Then the next, and the next.

  As the eleventh man hooked onto the balcony, Tom got ready. Releasing the squeeze-beener, he trusted to the harness and lock as he ran away from the balcony then back, swinging back and forth in increasing arcs until he could hook on with his one hand.

  Ankestion Raglok hauled Tom over the parapet. Tom rolled aside just seconds before the next man grabbed hold and clambered onto the balcony. One more to come.

  The last man fell.

  It was two minutes early, but a severed rope tumbled past, and Ankestion reacted fast, throwing out his hand to grasp the last warrior. For a second Tom thought they were going to make it, but then the remainder of the acid vials must have released up above as the other ropes fell and the warrior plummeted from sight.

  Tom leaned over the parapet. Below him, the falling clone-warrior flung his hand out towards a small ledge on the shaft wall - hook it, come on - making contact, but torque spun his body, bouncing him off - no - and then he was done for.

  The clone-warrior fell in silence.

  Fate.

  A yell would alert the Enemy, but the man kept his discipline even as he tumbled into darkness, shrank to a spot of grey against black, and was gone.

  ~ * ~

  50

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  In occupied territory, read the Academy’s Infiltration Manual, assume the enemy’s appearance. Like all good military manuals, its precepts were simple enough to work under extreme stress, and were best learned in dangerous conditions, with adrenaline.

  Tom and the twelve remaining clone-warriors crouched in hiding places high up in a natural cavern. The cavern was unaltered by humankind, save for a small decorative fountain off to one side, where water tinkled from copper nozzles beneath a stone dragon’s wings.

  There were no locals in sight.

  Initial rendezvous, the manual warned, is fraught with danger.

  Finally, two warriors lowered themselves from their positions. It took ten minutes for them to examine the environs and satisfy themselves that no booby traps or alarms lay in wait. Still, the Enemy could have left devices too small to be detected without sophisticated tech: exactly the kind of hardware that infiltrating warriors could not carry.

  Come on ...

  Then the two warriors slid back a panel in the fountain’s side, and hauled four green sacks of supplies out of the cache. One of Trevalkin’s agents-in-place had readied the cache; so far, everything was in order.

  The warriors descended in twos and threes to shuck off their jumpsuits, pull civilian clothing from the protective sacks, and tug the garments on. They used simple theatrical make-up - no smartmasks here - to turn their purple skins to ebony. Contact lenses disguised their eyes. With their soft caps and tunics of brown or grey, they looked like typical freemen-artisans of Strehling Suhltone. Their features were almost identical, but that was no problem: they would not travel as a group.

  Tom folded up the discarded jumpsuits, wrapped them in the green sacks, and secreted them inside the fountain. He sealed the panel up; it looked untouched.

  The clone-warriors performed a final check on each other’s appearance. Graphite needles protruded from one warrior’s brow; a clone-brother adjusted the glued-on false hair. Then they stared at each other, looking for signs of dismay or overwhelming stress, and nodded: their minds were also in order.

  ‘All right,’ said Ankestion Raglok. ‘Chain-sequence rdvs, overlapping contacts. First objective is the dead-letter drop in Horstmann Pentangle. Likardion, you’ll make the pick-up. Tom’ - he nodded: no-one would use ranks until the operation was over - ‘and I will cover you. Everyone else ... You’ll be nowhere in sight, until rendezvous gamma. Understood?’

  There were nods all round.

  Then Ankestion Raglok surprised Tom by giving a farewell and benediction whose wording came straight from LudusVitae, from those who had plotted revolution:

  ‘Go in freedom, my brothers.’

  Tom walked with Ankestion Raglok, while the others faded into side-corridors to make their separate ways through the beleaguered realm.

  At first, Tom and Ankestion were in square-edged residential tunnels that bore all the marks of armed resistance: scarred ceilings and broken pillars; tunnels where the air tasted of soot. They passed through dead zones, chests tightening, as the charred remains of ceiling fluorofungus struggled to replenish the atmosphere. In communal squares people were waiting in food queues, or going about their listless business with drawn faces and sunken eyes. No children laughed.

  After a while, they reached clean, unbroken boulevards, with the architecture peculiar to this sector: low, almost oppressive blue-grey ceilings covered with angular knotwork, yet stretching wide. Rows of square pillars stretching out on every side. Among them, people walked, looking subdued.

  ‘This way.’ Ankestion subtly changed direction.

  ‘What... ?’ Then Tom noticed the sentries taking up position. ‘I’m with you.’

  Militiamen were forming a checkpoint, blocking off the aisle along which Ankestion’s clone-brother Likardion had been headed. Tom hoped Likardion was far ahead, out of the troopers’ sight.

  They followed a convoluted route to Horstmann Pentangle, before coming out into the busy plaza. Most of the crowd were civilian, but here and there military officers walked with purposeful strides, or sat drinking in front of daistral houses. (It was the prettiest servitrices who brought food and drink to the most senior officers, Tom noted.)

  Head down, Tom pretended not to notice the flat-faced woman who scanned the crowd from behind a café membrane window, or the three nondescript men bracketing the main exit tunnel. As pedestrians passed the window, the woman made a subtle gesture.

  And then, as the people continued walking, one of them, a man with foppish hair, suddenly jerked upright as he sensed danger, yet disbelieved his own perceptions, for he did not run in those few seconds when he had the chance.

  Then there was a short scuffle which would have gone unnoticed in any realm, never mind one whose subjects had little incentive to pay attention to the dark things happening around them. Within seconds, the three agents - or policemen - had dragged their victim through a membrane wall and were gone.

  It was so swift that—

  Something brushed against Tom’s hand.

  Danger.

  But the person walking past him was Likardion, and the hard object clutched in Tom’s fist must be whatever Likardion had retrieved from the dead-letter drop. Tom watched for the woman in the window, to see if she had spotted Likardion, but she had already turned away: she had her target for today.

  Ankestion headed for a quiet corridor, and after five minutes Tom followed. They came out into an angular hall where a mag-water pool floated above them, its lower surface only a metre overhead.

  Tom held out his hand and opened it. On his palm lay a polished silver teardrop.

  ‘We came all this way’ - Ankestion plucked the silver object from Tom’s hand - ‘for a holopin?’

  Tom shrugged.

  ‘Can you see anything strange about it?’

  ‘No.’ Ankestion looked in every direction, but they were alone. ‘Not a thing.’

  He handed the holopin back to Tom.

  ‘Thanks, I suppose. We should— Ow!’

  Something had pricked his hand. The holopin ...

  Fate.

  ... was unfurling, as it tested Tom’s DNA and confirmed his identity, knowing he was the right person to see the map it bore. The image was ghostly, transparent, and their current location was marked with a small scarlet sphere.

  The route through to the edge of the Anomaly-occupied territory was marked in faint amber; the Enemy’s forces were shown as massed, bruised purple clouds, blocking off the main tunnels, on all five strata depicted in the holomap.

  Someone’s coming ...

  Ankestion moved away from Tom, drawing a punch-knife from his belt - the only weapon he was carrying here, to maintain civilian cover - and Tom’s hand went to his own knife. But the figure moving out of the shadows was a clone-warrior, and Ankestion nodded and said: ‘Likardion,’ for Tom’s benefit. Although Tom had memorized all fourteen clone-warriors’ names, he had found no way of telling them apart.

  ‘The holopin,’ said Likardion, ‘was in the dead-letter drop, exactly where it was supposed to be. There was no surveillance.’

  All three of them looked at the entrances to the hall. The mag-pool hanging overhead cast strange silver ripples across their faces, lending them an eerie aspect.

  No Enemy forces were coming with grasers drawn and inhuman determination in their dead eyes.

  ‘I took a long route here,’ Likardion added, ‘but I had no problems. The locals, the ones who haven’t been Absorbed, are too afraid to pay much attention to strangers.’

  ‘Good.’ Tom pointed into the holomap. ‘This is our rendezvous gamma’ - the place where all the surviving clone-brothers were due to meet up - ‘and this is the route that Trevalkin’s local agent has surveyed for us. We’re not too badly situated.’

  Ankestion’s voice was a growl as he asked, ‘Do you trust him, this Trevalkin?’

  ‘I—’ Tom shook his head. ‘Our personal history is ... complicated, the Viscount and me. Why do you ask? Any particular reason?’

  ‘Just that this tunnel here’ - Ankestion pointed into the map, and a section glowed soft blue - ‘is a more direct route.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Likardion, ‘and I walked past it on my way here. There were only two guards.’

  Tom frowned, for the map indicated a well-guarded post. If the map’s information could not be trusted—

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, ‘and take a look. What d’you say?’

  Ankestion’s stone features hinted at a smile.

  ‘We’re with you.’

  Square blue pillars stood in rows along the broad hall. At the far end, where a square-cross-sectioned tunnel opened, stood eight troopers wearing identical dark uniforms of the Anomalous forces. All of the troopers bore graser rifles.

  Out of sight behind a huge pillar, Ankestion and Likardion exchanged unreadable glances. Likardion had reported only two guards, not eight. Tom did not dare ask Ankestion and Likardion what they were thinking: even a faint sound would carry in this place.

  Then something caused the air to change, and a faint scent of ozone drifted in their direction. Tom slowly put his head around the pillar’s corner, and looked towards the hall’s far end.

  Sixteen troopers stood in the entranceway, and they were exactly identical. Beside Tom, Ankestion and Likardion stiffened, but this was not a clone-group that the Enemy had deployed. Tom had seen this kind of thing before.

  Before Ankestion could stop him, Tom rolled away from the pillar and crossed the gap to the next one. Again, he moved with silent steps one pillar closer to the entrance; and another pillar, and then one more.

  Close enough to feel strange energies on the air, Tom crouched with his back against hard stone, closing his eyes, trying to recall his mental state the last time he had seen this.

  The air ripping apart as nine scarlet-clad fighters become eighty-one, advancing on Tom, but he has kissed Eemur’s Head, swallowed her sapphire tears, and somehow he can take the momentum of their reality-splitting energy flow and subvert it for his own use. As the geometric proliferation continues, the arena fills with hundreds and then thousands of Absorbed fighters, but Tom is not outnumbered.

  For he, too, has become Legion, and there is one of him for every enemy, and then he strikes with focused intent, each fight a solo duel, the whole forming a battle he will remember as a dream when it is over and he has won and become singleton once more.

  Eemur was not with him now, but sapphire fluid sang in his veins as Tom breathed deeply, feeling the dark forces moaning in the air. He raised his clenched fist, concentrating, merging with the flow—

  Come on. I need to split apart.

  But nothing was happening.

  Fate. Chaos. Destiny damn it. Come on ...

  Whatever the mysteries of parallel times, whatever strange abilities he had gained in the past, making use of the Blight’s power to split reality ... none of it was working now. Tom might have become more Seer-like, but something had been lost.

  I can’t do it.

  Defeated, he slid down to a sitting position on the cold floor, back against the pillar.

  Can’t...

  Then Tom risked a glance around the pillar, and saw hundreds of troopers - two hundred and fifty-six he guessed, by sheer logic - and pulled back before any of them (or any of him ... it was one man doubled, eight times over) realized there were intruders here.

  No go.

  Ankestion’s face peered around the rearmost pillar. After a moment, Tom rose to his feet, and made his way quietly back, trembling inside, sickened with defeat.

  He could not take out even one small checkpoint manned by a single Absorbed component. What hope had he of destroying the trillions-strong entity as a whole? Here, in the midst of occupied territory, it came home to Tom for the first time that Nulapeiron was already lost.

  ~ * ~

  51

  TERRA AD 2166

  <>

  [15]

  And so, the life and times of Kian McNamara.

  What happened after Dirk stole the ship and disappeared?

  UNSA closed ranks. Within the organization, few learned the full story; most accepted that grief over Kian’s burns had caused temporary insanity. A PR campaign focused on Kian’s suffering meant that UNSA management did everything possible to treat him with compassion.

  Then there was the matter of Ro McNamara’s disappearance and presumed death.

  No-one involved in the Flagstaff mall riot ever saw a courtroom. Two cops who had remained conscious throughout, and gave damning evidence against their own commander, found themselves taking early retirement in Florida. There, they took up part-time roles in a small consultancy that never advertised and paid exceptionally high salaries.

  As for members of the public blinded in the freak electrical storm that had struck during a perfectly legal demonstration ... they received generous out-of-court settlements, and none of them was foolish enough to rock the boat after their discharge from hospital.

  During their hospital stay, every one of the victims had received extensive hypnotherapy to help them see the truth of what happened, and allow them to recover from the trauma of being caught in such a storm.

  SpyMotes Inc., by chance a wholly owned subsidiary of UNSA (via several layers of corporate indirection), upgraded the mall’s security systems free of charge. In the process of replacing every component, engineers quietly removed the old crystal logs to a safe location.

  By the time the first witnesses were available for interview, the Atlanta Archipelago, a linked series of morphing artificial islands for rich tourists, had undergone catastrophic failure - terrorists were blamed for the virus - and newsNet journalists were more interested in cataloguing the dead in a high-profile disaster than in an odd, no-longer-newsworthy incident at a Flagstaff mall.

  The chief architect of UNSA’s PR campaign was a soft-faced man called Ben Winrod who had learned to lie to his parents at an early age. It was sheer coincidence that he visited the Archipelago two days before its tragic collapse.

  One week later, UNSA medics pronounced Kian fit to walk.

  No cameras or journalists recorded Kian’s exit from the hospital. Disfigured face half-hidden by a hood, his claw-hand pulled up inside his sleeve, he walked with a limp which would diminish over the years but never disappear.

  Only Deirdre was there to see him. She walked beside him, escorting him across the parking lot without touching. Kian stopped at the hire-car’s door, looked up at the sky with an unreadable expression, then hauled himself inside.

  ‘Take me home please.’ The soft tones were unlike those of the brash young man who had arrived in Arizona twelve weeks before.

  Later, some would say it was the voice of a saint.

  There was a small memorial service, held in the tiny Church of the Holy Trinity on a Wicklow mountainside, in whose leafy cemetery earlier generations of McNamaras lay buried. One of the attendees was an astrophysicist called Dorothy Verzhinski, who pulled in favours to get a voyage home. She was the one who had dredged through Vachss Station’s scan-logs to find the faint signature of a Zajinet vessel.

  It had lain in wait, followed Ro into mu-space ... And no-one had seen Ro since.