The literal-minded among the Hierarchy were confused by the apparently random numbering of the worlds, but it was explained that the numbers were relics of first landing, of exploration, colonisation, not proximity.

  Another journey of twenty-seven days or so, another ninety astronomical units this time. Ulla did her level best not to count the days. And nor was she given any hint of what the ship’s new mission at that capital world might be.

  All she could do was survive from one ship’s day to the next, immersing herself in her strange role as it had emerged and evolved, following routines that were becoming familiar, and yet sometimes subtly changing.

  Trying to do no harm, and minimising harm inflicted by others. That was how Commodore Mott summed up Ulla’s personal mission for her.

  And that meant exploring both the culture of command above decks, and of servitude below decks, as she saw it now. Commanders and crew, guards and slaves. Both cultures which she had to fit into and explore – and seek advantage, for the benefit of her shipmates.

  It gave her great comfort that Commodore Mott was still alive, still here, evidently kept as a potentially useful tool by Captain Erbas and Protector Pulet. A tool that might turn on its users, Ulla knew. But at least Mott was there.

  Amid all this Ulla tried to use what little leverage she had to make the lives of her enslaved fellow crew, including her Venusian friends, bearable, even liveable.

  By now, in the ship, down in the slave hold, the 45 crew, after many petty rebellions, had long been put to work at the grimiest, hardest, most dangerous of chores available – all save the life support, restricted to child-sized entry. And now a new cadre of slaves, taken from the Venus world, had been cast down into this place. There was violence, sexual and otherwise, a spate of overcrowding, a dumping of the worst work on to the newcomers – if those newcomers survived their arrival to get that far. And it would all have to sort itself out without intervention from the officers – or even the guards, unless particularly useful packages might be damaged.

  Dirty, foul, dangerous much of the work was, but essential; this was a spacecraft after all, and apparently an elderly one.

  And things got slowly worse, it seemed to Ulla. As the long journey grew longer, the system itself seemed to be degrading technically – ammonia leaks were particularly prevalent – and the failure or closure of the material loops reduced output too. The numbers of crew able to be supported by this process evidently declined steadily through an average journey, no matter how hard the slaves worked – but then the number of useful slaves declined too. Sicknesses, even among the junior-rank crew.

  Against this background, Ulla did what she could to help, especially her old crewmates.

  A nerve whip was the current favourite weapon of the guards.

  18

  On around the fifteenth day after the Venus encounter, an alarm sounded through the body of the ship.

  Nusma and Ulla were sitting together, slowly eating their day’s food ration. You always ate your food ration as soon as you got hold of it from the guards, to avoid theft – anywhere in the ship, theft by hungry slaves and greedy guards themselves, who then blamed the slaves. On the other hand you were driven to eat it slowly, to make it feel like it was more substantial than it was.

  It was a hungry ship, despite the Venus restocking. Unless you were a grandee or an officer.

  And today, as they ate, the manoeuvre alarm sounded.

  An automated siren wailed in the upper decks. Even on the slave deck a few trusties had whistles and loudhailers to prepare even the lowest of the low for manoeuvres, for – for what?

  Who knew what purpose this time? Avoiding an asteroid, a rogue planetesimal, a relic from the age of formation of planets in the Hearthspace? Maybe something more dramatic? A human encounter in deep space? Was the ship mounting some kind of attack? After the easy taking of the 45, the hardened crew of the Scholar continued to treat the ships of the Inner Worlds with contempt. And more so since the assault on the innocent Earth 4, where there had been no evidence of defence before the attack, or a pursuit by Patrol vessels or any other Alliance ships afterwards. But then, Ulla knew, the Alliance was not an organisation prepped for war. Its ships were cargo vessels, passenger ferries, a few local patrollers – like the 45.

  Even so, aboard this tub, there were plenty of false alarms. Still, you had to prepare, for good or bad occurrences. Assume an alarm, then. Ulla and Nusma exchanged glances. They had places to be.

  They stuffed their food and drink into their mouths, scrambled to their feet, and made for the nearest door out of the big slave-pit cylinder – a door as always guarded – and, once allowed through, entered the space between the ship’s inner and outer walls.

  In this cramped, dimly lit space, they clambered up one of those claustrophobic, entirely enclosed staircases and ladders, built into the fabric of the cylindrical hull, above the slave pit, working their way towards the bulbous head of this bolt-ship – towards the bridge, where their duty lay.

  When they got there, Captain Erbas was present, with Protector Pulet hovering over his shoulder. And they stood before windows and viewscreens full of images of a blue planet. Dimly lit yet beautiful, with landscapes green and brown sprawling over continents, the blue of oceans, a gleam of pure white at the poles.

  And yet, Ulla saw immediately, a shadow was infringing on that worldscape, coming in from the right from Ulla’s perspective, a line that looked dead straight from here, sweeping slowly across ocean and land. And where it passed, she saw the spark of lights showing up in that ocean of shadow: towns and cities on land, islands in the seas, perhaps the sighting of enormous seagoing vessels with their lights blazing in the dark … A busy, fecund world.

  The shadow, of course, was cast by the great sail of the slaver ship itself.

  The bridge area was crowded with officers.

  Commodore Mott was here too, in her dress uniform, Ulla saw – a uniform growing ever more shabby with time. She was staring bleakly into arrays of viewscreens.

  Ulla hesitated, stood back cautiously, but the commodore beckoned her over with a weary wave.

  Ulla glanced at Nusma, a formal request for permission from her assigned superior.

  Nusma followed, and shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea what’s going on here, but it evidently concerns this Earth.’

  ‘Earth 1,’ Mott said. ‘The most senior of our six capital worlds, as you people must know by now. And – well, you can see what’s happening to it. What you visitors are doing.’

  That edge of shadow, so large it was all but a straight line as seen from space, was advancing across the disc of the planet, slowly, slowly covering the Hearth-lit world, like a seeping flood of darkness, swallowing oceans and landmasses and ice caps …

  ‘It’s a lightsail deployed as a weapon against an inhabited planet,’ Mott said. ‘They are plunging this Earth into the dark. Simple as that. This damn ship’s sail is twenty thousand kilometres across fully extended, easily enough to cut the light to a whole planet.’

  She looked around at the crew, calmly enough, but Ulla could see the tension in the commodore’s eyes, her stare. The anger and control.

  ‘So the aggression takes one step further. An artificial eclipse. Your sail is so much wider than the planet – your shadow – you can stop the light for as long as you like. Across a world.’

  ‘As wide as we like and as long as we like,’ Captain Erbas said. ‘Simple manipulation of the sails. And I’m sure they remember what we did at Earth 4.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Pulet, ‘but it’s really as long as they like. The inhabitants of this world, Earth 1. And what passes for a government here. They can stop this at any time.’

  ‘On your terms,’ Commodore Mott growled. ‘I assume threats have been made. Sanctions to be announced and imposed.’

  ‘Have it your way,’ Pulet said. ‘Use whatever words you like. To me, this is just the acceptance of another world into the Hierarchy’s welcoming embrace.

  ‘This is a slow process, though. This stratagem: a shadowing, and its effects. But it’s been used many times in Hierarchy space, whenever a whole world requires a lesson in humility.

  ‘Simply put, we will cut off the Hearthlight – the light, the warmth – from a world.

  ‘It’s a major project, and slow, however. A planet is a big thing! Its oceans, its atmosphere, are large sinks of heat. And it will take some time to dump that heat, even now that the Hearthlight is gone, now that those natural planetary heat-reservoirs have started draining into the cold. But already the effects will be apparent to the natives … Well.’

  He drifted out of his chair, stretched and yawned in freefall.

  ‘It will take some time to work out. I imagine not much will happen for a few hours yet, if not a few days. One drawback of this particular stratagem is, indeed, the time it takes to implement. That is, for the consequences to become obvious to those on the planet, from its governors down to the lowest of its poor. Until the air itself starts snowing out.’ He barked laughter. ‘Still, we needn’t wait around. We ought to get that surrender demand drafted soon. But not issue it just yet, eh? Let it all sink in. Still, we can prepare the detail. Always fun. Hmm. I wonder what those down on that wretched planet are experiencing right now … Well. Anybody care to join me for lunch?’ He looked at Ulla.

  She tried not to scowl back.

  19

  Holye Lawa was a police officer, assigned to a position in the environs of the Capitol: the most significant building complex on all of Earth 1 – itself the most significant of the Alliance’s six worlds of governance.

  And he had just finished a day shift when the … strangeness came.

  When the eclipsing shadow started to slide across the Hearth, the glowing cloud in the sky, the blinding pinpoint at the very centre.

  It took him a while, in fact, to see what was going on, to understand it – at its most basic level. Later he would think it must have been the first breath of cold wind that alerted him to the strangeness of the day, rather than the subtle changes in the light. And maybe he was slow to react. His current assignment, as well as being close to home, was a prestigious one. He knew the location, and its light, very well. This was his ground. And it was possibly the safest place on the planet.

  Maybe it just took some time for him to grasp the magnitude of what was unfolding in the sky.

  It had been Holye’s good fortune to have grown up practically in the Hearth-shadow of this great building, the seat of government, the citadel from which this world, and others, was run. This Earth 1. Indeed, as the lead element of the sextet of worlds that together governed this part of Hearthspace, Earth 1 was the summit of power.

  And so, after joining the planetary police – and a few years infiltrating his way through the criminal undergrowth of the area, and contributing to increasingly major operations in the process – Holye Lawa had finally landed this prestigious assignment, as part of the perimeter guard of the big government central complex itself.

  The work wasn’t too onerous – if anything, it could be dull. There was only so long you could stand watch at the foot of this vast building, beside a set of entry–exit doors – looking for possible threats to the high-ups who used the building and its neighbours – without losing concentration. He knew that the relative quiet of this assignment was largely because of the many outer layers of security to be breached before any problems could reach in as deep as his posting.

  And when problems did come up at all, they were usually minor enough for them to be dealt with locally. Drunks or addicts – some of them staffers. Noisy, vandalising kids. Occasional political protesters.

  The Capitol, like this Earth, was a place of peace. And as such, Holye sometimes thought, it was a paradox that the world’s best police were assigned to its protection.

  Generally, Holye went home at the end of his watch with nothing but trivial incidents to report to his mother about his day. She was a dementia sufferer whom Holye, when he got this long-term posting, had installed in a small apartment – small but select, and close to the Capitol, only a short walk from Holye’s own workplace and apartment. He had a habit of telling his mother about his day, which seemed to comfort her, even if she understood little.

  His was a crucial but routine assignment. Rarely exciting, or novel. Like his life as a whole …

  But today was eerie, and getting stranger.

  He thought the light had diminished further.

  And when he glanced up, looking through his fingers, at the Hearthlight, he saw, quite clearly, that that blur of shadow at the rim had advanced further. Obviously so, now, cutting across the diffuse-edged patch of brilliance that was the manifestation of the glow of central Hearthspace. Why, it seemed to him that the fuzzy disc of brilliance at the centre of the Hearth itself was more than half obscured already.

  And the light of the world around him, the sky, the light reflecting from the buildings, was dimming too. A too-early twilight.

  He tried to think this through.

  What was going on?

  This was not like a regular Hearth-set, as Earth 1 turned on its axis, when that big gaudy splash, the Hearth itself and the glowing clouds around it, slid beneath the horizon, to reveal, on clear nights, the sky’s finest display in the chain of worlds, stretching across the firmament, and the spine of Alliance space.

  He was growing increasingly confused.

  This was all very strange.

  But, urgent?

  Still, he ought to call it in, even if he didn’t know what to call in, even if a call invited ridicule. What, you never saw a rain cloud before … ?

  He had a radio communicator built into his helmet. When he tested it, he got nothing but static. Nobody was speaking to him. Or to anybody else.

  That was not good.

  Even as he formulated that thought, a breeze blew up, from out of nowhere. Suddenly cold enough to make him shiver.

  And – was the light going yet more?

  One last try to convince himself this was a false alarm.

  He glanced up again, at the increasingly darkening sky. He blinked, once, twice. If anything, that curve of shadow had become more definite – and had advanced further while he’d been standing here.

  Nothing wrong with his eyes, surely.

  Something wrong with the world.

  Still nothing from the captain and her team.

  He tried to think it through. What he should do first. If this – eclipse? – of the Hearth continued, it was going to get dark and cold, at least for a while, and—

  Mother.

  He had given his mother a police communicator – bending the rules, but when he’d explained the circumstances to Captain Straith, she had agreed to a mild infringement of the regulations concerning access to the police comms systems. Now he hastily thumbed the code for his mother’s half-illicit handset—

  Hello?

  The reply came immediately. She must have been hovering over the handset, waiting for Holye to call. Obviously anxious. Guilt stabbed.

  You’re a lousy son.

  ‘Mother?’

  Well, who else would it be? Have you been listening to the people in the sky? I had to fumble a bit to turn them off and you on, but what they were saying—

  ‘Listen to the … who?’

  Have you been drinking again? Haven’t you even looked at the sky? I do sometimes wonder if you walk around with your eyes closed doing that so-called duty of yours. I don’t know why you couldn’t have had a nice steady stay-at-home job like—

  ‘Like my little sister, the doctor. I know.’ And Holye ought to call her too. ‘Look, Mother, I need to get off the line. Are you safe? Just stay indoors. I don’t know what’s going on here, and I probably won’t for a good while yet. But I’m on duty outside the Capitol—’

  As usual.

  ‘So I can’t talk for long—’

  When do you ever … ?

  The light level seemed to drop markedly, suddenly.

  An alert on his phone flashed. The captain.

  ‘Mother, you take care now. I have to hang up. Lock the doors.’

  I always lock the doors—

  ‘And keep warm.’

  Keep warm? On a day like this—

  ‘Call my sister. Will you do that?’

  Actually I have her on the other line. She’s on the way in. To see me. She’s always been so loyal – whenever I’ve needed her—

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Give her my love. And—’

  Stay safe, sweetheart. And his mother broke the connection.

  The captain’s alert was still flashing.

  Holye took one deep breath. The air felt colder yet, and that breeze was picking up further. The light seemed dimmer too; soon that dome of shadow was going to obscure the whole sky.

  He pressed the button.

  Holye Lawa. Glad I got you.

  ‘What’s going on, Captain?’

  Well, I guess you can see for yourself, officer.

  ‘Sorry, sir. It’s just—’

  Unprecedented. But I think it’s pretty obvious what’s happening.

  It’s the Neptune people, they call themselves the Hierarchy. It’s simple enough. They’re using their big lightsail ship to block the Hearthlight from the planet. From us.

  ‘I— Why would they do that, sir? They must know the damage they’ll cause …’ Though Holye’s own imagination failed. To block out the sky … ?

  He needed to concentrate on what the captain had to say.

  … Their approach to the planet has been friendly enough, like it was before the bomb they dropped on Earth 4. Or no more hostile anyhow. And, supposedly, they brought pallets of supplies from a Venus they stopped at. But it turned out they brought a good few sky-farmers in the process too. And not with their consent.

  ‘All of which gives us cause for concern.’

  Yeah. Cause for concern. Listen, Officer Lawa. Logically I’m about four command levels away from the President’s office, but I’ve been physically sitting right outside her door, and have been, for, what, two hours. Co-opted as a personal guard, among my other duties. So the information I’m getting on the situation is pretty hot – authentic – as is what our response is going to have to be.