There was an implied offering there, and Clayton took it.

‘What are you sure of, boss?’

Pavel turned. Off to Clayton’s right, the air shivered, wavered, and rotated.

Fastpath inside the core shield?

A small, thin, black-uniformed man stepped out, only a tiny golden collar-stud betraying his rank.

‘Admiral,’ said Clayton.

This was Admiral Asai, a man with a reputation for agile strategic thinking, and the ability to pull off astounding tricks of expertise, both as an individual Pilot and at the head of a fleet. Clayton had never met the man. Beyond the technical realm, Asai was an enigma, his political philosophy unknown.

‘I’m told you’re considered reliable, Mr Clayton.’

‘Sir.’ Clayton smiled. ‘That’s two layers of indirection removed from whether I actually am reliable.’

Asai raised an eyebrow, turning to Pavel.

‘It’s not his fault,’ Clayton went on. ‘I know a conspiracy when I see one. Likewise a deniable operation. It makes me nervous.’

‘So.’ Asai bowed his head, just a little. ‘If Boris Schenck is not a traitor, then what we propose will not affect him adversely. We are not moving against him personally, or those who support his ambitions.’

Clayton began to assess the implied information: that Schenck had an extended set of supporters, call it a political network; and there was another, possibly separate network with the potential for action.

‘And if he is a traitor?’

He threw the word back at Asai. Traitor could mean many things; it was specific charges that made the difference. Pavel started to speak; but Asai raised his hand.

‘If Schenck is a traitor and we do nothing, either Max Gould will disappear, or the personality inhabiting his body, when he comes to trial, will bear little relation to the Gould that some of us know and highly respect. Those who’ve served with him.’

This was manipulation on Asai’s part. The mindwipe that Sapherson had subjected Clayton and Boyle to, after they had learned ultra-classified secrets while interviewing Carl Blackstone, had caused more than the specific planned amnesia. Besides forgetting what he had learned from Blackstone, Darius had also lost all memory of his own sister – consistently, throughout his whole remembered life – and developed an ongoing inability to recognize her face. He had also suffered a form of aphasia that medics were working to cure, and believed they could reverse. But his sister would be a stranger always.

So Clayton could be expected to have sympathy for someone facing neurological re-engineering.

‘What is it you want me to—? Oh, no.’

Pavel was smiling now.

‘That’s why you’re the man we need. You see it straight away.’

‘You don’t even know where they’re holding him.’ Clayton shook his head. ‘No, of course you do. You’ve probably got a source right inside Schenck’s personal staff.’

Of course Pavel was not going to respond to that.

‘You think a solo operator can do the job?’ Clayton realized he was arguing practicalities, a signal he had decided to accept the task. ‘I’m assuming we’re talking about breaking a prisoner out of one of our own establishments.’

‘We think a second experienced case officer would do the trick,’ said Pavel.

‘And that’s why you’re asking about Clara James?’

Asai tipped his head forward. Clayton read the gesture as approval.

‘She has the expertise,’ said Pavel. ‘I think she’s feeling restricted by Garber’s management style.’

‘Has she tried to jump the chain of command?’

In the service culture, such acts had a flavour of disloyalty.

‘No, she’s too smart for that,’ said Pavel. ‘Smart or principled.’

Clayton nodded, acknowledging the problem: principled was good, while smart-but-self-serving could be utilized; but they required different recruitment strategies.

‘Let’s make it my initiative test,’ he said. ‘If I can recruit her for the op, then I’m the right person to carry it out.’

Asai and Pavel smiled.

‘Good man,’ said Pavel.

Clara watched the footage three times, rotating the angles and adjusting playback speed, reading Jed Goran’s body language as much as his voice. The images originated several hours earlier in Far Reach Centre, a fractal warren of commerce and bureaucracy responsible for all Pilot logistics: a major Labyrinthine institution, therefore monitored by the intelligence service always. In the holo, everything about Jed Goran indicated a controlled, muscular anger. He was angry because he believed the authorities had deserted Roger Blackstone when they declared the quarantine around Molsin.

A good man.

She placed her fingertip against the insubstantial image of Jed’s face. It would be nice to make a new friend outside the service, the problem – and opportunity – being that he had seen her on the interview panel, debriefing himself and Roger on the Fulgor escape. But she already had a backstopped cover identity as an ordinary Admiralty employee.

Or Jed Goran might be a useful asset: someone strong and used to acting in a crisis. That was the problem, because you could not consider someone as a potential boyfriend and later manipulate him for the good of an operation. At least, she could not work that way.

Her immediate superior, Garber, would not betray someone he cared for, either. But that was because the icy bastard had no emotions beyond his own self-absorbed career.

Shit.

With regret, she closed the holo down.

An hour later, she was watching another holo, this one rendered real time as a room-sized image, while Colonel Garber stood alongside her, and two specialists, Arlene and Michio, observed with the aid of subsidiary biometric displays. Reading micro-expressions and gesture-clusters formed part of every officer’s training; the specialists were expert even by service standards.

‘This is the third person to have seen Helsen at the relay station,’ said Michio. ‘Her name is Susannah Blaydon. The interrogator is one of ours, Tol Karden, under cover as a Far Reach distribution controller.’

‘All right,’ said Garber.

Unknown to the Molsin authorities, every ship with the exception of Jed Goran’s had made a stopover at a realspace relay station manned only by Pilots. There, the staff roused each med-drone occupant who was deemed safe to awaken, questioned and scanned them, then blanked their short-term memory before dropping them back into delta-trance, ready for their onward mu-space journey.

The difference in Jed Goran’s case had been that all of his comatose passengers were designated as high-probability severe trauma cases, who should be woken only in full-care medical facilities, and not returned to coma until their recovery was well under way, if not complete. The decision had been a balance of humanitarian versus security concerns; Garber had wanted everyone woken and examined regardless.

In the holo, the questioner, Tol Karden, gestured at an image of Petra Helsen – a holo within a holo – that had been created on the basis of Roger Blackstone’s debriefing session.

‘This was the main person,’ he said, ‘that you were tasked with looking out for.’

‘That’s correct,’ said Susannah Blaydon.

She looked tense but not overly so. Clara read it as innocent concern, faced with official questioning but harbouring no guilt. Arlene and Michio looked intent, too busy observing to give a verdict.

‘And you saw no sign of her on the day in question?’ Tol Karden leaned forward. ‘That would have been the third shipload you processed, is that correct?’

‘Absolutely.’ Susannah Blaydon rubbed her face. ‘We were tired, maybe. But none of the women looked much like this one.’

They had been instructed to watch out for a certain male also; but his bearded image was less reliable – Roger Blackstone had scarcely seen the man on Fulgor – so a negative result had been expected in that case.