Two pairs of eyes were gleaming in the darkness. They had been using lased-in displays while he was sleeping.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Lights.’

  The chamber brightened.

  In the bed beside him, Elva blinked three times rapidly, and the membrane coating her eyes cleared. From the smaller makeshift bed laid across the far wall, Jissie gasped, then made a control gesture which stilled the game she had been playing.

  ‘Sorry ...’

  ‘You didn’t wake me up,’ said Tom.

  Elva sat up properly, tucked her pillow against her back. ‘I’ve been keeping in touch with SatScan comms—’

  ‘I guessed.’

  ‘—and Adam Gervicort got away.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And Zhao-ji took Paradox to safety, apparently, from his base.’ Paradox was a neko-feline, very old and grand, whom Tom and Zhao-ji had looked after in their school days. ‘And his latest-generation offspring: Fawn, Constantia, and Antinomios.’

  Thank Fate.

  ‘Ah, Destiny.’ Tom rubbed his eyes, wiped the back of his hand across his nose. ‘With all that’s happening, worrying about the Fate of a neko and three kittens—’

  ‘I’d think less of you, Tom, if you didn’t.’

  Tom swallowed and shut his eyes.

  ‘If we’re not fighting for the three of us,’ added Elva, ‘then what are we fighting for?’

  ‘Um, right.’ Tom cleared his throat, looked at her. ‘Things happen fast in war, don’t they?’

  Jissie, in her makeshift bed, looked from one to the other. ‘Three?’ she asked.

  ‘If that’s what you want, of course,’ said Elva.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jissie.

  Then she lay back down, curled on her side, and slipped into peaceful sleep.

  ‘Lights off,’ said Tom, and lay back, knowing that nothing awaited him but nightmares. Perhaps the dreams were prescient, or perhaps they were like the truecasts of Oracle Gérard d’Ovraison who once lived in this place, dreaming of life, until the day Tom murdered him.

  ~ * ~

  36

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  Tom and Elva, along with most of the senior officers, were already grouped around the conference table when Axolon interrupted, displaying an image of dart-shaped shuttles flying in tight formation.

  ‘That’s Adam’s group, is it? How is he doing?’

 

  ‘Kraiv!’

  Axolon took that as assent.

  ‘Greetings, old friend. By Axe and Blood, we made it.’

  ‘Fate ... Kraiv! Is that really you? Where’s Draquelle?’

  ‘Here, with the children, and thirty per cent of the Manse Hetreece. Are we welcome in this place?’

  ‘Ha.’ Tom looked around the table. ‘One third of such a fighting clan is welcome anywhere ...’

  ‘Aye, my Lord.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘... and my colleagues agree.’

  ‘We’ll see you in twenty minutes. Till then.’

  Tom waited for a second to ensure the comm link was ended.

  ‘Axolon?’

 

  ‘Make weapons ready, all the same. An AI could fake that voice, given the right surveillance material to work from.’ It was unsettling, but they had to face the possibility. ‘Sooner or later, the Enemy will find out where we are.’

  There were grim nods around the table.

  ‘But it will cost them’ - Elva placed her graser pistol flat upon the tabletop - ‘to take us down. That’s for sure.’

  It was not just nightshift: it was real night outside, with dark clouds scudding and chill winds in the air. Inside the terraformer’s command centre, the white and blue tiles showed track-marks of boots. The chamber was quiet with the odd feel of a workplace when everyone has left.

  Tom stood watching the empty space where his mother’s sarcophagus had stood. Someone had ripped out the equipment before he took possession of the terraformer; still he could almost see her near-dead body, if he tilted his head a certain way.

  Behind him, someone coughed.

  ‘Oh.’ Tom turned. ‘Hi, Adam.’

  ‘Tom.’ The scar on Adam’s face rippled in the half-light as he nodded. ‘I hear my Lady Elva is safe.’

  ‘As much as any of us.’ After a moment, Tom gestured for a drone. ‘You need a drink?’ A small drone rose, and hovered at shoulder height. ‘This one’s got daistral and juice.’

  ‘What I need is something stronger. But ... All right, a daistral. Command: bring—’

  ‘Cancel that.’ Tom stopped the drone before it could float over to Adam. He gestured the carapace open and reached inside, and drew out a steaming cup. ‘Here you are.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Adam accepted the drink. ‘That’s the second time I’ve been served by you, my Lord.’

  ‘It won’t become a habit.’

  ‘I know ... I hear you’ve a new tunic which no-one’s seen you wearing.’

  Tom raised his own cup in a toast. ‘You’ve just got here, and your spies are reporting already. Not bad.’

  They clinked their cups together.

  ‘I rescued some new ‘tropes,’ Adam said. ‘From the labs. My Lady ordered a research programme some time back. The logotropes work for anyone who’s not had desensitization against all that.’ Adam gestured to the night sky outside. ‘Works in ninety-nine per cent of cases.’

  ‘What about the other one per cent?’

  ‘That’s the thing. Adverse reactions range from nosebleeds all the way to haematoma or anaphylactic shock.’

  ‘Chaos. All we can do is offer them around and explain the risks.’

  ‘I ... Right. I didn’t think you’d agree, Tom. They need more testing and development. You’ve got children on board this thing.’

  ‘No, what we need is more time, but we’re not going to get it. If things get bad, we’ll have to evacuate via drop-bugs to the surface. Anyone who can’t function in the open ...’

  Tom let his voice trail off, as Adam carefully placed his cup down on the conference table.

  If you‘re going to attack me, now’s the time.

  There was tension in Adam’s shoulders. He blamed Tom for Elva’s stress over the past two years; that was understood. Perhaps now he had nothing to lose by attacking Tom, since their whole world was gone ... and he was Academy-trained like Tom, and just as dangerous.

  Then Adam straightened and looked Tom right in the eyes.

  ‘Tom. Sir. I need to tell you ...’

  Tom held his breath.

  ‘... that we need a commander…’

  Right. It was a shame Corduven was not still alive, is that what he wanted to say?

  You think I’d disagree?

  ‘... and you’re the right man. We need you, Tom.’

  Tom could only watch as Adam bowed in formal salute, spun on his heel, and left.

  After three hours of immersion in tactical displays, it seemed that the only thing Tom had accomplished was reading about the successes of others; and those were limited to the practicalities of survival, not victory. Dispersed shuttle groups were entering the first eighty terraformer spheres to begin the task of recommissioning.

  We‘re hiding. Hoping the Anomaly won’t notice.

  Grimly, he looked through hanging stacks of tesseracts delineating the Anomaly’s absorption of realm after realm below.

  While the world dies.

  From inside his belt, Tom took out the violet crystal which the Kobold officer had given to him. It would allow him to contact the Grey Shadows, and perhaps whatever forces the Crystal Lady herself might command. Tom’s tech analysts had decided it used a Calabi-Yau bridge, which allowed the comms-beams to bypass the kilometres of solid rock between here and the Crystal Lady’s deep dwelling, by sliding through the hyperdimensions.

  The problem was, such a broadcast would almost certainly produce resonances which a hungry and expanding Anomaly could detect and pounce on.

  ‘I can’t use it,’ Tom muttered, ‘until I know what I’m asking for.’

  He was talking to himself: harmless in an academic logosopher; fatal in an intelligence agent, as Tom had been back in the occupied Aurineate Grand’aume. Then he thought of the young girl, Sadia, in Realm V’Delikona, writing poetry at Corduven’s funeral, and wondered how she and her father had fared.

  So long since I wrote poetry.

  Now was the time to fight.

  Tom looked again through the displays which pulsed in the darkness while everyone else in the overcrowded terraformer sphere slept - all but a few night-duty sentries and obsessive researchers ... plus the wounded who suffered despite the autodocs’ morphitropes and delta-inducers.

  ‘I can’t do this.’

  Tom pushed himself back from the table and stood.

  Unclasping his cape, he cast it across the chair. His belt, with the Grey Shadows crystal, went on the table. We’re lost. Tom considered a moment, then bent forward, tugged his tunic over his head, and threw the garment aside. Lost... The tunic fell through the holo images and lay spread across the tabletop like a fallen soldier.

  Bare-chested, with the stallion talisman and its hidden crystal hanging round his neck, Tom crossed to the window. Membrane slid wetly across his skin as he stepped outside.

  Chill night air encircled him.

  Step and smear.

  And lean out, for Fate’s sake.

  Traversing with his fingertips brushing the stone, walking almost upright, using the sides of his slipper-like shoes for greater friction, Tom moved along silvery stonework rendered treacherous by moonlight.

  Sliding shadows and odd perspectives made him constantly review the basics. The smallest mistake would spring him outwards from the sphere, betrayed by his own tension and the basic laws of physics, only to topple into a void filled with darkness.

  The wind was fresh. The wind was freedom.

  Thank Fate I’m here, now. Breathing.

  For there were, as one of the ancient proto-logosophers pointed out, many more ways to be dead than to be alive.

  Then the going became more difficult, and both rational and whimsical thinking disappeared as the cerebellum brought the climbing problem into his forebrain: jamming his fist inside a wide crack, extending down for a foothold - missed - and scrabbling, looking for a knot of stone where he might hook his heel - got it - and continue his descent.

  Wind buffeted his ears, flailing at his bare torso, as Tom perched gargoyle-like upon the narrowest of ledges, at the equatorial rim of the kilometre-diameter sphere. Moonlight caused clouds to whiten as though from internal fluorescence, painted the sky dark-blue and purple, occluding the stars.

  The ground, far below, was scarcely visible, save as half-glimpsed patches of grey heathland plus, once, a tiny spark of orange flames. Refugees.

  You‘re safer down there.

  Tom would order a drop-bug, filled with supplies, to be flung back in that direction.

 

  The face was mostly stone now. The one faceted eye that Tom saw was a silver shard of moonlight.

  ‘Oh, you know ... Time passing like a cloud. Life dissipating like a morning mist. That kind of thing.’

  Seconds slid by.

 

  Chill movement of wind.

  ‘Yeah, but teleology ain’t in fashion, my friend.’

 

  ‘You’ve got me there.’

  Silver-grey, the distant glimpses of land below.

  ‘What about you, Axolon? What do you think of as you float up here?’

  A shining lake moved past below. Soon it was gone, hidden by nimbus and distance.

 

  Tom chuckled.

  ‘Let me know if you come to some conclusion.’

  A dark gap appeared overhead, split by the major moon’s white disk.

 

  Later, in the depths of the terraformer, Tom opened the small cupboard he sought. Someone who could explain his random visions and what they might mean: that was what he needed.

  Her flensed head was glistening with blood, and her lidless spherical eyes somehow appeared to widen; and Tom realized he was interrupting what should have been a private time.

  Nutrients swelled striated strips of tissue.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll... Later, OK?’

  The cupboard door vitrified shut and Tom stood there for a moment, face flaring with embarrassment and something more. Then he turned away, looking for the helical stairway which led back up to the level where the Corcorigan family chamber was, where he might attain a few hours’ rest before the morning crowded in on him.

  At mid-morning, Elva beckoned Tom from a briefing session after he had called a short break. Leading him down to the lower levels, she stopped at a clear internal window and nodded.

  ‘I’d say she gets it from you.’

  ‘What do you—? Well.’

  Inside a storage bay which had been refitted with old matting on both floor and walls, a silver-haired, hard-looking carl was instructing some twelve or thirteen children. In the front row, a stern-faced Jissie stamped and whirled her way through a phi2dao beginners’ fighting form.

  Part-way through, she became aware of Tom watching her, but her ferocity only increased, all hesitation evaporating as she gouged and struck imaginary opponents crowding in upon her.

  Tom was very careful not to smile. When the form was finished, he gave a long slow nod, while Jissie stood to attention and appeared to be watching only her instructor.

  ‘Come on,’ said Elva. ‘There’s someone else you need to see. Arrived a few hours ago.’

  In the next level down, in one of the many chambers that had been transformed into a sick-ward, they found Lady Renata bent over an autodoc. A maintenance drone floated overhead, just below the ceiling, beaming control codes into the autodoc’s processor blocks at Renata’s direction.

  ‘Right,’ she said after a minute. ‘All done, I think.’

  ‘Very good.’ Tom smiled as Renata jumped. ‘Sorry. All that stealth training.’

  ‘Right. How are you, Tom? Hello again, Elva. Are ... ? Look, drone, put the ‘doc into restart mode, and I’ll check it myself, OK?’

  The drone hung in place for a moment as though in reproach, then slowly slid from the chamber.

  ‘Sorry about that, Tom.’

  ‘Our fault for interrupting. You’re doing good work.’

  ‘Maybe ... You’ve a question you need to ask me. I can tell.’

  ‘How about a statement first? I’ve seen a ... Lady. One whose substance is like nothing I’d ever heard of. Though there are people who’ve heard certain ... stories.’

  ‘You‘ve met her. The Crystal Lady.’

  ‘Yes, though I’ve no way of proving that.’ Not without revealing the comms crystal, and that Tom did not want to do. ‘It seems quite a coincidence, that your investigative field is magma studies and indigenous lifeforms—’

  ‘Pretty much the same thing, as it turns out.’

  ‘—and that Trevalkin ends up being associated with an organization that somehow links to the native species’... what? Representative?’

  The Grey Shadows were old. Tom wondered how many of the nobility were members. Yet Renata made no mention of them as she explained: ‘According to legend, the Crystal Lady is ancient. Some say one of the Founding Lords constructed her. There are more mystic tales ... The planet’s core manifesting itself in dreams, stuff like that.’

  ‘But the Lady is a construct?’

  Renata shrugged. ‘You’re the one who’s met her, not me.’

  Tom had read some of Renata’s technical papers. Their academic language failed to disguise her enthusiasm for the creatures she studied: not just thermidors, but huge entities that moved deep inside the magma, swimming in schools and emitting long-harmonic vibrations that might be a form of singing.