Captain Goray had chewed at his moustache during the entire briefing. His pale face and mournful eyes looked more worried than ever.

  Tom leaned close to him as the others were filing out.

  ‘Don’t worry. There’s going to be a ruckus when we make our break from the Collegium. You’re going to have one Chaos of a fight on your hands, soon enough.’

  Goray smiled, relieved.

  ‘Thank Fate for that, Warlord.’

  ‘In the meantime, come with me. There are some tac-displays you need to see.’

  They took the spiral stairs down to the next level. Tom stopped before a sealed doorshimmer, which swirled in place until scanners confirmed his identity; then he and Captain Goray stepped through.

  ‘This,’ said Tom, ‘is forbidden tech. VLSI’

  Eemur’s Head floated before a holo network which Elva was manipulating. Tom found their cooperation unsettling.

  ‘Never heard of it, sir.’ Goray rubbed his moustache. ‘Won’t mention it to anyone.’

  ‘The Oracle who lived here used it to interface with installed systems. The devices are original, left inside the terraformer at construction.’

  ‘Old tech, then, Warlord.’

  ‘They date back to the Founding.’

  Elva halted the display, and looked at them. ‘Want to know something funny? There’s a theory that this tech is what enabled the Anomaly to grow in the first place, from a mind distributed across plexcores - pre-logotrope enhancements - on the hellworld of Fulgor.’

  Tom watched Eemur. She floated on her lev-tray, looking intent.

  The display remained static.

  ‘I read Xiao Wang’s Skein Wars when I was a kid,’ Tom said. ‘That’s the story it told. Fulgor was a paradise, not a hellworld, when it started.’

  In one corner of the chamber a translucent hologlobe rotated, stained with darkness representing the Anomaly.

  Will people someday talk about the hellworld called Nulapeiron?

  No they won’t. Because you’re going to succeed.

  Tom smiled at Eemur, and bowed his head. Suddenly, the display swirled with random colours.

  ‘Well done!’ Elva checked a subsidiary holo. ‘You’ve got it, Eemur.’

  The lev-tray bobbed a curtsy in the air. The interface was a glistening strip woven around the dangling remains of Eemur’s left carotid artery and disappearing into her flesh.

  ‘How long,’ asked Captain Goray, ‘before the Seer can establish full conscious control of the holodisplay?’

  ‘I thought you were quick on the uptake, Captain.’ Tom placed his hand on Goray’s shoulder. ‘I’d like you to work with Elva and Eemur, to liaise with General Ygran and the command staff. Relay questions and answers in both directions, between this chamber and the planners upstairs. Interpret intelligently.’

  ‘Sir?’ Goray clasped his hands behind his back. ‘I don’t truly understand.’

  Tom looked at Elva and Eemur, took a deep breath, slowly expelled it.

  ‘Have you noticed, Captain, that I seem to be more aware of the Enemy’s movements than I ought to be? That the planners blindly accept what I tell them only because I’ve been proved right?’

  ‘Yes.’ A faint smile tugged at Goray’s lips. ‘Yes, sir. I’ve noticed that.’

  ‘Then...’

  Don’t worry, lover. You will come back.

  ‘... If I don’t make it, my Lady Elva has the strategic training and Eemur has the ability to ... Let’s just say, between them, they can do as good a job as I can.’

  Tom could not help looking at Elva then, seeing the depth of fear in her grey eyes before she blinked and resumed a professional expression.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Tom.

  Wearing the grey jumpsuit he needed for the drop, Tom made one last stop before joining his team. In the labs situated at the terraformer’s heart, Truholm Janix oversaw teams of workers, a mixture of logosophically trained Lords and Ladies - the young Lord A’Vinsenberg showed a particular aptitude - and Academy-trained freeborn, even three of the techs that Tom and Elva had recruited years ago in the original, short-lived Corcorigan Demesne.

  ‘How’s it going, Truholm?’

  ‘Um, well, my ... Warlord. My Lady, ah, Flurella was looking for you.’

  And she can fluster anyone.

  Hiding a smile, Tom asked: ‘What about the work?’

  ‘Oh, right. We’re reviewing models. Also, some of them’ - he waved a hand; A’Vinsenberg looked up and nodded - ‘are improving the anti-agoraphobia logotropes. We have one that produces agoraphilia, in fact.’

  ‘Overcompensating,’ said A’Vinsenberg. ‘But I’m bringing it back under control.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Truholm wiped his desktop display. ‘It seems too strong, but the point is that this version has no side effects. Besides an excessive longing for the great outdoors.’

  Tom was frowning. ‘Why are you working on logotropes at this time?’

  ‘Because, Warlord, it’s where femtotech reaches its apex. There’s a nicety of design when artificial atom construction meets computational theory meets biochemical pathway. We’re engineering subatomic particles in order to influence human thought.’

  ‘And ... ?’ said Tom, thinking: I know what a logotrope is, for Fate’s sake.

  ‘And when you bring us the Collegium’s devices, we’re going to be collapsing spacetime using attotwistors none of us here have practical knowledge of. This is the nearest we can get.’

  ‘Hmm. Good answer.’

  ‘Thank you, Warlord.’

  Lady Flurella caught him in the corridor. Her crimson eyes shone like blood-filled orbs against her bone-white skin.

  ‘You’re attempting to penetrate Strehling Suhltone, Lord Corcorigan.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you’re extracting ... what? The Collegium’s devices? Or their people?’

  ‘Both, if we can manage it. The equipment comes first.’

  ‘And Lord Avernon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  If he’s there.

  Tom had tried to See into the Collegium again, but Anomalous activity in the Calabi-Yau dimensions was blocking him. Trevalkin had been there, and Magister Strostiv, the last Tom had Seen. But that was days ago.

  ‘What about Trevalkin?’

  ‘He may,’ said Tom, ‘be the one person who can keep Avernon safe until we get there.’

  ‘And you trust him?’

  ‘Trevalkin? He’s extremely capable.’

  ‘Mmm. Be careful, Warlord. Don’t turn your back.’

  Then a surprising thing happened. The albino Lady Flurella reached up on tiptoes, leaned forward, and kissed Tom on the cheek.

  ‘Good luck.’

  She bustled away, while Tom could only watch.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said finally, addressing an empty corridor.

  Then he checked the equipment tagged to his jumpsuit, nodded to himself.

  Time to go.

  Elva and Jissie were waiting outside the shuttle bay.

  ‘Tom...’

  They hugged, kissed, and pulled Jissie into their embrace. Then Elva released him, stepped back, her hand on Jissie’s shoulder.

  ‘Give them Chaos, my husband.’

  ‘Yes, my love. I will.’

  As Tom was stepping into the shuttle, silent words rang in his mind. He jumped.

  Don’t lose your head, lover.

  His laugh caused fourteen heads to turn and stare, fourteen pairs of horizontally slitted eyes to dilate and contract. Fourteen purple-skinned faces each raising a graphite eyebrow.

  ‘Ankestion.’ Tom nodded to Ankestion Raglok - or at least, to the clone wearing the narrow red armband of leadership: if Ankestion had swapped places with one of his clone-brothers, Tom would never be able to tell the difference.

  ‘Warlord.’

  The hatch sealed shut as Tom took his place on the bench seat.

  ‘Launch in thirty seconds,’ came the pilot’s voice.

  And finally Axolon himself spoke into the shuttle.

 

  The shuttle slid forward.

  Ten minutes after they were airborne, a strange change came over the clone-warriors. One by one they closed their eyes, and their faces grew not just still but solid, as if turning into stone. Only Ankestion Raglok remained watchful.

  ‘May I ask—?’ Tom began.

  ‘It is how we prepare for battle. I expect they’re doing likewise in the other shuttles.’

  There were no windows or holodisplays depicting the five other craft flying alongside. Instead, Tom concentrated and Saw:

  Twenty carls raise a cheer. Kraiv thumps morphospear against bronze shield, and Volksurd yells a curse upon their enemies. The single non-combatant, a specialist they are taking into battle, stares around at the carls, disbelieving what he sees.

  Then the whole group launches into a rousing battle hymn.

  Tom withdrew, blinking, just as the five shuttles banked away, following their own trajectory, engaged in their own mission.

  ‘Something like that,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  I wish you luck, Kraiv.

  Tom would have preferred that Kraiv remain on Axolon Array, but to have suggested it would have been a grave insult to his old friend.

  Beside Tom, Ankestion Raglok closed his eyes, and slid into trance like his brothers; while on Tom’s skin, sparkling drops of sapphire sweat formed, shone for a moment, and then soaked back in, vanishing from sight.

  ~ * ~

  47

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  ‘Ten minutes to drop.’ The pilot’s voice was clear inside the shuttle hold. ‘Take your positions.’

  It had been bright daylight when they left Axolon Array, but they had flown for hours and into darkness. Tom did not use his Sight to check - in case the Anomaly could detect such spacetime twisting - but he knew it would be night outside.

  ‘Ready,’ called the first clone-warrior, as he clasped his arms in front of his chest.

  Gelatinous morphglass emerged from the deck, rose to envelop him. Within seconds, its exterior hardened, formed a polished egg-shape enclosing the warrior.

  ‘Ready,’ called the next man.

  Two minutes later, everyone but Ankestion Raglok and Tom was ready for the descent.

  ‘After you, Warlord.’

  ‘Ready.’

  Tom closed his eyes as soft material rose around him and covered his face.

  The world went silent in his cocoon.

  And drop.

  Empty stomach. Tumbling, over and over. Sheer fear flooding the body.

  Then a bump as though the air itself had thumped him with a giant fist.

  Sweet bleeding Fate.

  Tom gasped.

  Night grew visible, stars between the clouds. Then the drop-bug rolled, straightened, as the morphglass around his head cleared to complete transparency. Facing towards the silvery ground that slid past far below.

  To either side, stubby wings elongated.

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  His drop-bug’s wings stretched, snapped out, flared back. Tom laughed, and swooped through the night like a raptor hunting prey.

  Years of climbing had never taken away Tom’s fear of heights. But the air felt solid, supporting, and moonlit heathland moved smoothly below. There was no longer a sense of falling. Only a faint whistling sound, audible now that he had calmed down, accompanied his flight through darkness.

  Once, he glimpsed something, perhaps another drop-bug: a glint of moon-white reflection, a banking motion. But then it was gone.

  I hope you‘re all safe.

  The long night-glide continued.

  Finally, it was laughable. There had been crude toilet facilities aboard the shuttle and he should have used them. Instead, Tom’s bladder felt swollen by the time his drop-bug’s wings altered curvature, and he banked down for the final approach.

  Don’t lose control.

  The ground suddenly whipped into rapid magnification, silver grasses hurtling past just metres from his face, a stand of trees - shadows against night sky - growing large impossibly fast.

  Hold on.

  Just centimetres now, and the grass was a blur close to his face.

  Then the bug’s wings cupped, braking.

  Hold it.

  And the belly struck the ground.

  Hold...

  Shaking now, and he gritted his teeth to save biting his tongue.

  Hold.

  Slowing.

  Made it.

  And stopped.

  For a moment Tom lay there, cocooned.

  Then the morphglass rippled, pulled away from him, dissolved. It left him face-down in long grass, the woody soil-scent filling his nostrils.

  First things first.

  Slowly, he rolled onto his side - not wanting to present a silhouette by standing upright - and pulled at his jumpsuit’s fastening, and urinated as quietly as he could. Then he adjusted himself, and crawled forward on forearm and knees until he reached dark undergrowth and raised himself to a kneeling position.

  Someone tapped Tom’s shoulder.

  Enemy? Adrenaline jolted through his system.

  ‘Warlord.’ The whisper was close to his ear.

  Tom tapped Ankestion’s shoulder in reply.

  It took three hours to make the rendezvous, at a stony outcrop overlooking a deep valley. The bugs’ drop pattern had spaced out their landing positions in a precise arc centred on this point. Following the protocol, the clone-warriors gathered in twos and threes - as Ankestion Raglok had rendezvoused with Tom - then proceeded to the central rdv.

  But when Tom counted identical purple faces, only thirteen pairs of green eyes shone back at him. One of the warriors leaned close to Ankestion and whispered. Ankestion nodded, then crawled over to Tom.

  ‘Zakedion didn’t make it.’ He kept his voice to a low whisper.

  ‘Did the—?’

  ‘The bug dissolved. Too soon, but it dissolved.’

  Which meant there would be no traces left in the open. That at least was good.

  ‘And the body?’ Tom had to ask.

  ‘Disposed of.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Ankestion Raglok did not reply. He looked up at the horizon, now touched with pale turquoise. Fewer stars were visible.

  He made a patting gesture with one gloved hand.

  Moving as one, in silence, the clone-warriors and Tom dispersed, crawling across the ground. It took only a hillock or even just a thick clump of grass to break up a prone man’s profile. Each man unwrapped chameleoflage from his thigh pouch, spread the gossamer-thin sheet over himself, and settled down.

  They would wait unmoving until it was night once more. Both bead cameras and human beings could be equipped to see in darkness, but as a matter of course they were not. Tom and the clone-warriors needed every small advantage.

  As the sky lightened to a smoky amber against pale grey, Tom’s breathing became almost imperceptible, and he slid into logosophical trance.

  General Ygran had designed the approach phase, using techniques proved during Academy missions when Corduven was in charge. The required personal attributes were based on the ultra-hard endurance training that elite squadrons underwent: emphasizing patient determination and a capacity for sneakiness. A notice in the recruiting colonel’s office declared: He-men and heroes need not apply.

  Ankestion Raglok and his clone-brothers fit the profile exactly. So did Tom Corcorigan.

  It’s time.

  As darkness descended and the stars became diamond points, fourteen figures rose and slipped across the nightbound land like shadows.

  ~ * ~

  48

  MU-SPACE AD 2166 - 2301

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