‘Ho, stranger!’

The words were not of the Tongue, yet close enough that he knew their meaning.

‘Wounded, are ye?’

He tried to nod, but his head drooped, neck muscles softening, and he could not raise it again.

‘Come, brethren. We carry him.’

Men in rough robes congregated around him, crouching to take hold. Then Stígr found himself being raised, his eye turned to the sky, glimpsing shaven tonsures on the heads of those who held him.

The other children, laughing.

It was a memory of childhood celebration, being tossed in the air before the feasting, long before the darkness came to rule him. Now, he saw the bobbing sky, caught an upsidedown glimpse of a great stone building – his destination? – then old memories and new pain became too much and he let go, tears in his single eye, burning in the scarred socket as he fell into void.

FORTY-TWO

LABYRINTH, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

The reports said that Admiral Asai had passed away during his sleep, of natural (but unspecified) causes. Max, Pavel, Clayton and Clara, sitting around a flowmetal table in an off-the-grid safehouse, had a different view of the news.

‘They’re beginning to move openly,’ said Pavel.

‘Clearly.’ Max reopened a 3-D graph, a globular web of arcs and nodes. ‘That bastard Schenck has revealed himself. You think this is all of his inner circle?’

‘You’ve been observing them for longer than we have.’

‘Then I think we’ve got them identified, and most of the next layer out. Beyond that, we’re still struggling.’

No one had tackled the most important question.

‘Are they really secessionists?’ Clara meant seceding from realspace. ‘This darkness phenomenon seems a bit … metaphysical, or something. But Schenck’s not just after power, is he? It’s his long-term vision that worries me, because I’ve no idea what it is.’

‘I wouldn’t overestimate him,’ said Clayton. ‘Just another sociopathic political type.’

‘Who’s already got as much power as you can achieve in the current system.’ Pavel was staring at Max’s graph. ‘Clara’s right. What direction would he take Labyrinth in if we let him take over?’

Max closed down the holo once more.

‘I’ve got a suggestion.’

‘What’s that?’ said Pavel.

‘Let’s not find out. Let’s shut down Schenck while his plans are still inside his head, and nowhere else.’

‘You’ve got my vote,’ said Clayton.

No one pointed out that this was no democracy.

‘All right,’ said Clara. ‘I’m going to bring it out into the open. We’ve all been worrying about it, I’m sure.’

Clayton said, ‘Analysing, not worrying.’

‘If they’ve taken out Admiral Asai, do they know about us? Do they know who we are?’

‘We’re still here,’ said Pavel. ‘That’s a good sign.’

‘Can we counterattack?’ asked Clayton. ‘Besides assassinating Schenck, which he’ll be taking precautions against in any case, how do we stop them?’

Max was regarding Clara.

‘Is Schenck associated with secessionist philosophy in most people’s minds, would you say?’

‘Er … Those who follow politics, yes.’

‘Hmm. I’m pretty sure you’re right.’ Max looked at her, then Pavel. ‘In which case, a little information campaign might be in order. If we leave realspace, it’s not just that humanity will do business with the Zajinets. Scientists created us once, and they can do it again. A shortcut might include capturing some of us, perhaps with a bit of vivisection thrown in.’

Clayton’s scowl signalled dislike of such an indirect response.

‘I do have an additional idea,’ Max went on. ‘It involves using some skilled Pilots, preferably neutral in all of this, and preferably without their knowledge.’

‘Recruiting innocents?’ asked Clara.

‘It’s a tough game we’re in,’ said Pavel. ‘I thought you realized.’

To save Clara some face, Max said: ‘You’re right, but there’s some information we need to disseminate. Information I’ve been sitting on for way too long.’

Pavel shook his head.

‘Any information known to come from you, Schenck’s people will find a way to discredit.’

‘That’s why I need to churn things up,’ said Max. ‘And with luck, come back with eye witness testimony.’

Before they would agree to the plan, the others demanded to see Max’s ship. His departures and arrivals had been covert for many years: few of his colleagues still living knew what she was like, his vessel. That felt poignant: thoughts of ageing might carry overtones of desolation for anyone, but more so for Pilots; for they were not always solitary beings: sometimes they were symbiotic partners.

The quartet stood in a place deep inside and orthogonal to the core of Ascension Annexe.

‘Where is it?’ Pavel looked around. ‘I can’t sense a—’

An opalescent wall dissolved.

‘There,’ said Max.

She hung at the centre of the hangar.

Hello, my love.

Max smiled, not allowing tears to form.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Clara.

The ship was huge.

At last.

Dark-blue and midnight black, thick delta wings webbed with startling white, throbbing with power and potential.

‘I’ve heard old stories about you, Max.’ Pavel stared at her, the ship. ‘Rumours from the past. Now I know they might be true.’

Clayton was smiling.

‘He can do it, can’t he?’

Jed Goran stepped out of the fastpath rotation and onto a polished dark-green and silver platform overlooking Cantor Circus. Rowena James from Far Reach Logistics was there, along with a tousle-haired Pilot it took Jed a moment to recognize.

‘You’re Davey Golwyn,’ he said. ‘The man who got a huge number of folk off Fulgor.’

‘Well, yeah.’ Golwyn shrugged. ‘Me and a couple of thousand others.’

From Fulgor, Jed had carried only Roger Blackstone and Roger’s comatose girlfriend, Alisha … plus Carl Blackstone’s legacy, now growing by the day inside Ascension Annexe.

Perhaps I should have stayed to rescue more.

But the risk had been vast, and he had made a promise to Carl Blackstone, without whom no one would have escaped the Anomaly.

‘So.’ Jed turned to Rowena. ‘Is this a big job you’ve got for us?’

‘Pretty much. I’m waiting for a few more– Ah.’

Fastpath rotations were forming all around them. Over the next few seconds, eleven more Pilots stepped through onto the platform.

‘OK, everyone.’ Having greeted each Pilot by name, Rowena looked around the group, smiling. ‘I’ve a nicely tricky schedule lined up, so I thought I’d use only the best Pilots I know for the job.’

‘But they weren’t available so you called us instead,’ said Felipe Copeland, an old rival of Jed’s. ‘Right?’

Rowena laughed. ‘Absolutely not. Follow me, children. Everybody hold hands.’

Jed held out his hand to Felipe, who gave a hooked-little-finger salute in return.

Skilfully, Rowena summoned a fastpath rotation to envelop them all, and they passed through to a promenade that ran along a vast cavernous area of docks. Jed’s ship was already there as requested by Rowena, hanging among the fifty or so ships he could see. He presumed the others also had their vessels waiting.

Scarlet light blazed at the promenade’s far end.

‘Emergency?’ said Golwyn.

A blocky, shaven-headed man came tumbling through a rotation. Two younger men in Admiralty uniforms came running after him, but he gestured and the air rippled, and his pursuers dropped.

‘I’ve seen him before.’ Jed remembered the state funeral, of Carl Blackstone along with his wife, and the man who had appeared on Borges Boulevard only to be arrested. ‘Who is he?’

Rowena had a holovolume open.

‘Guy called Gould, chief suspect in Admiral Kaltberg’s murder, according to this.’

From below, in the gleaming abyssal depths of the docking volume, a dark, powerful-looking ship with white-webbed wings was rising.