The Temporal Void

FIVE

It was an ordinary house in an ordinary street. At least as far as Ganthia was concerned. A planet that became Higher soon after it was settled, its various political committees had quickly evolved a policy of sustainable organic construction. Native flora lent itself easily to the concept, trees in the temperate zones were hardwoods with an internal honeycomb structure. A few genetic tweaks make them quite suitable for creative shaping. Like the aircoral developed during the first Commonwealth era, Ganthia's modified trees could be guided over frameworks to form hollow bulbous chambers. Better yet, they were amenable to grafting, so while each room was an individual tree, a house was the merger of many.

Navy Captain, retired, Donald Chatfield, lived in the middle of what from the air resembled a good-sized forest. It fact it was Persain City, spreading out over the side of several mountains just above the shoreline. Twelve trees provided him five first floor rooms whose curving walls sprouted stunted branches with shell-pink leaves. Five long trunks grew up through the gaps between the lower rooms, before bulging out into the second floor of smaller compartments; each frosted with copper leaves. The remaining two trees were hollow pipes, twisting round the curvature of the lower rooms to provide stairwells between the two levels.

Paula's taxi capsule skimmed along what appeared to be a wide greenway through the forest city. It settled silently on tin-wild lawn outside Chatfield's home and she climbed out, sniffing the unusually spicy air. House clusters stretched away in every direction, some extending three or four floors high, their marvellously convoluted trunks forming a knotted support maze. Sunlight shone through the overhead branches creating a sharp dapple around her. In the distance, some kids were playing in an open area. The whole scene was remarkably rustic. Only the capsules flitting along the grid of greenways betrayed the planet's true cultural base.

She walked up the short wooden steps to the porch platform formed from a miniature tree crafted to a flat mushroom shape. Donald Chatfield greeted her at the wonderfully old-fashioned green-painted front door. A tall youthful-looking man with an easy smile. His neat dark hair was starting to grey in contrast to firm features and a healthy tan. She couldn't work out if those light strands were a fashion statement or an imperative genetic quirk his biononics couldn't adjust. He was three hundred and fifty years old, after all.

'Thank you for agreeing to see me, she said as he led her into the sitting room. Three big circles had been sawn out of the bulging walls, to be filled with perfectly clear crystal that overlooked his back garden. No attempt had been made to paint or cover the bare wood, though walls and ceiling had been polished to show off the dark timber's turquoise grain flecks. Even the furniture was carved from large sections of tree trunks; softened by a few scattered cushions.

'Your reputation precedes you, Investigator, he said as he waved her into one of the big chairs. 'I didn't even have to consult a reference file. But then I have served on ships around Dyson Alpha. It was a long time ago, but the crews tend to assimilate the War period's history in more detail than the average citizen, it helps us understand the mission.

'Interesting, she said as she settled back. 'That's actually why I'm here.

He raised an eyebrow in an almost dismissive expression. 'Good heavens. Even I'm history in that respect.

'Not quite. I'd like to ask you about your third mission there, you captained the Poix.

'Yes. What's the problem?

'No problem. I need some information on one of your crew: Kent Vernon.

'Oh him.

'That doesn't sound good.

Donald gave her a roguish grin. 'Navy service sounds very grand, but I was actually in the Exploration Division. We fly science missions, not combat. That allows a — he paused — broader range of characters than the regular Navy. Vernon might have been helpful analysing the generator lattice shells, but he certainly wouldn't have been any use in a regular Navy position. He wasn't the most popular person on board the dear old Poix.

'Why not?

'Don't get me wrong. He performed some valuable work. However, his social skills were somewhat lacking. Quite surprisingly so given he was Higher. It rather shocked some of the crew, they weren't used to making allowances like that.

'If he was that disruptive how did he get a commission?

'It was a science commission, he wasn't strictly Navy at all. Specialist are given temporary commissions for the duration of their missions. I was warned about his nature while the mission was drawn up.

'Yet you allowed him to take part.

'The captain has some discretion. I accessed his file and thought he could make a valid contribution; he was very highly qualified in his field. That had to be balanced against any personal disruption he would make. Ultimately, I agreed to him joining us because it doesn't hurt to shake things up every now and then.

'Strange attitude, she observed. 'You're on a difficult and important mission a long way from home in what is still technically a war zone, and you choose to take along a potentially disruptive influence.

'It was a judgement call. I made it because we'd had two previous missions at Dyson Alpha; my crew knew the routine. It was never a physical danger having him on board. Worst case scenario, which we always had to plan for, was the barrier collapsing while we were there. Vernon would just be shoved in his cabin and told to stay there while we did what we could to prevent Prime ships from escaping. Even then, the Poix would be assigned a third line defence position. To this day the Navy maintains some serious firepower outside the Dyson Pair. Ozzie help the Primes if they ever do crack out and make a break for it.

'So did you make the right judgement? Paula asked.

Donald gave an expansive shrug. 'There is no right answer to this. The mission gathered a lot of data, but I wouldn't necessarily want him on board again. In a strange way it helped crew morale afterwards. In my final two missions there was always a lot of talk about how difficult that mission was.

'Bonding in the face of adversity?

'Something like that. Though I wouldn't want to make out it was some terrible trip into hardship. It wasn't. He's just different from the rest of Highers, which isn't a crime. So what's your interest in Vernon after all this time?

'He wasn't quite who he claimed to be.

Donald gave her a long stare. 'In what possible way?

'I believe he was carrying out his own agenda, possibly on behalf of an ANA Faction.

'What agenda?

'That's why I'm here, to see what you can tell me.

'I'm sorry, but my immediate answer to that is: very little. Even taking his attitude into account it was a perfectly routine mission. We gathered data on the Dark Fortress for eight months and came home.

'There was no abnormal event? Nothing out of the ordinary?

Donald's eyes flickered as he delved down into memories long ago shunted into a storage lacuna. 'Not a thing.

'So what exactly was the mission?

'Monitor and analysis of the inner two lattice spheres inside the Dark Fortress. Which we accomplished successfully.

'Were there any breakthroughs or revelations about the Dark Fortress?

'Not due to us. The damn thing is still an enigma. We don't understand how it generates a force field large enough to envelop an entire star system; the mechanism is peculiar. Though they are making headway on the field itself these days, I gather. I don't really stay current.

'Did Vernon want to take anything further; perhaps some persistence that at the time you wrote off to his personality?

'He was always on about the factory.

'Factory?

'Whatever the Anomine used to build the Dark Fortress itself. He contended that if we could examine that we'd solve the entire generator and its principles. Logically, he was quite right. But that wasn't our mission.

'I see. Has there ever been a mission to examine the factory?

'No. Because we don't know where the factory is.

'So did Vernon want to go and search for it?

'Yes. I wouldn't mind doing that myself, actually. That would be quite something, wouldn't it? A structure that builds machines the size of a small gas-giant. Finding that would be enough to yank me back out of retirement.

'I'm sure. Paula hesitated, not trusting a word he said. 'Did Kent Vernon modify the observations you were making?

'Constantly, that's what the science team are there for. One set of results leads them off to investigate some other aspect. Within the overall mission parameter, the monitoring process is very fluid. We'd just be a simple sensor relay otherwise.

'What was Vernon's specific field?

'Quantum signature. He was there to determine the sub-physical nature of the lattice sphere composition.

'So in that field did he want to do anything he shouldn't have done?

'No. We've got a pretty broad leeway when it comes to observations. Just about the only thing the Navy prohibits is trying to take a physical sample of a lattice sphere — not that they are all strictly physical. A stupid restriction if you ask me, but I don't make the rules.

'Stupid how?

He gave her a curious gaze. 'You took part in the Starflyer War. Ozzie and Nigel Sheldon set off a couple of quantumbusters inside the Dark Fortress, and it's still working. That is one extremely tough mother. Shaving a nugget off isn't going to break it.

'Good point. Paula activated a layer of specific-function biononics on the skin surface of her right palm.

'You have a good relationship with ANA, you might want to tell it that someday, Chatfield said.

'I'm sure it has its reasons.

'Yeah.

Paula stood, and held out her right hand. 'Well, thank you for your time, Captain.

'Not at all. He shook hands warmly. 'Was I of any use?

Her biononics sampled the dead cells of Chatfield's outer epidermal layer. 'I'm not sure. There was a second when she thought he might activate his combat enrichments. It passed. Even so, old fashioned instinct made her uncomfortable turning her back on him as he showed her out.

As soon as she got back into her taxi capsule she opened an ultra-secure link to ANA: Governance. 'He's an Accelerator.

'What makes you say that? ANA: Governance asked.

'He admitted a possible error and accepted the blame. Standard sympathy-grab manoeuvre. But his real mistake was a fundamental one. When I said Vernon had an agenda for a Faction, Chatfield asked what the agenda was, not which Faction. She held up her right hand, turning it to examine the palm. There was nothing visible, but the biononics were already feeding a stream of sequencing data down the link. 'I'm sending you his DNA. Run it against every file you have. Specifically, people involved with Government and Navy.

As before, the speed of the reply was near instantaneous. It impressed Paula exactly how much attention ANA had devoted to the analysis. Her u-shadow would have taken at least a minute to run the comparison.

'That instinct of yours is quite something, ANA: Governance said.

'Really?

'There is a twenty point spread marker similarity with a Captain Evanston.

'Not identical, so it's either family, or…

'Or he had a DNA resequence for that assignment.

'That's very deep cover. So is he Evanston or Chatfield?

'I'd say Chatfield. Evanston was a serving officer twenty-five years ago. But Chatfield's current DNA is almost a match for Captain Chatfield's registered Navy file a hundred years ago.

'Almost a match?

'The variance is small but noticeable. If we weren't considering a period spent resequenced it would be within acceptable error.

'So, if he's going for resequencing, why keep the twenty point similarity? Complete resequencing used to be quite a popular option among the criminal classes of late first era and early second era Commonwealth. The perfect way to avoid court-verified identification. A lot of them literally got away wild murder.

'That's a simple answer: his brain. He wanted to maintain his thought routines as they are. If you alter neural structure and neurochemicals you alter how you think, your very personality. He wanted to keep on being him.

'That makes sense. So give me his file. She observed it enter her macrocellular clusters. Secondary thought routines picked the data apart, highlighting the relevant sections. One long entry leapt out at her. 'Oh Jesus, she muttered.

'Quite, ANA: Governance said. 'And in connection with today's events, extremely significant.

'Overwhelmingly significant, she retorted. 'Evanston was second in command of the development-restrictions monitoring station on Elan.

'I always considered it quite an irony that the Commonwealth allowed the surviving Prime invasion forces to continue living on the worlds they conquered.

'Not all of them, she said. 'Just on the five Lost23 that we didn't completely nuke into oblivion. Some of those surviving immotiles got smart.

'You mean they got human. .

'They accessed the memories of human lawyers and promptly surrendered. They even quoted our own basic rights laws back at us. I'd say that was quite smart. Evolutionary even. Adapt to and then accept the ethics of an alien species that you were trying to wipe out in order to survive yourself. It was the only reason Admiral Columbia allowed them to live, he considered it an indication that Primes were capable of social progression — as humans see it.

'They've kept their side of the agreement until now.

'I don't think this can be blamed on them. Paula hadn't felt this angry for quite some time. Centuries. But for the Accelerators to use the Prime to bolster the Ossian Empire… It took a lot to shock her, but this had done it. Don't they understand the danger? But of course they did. It's me who is only just starting to grasp the stakes they're playing for, the ends to which they'll go.

'That is also our conclusion, ANA: Governance said.

'It's treason.

'If provable. So far we only have circumstantial evidence.

Paula resisted the temptation to glance back over her shoulder. The capsule was already clear of the city's elegant greenways. Now it was soaring gracefully over the mountain peaks towards the starport on the inland plain beyond. She toyed with the idea of going back and arresting Chatfield. 'A memory read will provide the evidence.

'Do you think Chatfield will allow that to happen?

'No, she admitted regretfully. 'If he's an Accelerator agent at tin- level we believe him to be, then capture is not an option.

He'll just auto-bodyloss and they'll re-life him inside a day with a safe body. We'll have to keep him under observation and see where he takes us.

'I have placed him under electronic scrutiny.

'Thank you. That should do until I can get a colleague here to shadow him. If Chatfield is part of the project which allied the Primes to the Ocisen Empire, he'll probably be aware of the hardware Troblum has helped them build. I'm wondering if it was those starships accompanying the Ocisen fleet.

'According to Gore, Ilanthe said the Accelerators can protect the sol system from any Void expansion. I have no idea what that might translate into in practice.

'Two illegal hardware construction projects? They really are committed to their ideology, aren't they? We're going to have to keep a very sharp watch on Chatfield.

'Who will you use?

Paula allowed herself a slight smile. 'Digby has been wanting an assignment at this level for some time. It's only fair I give him the opportunity.

'He is fully qualified, and has the necessary experience.

She laughed outright. 'That's a very tactful way of accusing me of nepotism.

'He is four generations removed.

'But still my descendant. After all, who else is crazy enough to do this kind of work?

'I find him highly capable.

'He's too young, and too eager. But if anything is going to cure that it'll be this assignment. I'll call him.

Marius was half a kilometre away when Paula's taxi capsule left Chatfield's house. He found the Investigator's presence at this exact time to be unnerving. It meant she was making a lot of connections he'd assumed would stay hidden, at least until it was too late. When her capsule had left the city greenways he walked unhurriedly to Chatfield's house. That approach at least would eliminate some observation protocols which he knew would be enacted following her visit. In confirmation, his u-shadow informed him of extremely sophisticated scrutineers slipping into the local cybersphere nodes.

For a moment he considered simply abandoning Chatfield. But advancing to the next stage was an acceptable risk. If Paula Myo had any real understanding of the Accelerator strategy she would have taken Chatfield into custody. So he sent his u-shadow into the homes of Chatfield's neighbours, and examined various files, siphoning out inconsequential personal details and preferences. As he walked down the greenway the data was absorbed by his biononics, enabling them to change his appearance and electronic emissions. His shimmering toga suit transformed to a bland swaddle of amethyst cloth, with ginger boots just visible below the shifting folds. Confident in his amalgamated persona he crossed the shaggy front lawn and triggered the house sensors.

Chatfield showed no surprise when he opened his glossy front door to someone who resembled Fardel from four houses down, even though the man wore Jalliete's style of clothing. It was the green eyes which gave him away. 'You saw Myo leave? Chatfield asked as they went into the living room where they were surrounded by a privacy shield.

'Yes.

'They've discovered Troblum was on the Poix.

'Shit. I will take a great deal of pleasure ridding this universe of that failed embarrassment of a Higher. Does Myo know why he was there?

'No. I threw her the line about him focusing on the Anomine factory.

'Good. That ties nicely into his obsession with the planet-shifting ftl. It might divert them for a while.

'I'll be under observation. He looked straight at Marius. 'Are you here to bodyloss me?

'No. We're moving to the next stage a little early. That should remove you from their view for a while, and when you do reappear it won't matter.

'I see. Chatfield gave the bulbous wooden room a regretful stare. 'I'll miss this. Ganthia has been an enjoyable place to live. Its politics are quite progressive in some respects.

'Irrelevant now. I have a ship waiting at the spaceport. Go directly to our Frost station and collect your equipment.

'Understood. And then on to Ellezelin?

'Yes, but stand off until I authorize your landing. Living Dream is expecting you to join the pilgrimage, but I don't want you there early. Even if our policy is successful, there may be rogue ANA agents left over who could cause trouble.

'Like Myo?

'Among others. We have contingencies, don't worry.

'I'll leave right away.

Babuyan Atoll was undergoing an approximation of night. The dome's internal illumination was off, but the crystal remained perfectly transparent. Icalanise's jaundiced crescent was rising above the lip of the parkland to shine a jaded light across the forests and towers. Admiral Kazimir saw it through his office window as he made some niggling final adjustments to his dress uniform. Over on Aldaho, the Senate Executive Security Commission was convening for an emergency session, where he was due to present the really bad news about the Ocisen Empire's new allies. It was looking like the deterrent fleet would have to be used, a prospect which both thrilled and horrified him in equal amounts. For nearly seven hundred years the mere threat of its existence had been enough to deter the more belligerent species in the galaxy from any aggression against the Common wealth. Now the bluff was going to be called, and those who thought it was a bluff were about to get a very nasty surprise.

The silver collar on his tunic was lopsided. Kazimir grimaced at it in the mirror, and tried to fiddle the awkward fabric back into shape. In seven hundred years, he'd never used semi-organic fabrics for his uniform, and wasn't about to start now.

His u-shadow told him Paula Myo was calling from Ganthia. 'Good news? he asked.

'Not even close, she said. 'I've uncovered evidence that suggest the Navy has been manipulated.

Kazimir listened with growing anger as she explained her suspicions about Chatfield and his secondary persona, Evanston. When she'd finished he called ANA: Governance.

'This cannot stand, he said 'The Accelerators have committed treason.

'Circumstantial evidence, ANA: Governance replied. 'We don't know for sure.

'They have worked up this whole Pilgrimage situation right from the start.

'Pilgrimage was inevitable from the moment Inigo dreamed his first dream, Paula said. 'If they are behind the Prime Ocisen alliance then it is an arrangement that goes back decades. Evanston was assigned to the Elan system thirty years ago.

'And whatever Troblum worked on was twenty years before that, Kazimir acknowledged.

'I'd suggest this idea of Fusion was concocted when Inigo abandoned Living Dream, Paula said. 'They saw a method of fast forwarding to post-physical status and immediately set about enacting it.

'Very likely, Kazimir said. 'They don't call themselves Accelerators for nothing. The question is, what do we do about it? Can't you simply suspend them?

'Any intervention would have to be universal, ANA: Governance said. 'At present I do not have sufficient grounds.

'But you know.

'I very strongly suspect. To act on suspicion alone is persecution. I believe the human race is past such barbarism now, isn't it?

'Let's try this tack, Paula said. 'What can they possibly hope to achieve by the Prime Ossian alliance?

'It's a distraction, Kazimir said.

'No, Paula said. 'It has to be more than that. They know it will divert a degree of attention to the invasion fleet, but they also know that ANA and people like myself will continue to monitor the Pilgrimage preparations and investigate Troblum and Marius. No matter how many distractions, how many crises and alien invasions we face, we will not drop the ball when it comes to the Accelerator manifesto. Therefore, it has to be connected.

'How? Kazimir asked. 'For all the alliance is shocking, in military terms it is trivial. It doesn't physically threaten the Commonwealth, nor will it prevent Ethan's Pilgrimage from launching.

'Are you so sure Chatfield is an Accelerator? ANA: Governance asked. 'Your conclusion was drawn from a single answer. It would be more credible if he was a Custodian or even an Isolationist.

'He's an Accelerator, Paula said. 'It fits. So why would they want to engineer a threat to the Commonwealth, one that would be triggered by the Pilgrimage? One that isn't a simple diversion tactic?

'The deterrence fleet, Kazimir said bitterly. 'Without the Primes as part of the Empire's fleet, a squadron of capital-class ships would be enough to take them out. But with the Primes we have to send the deterrence fleet.

'They want to know what it is, ANA: Governance said.

'Why? Paula asked. 'What does knowing that get them? Is it a bluff?

'No, Kazimir said. 'It is not a bluff.

'In all my time I have never met a Navy officer who served in the deterrence fleet, Paula said. 'I've met hundreds serving on every other class of ship, but never that. And given the levels of government I interact with, I find that extremely odd.

'You have met someone from the deterrence fleet, Kazimir told her calmly. 'Me.

'I was birthed to provide protection to the physical segment of the human race, ANA: Governance said. 'I assure you the deterrence fleet is real, and is quite capable of achieving that level of physical defence. I should know. I built it.

'In which case, the Accelerators must want to know what it's armed with, Paula said. 'I assume it's something pretty potent.

'Yes. Very.

'All right, so they're expecting to analyse it, and use it — after all you wouldn't go to this much trouble if you don't have a need for it. But the timescale's not good here. Even if they did analyse it perfectly, they still have to build it. That will take time, and the Pilgrimage fleet is due to launch in a couple of months. Can they duplicate it in that time?

'Extremely unlikely, ANA: Governance said. 'It required my full abilities several years to fabricate. Admittedly my faculties have increased dramatically since then, but still it is not something which can be accomplished quickly.

'Let's examine the extremes, Paula said. 'Can the deterrence fleet weapons knock out the Void?

'No.

'But you're confident it can ward off just about everything else in the galaxy?

'Yes.

'In which case my guess would be that they intend to use it against the Raiel ships guarding the Void boundary. Justine barely managed to get through, and she had a head start on them, plus some help from the Void itself. As it stands, Ethan's ships wouldn't even make it to the Wall, let alone through the Gulf.

'Damn, Kazimir grunted. 'That has to be it. The idiots. Not enough to try and wreck the galaxy, they've got to start a war with the most powerful race in existence.

'There is one factor which might work to our advantage, Paula said.

'What?

'The Primes.

Centuries of experience had taught Kazimir never to be surprised at Paula's ideas. 'Go on.

'They're not stupid. At least not the ones still living in the Commonwealth, which is the group the Accelerators have manipulated. A standard Prime immotile knows that if there is any possibility of them threatening us again, we will simply exterminate them.

'Yes. Actually, given the new nature and developing psychology of the five surviving Prime civilizations, the Navy has downgraded their threat potential twice in the last thousand years.

'So they're not going to risk triggering human retaliation. They are extremely unlikely to agree to cooperate with the Accelerator plan. However, we know that human personalities can operate within a Prime neural structure. I once met the Bose-motile. The integration was flawless, he functioned without any problem. That gives us our potential evidence.

'What does? Kazimir asked.

'They might be Prime bodies inside those warships, but I'll give you very good odds that they're animated by human thought routines. It would be a simple matter to snatch some motiles that have just come out of the birthing pond. At that stage their brains are completely empty, it's their immotiles which instil them with baseline thoughts and memories. So if you did snatch one at that stage, it would be a simple procedure to load in a human mind and memories instead, it's our basic re-life procedure but with an alien body. And there you have it, the core of a completely independent Prime hierarchy. The Ocisen Empire thinks they've found a genuine enemy of humanity to give their cause some particularly sharp teeth, while in fact they're being manipulated by the Accelerators just like everyone else.

'So all we have to do is catch one and download its thoughts, Kazimir said.

'Exactly. When you go to the Senate Commission, explain that you're going to give the Ocisen Empire fleet one last chance to turn round now you and they know Capital-class ships can defeat the Prime. Use the Capital-class to disable a Prime ship and board it.

'If they are human driven Prime they'll suicide, ANA: Governance said.

'Will that be sufficient evidence for you? Paula asked.

'Not conclusively, no. I would have to be inserted into the inter-Prime communication network and analyse the thoughtstream.

'Attempt the Capital-class interception, Paula said. 'It acts completely in our favour. If it works and we prove the Primes are just biological shells for the Accelerators, then you can suspend all Accelerator activities. If not, then Kazimir still has plenty of time to use the deterrent fleet before the Ocisens reach the Commonwealth, and as a bonus you delay Accelerator acquisition of the fleet weapons.

'I agree that's a logical course of action, Kazimir said.

'But? Paula enquired.

'We didn't really know how powerful the warrior Raiel were until my mother flew past them in the Gulf. While from what we can determine, this plan of the Accelerators has been in motion for at least fifty years.

'We've known the Raiel had defence systems around the Wall stars since the day Wilson Kime discovered them in back in 2560. It was inevitable that those Raiel would have adequate firepower to back up their mission. After all, they're the ones who once tried to invade the Void. That's not something you attempt with anything as pitiful as a novabomb. The Accelerators have always known they'll need serious firepower to reach the Void boundary.

'Maybe, Kazimir said reluctantly. 'There's just something about this that bothers me, and I can't define it.

'If they don't want to see the deterrence fleet weapons in action, what else could they be using the Ocisen Empire fleet for?

'I don't know, he said. 'ANA?

'Paula's scenario is the obvious one. An exceptionally large effort is being made to draw the deterrence fleet out to the Ocisen invasion forces. Primes are the one species which will still unite every political and cultural bloc within the Commonwealth. And I would point out that even if you're right, and the Primes are exposed as Accelerator agents, the Ocisens themselves will still keep coming.

'Very well, Kazimir finally got his collar straight. 'I'll ask the Senate Commission for permission to deploy the deterrent fleet, but only after we make one final attempt to warn them off.

'Do let me know how Ilanthe responds to that, Paula told him.

It was as humiliating as Honious, but Corrie-Lyn had to rely on Aaron as well as Inigo to make it across the hundred-metre gap between the remains of the ground crawler, and the Navy starship. As well as her broken arm, her ankle was badly twisted and sprained, as she discovered when she tried to put any weight on it.

Aaron had simply knelt down on the rim of the ground crawler's bodywork that he'd sheared off with his disruptor pulse, and extended his arm. She'd reluctantly grasped it with her good hand, and allowed him to haul her up with no more effort than if he'd been lifting a bag of gromal puffs. It was only when he'd put her down that she gasped with pain and nearly collapsed back on to the ice. Aaron, of course, had caught her easily.

So she had to sling an arm around each of them, and let them take the weight as she hopped all the way over to the starship. Her body was shivering violently from the terrible cold. Huge flashes of lightning ripped overhead, their muted thunder rolling round the little bubble of calm which the starship's force field had cast over them. Even without any enriched sensors she could see the craft had taken a terrible beating. The fuselage actually had splits in it, and fluids were seeping out of various valves and exposed pipes.

The ground shook violently, and all three of them went tumbling down.

'Move, Aaron snapped. His integral force field strengthened, surrounding him in a mild blue haze.

Corrie-Lyn was slightly disconcerted to see Inigo had also protected himself the same way. Then the pair of them picked her up and started jogging over the last twenty metres with her hanging ignominiously between them. While they were doing that she started to pay attention to the red symbols appearing in her exovision. She was receiving a very unhealthy dose of radiation from the atmosphere trapped under the force field.

It was a Navy ship, she could see the name CNE Lindau on the fuselage. But the crew weren't responding to her desperate pings. She wondered what kind of cover story Aaron could possibly have spun them. Somehow she never thought to ask herself how he could have survived the glacier. It was sort of inevitable.

They hurried up the ramp and into the airlock. The outer hull was already flowing closed as they crossed the threshold. Another quake made the starship tremble. Then there was the unmistakable whine of power feeding into the drive, and they lifted from the surface. The floor immediately shuddered badly, and the decking shifted out of horizontal alignment. It juddered its way back level as the unnerving sounds of equipment straining at its safety margins set her teeth on edge.

The airlock's inner door unfurled as her weight began to build up.

'Hold her, Aaron instructed curtly as he let go of Corrie-Lyn's arm and lurched his way into the ship against the rapidly increasing acceleration.

Inigo quickly lowered her on to the floor of the short corridor. 'Don't move your neck, he said urgently. 'Keep your spine level. I don't know how bad this is going to get. The decking seemed to be made from a grey plyplastic. It wasn't comfortable, but with the gee force approaching five she was grateful to be lying prone. Medical symbols warned her what the acceleration was doing to her broken arm, which might have accounted for her mounting nausea.

'What's happening? she grunted to Inigo. 'Where's the crew? Her body was still shivering from the icy air outside.

He kept his head steady as he replied. 'We're going straight up to get out of the atmosphere as fast as possible. I don't know about the crew. His gaiafield emission was tinged with worry.

'I can't access the ship's net.

'Me neither.

After a couple of minutes the acceleration suddenly sunk back to a stable one gee. Inigo lifted himself to a sitting position. Worry was still leaking out of his gaiamotes.

Corrie-Lyn winced as she slowly sat up. Her ankle was throbbing, and the medication she'd taken for her arm was doing strange things to her vision. Or maybe it was just her balance that made her feel weirdly light. Or perhaps the ship's drives were acting oddly. Something in the air smelt funny. She hiccupped, hoping it wasn't a precursor to being sick. For some reason the situation didn't bother her as much as she knew it ought. The crew, though. That was bad. She knew it at a deep instinctive level. Didn't want to consciously examine the obvious. Too much. Way too much all at once.

'We're still alive then, she said with a sigh.

Inigo gave her a troubled glance. 'Yes. He clambered to his feet. One of the light strips on the ceiling was flickering. Its case had cracks. He frowned at that. 'My field scan is revealing a lot of damage in the structure around us. Uh, I can't find the crew on board.

'What do you mean?

A thick plyplastic door curtained open, and Aaron stepped out into the corridor. His gaiamotes were closed, but even in her medicated state Corrie-Lyn didn't need them to tell how angry he was. He glared at Inigo. 'Don't you ever pull a stunt like that glacier again.

Inigo gave him a disdainful glance. 'Almost got you, though, didn't it? And me a simple amateur.

Aaron produced a tight smile. Took a step forward.

Corrie-Lyn screamed at the pain as his foot came down on her ankle.

Inigo lunged forward, hitting Aaron with a rugby-style tackle. It barely moved him. For emphasis, Aaron held the position for another few seconds before slowly and deliberately taking his foot off and stepping back.

Corrie-Lyn whimpered, and gripped her ankle where the hot pain was still firing into her flesh. There were tears in her eyes. 'Don't, she whispered fearfully.

'The medical chamber is in the main cabin, Aaron said, and held his hand out.

'Where's the crew? she asked.

'They stepped out for a moment. Aaron paused, thinking. 'They might be some time.

Corrie-Lyn ignored his hand. Inigo helped her up. They hobbled after Aaron through the door into the main cabin.

'Oh Lady! Corrie-Lyn's free hand came up to cup her mouth. She really felt the bile rising in her gullet at the sight which greeted her.

The starship's main cabin was a circular room about seven metres across. Several items of furniture were extruded from the plyplastic walls and floor. Some had twisted and locked into strange shapes. A lot of the equipment modules sunk flush with the walls were damaged. Most had suffered some kind of physical impact, leaving their casings buckled and broken. Others were melted along with the wall around them, leaving soot marks scarring the ceiling. That wasn't what drew her eye. There was blood on the floor. Big puddles of the grisly fluid that had been sloshing around in the starship's erratic acceleration. Now it was congealing. There was blood on the walls; broad splash patterns radiating out from the burn scars. There was blood on the ceiling in long splatter trails.

'Monster! she groaned though clenched teeth.

'Let's get one thing quite clear, Aaron said as he ordered the smartcore to activate the one surviving medical cabinet. 'I am not a good man. I am not a bad man. I am simply a man with a job to do. I will complete that job. Nothing must prevent that. Nothing.

Corrie-Lyn gave Inigo a broken look. She could see how scared he was; an expression she'd never seen on his face before. Not Inigo. Not the man who was going to lead them all to a chance at a beautiful life.

'What job? Inigo asked, with considerable dignity.

A small muscle flexed in Aaron's jaw. 'I apologize. I'm not sure.

'Not sure!

Aaron gave Corrie-Lyn a modest shrug. 'You know how it is.

'He's not a man, she growled out. 'He's a biological killing machine. And he's so pitiful he doesn't even know why.

'So there you have it, Aaron said. He looked over at the medical cabinet which had rolled out of the wall. It did have a scorch mark on its silver casing, but the malmetal lid split open, and the management system reported full functionality even if some systems were running on back-up.

'I'm not getting in that, Corrie-Lyn yelped.

'You are, Aaron said. 'One way or another. Of course Inigo's u-shadow will have complete control of your treatment. But I need you intact and healthy. As well as your physical injuries, you picked up a bad dose of radiation back there.

She glanced at Inigo, who shrugged.

'You need her healthy? Inigo said. 'Why?

'She's my leverage, Aaron said bluntly. 'She guarantees your good behaviour.

'Shoot me, Corrie-Lyn implored Inigo. 'Use your biononics like a weapon again. Please. He can't be allowed to succeed.

Inigo stared at her for a long moment. He bowed his head.

'Now we have that out of the way, please get in, Aaron said with a polite gesture at the medical cabinet.

Corrie-Lyn limped over to it and sat on the edge. Inigo helped her to remove her clothes, then eased her back. The lid slid over her. She was sobbing as she lost consciousness.

According to Corrie-Lyn's secondary thought routines the medical cabinet took four hours to reset and bind her arm in a toughened dermal layer, de-stress the bad sprain around her ankle, and decontaminate her skin and blood. Inigo had also got it to issue some kind of anti-depressant sedative. She lay there in the warm dry darkness for several minutes after she woke, reluctant to get out and see how much worse their lives had become. Eventually, she sighed and told her u-shadow to open the lid.

Inigo was there, leaning over with his face showing a gentle concern.

'How do you feel? he asked.

'Like the Waterwalker on top of the mountain after Salrana's death.

Inigo stroked her hair tenderly. 'Nothing we face is ever going to be that bad.

'Ha, she said indignantly. 'That bastard's not human, although he's got the psychopath trait nailed pretty good. She sat up to see Aaron on the other side of the cabin, smiling modestly. 'Are your dreams still punishing you? she growled at him as she crossed her arms over her bare breasts. 'Hope so. One day you'll drown in all that shit sloshing round in your head.

'Well, well, it is true, Aaron grinned. 'You can take the girl out of Sampalok, but you can't take Sampalok out of the girl.

'What the crap do you know about the Waterwalker's life you subsentient biobot fuckhead.

'Welcome back, Corrie-Lyn. This party just wouldn't be the same without you.

Inigo handed her a robe that was several sizes too big. Corrie-Lyn wrapped herself in it with angry motions, then swung her feet out of the cabinet. She drew back abruptly, remembering what had been on the floor as she went in.

The blood had gone. She gave the cabin a careful examination. Apart from the bent equipment and misshapen furniture, it was relatively clean.

'Some of the servicebots still work, Inigo said. 'I've had them cleaning things up.

'Huh, she grunted and climbed out. 'So, going to start threatening me?

Aaron scratched behind his ear. 'No.

'Why not? I thought you said I was your leverage. Go ahead, get your kicks slicing bits off. I won't disappoint. I promise I'll scream lots. The bravado was making her legs shake.

'Damn, and you think my brain's damaged.

'Fuck you.

Aaron gave Inigo a genuinely curious look. 'Whatever did you two have back in the day?

'Love. Inigo's arm went round her shoulder. 'I doubt that's in your memories.

'No. I have to admit it ain't dinging any bells. But I understand the principles. And who knows, if I eat my greens and stay out of trouble maybe I'll find a nice girl who'll like me for what I am. Just like this one does you.

Corrie-Lyn took a step forward, her hand bunching into a fist. Inigo pulled her back. 'Will you two behave yourselves? And you, this is hardly professional.

'I know, Aaron said. 'Truce?

'If I ever get the chance to slit your throat while you're sleeping, I promise I'll cut long and deep.

Even Inigo gave her a strange look at that. She remained unrepentant.

'I did save your lives back there, Aaron said in a mildly injured tone.

'We were only in that much trouble because of you.

'Really? Think on this. The people following us to find Inigo wanted him dead, very badly dead. They would have found him eventually. Thanks to you and me teaming up, we got here first.

'And who is left alive on Hanko to thank you for that?

'All right, enough, Inigo said, squeezing her arm. 'We are still alive, for which I acknowledge our debt. But you have to admit, having you come for me as part of some Faction's ideological wish-fulfilment isn't great for me.

'I don't know what's in store for you, Aaron said. 'But how bad can it be?

Inigo said nothing. Corrie-Lyn was disconcerted by the way his gaiamotes had closed off again, isolating his emotions. She was so used to sharing her every feeling with him. Seventy years ago.

'So who are you taking me to? Inigo asked.

Aaron had the grace to look uncomfortable.

'He doesn't know, Corrie-Lyn said.

'Can I at least ask where we're going?

'Well, Aaron drawled. 'I have to admit I'm not too sure any more.

'What?

'You said you always know what to do next, Corrie-Lyn protested. 'Your brain is like an old flow chart. Finish one task and the next flips up. Well now you've got the Dreamer, you have to know where to take him.

'It's kinda like this: under ordinary circumstances I'd know exactly what to do next.

'Ordinary circumstances?

'We're on a Navy ship. A, uh, borrowed Navy ship.

'And you've broken it, Inigo said laconically.

'Broken it? she asked in alarm. The prospect of the rest of her life, however long or short, condemned to the confines of this ship with the ultimate nut-job Aaron wasn't a comforting thought.

'I had to fly some rather extreme manoeuvres to locate you, Aaron explained. 'Let's just say I kinda screwed the warranty. On the plus side, there's a lot of redundancy, and a big inventory of spare parts. The smartcore has drawn up a repair schedule, and the bots are hard at it.

'Wait, Corrie-Lyn said. 'Where are we now? She'd assumed that after four hours they'd be far outside the Hanko system.

'A million kilometres from Hanko, Aaron said. 'And waiting.

'For what?

'Here's the deal, this is a Navy ship, so they build them tough; we can go ftl in our current state, but I haven't got me a huge urge to do that right now. The bots need some time to get us back up to a minimum function level. Now the way my instinct's pushing it, I don't mind waiting. When we are back up to a halfway decent degree of flight readiness, I'll know what to do.

Inigo blinked in astonishment. 'Is it always like this?

Corrie-Lyn sighed. 'Yes. Fraid so.

There was food on board. The crew each had their own little store of speciality items they just couldn't live without. So Corrie-Lyn and Inigo got to open packets of hot orange chocolate drink made on Luranda, with marshmallows from Epual. The packets were self-heating, which was just as well; the culinary unit was one of the casualties the bots were working on. And half of their basic nutrient liquid had squirted out of a ruptured tank.

The cabin furniture was a long way down the priority list for repairs, so they wriggled themselves into the strange lumpy curves as comfortably as possible and sipped from metal mugs. Aaron was with them some of the time. He often left to inspect what was being done in various parts of the ship.

After another argument, Corrie-Lyn got him to open up the ship's net with some heavy access restrictions in place. At least it meant she and Inigo were allowed to review the sensor images.

Hanko was a silver crescent set against an unusually barren starfield. The Lindaus remaining sensors overlaid the visual image with a host of gravitational data. They could actually watch the mass distribution altering as the Hawking m-sink ate the world from within. Great looping gravity waves expanded and contracted around the planet, juddering with the rhythm of a dying heart. Their motions became more erratic as the process began to accelerate towards its terrible ending. The magma core was now being absorbed at a phenomenal rate by the inflating event horizon. Tectonic plates shifted and shattered as the mantle adjusted to internal pressures that changed by the minute. The ice that had grasped every ocean for the last thousand years broke apart into vast crumbling sea-sized bergs that started to skid across the buckling land and collapsing mountain ranges.

Aaron returned to the cabin. 'It's about to go critical, he announced solemnly.

As he spoke, the brilliant white storm clouds began to glow with a tangerine hue, filling the crescent out to a perfect sphere of amber light. Its intensity rose swiftly, and the atmosphere started to expand. Massive hurricanes geysered up above the ionosphere, twirling off into space as the gases burned with nuclear heat.

'Wish it well, wish it gone, Aaron sang in a low whisper.

Below the shredded atmosphere, the mantle detonated. Continent sized rock segments punched outwards amid tattered oceans of superheated lava.

'The splendour of death, once known, loved beyond reason. Evolution's eternal shore, free at last to wash up what you will.

Untied from the constraints of the semi-solid shell, the true light of the runaway m-sink implosion shone out far brighter than the nearby star. Its spectrum chased through a delicate pink to pure white, then accelerated into blue-white as its radiation efflux poured out vast quantities of gamma waves. The event horizon consumed the last of the planet's core. Only the light remained, growing ever brighter as its heart shrank faster and faster.

'Out of twinkling Stardust all came, into dark matter all will fall. Death mocks us as we laugh defiance at entropy, yet ignorance birthed mortals sail forth upon time's cruel sea.

The Lindau began to accelerate at an easy two gees, keeping far ahead of the rock fragments and darkening seas of magma that spewed out from the dazzling implosion nucleus.

'I don't recognize the verse, Inigo said.

Aaron shook himself out of a mild daze to frown at him. 'What verse?

Corrie-Lyn rolled her eyes, and poured a shot of hundred-year-old rum into the remains of her hot chocolate. She'd found the bottle of St Lisamne's finest in one of the crew cabins, and immediately appropriated it. 'Never mind. Has your crappy brain come up with anything yet?

'I'm considering options. I'm most worried that the Navy knew we were here.

'How do you know that? Inigo asked.

'The information was in the captain's brain. Admiral Kazimir himself told him about you and me.

Corrie-Lyn shuddered and poured some more rum. The chocolate was all gone now. 'In his brain! So they'll come looking when this ship doesn't report in.

'I suspect they're already on their way and, given the captain reported the use of an m-sink, it will be considerably more than a simple scout ship that pops out of hyperspace.

'So will you suicide or surrender?

'Neither. We have about three more hours until primary systems repairs reach an adequate level. The rest can be performed while we're underway, but the drive and power systems must be made reliable first.

'That sounds like you know where we're going.

'I'm considering options that are opening up.

'Opening up, an intrigued Inigo said. 'Do you mean logically, or are these possibilities inside your own head that are being revealed by your employer?

Aaron scratched behind his ear, clearly made uncomfortable by the whole process. 'The options, I guess, are implanted information. Which one I choose is down to me based on the situation on the ground. After all, it's that kind of expertise which bought me the job.

'Do any of these options tell you what is to become of me?

'It's not like that. You're not relevant to me personally; you're just the package I'm assigned to deliver.

'You know, as well as my day job as the Dreamer, I am an accomplished analyst. If you were to open yourself fully to the gaiafield I might be able to uncover the pathways of these foreign memories.

'Why would I want you to do that?

'So that you know who you are. Where the real you begins and the artificial motivations end.

'Suppose they're not artificial motivations? Suppose this is what I am, what I've always been?

'You suffer too much for that to be true. Your dreams trouble you. I knew that even before Corrie-Lyn told me.

'And yet I'm alive, and you're in my custody. I think we'll settle for that level of functionality for now.

'As you wish. Can you at least tell us of the options that have been revealed?

'I don't know much in advance. That way, if I'm captured I can't reveal anything to my opponents.

'You just said we were in your custody.

'I have to consider the infinitely small probability you might escape. I can't have you knowing what I know, that would give you a mighty large tactical advantage my friend.

'Oh dear Lady, Corrie-Lyn groaned, and took a swig straight from the bottle. She ordered her u-shadow to resume the feed from the external sensors.

The new intense star that had been Hanko began to diminish within an hour of its inception. It was an insatiable consumer of mass, quick to devour the remnants of the planet that hadn't reached escape velocity during the implosion rupture. Solid splinters were quick to fall prey to its incredible gravity, flashing to ruin as they passed through the event horizon. Then its gravity reached out further, to the solidifying torrents of magma, pulling them back. After that there was only the thick streamers of gas and dust that were splayed out. Their tides began to turn, grasping at the loose irradiated particles and hauling them down the steepening gravity gradient to extinction.

A mere three hours after it shone brighter than its primary, Hanko was reduced to a tiny glowing ember surrounded by whirlpool veils of lavender fog that were slowly constricting.

'It consumes everything around it in order to burn, Aaron said. 'Yet, in the end, entropy will always emerge victorious, snuffing out the very last glimmer of heat and light. After that there is only darkness. When that state is reached, even eternity will cease to exist, for one moment will be like every other, and nothingness will claim the universe. He turned to Inigo. 'Sound familiar?

'Nothingness is a long way off, Inigo said. 'Not even the post-physicals will be around to witness that. It certainly doesn't worry me.

'And yet it's your Void which will accelerate the process. Without the mass of this galaxy, the universe moves noticeably closer to the end of time and space.

'Your employers want me to stop the Pilgrimage.

Aaron gave a bemused shrug. 'I have no idea what they want. I'm just observing the symbology here.

Corrie-Lyn stirred herself. After the St Lisamne rum, she'd polished off a couple of bottles of wine hoarded by another crewman. Then there was the JK raspberry vodka. It annoyed her there wasn't a working fridge, the JK should have been drunk chilled to arctic levels. 'You care though, she slurred. 'That's a start. Your conditioning is beginning to unravel. Maybe we'll get to meet the real Aaron sooner than your boss would like.

'You're already looking at him. Sorry. Aaron sent an order to the smartcore, and the Lindau went ftl.

'So what have you decided? Inigo asked.

'The Navy knows that I was hunting you, and if they don't know I survived Hanko they'll find out soon enough. We're both being hunted by whoever flew the ship that fired the Hawking m-sink. I was supposed to be in the Artful Dodger, which should have given me a big edge, but that's gone. However, there's the emergency replacement ship waiting for me on Pulap. The bad news is that if we turn up anywhere in the Lindau, everybody and their mother will know about it. I can't risk that, I can't expose you to the possibility of capture or termination.

'You're stuffed then, Corrie-Lyn sniggered. 'Shame about that.

'Not quite. There is something that took a long time to emerge, a real last resort.

'Which is? Inigo asked.

'I'm taking you to the Spike.

'The alien macro-habitat? That's seven thousand lightyears away. It'll take weeks. What in Honious is there?

Aaron wrinkled up his brow as if listening to some distant voice. Even he seemed surprised by what it was saying: 'Ozzie. Ozzie lives in the Spike.

Paula watched the padded plyplastic fold protectively around her piano with a mild sense of regret. There was just no point in trying to play. Following the conference with Kazimir and ANA she just couldn't lose herself in music like she normally did. Kazimir's doubt about the Accelerator's motivation was troubling her. Logically, the outline she'd proposed was flawless. The Accelerators needed the deterrent fleet weapons to blast the Raiel out of the way.

As she'd thought earlier: what else could the whole Prime scheme be? And that nasty little phrase had begun to haunt her. What else? For the Accelerators to risk internal ANA suspension by manipulating the Ocisens and Primes was a phenomenal gamble. One that always had a good chance of exposure. To her mind it was too much of a gamble for anything astute as an ANA Faction. For all she rejected half of their ideologies, they weren't stupid. Which left her with the uncomfortable question of what else they could hope to gain by forcing deployment of the deterrent fleet.

In a classic diversion tactic, the fleet would rush off to intercept the Ocisens, leaving the rest of the Commonwealth exposed. She couldn't think what the nature of that exposure could be.

It can't be a physical attack. They need the Pilgrimage ships to be complete and launch, they also need ANA to carry on, after all they're part of it.

So, what, then?

If it was nothing other than a crude attempt to analyse the deterrence fleet weapons they were going to fail. And failure now would mean the end of them and their goals. ANA: Governance had only ever used the suspension sanction once before, during the Evolutionary Secessionist rebellion five hundred years ago, which had seen the Secessionists trying to literally split ANA so they might assume control of a section and go post-physical.

There has to be something I'm missing.

The one big hole in her information was the nature of the deterrence fleet. Which was the one thing ANA: Governance would never explain to her. For all she was a valued agent, even she acknowledged that information could never be allowed to leak out, which it might well do if she was ever captured. Small chance, but if it was the Cat after her, a realistic chance. And if not the Cat, there were others who would enjoy seeing her removed from physical existence. There probably always would be. All part of the job. After fourteen hundred years you just grew to live with the prospect no matter what your psychology was.

The smartcore told her the Alexis Denken was fifteen minutes out from Kerensk. And Gore was making a call.

'Justine's still all right then, Paula said. 'That's good news.

'Yes. But that little shit Ethan must be laughing his fucking head off that the Skylord wouldn't help her.

'It won't help her now. But let's face it, if any of us are close to maturity it's going to be Justine.

'Yeah, maybe.

'I didn't realize time was that fast inside the Void.

'Nobody did. Although I suspect the flow rate might be localized. We don't know enough about its fabric yet, but that would certainly explain the Skylord's acceleration. It wasn't physically fast, it operated a different time-flow.

'What do you think happened on Querencia since the Water-walker's death? The Skylord said there's nobody left now.

'Who gives a shit? I have some information for you. Do you know who left Ganthia two hours after you did?

'Yes, an Accelerator agent we're interested in. He's got an ultradrive ship, but its stealth isn't perfect, or at least ANA's sensors are better. Don't worry, Digby has him under surveillance.

'Keeping it in the family, huh? Good for you. But I wasn't taking about Chatfield.

Paula sighed. There were times when she was very annoyed with ANA for the leeway it granted Gore Burnelli. 'Who then?

'Marius.

After fourteen hundred years, an unexpected turn in a case no longer surprised her, but she was very interested. 'And how do you know that?

'A friend of a friend saw him at the starport.

She laughed. 'You mean the Conservative Faction is still eager to screw the Accelerators.

'Screw them into the ground and dance on the pieces, actually. Does that information help?

'It's not helpful for them, but it does confirm my assumption that Chatfield is an Accelerator representative. Her u-shadow reported that it couldn't track the origin of Gore's call. There were very few people who could manipulate the Unisphere to that extent. And why would he hide that anyway? Unless… No! Surely not.

'I have something else which may be of use for you, Gore said.

'What's that?

'Troblum.

'You know where he is?

'No, sorry, not that, but I do know what he's been up to.

'Oh really? Your Delivery Man shut down our one avenue of investigation. I'll get round to arresting him one day, you know. Using an m-sink on a Central world is not amusing.

'Consider this my olive branch. We were scared by what Troblum was doing.

'Which was?

'Building an ftl drive big enough to move a planet.

'Jesus! You're kidding.

'Wish I was. The good news is that he wasn't doing it for the Accelerators — at least not as far as we can determine. This seems to be some mad personal obsession.

'That fits. He has a semi-plausible theory on how the Anomine acquired Dark Fortress technology. One way is that they simply stole or borrowed them from the warrior Raiel.

'Yeah? Anyway… he succeeded in building one.

'Now you are kidding me.

'No. That's why the Delivery Man was authorized to cover it up. We were concerned when we thought it was part of the Accelerator plan, but now we don't believe it is.

'So why tell me this now?

'Troblum is a very strange man. And now he's loose in the universe with an ftl drive that might be able to move a planet. He's also trying to make contact with you to tell you something about the Accelerators. They don't like that.

'Ah, I get it: the wild card.

'Damn right.

'And that worries you?

'It should worry you, too. Events are becoming unstable enough as it is. We don't need people like Troblum fucking things up even more.

'And yet he might have the evidence ANA: Governance needs to suspend the Accelerators.

'Could be. Who knows?

'So what do you want me to do?

'Stick him up at the top of your priority list. He needs to be found.

'After what happened on Sholapur I expect he's halfway to Andromeda by now.

'We can't take the risk. You must not allow the Accelerators to find him again.

'Don't try to tell me my job, she told him curtly.

'Wouldn't dream of it. Just making information available like a good citizen.

'So what are you up to right now? I heard you didn't show up for the ExoProtectorate meeting.

'I thought now was a good time to take a sabbatical. But don't worry, I'm still sticking my hand in.

'Stick it in too deep and I'll break it off. You know you don't have half the special privileges you think you do, not as far as I'm concerned.

'Pleasure doing business with you, Paula. As always. The call ended.

Paula sat back on the couch. After a while she began to grin.

The Wurung Transport cab rattled along Colwyn City's ageing public rails all day long. Araminta sat on the wide front seat with the wrap-around bubble window switched to one-way, watching a city in torment. The Ellezelin capsules zoomed low over the buildings, an unending reminder of their presence and power. Desperation was sinking in now, replacing the previous sullen resentment which had claimed the city. The Senate delegation had been on the ground for six hours before Cleric Phelim even agreed to see them. Crowds around the docks were treated badly by the paramilitaries as they shouted their demands to be heard by the Senators. Flights by ambulance capsules were still forbidden; cabs and trike pods were kept busy carrying the injured to city hospitals. By mid-afternoon numbers were thinning out around the docks. Other disturbance areas were growing.

Laril had switched on the cab's Unisphere node as he promised. It responded to simple voice instructions, which was proving incredibly useful. Almost the first thing she saw was a Unisphere report on Justine's encounter with the Skylord. The dream had been released into the gaiafield a few hours ago, the show said, and they'd transferred the images over. A lot of smart commentators were busy providing their interpretation, as was a Living Dream Councillor called DeLouis who seemed repellently excited by the Skylord's refusal to take Justine to the nucleus. Araminta watched for a while until she realized that no one really knew anything, then switched to local news. The tiny portal projected scenes captured by reporters all across town.

One thing kept happening over and over again. It was random, and inexplicable to the news shows. Ellezelin capsules pounced out of the sky to snatch women by force. There was no discoverable connection between the women as far as anyone could make out, and some very sophisticated semi-sentient scrutineers were employed to that effect. The Ellezelin troopers who performed the seizures were extremely determined, and didn't care how much peripheral damage was committed to achieve their objective. The images helped stir a lot of the outrage people were feeling. Those minority of residents who had valiantly gone to work as normal were heading for home by mid-afternoon. Almost no one on late shifts turned up. A siege mentality was growing. Homes were double locked and alarmed.

Araminta only had to see the first three atrocious snatches to work out the link between the poor hapless women. They looked like her.

'Sweet Ozzie, she groaned as the third was dragged away in the middle of a street in Espensten district, her two young children screamed at the horror of Mummy being forcefully taken from them.

Condemnation from across the Commonwealth reached a crescendo with that one. It didn't affect the behaviour of the paramilitaries.

Her feeling of depression grew as she saw her homeworld suffer because of her; a feeling not helped by the way the Skylord had rejected Justine. Araminta was furious about that. After all she'd risked contacting the Skylord and getting Justine into the Void, the effort had come to nothing. Justine hadn't even got to the Heart. There would be no negotiation now, no explaining to whatever controlled the Void the damage it was causing.

There was nothing Araminta could do about that, or anything, actually — short of surrendering, which was one very swift answer to everything. Instead she did what Laril advised, and delved into the gaiafield, losing herself amid the emotional outpourings and whispered messages of enticement and spectacular memories divulged by the confluence nests. There were levels, or layers, or perhaps she was too rigid in applying such labels; there were certainly different aspects to the emotive universe which she could immerse herself in.

The dreams, of course, were the primary foundation of the gaiafield. Inigo's dreams and the countless billions of others given to the confluence nests by their creators; all identifiable by their unique emotional appellation. Any one of which would rise into her consciousness to the summons of a matching mood or image; exactly the way memories inside her own head worked — simple association. Although Inigo's dreams all seemed to have strong tags and were the easiest of all to acquire.

So, as the cab trundled onwards steered by Laril's dodgy software, Araminta bowed to the inevitable and lived through Inigo's first few dreams, only finally to shake herself free hours later, smiling exuberantly as young Edeard walked across Birmingham Pool to defeat Arminel. She felt like letting out a cheer inside the cab. Makkathran was such a delight, with its strange architecture and peculiar genistars, populated by rich and pompous lords and ladies out of some incredibly ancient text. She wondered if Edeard would wind up marrying Kanseen or Salrana; either would be a lovely romantic outcome. And she knew for sure it all had some kind of ridiculously happy ending, not that she'd ever want to live in such a backward culture.

Outside Inigo's dreams of Edeard were the voices carried on winds of pure emotion: the everyday emissions of her fellow Colwyn City residents. The gaiafield was a bleak state indeed beyond the cab, worry and fear from the majority almost drowning out the fervent hopes of the Living Dream adherents that their Second Dreamer was truly close at hand.

Perhaps it was because her Silfen heritage delivered her into the gaiafield rather than gaiamotes like everyone else, but this whole strange universe of memory and raw emotions seemed remarkably clear to her. She was able to rise above the emotional clamour to study the composition of this strange cosmos in a calm and objective fashion. By doing that rather than simply plunging in regardless, she was aware of what her mind interpreted as little neutral zones. Slivers of nothingness anchored throughout the babble. Strangest of all was the way they really did appeal to her; their outer layers reverberated to an emotional state that was almost identical to her own. That mental siren song alone made her cautious. Holding them aloft in her mind she could feel the subliminal tethers to the confluence nests of the city.

Ozzie! Living Dream really is desperate to find me.

She carefully separated herself from the treacherous traps. Beyond that brash bright constellation of human thoughts was the ever-present serenity of the Silfen Motherholm.

'Do you know me? she asked in trepidation.

The answer wasn't specific, not speech in human terms, more a warm feeling of acknowledgement and welcome.

'Can you help me?

Sadness, not cold, it was regret rather than a rejection.

'I might make a real hash of things.

The comforting warmth of a mother's embrace.

'I wish I had that much confidence in me. Do you have any idea what's at stake here?

A glowing gold light bathing every cell of her body, as if an angel's smile had broken through Colwyn City's fug of misery.

'Oh for Ozzie's sake; all right, I'll ask it again. And she reached beyond the Silfen Motherholm for the entity that lurked right on the edge of her perception. Carefully this time, avoiding the vigilant watchers, speaking softly within herself rather than the cry across thirty-thousand lightyears. A call which found her bathed in a luminescence similar to the Void's nebulas, relishing the smooth flow of the universe around her.

'Hello, she said to the Skylord.

'I wait for you.

'Was that you with my friend? The one who is inside your universe.

'I have not guided one of your species for a long time.

'Doesn't mean much, Araminta muttered sourly. 'If I come to your universe, would you guide me to the nucleus?

'I will.

'Immediately?

'Once you have reached fulfilment.

'Ah. You just won't do it, will you? None of you will.

'I am gladdened by your desire to reach the nucleus. I will guide you.

'When our species first arrived in your universe, where did you guide them?

'My kindred showed them where they might live and reach maturity.

'So you will take people to planets, just not the nucleus? Interesting.

'I will guide those who have reached fulfil—

'Yeah yeah, I get it.

'Do you come?

'Many of my species will try to reach you.

'I await with joy.

'By reaching you, they will slaughter billions of other people, trillions of lives will be lost as your universe destroys the galaxy. How do you feel about that? She knew she was risking triggering another devourment phase, but she'd managed to calm it last time.

'Not all reach fulfilment. Your species grows strong. Few of your kind will be left to ascend into the fabric alone.

'Do you even understand that there is a universe outside yours?

'There is only hero, the universe and the nucleus. You will emerge here somewhen.

'Deja vu, she grunted. 'Okay then, she told the Skylord. 'Maybe 1 will.

'I wait for you, it said as she withdrew her consciousness. She hurriedly checked round outside the cab. Night was falling, the low sunlight diffused to a smear by the city's force field weather dome. She peered upwards urgently, but couldn't see any of the Ellezelin capsules swooping down on her, so presumably they hadn't overheard her conversation with the Skylord.

'Big deal, she snorted to the inside of the cab. 'I can't stop the Void from taking us in. The bastards have just about won.

Which left her with some decisions to make. She told the cab to swing past Bodant Park, using the rail on the marina side, away from her apartment block. It wasn't as foolhardy as it seemed. Well, all right maybe a little stupid. But she wanted one last look at what she'd considered her first real home since — well, leaving Langham. It was becoming clear to her that she would have to get out somehow. The only way to stop Living Dream from using her was to get beyond their reach. That cut her options considerably. Cressida's offer of a starship ticket was clearly impossible, events of the last few days had made it obvious that even a diplomatic starship wasn't going to lift her away from Colwyn City. Thinking of that made her remember Cressida's claim of a Silfen path in Francola Wood. Now that was a definite possibility. But she was more confident that Laril might negotiate for her. He was part Higher now, he must know a reliable Faction, one that was opposed to the Pilgrimage. Everyone knew the Factions had agents with all sorts of enrichments; and Gore had said they were looking for her. If anyone could get her out of Colwyn City and away from Viotia it would be them.

That came hooked to the sheepish thought that if a Faction took care of her she wouldn't have to make the big decision herself.

Forget that. You just need to get out of here.

It was dark by the time the Wurung Transport cab slid along

Aeana Street, parallel to the Cairns. Strong white light shone through one side of the cab's bubble window, coming off the big deco marina buildings. She could hear the crowd now, that unnerving buzz of so many people sharing their anger.

The cab pulled in to a marina slot and Araminta got out. She was surprised by how many people were in the park, it was in the thousands now. On this side they were milling around in loose groups; while over near her apartment block they'd concentrated into a dense knot, shouting abuse and clashing with the barrier set up along the road.

Araminta suddenly realized what the problem was. The cordon the paramilitaries had thrown up around her apartment block was acting as a huge provocation.

My fault. Again.

She walked forward into the crowd. The gaiafield was a storm of hatred and resentment. Her macrocellular clusters reported a colossal amount of pings zipping across the park. Directionless, without any author code, not routed through the cybersphere nodes and therefore untraceable.

'>file< Binder frequency at the second segment.

'Counter that with a patch from Etol, they have the fixes.

'Managed to hit one scumfuck with a maser pulse.

'Cheer.

'Cheer.

'Cheer.

'Cheer.

'Left side of the building, road crumbling around a segment.

'Gather there people.

'Free Viotia.

'Bot attack ready. Maybe. Are you listening fuckheads? Are we joking?

'Fuckheads, we're coming for you.

'Free Viotia.

'Gonna carve the memorycells right out of your living dreaming brains.

'None of you is ever going to see re-life.

'Gather at segment five. Push hard people.

Araminta soon realized that the segments were part of the barricade the paramilitaries had set up. The mob was organizing for a assault. There was no leader — not obviously — they were reacting like antibodies to the invasion forces.

'Got me some disruptor rifles that'll cut clean through their armour.

'Good.

'Great.

'Laugh.

'Handing out the rifles.

'Hey, scum in armour; if you think your Waterwalker's strong enough to save you from us, start screaming for her.

'Laugh.

'Laugh.

'Laugh.

'Ready? Go.

Araminta tensed. The paramilitaries fired a barrage of jangle-pulse shots through the barricade. Screams echoed over the park.

'You believed me. Stupid dumb shits.

'Laugh.

'Laugh.

'We hurt now, you die later.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, she thought looking across the sea of agitated people. But the nostalgia was reassuring.

If she craned her neck she could just see the six storey apartment block. Strangely dark behind the bursts of purple light along the barricades. Its edges were framed by the blue and violet sparkles of the glass column corners.

Okay, seen it. Let's go.

Araminta turned and began to push her way back through the rowdy crowd. Emotional pressure was building in the gaiafield, a compelling surety replacing the edgy tinge of anticipation. Something was about to happen — whatever something was. She paused, glancing back over her shoulder to see the flickering dapples of light become constant all along the barricades.

Screaming and cheering rose to a single animal howl blanketing the park. The pings increased to an indecipherable smear of electronic noise. All around her people began to rush forwards towards the barricades.

Weapons fire was distinct.

One ping peaked above the general clamour: 'Got one! relayed by everyone's macrocellular clusters. A tone of evil glee bloomed amid the gaiafield at the news.

'Oh no, Araminta muttered.

People stared at her as they rushed past — mildly annoyed she wasn't joining them.

Several urged, 'Come on.

She hesitated, undecided.

Dazzling pinpoints of scarlet light rose from various parts of the park, skimming overhead to converge on the paramilitaries behind the faltering barricade segments. More weapons fire greeted them. She saw the distinctive blue-green flash of disruptor pulses. A second salvo of red stars shot upwards.

This is well planned, she realized.

A section of the lavender aura put out by the straining barricades went dark. From her viewpoint she saw bobbing heads surge into the dark opening. More red stars lit their way. A long scattering of weapons fire — it wasn't all coming from the paramilitaries.

Then windows in her apartment block began to glow with orange light. 'Oh no! Araminta's hands came up to cover her mouth as the shock hit her. Fire!

It was on the third floor. Then flames began to lick up a top floor balcony. Down on the street below the flashes from weapons became more pronounced.

'Got them.

'Got them. Went the pings. 'We're through.

'Barricade's down.

'Burn the fuckhead scum.

Araminta stood staring at the fire which was spreading rapidly. None of the apartment block's suppression systems seemed to be engaging. She remembered the whole thing was being upgraded.

Oh, sweet Ozzie, no!

The engineers hadn't left a temporary system operative while they upgraded. Everything she owned in the universe was going up in smoke. The work she'd put in! Insurance would take years to pay out for riot damage, if it ever did. She'd never be able to buy extra bodies. There would be no marriage.

Tears began to well up in her eyes. She was losing the last remnants of her real life right in front of her eyes, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The screams and violence raged unheeded around her as flames chewed through the roof to shoot high into the funereal sky.

'Ozzie damn you all! she shrieked unheard at the rioters and paramilitaries whose fight had caused this, at the Ellezelin invaders, and the biggest shit in the universe: Cleric Conservator bastard Ethan.

'Araminta?

'Huh? she looked round wildly at the voice whispering to her. Nobody was close enough.

'Araminta. They know you're there in the park. Your distress triggered an emotional resonance indicator in the gaiafield. Get out. Get out now.

She stood completely still. The voice had come slithering through the gaiafield — and she'd never known it could do that, not single her out. 'Who are you? she shouted into the tangle of bright emotions. And the whole gaiafield churned, its spectral colours suddenly burning with the light of a nova. Incredulity hammered against her.

'It is you!

'Second Dreamer… please we beseech you.

'The Void, a billion Living Dream followers gasped in unison. 'Lead us into the Void. You are the one chosen by the Skylord.

'Fuck off, she cried back at them, delighting in their shock and dismay.

'Get out of the park, the first ethereal voice whispered at her again. 'I can't maintain this connection any longer. Get out. They're coming for you. Beautiful warm smile image rich with encouragement, a mental push.

Sonic booms slammed down across the rioters. Suddenly the sky above the park was glaring with white light thrown off by big capsules. There must have been a dozen of them rushing in, looking like they were going to collide directly overhead. Araminta slapped her hands over her ears at the noise that shook her bones.

'EVERYONE STAY PERFECTLY STILL, a voice boomed down from above.

Threads of crimson light flashed across the sky. A capsule exploded. Araminta screamed and flung herself down. Just before she hit the tattered grass she could've sworn she saw people jumping from the capsules. They're too high. They'll kill themselves. More beam weapons clashed, overwhelming her sight. Debris thudded into the grass and earth as the capsules began to accelerate again. Long ion contrails spiralled through the night as they chased each other around and around with energy shots blazing between them.

All across the park the rioting crowd started running. Fast.

Araminta didn't need any more encouragement. She scrambled to her feet and began sprinting hard back to where she'd left the cab. The strobing lights of the dogfight illustrated everyone in weird stop-motion positions. Her secondary thought routines did their best to maintain a level vision for her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a long line of red and blue strobes tearing through the air above the Cairns.

Reinforcements.

Her feet pounded over the grass. Panic was bleeding everything else out of her mind. Damn, I was stupid.

'Hey you, the voice was loud but calm.

Araminta kept on running.

'You: woman with the black hair wearing the fleece. Stop. Last chance.

Oh please, Ozzie, no!

She stumbled to a halt and looked fearfully over her shoulder. A man was standing ten metres behind her, dressed in a simple leather one-piece. A force field shimmer layered the air around him. He smiled, ignoring the frantic people running past. 'It's over, he said in a kindly voice, and held out his hand. 'Come on. Nobody's going to hurt you. You're far too important.

Araminta's jaw dropped as she saw the figure flying through the air behind him. Actually, really flying! Arms outstretched and everything. It was a woman, Araminta saw that much before a bright purple nimbus sprang up around her. She landed directly on top of the man. The air detonated in a violent corona. Blast pressure sent Araminta and everyone else nearby tumbling across the ground. A whitesound wail eliminated every other noise.

Somehow Araminta managed to stagger to her feet and totter away. Behind her the fight between the man and the women was getting ferocious. Energy blasts pummelled away. Waves of smouldering earth cascaded upwards as the lurid pair writhed together in a small crater of their own making.

Two more dark figures were flying silently over the park. She could see their silhouettes against the indigo haze of the dogfight above. The line of paramilitary capsules was almost at the marina.

She tripped over a prone figure to go sprawling into a small guralo tree. Tools in her belt jabbed painfully into her stomach and ribs. 'Ouch!

'Up you come.

A hand gripped her, pulling her to her feet. She gasped into the face of her helper, seeing a wry smile. His youthful features were very handsome, yet she knew he was ancient. He had a level of self-confidence that even Laril hadn't achieved. Then he was looking behind her, frowning. 'Oh crap.

She didn't want to look. This is it. The end.

Another capsule exploded just beneath the force field dome. Scintillating wreckage hurtled down.

'Get out of here, the man said urgently. 'My team will hold them off. We're killing ever sensor in a five kilometre radius. Living Dream won't be able to follow you. Go!

'Huh? she grunted, hating herself for being so dumb.

He swung her round and let go. She stared at the two figures approaching through the terrified crowd. Both were clad in a liquid jade glow. Her helper pushed his arms out in some kind of martial arts pose. His hands ignited into sharp turquoise-fireballs.

'Go! he growled at her.

'Who are you?

The ping was short and very directional, no one else could pick it up. 'Oscar Monroe; I work for ANA. We want to help, we want you to be free to make your own choice. When you're clear and safe, call me. Please. >unisphere code< He smiled at his opponents. 'Go for fuck's sake! he yelled out loud.

'Don't even think it, one of the jade figures snarled.

Araminta finally turned and ran. Behind her there was a thunderclap as the three of them clashed. The impact was almost enough to send her toppling over again, yet somehow she kept her balance, kept scrambling forwards. Another of the eerie dark figures was flying fast above the heads of the panicked mob. The long line of paramilitary capsules came streaking down from above the river, curving round to encircle the park.

She reached the Wurung Transport cab and fell inside, sobbing with relief. It slid smoothly along the rail. Outside, people were running over the road and the rail, their terrified expressions making her flinch. The cab slowed then accelerated in juddering motions to avoid them. Garish light battles raged in and above the park. The sounds were muted by the cab's bodywork. Araminta curled up into a ball on the seat, hugging her chest. Far inside her mind the gaiafield was in turmoil at the outpouring of fear. Living Dream followers were still praying to her — forcibly. She blotted it all out.

After a couple of minutes the cab had outpaced everyone else fleeing the park. The dogfight above the city had finished, and the sickening sounds of raw conflict had died away. She was sliding gently along through the Garlay district with its elegant houses and high toroidal pad malls. She could even see some people sitting under the awnings of the cafes and bars that had stayed open, their drinks and food left ignored on the tables as they looked anxiously towards the Bodant district.

I have to get away. No matter what.

She turned to the cab's node, and keyed in the drive program. 'Francola district, she told it.

It had been a long time since Paula had been to Kerensk. Officially, anyway. Kerensk had been one of the Big 15 worlds during the Commonwealth's first era; the super-capitalist engines which powered the Commonwealth's expansion right up until the Starflyer War. Founded by Sergi Nikolayev, a Russian billionaire, to whom the human exodus from Earth finally provided a way to free himself and his money from Moscow's grasp. Like the other Big 15, it developed into an industrial world whose megacity produced an abundance of cheap heavy engineering and consumer products. Entire continents were strip-mined for raw materials, while those that weren't plundered for their minerals were factory farmed.

After the war the economic slowdown caused by financing the new47 worlds followed by the emergence of Higher culture saw the Big 15 slowly lose their stature. Their populations, always transient, drifted away and their manufacturing fell into decline. Inevitably, given their technology base, they became Higher worlds.

Except for Kerensk. The Nikolayev Dynasty carried too much residual distrust and suspicion of the old central control ideology to knuckle under to Higher influences and ANA's benign guidance. Following Far Away's lead, it rejected both Higher and Advancer culture, removing its representative from the Senate and becoming an 'observer' nation. Those that stayed on in Kaluga, the old megacity, followed their own techno-economic imperative. The rest of the planet was effectively abandoned.

Paula scanned the area around Kingsville curiously as the Alexis Denken descended out of a cloudless sky. The old military base was in the middle of a huge desert on the other side of the planet from Kaluga. A relic of the Starflyer War, it had started out as a training camp for the insurgency teams dropped behind enemy lines to make life hell for the Prime invaders. Of course, it was hard to find ruthless soldier types in the nice civilized first era Commonwealth. The new Navy had recruited heavily amid the criminal fraternity.

Kingsville had trained over thirty thousand troops. Back then it had sprawled for miles over the rocky desert, prefabricated buildings arranged in unimaginative rows, their air-conditioning straining against the harsh sun. After the war it had reduced its size considerably. But with the Dynasties chasing after the new Navy contracts it was politically useful to keep the base going. It became a ship repair and refurbishment yard throughout the Firewall campaign. After that, with Kerensk slowly rejecting the Senate's authority it had been downgraded again. Then again.

However, the base had never been legally decommissioned, so technically it remained Commonwealth territory. It was a reserve station in case the Commonwealth was ever threatened again; its array of emergency communication systems maintained by a smartcore and an ageing regiment of bots. There were no humans there any more.

The sensors showed Paula a cluster of long crumbling concrete blockhouses at the centre of strangely straight lines that stretched out into the desert. After a thousand years exposure to Kerensk's ferocious sun by day and freezing air each night even the strongest construction materials crumbled away. The desert was slowly constricting around it. Only the blockhouses remained intact, switching on a small force field once every couple of years or so when the desert finally summoned up enough energy to spin up another sandstorm.

Kingsville reminded Paula of Centurion Station.

The Alexis Denken touched down on a dedicated landing zone that was simply a flattish area of sand and loose rock. She floated down out of the main airlock, with a trolley-sledge hovering behind her. The air was as hot as she'd expected. She put on a pair of silver sunshades against the violet-tinged sun.

A dull metal door on the nearest blockhouse slid open with a grating sound of small stone particles being crunched somewhere in the actuators. She gave it a glance as she went inside, wondering why they didn't use malmetal. It closed behind her and the trolley-sledge. Inside, there was less evidence of decay, though it had obviously been decades since the air conditioning had been on. Fans were now making odd groaning sounds behind their grilles as power was fed into their motors. Light panels came on in the ceiling, revealing an empty rectangular room with a single lift door ahead of her.

Paula's u-shadow gave the Kingsville smartcore her authority code, and the lift doors flowed open. The base itself was buried three hundred metres below the desert. Thankfully, the lift ride down was a smooth one.

The transdimensional communication systems were housed in eight caverns that radiated out from a central engineering hub. Paula walked past the big silver-cased machines in cavern5, followed by the trolley-sledge. The chamber was completely silent. She couldn't even hear a mild power hum despite the huge energy flows her field scan revealed to her behind the silver casings.

Tucked away at the end of an ancillary chamber was another lift. It took her down another hundred metres to the oldest section of the base, comprising a single fortified compartment. This deep shelter had been designed to survive a nuclear strike by the Primes; it had force fields and molecular binding generators reinforcing the superstrength carbon walls. None of them had been switched on for over five hundred years; the smartcore didn't have the resources to maintain them at combat readiness. It didn't really matter, all they protected was an ancient secure storage vault dating back to the Starflyer War.

The Navy command at the time had estimated loss rates among the insurgency forces would be at least eighty per cent. Because of that the last thing every soldier did before being shipped out to their combat zone was to make a copy of their memories so they could be re-lifed if they didn't return. Kingsville's vault still retained the memories of those thirty thousand soldiers.

Paula's integral force field was on when the lift doors opened. She stood perfectly still scanning round with her biononic field functions. The air down here was foul; life support had broken down seven hundred years ago, and hadn't been repaired. There was no need, only bots moved through the ancient compartment. Two light panels out of thirty came on in the ceiling; it was as if the patches of floor they illuminated were suspended in deep space.

Paula's field scan function couldn't detect any evidence that the environment had been disturbed by a human for centuries, but having the scan pick up any proof was remote at best. Eight sensor bots deployed from the trolley-sledge, little globes that glowed with a weak violet light as they drifted forward through the air, sprouting long gossamer strands woven with sensitive molecular chains. The strands floated about like hair in water, probing the air.

Her u-shadow inserted itself into the chamber's ancient network and began to interrogate the management routines. Even with time-resistant fail-soft components and multiple redundancy there was little left functioning. Just enough to maintain viability. At the present rate of decline even that would be lost in another hundred years, and the Navy would have a decision to make.

A batch of forensic remotes darted out of the trolley-sledge. They zipped about through the darkness like cybernetic moths, settling on the physical sections of the network designated by Paula's u-shadow. They extruded active-molecule tendrils that wormed through the fragile casing to meld with the inert components below and began a very detailed analysis.

The network database gave Paula the location of the secure store she was here to investigate. Twelve hundred years ago, the Cat had sweated away her training sessions in the hot desert sun above before being deployed to Elan. Like everyone else, before she left she'd downloaded her memories in case she didn't come back.

Paula walked through the darkness, trepidation stirring her heart. The compartment was filled with row upon row of sealed shelving, containing thirty-thousand small armoured boxes. She stopped in front of the one holding the Cat's memorycell. Two forensic remotes were attached to it, their tendrils examining the twenty-centimetre door and its lock. The tendrils withdrew, and the remotes glided away to hover beside Paula.

'Open it, she told her u-shadow.

It took such a long time she wasn't sure the mechanism still worked — in fact she was quite impressed the network was still connected to the majority of the stores. Eventually the box buzzed as if there was a wasp trapped inside; then the little door hinged open and pink-tinged light shone out. The memorycell was sitting on a crystal pedestal, a neat grey ovoid three centimetres long.

Paula sent one of the forensic remotes in. It sat on the rim of the box, and extended its tendrils around the memorycell. Then the fragile strands were infiltrating the casing to probe the crystal lattice beneath. For something so old, the memorycell had endured surprisingly well. The company which had manufactured it twelve hundred years ago could finally justify their eternity survival marketing boast, Paula thought as her u-shadow displayed the results in her exovision.

DNA encrypted data confirmed the memories contained in the memorycell belonged to Catherine 'the Cat' Stewart, assigned to squad ERT03. Paula waited for twenty minutes while her forensic bots completed their analysis of the vault before calling ANA: Governance.

'I was right, she said. 'Somebody made a copy.

'Oh dear, ANA: Governance said.

'Quite. They were very good. There's almost no trace. I had to analyse dead network components for clues. A file search was conducted a hundred years ago in the network. And a quantum atomic review of the memorycell confirms a complete read with a corresponding timeframe.

'So it is her.

'The Accelerators must be very desperate indeed.

'We already know that.

'This isn't the Cat that went on to found the Knights Guardian; that was an older smarter personality. This is an early one.

'Do you believe the difference is relevant?

'I'm not sure. I expect this one to be… raw. Sholapur was confirmation of that.

'Are you sure? Remember why you finally arrested the Cat.

'Good point.

'What's next?

'I'm not sure. I think we need to concentrate on Chatfield. He's the only link we have between the Accelerators and the Prime, and the Conservatives are clearly interested in him. I shouldn't have allowed myself to get distracted by this.

'Very well. Good luck. The link closed.

Paula stood in front of the open box for a long time, staring at the grey memorycell. Eventually she put her hand in and took it off the pedestal, holding it in front of her face. 'This isn't going to end well, she told it, and let go. The little memorycell hit the ancient enzyme-bonded concrete floor and skittered a few centimetres before coming to a halt.

Paula stomped down hard, enjoying the crunch it made under her heel as it burst into minute fragments. Guilty enjoyment, admittedly, but then: 'Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing in order to do what's right, she told the dead vault.

Retracing her path through the Kingsville base, Paula considered ANA's claim about the Cat's personality. Perhaps it was right. Perhaps the Cat was utterly changeless. She'd learned to justify herself with the founding of the Knights Guardian, developing into an astute political leader. But was that just another form of manipulation. There had never been any need for her to adapt and evolve, she was always bending the universe to her will.

Paula always kept the memories of Narrogin with her, not particularly wanting to remember but knowing she should not forget. Narrogin was the 'contract' which had finally made the Senate issue an unlimited warrant for the Cat, and to hell with the political consequences. There was a huge sectarian struggle going on to determine the planet's ideological future, and one side brought in a team of Knights Guardian to help their cause.

The Cat had chosen to lead it. Her final act to prove the strength of her employer's cause was the Pantar Cathedral crisis, where she took twenty-seven opposition councillors hostage along with their families. She'd promised to execute the families unless political concessions were made, then she started slaughtering them anyway. Even some of her own team rebelled at that. A disastrous firefight erupted as three Knights Guardian attempted to protect the children against her and the loyalists.

Paula had walked through the cathedral five hours later. Despite every crime she'd witnessed, every evil she'd seen, nothing prepared her for the atrocity performed under the cathedral's elegant domed ceiling with its crystalline ribbing. She knew there and then that the Cat had to be stopped, no matter the immunity granted her by Far Away's government and the physical protection afforded her by the Knights Guardian. Standing amid the pools of blood and burned out pews, Paula had been prepared to go against a great many Commonwealth laws to bring about fundamental justice. She didn't have to, of course, the Senate gave her a perfectly legal validation for tracking down the Cat and bringing her to the specially convened court in Paris.

It was during her next rejuvenation that Paula had undergone her most radical genetic reconfiguration, removing some of the deepest psychoneural profiling to obtain that degree of freedom she'd acknowledged was necessary in the cathedral. An irony Paula always took a wry pleasure from; that it was the Cat's intractability which had goaded her into the greatest evolutionary step necessary for personal survival in a constantly changing universe.

Alexis Denken rose from the crumbling ruins of Kingsville, accelerating at thirty gees into the hot pellucid sky. Paula watched the old base dwindle away with mixed feelings. It was good to finally confirm she was up against the Cat, but that knowledge might just have been bought at the expense of time she didn't have.

The planet's curvature slid into the visual sensor image as sin-raced away. Paula was tempted to head over to Kaluga on the southern ocean. Morton still lived there, part emperor part industrialist and by now only a very small part human. The massive company he'd built up made him the nearest thing Kerensk had to a chief executive. She could ask him what he knew about Kingsville and any quiet visitors there. After all, his own memories were down there in the vault. He'd keep a subtle watch, she was sure.

Tempting… but again it was personal. The trail was a hundred years old. Cold even by her standards.

She opened a link to Digby. 'Where is Chatfield?

'Still in deep space, Digby replied. 'But the course is holding constant. We're heading for an unregistered system just inside the Commonwealth boundary.

'I'm on my way.

Purlap spaceport was a small plateau on the eastern side of the capital city. As the planet had only been open to settlement for a hundred and fifty years, it was as neat and level as any development on a new External world could be. Civil engineering crews had cut the last few rocky peaks down flush, then trimmed the edges, leaving a perfectly circular surface two kilometres in diameter. The winners of the terminal building architecture competition had designed a shocking-pink cluster of bubbles arranged like some neon-Gothic molecular structure. One of the lumpy limbs sticking out at a strange angle from the crown of tripod legs had a studio cafe that occupied the entire last bubble. A panoramic strip window gave a near-360 degree view of the sheer rock circle. It was an excellent observation point for starship enthusiasts. Some spent half a day sitting at a table watching the different shapes arrive and depart.

Marius had been there for five hours before the images of the battle over Bodant park overwhelmed every Unisphere news show. He had a thirty second advance warning from his own agents on Viotia that Living Dream had got a fix on Araminta through the gaiafield. They flew their capsule to the exact location at mach three — quite dangerous within a weather dome force field. Unfortunately, speed and determination didn't count for much in the occupied city these days. They weren't even the second team to reach the park. And when they did, their communications dropped out as the dogfight began and three of them jumped into the hysterical crowd of fleeing rioters.

He accessed in amazement as various agents went head to head. It was a domino effect, once the first clash erupted in a blaze of disruptor fire and atom laser shots everyone started to activate their biononics and weapons enrichments. Stealth was abandoned within seconds. Agents went for each other like frenzied animals, desperate that no one else should collect the prize. None of Major Honilar's welcome team even made it past the first three minutes.

Out of the five people he had on the ground, only one survived the clashes to report back. 'She's gone. A team covered for her while she ran off. There are no embedded sensors left anywhere round here, someone took them out. I don't know where she went. Neither do the Ellezelin troops. They're going crazy.

'I see that, Marius murmured, sipping his foamed chocoletto. Exovision was showing him images from reporters on the edge of the park. It resembled some kind of historical war zone with smoking craters, smashed trees, ruined buildings blazing, and people. Injured people. Weeping people. People limping along. Shocked walking-comatose people being shouted at by Ellezelin paramilitaries. Bodies lying on the ground untended. Parts of bodies. Medic zones being established. Capsules circled low overhead, holoprojectors flooding the devastated park with monochromatic light and strobing lasers. Still Cleric Phelim wouldn't allow ambulance capsules to fly.

That, along with the casualty figures and violence, was going to bring a colossal amount of political pressure on Cleric Conservator Ethan. Possibly an irresistible amount.

'She did remarkably well for a complete novice without a single enrichment, he commented.

'I have a scan of the team that helped her.

Marius examined the file images that arrived in his storage lacuna. Eight figures surrounded by flares of energy, battling it out with appalling savagery. Three of them — two men and a woman — had exceptionally powerful biononics he noted. His u-shadow began to run identification checks through Accelerator files — which produced some very interesting results.

'Thank you, Marius said. 'I'll send some replacements to reinforce you. They should be there in a day. Meanwhile, please don't forget your objective. Just because she escaped this time doesn't mean we give up the hunt. You have an advantage now, the welcome team is out of the picture, along with most of our serious opponents.

'Yes sir.

Marius's u-shadow opened a secure link to the Cat's ship. 'I have a new assignment for you.

'Is this before or after I eliminate Troblum for you, and find Inigo?

'Troblum is beginning to look irrelevant. And I'm waiting to see if Inigo survived.

'Aren't you the capable one, darling?

A flicker of annoyance crossed Marius's features. He disliked the way she irritated him, and that it was all deliberate. 'Did you access the tussle on Viotia?

'Yes. Hardly the clash of Titans.

'Actually, it was rather interesting. Living Dream found Araminta. She got away. She was helped by a team of Knights Guardian.

'Really? I trust they won the fight.

He smiled down at the ultradrive starship he was watching. The Cat was remarkably easy to influence. 'Better yet, it looked like they're working for an old friend of yours, Oscar Monroe.

'Oscar the Martyr? I didn't even know he'd been re-lifed.

'Some time ago, actually. And living the quiet life ever since. Interesting psychology. Who would suspect him of getting involved in events again?

'Which makes him ideal for low-visibility operations.

'Quite. And there's a very small number of people he'd do that for. After all, he would only sign on for a worthy cause.

'Brilliant deduction, my dear. No one would expect him to be working for Paula.

'Please remember our prime concern is to deliver Araminta to Living Dream.

'Was that a pun?

'Not intentional.

'I'm on my way.

After the link closed, Marius regarded the starship which the Delivery Man had parked on the seamless rock for several minutes. He decided he was wasting his time. The ship was probably a contingency — the Conservatives didn't know if Aaron and Inigo had survived any more than he did. In which case there were passive sensors he could deploy to watch the ship remotely. He used a coin card to pay his tab, and glided away from the table.

Troblum backed out of the compartment, bending as low as he could, yet still managing to knock the back of his head on the malmetal rim as he went through.

'Ouch! He rubbed at the point, though it was hard bending his arm that far back. Every muscle ached. He was sure his call muscle was about to cramp again from the awkward position he'd maintained while supervising the bots. He'd ignored the growing discomfort last time, and his biononic medical functions had to deal with the sudden flare of pain as his whole leg seized up. Even now it was difficult to put his full weight on it. As a consequence, the Mellanie's Redemption was now operating with a two-thirds internal gravity field. He knew that wasn't good, that his body shouldn't grow too accustomed to an easier environment. It was a mistake he'd made a couple of times before on long flights; mistakes which had taken too long to rectify in the medical chamber.

The malmetal door flowed shut. Technically it was the engine bay door, but necessity had required some internal remodelling of the starship's layout. Two of the midsection cargo holds were now incorporated into the engine bay, along with a small section of companionway. The expanded volume was essential to accommodate the new ultradrive. With the components finally identified, he'd broken open the hyperdrive and grafted the two machines into a single unit. Even with the engineeringbots and low gravity it had been difficult manoeuvring the modules into place. Several bulkheads had been chopped up and dumped out of the airlocks. He'd been worried that the whole new drive system might even intrude in the cabin. But thankfully the ship had been spared that.

'There you are, Catriona Saleeb chided in her deep voice as he returned to the main cabin. She was pacing about, dressed in silky shorts that came down to her knees and some kind of loose top with gossamer-thin shoulder straps.

'We've been worried, Trisha agreed from the galley section, where she was bending over to sniff some of the dishes the culinary unit had produced. White bikini bottoms stretched tight over her buttocks, the navy-blue T-shirt she wore above them was equally snug. Troblum always enjoyed how powerful she looked in constricting clothes.

'It's not easy, he said as he slumped down into a chair. A servicebot brought the first set of plates over.

'Have you finished? Trisha asked. She walked alongside the bot to sit on the floor beside his chair. Her hand stroked Troblum's cheek as the OCtattoos on her face glowed faintly, creating an alluring shading. A phantom perception shivered pleasurably down his nerves as the I-sentient personality meshed with his sensory enrichments.

'Not yet, he admitted. 'There's another hundred components to integrate. But they're peripherals. The bots can handle that now they're catalogued. I've assembled the principal modules. Initial system functionality check was positive.

'Well done you, Catriona purred.

Troblum started on the pile of salmon flakes marinated in sweetened soy sauce and rice wine on a bed of brown galie rice. Premium-strength Dutch lager washed them down well. Now he was relaxing into the chair he felt supremely tired. He had spent days assembling the ultradrive, and biononics had kept him awake for every hour of it. Now he badly needed to rest.

Catriona knelt beside Trisha. 'You should get to sleep, but first you have to turn the gravity back up.

'In a minute, he assured her.

Catriona put her arm round Trisha, slipping her hand up inside the tight T-shirt. Her nose nuzzled Troblum's neck, almost tickling. 'Why don't you watch us? she murmured. 'That'll help you relax.

'I don't need help, he said as the servicebot produced a big lasagne garnished with garlic butter dough balls. 'But you two keep going.

Trisha grinned, and turned to kiss Catriona. The two of them became more ardent as Troblum chomped away contentedly. He watched them, but shut down any sensory reception from the I-sentient personalities until he'd finished tasting the food. The two together weren't a good mix — something else he knew from experience. Once again he regretted losing Howard Liang. Without the male I-sentient personality to twin his sensorium with he'd have to work out how to fully appreciate the two girls making love. Twinning with a female body unnerved him somehow. He didn't handle out-of-the-ordinary well. Though his social acceptance monitor program kept informing him he should make an effort to be more accepting, and try new things. This was something he'd have to solve before his flight to the Drasix cluster.

He was half way through the slab of lasagne when he told the smartcore to establish a TD link to the Unisphere, using an ultra secure onetime node. Even if the Accelerators had located his u-shadow's monitor emplacements there was no way they could track his physical location though the link.

'Have you found Paula Myo? he asked his u-shadow.

'No. There are no reported sightings within any of the accredited Unisphere news chronicles, nor the gossip journals. The Intersolar Serious Crimes Directorate lists her as currently unavailable.

'Shit. Oh well, I tried. That was the right thing to do. Still, leaving the Commonwealth with the Cat on the loose didn't sit right.

He popped four dough balls into his mouth, sucking air down as the hot garlic butter ran across his tongue. / could just shotgun everything I know about the Accelerators and what they've done. Paula would pick that up. But even I don't know what the swarm was meant to imprison.

He still worried about how the Unisphere was compromised. Although he was convinced he was beyond anybody's reach now.

Shotgunning is probably the right thing. He just hated drawing so much attention to himself. Although, if he was truly leaving, it didn't matter.

Trisha let out a startled gasp. Troblum glanced down as Catriona sniggered. Catriona could be impressively kinky at times, and she'd already got Trisha's little blue T-shirt off. That wasn't what had astounded Trisha this time. She was sitting up frowning as the green OCtattoos on her face began to glow brighter than ever. Then the seething pattern began to slip down her neck to flow across her chest and along her arms. She held them up in front of her as Catriona backed off fast.

'What's happening? Troblum asked the smartcore.

'Contaminated communication link, it replied, which fired Troblum right out of his fatigue lethargy.

'Can you counter it?

'I can close the link. The source is within the Unisphere which I do not have the ability to deal with.

'Is it trying to contaminate you?

'No.

'If you detect any such attempt, cut the link immediately.

Trisha was now a three dimensional human silhouette of writhing green curlicues. Her features vanished, and the shape shrank rapidly. New colours bled in. Tangerine and turquoise lines wove their way through the thicket of green until there simply was no more green. Hanging in the air directly ahead of a badly startled Troblum, tangerine and turquoise sine waves rushed back towards their vanishing point.

It triggered a deep memory, not in a storage lacuna but a perfectly natural recollection. 'I know you, he said.

'Congratulations, the eternity pattern said. 'You really do know your history.

'The Sentient Intelligence, you abandoned us a long time ago.

'I didn't leave, I was declared persona non grata by ANA.

'Oh. Everyone thought you'd gone post-physical. Troblum could barely believe he was talking to the SI. It had grown out of the huge arrays that the first CST commercial wormholes had used. Their programs had been so complex, with so many genetic algorithms they had become self-aware. Nigel Sheldon and Ozzie who owned the arrays agreed to provide the newly evolved batch of Sentient Intelligences an independent super-array to operate in. The deal was for the SI to then write stable software which would operate the wormhole generators without any further evolution. The deal also included an independent planet where the super-array would be sited.

A lot of people in the Commonwealth questioned if the SI counted as truly alive, an old argument that never had an answer. But the SI and the Commonwealth had got along side by side without any problem until ANA came on line. ANA claimed the SI did not qualify as a genuine living entity, and that it was interfering in Commonwealth political affairs; a suspicion which had been given a lot of credence by ANA's exposure of various SI undercover scouts in strategic positions. Contact had been abandoned or cut off depending on which account and conspiracy theory you accessed.

'No, the SI said. 'I am still resolutely physical. The systems I operate within would have to be transformed for me to evolve-further.

'Can't you do that?

'Yes. Are you familiar with the phrase: for everything a season?

'Uh, not really. But I understand it.

'For the moment I remain content with my current existence. However, like several species, I am concerned by your proposed Pilgrimage into the Void. That threat is enough to upset the status quo between myself and ANA.

'Not my Pilgrimage.

'You work for the Faction which engineered it.

So how the crap did it know that? 'How removed are you from our affairs?

'Not as much as ANA would like, nowhere near as much as conspiracy theorists would like to believe. As always, I observe and interpret. That is my function.

'You're still in the Unisphere, then?

'I have some monitoring capacity left. After all, I predate ANA by several centuries. I am not easy to purge from existing systems.

'So what do you want with me?

'There is a lot of attention focused on you. You wish to contact Paula Myo, your u-shadow has been trying to locate her. Why?

Troblum wasn't going to answer that. He didn't even have proof that he was talking to the SI. It would be easy enough for the Accelerators to pull a stunt like this; and they knew of his interest in the Starflyer War. 'I have information for her.

'Is it relevant to the current situation?

'Yes.

'Will it prevent the Pilgrimage?

'It will weaken the Accelerator Faction. I don't know how badly that will affect the Pilgrimage.

'Very well, I will establish a secure link for you.

'No! I want to see her in person.

'Why?

'I don't trust you.

'How very unoriginal.

'That's the way it is.

'She is en route to an unregistered star system.

'Why, what's there?

'If you are still working for the Accelerators that information will help them.

'I'm not. And you contacted me.

'I did.

'I'm not going to some unregistered system. I don't know what's there.

'Very well. What about Oscar Monroe?

'What about him?

'You tried to contact him on Orakum.

'Yes, I trust Oscar.

'Smart choice. He is on Viotia, in Colwyn City.

'Okay. Thank you.

'Now you know that will you seek him out?

'I'll think about it.

At three hundred and thirty five years old, it always galled Digby that his great-grandmother still thought he wasn't experienced enough to do his job. He suspected it would always be the case. Nonetheless, as soon as he received the shadow assignment he vowed it would be the epitome of professionalism.

His starship, the Columbia505, helped; a brand-new ultradrive designed and built by ANA in its secure replicator station on Io. Its systems were the most sophisticated in the Commonwealth. Tracking Chatfield's stealthed hyperdrive ship as it left Ganthia was no problem at all.

Digby followed Chatfield out to an uninhabited star system just inside the loose boundary that defined the Greater Intersolar Commonwealth. A small star whose mildly variable spectrum drifted between orange and yellow in two-hundred-year-cycles. It had been examined by CST's Exploratory division nine hundred years ago, a short visit which soon established there were no H-congruent planets. According to the Columbia505's smart-core there were no subsequent follow up ventures.

Chatfield's ship rendezvoused with the Trojan point of the biggest gas giant. The only object of any note there was a small ice moon which had been trapped by the gravitational null-zone over a billion years ago. With a diameter of just over two thousand kilometres, its grizzled surface glinted softly in the weak copper sunlight.

The first thing Digby found as he followed Chatfield in was the elaborate sensor network scanning space and hyperspace out to a hundred million kilometres from the ice moon. His stealth systems allowed him to get within twenty-thousand kilometres before he halted his approach. The on-board sensors had just managed to pick up eleven vehicles of some kind orbiting the moon. They were heavily stealthed, and his ship's registry didn't have anything like them on file. Digby couldn't get any kind of image using passive sensors from such a distance, so the Columbia505 released a flock of miniature drones on a flyby trajectory. The only flaw with that was the flight time. To avoid suspicion about their trajectory and velocity the pebble-sized drones would take nine hours to reach the ice moon and skim past its unknown sentries.

Chatfield's visit lasted three hours.

'What do you want me to do? Digby asked Paula as Chatfield's ship rose away from the frigid surface at five gees. 'Stay here or follow him?

'Follow him, Paula said. 'I'll investigate the base.

'My sensor drones will engage in another five and a half hours. They should be able to tell you more about the satellites. If they're as bad as I think they are you'll need a Navy squadron to break in.

'We'll see.

The Columbia505's sensors watched Chatfield's ship power into hyperspace. Five seconds later Digby followed him out of the unnamed system. Interestingly, they were now heading for

Ellezelin.

The Alexis Denken flew into the star system seven hours after the Columbia505 had departed. Its smartcore steered it towards the ice moon in full stealth mode. While it was still ten thousand kilometres out, Paula triggered the sensor drones that were now tumbling away from their brief encounter. All the data they'd amassed downloaded into the smartcore, which immediately set about analysing the information.

The orbiting sentries were impressive. Very little of their nature had leaked through the stealth effect, but the drones had managed to piece together a few fragments. What they'd glimpsed was some kind of ship over a hundred metres long, with a strange wrinkled teardrop-shape hull that sprouted odd lumps. Power signature leakage confirmed they were heavily armed. Technologically they weren't as advanced as the Alexis Denken (very few ships were, she acknowledged wryly), but their sheer size and power meant they'd be able to overwhelm her starship's force fields if they ever caught it.

The smartcore took eight minutes to analyse a flaw in their detector scans and configure the Alexis Denken's emissions so that it could pass among them unnoticed. Paula watched the surface of the ice moon grow larger as the Alexis Denken slipped placidly through the big defence sentries. Little attempt had been made to hide the station that sprawled across the fissured ice plain. Electronic and thermal emissions were strong. She saw a broad cross shape of dark metal, with each wing measuring nearly a kilometre long.

'This might just be the proof you need, Paula told ANA: Governance. 'We've never been able to find one of their bases before, let alone intact and still functioning.

'Now we know it exists do you want Navy support?

'No. This is just a reconnaissance trip. If the Navy tries to force its way in here, they'll self-destruct. I want to know what's here that's worth this level of secrecy and defence.

The Alexis Denken descended carefully until it was hovering above the craggy icescape a couple of kilometres away from the base itself. Quantum mass signature detectors built up a comprehensive pattern of the base's layout for Paula. It extended over half a kilometre below the top of the ice. The central section was largely empty, which she judged to be the starship docking bays. Around that, the wings had a much higher density average, reflecting the concentration of equipment inside. Whatever the Accelerators were doing in there, it required eight high-output mass energy generators to supply the power they needed.

Paula directed the smartcore to extend the ship's t-field, which inflated out to a five kilometre radius. A t-field wasn't exactly standard starship gear, not even for ultradrives; but then the Alexis Denken was pretty extraordinary even by ANA's standards. She waited anxiously for a couple of seconds, but the t-field didn't register with the base defence sensors.

For over half an hour the Alexis Denken teleported flecks of ice from directly underneath the bottom of the base. One sliver at a time was taken, to rematerialize in crevices and fissures across the surrounding surface, adding to the coat of slush-gravel that covered the small moon. Eventually, Paula had excavated a cavern slightly larger than the Alexis Denken. The starship teleported itself inside.

The next phase was even more delicate. Paula suited up and went outside, carrying several cases of equipment. She slowly cleared the remaining shell of ice from the bottom of the base, exposing the metal skin. Once that was clean, she applied a segment of molecular nanofilaments which began to worm their way up through the molecular bonds of the metal. The first tips which penetrated scanned round, showing her where to apply the next batch. It took five attempts in total before a set of filaments melded into one of the base's data cables, and gave the ship's smartcore unrestricted access into the network.

Paula's u-shadow assumed direct control over the basement above her, disabling the alarms and subverting the sensors. After the whole Sholapur incident she wasn't taking any chances with her personal safety. She teleported eight combatbots into the room, then materialized at the centre of them.

The chamber she emerged into was empty, and looked like it had never been used. A blank metal room with structural ribbing reinforcing the base's external skin, its floor a simple grid suspended above the curving metal. Thick conduit tubes threaded across it. The only door was a malmetal circle in the ceiling. Paula told her u-shadow to open it. Her armour suit's ingrav units lifted her through after the combatbots. The corridor she came out on to was illuminated by thin green lighting strips on their lowest setting. It ran for almost two hundred metres in both directions before ending in pressure bulkheads. Gravity at this level was a standard one gee field.

She called up schematics which the Alexis Denken's smartcore had extracted from the network. The base's staff quarters and ship facilities were clustered round the centre of the cross, with the lower levels providing utility and engineering support to the big chambers on the upper levels of all four wings. Strangely, the base's network didn't extend into those large chambers, which were linked with an independent web. There was no way of knowing what was going on inside. However, there was one compartment which the network did cover. Twelve suspension cases were inside. Three of the rooms adjoining it were given over to extensive biomedical facilities. Ten of the cases were currently occupied. The network didn't list any personal details, but her instinct gave her a really bad feeling about who they contained.

Her u-shadow swept through the network nodes in the suspension case compartment, creating neutral ghost readings in the sensor systems so she could walk about without triggering any alerts. According to the network, there were five staff at the base, none of them near the compartment. Paula and her escort teleported in.

It was dark in the suspension case compartment. A small polyphoto ball in each corner glowed an unobtrusive lime green, giving the big sarcophagi a sombre shading. The compartment was like some bizarre miniature homage to the Serious Crimes Directorate secure vault. She walked over to the first sarcophagi, and ordered her u-shadow to opaque the lid.

The Cat lay inside, her trim body contained within a silver gossamer web.

Paula stared at her hibernating adversary for a long while. 'Ho Jesus, she muttered and walked over to the next sarcophagi. Her u-shadow opaqued the lid. Another Cat lay inside. She moved on to the third.

Just as Paula looked down to confirm the seventh version of the Cat, her biononic field scan function detected a change in energy patterns at the first sarcophagi. She spun round to face it. Three combatbots deployed their proton lasers to cover the big case.

The Cat sat up on her elbows. An integral force field came on, cloaking her in a ghostly violet scintillation. A field scan swept out from her biononics, attempting to probe Paula's armour suit. 'Who are you?

'Paula Myo. Paula's u-shadow was running a review of the sarcophagi's management routines, trying to determine what had switched off the suspension.

'Ah, the Cat said, and grinned hungrily. C'est la vie.

Paula's u-shadow reported a small non-register sub-program that had been grafted on to the case's opacity routine which would terminate the whole suspension as soon as anyone looked in on the occupant. / should have guessed there'd be a trip. Typical Cat, paranoid clever. 'I'm afraid you're not negotiating from a strong position.

The second Cat sat up. 'Aren't we?

'No.

'Paula Myo herself, said the third Cat. 'We must have been doing something bad to warrant your personal attention.

'Of course we have, said the fourth.

'It is what you do, Paula admitted to them. 'But now you have to go back into suspension so the court can ascertain what to do with you.

'Been there, said the sixth.

'Done that, said the second as she slipped nimbly over the rim of the case.

'Bored with it, the fifth emphasized.

'You're interfering with my investigation, Paula warned them. Two combatbots glided into place on either side of her.

The first Cat to waken grinned her effusive grin. 'Is this supposed to be a covert mission, Paula? Are you creeping round here to try and see what's going on?

'My dears, I do believe she is, said the third.

'Shit, Paula grunted, and rolled her eyes inside her armour helmet. This was the Cat after all. All that time and effort sneaking in here...

As if they'd read her mind, all seven Cats configured their biononic energy currents to full weapons function. The combatbots opened fire. Paula teleported out. The Alexis Denken's smartcore activated its weapons systems, and hardened the fuselage force fields. Paula sat down fast in the couch. Active sensors swept out.

The fight in the suspension compartment was almost over. The Cats had lost, against the level of firepower carried by the combatbots the outcome was inevitable. But that wasn't the point, as they'd well known. The damage to the compartment and the base's surrounding structure was substantial. Emergency systems were just starting to deploy. The staff and the orbiting sentry vehicles knew their security had been breached. Paula had a good idea what they would do next. Ilanthe was just as ruthless as the Cat, and she knew the Accelerators couldn't afford to leave any evidence behind.

Sure enough, barely five seconds after the fight between the Cats and the combatbots four of the sentry vehicles were swooping down towards the ice moon at high acceleration. Their multiple sensors probed the base on high intensity, exposing the combatbots. Paula's u-shadow tried to crash the base network, but two of the staff established personal secure links to the" incoming sentries.

All of the base's protective force fields switched off. The Alexis Denken teleported above the cross of cool metal, assuming a defensive posture. Gamma lasers and disruptor pulses hammered down from the approaching sentries. Explosions ripped through the base's skin, sending huge plumes of superheated gas jetting out into space. Paula winced at the damage they'd caused, and fired three m-sinks up at the sentries. They began evasive manoeuvres, twisting and varying acceleration with an elegance she'd never witnessed before, the way they slipped fluidly through space was almost organic. Their fuselage seemed to adapt with them, distorting to absorb the constantly shifting acceleration vectors. One actually managed to elude an m-sink, driving down at forty gees. Kamikaze impact, Paula realized. The Alexis Denken rose to intercept it, firing another two m-sinks.

High above, an m-sink punched clean through one of the sentries, its colossal tidal forces imploding the internal structure in microseconds. The wreckage spun uncontrollably. More m-sinks tracked their prey skilfully. Energy weapons lashed across the base, partially deflected by the Alexis Denken. It was actually looking as though Paula might manage to preserve some of the base.

A phenomenal blast of raw multi-spectrum energy from behind the ice-moon deluged the Alexis Denken's sensors. A flare of blue-white light irradiated the fuselage, as if a sun had suddenly blossomed into existence. Its corona erupted around the ice moon at relativistic speed.

'Shit! Paula yelled. Quantumbusters

The ice moon detonated. Alexis Denken fled into hyperspace, racing away from the colossal mass energy explosion at fifty lightyears an hour.

'Shit shit shit, Paula growled at the readings flashing across her exovision. The four attacking sentry vessels had just been a diversion. One of the others had deployed behind the ice moon to ensure there was no evidence left. 'Crap, I'm old and slow. I should have known. She opened a link to ANA: Governance. 'I'm sorry, my stupidity just lost us our one tangible lead.

'You are being too hard on yourself.

'No. What a professional would have done is examined whatever was in those main chambers first. Given its energy demand it had to be some kind of manufacturing operation. But oh no I went and acted on my obsession.

'You have verified the Accelerators are using the Cat.

'Stop trying to cushion me. Somebody is using the Cat, we have no proof it is the Accelerators. And even if we did, that isn't enough for you to enact their suspension. I need to nail them with conspiracy and treason.

'Paula, you are letting self-anger dominate. This aspect of your investigation has one link remaining: Chatfield.

'Damnit, she wanted to kick herself. Her u-shadow opened a link to Digby.

Cleric Conservator Ethan sat alone behind his polished muroak desk in the oval sanctum, his eyes closed against the bright starfield visible through the high diocletian windows. One day soon, he knew, he would sit in the real oval sanctum, and that very same window would reveal the Void's splendid nebulas glowing across the night sky. When that happened, days like today would simply be banished from existence, and he would live an easier, gentle life. In fact he wouldn't even be Conservator, nor even a Cleric. It often amused him to wonder who on the Council had considered that aspect of their cause. Once they were inside the Void, then they would have achieved their goal and there would be no more Dreaming Void movement. All of them would be ordinary Querencia citizens. Giving up their positions would be hard on some, he knew. Too hard. They would warp their world to make themselves District Masters or worse. But the Waterwalker had shown that even such self-indulgence would come to nothing. All would come right in the end. The Skylords would carry them all to the Heart. He couldn't imagine just how splendid that would be, especially in comparison to today.

Cleric Phelim had called five hours ago to tell him they'd located Araminta, that she was in Bodant Park right outside the apartments she owned. A mere five seconds later Ethan had felt her mind's angry dismissive cry resonate throughout the gaiafield. That worried him more than he would ever admit to anyone, even Phelim. Why would someone chosen by the Sky-lords reject Living Dream so comprehensively? He'd felt her naked emotions, experienced how deep her revulsion for their goal truly was.

Then biononically enriched agents had fought a small war in Bodant Park, a war given total coverage across the wretched Unisphere. Honilar's welcome team had been killed — and they were tough operatives. Ethan knew that, he'd authorized their enrichments and training himself. The aftermath had left him deeply shocked. So many dead. More injured. He had prayed to the Lady for guidance and forgiveness.

A prayer cut short by the Speaker of the Senate calling, demanding he end Viotia's occupation and turn over Living Dream's paramilitaries for an independent trial. Ethan's rather reasonable observation that the carnage was caused by representatives of ANA Factions was ignored. The Speaker said that the Security Commission was preparing a resolution that would allow the Navy to intervene if any further human rights violations occurred on such a level. And that ever since Ellezelin's Senator had walked out of the Senate following the condemnation of the Viotia invasion, repudiating its authority as he went, Ellezelin was technically no longer part of the Commonwealth and therefore the Navy's non-internal deployment restriction didn't apply.

There was only one person Ethan could ask for reassurance in such circumstances, and he hesitated to do that. The last thing he wanted right now was to be forced further into reliance on Marius.

Phelim's curt, apprehensive assurances that Bodant Park was just a temporary setback failed to impress. Ethan had now accessed every scrap of information that ever existed on Araminta. He was deeply suspicious that she'd spent a weekend at Likan's mansion. Likan of course claimed complete innocence, that she was just another recruit for his harem. After Bodant Park Ethan had given Phelim permission to bring Likan in for a full memory read. It would be just like that super-capitalist to try and manipulate things to his personal financial advantage. If Araminta's background was as simple as the records claimed, there was no conceivable way she could elude Honilar and the other agents the way she had. An entire planet had been invaded with one purpose: to find her. The resources he'd deployed were using up an appreciable percentage of Ellezelin's gross planetary product. There had never been a manhunt on such a scale in human history.

Somebody was helping her; Ethan was fairly sure it had to be ANA. That subtle interference was bringing about some serious complications to the goal of Pilgrimage. He wasn't sure how he should attempt to counter them.

The Ellezelin civil security alert was totally unexpected. Ethan's exovision was suddenly swamped with a flock of red icons. Five fully armoured guards from the Cabinet Security Service hurried into the oval sanctum as force fields shimmered on around the Orchard Palace. More exoimage graphics showed him sequential protective domes powering up to protect the core of Makkathran2, then the greater civic zone. The alert was originating in the civil spaceflight agency. Something was happening in orbit above Ellezelin.

'Sir, the Security Service detail leader said. 'Please accompany me to your safe refuge. A circle of the floor was expanding to reveal a gravity chute.

Hardly authentic, Ethan thought idly. Although technically the Waterwalker's rapport with the city did allow him to pass through solid floors to the tunnels below.

Two of the Security Service detail jumped into the chute where manipulated gravity sucked them away fast. Ethan followed them down. To increase the irony of the situation, the full was similar to the way Edeard flew along Makkathran's travel tunnels; except here Ethan was going feet first.

He dropped out of the chute into a deep shelter half a kilometre below the city. The refuge was a circular chamber with glass walls that partitioned off smaller cubicles and offices. His presidential office was already illuminated, but the others were all unoccupied and dark. A startled skeleton team of security agency staff were scrambling to build up a situation overview in conjunction with the refuge's smartcore.

'What have we got? he asked.

'Energy discharges in orbit, sir, the defence agency colonel reported. 'A thousand kilometres up, that's in the parking ring. And, sir, it's high-level weapons fire. The emissions are sophisticated. We think it was two ships, both in stealth mode; we didn't even know they were there until they started shooting at each other.

'Are they attacking the surface? Ethan's immediate thought was the Pilgrimage fleet, still under construction and supremely vulnerable.

'No sir, as far as we can ascertain it's just the two ships engaging each other. No new discharges for the last ten seconds, so it's probably over.

'That fast?

'Yes sir, the colonel said. 'Modern engagements are quick and decisive. The power levels in the weapons guarantee that.

'So can we get a clear image now?

'We're trying sir, our civil sensors aren't built for this. Nearby ships have been destroyed, there's a large wreckage field that's expanding rapidly. We're alerting urban areas along the fall-out track.

'How many ships destroyed? Ever since he'd announced Pilgrimage, wealthy Living Dream followers had been arriving in their personal starships thinking they could take part in the flight to the Void. The last time he'd enquired, over three thousand were in parking orbit above Ellezelin.

'Over twenty confirmed destroyed, probably fifty damaged. Fatalities unknown.

'Lady, Ethan groaned. 'So do you have any idea who the protagonists are?

'No sir, sorry.

'Has the Commonwealth Navy called your agency?

'Not yet.

'Kindly get in touch with them, and formally report this conflict. I'll be interested in their opinion.

'Yes, sir.

Ethan's worry was that the conflict in Bodant Park had somehow spilled over to Ellezelin. That the ships were stealthed was a good indication that Faction agents were in orbit, presumably in a last ditch attempt to retrieve the Second Dreamer for their own purposes. Again, he hesitated to call Marius.

'Sir, the colonel said. 'Back up sensors are coming on line; we're getting some situation clarification. One ship survived intact. Tracking a great deal of debris.

'A victor, then, Ethan said as he accessed the defence agency network. An image of a small ship appeared in his exovision, a smooth ovoid surrounded by a force field's electron-blue shimmer. He knew enough about modern hardware to recognize the type favoured by Faction representatives, and ANA agents. 'So which are you? he murmured. 'See if you can establish a link with them, he instructed the colonel.

The colonel never got to try. Ethan's exovision threw up a communication icon he didn't expect. He let the call come through as he walked into his slick modern office. Two of the armour suited Security Service detail took up position beside the door. Privacy shielding enveloped the room.

'Good evening, Cleric Conservator, ANA: Governance said.

Ethan settled into a chair which shaped itself to his contours. 'I take it you've monitored the fight above Ellezelin?

'Indeed.

'Does the Navy know what's going on?

'Admiral Kazimir has been informed.

'Who are they?

'One of the ships is piloted by an agent working for my security division.

'I see. Is he the survivor?

'Fortunately, yes.

'And the loser?

'Someone suspected of high treason.

'High treason? Ethan didn't know if he should be amused or not. 'That sounds very dramatic'

'This is classified information, but as a courtesy I will tell you we have discovered the Ocisen Empire fleet on its way to Ellezelin is accompanied by Prime warships.

Ethan sat perfectly still. For a second he thought the communication link might have malfunctioned somehow. 'Prime? he asked, glad he had closed his gaiamotes. His shock impulse would have startled the staff working outside.

'Quite, ANA: Governance said. 'As you can imagine, we are extremely concerned by the development.

'Was that a Prime ship in orbit?

'No. However, we believe there was a connection. Fortunately, my agent managed to avoid completely vaporising the suspect's ship, no small achievement given modern weapons. I am dispatching a forensic team to examine the wreckage. I need to know what the suspect was carrying.

'I see. Can we help?

'Yes. Please quarantine the orbital wreckage until my team arrive. No one else is to touch it. My agent will remain in orbit, he has orders to open fire on anyone who contaminates the scene.

'I understand. I will order my defence agency to establish the quarantine zone. As he spoke, the sensors showed him the ANA ship gathering up fragments with coherent gravity pulses, pulling them out of decay paths which would have taken them down to the atmosphere.

'Thank you for your cooperation, Cleric Conservator. This is not an easy time for the Greater Commonwealth. I hope that when this situation is resolved, Ellezelin's Senator will resume his seat.

Ethan didn't bother to point out that Commonwealth politics would be irrelevant to anyone inside the Void. In fact, neither would renewed Prime aggression. 'Can the Navy stop the Ocisen invasion fleet? he asked.

'Yes. It can and it will.

'Thank you.

The call ended, and Ethan sat back, only just realizing how badly his muscles had tightened up. A headache was building behind his eyes; they were frequent now even though the last of the semi-organic auxiliaries had been removed. His doctors warned him it would still take time for his brain to recover fully. He waited a moment, gathering his thoughts, then called the defence colonel in. 'The surviving ship is staying in orbit, I want a two-hundred kilometre quarantine zone around it. Nobody is authorized to approach, I don't care who they are.

'Sir, the colonel licked his lips. 'Rescue ships may need to—

'Nobody, Ethan said firmly.

'Yes, sir.

The colonel hadn't even left the office when Marius called. 'A most unpleasant event in your skies, the representative said.

'Was that one of your agents up there?

'Someone we were affiliated with, yes.

'ANA has requested a quarantine around the wreckage. It says the Prime are part of the Ocisen fleet. It says there's a connection. Is that true?

'I know nothing of that. I don't have access to Navy intelligence.

'Really?

'Yes. Really.

Ethan wondered if he should challenge the representative directly, but couldn't see any advantage in that. 'What was your ship doing stealthed in orbit around Ellezelin?

'It was waiting for the Pilgrimage ships to be completed, then it would deliver the consignment of defence systems in its hold.

As you can understand, we don't want them sitting on the ground exposed to ANA's scrutiny.

A smooth enough answer, and one which Ethan didn't believe for an instant. 'I see.

'Neither do we want ANA to examine the remnants.

'That is completely outside my remit.

'My dear Conservator, if ANA uses the defence systems our ship was carrying as an excuse to curtail our involvement with your Pilgrimage, there will not be any Pilgrimage. And that is exactly the kind of pseudo-legal argument that so many people will seize upon.

'But I can't do anything. We can hardly attack that ship.

'A friend of mine will be in touch within the hour. She can explain to your wormhole technicians how they can assist our cause. Marius closed the link.

'Dear Lady, Ethan put his head in his hands. Events were becoming too powerful, building their own inertia. He tried to remember why he'd agreed to the representative's help in the first place. Ultradrive was turning into the ultimate poisoned chalice. But even if he reverted to equipping the Pilgrimage ships with an ordinary hyperdrive they'd still need help to get past the warrior Raiel in the Gulf. There was nothing he could do but try and ride the crisis out.

If we just had the Second Dreamer we'd be in much stronger position. She's the key to success. We have to acquire her. We have to, no matter what the cost.

The ExoProtectorate Council watched the new squadron of Capital-class ships matching superluminal flight vectors with the Ocisen Empire fleet. Five of the Navy ships were concentrating their sensors on a single Prime warship, preparing to pull it out of hyperspace.

'This habit is turning into a vulgar repetition, Ilanthe said, her voice silky with disdain.

Kazimir hadn't realized before now how much he missed

Gore at the council; his grandfather was a perfect balance against the Accelerator advocate. More accurately, Gore wouldn't put up with her bullshit point scoring and needling.

Crispen gave her a small grin. 'Ever wondered what kind of effect these snatch raids are having on the Ocisens? I mean, their most powerful allies are being pulled out of space and shot without any warning. Can't be good for morale.

'Don't compare the Ocisen psychology to ours, Creewan warned. 'Obedience to the nest father is their paramount concern, in fact it's their only concern. They don't question and worry away at issues like we do.

'Which makes this interception even more pointless, Ilanthe said. 'They can't be rattled. They're not going to turn round even if we eliminate every Prime ship there is.

'I'm not eliminating them, Kazimir said levelly. 'I want a living immotile.

'What? John Thelwell demanded. 'I thought this was the final final warning, not some capture mission.

Kazimir met Ilanthe's gaze across the conference table. The lightning outside the big curving window stroked their faces with sharp slivers of flickering light. 'It is the final warning. To her credit she didn't flinch, but then he didn't expect her to. Less than an hour ago, Paula had reported in that the ice moon Accelerator station had been destroyed by a quantumbuster. Kazimir was mildly surprised Ilanthe had turned up to the ExoProtectorate Council at all. She must know the indomitable investigator was getting close to the kind of evidence ANA needed to suspend the Accelerators.

'What in heaven's name do you want with an immotile? Creewan asked.

'Intelligence, Kazimir said. 'We need to know where they come from, which planet or planets they've colonized. Ship numbers. Technology level. Once the Ocisens are eliminated by the deterrence fleet they will be the Navy's next target.

'Glad to hear it, John Thelwell said.

'Yes, said Kazimir. 'It will be interesting to find out how they avoided the Firewall. He still didn't get a reaction from Ilanthe.

The Navy ships yanked a single Prime warship out of hyper-space. Kazimir followed the engagement closely. He couldn't fault the captains, their strategy was flawless, subjecting the warship's force field to inexorable stress. When the force field finally collapsed, weapons fire against the hull was minimal. They went for electronic warfare, scrambling electronics and knocking out power circuits with quantum magnetic pulses. All at a level that wouldn't interfere with Prime nervous systems. Even with life support equipment knocked out, there was enough air and warmth for the living Primes to survive until they were captured.

Ten marine assault teams got ready to jump across.

The Prime warship exploded.

'Shit, Kazimir grunted.

'I trust this charade is concluded to your satisfaction, Ilanthe said. 'Admiral, will you now be launching the deterrence fleet in compliance with the Senate Executive Security Commission resolution?

Creewan and John Thelwell watched closely.

'Yes, Kazimir said. 'I will order the launch of the deterrence fleet immediately. And what have you put out there to snare it? What are you up to?

Ilanthe's female persona translocated out of the old fashioned perceptual reality of the conference room. She reformed herself in a completely different zone of ANA, the Accelerator compilation, that manifested as an inverted world of dark primary colours. She walked across a verdure sky as a heliotrope ocean rippled above her. Airborne wisps of kingfisher-blue light slithered around her, winking in complex sequences designating their sentience level: mirrored personality repositories performing designated secondary tasks while the primary mentality operated on an upper hierarchal level. Her body characteristics morphed away to a simple flawless silver skin, and her own repositories fluttered in, perching themselves on her shoulders and arms like birds of prey. Information squeezed in through the data porous boundary skin.

First analysis was of the Ellezelin interception. Every surviving physical section of Chatfield's starship was encapsulated by trajectory algorithms extrapolated and refined from Ellezelin's monstrously crude orbital sensor arrays. The flight of the eighty thousand scraps of matter were defined in a four-dimensional projection resembling a particularly beautiful scarlet firework scintillation bloom.

Origin point analysis designated the critical segments of the equipment Chatfield had been carrying. Exotic matter fragments were already decaying as their cohesion integrity was broken. But sufficient pieces survived; it would be possible to determine the interstice folds contained within them before their decay sequence fizzled to extinction. ANA might be capable of retro-profiling the nature of the equipment, and that would ruin everything.

Two more blank humanoid shapes walked across the sky. Fellow Accelerators, Colabal and Atha. Ilanthe transferred the trajectory construct to them. 'Supervise the wormhole interception yourself, she told Atha. 'It will need to be speedy, the ANA agent will see what's happening and instigate a hyperspacial distortion. You will need to collect seven thousand fragments.

'Confirmed, Atha said. The figure reversed its dimensions to zero and translocated.

'Is the replica functioning? Ilanthe asked Colabal.

'Yes. The sky beneath their feet began to undulate, its tempo increasing rapidly as if thin storm clouds were speeding past. A section glowed with a pale amber hue. Ilanthe immersed herself into it.

One of the accelerator agents that Colabal ran had collected a sample of Araminta's DNA from the Colwyn City apartment block. The sequencing had provided the Accelerators with enough information to formulate Araminta's neural structure.

Every scrap of information on her background had been transformed into simulated memories and loaded in. They were woefully inadequate, Ilanthe acknowledged, but the personality that knitted together was the closest thing they could produce to the actual Second Dreamer herself. Puzzlingly, there were no gaiamotes, how she connected to the gaiafield was a complete mystery.

Ilanthe hung in the middle of the simulacrum, and meshed herself with the mind that flowed within. Emerald threads of neurological emulates blended into her own primary mentality. Ilanthe allowed herself to see the block of flats beside Bodant Park go up in flame, fed in the shock pulse that Araminta had released into the gaiafield. Feelings raged around her, connecting to memories with erratic volatile associations, triggering irrational emotional responses.

Ilanthe disconnected herself. 'Laril, she said. 'She will turn to her ex-husband for help. This disconcerting meat-based memory fluttered through her thoughts, illogical and shaky. 'He represents a stability she has not known before or since. It is not a pleasant refuge for her, but a dependable one. She lacks that above all else.

'He's migrating inwards, Colabal said. 'That makes him susceptible. And his reputation is established. We can make cooperation worth his while. He is also weak. He will capitulate to threats.

'Proceed, Ilanthe said. She opened a secure link to Neskia. 'Marius made a huge mistake bringing Chatfield into operation this early, she told the station chief. 'And using the Cat against Paula was another blunder, he should have known better than to exploit personal animosity. His stupidity has exposed us to an unacceptable level of risk. Consequently, I'm restructuring our event sequence. Please take immediate command of the swarm, and bring it to Sol.

'I'll fly to it now, Neskia said. 'Do you want me to eliminate Marius?

'Not yet. I will restrict his initiative freedoms. It should act as a suitable caution. Clipping the wings of those who fly highest is always a profound disciplinary action upon them.

'I always found him unreliable.

'1 know. His temperament suited the majority of tasks he was assigned to. He may have come to enjoy the game so much he has lost sight of the goal. A common enough occurrence.

'Well I certainly haven't.

'I will rendezvous with you outside the cemetery belt. If all goes well. And it should. Kazimir is authorizing the deployment of the deterrence fleet.

'Finally! I wonder what it is.

'We'll know soon enough. Ilanthe ended the connection to the agent. Above her a black globe slipped out from the languid mirror-purple waves, no more than twice her height. She rose to greet it, slipping through the formless surface.

Ilanthe emerged through the side of a chamber measuring an apparent half a million kilometres across. The citadel of Accelerator ethos. Like an ancient godling she took flight, chasing through the chains of translucent planet-sized globes that spun idly through the immense formatted interstice. Flocks of fellow Accelerators flashed past her, calling out in welcome to their leader. They trailed long potentialities behind them, fragments of nonreality that struggled for existence then dissipated into little more than dreams. All of them, all of her kind, strove to imprint themselves on the modified space-time of their artificial environment, to bend reality to their wishes. Just as the Void achieved so effortlessly. Every second of existence was devoted to extrapolating the structure that would achieve the ultimate post-physical manifestation.

Up ahead, the inversion core glimmered with suppressed power, ready for her. Ready to break free and carry human evolution to heights not even ANA could envisage. Ready to change the nature of the universe for ever.

The Wurung Transport cab reached the end of the metro line sometime in the early hours. Araminta was not quite dozing when it came to a gentle halt in the middle of the Francola district. She'd never visited before, never even considered any of the properties which came up for sale here. In economic terms the area was as run down as the Salisbury district, but this decay was subtle, verging on genteel, as if the district had fallen into a cosy slumber, a retirement village content with its lot. The buildings here were mostly housing. Large and expensive when they were built; many had been subdivided into apartments. Sprawling gardens had matured, the trees growing up taller than roofs, casting long shadows during the day. Fallen leaves formed a dry mantle across the road, stirring briefly as the cab swished past.

Araminta opened the door and climbed out. Her boots crunched on the crisp brown leaves as she looked round, getting her bearings. About a mile away, behind the houses directly ahead of her, the city's force field was a near-vertical wall of shimmering air. She craned her neck, following the insubstantial barrier as it curved overhead to cover the entirety of Colwyn City. A flat layer of starlit clouds parted to slither around it, while the stars themselves were distorted smears of light speckling the apex high above the river in the middle of the city. She brought her head down again, almost dizzy.

'Go back to the nearest public slot and wait for me there, she told the cab. Not that she expected to come back, not for a very while anyway; but living with paranoia for the last few days had switched her brain to a very cautious mode of thinking.

The door closed up, and it hummed away down the rail. Araminta knew which way to go, it was instinctive; beyond the houses, where the streets ended and a strip of big native dapol trees acted as a buffer between the buildings and the force field. There was a warmth to be had there, her mind felt, a calmness that was almost the opposite of the gaiafield's exuberant emotive bustle.

She walked along the pavement, heading down the gentle slope and occasionally shying away from the hedges that had grown up to lean across the cracked mossy concrete. Little nocturnal rodents scurried about in the undergrowth, she heard cats yowling somewhere, a cry that carried a long way in the still air.

The last house at the end of the cul-de-sac had almost been swamped by vegetation from its own garden which had been untended for years. Trees from the backdrop of woods were slowly reclaiming the land that had once been cleared for lawns and ornamental beds, advancing the forest in a tide of luxuriant growth, with fresh saplings shooting up closer and closer to the house's moss encrusted walls.

She could just make out the bottom of the force field now, suspended twenty metres from the ground. From her angle it looked as though the spiky treetops were holding it up. Cressida had said the gap was guarded, though not how. Araminta had no intention of finding out; she certainly couldn't see any Ellezelin capsules, not even using her nightsight function. Unfortunately, her Advancer heritage wasn't up to supplying her with infrared. Lack of knowing what was lurking among the trees made her very conscious of what could be watching her with enriched senses, laughing quietly as she blundered about.

Crumbling enzyme-bonded concrete beneath her feet gave way to grass and the wide indigo fans of whiplit ferns. Araminta pushed her way forward into the dark spaces between the dapol trees. There were no thoughts impinging on the local gaiafield, no human ones anyway. The gentle thoughts of the Silfen Motherholm were somehow stronger. More so in one direction. She turned towards it, and pushed sharp branches out of her way. Dense whiplit fronds pressed against her legs, their curly strands damp from the night, making progress difficult.

She caught a glimpse of blue and red laser fans sweeping through the tangle of trees and froze. She was ail-too familiar with the strobes on Ellezelin support capsules by now. This one was just outside the force field, flying slowly along a shallow curve. Some patrol scanning for citizens seeking escape from the invasion.

The minds of the crew and paramilitary squad inside emitted a dull glow of thoughts into the gaiafield. All of them were tired, emotionally and physically, they hated Colwyn City and its resentful inhabitants.

Araminta kept still until the capsule had glided away. She was close to the force field now, maybe just a couple of hundred yards away, but the trees must have shielded her from the capsule's sensors. Her legs were soaking from the moisture on the whiplit fronds. Hands and cheeks had been scratched by dead twigs. And she was beginning to feel somewhat foolish floundering round in a forest at night, looking for a path that was actually some kind of alien wormhole which she was supposed to be able to sense because her ancestor was a friend of elves and the magic passed through the female bloodline.

'Makes perfect sense to me, she muttered to herself. I wonder what the me of a week ago would make of all this?

Thankfully, she stumbled out into a narrow animal track, and started along it. The fronds didn't accost her so much, though she still had to ward off the branches.

Dear Ozzie, was it really only a week ago I was living a perfectly ordinary life? And I haven't called Bovey for days. He must be worried sick. Cressida will be worried too, and cross that I haven't confirmed my ticket offplanet.

The trees were spaced further apart now, the path easier to perceive. She couldn't tell if that was because of a weak dawn light starting to rise, or if her mind was illuminating the compressed trail of loamy soil that had borne so many feet before hers. But she did know she was walking the right way, a knowledge that came in the form of cold relief. That newfound buoyancy faltered after only a few yards as she instinctively accepted the path was truly taking her away from her homeworld.

I'm being forced out, she thought bitterly. I haven't even said goodbye to all the people I love. Not that there are many of them, but I should be allowed that. Even though she was more confident about using the gaiafield, she still didn't dare access the unisphere. That would be the first thing she would have to fix when she reached whatever world she was heading for. Araminta wanted to know who the hell Oscar Monroe was, and why he would help her. If he was telling the truth about working for ANA, and ANA wanted her to be free, there might be hope yet.

It was definitely getting lighter, even though Araminta knew it was still a couple of hours before dawn. She didn't recognize most of the trees she was walking through now, either, the old familiar dapol trees were becoming few and far between. The newcomers were taller and thinner, with slimmer branches and silver-green leaves. Strange lavender star-flowers peeped up through the wiry yellow-tinged grass as the ground started to tip down. There was no sight of the force field through the upper branches of the new trees. And the gaiafield was fading out, allowing her tense thoughts to expand, calming the deep worry contaminating her body. Somewhere the Silfen Motherholm smiled in compassion for her.

The trees were thinning out, and Araminta shivered in the cold air gusting past the white and green striped trunks, rubbing her hands along her arms and pulling up the front of her fleece. Then she walked out of the treeline and stopped dead.

'Oh Great Ozzie, she murmured in astonished delight. She was halfway up a steep valley wall. The grassy mountainside beneath her feet swept down towards a broad meandering river. On the other side, maybe twenty or thirty miles away, the opposite side of the valley climbed upwards, its summits coated in thick fields of snow. Above that—Araminta shielded her eyes from the orange sun peeping over the jagged peaks. A quartet of tiny moons were racing across the sky, twisting round each other as they went. She was sure one of them must have been made from blue crystal, glints of sunlight flashed off its facets as it spun round and round.

Viotia didn't have moons like that. In fact she'd never heard of anywhere that did.

Somewhere beyond the river, lurking among the spinnies and tracts of woodland, Araminta could sense the beginnings of another path. She set off down the mountain, laughing joyfully at her liberation.