Far too vast for her.

I’m here.

A small shape moved, some ten metres above the ground. Black, mostly: a convex triangle webbed with scarlet and gold that only emphasized how dark her body mostly was. She turned in the air.

Roger!

Warmth more than verbalization flared in his brain. He opened his arms as she flew towards him; then she stopped, quivering, to hang level with his face. She was growing bigger: no longer could he reach all the way across her triangular width. Twin differentiating folds were visible, where her lateral extremities would grow into delta wings.

When she became a big girl.

Play now?

For the first time since the catastrophe, he laughed without sadness.

Race you!

He broke into a sprint, moving in a fast straight line then dodging, breaking right then left, throwing himself through a shoulder roll and coming back to his feet, while she swooped around him, tumbling through aerobatics: never touching him at speed except to brush his clothing; and all they felt was warmth and love as they played until they were tired and then they stopped. Afterwards, Roger sat on the soft floor, and she settled beside him so her nose was on his lap, and his hand was upon her dorsal hull that felt so warm and strong. Though ships and Pilots alike possess a fine-grained sense of time, neither could have said how long they held each other like this, so fully absorbed, so filled with love and rightness.

Knowing they belonged together.

TWO

EARTH, 1941 AD

To be a Nazi in Tokyo was … interesting. The Reich and Imperial Nihon might be allies but their cultures were different; while to be a pretend Nazi, like Dmitri Shtemenko, meant every day was filled with pervasive threat, the good and the bad of it: nervous fear yet a sense of life on the edge. There were recurring icons: blades, blood and a fascination with suicide by sword, the hallmarks of the homosexual ultra-right-wing subculture that Dmitri continued to infiltrate.

The man he shared his twenty-tatami apartment with, Sergei Alegeev, had no sexual interest in men, but was not bothered by anything Dmitri got up to. Perhaps it was Sergei’s navy background that kept him broad-minded.

I haven’t given in to all my needs.

Before starting this mission, Dmitri had thrown his collection of human fingers into the Moscow River; since then, he had made no attempt to replace them. Personal safety, more than mission security, motivated him. Torture was fine, but not with him as the subject.

‘Another evening’ – Dmitri raised his third cup of saké – ‘spent rolling around on the floor with brawny men. You must have enjoyed yourself.’

He was sitting on the straw mat opposite Sergei.

‘I did, Chief.’ Sergei spoke German, as they both did in the apartment, though they had checked yet again today for microphones or human eavesdroppers. His fluency came from his mother, for he was far from the image of a studious linguist: never pretty, he had developed true cauliflower ears during their sojourn here, and broken his nose twice. Tonight, his left cheek was raw, reddened with the ongoing condition he called mat-burn. ‘I strangled one of the bastards unconscious,’ he added, reaching for his own saké. ‘So yes, a good evening.’

‘Next you’re going to tell me how you once got choked out by what’s-his-face himself.’

‘Oshchenkov.’ Sergei lowered his voice. This was not a name he would want overheard, by their current hosts or by their masters. ‘Well, I did. A cross-collar choke, and I’m proud I fought him. So long as you don’t tell those bastards back home.’

He refilled his cup from the porcelain flask.

‘I won’t.’

Dmitri meant it. For all that he knew was wrong with him, betraying the closest he had to a friend was unthinkable. Sergei was able to train with the local judo men because of his background in grappling, in civilian clubs in Moscow and in the navy. The man Sergei admired, Oshchenkov, had been a judo great: practising at Tokyo’s Kodokan where Sergei trained now, then transforming the discipline back in Mother Russia. Under official orders, Oshchenkov had taken the various indigenous wrestling styles of the Soviet republics, and aggregated them around a skeleton of judo.

But Stalin was paranoid and foreign contact was suspect, so five years ago, the NKVD had snatched and killed Oshchenkov. The term judo was now illegal; the transformed discipline was called sambo, and Sergei – as much as Dmitri could judge – was pretty good at it.

‘Anyway’ – Sergei tossed back the saké and went for the flask again – ‘I lined up a treat for you tomorrow. A young Lieutenant Kanazawa wants to show us, that’s you with me tagging along, something special.’

Sergei’s features became sharp and full of depth in Dmitri’s vision, as saké-induced vagueness vanished. ‘What kind of special thing?’

‘Todé.’ Sergei beamed. ‘You’ll love it. Also called China Hand, or Empty Hand since the buggers here got as paranoid as Uncle Joe himself.’

Dmitri, translating in his head, realized that China Hand and Empty Hand would sound the same in Japanese.

‘This kara-té,’ he said. ‘It’s not another kind of wrestling, is it?’

‘Not wrestling, but it is fighting.’

‘Oh.’ Dmitri took the saké flask from Sergei. ‘And I’m going to be interested why, exactly?’

‘Because Lieutenant Kanazawa is on Admiral Yamashita’s staff, and he’s unhappy about something.’

‘Ah.’

‘Perhaps you can console the poor man. And perhaps’ – Sergei leaned over to peer into the flask – ‘you could get more saké, Chief, since I’ve been doing my patriotic duty while you’ve been polishing off the booze.’

‘I’ll get right on it.’ Dmitri rolled onto his knees, then made himself stand. ‘Since we’re all equals in the great workers’ paradise.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

‘Yes, wouldn’t it just?’

But he fetched the saké anyway, because it was precious, this concept of having a friend; and besides, they both knew who was in charge.

And we both despise our masters.

Except that in Dmitri’s case, it was not just Stalin and the political apparatus he served: there was a darker force that he believed existed in the world – not just inside his head – with goals he could never know; and his feelings for that force were ambiguous and always had been.

I hate you.

But he also loved it, the darkness; and that was the problem.

In the training hall, Dmitri sat with Kanazawa and Sergei on actual chairs – pretty much hidden by tall paper screens – while the pyjama-clad fighters were in seiza: kneeling, sitting back on their heels. Beforehand, Kanazawa had said something about the instructors’ being special, and you could sort of see it: healthiness, alertness and posture combining to give the two senior men an apparent aura.

There was a concept that Dmitri wanted to admire but could not: shugyō, meaning ascetic discipline. It applied to more than combat; but it was obvious here in the dojo as the fighting drills commenced. Moving in straight lines, throwing first hundreds then thousands of techniques against imaginary opponents, was militaristic if not realistic, until the mad fire in their eyes made it obvious that the goal was to induce combat insanity. Here, they succeeded.

When they sparred, they did not hold their hands up high like boxers, but they hit hard. Soon blood was brightening on the yellowish-white jackets. One man in particular was taking a battering. Dmitri heard Kanazawa suck in a breath; but they were supposed to watch silently, so this was not the time for a question.

Soon it became apparent that everyone was fighting this poor bastard in turn – except that they would not all get their chance, for a large flat-faced man leaped forward, arm thrusting like a battering-ram into a cheekbone, and his victim was down, showing zero sign of getting back up. The others responded by carrying the limp body off to one corner and dumping it there, then resuming their training.