Dirk led the rescue raid.

  Five ships burst into the sky above the Fastness Magnusson. The raiders descended in drop-bubbles against which graser fire spattered harmlessly; and then they were inside. When the rescuers departed with Pilot deVries, they left behind King Rasmus and his Palace Guard reduced to a collection of strewn corpses from whose eye sockets steam still rose.

  It turned out that King Rasmus’s subjects had been trading with Zajinets, after all.

  Dirk also commanded the much larger fleet which routed the Zajinets - one fleet of Zajinets at least - at the Battle of Mandelbrot Nebula. That was a long and deadly engagement inside mu-space featuring thousands of vessels on either side. Besides the violence, the battle was remembered for one other notable occurrence.

  When the Zajinet position became untenable, they sent a message to the Pilots’ fleet. It was the only time they had ever delivered a syntactically straightforward statement, yet its meaning remained obscure.

  <<... we leave you to your darkness ...>>

  And then the entire surviving Zajinet fleet moved together to execute a manoeuvre whose audacity left the Pilots wondering about their own limitations. Golden mu-space rippled as the fleet turned and exited the fractal universe en masse.

  But they did not return to realspace.

  Instead, as the returning Pilots would analyse over and over, the Zajinets had treated mu-space like the ur-continuum it was, and used it as a launching point into an entirely different universe. Their destination might have been a parallel reality to the realspace they knew; or it might have been an unimaginable place where different physical laws applied.

  The victory celebrations in Labyrinth were ... thoughtful.

  Throughout the First Chaos Conflict and after its uncertain resolution, the worlds of humankind multiplied and diverged from each other. On the paradise of Fulgor, a new entity arose through the mediation of mu-space processors that were everyday devices to the Pilots who used them.

  Pilots did not move openly during the Skein Wars (though their agents made a difference to many beleaguered humans), but they arranged the evacuation which saved some of that world’s inhabitants before the Anomaly engulfed it.

  Different factions of the Stochastic Schism had divergent ideas about how closely to observe or even control the settled human worlds. Those who followed the Reconciled Path (which might or might not have been founded by Kian McNamara) watched closely yet did little to influence affairs.

  The one thing no Pilot of any faction revealed to humanity was

  <>

  <>

  <>

  ~ * ~

  57

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  Tom hurled the lifeless crystal against the wall.

  Bastard thing.

  It bounced to the floor, lay still. The crystal had wiped its own contents, was empty now.

  Then Tom looked around the small half-lit chamber and laughed. There was no-one to hear it besides himself. Phase space displays billowed around him.

  It’s too late for stories.

  A chime sounded.

  Too late for any distraction.

  The door shimmered open.

  ‘Planning teams are ready, Warlord.’ The soldier was young: far too young.

  ‘Good. Thank you.’

  Eemur?

  I’m ready, sweetheart.

  Thanks.

  Finally, Tom took a different crystal in his hand, one of a strange violet hue, and concentrated. Nothing. If there was ever a time he needed help, it was now.

  He tried harder.

  No ... Yes.

  Blue flames licked along his hand. Somewhere in the distance or in the past, he heard a soft singing voice. The Crystal Lady seemed very close for a moment.

  —Time, as we agreed.

  And she was gone.

  Tom’s heart ached for the broken contact. It seemed a dream already; but she had spoken to him: he was sure of it. Tom laid the violet crystal gently on the floor.

  Then he looked up at the thin young soldier in his too-big uniform who was still standing by the door. The soldier swallowed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Tom. ‘We’re going to win.’

  As the action commenced, Tom sat alone in a chamber below the command centre and Saw what happened.

  On a vast blue desert the sand erupts as arachnargoi leap from their hiding places, to take down the first wave of Absorbed infantry as they crawl from shafts which lead to the realm below.

  Shift.

  In the demesne known as Bilyarck Gebeet, a merchanalyst reaches out with a packing knife and slits an overseer’s throat. Others leap into action around the dusty godown, taking down their oppressors with bare hands and everyday implements, while in the corridor outside, graser fire cracks and cold waves wash through the air as Absorbed beings manifest themselves.

  Shift.

  Children scream as molten lava bursts through the floor. But it is the black-bronze creatures with angled wings who fall into magma as the humans flee.

  Shift.

  People are queuing in an Aqua Hall, buckets in hand: just going about their everyday business as ... nothing happens. Some failed communication, some courier screaming in an interrogation cell or lying face-down in a dank tunnel: no action kicks off here.

  Shift.

  A heavy battalion moves forward. Three thousand men and women, eyes wide with fear beneath their helmets, advance together along the winding series of caverns while arachnabugs, upside down, dance at speed along the broken ceilings, heading for the conflagration where Enemy forces await.

  Shift.

  Choking smoke. A golden dining-hall where glass songbirds wheel away in panic. A foppish-looking logosopher stops his recitation, reaches inside his sleeve, then leaps forward to thrust his bodkin through the ruling Lord’s throat.

  ‘For freedom!’ he cries as scarlet-clad men step out of black flames, surrounding him.

  Shift.

  Fencers in a salle d’armes, a loft overlooking a narrow tunnel, stop at the sound of graser fire below. Soldiers with scarlet cravats are directly underneath the window, firing into the unarmed crowd who are rising up against them.

  Several of the fencers look at each other in silence.

  Then they pull the safety tips from their weapons, haul themselves out onto the sill, crouch, and jump.

  Shift.

  Blood-ribbons in a swimming-pool as the action rages—

  Tom?

  Yes.

  There’s too much, Tom. You can’t track everything.

  I know. But I can try.

  Tom was muttering directions and gesturing into holo images. Upstairs - he Saw briefly - the planners were swarming around the tac displays and two hundred comm sessions were open at once as they coordinated efforts around the globe. The planners were translating Tom’s mutterings into battle commands, and transmitting them to the free forces in their all-out strike against the Anomaly.

  Eemur, working with Elva, was sending as many messages to the control centre as Tom himself. Eemur and Tom were each observing one hemisphere of Nulapeiron: between them, they had to cover every main strike against the Anomaly.

  Had to.

  Shift.

  Limbs straining as the free humans fight those whose Absorbed masters have already corrupted them. Grappling, slick with sweat, no weapons or technology but basic primate struggle, and it is a free human who is first to use his teeth against his opponent’s carotid artery, heedless of the screaming.

  Shift.

  Tom, I’m OK now. I can See your hemisphere too, for a while.

  There’s no—

  You have to check on Avernon.

  Shift.

  Daggers glinting in darkness.

  No. He had to let Eemur help. She was right about Avernon.

  OK, Eemur.

  Shift.

  Broke contact.

  Tom was sitting cross-legged in his chamber, drenched with sweat, while the holos around him swirled with primary colours. The soldier in charge of relaying messages looked concerned.

  ‘Warlord?’

  ‘Fate. It is too much.’

  ‘Sir? What do you want me to—?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Avernon’s teams would be commencing action, and Tom had to know.

  Shift.

  Shuttles against the endless night.

  There are squadrons of them, hundreds of kilometres apart in orbit above Nulapeiron. To every side they spray their load of shining copper specks: each the size of a human hand.

  They drift above the spinpoint field, the gossamer shell that surrounds the world.

  Tom waved open a subsidiary holo.

  ‘General Ygran? How goes it?’

  ‘Holding our own, Warlord. No better or worse than that.’

  ‘Good. Good.’

  He closed the image.

  From a thousand sites across the world, dart-shaped fighters rise with Absorbed pilots at the controls. They are not capable of spending extended time in orbit, but they can reach the atmosphere’s edge and launch weapons against the shuttles.

  ‘Now,’ says Zhao-ji, and from one commandeered facility at least a counteroffensive begins. Silver fighters with back-swept wings roar upwards to intercept the Enemy.

  Shift.

  Flames sweep across the clouds as smart dirigibles, released by the terraformer spheres, explode across the Enemy fighters’ trajectories. A squadron is blown apart at first contact with the airborne minefield; the others break off.

  And start scanning for a safe way through, a route to reach Avernon‘s shuttles.

  Again, Tom checked the status displays, the simplified overview of the Chaos that the planners were working with in the control centre. He continued to gesture, directing the planners’ efforts at the highest level, while they modulated his instructions according to their own interpretation.

  ‘Are we still holding our own?’ Tom asked, then answered his own question: ‘It looks like it... but only just.’

  The attacks were coordinated enough - perhaps - to require all the Anomaly’s attention to combat them. That was all they could hope for.

  Tom used urgent control gestures to attempt communication with Avernon, who was on board one of the orbital shuttles himself.

  ‘Come on. Come on ...’

  Nothing. But even if Avernon would not talk, Tom could still See.

  Shift.

  Avernon stares at the feedback images.

  ‘Sir?’ The shuttle pilot calls back to him. ‘Down to our last thousand modules.’

  The copper spray continues to port and starboard.

  ‘Stand by,‘ Avernon says to a waiting tech, ‘to resonate.’

  There was nothing more Tom could do: not to help those in orbit. Either the modules would shift into optional alignment, or they would fail.

  But the battles down below were another matter. There, his ability to See the Enemy and coordinate action might be of use.

  Blue flames licked across Tom’s body, were gone.

  Shift.

  Kraiv leads a company of carls sweeping down from a ridge. At the heart of a deep cavern, they meet the Enemy with morphospears unslung and moaning for blood.

  ‘Blood and Axe!’

  Berserkers roar, and the battle is joined.

  Shift.

  A thousand lev-bikes hover, quivering in the air.

  ‘Are your people ready, Captain?’

  ‘Yes, Viscount.’

  Trevalkin gives a slow, ironic smile. ‘Then go.’

  They fly forward like arrows, and fall like hail upon the Enemy.

  Shift.

  Thylara of the Clades Tau throws her scarlet arachnasprite to one side as a graser beam rips through the air. Up ahead, her fellow TauRiders swoop in from either side, into the mass of black-bronze beasts and their dreadful talons, avoiding the Dark Fire that flickers at the great hall’s rear.

  Then Thylara spins her arachnasprite in place, whipping half of its tendrils outward as weapons, beheading three Enemy soldiers before they can blink. She raises her hands overhead, brings them down to either side, firing grasers into the Enemy’s midst.

  A questing beam blows her torso into liquid spray.

  Shift. Before Tom could react, his vision had changed.

  Anomaly-controlled fighters leave the ground, heading over a mountain range to intercept the free forces just as a long-dormant caldera explodes hundreds of metres into the air, a spume of yellow-hot magma that splashes and melts and burns and takes the aircraft down.

  The Crystal Lady is wielding her influence.

  Shift.

  A quake from nowhere. Deep in occupied territory, ceilings crack. Tonnes of broken stone descend upon the inhabitants: broken dark metallic wings protrude from the rubble when the dust begins to settle.

  Shift.

  Lava sprays horizontally from a sudden split in an ornate marble wall and an Absorbed human, once Lord of this demesne, falls screaming.

  Shift.

  Absorbed humans, by a decorative lava pool, swing up their weapons, ready to kill the rag-tag army of old people and children who have crawled up from the lower strata with nothing more than knives and bludgeons and bare hands to fight with.

  The Absorbed take aim.

  Then something huge moves in the pool, a hexagonal fluke bigger than a man rises from the lava, and molten Chaos falls upon the Enemy.

  Tom gasped, breaking Seer-trance.

  Thank you, my Lady.

  But there could be no communication with the Crystal Lady now. The force of Nulapeiron’s native lifeforms was on the loose, overwhelming and magnificent, and nothing Tom might say or do could control them.

  Shift.

  A bronze talon reaches for Zhao-ji and he yells, brings up his graser pistol already firing, and then a team of 49s, Strontium Dragons warriors, bursts in through the side door and lays down heavy fire upon the single Anomalous creature that dares invade their territory.

  Shift.

  It is hand-to-hand fighting now, and Trevalkin whirls and stabs his long blade with devilish accuracy into an Enemy soldier’s eye.

  Shift.

  In the depths of Sable Ocean, armoured mantargoi crewed by Grey Shadows fighters fire grasers through the dark waters. Metallic beings face them, return terrible fire of their own.

  Then an ocean vent opens, spewing superheated steam, and the Anomalous creatures writhe.

  Shift. And twist.

  At submicroscopic dimensions, long-outlawed smartmists and femtoviruses battle each other for control in a blaze of microwaves and subatomic predation.

  Panting, Tom wrenched his attention back to his surroundings. The young soldier was looking upwards, weapon ready.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. Warlord. The proximity detector, I thought— Nothing.’

  Tom opened a holo.

  ‘Everything all right, General?’

  General Lord Ygran gave a grim smile. ‘As well as can be expected.’

  ‘Have you had word from Avernon?’ It was critical that the modules laid down in orbit align themselves correctly. Geometry was everything. ‘Can we detonate yet?’

  ‘No, Warlord. We’re still waiting.’

  ‘Maybe I can do better than that.’

  Shift.

  Avernon is clawing at his own face and screaming.

  ‘Stop it, sir. Stop it. ‘A soldier grabs hold, hard. ‘This is no good.’

  ‘I know, I—’

  Avernon sobs. Stops.

  ‘It’s not going to work,’ he says. ‘Do you understand? It won’t work!’