Judas Unchained

CHAPTER TEN

The assembly platform brought back memories of the Second Chance being constructed above Anshun. To Nigel that whole period seemed like centuries ago now, a time when life was a great deal quieter and more leisurely. Giselle Swinsol and Nigel’s own son, Otis, were leading him through the platform’s gridwork maze inside a huge cylinder of malmetal, where the Speedwell was under construction. The Dynasty’s colony ship was much bigger than the Second Chance, a lengthy cluster of spherical hull sections arranged along a central spine. So far, Nigel had authorized eleven of the vast ships, with initial component acquisition consent for another four. In theory, just one ship could carry enough equipment and genetic material to establish a successful high-technology human society from scratch. But Nigel had wanted to begin with more than the basics, and his Dynasty was the largest in the Commonwealth. A fleet would make absolutely sure any new human civilization they founded would succeed. Now, though, he wasn’t sure if that second batch would ever be built. Like everyone else, he’d expected the navy warships to have some success against Hell’s Gateway. The moment when the navy detector network saw the Prime wormholes come back to the Lost23 had come as a savage surprise to him. He really hadn’t been prepared for a defeat of that magnitude.

“We’ve commissioned four now,” Otis was saying. “The Aeolus and the Saumarez should be ready for their preliminary trials in the next ten days.”

“Don’t quote me, but we might not have ten days,” Nigel said. “Giselle, I want you to review our emergency protocols for evacuating as much of the Dynasty as possible onto the lifeboats during an invasion. Coordinate with Campbell. We’ll need to establish hardened wormhole connections to our parties. The exploratory division wormholes will be our principal method, but we’ll need backup procedures ready.”

“Got it.” Her elegant face was slightly puffed in freefall, but she still managed a worried expression. “How likely is that?”

Nigel halted his steady drift by grabbing a carbon strut at the base of a high-mass manipulator. He was looking out at the Speedwell’s drive section, a mushroom hemisphere at the front of the starship with fluted edges that curved backward like a protective umbrella over the forward sphere sections. The outer skin was a smooth blue-green boronsteel, with a sheen that gave it the overall appearance of a beetle’s carapace.

Most of the platform’s robotic systems were folded back into the cylindrical gridwork that encased the vast starship. All of the prefabricated sections from Cressat had been locked into place; the few remaining areas of activity were involved with integrating the spheres to the ship’s power and environmental circuits.

“Only the Primes know,” he said. “But after our failure at Hell’s Gateway I don’t think it’ll be long before they respond.”

“They don’t know where this world is,” Otis said. “They don’t even know it exists; it isn’t on any database in the Commonwealth. Hell, when it comes down to it, Cressat would be tough to find. That gives us a breathing space.”

“I don’t want to evacuate,” Nigel said. “Using this fleet still remains the last option as far as I’m concerned. As of now, I’m prepared to use our weapon to defend the Commonwealth. That’s what I’m here to tell you.”

Otis gave him a tight smile. “Are we using the frigates to launch them?”

“Yes, son, you get to fly combat missions.”

“Thank Christ for that. I thought I was going to wind up sitting this out.”

“Don’t be so gung ho about this. I’m trying to avoid bloodshed.”

“Dad, you’re going to genocide them.”

Nigel closed his eyes. These days he often found himself wishing he believed in God, any god, just some omnipotent entity who’d listen sympathetically to the odd prayer. “I know.”

“The frigates aren’t even approaching readiness,” Giselle said. “And our weapon hasn’t been tested. We’ve only just completed component fabrication.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Nigel said, glad of a solid, practical problem to focus on. “We’re going to have to accelerate our schedule.”

“If you say so, but I don’t see how.”

“Show me what we’ve got so far.”

Frigate assembly bay one was a separate malmetal chamber affixed to the side of the main platform like a small black metal barnacle. Nigel drifted into it through a narrow interlink tube whose bands of electromuscle pulled him along with the ease of a ski lift. His first impression was that he’d emerged into the engine room of some colossal nineteenth-century steamship. It was hot and loud, a metallic clanking reverberating continually through air that was heavy with the smell of burning plastic. Big gantry arms swished across the few open spaces like ancient engine pistons. Smaller robotic manipulators rolled along their tracks, darting out with serpentine agility to peck at some chunk of compact machinery. Circular scarlet hologram signs were flashing everywhere Nigel looked, warning people away from the complex moving parts. At the center of the mechanical commotion the frigate Charybdis was a dark mass of densely packed components. Eventually, it would be a flattened ellipsoid, fifty meters long, encased by an active-stealth composite; but at this point the hull hadn’t been fitted.

“How near are we to completion?” Nigel asked.

“Several days,” Giselle said. “Flight readiness comes quite a while after that.”

“We can’t afford that kind of delay, not now,” Nigel said. He twisted his cuff off a fuseto patch, and drifted in for a closer look. “Where are we with the other three frigate assembly bays?”

“Not as advanced as this one. We haven’t even begun construction in them yet. We were waiting until the bugs are sorted out in number one. Once we’re up and running with all four we’ll be building a frigate every three days.”

Nigel gripped the base of a manipulator track next to one of the holographic circles, peering through the perpetual motion lattice of cybernetics. He could just see the smooth bulge of the crew cabin a third of the way down the naked frigate. Over twenty robotic systems were busy fitting additional elements or connecting up tubes and cables to the ribbed pressure module.

“Hey, you!” a man’s voice yelled. “Are you blind? Stay the hell back from the warning signs.” Mark Vernon slid through one of the scarlet circles five meters away from Nigel as if he were emerging from a pool of red fluid. “It’s goddamn dangerous in here; we haven’t got any of the usual safety cutoffs installed.”

“Ah,” Nigel said. “Thank you for telling me.”

At his side, Giselle was glowering at Mark.

Mark blinked, suddenly recognizing who he was shouting at. “Oh. Right. Er, hi, sir. Giselle.”

Nigel watched the man’s face redden, but there was no apology. He rather respected that; Mark was clearly the boss in this arena. Then his e-butler flipped up Mark’s file, complete with interesting cross-reference. Goddamn! Is there anything in this universe that doesn’t connect back to Mellanie?

“Mark Vernon,” Giselle said in a half growl. “Our assembly bay chief.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mark,” Nigel said.

“Yeah,” Mark said grumpily. “You really have to be careful in here, sir. I wasn’t joking.”

“I understand. So you’re the competent man around here?”

Mark tried to shrug, forgetting he was in freefall. He tightened his grip on an alulithium strut to stop his feet from swinging around. “It’s a hell of a challenge integrating everything in the bay. I enjoy it.”

“Then I apologize, because I’m about to make your life miserable.”

“Er, how?” Mark flicked his gaze to Giselle, who was looking equally perturbed.

“I need a functional frigate in the Wessex system within the next thirty hours.”

Mark gave him a wild smile. “No way. I’m sorry. It’s just not possible.” A hand waved limply toward the exposed shape of the Charybdis. “This is the first one we’ve attempted to build, and we’re encountering a problem every ten minutes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they’re superb ships. And once me and the team finalize the assembly sequence then we can fast-track as many as you want, but we’re not there yet. Not by a long way.”

Nigel smiled back uncompromisingly. “Disconnect this assembly bay from the platform. Attach it to one of the completed lifeboat starships, and continue working on the Charybdis while you’re flown to Wessex.”

“Huh?” Even without gravity, Mark’s jaw dropped open in astonishment.

“Is there any technical reason why that cannot be done? Any at all?”

“Er, well, I hadn’t really thought about it. Suppose not. No.”

“Good. I want it attached and ready to leave in one hour. Take whoever you need with you, but get the Charybdis flight-ready.”

“You want me to go with it?”

“You’re the expert.”

“Umm. Right. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Er, can I ask why you want a frigate at Wessex?”

“Because I’m sure that star is going to be right up at the top of the Primes’ list of targets when they invade.”

“Uh huh. I see.”

“Don’t be modest, Mark; you did a terrific job helping people back in Randtown. I’m proud you’re one of my descendents. I know you won’t let us down.” Nigel signaled to Giselle and Otis, then pushed off from the manipulator track and headed back for the interlink tube. “We’ll move the weapons section onto the lifeboat as well. I’d like to meet the project scientists now. Which lifeboat will be easiest?”

“The Searcher has done two test flights already,” Otis said. “Shakedown’s almost complete. It should be the most reliable.”

“The Searcher it is, then.”

Mark clung to the slim strut as he watched Nigel Sheldon slide away down the interlink tube. Sweat was oozing out of every pore on his body and clinging to the skin to produce a horribly cold, sticky film of moisture. “Top of the invasion list,” Mark whispered forlornly. He glanced back at the incomplete frigate. “Oh, hell, not again.”

***

It was four in the morning Illuminatus time when Paula finally left for the CST station. Everyone in the Greenford Tower had been evaluated by the medical forensic team. Several criminals undergoing wetwiring had been hauled off by the local police. The city hospitals were dealing with casualties from both Greenford and Treetops. A civil engineering team was inspecting the remnants of the Saffron Clinic for structural damage. Forensics was removing all the surviving arrays ready to perform a complete data extraction.

Paula removed her armor suit in the control center, handing it over to the support team who were packing everything away. She put on a force field skeleton suit, then dressed in a long, plain gray skirt and thick white cotton crew-neck top. Her brown leather belt with its embedded silver chain looked decorative; it had even come from her own wardrobe, but Senate Security technical services had reworked it.

“You okay?” Hoshe asked.

“This didn’t quite happen how I was expecting,” she admitted. Her e-butler was running integration checks on the belt and force field skeleton. “Hopefully it’s not over yet. Are we ready for the journey back?”

“Teams are in position, equipment all set up”—he glanced down at the four black cases containing their cage equipment—“and activated.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

They went out into the subbasement garage where the holding areas had been set up. A single pen of wire mesh was left, with twenty guardbots surrounding it, weapons out of their recesses. Two local police officers stood on either side of the gate. There was only one person left inside.

Mellanie waited in the middle of the pen, still in her nurse’s uniform, arms folded huffily across her chest, an incensed expression welded into place.

Paula told the police to open the gate. Mellanie remained resolutely in place.

“I thought we could talk on the way back,” Paula said. Somehow she didn’t have any scruples about setting the girl up. Mellanie, she guessed, had involved herself in a great deal of illicit activity to get into the Saffron Clinic.

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting here?”

“To the second, actually. Why?”

Mellanie glared at her.

“If you prefer, you can stay here,” Hoshe said generously. “The police will process you in due course. They are quite busy after tonight.”

Mellanie let out a dangerous growl. “I can’t access the unisphere.”

“We have blocker systems active down here,” Hoshe said. “They’re quite effective, aren’t they?”

Mellanie switched her stare to Paula. “Where?”

“Where what?” Paula asked.

“You said we’d talk on the way back. Back where?”

“Earth. We have tickets for the next express. First class.”

“Fine. Whatever.” Mellanie stomped out through the open gate. “Where’s the car?”

Hoshe gestured politely to the ramp. “Outside.”

Mellanie flounced in disgust at their incompetence. She headed for the ramp with long impatient strides. Paula and Hoshe exchanged a bemused glance behind her back, and set off after her. Hoshe’s four black cases trundled along behind him.

The ramp came out directly on the street beyond the Greenford Tower’s plaza. Mellanie paused in confusion at the scene outside. Paula and Hoshe stood on either side of her. The remaining reporters flocked toward the nearest section of the barricades, and started shouting questions.

Paula’s virtual vision showed her several heavily encrypted messages arriving in Mellanie’s address port as they emerged from the blocking field. The girl sent two.

Tridelta police still had Allwyn Street sealed off for six blocks around the skyscraper. All the ambulances had departed, leaving the fire department crews and bots to clear up the aftermath of the explosion. The eight cars closest to Renne’s taxi were burnt-out wrecks, shunted across the road to smash into the buildings; a further twenty vehicles were buckled and broken. A big crane was lifting them onto waiting trailers. Civic cleaning bots were washing the blood off the pavement. There had been a lot of people in the open-air bars nearby. GPbots were moving along the façades, sweeping up the piles of broken glass.

“Oh, God,” Mellanie mumbled. She stared at the devastation, then twisted around to look back at the Greenford Tower.

“I told you it was an unsafe environment,” Paula said.

A big police van pulled up beside them. The door slid open, and they climbed in. The cases rolled into the luggage compartment.

“I remember Randtown,” Mellanie said in a quiet voice as the van drove off. “I hoped I’d forgotten, but that just made it all come back. It was awful.”

Paula decided the girl was genuinely upset. “Death on this scale is never easy.”

Hoshe was looking out of the window, his face expressionless.

“Did your people get hurt?” Mellanie asked.

“Some of them, yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They knew the risks, just like you did. They’ll all be re-lifed.”

“If there’s anything left to be re-lifed into.”

“We’ll make sure there is.”

***

The police van got them to the CST station in plenty of time before the express was due to depart. A cool breeze blew through the cavernous structure, coming straight off the Logrosan, which ran along the side of the smallest marshaling yard Paula had seen in the Commonwealth. Illuminatus didn’t export any bulk products, it only manufactured small high-technology items. The marshaling yard was set up primarily for receiving food imports; without any arable land on the planet, every meal had to be brought in on the goods trains. She wondered what would happen if the Primes struck here. Or worse, on Piura, the Big15 world to which it was connected. If Illuminatus was cut off from the Commonwealth, it would go bad very quickly for the population of the trapped city.

When she looked along the platform, the other waiting passengers scrupulously avoided eye contact. The station wasn’t exactly busy, but there were more people than usual for this time in the morning. Several families stood huddled together, complete with drowsy children. After the news of the starships, they’d obviously been thinking hard about the consequences of a Prime attack.

Mellanie rubbed at her arms; the cool air was raising goose bumps. “I feel stupid in this,” she muttered. Her nurse’s uniform had short sleeves.

“Here.” Hoshe took off his sweater and held it out to her.

She flashed him a grateful smile. “Thank you.” It was baggy on her, but she stopped shivering.

The express slid silently into the station along its maglev track. They boarded the first-class carriage, where they had a reserved compartment.

“Which Earth station are we going to?” Mellanie asked.

“London,” Hoshe said.

“I thought you were based in Paris.”

Paula gave her an enigmatic smile. “It depends.” She told her e-butler to open one of the pouches in her belt. A Bratation spindlefly dropped out and began to scuttle up the wall. Its gossamer thread extruded behind it as Paula walked along the carriage’s narrow corridor, maintaining the secure connection. The compartment contained thick leather couches on either side of a walnut-veneered table. Mellanie flopped down into one with a hefty sigh, curling her legs up and pulling the sweater down over her knees. She had her face up close to the window, like a child peering into a shop display. Paula and Hoshe sat opposite her. The black cases arranged themselves on either side of the door.

After a couple of minutes, the express eased out of the station and began to pick up speed as it headed for the gateway.

“What happened to the lawyers?” Mellanie asked.

“Bodyloss,” Paula told her. “Our medical forensic teams will try to recover their memorycells, but given the damage level it doesn’t look good.” She checked the image she was getting from the spindlefly, which showed her a black and white fish-eye-lens view of the corridor from the ceiling. Her skin tingled as they passed through the pressure curtain. A warm salmon-pink light shone in through the compartment’s window, and the express accelerated hard across Piura’s massive station yard.

“They were the one lead I had back to the Cox,” Mellanie said.

“Yes, me, too.”

Mellanie looked surprised. “You did believe me!”

“I do now. We uncovered a Starflyer agent in my old Paris office. He’d been manipulating information for quite some time. The Cox case was one of them.”

“Did you catch him?”

“No,” Paula said. It was a heavy admission, but she’d talked to Alic Hogan before the paramedics put him under. Treetops had been worse than the Greenford Tower.

“So we still don’t have any proof that the Starflyer exists,” Mellanie said.

“The case against it is building.” Paula’s virtual vision flashed a small square of text. The management routines in the carriage arrays were shutting down all their communications functions. The spindlefly showed her the door that led through to the next first-class carriage being opened. She exchanged a glance with Hoshe, who nodded subtly.

“But not conclusive,” Mellanie said sullenly. “That’s what you’re going to say.”

“No. And we’re running out of time.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The war is not going well for the Commonwealth. Our starships were defeated at Hell’s Gateway.” A girl was walking along the carriage’s corridor toward their compartment. Paula’s heart began to speed up. A tactical grid flipped up into her virtual vision; she prepped several icons for immediate activation.

“Yeah. I guess the rich will be taking off in their lifeboats pretty soon.”

“I expect they will. More importantly, according to the Guardians, the Starflyer will leave once it has arranged for our destruction. Unless we can move against it soon, it will have gone.”

“So just stop it going back to Far Away,” Mellanie said. “Put a guard on the Boongate gateway to Half Way.”

“I would have to convince my political allies such a move was justified.” Through the spindlefly’s artificial senses, Paula saw the girl standing outside their compartment.

Mellanie took a deep breath. “I know about some more Starflyer agents, if you’ll believe me this time.”

“You are very well informed.”

A focused disruptor field hit the compartment door, which instantly shattered. Mellanie screamed in shock, flinging herself down. Paula and Hoshe activated their force field skeletons. Isabella Halgarth stepped in through the dagger shards of the door frame. A force field sparkled around her.

“It’s her,” Mellanie yelled. “It’s Isabella! She’s one of them.”

Isabella raised her right arm. The flesh on her forearm flowed, parting in several places like lipless mouths.

Paula triggered the cage. Curving force field petals sprang out of the cases on each side of Isabella, closing around her and squeezing tight. She grimaced, as if mildly puzzled. Then she tried to move, squirming inside the constricting petals. Her movements were mechanical as each boosted muscle tried to push her body free. A series of apertures opened in her skin along both arms, allowing dark stubby muzzles to protrude. She started firing ion bolts and masers.

Streamers of energy lashed across the cage, grounding out in the floor of the compartment. Smoke began to leak upward. The shimmering petals slowly brightened to a threatening azure.

“Ready?” Paula shouted above the screech of the wild discharges. She held up a dump-web, and as Hoshe nodded she slapped it against Isabella’s back. The cage petals rearranged themselves to let it through. Her face was centimeters from the girl’s, and that was when she knew with absolute certainty they were confronting some kind of alien. Isabella’s eyes looked at her with malignant fury. Whatever intelligence stared through them was studying her, and judging.

Isabella’s force field failed.

Hoshe rammed a nervejam stick against her. It slipped easily through the cage petals to press against her chest. Her imprisoned body began to shake violently. She slowly peeled her lips back to reveal a furious snarl. All of her embedded weapons fired simultaneously. Sparks burst out of the gleaming cage petals as they began to whine dangerously.

“Jesus!” Hoshe exclaimed. He twisted the nervejam stick’s trigger to full power.

Isabella suddenly looked surprised, her eyes opening wide. Her weapons stopped firing.

The cage petals held her immobile, pressing tight against the skin, freezing her posture and expression. Paula looked at the girl’s feet. They were suspended a couple of centimeters off the smoldering carpet. “Is she out?”

“I don’t know,” a sweating Hoshe said. “But I’m not taking any chances.” He continued to push the nervejam stick hard against her.

“Okay.” Paula called the rest of the team in. Vic Russell, in full armor, clumped along the corridor, leading Matthew and John King.

“You get all the fun,” Vic complained.

“Next time, it’s all yours,” Hoshe said sincerely as Vic took over the nervejam stick.

With Isabella surrounded by the three armor suits, Hoshe switched the cage petals off. The girl crumpled into John’s arms.

“Is she alive?” Paula asked.

“Heart slightly erratic, but calming,” John assured her. “She’s breathing unaided.”

“Good, get her into the suspension shell.” Paula switched off her force field skeleton and ran a hand over her brow. She wasn’t surprised to find her fingers damp with perspiration.

“Just what the fuck is going on?” Mellanie yelled.

Paula turned to face the furious, frightened girl, and blinked in surprise. Mellanie’s skin had turned almost completely silver.

“It was an entrapment,” Paula said, trying to stay calm; she had no idea what Mellanie’s inserts were capable of. The only reassurance she had was that if Mellanie had been working for the Starflyer she would have pitched in with Isabella. “You and I have both been causing a considerable amount of trouble for the Starflyer. Together we presented what I hoped would be an irresistible target. I was correct. Although I was hoping it would be Tarlo they sent.”

“You!” Mellanie gasped the word out, a trembling finger pointed at Paula. “You. We. I. The police van. Everyone saw.”

“That is correct. Everyone saw us leaving the Greenford Tower together, and the event was released into the unisphere. This compartment was booked in my name. It gave them a perfect assassination opportunity.”

“I haven’t got a force field suit,” Mellanie wailed. The silver was fading from her skin, withdrawing in complex curling patterns.

“You were relatively safe. The cage is capable of absorbing high-level weapons fire from its captive.”

Mellanie sat down hard, staring at nothing. “You piece of shit. You could have told me.”

“I wasn’t completely sure of your loyalties. And I wanted you to behave in a natural fashion. I apologize for any alarm.”

“Alarm!” Mellanie appealed to Hoshe, who gave her a sorrowful little smile.

“And now,” Paula said, “would you please explain to me how you knew Isabella was a Starflyer agent?”

***

Justine arrived back in New York just after midnight eastern standard time. It was later than she expected; the War Cabinet session had overrun by an hour as they discussed the briefing from Wilson Kime. Seattle Project quantumbusters were now being carried on twenty-seven Moscow-class starships. The seventeen surviving ships in the Hell’s Gateway fleet were on their way back to the High Angel, where they’d also be equipped with quantumbusters once they were recharged.

Nobody knew if it would be sufficient to ward off any further Prime attacks. Even Dimitri Leopoldovich was being guarded with evaluations.

The War Cabinet was also undecided on carrying the fight back to the Primes. Sheldon, Hutchinson, and Columbia wanted to dispatch several ships to Dyson Alpha while the Primes remained ignorant of quantumbusters. Columbia believed they could inflict an incredible amount of destruction on the alien star system, hopefully weakening the Prime civilization catastrophically. A second wave of ships could then go in and finish the job, he said.

The genocide option again. Justine had taken their side, which had clearly surprised the remainder of the cabinet, including Toniea Gall, its newest member. She’d done it because of the Starflyer. Bradley Johansson had told her it wanted to destroy both species, that it was carefully playing them both off against each other so that it could rise victoriously in the ruins. Genocide was the only way she could see the Commonwealth surviving.

By contrast, Wilson hadn’t been keen, pointing out the sheer size of the Dyson Alpha civilization, the undoubted fact it had now spread to other star systems besides the Lost23 and Hell’s Gateway. The remnants could strike the Commonwealth equally hard, he claimed; we might trigger a double genocide.

“They’re trying to exterminate us anyway,” was Columbia’s reply.

If the genocide option was out for the immediate future, Alan Hutchinson said, then why not launch a second raid against Hell’s Gateway, this time using quantumbusters?

“You’ll be giving away our advantage,” Kime replied. “Quantumbusters are the only weapon we have that they don’t know about.”

“But if they work, we can stop the Prime advance completely, and push them off the Lost23,” the bluff Dynasty leader said. “They can’t launch a second wave against us without Hell’s Gateway. With that knocked out, we can go right ahead and take out their home system.”

“I don’t think we can afford to divert starships from defense right now,” Kime said. “When we have more in service, then such a course becomes viable.”

Hutchinson clearly wasn’t happy. The rest of the War Cabinet was conscious of the growing rift between Kime and Columbia. President Doi closed the session by instituting an ongoing review. They would reconvene at any time the strategic situation changed.

As soon as they rose, Justine had taken an express straight back to New York with three aides and her Senate Security bodyguard team. The next morning had her scheduled to meet an informal group of Wall Street executives to discuss the worsening financial conditions brought on by increased taxes, the exodus, and the latest navy failure; the markets were in freefall, and they needed reassurance that the Executive was firmly in control with policies that would ultimately resolve the problem. As if I can convince them of that. At least Crispin would be with her at the working breakfast; she could rely on him for general support.

When the express pulled into Grand Central Station, her aides took a taxi to their hotel, while Justine was ferried to her Park Avenue apartment by a family limousine. As she got into the big car, her e-butler was tagging news reports from Illuminatus for her attention. She let some of them through her filters, and immediately sat up in the limo’s deep leather seating. Images of the Greenford Tower filled her virtual vision, with reporters covering the Tridelta fire department’s efforts to cope with the taxi that had exploded just outside. The civilian casualties were appalling.

“Call Paula Myo,” she told her e-butler.

“Senator?” Paula said.

“Are you all right?”

“So far, yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“We have failed to capture any of the Starflyer agents we discovered in Tridelta. However, we have exposed one of its agents working in the navy intelligence Paris office. It will give you some valuable leverage to use with Admiral Columbia, and the Halgarths.”

“That’s excellent news.”

“Yes. I’m now initiating a further entrapment scenario involving myself and Mellanie Rescorai as we travel back to Earth; I hope that will be more successful.”

“Mellanie is with you?”

“Yes. She is getting very heavily involved in the anti-Starflyer movement. I suspect she is somehow involved with the Guardians.”

Justine nearly told her that Mellanie was in contact with Adam Elvin, but that would mean explaining how she was in touch with Johansson, and she wasn’t prepared to give that to the formidable Investigator, not yet. “Perhaps we should try and convene a meeting, pool our resources.”

“Very well, but I would like to establish Mellanie’s true sympathies. She could be a very elaborate trap for us set by the Starflyer.”

“As you wish. Let me know once you’re satisfied about her. Good luck, and be careful.”

“Thank you, Senator.”

The limousine drove down into the apartment block’s underground garage. Justine and her three bodyguards took the elevator up to the fortieth floor.

Despite the apartment’s new beefed-up security apparatus, the bodyguards insisted on doing a physical appraisal of all the rooms as well as reviewing the array logs. Justine stood in the big living room, waiting for them with an outward show of patience. It was the kind of social façade she’d learned centuries ago, but even so it was a strain tonight. Her feet ached from swelling ankles, she had heartburn that was becoming more frequent, her morning sickness was now lasting for fifteen hours a day, and she had a headache. Just get on with it, she thought darkly as they moved from room to room, taking their time, being professional and thorough.

“The apartment is clear, Senator,” Hector Del, the team commander, told her.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll be staying here with you tonight,” he said.

“Whatever, yes.” She went into her bedroom and shut the door just as the other two bodyguards left. The apartment’s housekeeper array had started to fill her big sunken tub as soon as the limo parked. It was now full to the brim with scented water, and foaming richly. Justine looked at it in exasperation and groaned. A decent wallow in the tub was the one thing she’d been looking forward to the whole journey home. She’d completely forgotten she shouldn’t be taking long hot baths when pregnant.

She hissed crossly and told her e-butler to switch the shower on. As the tub drained away she took her clothes off and left them on the floor for a maidbot to clear away. It is true, your brain packs up and goes on vacation when you’re pregnant.

The warm jets of water played over her skin. Nice, but not as nice as a good soak. Her e-butler pulled some twenty-second-century organic-synth jazz from the apartment memory, and played it at high volume as soap began to mix into the water.

Sheldon’s behavior during the War Cabinet had bothered her. She didn’t understand why he was so keen for the genocide. Unless he knew that it would provoke an equal reaction from the Primes. Which was what the Starflyer wanted. Or am I being really paranoid? The only evidence against him was Thompson saying that his office had continually blocked the examination of cargo to Far Away, something Justine was still unable to confirm.

She wiped an exfoliator sponge across her legs and stomach as the foamy water sluiced over her. Red icons flashed into her virtual vision. INTRUDER ALERT. The newly installed alarm system showed her a dark image of an unidentified person walking through the kitchen.

How the hell did they get in there without triggering a perimeter alarm?

She wiped the water frantically from her face and reached for a towel.

SENATOR, Hector Del sent, PLEASE DO NOT EXPOSE YOURSELF. I AM INVESTIGATING NOW. THE REST OF THE TEAM IS RETURNING IMMEDIATELY.

Her heart was pounding wildly, which was exacerbating her headache. She wrapped the towel around her waist and hurried out into the bedroom, dripping all over the carpet. On the other side of the door, Hector Del shouted: “You. Halt. Now!”

There was the high-pitched crack of a weapon discharge, which made her jump in shock. It was swiftly followed by two louder blasts. A man screamed. There was a crash. Something heavy thudded onto the floor as white light flared through the gap under the door.

HECTOR? Justine sent. WHAT HAPPENED?

Her virtual vision showed her the bodyguard’s inserts had dropped their link to the apartment’s array. She put her hand on the door handle. Hesitated. There was no sound on the other side. When she tried to access the apartment’s security net, it reported that a very powerful jamming signal was interfering with the sensors. Her e-butler told her the bodyguard team was in the elevator, coming back up.

Justine opened the door a crack and peered out into the apartment’s central corridor. It was dark, with light shining in from the hallway at the far end. Thin stands of smoke layered the air; some flames were licking up from the smashed remnants of an antique table. Hector Del was crumpled against the wall, his clothes smoldering, skin red and blotchy. From the angle of his neck she knew he was dead.

Someone stepped into the hall’s archway.

“Bruce!” Justine gasped.

The Starflyer assassin raised his arm.

Justine wailed in terror, hands instinctively clutching at her belly, protecting the unborn.

The corridor’s ceiling ruptured in a cloud of dust and concrete fragments as it was hit by a powerful focused disruptor field. Gore Burnelli dropped through the rent to land lightly between Justine and Bruce. He looked very dapper in a perfectly tailored tuxedo. “Hey, pal,” he said to Bruce, “want to try picking on someone your own size for a change?”

Both of Bruce’s arms were raised. A near-solid torrent of plasma bolts struck Gore, cocooning him in an incandescent nimbus. His tuxedo burst into flames. The floor and walls around him started to blacken. Justine shielded her face from the fearsome light.

Bruce lowered his arms. Gore stood in a circle of scorched concrete that was edged in flame, the last ashes of his ruined clothes dropping from him. His naked body was completely gold, reflecting the flames in little orange ripples. He smiled waspishly. “My turn.” He started walking toward Bruce. A focused disrupter pulse slammed out from him, filling the corridor’s smoky air with a ghost-green phosphorescence. Bruce’s force field flashed purple as he staggered backward from the blow. He struggled to stand upright. Gore fired another pulse that knocked the assassin off his feet and sent him skidding back across the hall’s polished parquet flooring, arms and legs waving like an upturned turtle. He rolled himself onto his front, and scurried away.

“Come back and play, motherfucker,” Gore called. He sped along the corridor and into the living room after Bruce. Plasma bolts, maser beams, and ion bolts hit him as soon as he was through the open doorway. Wild ribbons of energy exploded around him as his integral force field deflected the assault, sending them lashing into the building’s structure. The strength of the attack started to push him back as if a watercannon was striking him head-on. He expanded the force field behind him, pressing it up against the wall to hold himself against the power of the assassin’s weapons. His feet halted their backward slide as the wall cracked and bent inward. Another focused disruptor shot at Bruce’s legs sent the assassin tumbling over again. The assassin hit the wall beside the balcony doors as the glass shattered across him. He rebounded and assumed a wrestler’s crouch. Gore jumped.

The two of them collided in a maelstrom of whirling energy streamers and disintegrating furniture. Gore’s nerves were saturated with accelerants, speeding up his reflexes as he chopped at the assassin with a series of karate blows that would have sliced an unprotected body into pieces. The impacts couldn’t quite reach through Bruce’s force field, though Gore saw the telltale scarlet flicker of an approaching overload each time he connected. He was managing to inflict a degree of harm on the body it enveloped, though it was hardly debilitating. Bruce’s face grimaced silently in the bursts of red light. His own nervous system was accelerated, but not as fast as Gore’s. He never quite managed to block the chops. As the force field weakened, it left his clothes exposed. Cloth either tore as Gore’s hand ripped across it or singed from the residue of weapons fire. Then Bruce twisted around, and managed to kick Gore’s legs with a savage judo lunge.

Gore let the momentum carry him, and then amplified the movement, somersaulting backward to land on his feet like some gymnast coming off the bars. He immediately advanced again, unleashing a barrage of focused disruptor shots.

Bruce had flipped the other way, recovering gracefully. As he straightened up, ragged clothes flapping against him, he was standing directly in front of the shattered balcony window. The disruptor field punched him back. He extended his force field wide, producing an angel wing configuration to try to secure himself to the walls framing the balcony door. Gore fired plasma bolts into the scorched plaster and concrete, blasting the solid material from either side of the assassin. Bruce answered with his own focused distortion field. They leaned in toward each other, as if shoving their way through a hurricane. The apartment began to break up around them as the focused disruptor fields clashed. Deep fissures snapped through the walls. Whole sections of the floor shifted like tectonic faults. Plaster, concrete, wood, and carbon-wrapped steel reinforcement strands rained down from the ceiling.

Gore crouched down, and sprang with the full power of his boosted muscles, amplified by a perfectly timed expansion of his force field. He flew through the air like a golden missile, outstretched fists ramming into Bruce’s chest. The assassin left the ground, flailing backward. His back hit the stone balcony rail, which buckled badly. Gargoyle heads shifted around as the stonework juddered.

Bruce looked at Gore for a moment, then vaulted over the rail. Gore never even hesitated: he leaped after his opponent.

It was completely silent in the air forty floors above Park Avenue. Gore heard nothing as he fell. His full-spectrum senses locked on to Bruce’s plummeting body below him; shrouded in its cloak of energy it shone like a star in his virtual vision target grid. He fired several plasma bolts down, but his own plunge was too unstable to provide him any reasonable accuracy. Explosions blossomed on the street below, orange and violet flames flowering up and outward to welcome both of them.

The few cars and taxis using the road emergency-braked, their headlights skewing across the street as they skidded to a halt. Passengers pressed their faces to the windows to see what was happening.

Gore stretched out his arms and legs like a skydiver, then expanded his force field into a wide lens-shaped bubble. Air rushed against it, braking his speed sharply. When it reached twenty meters across he was barely moving. He rotated to an upright position. The force field’s lower section touched the sidewalk, and folded carefully back against him, lowering him onto the ground. He stood motionless for a moment, hands resting on his hips as he watched Bruce.

The assassin’s impact had left a human-shaped indentation in the Park Avenue tarmac close to the smoldering craters of the plasma bolts. There was a lot of blood in and around it. Bruce was staggering away across the road, weaving unsteadily around the stationary cars. Blood soaked the charred, tattered rags that he wore, splattering a wide trail behind him. Each step produced a strange crackling sound. It came from the spikes of bone sticking through his shins that were grinding against each other at every motion. The integral force field was holding his legs together, which was the only reason he was lurching forward; even so the jerky movement was that of a late-night drunk.

Gore grinned in satisfaction, and jumped. He soared effortlessly over the cars to drop in front of Bruce. As he landed, he bent forward and kicked back in one smooth motion, his heel smashing into Bruce’s chest. The assassin was flung backward as his force field cloaked him in a pale crimson light; he rolled over and over until he thudded into the front fender of a yellow taxi, denting the bodywork. One shin was bent at a right angle. The force field strengthened around it, trying to straighten it again. It emitted a loud squelching sound as the mangled flesh was further abused.

Bruce’s head was shaking as he tried to look around at Gore; dark blood gurgled out of his mouth. He raised an arm and fired a plasma bolt at the nude golden human. The intense globe of energized atoms simply splashed off Gore’s metallic skin without even straining his force field. The taxi’s terrified passengers were yelling frantically; they ducked down below the windows.

“This is not a good day for you, is it?” Gore sneered. “First Illuminatus, now here. How many of these corrupted humans have you got left? I wonder.”

Bruce rolled onto his chest and started to crawl. Gore moved fast and clamped a hand around his neck. Their clashing force fields buzzed like a high voltage cable shorting out.

Bruce was hauled off the ground, and turned so Gore could study him in profile.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Gore told him. “From a tactical point of view I should take you in and try to break your conditioning. We’d probably learn a lot from that, Bruce.”

Bruce McFoster’s eye twitched.

“But you tried to kill my daughter and my grandchild. So fuck that.”

Bruce’s jaw opened, sending out a spray of blood, as he tried to say something. Then his contorted face calmed. “Do it. Kill the alien.” His force field switched off.

“Good for you, son,” Gore said in benediction. His hand closed around the man’s neck, snapping the spine.

***

The last time Hoshe had visited the High Angel there had been a couple of bored Diplomatic Police reviewing the ID of everyone who entered the transit station, and scanning their baggage. Today it was a little different. There were now eight transit stations, all of them a lot bigger than the single original. All of them were guarded by a squad of fully armored navy troopers.

Hoshe, who had seen quite enough of armor suits in the last twenty-four hours, eyed them warily as he approached the entrance to a transit station marked CIVILIAN PERSONNEL. The big trollybot carrying Isabella’s suspension shell rolled along quietly behind him, screened from any scan by an e-shield. He called Paula while he was still fifty meters away along the white concourse. “I’m being chicken. I think I need help already.”

“Okay, Hoshe,” she told him. “I’m calling the High Angel now.”

The navy troopers watched him approach, and moved to form a protective cordon around the entrance. Two of them walked out to meet him.

One of them had a captain’s star, and the name Turvill printed on his chest. He held out a hand, stopping Hoshe. “What the hell is in that?”

Hoshe stared at the captain’s helmet, seeing a curving reflection of himself in the gold-mirror dome. “Luggage.”

“What’s in it?”

“That’s not your concern, Officer.”

The squad around the entrance raised their plasma rifles.

“Oh, yes it is. Open it.”

Hoshe gave him a pleasant smile. “No.”

“We are taking you into custody. Sergeant, get a team to scan the box.”

Hoshe stood his ground, smiling in what he hoped was a natural fashion, while praying he wasn’t sweating too obviously. The squad started to advance, their rifles still raised. Some were covering the trolleybot and its large oblong shell.

Captain Turvill suddenly became very still. The squad halted. Their rifles were lowered. The captain saluted. “Sorry, sir. There has been a misunderstanding. Please go through. Your shuttle is waiting. Can my men be of any assistance?”

“No. Thank you,” Hoshe said. “I’ll just, er…” His hand waved at the entrance to the civilian transit station. He felt like tiptoeing past the squad. A schoolboy smirk was trying to break out on his face; it was hard not to laugh.

Poor Captain Turvill would never know what happened, but Paula had spoken with the High Angel, who called Toniea Gall and rather pointedly asked that a prearranged shipment to the Raiel should not be subject to interruption or examination. The alien starship had never been so blunt with her before. A furious, and frankly worried, Toniea Gall immediately called Admiral Columbia, who told the captain to back off. Now.

Hoshe was the only passenger on the shuttle. The stewards helped him float the suspension shell along the connecting tube, then strapped it securely to some seats for the duration of the flight. They docked at the base of the New Glasgow stalk, where all the airlocks were compatible to human ships. When they were inside, Hoshe’s e-butler connected him to the High Angel’s internal information net. His virtual vision filled up with strange fluid graphics in dusky colors. He thought it was a guidance display of some kind. Fuseto patches on his cuffs secured him to the wall, and he looked around the corridor. The tapering ribbons of light in his virtual vision undulated into new patterns as his head moved.

“What is this, exactly?” he asked.

“Detective Finn, welcome back,” the High Angel said. “I am showing you which direction to take.”

The ribbons undulated again, ushering him along a small corridor. Hoshe beckoned the stewards, who tugged the suspension shell along for him. A door opened to show a small elevator capsule, and Hoshe drifted in along with his cargo. He used the fusetos on his soles to keep his feet on the floor as the elevator began to move.

Several minutes later the elevator rose up the stalk into the Raiel dome. “Can you send whatever the equivalent of a trolleybot is for me, please?” Hoshe asked. The dome’s gravity was eighty percent Earth standard; there was no way he could lift the suspension shell, let alone drag it through the streets.

“That will not be necessary,” the High Angel said. “Your cargo will accompany you.”

“Right. Thanks.” The elevator doors opened. Hoshe looked out onto the Raiel city—if that’s what it was. The light was the same gloomy gray he remembered from his earlier visit. Ahead of him was a street made from walls of unbroken matte-black metal. Lines of tiny red lights glimmered along the base of each building.

The ribbons in his virtual vision waved about like seaweed fronds, aligning themselves onto the street. He took a breath and walked out. The oblong shell that contained Isabella Halgarth slid out after him, its base half a meter off the floor.

“Oh, neat,” he muttered. It wasn’t particularly impressive, even though such a feat was currently beyond human technology. But then every High Angel dome had artificial gravity; if you could generate it you could certainly manipulate it.

With the virtual vision display guiding him, Hoshe Finn walked along the dim alien streets. There were more curves, this time, he thought, and the junctions weren’t all right angles. Other than that it was the same interminable featureless metropolis, illuminated by row after row of small colored lights set along the bottom of the walls.

He wound up facing a sheer cliff of metal, identical to all the others. The lights along the foundation were purple, as before. A vertical line split open in front of him, widening to allow him through. Inside was the same circular space with a glowing emerald floor, and a ceiling lost in the overhead shadows.

It was Qatux waiting for him, of that there was no mistake. The Raiel’s health hadn’t improved since they last met. Several of its medium-sized tentacles were coiled up tight; the large pair at the bottom of its neck rested on the floor, as if they were helping to prop it up. Given the way the big body was sagging on its eight stumpy legs, Hoshe thought that might be a correct assessment. Not that it should have any trouble holding its own weight; judging by how tight the brown hide was stretched over the skeleton platelets it was suffering from the Raiel equivalent of anorexia. One of the five eyes was permanently shut, with a blue rheum leaking from the clenched eyelid; the remaining four eyes were twisting around independently.

Hoshe bowed to the creature, feeling enormously sorry for it. You poor desperate thing, if you had to get addicted to anything, it should never be humans, we’re not worth it. “Hello, Qatux, thank you for seeing me,” he said formally.

Qatux raised its head. “Hoshe Finn,” it sighed as air gusted through the pale wrinkles of flesh that made up its mouth region. “Thank you for returning.” Two of its eyes turned in sequence to gaze at the shell. “Is this her?”

“Yes.” Hoshe’s e-butler sent a code to the shell’s array, and the top dilated. Isabella was floating in a clear gel, eyes closed, slim tubes reaching in through her nostrils. Hundreds of fiber-optic strands had been inserted into her shaven skull, forming a white gossamer crown. Long incisions on her arms, legs, and torso were covered with strips of healskin that were even paler than her Nordic skin. She looked so peaceful she was almost angelic. A vicious contrast to when she’d last been conscious.

“Her power cells have been removed,” Hoshe said, “and the weapons neutralized. She’s perfectly harmless now.”

“I understand.”

“The suspension shell array can raise her consciousness to whatever level you want. If you need her to be awake, nerve blocks can prevent her from moving.” Somehow, he felt as if he were betraying the human girl by surrendering her to the alien in such a helpless state.

“That will not be necessary. A neural cycle approximating deep sleep is all I require.”

“Very well. We need to know what is in her brain, why she did what she did. Paula suspects there is some kind of alien presence, or conditioning.”

“A valuable thing to learn. I have never tasted the memories of a living human brain before. I thank you for this gift.”

“It’s not a gift,” Hoshe said sternly, marveling that he found the courage to be so forthright. “This is a service we ask you to provide, which benefits you in kind. Even so, we need complete reliability from you in this case.”

“And you shall have it, Hoshe,” the soft voice wheezed.

“How long do you think it will take?”

“That cannot be answered accurately until I have begun my examination. From what Paula has told me, the method of subornation does not appear to be a subtle one.”

“Is there…” Hoshe scratched at the back of his neck, embarrassed to ask. “Any danger it could take you over?”

“A mental virus? Moving from host to host, replicating and spreading. No, Hoshe, you need not worry. We Raiel have faced such incorporeal entities before. Our mentalities are not susceptible to such assaults. Even so, I will take care.”

“Thank you.” Hoshe bowed again, suddenly desperate to ask when and where the Raiel had encountered such things. The wall behind him parted to let him out into the funereal street. And that was it. He just wished he had more faith in the alien junkie.

***

It was dawn at the Tulip Mansion. Justine sat in the big octagonal conservatory in a mauve sweatshirt and baggy jeans, curled up on her battered leather couch as if it were a child’s comfort toy. She couldn’t stop her hands from stroking her belly, giving reassurance. To herself or her child, she wasn’t sure which.

Gore walked in, dressed in a simple white shirt and dark brown pants. He leaned over the couch and gave Justine a light kiss. She gripped his forearm. “Thanks, Dad.”

He gave a shrug, as close to embarrassment as she’d seen him in the last two hundred years. “Nothing to it. His wetwiring was all cheap black market shit. You could have beaten him off with a wet towel.”

“I was in a wet towel,” she said sardonically.

“Well, there you go then, you didn’t even need me.”

There was a small cough, and Justine looked up to see Paula standing at the entrance. “Senator, I’m glad to see you’re all right.”

“No thanks to your bunch of asshole incompetents,” Gore snapped. “What kind of piss-poor operation are you running? I’m not surprised Columbia kicked you out of the navy if this is an example of your results.”

“Dad,” Justine scolded.

“Your father is correct,” Paula said. “The lapse in security is completely unacceptable. It appears that the Starflyer agent was waiting in your fridge; most of the food inside had been consumed. He must have been in there when the Senate Security team installed the upgrade. They will be suspended pending a disciplinary hearing.”

“And that will help how, exactly?”

“Dad, just drop it.”

“Ha.” Gore waved a hand in disgust. “Thanks to the Investigator’s screwup I’ve got to put up with every news show on the unisphere showing the recording of me walking around Park Avenue with my dick hanging out.”

“And executing the assassin,” Paula said.

Justine gave the mansion’s array an order, and the octagonal room’s glass walls vanished behind a gray haze.

“That motherfucker was trying to kill my daughter; he’s already killed my son, and countless others. You think I’m upset about killing him?”

“No. But the NYPD must show due process.”

“I talked to the detectives on the scene. If they want to know anything else they’ve got my lawyer’s unisphere address.”

“Enough,” Justine snapped. “Both of you. I’m shaky enough without you two shouting at each other in front of me. The big question is if we now have enough evidence to force the Senate to take notice of the Starflyer.”

“The proof is certainly building,” Paula said. “We’ve exposed Tarlo, which will help convince the Halgarths that this is not some personal power struggle. And people will be curious who sent the assassin against you, Senator.”

“Damn right,” Justine said. She’d already had several calls from her fellow senators, and one from Patricia Kantil, who’d expressed the President’s concern at the incident. “They’ll expect a report from Senate Security.”

“So what are you going to say?” Gore asked.

“It still depends on Nigel Sheldon,” Paula said. She peered in at the crescent-shaped aquarium, watching the fish gliding around. “If we announce the Starflyer’s existence based on the evidence we have, we have to have at least one Dynasty supporting us. If the Sheldon Dynasty goes against us, we’ll have lost every advantage we have. I know Admiral Kime believes it is real, but he has his hands tied by corrupted evidence.”

“Wilson knows it’s real?” Gore asked. “That’s got to be a big bonus.”

“But I don’t understand Sheldon’s position,” Paula said. “Everything he has done points to him being concerned for the Commonwealth. Yet Thompson was convinced it was his office that had blocked the Far Away cargo inspections I’d been pressing for.”

“I’m sorry,” Justine said. “But I still can’t lock that down.”

“Confront him,” Gore said. “Put him in a position where he has to make a hard choice. That should tell us who he’s playing for.”

“That seems reasonable,” Paula said. “We still don’t know exactly how the Starflyer controls humans. I’m expecting an answer to that shortly.”

“I hope you’re not relying on Senate Security to supply it,” Gore said.

Justine gave him a fierce look.

“No. We secured Isabella Halgarth. Her mind is being examined by the Raiel for me.”

“Oh,” Gore said, slightly taken aback. “Okay, that’s a decent pedigree.”

“Do you have any ideas how we can approach Sheldon?” Paula asked.

Gore gave Justine a hard look.

“Me?” she asked.

“Yeah, you. Nobody in the Commonwealth is going to say no to meeting you right now.”

“I’m not sure we should be exposing the Senator to any further possible confrontation with Starflyer agents,” Paula said.

“Hear hear,” Justine muttered.

“Campbell,” Gore said quickly. “Use him. He’s senior enough to get a direct line to Nigel.”

“All right,” Justine said. “I can probably arrange that.”

“Have you got any idea what the Starflyer’s next move will be?” Gore asked.

“Not specifically,” Paula said. “I can only go by earlier Guardian releases. If they are correct it will return to Far Away. I already have a Senate Security covert observation team in place on Boongate watching for just such an attempt.”

“I’ll reinforce it with our own people,” Gore said. “If we don’t gather enough open political support to force Doi into acknowledging the threat we may have to shut the wormhole down by ourselves to prevent it going through.”

“That’s risky,” Justine said.

“Better than being dead, girl.”

“Where is Mellanie right now?” Justine asked.

“She went to LA with a Senate Security escort,” Paula said. “She said she had to collect Dudley Bose. She was worried about him.”

“The reporter whore has got her claws into Bose?” Gore said. “Christ!”

“I think she should be brought in,” Justine said. “Investigator, if you’re finally satisfied she’s not working for the Starflyer, she could be helpful to us. She obviously has connections of her own. We need information as much as we need allies, however unlikely they are.”

“I’ll certainly suggest that to her,” Paula said.

“And I’ll call Campbell,” Justine said.

***

Stig rolled out of bed just before dawn. His e-shielded room at the top of the rental house was almost empty; whitewashed plaster walls, bare carbon floor panels, a crude dresser with a big china bowl and a jug of water on top. Shuttered doors opened onto a tiny Juliet balcony that gave him a view over the red tile rooftops of Armstrong City’s Scottish district. Grime-laden solar-charged globes rested in a series of alcoves at shoulder height around the walls, their glow diminished to a moonlight spark after eight hours of darkness. As he always left the balcony doors closed during the day, there was never enough light to fully recharge them.

He crossed the room and swung the thick burgundy curtain away from the arch that led to the tiny bathroom. A couple of polyphoto bulbs came on as he stepped in, filling the room with green-tinted light. Because of the city’s lack of basic infrastructure, the toilet was a self-contained unit, an algaereactor made by an EcoGreen company on Earth over a century ago. Whatever biological processes went on in the compostor chamber behind the wall, the algae and bacteria certainly needed refreshing. The smell that drifted up made Stig’s eyes water every morning. He peered at himself in the mirror, not liking the face he saw. It had been reprofiled after the Oaktier to LA run, giving him small flat ears, a squashed nose, and skin that was a couple of shades darker than his original tone. The thick stubble was now ebony, while his close-cut hair remained mouse-brown. His own mother really hadn’t recognized him when he returned.

The rental house got its water from big semiorganic precipitator leaves that hung from the eves, which was heated by a row of solar panels up on the flat roof. Half of the hot tank had been emptied by his fellow residents last night, but Stig was always among the first to rise in the morning, so the water that squirted out of the shower nozzle was reasonably warm.

He stood under the spray and started to wash himself down. Water on Earth had always fascinated him, the speed it fell, the hard strike of droplets on skin. Here on Far Away water was a much gentler substance.

Olwen McOnna squeezed into the small cubical. She was only a few centimeters shorter than he was, with a lean slim body that made her heavy breasts even more prominent. Red star OCtattoos glowed on her round cheeks sending trailers coiling down her neck, which made her gaunt face even more hawkish. She pressed up against him, and he felt the rough scar tissue on her belly where the healskin had recently come off the burn she’d received when her force field skeleton was overloaded by a plasma shot. There were other scars he knew of on her body, acquired over the last few weeks. He had his own personal reminders of the increasing violence in Armstrong City; his left arm was still difficult to move.

“The morning,” Olwen said, “the one and only time men can always be relied on.” Her hand slid down to his erection, guiding the tip of his cock between her legs. He gripped her buttocks, lifting her feet off the shower floor, pushing her back into the tiled wall as he impaled her. She snarled in rough delight; her arms twined around his neck to hold herself in place as he thrust repeatedly.

They clung to each other for a while after the climax, water splashing over both of them as tingling nerves returned to normality.

“Do you think that finally got me pregnant?” she mumbled, lowering her feet. “It certainly felt good.”

“Well, thank the dreaming heavens for that.”

“If I was pregnant, you’d have to take me off active duty.”

“Is that why you’re fucking me?”

She grinned. “You got a better reason?”

Actually, he didn’t, but he could hardly say that. They’d started sleeping together weeks ago. The constant danger, the adrenaline buzz, the fear, it all kicked the primal urges into high gear. And he knew damn well she didn’t want to quit active duty.

Olwen turned around, letting the spray wash down her back. Stig finished soaping himself down, and stepped out. She joined him a minute later when he was almost finished toweling himself dry.

A long list of messages had arrived in his hold file overnight. He started working through them, building up a summary of events. The Institute had attacked another two clan villages in the Dessault Mountains, with thankfully few casualties. The clans were watching the movements of the Institute troops closely now; they’d been caught out too many times when the raids started, suffering awful fatalities. Surprise ambushes were becoming rare, although combating the Institute forays was using up a lot of clan members, members who should be helping to prepare for the planet’s revenge right now. Stig didn’t have as many people working in his teams as he would have liked.

There had been a couple of disturbances in the city during the night, not quite large enough to qualify as riots, but news about the navy ships had stirred up the general level of anxiety. Shops had been looted, some fires started, cars stolen and used as barricades. Sparky residents flung missiles at police and Institute troops.

The teams that Stig had on duty during the night had been busy tracking Institute troop movements. On the map in his virtual vision it was clear what they were doing, consolidating their hold along a broad passage between First Foot Fall Plaza and the start of Highway One outside the city.

An Institute-assisted police team had raided a warehouse in the docks. Stig recognized it as one he’d been using to store equipment in right up until three days ago. The Institute was definitely picking up its intelligence-gathering operation.

There had also been arrests in the Chinese district on various warrants. Three of those taken into custody worked for the Barsoomian residence. The Institute wasn’t yet challenging the Barsoomians directly, but they were definitely chipping around the edges.

The Governor had certified another three police precinct assistance contracts with the Institute.

“Shit.”

“What’s the matter?” Olwen asked.

“The Governor signed over 3F Plaza.”

“To the Institute? Fuck it!”

“Yeah.” He pulled a fresh set of shorts and a T-shirt from his small bag, then put his force field skeleton suit over them and covered that with a checked shirt and baggy jeans. The long leather biker jacket he’d bought in StPetersburg on Earth went on top. He slipped a slim harmonic blade into the top of his hiker boots. His ion pistols and high-velocity machine carbines slotted into their holsters to be covered by the zipped-up jacket. Grenades clipped into his belt. His arrays with their sophisticated sensors went into his chest pockets. Steel sunglasses with enhanced display functions hung on a purple surfer band around his neck.

Olwen finished dressing for the day in a similar fashion, with baggy sulphur-yellow pants and a green rainjacket with North Sea Power Surfers printed across it.

They left the apartment block together. The streets were virtually deserted, with shopfronts still covered in fine carbon grilles. Ancient civicbots rolled slowly along the pavements, gathering up rubbish and washing away yesterday’s grime. A few early delivery vans raced along the empty roads. Buses with the first shift workers slumped into their seats rumbled past in clouds of diesel fumes.

When Stig looked east, Far Away’s sun was rising above the horizon, sending a rosy glow to soak the city. He stopped at a mobile stall that was just setting up on a corner three hundred meters along the road from the rental house. The owner smiled happily at them as Stig ordered some bacon sandwiches and coffee for breakfast. They drank some fresh-squeezed orange juice while the man flipped their bacon slices on the griddle.

Stig called Keely McSobel, who was on duty in the room above the Halkin Ironmongery store. “Anything near us?” he asked.

“No, you’re cool, the Scottish quarter’s pretty quiet. But they’re really pouring their people into 3F Plaza. It’s not just troops, either. Some tech types are in the gateway control building.”

“Damn, that’s not good. Can you snoop around inside?”

“That’s the second problem. The city net’s links to CST’s center are being eliminated. I think they’re physically cutting them.”

“Dreaming heavens, are we going to be able to get our calls through?”

“I’m not sure. I managed to get a scrutineer inside CST’s arrays. It can’t send much back without being detected now they’ve cut the bandwidth, but from what I can make out the Institute is setting up censor programs on all the Half Way channels. Any call going out through the link to the Commonwealth unisphere will be examined, same for anything coming in.”

“Bloody hell.” Stig finished his orange juice and pulled out a pure-nicotine cigarette. “Good job, Keely. We’re going to scout around 3F Plaza.”

“Be careful.”

They collected the sandwiches and coffee, and he started to tell Olwen about the Institute’s latest accomplishment as they walked along toward Mantana Avenue, which was the quickest route to 3F Plaza.

“That’s very provocative,” she said carefully. “Especially on top of everything else this city is putting up with.”

“Yeah.” He lit the cigarette. “They’ve already armor-plated the route from the gateway to Highway One, now this. It can only mean one thing.”

“The Starflyer’s coming,” she said it with a knowing gleam in her eyes. It was the moment every Guardian dreamed of. The showdown with their enemy. The planet’s revenge.

“Yeah.”

They were very visible going down Mantana Avenue, the broad thoroughfare that linked First Foot Fall Plaza with the main government district. With a little uncharacteristic flourish of ambition, city planners had laid out a three-lane road as a transport centerpiece between the biggest commercial market and storage zone in the city and the civil servants who sought to regulate it. Then a wealthy Russian émigré had gifted the city with a thousand saplings of newly sequenced GM maple fur poplars. The trees were all planted along Mantana, growing fifty meters tall, with leaves that resembled woolly magenta catkins. For nearly a century the arboreal avenue had been one of the city’s grandest sights, with the thick tall trees screening the road from the pavement.

Now, over half of the trees had withered and died from a native fungal virus that had reestablished itself in the southern hemisphere and swept through the city a couple of decades back, spoiling the beautiful wall of drooping leaves that separated traffic from pedestrians. The Barsoomians had provided resistant saplings as replacements, but the uniformity of the avenue would never be regained now, and a lot of the saplings had been vandalized. It left long segments of the pavement exposed.

Stig assumed an innocent, absorbed expression as yet another convoy of six-wheeled Land Rover Cruisers roared along the road toward 3F Plaza, hooting crossly at any other vehicle impertinent enough to be on the same route. The buildings set back from the avenue were three or four stories high, their elaborate faux-Napoleonic façades making them the most sought after addresses in Armstrong City. Their ground floors were individual shops, as exclusive as anything could be on Far Away; the offices above were mostly inhabited by lawyers and the local headquarters of big Commonwealth corporations, the only organizations that could afford the rent.

“Where in the dreaming heavens is everyone else?” Olwen complained as the Cruisers disappeared ahead of them. Even for early morning, there were remarkably few pedestrians abroad; the traffic was reduced as well. Normally there would be a stream of vans and trucks and carts going in and out of 3F Plaza in preparation of the day’s commerce.

“Bad news travels fast,” Stig told her.

Half a kilometer from the Enfield entrance to 3F Plaza they took a side road off the avenue, and made their way through the clutter of secondary streets to Market Wall.

“Stig,” Keely called. “Muriden says he’s seen a couple of guys loitering around the end of Gallstal Street; it’s the third time they’ve walked past.”

“Damnit,” Stig exclaimed. Gallstal Street was only a few hundred meters away from the Halkin Ironmongery store. He and Olwen were now fifty meters from the base of Market Wall. The merchants in the archways were starting to open for business. Everyone seemed a lot more meek and restrained than usual. “Tell him to keep watching them; I want to know what they do next, if they’re just on a loop. And tell the other sentries to scan around.”

“Aye, will do.”

“And, Keely, prep for a crash evacuation.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, do it.”

“What’s up?” Olwen asked as he scowled.

“Possible reconnaissance on the store.” He was angry that he wasn’t there to make a proper evaluation. I ought to trust the others by now.

“It was only a matter of time,” she said.

“Right.”

They reached the bottom of Market Wall, and started up one of the broad stone stairs that led to the raised souk. On the top, the stalls with their canopies of solarcloth and worn canvas shared the subdued air that infected the vendors at the base. He and Olwen did their best to blend in, but this hour was given over to chefs and owners of cafés and restaurants buying fresh food from bulk suppliers. It was like a massive extended family, with everybody knowing each other. So they wove through the ramshackle layout of tables and counters, ignoring the welcome smiles and promised bargains, trying not to be too obvious. When they reached the thick stone parapet, it was lined with cautiously curious people staring at events below. Stig edged through and glanced over. “Bloody hell.”

It was as if an occupying army had landed in the middle of Armstrong City. A curving line of Range Rover Cruisers was parked in front of the gateway, their mounted kinetic weapons deployed and sweeping from side to side to protect the shimmering force field. More Cruisers were parked to block every entrance, except Enfield, where barriers and concrete cubes turned away all civilian traffic. The wide expanse of the Plaza was empty, something Stig had never seen before. The three big fountains were actually audible from the top of Market Wall as they pumped their white plumes into the air. Squads of Institute troops in flexarmor were going around the base of Market Wall, ordering the stallholders in the archways to shut up and go home. There were a few loud protestations, swiftly followed by the sounds of a brutal beating, screams, sobbing. The Institute was now in complete control here.

“Keely, give me status on the link to Half Way, please,” Stig asked.

“There are no links. They’ve cut every cable into the CST control center except two, and those both have monitor programs that I wouldn’t know how to circumvent. I’m sorry, Stig, there’s no direct line back to the Commonwealth anymore.”

Stig clenched his jaw as he stared down at the dark armored figures strutting across the dusty plaza below. “What about Muriden?”

“His two observers have gone, but Felix reports a possible in his zone.”

“Okay, get out now, that’s an order. We’ll regroup our headquarters at fallback location three. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

The connection ended. Stig waited a few moments, and told his e-butler to connect him to the Halkin Ironmongery store. The address was inoperative. He smiled in grim satisfaction. Keely and the others were acting professionally.

“Let’s go,” he told Olwen.

They retraced their path through the stalls, and started back down the broad stairs. “What do we do now?” Olwen asked.

“I don’t know. And don’t tell the others that.”

“Sure.”

“Damnit, I should have seen this. I screwed up completely. If Adam makes his blockade run now, they’ll come out into the biggest concentration of Starflyer firepower on the planet. And we can’t even warn him.”

“You’ll find a way.”

“Don’t say that, don’t just wish that everything will be all right. The Starflyer just secured the only route onto the planet.”

“Johansson will see we’ve dropped out of communication; he’ll know the Starflyer is on its way back.”

“There’s a difference between knowing and being able to do anything about it.” He glanced back at the sturdy stone and concrete edifice of Market Wall. “We might have to attack the Starflyer ourselves when it comes through.”

“But…the planet’s revenge,” she said it in almost reverential tones.

“The planet will be revenged if the Starflyer dies. I need to get our heavy-duty weapons ready. Just in case.”

***

Like most senior Dynasty members, Campbell Sheldon kept a private residence on Earth. His was on an artificial island, Nitachie, that had been built in the Seychelles several hundred years ago when the natural archipelago was threatened by rising sea levels. The greenhouse effect never did achieve the worst-case scenarios that the more evangelical environmentalists claimed it would. Some of the smallest islands were swamped by exceptional high tides, but the relocation of the population to protected land never happened. Once the worst industrial polluters moved offplanet to the Big15, and the UFN Environment’s Commissioners introduced their onslaught of regulations, the climate began its turnaround toward the benign nineteenth-century ideal that was the goal to which the EcoGreen campaigners had dedicated themselves. The worst damage to the Seychelles in ecological terms was the coral bleaching, which had killed off thousands of reefs. Even that was being countered as new polyp was planted, allowing the magnificent coral to expand again.

From her private hypersonic, Justine could just see the odd glimmer of light that indicated an island. The rest of the sea was pitch-black, there was no moon to shine off the water, and precious little starlight.

They began to decelerate hard, the nose pitching up as the delta-wing plane began its long curve toward the ocean twenty kilometers below. Justine accessed the sensors in the needle nose as they descended. Nitachie was just visible against the dark water, a warm patch against the cooler sea. The island was square, five kilometers to a side; with long breakwaters extending out from the steep concrete walls, where white sand was building into deep curving beaches. Several lights twinkled around the solitary house, set above the northern side. As they swept in close she could see the glowing blue-green patch of a big oval swimming pool.

Red and green strobes were flashing on the landing pad, a metal grid standing a couple of hundred meters offshore. The small hypersonic settled with only the slightest bump.

Two of Justine’s Senate Security bodyguards walked down the air stairs. Only when they gave the all clear did she and Paula step outside. It was warm, even for the middle of the night. Justine breathed in the clean salt air, feeling quite invigorated after the cabin’s air-conditioned purity.

Campbell Sheldon was standing at the side of the pad, flanked by his own security staff, dressed in a white and gold toweling robe. He yawned, trying to cover his mouth with his hand. “Good to see you,” he said, and gave Justine a small kiss on the cheek. “You okay? I accessed the reports from New York before I turned in.”

“I’m fine.” She was amused to see he had threadbare slippers on his feet.

“Sure.” Campbell was giving Paula a curious look. “Investigator. Always a pleasure.”

“Mr. Sheldon.”

“Do you mind if we go back into the hut?” Campbell asked. “I’m not even on Seychelles time yet.”

“That would be nice,” Justine said.

There were a couple of small carts parked on the edge of the landing platform. They drove the small party back along the causeway and up to the house. Architecturally, Campbell’s beach hut was all curving arches and glass bubbles. Even though the larger outside arches appeared to be open, they framed pressure curtains; a subtle air-conditioning cooled the interior, extracting the worst of the humidity. He led them into a big living room full of casual chairs. Justine sank down into soft white leather cushions, and nodded dismissal to the bodyguard team. Campbell’s own security team withdrew. An e-shield came on around the room.

“Okay,” Campbell said, rubbing at his dark blond hair. “You have my full and complete attention. You get shot at by the most lethal assassin in existence, and the first thing you do is come and see me. Why?”

“I came in person to emphasize how important this is to us. We need to know where the Sheldons stand on certain points, and I don’t have time for the usual Senate Hall talking-in-bullshit routine. I’m only a senator by default.”

“A damn good one, I’d say. I access our Dynasty’s political office bulletin.”

“Thanks.”

“So ask away. I’ll answer whatever I can, and if I can’t I’ll tell you. We know each other well enough for that.”

“Very well.” Justine leaned forward slightly. “There’s going to be a vote in the Security Oversight Committee, engineered by Valetta, to dismiss Paula from Senate Security. I need to know which way the Sheldons will vote.”

Campbell gave her a strange look. It was clear the request wasn’t what he was expecting. He glanced at Paula, then back to Justine. “You came here for this?”

“It’s the strategy behind it which is crucial,” Justine said. “And, Campbell, the answer must come from Nigel himself, I don’t want some aide in Jessica’s office to trot out a standard response.”

Campbell gazed at Paula, clearly confused. “I don’t get this. Does the Senator know about Merioneth?”

“No,” Paula said.

Justine turned to the Investigator. She knew she’d just lost a considerable amount of momentum. “What’s Merioneth?” she asked in annoyance. Her e-butler flipped a file up into her virtual vision that told her Merioneth was an Independent world, which had left the Commonwealth over a century ago.

“An old case,” Paula said.

“For which our Dynasty was, and remains, deeply indebted to the Investigator,” Campbell said.

“That’s the problem,” Paula said. “And why I’m here to back up the Senator. I do need to know your current policy toward me.”

Campbell remained silent for a moment, his eyes studying data in his virtual vision. “This is connected with Illuminatus, not the assassination attempt. Right? One of your old team was some kind of infiltrator.”

“Tarlo, yes. But this is connected with the assassination, too, and your Dynasty’s political strategy. The question about my future is the key to that.”

“This is why I chose the development side of CST, not politics,” Campbell said. “The intrigue and backstabbings that you people…” He shuddered.

“Can you get us the answer?” Justine inquired.

“You want me to ask Nigel personally if the Dynasty is trying to fire Paula?”

“Yes please.”

“Right,” he said briskly. “If that’s what you want, then that’s what you get. Hang on a moment.” He closed his eyes and sank back in the thick cushions of his own chair.

Justine turned to Paula. “Merioneth?”

“Long story from a long time ago. I took a holiday from the Directorate to finish up a case on the planet after it went Independent.”

“After?” Justine couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Not for the first time, Justine considered how totally boring her own life was compared to that of the Investigator. Until recently.

Campbell’s eyes opened. There was a bad boy smirk on his face. “Well, that’s me out of favor for a week. I interrupted Nigel while he was, er, busy.”

“What did he say?” Justine asked; it came out uncharacteristically needy. She was trying to keep calm, though she saw her hands were trembling.

“The Sheldon Dynasty has every confidence in Investigator Myo, and will be happy for her to carry on her job with Senate Security unhindered. The Senator for Augusta will make that very clear to the Halgarths. We will oppose any removal proposal.”

Justine let out a long breath, almost a sob. Her eyes were watering. She knew it was hormones, and didn’t care that Campbell was seeing her like this. But the relief was incredible. She’d been too frightened to consider what would have happened if Nigel had been in league with the Starflyer.

“Jesus,” Campbell said as he stared at Justine. “What the hell is going on here?” He rose from his seat and took her hand. She sniffed, wiping away some tears.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m a bit of a mess right now.”

“This isn’t the gorgeous Justine I remember,” he said softly. “Perhaps you should stay and get some rest, recover from your ordeal. I can’t think of a more relaxing place than Nitachie. There is a spare bed. There’s also my bed.”

She smiled weakly at his playfulness.

“We need to see Nigel Sheldon,” Paula said. “Could you please schedule a meeting with him for myself and the Senator?”

Campbell’s expression was close to indignation at the Investigator’s lack of tact. Justine’s grin broadened. “I’m afraid the Investigator’s right, we do need to see Nigel. It’s very urgent.”

“Very well,” he said with remarkable dignity. “I’ll call him again and—” He broke off, his eyes widening in surprise at the priority data sliding down his virtual vision.

Justine was seeing the same thing. An ultra-secure alert from the navy was flashing up details about hundreds of new alien wormholes opening in Commonwealth star systems.