“I did,” she murmured. “A copy of me did. But that copy has gone, or never existed — gone to wherever deleted timelines go… It’s so strange, Pirius Blue.”

“I know. And sad.”

“Sad? Oh. Because I’m not your Torec.” She snuggled back down to his chest. “But there’s nothing we can do about that, is there? So we may as well get on with things.”

“Get on?”

“What else is there to do?”

Pirius Blue laughed. “As Nilis would probably say, we haven’t evolved to cope with time-looped relationships.”

“I know what your real problem is,” she said. “And it’s got nothing to do with time paradoxes.”

“What, then?”

“I’ve been with him. Your evil time-clone rival.”

He stifled a laugh. “He thinks the same about me.”

“Well, you both resent each other. But you’re not the same. I think he’s in awe of you.”

“But he’s your Pirius.”

“I don’t think it works like that. You’re growing apart, becoming different people. But you’re still both you.”

“Does he love you?”

She sighed. It was the first time either Pirius had used that word to her. “You know I love you. Both of you.”

He stroked her back, a spot between her shoulder blades where her skin felt like the smoothest, softest surface he had ever touched. “It’s a mess. A stupid triangle. I don’t know how we will sort it out.”

“Wait until the mission is over,” she said.

And see if any of us come back — that was what she left unsaid.

After a time she drew away from him.

“You’re going to him,” he said.

“He needs me, too. And I need him.”

“I understand,” he said, though he wasn’t sure if that was true.

When she had gone, Blue rolled into the part of the bunk still warm from her body, and tried to sleep.

Two hours before reveille, Cohl was already on the surface of Orion Rock. In her massive, armored skinsuit, she was propped up in a foxhole with the members of her platoon around her. The monopole-cannon emplacement they were ordered to protect was a couple of hundred meters away, a complicated silhouette against a shining sky.

As it had been since its chthonic birth, this Rock was still immersed in the glowing molecular clouds of the North Arm of the Baby Spiral. But if she looked ahead, she could see a gaggle of stars through the mist, like light globes hanging in smoggy air. That was IRS 16, the cluster of very crowded, very bright stars that coalesced out of the Baby’s infalling material as it poured into the crowded space that surrounded Chandra.

Orion Rock itself was probably almost as old as the Galaxy itself, and for all that time it had been swimming helplessly along this lane of gas. For a thousand years humans had dug their way into this Rock. Now both those immense intervals of time were coming to a close, for, in two hours from now, this Rock would burst through the last veils of cloud that separated it from IRS 16. It was hard to believe that Cohl should be here at a moment like this.

What was even harder to believe was that at least half her platoon were asleep, and the rest were eating. But that was life in the infantry. Your priority was eating and sleeping, and you took whatever chance you had to do either — even now, on the brink of battle.

Cohl was an ambassador. Her mission, given her by Pirius Red, was to ensure that the two halves of the operation — the Navy fliers who would take the greenships to Chandra and the Army infantry down here on the Rock — communicated properly, shared the same objectives, and worked well together when the crunch came. That was what she had been working toward in the weeks since she had been brought here from Quin.

The senior staff and civilians were going to evacuate Orion before the action, and go back to Arches. Even Captain Boote the Forty-Third had chosen not to stick around to witness this climax of his beloved Rock’s destiny. Pirius Blue had pulled strings to ensure Cohl could go if she wanted to, but she couldn’t bear the thought of running out on the people she had worked with for so long. There was only one place she wanted to be — on the surface, waiting for the sky to fall in, along with the rest of the troopers. And so here she was.

Blayle wasn’t asleep, though. Blayle, her platoon sergeant, was a good bit older than her, in his midtwenties. She could see his eyes on her, bright blue eyes visible behind his faceplate, a cold blue like the light of IRS 16.

He asked, “How are you bearing up, Lieutenant?”

“Fine,” she said uneasily. Her rank was basically honorary, and it made her uncomfortable.

“I’m proud to be here,” he said, without affectation. “There’s a lot of tradition here on Orion.”

“I know.”

“My own birth cadre — Cadre 4677 — is mentioned in the Rock’s first operational order, which is preserved in the archives. Of course we never knew what our mission would turn out to be. And nobody ever knew when it would end. But now it’s turned out that it’s me, my generation, who has the responsibility — no, the privilege — to be here at the climax.” He sighed. “A thousand years culminates here and now, in what I do today.”

Blayle was a disciplined soldier and a good sergeant; as she had worked with this platoon she had learned to lean on him. But he was a thoughtful, soft-bodied, soft-spoken man who seemed to lack the spirit of camaraderie of some of the other troopers, the loyalty that impelled them to fight so hard. Rather, Blayle seemed to embrace the larger mission of Orion Rock, and had to argue himself into fighting. And, like most people on this Rock, Blayle was a combat rookie.

“Might be best not to think too hard about that stuff, Sergeant. Combat is difficult enough without the feeling that forty generations are looking over your shoulder.”

“Yes. What would Hama Druz say if he was here? Focus on the moment; the present is all that matters.”

“He might say, shut your flapping mouth while some of us are trying to sleep,” somebody called, to a ripple of laughter.

Cohl knew little about the mission of Exultant Squadron. What she did know and her platoon didn’t, however, was that all their elaborate preparations, all the lives that would be lost on this Rock today, were not even the point of the operation. After a thousand years of planning, preparation, and silent running, Orion Rock was to be sacrificed as a diversion. She wasn’t going to say a word about that.

Cohl tried to relax, letting the Rock’s microgravity cushion her. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the situation, to think back to less complicated times, when she had been just another trainee on Arches Base…

Even reveille sounded somber that morning.

It didn’t make any difference to Enduring Hope, who hadn’t slept anyhow. He had spent those last hours checking and rechecking everything he could think of, but the novel systems grafted onto these wretched greenships were about as integrated as a third arm growing out of his own back, and he knew that the paltry weeks of developments, trials, and modifications had not been enough.

What he was really scared of was that he might be responsible for the mission’s failure. He knew his crews felt the same. So they kept on working, right up until the moment the first flight crews began to arrive, trying to be absolutely sure that this mission wouldn’t screw up because of something they had missed.

At last the crews of the first wave arrived. And Pila was with them. As the flyers clambered out of their little transporter, Pila stood to one side and began making checks on a data desk she carried. Nobody approached her.

Everybody still found Pirius’s adjutant more than a little intimidating — this woman from Earth was cold, and strange. But her duties included such mundanity as ensuring that the crews had been served the breakfast they wanted, that the transports had been laid on correctly — a hundred tiny details to make sure that nothing got in the way of the crews doing their jobs. She carried out those duties with calm, invisible efficiency, and people had slowly granted her respect.