Orduval gazed after the departing car. Why had Reyshank let it go?

"Listening?" wondered Trausheim. "You said those who're listening are being evacuated."

"We've got martial law in place but it seems few people are taking heed of the wardens. We've had to pull out of twelve major cities because arms caches have been broken into and the only targets all the rival factions can agree on are the GDS wardens. Some idiots—we assume in the Orchid Party—have also decided that a good way of stirring things up further has been to open the asylums."

The remaining warden, whose name Orduval had yet to learn, gazed after the vehicle, now in the distance. "What are our chances of getting this back under control?"

"Not the greatest." Reyshank hauled his pack up off the ground and gestured to the abandoned farmhouse. "We'll wait in there."

Following them, Orduval wondered about the importance of his own concerns now. "Why did you let that car go?" he asked, gazing round at the desolation.

"Have patience," said Reyshank. "We're going to be picked up here."

Trausheim kicked in the door of the farmhouse, releasing a cloud of glimmer bugs and the overpowering smell of decay. They decided instead to wait under some nearby acacia trees, around a fire fuelled by the farmhouse door and some rotting furniture found inside the building. The rumbling from the sky continued, but seemed to descend to a background murmur as Orduval thoughtfully chewed on a piece of biltong. At one point they heard the sound of lunatic bellowing, but when Trausheim grabbed his weapon and stood up, Reyshank ordered him to sit down again. After they had eaten and drunk their fill they sat there in silence, then Reyshank suddenly got up and moved off through the trees towards the desert's edge. After a brief hesitation, Orduval followed him.

"Fleet have destroyed two Defence Platforms," said the Chief, gazing out across the empty sands. "The plan of attack seems quite simple, though what their final aim is I don't know. However, I do know that Harald will need to neutralise the Corisanthe stations, no matter what else he's after."

"There's over a quarter of a million people aboard those stations," Orduval noted.

"Maybe more…"

Having originally noted Reyshank's queue and the scar on his face, Orduval suggested, "You were in Fleet?"

"I trained during the last years of the War, and went down to Brumal during the occupation." He turned his face into view, pointing to the scar on it. "I got this from a quofarl before I managed to blow its head off. But I feel no loyalty to Fleet now, and no agreement with what they're doing. What about you, then? The Admiral is your brother, after all."

"How did you know that?"

"Harald Strone and Orduval Strone? I had my suspicions, and Duras confirmed them for me."

"You spoke to Duras?"

"Oh yes, he chose me to pick you up, when we still only knew you as Uskaron, because he and I knew each other from our service days. He became very interested indeed in you when we later learned your real name."

Out over the desert, Orduval saw a constellation of lights that seemed to make no sense to him. Other stars weren't visible there, and those lights seemed too constant to be the result of explosions. After a moment he realised they were just below the horizon. Buildings maybe? But there was nothing out there, and anyway these lights seemed to be on the move.

"Here comes Parliament," explained Reyshank.

"What?"

"It's of Combine manufacture." He smiled wryly at Orduval. "GDS has three of them: mobile incident stations in the event of planetary disaster. It seemed safest to take Parliament aboard this one, so at least the chance of us losing the rest of the planetary government has been reduced."

The lights were now revealed as windows in some enormous floating structure: like a tall city building turned on its side and floating a few thousand feet above the dunes.

"They brought this out here for me?" Orduval asked.

"It would be nice to think so," replied Reyshank, "but no. We're only a few hundred miles from the landing site."

"What landing site?"

"For the Brumallian ship that's arriving here with the Consul Assessor and your two sisters aboard."

Orduval swore, but then he smiled.

Harald

He opened his eyes to the aseptic look of scoured aluminium in Ironfist's medbay, the taste of copper in his mouth and the astringency of antiseptic in his nostrils. With his head throbbing unremittingly, he tried to remember which particular operation this was, which surgical enhancement he had just undergone. Only after a moment did he remember that all those he had planned had been carried out many months ago.

"Try to take it easy," said Jeon, leaning over him.

Harald tried to sit upright but felt incredibly weak. He kept his face empty of expression, not wanting her to see the panic he felt, for he did not recall why he was in this place. Turning his head so as not to meet her eyes, he gazed steadily across at an instrument trolley, observed the bloody wadding and soiled instruments.

Noting the direction of his gaze, Jeon said, "I did the best I could after you told them all to get out." Harald could remember nothing about that. She stepped over to the trolley and picked up a steel dish in which lay a lump of grey metal with shallow flanges spiralling round it. "You were lucky really. This is an explosive slug but it failed to detonate. It lifted a piece of your skull and lodged next to your brain. Had it gone off there wouldn't be anything left of you above the neck."

Someone had tried to kill him—that much was clear, if all the details were not. He felt a sudden surge of rage, which he immediately fought, disliking such lack of control.

"You do understand me, don't you?" she asked.

"I unnerstan yo per…" He stopped talking, horrified that his mouth was mangling the words, like on the first and last time he had got drunk on going to his first ever party aboard Ironfist. He could feel one side of his mouth twisted down and wondered if he looked like someone who had suffered a stroke.

"What—is—happening?" he articulated carefully.

"Franorl took command in your absence and pulled the fleet back. All ships are holding station, safely out of range of beam weapons. We're maintaining a bombardment and we're still taking hits from Combine's rail-guns, but we can sustain that."

What was she talking about? And what was Admiral Carnasus up to?

"Admiral, what are your orders? Do we continue with this? I can give you something now to keep you on your feet, but I don't know how long it will last."

Admiral?

"We—must not—withdraw." The words seemed to come out of him automatically, even though he had no clear idea what she was talking about. Summoning some core of will, he took command of his body and sat upright. Dizziness assailed him, and in the fug that billowed through his mind he recalled feeling the warm grip of a small Combine handgun, and saw the slugs from it smashing into Admiral Carnasus's skull. Sudden grief clutched at his throat, and tears began to run down his cheeks. He reached up to wipe them away, then tried to put that memory into context. He had killed the Admiral and, from what Jeon had just told him, he realised his plans to move against Combine must be well advanced.

But only vague details punctuated by the odd disconnected sharper scene floated up into his consciousness. He recollected the fleet being gathered around Carmel, but did not know if that was something recent or went back to a time when Carnasus was in command. He also recollected giving the order to fire on a Brumallian city. Something else of importance had happened then, but he could not recollect it. He slotted these events into his initial plan, which he remembered clearly, and found that they fitted in well. However, he needed to know if anything had not gone to plan, he needed to know what had happened to him, and most importantly he needed to feel some genuine commitment to what he had been doing, for it seemed strangely lacking at that moment.