Lockstep

Nineteen

THE FIRST STIRRINGS WERE in the form of lights. As night fell, small pinpricks lit the darkness, high up in the towers and scattered along the roadways where there had been none before. Above them, the soaring shapes of aircars and flying bots—busy hunters—eclipsed the stars. It was a curiously slow and anticlimactic event—if you didn’t know what you were looking at.

Toby and Corva watched the slow rousing of the city through the glass outer wall of an empty condominium, high up on its seventieth floor. Even from this height, Toby didn’t feel they were safe, so they didn’t go near that window but instead viewed the city through the crack of a doorway to an inner room. They kept the lights off, and once or twice hovering shapes drifted past outside, dangerously close, and they crouched behind the place’s (active but empty) cicada beds, hoping these would block their biosignals.

Evening turned into night, night into morning: the city awoke slowly. By the time the random rainbow of dawn painted the eastern horizon, there were lights on in nearly all the towers. Traffic—mostly bots—was running in the streets below in increasingly strong pulses.

Feeling a bit safer now, Toby ventured to the glass wall to look down. It was only when he spotted the first human forms emerging from neighboring towers that he finally felt safe enough to sleep for a while.

“Let them try to sort this out,” he said as they lay down on the carpet between the beds. “Once the crowds reach their max, we can slip through their lines and go into stasis in a house they’ve already searched.”

Corva nodded. “They’ll know the beds aren’t being used, but as long as it’s cold…” House insulation around the hibernation core was very good; with the denners, they should be able to deep-dive safely for a month or two even in one that had had its power shut off.

He wrapped his arms around her and murmured, “Safe,” into her ear. They kept their clothes on and their packs ready at hand, though, as they drifted off to the faint sounds of a city waking.

TOBY AWOKE COUGHING. SOMETHING abrasive—an awful chemical odor—was in the air. He sat up blinking. On the other side of the room Orpheus and Wrecks were scrabbling frantically at the door.

“What’s happening?” Corva levered herself onto her hands and knees, and at that moment the room shook to an ear-piercing alarm. “FIRE, FIRE,” said an impersonal voice from some hidden speaker. “PLEASE EVACUATE THE BUILDING THROUGH THE STAIRWELLS. MOVE IN AN ORDERLY FASHION TO YOUR DESIGNATED ASSEMBLY POINT IN THE—” The voice suddenly cut out.

Toby had thrown open the door. In a glance he took in the fact that it was evening again—a perfectly blue one tonight—and the additional fact that a swarm of black somethings was dipping and diving around the tower. Still coughing, he went up to the transparent outer wall but jumped back as one of the things shot past only a meter or so beyond the glass.

“They’ve cut the power,” Corva called hoarsely. “We can’t stay here.”

“It’s no fire,” he said, gathering up a frantic Orpheus and grabbing the strap of his backpack. “They’re pumping something through the air system.”

“Easier than”—she paused to cough—“go door to door themselves.”

Efficient. Not like the Evayne he’d watched grow up, but just like the Evayne she’d become in his absence.

The corridor outside was filling with anxious people—men, women, children and pets, including other denners. Many of these people had no idea they’d been woken out of turn, and some stopped, blocking the way while their neighbors attempted confused explanations. Even those who’d checked the net and knew that the city was waking alone didn’t know why. There was no mention of Toby McGonigal; the government had hidden the truth of the situation well. As they moved down the stairwell, Toby did hear the name Evayne spoken, first just once, then over and over again. The rumors that she was coming to punish Thisbe again had been impossible to suppress in the days leading up to their last sleep—not with all the civil defense forces being put on alert.

They were afraid, and the fear was contagious. By the time they spilled out into a grass-tangled lot behind the building, Toby had become just another mote in a swirling stream of panicked people. They passed shreds of plastic sheeting that had wrapped the exit, catching fractured glimpses of people darting to and fro under a swooping flock of black things, and then spotlights came on and blinded him.

“MOVE AS FAR AS YOU CAN INTO THE PLAZA,” roared a bot voice. People stumbled and fell; kids were crying. Toby reached for Corva and put his arm across her shoulder to keep her close. Unable to see clearly, buffeted by others, they made their way toward a line of tall shapes half visible behind the spotlights.

“Mechs, Toby.” Corva pulled back.

“Doesn’t matter how close we are,” he said. “They’ll see us. And hear us—” He stopped talking. If Evayne had recorded his conversation with her—as she surely must have—then she would have his facial and voice biocrypto fed into all her bots. He had to hope his longer, lank hair, sunburnt features and new beard would confuse them. But his voice … Corva looked up at him, and he just shook his head.

“Where are the defense forces?” somebody shouted.

“They’ll be here! Give them a chance.”

They would, Toby knew; he’d woken them, too. There’d be some resistance, somewhere—but not right here, right now, and that was all that counted.

He’d lost. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t speak his fear, but his grip on Corva tightened as they staggered to a stop near the ranked forms of the military bots that ringed the lot.

These weren’t McGonigal bots but some standard military model. Evayne wouldn’t make the obvious mistake. Ditto for the half-meter-size quadcopters that flocked overhead. None would obey his commands.

Halen had been right. Better that he should have hidden behind an army of co-opted McGonigal bots and an even bigger force of fanatical Toby worshipers. He imagined the sky dark with his own ships, Evayne’s forces on the run, and an unstoppable militia flying his banners behind him as he stepped onto the soil of Destrier. That whole world would fall on its knees before him. They’d been waiting, after all, since the dawn of time. With Evayne helpless, he could have strode to their mother’s strange resting place and put his hand on the lock there, the one that only he in all the universe could open.

These … things, that his brother and sister had turned into—they’d be on the run then. He was never going to get his Peter back, nor his Evayne. But at least he could have driven those dark changelings out of the universe. He could have set things right, as he was supposed to. Now he’d never get the chance.

“WOMEN AND CHILDREN TO THE GREEN AREA!” Laser light described a square near the building.

“Why are they separating us?”

“What’s going on?”

“We’re not going to harm anyone!” It was a new voice, not the mechanical claxon sound of the military bots but a human man. He stepped out from between the mil bots, one of Evayne’s senior officers in a black-and-silver uniform.

“We’re searching the city for a criminal!” he went on, raising one hand to try to still the cries of outrage and fear coming from the crowd. “If you’re not him, you can go home. I’m just going to split off the obvious noncandidates to get this over with as quickly as possible!”

Slightly emboldened, some of the men pressed forward. “You have no right to do this!” one shouted. “The lockstep laws—”

Three milbots stepped toward him, the thud of their footsteps reverberating through the ground. “You don’t seem to understand,” said the officer. “Nobody will be hurt if nobody resists.”

Some of the men looked ready to fight despite their fear. A terrible feeling of helplessness was building in Toby’s throat. Barely aware he was doing it, he took a step forward.

Corva pulled him back. “What are you doing?” she hissed in his ear.

“I can’t let them be hurt for no reason—”

“Stop it!” She hauled at his arm.

But the moment had passed. The men who were thinking of resisting now found themselves washed with air from a dozen or more drones that hovered just above their heads. None of them could have taken a step without being knocked down, either lethally or by one or another stun technique.

“Women and children into the square, please,” the officer repeated. Reluctantly, the crowd began to dissolve into two parts.

Toby took his arm away from Corva’s shoulder and gently shoved her after the other women. “Take Orph, will you?”

“No, Toby—”

“It’s fine. I’ll just be a minute.” He disentangled Orpheus from his shoulder and handed the denner to Corva. Orpheus struggled, chittering anxiously.

“Go!” He stepped away from them. Corva backed away, then turned and fled through the maze of grim men, into darkness.

Abstractly, Toby noticed that lights like these spotlights were shining around other nearby buildings. This same drama was being played out throughout the neighborhood.

The officer began walking along the front of the crowd of men, a bot about his own size striding with him. This one flicked a light into the face of each man as they passed. “No,” said the bot, and the officer would pull the man forward and point him at the other crowd, the one with the women and children. “No, no, no, no…”

With terrifying speed, they peeled back the front lines of the crowd, getting closer and closer to Toby. He knew they’d find him; why not just step forward and get it over with? But he couldn’t move.

“Orpheus!”

Corva’s voice jolted him out of his paralysis. Toby whirled, saw her standing with the other women, a hand at her neck. Orpheus must have bitten her, because here he came, bounding through the tall grass that separated the two groups.

Toby took a step toward him. “No! Get back—”

Lightning flashed from one of the swooping black drones, and Orpheus wasn’t running but tumbling, once, twice, then flopping utterly still in the dark grass.

“No!” Toby ran to him, or tried, but suddenly a milbot loomed in front of him and a metal hand rammed him in the chest. His breath knocked out of him, Toby sat down hard.

The officer strolled over and tilted his head, frowning. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Your denner?” He crouched in front of Toby, peering into his face. “No, I don’t think…”

His bot had come up behind him and now it bent down, too, flicking its light in Toby’s face. Toby had just a moment to look past it to where Corva stood stricken with the others, Wrecks crouched at her feet with his hackles raised, then the officer’s bot said,

“Yes.”

THE FLIGHT OF EMOTIONS across the officer’s face would have been hilarious at any other time: disbelief, panic, triumph all battled it out in the few seconds that he crouched frozen in front of Toby. Then he reached out quickly; Toby flinched, but he was offering his hand.

“I’m so sorry, sir. Can you come with me please?”

Toby ignored the offer of help. He wanted to turn and look, see if Orpheus was okay and if they’d realized that Corva was with him—but anything he did, a flicker of the eyes, a half turn in that direction—might alert the watchful bots. If they’d been recording everything then there was nothing he could do anyway; but if not …

“Yes,” he said, “I’m coming,” and he stood and resolutely walked away from Corva and the dear friend who lay so unmoving in the grass.

The officer was talking excitedly, doubtless advising the other search units that they could stop their sweeps. The milbots broke ranks, milling about for a moment and then falling into formation all around Toby and the other human. Black shapes swooped and soared triumphantly over it all, morphing into hinted silhouettes as the milbots flicked off their spotlights.

“This way, sir,” said the officer. “We have an aircar waiting. It’s not much, but I hope you won’t find it too uncomfortable.”

This comment startled Toby out of his shock. “Uncomfortable? What do you think I’ve been—” But there was no point, and anything more he said was just going to turn into screaming anger. He shook his head, but the officer was practically running now, the mil bots pushing from behind, so Toby had to say, “What’s the hurry? We’ve been at this for years, a few more seconds isn’t going to matter.”

“It might, sir.”

“And stop calling me sir.”

“Yes, Mr. McGonigal.”

Four big boxy troop transports waited on the other side of a stand of trees, along with a smaller staff car, which could seat eight or ten people. Four bots similar to the one that had revealed Toby stood next to it. The officer stepped up to them and said to Toby, “In, please.”

Reluctantly, Toby complied. He couldn’t help himself and spared a glance back at the lot where he’d left Corva and Orpheus. All was dark there, just a confusion of moving shapes as the people from the tower belatedly realized they’d been set free.

The bot that had accompanied the officer moved to step into the aircar, but the man put his hand on its chest. “Wait here a second,” he told it. Then he slid past it and into the car.

“Sir, I—” the bot began, moving forward.

The officer reached up and yanked down the aircar’s clamshell door, banging the bot on the head and knocking it aside.

“Lift! Lift!” He practically screamed the word as he slammed into the seat next to Toby. The aircar surged upward, but the officer was already reaching for the manual override. As he took control they slewed sideways and then dropped. Toby was suddenly weightless, and he shouted as he braced his hands on the canopy. Black cutout shapes of trees shot past, and suddenly the sky was full of laser light.

Some part of Toby’s mind was registering that real laser shots didn’t look anything like those in the movies and games he’d seen—they were diffuse, tremulous, and wavering, full of sparkles as the beams exploded stray motes of dust. But the canopy of the tree next to them erupted in orange flame as one caught it, and then they were clear—

—For just a second before something slammed into the canopy, making Toby shout again. They took another hit, then another and a quick fusilade: bangbang bang!—with the last one cracking the windshield.

“Damned drones,” muttered the officer as he steered the aircar around the apartment building. Toby glanced back in time to see a sumptuous living room explode in fire as more laser shots tried to cut through the building.

“Don’t worry, they’re not trying to kill us.”

Toby reared back, staring at the man. “How can you tell?”

“If they were, we’d already be dead. But if they think they’re actually going to lose us, they might get serious.” He dove at the ground and, scant meters above the road surface, they dodged through the streets. Everywhere around them, vehicles and drones were rising into the sky. There were more laser flashes, only … “Hey, they’re shooting at each other!”

“Some of us are loyal,” said the officer. “Some would die for your sister even after learning how she’s betrayed you.”

“Ah.” A tumble of emotions flew through Toby then: fury that this man had been an ally all along, despair that Orpheus had been hurt or killed for no reason; relief that Corva was out of danger and, over it all, a savage sense of triumph at the carnage playing out across the cityscape. Bots were fighting bots, aircars and drones weaving around one another while people ran to and fro in the streets. Divided loyalty was shattering Evayne’s ranks, just as Toby had planned.

All his good intentions had evaporated but he didn’t care anymore if people got hurt. He laughed bitterly. The officer glanced over and something in Toby’s eye made him say, “I’m so sorry if—”

“Carry on,” snapped Toby. “This is perfect.”

THEY SHOT BETWEEN TREES that passed so close the branches whipped the side windows. Yellow blossoms of fire erupted behind them and Toby’s stomach flipped over repeatedly as they maneuvered.

It’s nothing you haven’t seen in Consensus, he told himself—or tried: none of the virtual battles he’d fought with Peter had included actual g-forces and vertigo. He gritted his teeth and tried to remember what a commander was supposed to do in situations like this.

“Where are we going?” He was glad his voice wasn’t quavering or squeaking. The officer grunted but had to pull some extreme banks and turns before he answered.

“We’ve been in contact with your people for years,” he said as they entered a slot between tall towers, and he opened the throttle. “Almost since we arrived.”

“My people? What are you talking about?”

“Your army,” said the officer. “The one we’ll be taking to Destrier.”

Toby slumped back in the seat, shaking his head. The cult of the Emperor of Time would surely have their own denners and non-McGonigal beds. Just like the Thisbe defense forces, they could skip a certain number of people through time on their own frequency. Toby hadn’t known how many of the recent firefights and ambushes had been engineered by the defense force and how many had been Halen’s cult; he hadn’t really cared. The one possibility he hadn’t considered was that some of Evayne’s own people would be highly motivated to find out.

“How many of you are there?”

The percussive sounds of battle were fading behind them. The officer sat back, too, grinning now. “We’ve had to be very careful about recruiting. Our core is over a hundred men, but at least half of the soldiers may take their orders from your sister, only because they think she’s acting on your behalf. They’ve been spinning their heads around trying to reconcile the Great Lady’s actions with that loyalty. If you’d declared yourself before, you could have had sixty-five ships and almost five thousand men at your command … instantly. When you do declare yourself, I’m sure most of the others will come around.”

“Declare myself?”

“Announce your true identity and your intention to march on Destrier.”

“Oh that,” said Toby.

“Everything’s going to change after tonight,” the officer went on excitedly. “Her forces will crumble away; they’ll all defect! Then we’ll have her and you can fulfill your purpose.”

Toby decided not to ask the officer what he thought Toby’s “purpose” was.

“What about my brother? Isn’t this just part of the lockstep army?”

The officer shrugged. “They’ll try to defend Destrier. I mean, the total lockstep army is seven million men and women, and hundreds of thousands of ships; nobody knows how many bots there are. But the same thing is going to happen then as is happening now. They’ll come around.”

But not without a fight. Toby’s angry satisfaction was draining away, replaced by dread. This is Halen’s plan. Just as surely as he knew that, he knew it had been M’boto and Ammond’s plan as well—with the tiny difference that they had intended to be the puppeteers pulling Toby’s strings.

Of course, you didn’t need to neuroshackle somebody to make him your puppet. All you needed was to know that person’s currency. To have leverage over him …

Corva. He’d left her behind—and where would she go now? Back to her family.

“Crap.” He twisted in his seat to look back. The city appeared absurdly festive, but the fireworks were going off strangely close to ground level. There was no returning there, at least not tonight. “Crap crap crap.”

“Sir? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Stay on course. I need to think.”

It was all unraveling. He didn’t know how many of Evayne’s human forces were awake, but she could concentrate all her bots here while they awoke. For his part, Toby would have to depend on whoever on his side was awake at the moment—and it sounded like it was the cultists. He could start thawing the rest of the defense force, but it would take more than a day for them to become operational. By that time everything would probably have been decided, one way or the other. It didn’t seem like he had much choice.

“Fly lower. I need an Internet signal.”

The officer barked a humorless laugh. “We’re about as low as we can go without slowing down. There’re still drones on our tail.”

“See what you can do.”

His glasses signaled intermittent connection to the net. Thisbe wasn’t set up to provide global high-data coverage while wintering over; typically the repeaters and antennae went into hibernation like everything else. They’d have to get lucky enough to find an industrial unit that was coordinating the slow harvesters. If he could stay in contact with it long enough to issue some commands, the whole mesh could wake itself—and the army.

The trouble was they were being herded past the city outskirts. An occasional bullet or laser shot past, and the officer had to keep them almost at ground level, while bots fought bots in the air above and behind them.

A hill loomed ahead, and they were up and over it in seconds. Spread out before them was the black plain of a wintering world—except that far off near the horizon, other city lights glittered.

“What’s that?” He shook his head and blinked, looked at it again. “I didn’t wake that city.”

“It’s Lockstep 180/1, sir. They share Thisbe with ours.”

“Can we get there?”

He looked shocked. “We can’t involve them in a civil war. The treaties—”

“I didn’t sign any treaties. Besides, they can’t turn away refugees, can they?”

“What are you saying? You want to go in there alone?”

“You were thinking I was going to take our army in there? Defend ourselves with 180 as a shield?” Toby shook his head. “Of course not. So yes, I aim to go in there alone.”

“With respect, sir, for you to stay they’ll demand you winter over on their frequency. All your sister has to do is post a guard to prevent you leaving. Once you’re bottled up and living on a different frequency, you’re no threat to her.”

“… And bottling me up would work great for her—if the rest of Thisbe let her do it. This is how we win or lose: you get me a signal long enough for me to wake the rest of the army, and then we head straight for 180. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!”

They swept in a tight turn around one of the city’s last towers and began to hunt for a repeater tower while bots and aircraft converged on them from every direction.

A WEEK LATER, TOBY stood with the officer, whose name was Ourobon, and the administrators of the city of Equinoct. They watched as a small group of human figures passed through the new checkpoint that 180’s own defense forces had set up on the edge of town.

Lockstep 180 spoke a different language and all its customs and culture were different. Thousands of years separated them from 360, and they had no Guides to make them conform. Toby had used the meager information in his glasses to negotiate with them.

Using Equinoct as a neutral meeting place would never have been a viable option before now. The generals had agreed that involving a different lockstep would have played into Evayne’s hands because it was the McGonigals who had the treaties with all those other civilizations. They wouldn’t have given him the time of day, until he could convince the local city fathers that Evayne was on the run.

Which he could now do.

He still wasn’t sure he could trust them. Nobody stopped him, though, when he strode out to meet them. Their backdrop was fields of green dotted with troop transports and tents: the ragged remnants of a once-great military force. Way off in the sky, speckling the white clouds like a flock of distant birds, a much larger force approached. Everybody involved knew what that meant.

The new arrivals had been disarmed. As soon as they passed the checkpoint they were officially in Lockstep 180, foreign soil for anyone from Thisbe’s dominant culture. Lockstep 180 wasn’t large or extensive, but it had its own army and fleets; it had no intention of getting dragged into a McGonigal family squabble. Anybody carrying weapons across the invisible line at the checkpoint would feel the full force of 180’s wrath—and so would 360. Evayne had to worry about how many other locksteps would join 180 if it decided to punish Peter’s empire.

So it was that Evayne approached Toby weaponless and with her hands out. “Brother!”

He suppressed a sarcastic laugh. So now I’m your brother? Yet he really did want to see her, and so it was with undisguised eagerness that he stepped forward, took her hands, and then threw caution to the winds and hugged her.

Her whole body went rigid, then after a moment she relaxed a bit—just enough for her to gently take his arms and disengage herself. “I don’t deserve that,” she said quietly.

“You’re the only sister I’ve got,” he said. “And we’re kind of in this together, even if you don’t think so.”

She glanced back at the forces massing in the sky. “I do not think so.”

Toby thought of that distant squadron as Halen’s new army, though he was sure Corva’s brother had little power in it. A mixture of Thisbe defense forces, native Toby cultists, and turncoats from Evayne’s forces, it was rapidly taking control of the planet. In doing so it was eating up vast resources; a lockstep like 360 lived lightly on the land and had few stockpiles. The whole planet would be going back to sleep soon, to awake on its normal schedule as Toby had commanded. Big changes would be waiting for those citizens who’d slept through the last few years.

“That,” said Toby, nodding at the approaching force, “doesn’t obey me. It obeys the mythical Emperor of Time, who’s got an agenda.”

Evayne made a skeptical noise, crossing her arms. Right now she looked so much like their mother that Toby was astonished. “You can’t tell me it isn’t your agenda, too,” she said. “Next stop: Destrier. Right?”

“It doesn’t have to be now,” he said.

“But every day you wait, the bigger they become.” She jabbed a thumb at the new army.

Toby shrugged. “What’s your point? Evie, it’s over. You had your run as pope, but now you gotta step aside. I don’t care how we spin it, but one way or another the universe is going to find out that I’m not a god. They’re going to have to deal with it.”

She shook her head. “Toby, I know you think Peter and I have been totally corrupted by power. But it’s not like that. I wasn’t lying when I said the myth took on a life of its own. There’s nothing for me in promoting it—Peter and I are already the most powerful people in history. Hyperrich and immortal—well, it can’t get much better than that, can it? But we’re as trapped by your myth as you are.

“There is no easy way to end this, and you know it. You’re going to arrive on Destrier carrying fourteen thousand years’ worth of baggage. Whatever you do, there’ll be social upheavals on countless worlds.”

“So all you want to do is keep a lid on it?”

“Keep a lid on potentially limitless levels of religious violence, yes.”

He snorted. “As you can see, it’s too late for that. —Not my fault, by the way. I was trying to keep this between you and me. You forced my hand.”

“And you’re about to force mine,” she snapped. “I told you before, this isn’t a game anymore. The stakes are too high to turn back now.”

“Uh, Evie, last I saw I was the one who had your troops surrounded. You had me trapped here for a while, but unless you want to drag 180 into this, too, you can’t touch me. And as soon as my army gets here, you’re my prisoner. Unless you head for orbit and leave Thisbe with your tail between your legs. And in that case, you’re letting me go.”

“No! There’s another choice. Your only real choice, Toby. You have to renounce your identity. Declare yourself an impostor. We’ll come up with a plausible story about how you controlled the cicada beds here on Thisbe. You become just another Toby impostor, the latest in a long line. You never interfere with the lockstep frequencies again, you never command a McGonigal bot to do so much as sweep the floor—and this all dies down. We go back to the way it was.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Come on, you know it makes sense. It’s the only way.”

“And what’s going to happen to me? Haven’t you executed all the other impostors?”

“Well, most of them took their own lives in the end…”

“And if you don’t do it, some Toby cultist fanatic will come after me sooner or later. You’re telling me to make myself a marked man forever—and you’re saying we never wake Mom up! Is that your plan?”

“Toby, at this point, letting her sleep is the lesser of two evils.”

She gave him a sad look, then shook her head and started to walk back to the checkpoint. “About Mom … this time it’s you who’s being unimaginative. You think we only have two options with her: let her sleep or wake her up. But there’s a third, and if you don’t do as I say, I’ll have to do it.”

A queasy feeling of horror was welling up in Toby’s throat. “What do you mean? Evie, what you are talking about?”

She paused at the checkpoint. “I’ve got about an hour to get offworld before your little army makes it impossible. So I’m leaving. You come with me now, Toby, or else when you get to Destrier, you’ll find that our mother can’t be awakened.” She saw his expression and sneered. “You can’t possibly believe that Peter and I never discussed this? —That we wouldn’t have built a switch into her bed that would make it look like she’s hibernating, long after there’s nothing left to revive?

“You’ve got an hour to grow up, Toby. I’ll wait as long as I can, but you made this deadline, not me.”

She turned and crossed the line into her own camp and ignored everything that Toby shouted after her.

Only after she disappeared behind a tent did Toby cough and sink to his knees. He nearly retched, and only Ourobon’s hand on his shoulder kept him from sinking all the way onto the grass.

Thisbe’s artificial sun chose that moment to change color, from solar yellow to bloodred. Toby stared at his hands in this light, shaking his head.

“Sir! What did she say?”

“She … she’s leaving.”

“We can keep her here,” said Ourobon. “It’ll be hard, but—”

“You’ll have to shoot her down. You’ll probably kill her. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. If she thinks we’re going to stop her, she might give the order from here.”

“We’re jamming her.”

“And can you guarantee you’ll be successful?” Toby brushed off Ourobon’s help and stood up. “No, let her go. She’s not going to do it until she absolutely has to.”

“Do what, sir?”

“Never mind.” At the far end of Evayne’s camp, her remaining flying bots were rising up and arrowing in the direction of the incoming squadrons. There was going to be bit of a dogfight before Evayne got out, but she had enough firepower left to get at least one lander back to orbit, where her ships waited.

“Ourobon, whose side are you on?”

The ex-officer in Evayne’s army looked startled. “Why, yours, sir.”

“Then I need you to gather some people you trust. People who’ll do what I say, not what the leaders of that army want me to say.”

Ourobon nodded slowly. There had been spotty communication in and out of 180; Evayne’s jamming transmitters fought with Thisbe’s, but there was little she could do to stop point-to-point laser comms. So Toby knew that Corva Keishion’s whereabouts were “currently unaccounted for.” He knew what that meant: she’d gone back to her family, and Halen or one of his friends had been waiting for her. Once Evayne was gone and her local forces mopped up, Toby would be able to walk through that checkpoint a conquering hero—or so it would appear. There was that little matter of leverage, though. If Halen’s people had Corva, if they threatened her … he had no illusions that he would be able to resist.

“I need a ship and a loyal crew, and I need to go straight from here to there. No interruptions, conversations, or debriefings.”

“A ship?” Ourobon looked puzzled. “You’re taking a single ship to Destrier?”

Toby shook his head. “Not to Destrier.

“I have unfinished business somewhere else.”