It took the Skylady’s smartcore four days to read all the data from the assortment of damaged electronics they’d brought back. Then it spent another two days piecing together coherent sequences from dozens of broken files.

‘Are you ready for this?’ Nigel asked as he came back to the farmhouse carrying a module with the newly transcribed master file in a simple old-fashioned Total Sensory Immersion format, covering a time period lasting twenty-seven hours and forty-two minutes.

Kysandra was about to give him a boisterous: ‘’Course I am,’ but his pensive expression made her hesitate. ‘How bad is it?’

‘It explains what happened. And from a historical perspective, it’s fascinating. You’ll actually get to see Captain Cornelius. But I have to warn you, it’s not pretty.’

‘Worse than the Desert of Bone?’

‘The scale isn’t quite the same.’

‘I’d like to see it. No. Actually, I have to see it. You know that.’

‘Yes. I know.’

She settled back in the front room’s deep settee and told her u-shadow to access the file. Her nerves tingled, as if someone had stroked a feather over all of her skin at once. Exovision produced a blurred full-colour optical image. And she looked out of Laura Brandt’s eyes as the tank yank pulled her roughly back to consciousness.

7

Months of preparation, months of watching and the interminable waiting had finally paid off. They’d intercepted the eggs. Then along came the regiment squad and almost wrecked everything. Kysandra stood on the prow of the steam-powered cargo barge as it backed away from the wanno trees lining the riverbank. Directly ahead of her, clustered in a gap between the trees’ big weeping boughs, the idiot one-armed lieutenant and his troops watched as the pistons below deck chugged loudly, taking them away from the temporary mooring and out into the broad channel of fast-flowing water.

‘Wave. Smile. Be happy,’ Nigel said as he stood beside her. He raised his own arm solemnly.

Across the muddy water, Lieutenant Slvasta responded with a fast, precise gesture – half-wave, half-salute.

Kysandra held back from giving him a mildly obscene gesture and waved her hand without any enthusiasm. ‘Wow, I’m amazed we’ve not been completely overrun by Fallers if that’s what passes for officer material these days.’

‘I don’t think you’ll find a more devoted officer, frankly,’ Nigel said. ‘He’s certainly dedicated to exterminating Fallers. And he knows something’s not quite right about us.’

‘But lacks the courage to do anything about it.’

‘That’s not lack of courage. You’re talking about someone who escaped being eggsumed. I’ve never heard of anyone being saved before.’

‘Captain Xaxon’s granddaughter,’ she said automatically as they turned from the lieutenant and made their way back to the mid cabin.

‘Who?’

‘Big part of Mrs Brewster’s history lessons. I’ll tell you about it one day. But for anyone in the regiment to succumb to a lure is just pathetic.’

Nigel sighed. ‘You’re becoming very judgemental these days.’

‘Can’t think why.’

The barge reached the middle of the river and turned downstream. The pistons reversed amid a loud clattering and began to power the boat forwards. They soon rounded a curve, taking them out of sight of Lieutenant Slvasta and his troops.

‘You were getting very friendly with him,’ she accused. ‘I thought you were prepping him for domination.’

‘Just planting a few seeds of doubt, that’s all. The good lieutenant is seething with righteous indignation at the way things are. That’s always to be encouraged.’

Kysandra glanced at the thumb which Slvasta had cut, frowning in disapproval. ‘I’m going to get some antiseptic on this. We all should before we die of blood poisoning from your righteous friend’s paranoia.’

‘He’s a good man in a bad world. You never know when you might need someone like that.’

‘He’s a loser.’ She gave Nigel a jubilant grin. ‘Forget him. Come on, we actually did it!’

Nigel nodded thoughtfully before breaking into a wide smile. ‘We did, didn’t we?’

Two hours later they caught up with the third steam barge, the Mellanie. ‘Old girlfriend?’ Kysandra had baited when Nigel renamed the boat after it had undergone a fortnight’s refit in Adeone’s largest boatyard. Ma had been slowly squeezing the owner out over the past two years – a position Nigel had subsequently regularized to become a sleeping partner.

‘Someone I underestimated once,’ he said with a certain distant gaze. ‘Don’t worry; it doesn’t happen often.’

In the Mellanie’s wheelhouse, Fergus reduced speed so they could come alongside. Kysandra followed Nigel, hopping over the narrow gap while the two barges chugged along steadily. Russell and his team were quite content to stay on their barge, looking after the horses.

Ma Ulvon was waiting for them on deck, dressed in a tailored grey suit under a black longcoat that was still damp from the rain. A pump-action shotgun was slung across her chest on a polished leather strap. ‘Any problems?’ she asked.

‘He knew something was wrong,’ Nigel said. ‘But we didn’t give him a chance to work out what.’

‘So my boys behaved themselves?’ The men in her old organization, who were now under Nigel’s domination, respected and obeyed him eagerly, but they still feared Ma.

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ she said in satisfaction.

Even now, over a year since Nigel had arrived, Kysandra couldn’t quite get used to Ma like this. Nigel or an ANAdroid refreshed the domination every few months, but even so there was a background worry that Ma would one day break free. Kysandra studiously avoided eye contact as she walked past.

Nigel climbed through the deck hatch to the forward hold. Kysandra went down the ladder after him. Mellanie’s refit had seen the big deck loading doors elevated until the forward hold was just over four metres high – easily large enough to install the two circular cast-iron cages it now contained.

Yalseed oil lamps fixed high up on the hull walls shone a bright yellow light across the hold. Demitri was waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder, creating a fuzz so strong it was like passing through a curtain of cold mist. Even standing on deck Kysandra hadn’t been able to perceive what the Mellanie was carrying.

Now, standing in the hold, she gazed in trepidation at the two dark Faller eggs in their cages. It had taken them nearly a day to drag those precious, deadly eggs through the violet bamboo on their stone sledges. Even after all that exposure, she still couldn’t get over her fear at being so close to the implacable threat to her whole world. The lure was drawing her in; she wanted to rush to the front of the boat where Jymoar was waiting for her as usual, to tremble in delight at her lover’s touch. When she breathed in, she could even smell him. So close.

‘Don’t,’ Nigel said sharply.

Kysandra opened her eyes to realize she had taken a couple of paces towards the first cage. There was no Jymoar, no promise of satisfaction. She was immediately furious with herself for allowing the egg lure to ensnare her, and glared at the dark malign shape. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, red faced.

‘It can get to you if you’re not careful,’ Demitri said sympathetically. Of all the ANAdroids, he was the most sensitive and compassionate, almost as if he wasn’t really cut out for this kind of work.

‘So what have we got?’ Nigel asked, prowling round the cage as if he was studying a wild beast. ‘Is there a brain in there?’

‘It’s fuzzed itself effectively,’ Demitri said, ‘so there are obviously some kind of thought processes occurring inside. But here’s the interesting thing: the ultrasound can cut clean through it.’ He pointed at the small electronic sensors stuck to the egg. ‘There’s no solid cell structure inside. The cells are all suspended in the yolk fluid, and evenly distributed. Just as the institute’s papers claimed.’