legendary Level Twelve shipbuilders, whose shipyards dwell in gas giants. Their star-ship designs include the interstellar Starpiercer, the Scythe warship, and the one-man Dart.

Sclarese [skla-ray-zee] Nova Stormers – Level Nine semi-intelligent stealth missiles based on energy amplification technology, aimed at turning stars nova. Built by the Sclarese.

Sentinels – blood enemies of the Alicians, involved in a silent war over a period of nine centuries. Last remaining Sentinel alive is Ramires. Sentinels were famous for their nanoswords, able to slice through a Q’Roth warrior’s armoured flesh.

Shimsha – home of the Spiders on Esperia.

Shiva – a Level Twelve Scintarelli Scythe-ship (a Cutlass Class warship) upgraded by Hellera to Level Fifteen. Shiva is a mind-ship, completely autonomous with its own personality.

Shrell – Level Nine matriarchal ray-like creatures who live in deep space, guardians and ‘gardeners’ of the space-environment, invisible to most other species as they dwell in Transpace. As well as protecting and fixing spatial tears, they can also poison space. They work for the Tla Beth.

Spiders – Level Four race harvested by the Q’Roth one thousand years prior to the culling on Earth. Homeworld called Ourshiwann, renamed Esperia. Visually-oriented race, otherwise deaf and mute. They live in Shimsha, near Esperantia, humanity’s last city.

Steaders – the ‘non-genned’ human population on Esperia, so-called because of the preponderance of farms and homesteads surrounding Esperantia.

Tazani – Level Seven patrons of the Mannekhi. Their battle-cruisers fire energy packets capable of destroying Mannekhi Spikers.

Tla Beth – Level Seventeen energy creatures, rulers of the Grid in the absence of the Kalarash. Their homeworld is located inside a supernova. Their small but powerful ships are called Gyroscopes. Their famed Mega Class battleships were called Grazers, believed to be defunct.

Transpace – a form of hyperspace allowing instantaneous travel across light years without relativistic effects. Transpace, however, does not use wormholes, which do not allow organic transport and can cause rips in subspace.

Transpar – Blake’s pilot Zack was transformed by the Tla Beth into a glass-like transparent living witness, unable to lie, and devoid (mostly) of his original personality, as part of the judicial procedure during the trial of mankind.

Wagramanians – Level Seven forest-dwelling tripeds famed for art, but also employed by the Tla Beth as shock troops during times of inter-stellar war, in their famed Hammer ships.

Whisking – short-range teleportation; requires vast amounts of energy, and only Level Fifteen ships and above can do it. Most ships, even at Level Fifteen and above, do not have the capability, and it is used in emergencies only, except by the Kalarash.

Xera – Level Eighteen Machine race developed by the Tla Beth, who had to be put down due to their war two million years earlier against ‘organics’. Their City ships were feared by an entire galaxy until they were neutralised in the battle at the edge of the galaxy in a place later named Hell’s End.

Zlarasi – Level Six aqua-farmers living in the oceans on Alagara. They use two ships: Conch ships (mass drivers) and Diamond warships (anti-matter core and weaponry).