‘I’m sorry,’ Dorothy told Kian. ‘So very sorry.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘It’s good that you’re here.’

  Later, as Kian stood alone in drizzling rain before his great-grandfather’s worn brown headstone, the infostrand round his wrist beeped. The message was urgent, text-only, from Ilse Schwenger. She had served in the highest echelons of UNSA management, and had helped Ro, years earlier (and Grandmother, before that).

  My profound sympathies, the message read. UNSA will be holding an official ceremony of remembrance next week, on Wednesday in Saarbrücken Fliegerhorst, at 10:00 local time. I’ll confirm your flight arrangements shortly.

  Kian held out his wrist. Silver rain drifted like tears through the holo.

  ‘Come on.’ It was Deirdre, her face long with sadness. ‘Let’s get you back to the hotel.’

  ‘All right.’

  Kian allowed her to lead him along the wet gravel path, his right arm hooked in her left, the twisted claw-like ruin of his hand visible to anyone who cared to look.

  A sputtering log fire filled the hotel’s snug with heat and a smoky tang. Kian and Deirdre sat on opposite sides of the fireplace. Deirdre’s infostrand displayed the official UNSA invitation to next week’s remembrance service.

  ‘The subliminal message is: We look after our own. What they mean is, we look after our own interests.’ Deirdre rotated the holo so he could read it. ‘See? It’s for Dirk as well, the service. Or that’s what they’re implying.’

  ‘Dirk’s not dead.’

  ‘No ...’

  ‘Who’s the other message from?’

  ‘What other message?’

  ‘Deirdre, I can see the icon from here. Is it Paula?’

  Deirdre shut down the display.

  ‘She works for them. For UNSA.’

  ‘As my mother did. And the father I never knew. And my grandmother.’

  ‘As you will, Kian?’

  ‘Yes ... Yes, I think so.’

  The fire popped and a small piece of smouldering wood landed on the rug. Deirdre pulled a poker from its stand and shoved the wood onto the tiles. There were iron tongs on the stand also, and she used them to fling the lump back into the grate.

  ‘I think you should reply to her message, Deirdre.’

  ‘Even after everything they’ve ... ?’

  Kian nodded. ‘Even after everything. You may only get one chance at love.’

  ‘Ah, Kian.’

  Deirdre’s room was at the apex of the old building. The ceiling sloped in from either side, and three-century-old oak beams spanned the gap. A faint draught moaned from a small leaded window.

  After a night of fitful sleep, she woke in a blue-grey dawn, padded on bare feet across the cold wooden floor, and peered outside. The Wicklow Mountains were majestic. Down below, on the lawn behind the hotel, a figure was moving.

  ‘My God.’

  It was a dance.

  Such grace.

  And then again ... there was a warrior’s intent behind the flowing motion.

  Deirdre could only watch as Kian moved like a swallow, swooping through graceful movements that were like tai-chi, like aikido, and yet were something new and different. There was a phrase she had always found stupid: becoming one with nature. But now ...

  Now, for the first time she knew what people meant, and she continued to watch as Kian’s dance brought the dream to life.

  Twenty spellbound minutes later Kian finished. He cupped his right hand over his left and bowed. And looked up at Deirdre’s breath-fogged window, his black eyes glittering.

  Then he retrieved his walking-stick from the tree it had leaned against, and limped back into the hotel, no longer magical, with his right hand a claw and his face half-covered in glistening scar tissue.

  Over the years, Kian would refuse reconstructive surgery until the medics grew tired of offering it. But after seeing that more-than-dance in the dawn, Deirdre could never think of Kian as anything other than a supremely complete being who had already evolved to a level beyond the most daring aspirations of Zen mystics.

  Yet he was also simply her friend.

  It rained over Saarbrücken, too.

  Ranks of young Pilots-to-be, each wearing the new dress uniform of black edged with golden braid, stood on emerald grass in the open-air sports stadium and listened to the eulogies. Older Pilots attended, their metal eye sockets beaded with rain, with sighted helpers to guide them.

  The music was solemn. Stravinski’s melodic Rite of Spring was the least mournful. Monsignor Edwin Grayling, SJ, stood at the podium and read from Psalms: ‘Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil…’

  Ro would have hated it.

  At the end, as Frau Doktor Ilse Schwenger delivered the final tribute, a thunderclap sounded overhead. Three thousand heads tipped back, ignoring the rain, as thirteen mu-space craft crashed through into real-space, screamed past in perfect formation, and were gone.

  Every one of two thousand fledgling Pilots looked towards the podium and snapped a perfectly synchronized salute.

  ‘The Admiral is dead.’

  They spoke in unison, unrehearsed. Every non-Pilot in the stadium felt their neck-hairs rise.

  ‘Long live the Admiral.’

  Kian bowed his head.

  When the service was over, there was largely purposeless milling. Among the senior UNSA management, a politically minded observer would have paid close attention to who leaned close to whom and talked in low tones. With such powerful figures in one place, it was inevitable that the day’s alleged purpose became merely an occasion that brought people together, not the only reason for being here.

  Deirdre watched it all with sour amusement. She had not known Ro, but she knew Kian and had begun to know Dirk, and they were not the kind of people to wheel and deal at a time of mourning ... except that Kian had been assured as well as modest in the way he took the young Pilots’ tribute and bowed back from the podium.

  ‘Deirdre?’ The tone was uncertain.

  ‘Paula. I wasn’t sure ... you’d be here.’

  ‘If you’d read my— Never mind. Have you seen Zoë?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Blonde hair, petite, looks a third of her actual age. You’ve met her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deirdre. ‘I didn’t realize you had.’

  ‘She used to be my boss.’ That was the clearest admission yet that Paula worked for UN Intelligence, not UNSA. ‘She told me ... something. Something Kian ought to know.’

  Deirdre crossed her arms.

  You‘re using me to reach Kian.

  Paula read the gesture correctly. ‘So here it is, and you can just tell him or not, OK? Zoë accessed the interrogation logs for Solly. You’ll remember him’ - with a trace smile - ‘as the one whose testicles squished on the toe of your boot. Er ... Where are they all off to?’

  Young Pilots were moving past them. Some were children of seven or eight, leading their even younger colleagues. All were in black uniform.

  ‘I don’t know. I do remember Solly.’

  And I wonder if Zoë needed to access the logs.

  Someone had to perform the interrogation, after all.

  ‘Solly knew he was working for Zajinets.’

  ‘Um, right.’ Deirdre stared at Paula. ‘Wasn’t that obvious?’

  ‘Not really. From past experience, many of their cell members are recruited by other humans. When you join a shadow organization, particularly a small one, it’s pretty hard to be sure who it is you’re working for.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Anyway, Solly knew the truth, so they pushed the questioning further than the usual: what’s your contact’s name, how do you meet up, that sort of thing.’

  Deirdre shivered.

  Perhaps it was the cold rain that was falling more heavily now. But Paula showed no sign of wanting to head for shelter.

  ‘They asked the question,’ Paula said, ‘that no-one’s been able to answer: Why do the Zajinets hate humans? Why have they targeted Pilots, specific Pilots?’

  She paused.

  Deirdre gave in. ‘So why? What’s the answer?’

  ‘Solly said: “They’ll allow the darkness to be born. It will spread across the galaxy, and they won’t fight back until billions have perished. I’ve seen it.” That’s what he said. “The Zajinets showed me the future, and I’ve seen it.” It may sound insane, but Solly believed. He was in no fit state for joking by that time.’

  ‘You’re using the past tense,’ said Deirdre.

  ‘He did not survive the interrogation. A pre-existing medical condition, they said.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  ‘I don’t think He was there that day. Deirdre ... Things are different now. I don’t like the way the organization is going. I’m not sure I belong here.’

  After a moment, Deirdre said: ‘Well, here’s a thing. I never liked it.’

  In a huge near-empty hangar, designated Flugzeughalle Zwei and vast enough to hold three mu-space ships at once, the Pilots-to-be convened. They were children and young adults with obsidian eyes and solemn expressions, and they stood in rows on the cold concrete floor and waited for Kian to speak.

  None of them had flown a ship. Not a single virally rewired adult Pilot was present.

  This was a gathering of Ro’s Children.

  All two thousand of them, near enough: only a few had been kept away by minor disasters or administrative snafus. In Tehran, fifteen youngsters were trapped in the spaceport while anti-xeno demonstrators picketed the buildings and prevented landings and take-offs. But enough of them were here.

  Two of the older youths dragged a wheeled platform into place. It was designed for engineers who needed to work underneath a mu-space vessel’s wing; it would do for what they had in mind. They locked the wheels in place, and nodded.

  From the hangar doors, Kian limped - still using his cane - along a natural aisle with a thousand young Pilots ranked on either side. When Kian reached the platform he paused, as though reconsidering. Then he handed his cane to one of the young men who had positioned the platform.

  ‘Thank you, Carlos.’

  ‘No problem, boss.’

  Kian hooked his bad hand over the steps’ rail, and climbed up to the platform.

  And looked down upon his brothers and sisters.

  In the flight base control tower, Paula used her ID ring to open a steel door, and ushered Deirdre inside. In a half-lit room, surveillance holos flickered. In them, shone scenes of a large hangar and the two thousand young Pilots gathered there.

  ‘Does Kian know he’s being watched?’ said Deirdre.

  There were twelve men and women observing. One of them turned at Deirdre’s question, mouth opening.

  ‘Is there a problem, Browning?’ asked Paula.

  ‘Er ... No, ma’am.’

  ‘Good.’

  Deirdre was shaking her head. ‘This is not right. You can not do this.’

  But one of the observers was frowning.

  ‘There’s, um, something going on.’

  ‘What?’

  In most of the displays, the scene was as before. But one of the holos showed a close-up of Kian’s face, as if he were looking directly into the observation room.

  And smiling.

  Deirdre shivered. For a moment, she thought a faint glimmer of gold crossed his black eyes, and she remembered the Santa Monica PD drone that had fallen from the sky.

  In the observation room, every holo winked from existence.

  This was the speech that Kian gave:

  ‘We are a family, my brothers and sisters. We mourn our mother, the first Admiral. And our brother Dirk who is lost, perhaps for ever.

  ‘There are armoured flyers overhead. You’ve seen them. Soldiers surround the base, guarding us. Protecting us.

  ‘For UNSA we are resources. Of course! Millions are invested in our training, in the construction and maintenance of great ships that we will come to think of as our own. We cannot blame them for fearing that we will go astray, or that public opinion will be swayed by paranoid minorities.

  ‘If we upset them, they will be like children whose toys have been stolen. It is we who must be the adults here.

  ‘Some people fear what is different. But they should not fear us, for we are humanity. UNSA need not fear us, for we will do their bidding, and they should know that.

  ‘My brothers and sisters, we pledge to humanity unwavering service and total dedication. And you know what? We‘re the ones who get the best side of the bargain.

  ‘We’re the ones who reach the stars.’

  For a moment there was silence.

  Then a roar filled the hangar, echoed back from those stark walls again and again in affirmation:

  ‘Admiral. Admiral. ADMIRAL.’

  Three separate audio pickups remained intact inside the hangar. Later, UNSA management and analysts would replay Kian’s speech over and over, listening for strange tones or internal contradictions, finding none.

  After that day, every young Pilot in training would redouble his or her efforts. When natural-born Pilots began to take their own ships into mu-space, they would be fearless and reliable, committed to UNSA and performing every single operation with determination.

  Only one thing would worry the most astute analysts: that they heard Kian’s words, but could see nothing of his gestures and body language, or the odd hints of golden light that holo images occasionally captured in Pilots’ eyes.

  But those worries were tentative, and few people dared record them in official reports. Over time, vague suspicions would fade and be forgotten.

  Yet one more thing happened that day which Deirdre would never forget. Before she and Paula could leave the observation room, the steel door clanged open and a bristle-haired man wearing a braid-draped uniform strode in.

  ‘What the bloody hell’ - he stabbed a finger in Deirdre’s direction - ‘is she doing here?’

  ‘I signed her in, General.’

  The general scowled at Paula.

  ‘That’s how she entered, not what she’s doing.’

  ‘She’s a civilian observer, who knows the surveillance subject and might have shed some light on what was going on. That is’ - Paula waved towards the blank spaces where the holo images should have been - ‘if your people hadn’t bollixed up their jobs.’

  The lines on the general’s face deepened.

  ‘I’ll look into that, mark my words. But as for your attitude—’

  Paula was already tugging the ID ring from her finger.

  ‘You have my resignation, sir, and this is not spur-of-the-moment. I’ve thought about it.’

  ‘Not acceptable.’

  ‘And if you allow my friend and me to leave quietly, then we won’t need to raise a fuss about what happened here today. Or rather’ - with a malicious smile - ‘what failed to happen. Do we have a deal?’

  The general clenched his fists and for a moment Deirdre thought he was going to lash out. But his voice when he spoke was calm.

  ‘Get out. Get out of my friggin’ sight.’

  Ten minutes later, they were outside, watching the young Pilots dispersing to the shuttles which would take them to their various homes.

  ‘Look at him.’ Paula nodded towards Kian, who was walking among his young kindred. ‘I’d swear he has an aura about him.’

  Her hand touched Deirdre’s, as if by accident.

  ‘It was only in medieval paintings,’ Deirdre said, ‘that artists started showing halos as disks around saintly heads. Before that, they were thought to surround the body with a faint glow.’

  ‘Right.’ Paula shivered. Then she rubbed her face with both hands, and stared up into the cloudy sky. ‘At least it’s stopped raining.’

  ‘You’re not really worried about the weather.’

  ‘What? Just because’ - with a shaky laugh - ‘I’ve destroyed my career, in the only environment I’ve ever known. Why should I be worried?’

  ‘I know what you did.’ Deirdre touched her shoulder. ‘And I admire you for it.’

  ‘Really?’ Paula looked into her eyes. ‘I’m jobless. Christ, I’m homeless. I’ve been living in barracks.’