If the torture that preceded it was agony, then no single word matched the fire that raged along Tom’s nerves and split his mind apart as the ship moved in a way that corresponded to no angle in realspace and the universe exploded and died and was reborn and then he was in the ship’s cabin in a place beyond reality.

  <> Janis’s voice was no longer sound, exactly.

  In a way.

  Energies washed all around. Amber fluid seemed to permeate everything, and the cabin’s image threatened to slip away from Tom.

  I’m still here.

  But even Eemur’s silent words in his mind were a distant, attenuated thing.

  <>

  Someone in a position of power. We need ships to help, at no cost to you. No risk to Pilots’ lives.

  <>

  Help to fix the shield we almost have in place.

  Janis said nothing.

  Tom strained with the effort of merely remaining inside the cabin.

  I know ...

  It was the only thing he had to offer.

  ... where Kian McNamara is!

  That caused Janis to react.

  <>

  Oh, yes. I’ve Seen him.

  Then Janis’s hands blurred into motion. That strange holo-that-was-not-a-holo opened and twisted—

  Labyrinth!

  ++Who is this?++

  Tom rode the carrier wave.

  ++Who—?++

  Tom rode the wave to Labyrinth.

  ~ * ~

  60

  MU-SPACE AD 3426

  Strange shimmerings and twisting perspectives and light/not-light bombarded Tom’s eyes.

  ++Why are you here?++

  Where is this?

  ++We call it the Aleph Annexe. I repeat: Why are you here? ++

  Kian McNamara ... I saw him on Siganth.

  Tidal shifting. Tom can see nothing beyond kaleidoscopic Chaos.

  Mu-space is not for the likes of him.

  ++Siganth?++

  A moving shape, closer now.

  Can it be a woman?

  He’s a prisoner.

  ++Tell me where.++

  Tom shudders, lost for a moment in the splendour.

  Then he concentrates.

  Yes, my love. Focus.

  And performs a feat of logosophical calculation perhaps only Avernon could appreciate, as Tom takes the remembered feeling of Eemur’s Seeing into the hellworld - that’s right - and transforms it into a displacement vector and shouts out the numbers: the location of the captive, trapped upon Siganth.

  It is as if a person, walking along, suddenly reeled off the second-order differential equations that mapped the motion of their muscles. That is what Tom achieves, with Eemur’s help.

  Is that enough information?

  ++Yes.++

  To mount a rescue?

  ++Twenty ships just left.++

  Time cannot pass in the ordinary way in this place.

  Tom floats.

  Who are you? He needs to know.

  Floats for a timeless duration.

  ++Perhaps I’m the one you think I am.++

  An aeon.

  ++Perhaps I’m not.++

  An eternity.

  Magic all around.

  Will you help us?

  Twisting.

  Waiting.

  ++They’re back. My ... Kian is safe.++

  Shifting.

  Glimpses of wonder.

  Rotations in ways he could never—

  ++We will help.++

  Slams out of existence.

  ~ * ~

  61

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  Wounded he hung on a windswept willow ...

  Braced against the stone sphere, crucified, Tom could barely see with ordinary eyes the surrounding sky.

 

  ‘I’ll... live... Axolon.’ Pain defined every nerve and muscle in his body.

 

  Black dots against the clouds. Tom could just make them out.

  ‘What—?’

 

  An entire fleet of fighters and suborbitals was heading straight for them.

  ‘No ...’

  They‘re almost ready.

  Tom’s head bowed. Far below, Nulapeiron’s landscape was a blur. He was freezing, but at some point his body had ceased to shiver. Not just the crucifixion: the excruciating stress on cramped, screaming muscles and the exposure, too, were killing him.

  Tom?

  Yes. We have to See.

  Ignoring the pain, ignoring the approaching Enemy, he forced it to happen once more.

  A great ship formed of silver and gold spreads its wings above the orbital shuttle. It is Janis deVries‘s mu-space vessel.

  Inside the shuttle, Avernon is wide-eyed, but still able to perform work as his fingers dance control gestures, transmitting the shield modules’ command codes to the Pilot.

  ‘When ... When will your fleet arrive, Pilot?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘I hope you‘re—’

  Then one of the shuttle pilots, Feltima, turns from her display.

  ‘Enemy missiles are rising.’

  Tom lost concentration, slipped back to his physical surroundings and the feel of hard stone pressed against his back, the constricting cables that supported him but cut off blood flow.

  Enemy fighters were drawing close.

  A wave of blackness washed over Tom - Anomaly - but then he raised his head and squinted at the sky, and knew it was only his own weakness, the incipient coma trying to take hold of him.

  Then a squadron of dart-shaped flyers swooped in from the left, and each one carried the sigil of the Strontium Dragons - Zhao-ji, my old friend - and the air rippled as Axolon brought his own defences to bear and graser fire streamed in all directions and an explosion blew out a hole from the terraformer, below Tom, and the vibration was a giant fist punching through his back.

  Black flames, somewhere overhead.

  Tom’s head lolled - fight it - and he pushed it back up, forced his eyes to open.

  Dark Fire.

  It was manifesting itself on the stone sphere’s surface above Tom, the air darkening and wavering and clearing once more, and the beings who crouched there now were different: black and bronze but human-sized and wingless, their metallic talons digging into stone while they hung and swivelled their horned, wedge-shaped heads and focused on Tom.

  ‘So ... kill me.’ Saliva gathered, dry and sticky, at the edge of Tom’s mouth. He tried to spit. ‘You’re too ... late.’

  Tom closed his eyes.

  And Saw:

  What he had never hoped to see: a Pilot’s ship in action. For as the Enemy missiles rise through the atmosphere, Janis deVries’s great silver-gold ship shimmers from existence.

  Then reappears far below the spinpoint field, light stabbing out in all directions and the missiles vaporizing with no true explosion, transformed into dust.

  And then, high in orbit above the world, a new apparition.

  Ten thousand Pilots’ ships spring into existence: a myriad polished bronze and silver vessels spreading their delta wings above Nulapeiron.

  An entire fleet of Pilots.

  Something sliced through the skin of Tom’s shoulder. His mouth opened but he could not breathe as the deadly being reversed the swing, aiming for his eye—

  NO.

  —and arched its back, screaming as a white beam pierced its torso, and then it was toppling from the sphere over the long drop to ground.

  Adam Gervicort’s commandos were rappelling down from the terraformer’s apex, firing heavy grasers as they came.

  Tom? Are you—?

  Still here.

  But the dark beings were returning fire of their own, spewing graser beams from encrusted growths on their bodies, and all was crackling fire and confusion above Tom.

  They know who you are. You’re a target now.

  Good. That’s what we want.

  While farther out, Enemy fighters were trying to reach Axolon Array, but Zhao-ji’s flyers were laying down heavy fire and Axolon’s own defences were deflecting the main attack: a holding action he could not sustain.

  We don’t need to win.

  It was a question of distracting the Enemy while the real solution materialized far above the world, in space.

  Just survive for a few minutes longer.

  And Tom Saw:

  The Pilot ships spread out now, tossing out sparkling motes to reinforce the number of shield devices, replicas of Avernon’s design. They hover above the spinpoint field where millions of tiny spots of light shine: the ongoing sign of something strange and powerful surrounding the world.

  Then those ten thousand ships use their fine-honed control systems, designed to navigate in a fractal universe where a microscopic divergence from an intended position can result in a near-infinite difference in result, to manipulate the orbiting devices into the configuration they were designed for.

  ‘Now…’

  A soft white glow suffuses the spinpoint field.

  Surrounds Nulapeiron with light.

  Pain jerked Tom back into place as two more beings crawled down the convex stone towards him. One had spat graser fire close to Tom’s face, searing skin, but now their mouths opened in what could only be blood lust as they came for him with talons extended.

  Then one of the commandos was in their midst—

  Adam!

  —and it was Tom’s former servitor who now fought like a berserker, hanging from a smartrope and firing his graser at close range so that one dark being’s guts exploded through its lower back and it was done for. But a talon raked as it fell away into the void, and Adam’s graser went spinning with it.

  The other being turned its attention to Tom.

  Eemur? Tell Elva that I—

  Then a shape came hurtling downwards as a freed rope whipped back.

  Fate, no!

  And Adam’s hands hooked under the Enemy creature’s mandible and momentum dragged its talons free from the stone surface and then they were hanging in the air. For a moment Adam’s gaze met Tom’s.

  Then he and the struggling being were falling.

  Down into the void.

  No, Adam.

  Dwindling specks.

  No...

  Gone.

  Tom hung his head.

 

  It’s only Axolon.

 

  Ignore him.

 

  The voice boomed, vibrated, shook him into momentary wakefulness.

 

  The sky was shining.

  A glow ...

  Shining a pure, beautiful white.

  It gave Tom the strength to See.

  Above the world, the encompassing field blazes, surrounding Nulapeiron with light, while ten thousand mu-space vessels move farther into space and hang there, regarding the marvel they have wrought.

  May have wrought. Things are not certain yet.

  So they wait.

  I never hoped to See such a ...

  Wait.

  Glorious light, fading.

  Dying down.

  Nothing.

  Where the spinpoints used to shine, nothing at all. The collapse has taken place.

  Tom. You don’t know how much I...

  Eemur?

  The shield is in place.

  One word is broadcast around the fleet: ‘Success.’

  Nulapeiron is safe.

  The tiniest hint of blue washed across Tom’s skin as he tried to See for the last time.

  Inside the shadowed chamber, a silver lev-tray floats. And on it...

  No. Please, no.

  ... sideways, lies a flensed head, looking dry and purple now.

  A black moirée cap lies like a veil half across the skinless face, over one spherical eye already growing opaque.

  No. Not because of me.

  The air shimmers as Tom bends it to his will.

  Inside the nearest med-ward containers of parablood spin in place and medics step back in horror as the blood squirts into nowhere—

  You can not die.

  —through unseen dimensions into the disembodied head—

  Come on.

  —forcing the nutrients inside—

  Come on.

  —forcing life—

  Don’t.

  —forcing—

  Die.

  —trying.

  No.

  But he forces until blood springs out around the eyes like tears, nothing inside her is responding, and he forces more but there is no point and then he stops.

  Eemur, you know I—

  No.

  Blackness comes.

  ~ * ~

  62

  NULAPEIRON AD 3427

  They waited until Tom could walk without a cane. The beginning of a new year.

  And, as he waited in the wings and peeked into the vast auditorium, he thought they must have used the delay to scour Nulapeiron for the biggest Convocation Hall they could find.

  So many people.

  They were taking their seats, excited murmurs filling the air as they made themselves comfortable, leaning back to take in the setting. Circular lev-steps formed two arcs in the air, rising from ground-level wings to the circular crystal platform that hung above the expectant crowd.

  ‘Tom?’ Elva squeezed his arm.

  ‘I’m all right, my love.’

  From higher up, a bright illumination shone. Hidden backstage, Tom could not make out the holo, but he had read it earlier when the auditorium was empty.

  *** PEACE REGAINED ***

  And, beneath:

  PRAISE TO

  LORD CORCORIGAN

  WARLORD PRIMUS

  RULER OF NULAPEIRON

  No-one could deny him that position now.

  There were nobles in the audience, in their finest capes and stoles and coronets and torcs, dripping with precious stones. There were freemen and freewomen who had fought in the war. And there were the pale, ashen figures who walked slowly as though measuring their surroundings, unable to forget the dark flood that once claimed their minds.

  ‘They’ll recover,’ said Elva, knowing what Tom was looking at. ‘Just like this realm.’

  But for all the opulent magnificence of the new-looking Convocation Hall, they had seen tunnels strewn with rubble still, and the broken boulevards where vendors set up stalls amid charred devastation: the merest beginning of regrowth.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Tom answered. ‘But their children will.’

  Others waited in the wings to take places beside their Warlord. Volksurd wore the ornate helm of a clan ruler; beside him, so did Kraiv: chieftain of the new Clan Guelfsson.

  Viscount Trevalkin, dressed in black, was wrapped in filigree silver wire: an exoskeleton with style. His physical recovery would take longer than Tom’s. Trevalkin stood next to General Lord Ygran, though the two men had little to say to each other.

  Tom thought about those who should have been here: Corduven, and Adam Gervicort. And Eemur.

  I’ll not betray anyone today.

  But that was the moment that Viscount Trevalkin chose to walk over to Tom, in the strange fluid-yet-jerky gait provided by his exoskeleton.