‘Down in thirty seconds.’

It took nearer two minutes for Rekka to descend, swirling with poignant elation, hoping her friends had created the framework for a good life, one to withstand the strains that would surely come in the future, with Amber disappearing into mu-space and then coming back into Jared’s life, or more precisely Angela’s and Randolf’s lives. Then the door slid open, and she almost ran out across the polished floor and the red carpet not intended for her, reaching the trio of smiling adults and baby Jared, shawl-wrapped in Amber’s arms.

‘So it’s all done,’ said Randolf.

Rekka hugged Amber-and-Jared first, then Angela, then Randolf. Returning her attention to Jared – his eyelids, drooping with sleepiness, not concealing his glossily opaque, obsidian eyes – she kissed his forehead, then looked up at the parents, all three of them.

‘Congratulations, all of you. Except …’ – with a glance around the glass-dominated reception – ‘I didn’t expect to see Jared here.’

Amber was in a rush to leave, either because of UNSA orders, now she was back in touch, or because she thought it best for Randolf and Angela to have time alone with Jared for bonding to commence. Rekka understood that much, but not their openness in this place.

‘We registered him officially,’ said Amber, cuddling Jared.

‘Yes, we did.’ Angela tickled Jared. ‘Didn’t we?’

Randolf said: ‘We’ve nothing to hide, none of us. No one’s taking Jared to an UNSA boarding school. He’s ours, you see.’ Nodding to Amber. ‘All of ours. He’ll have the kind of home he deserves.’

There were tears in Rekka’s eyes.

‘He’s very lucky to have you all.’

That was when another lift opened, and a group of well-dressed men and women came out, and a familiar tone said: ‘Oh, look. A baby, and isn’t he sweet?’

Luisa Higashionna, elegant and tall, swept across with the handsome Roberto beside her. Both senators kissed little Jared in turn, while Rekka stepped back, confused by the smiles on her friends’ faces, realizing after a second that the abhorrence was hers alone.

Senior management looked on, their self-serving smiles benign, happy for the official visit to end with an emotional high note, a photo opportunity that could not have been bettered had it been choreographed. If Bittersweet had been here, she would have emitted a faint but deliberate smell of excrement.

‘A fine young Pilot.’ Roberto Higashionna tickled him under the chin. ‘And what’s the brave lad’s name?’

‘Jared,’ said Amber, then turned her blind eyes towards Angela, who completed the naming: ‘Jared Schenck.’

Luisa Higashionna tucked her finger inside Jared’s tiny grasp.

‘Pleased to meet you, Pilot Schenck.’

When she looked at her cousin, perhaps it was only Rekka who processed that glance as reptilian. As the delegates left, the neurochemical tide of hatred began to sink inside her, to dissipate; but still she had little to say as Angela, Randolf and Amber exchanged more farewells and promises, until it was time for Jared to be taken into Angela’s arms.

While the emptiness left by Rekka’s hatred filled up with fear, though she could not have delineated the reasons in a logical manner of the kind Simon would have demanded were he here.

Fear for baby Jared.

FIFTY-NINE

LABYRINTH, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

They floated side by side in a crimson nebula, Jed in his silverand-bronze ship, Max in his vessel of black and midnight blue with white-webbed wings. Hanging there, they conferred, getting to know each other, discussing the dangers of reappearing when Max was legally a fugitive.

**I might be Labyrinth’s most-wanted criminal. Or they might have buried public knowledge of me.**

Jed did not want to admit the extent to which Labyrinthine internal politics could turn rotten; but he knew what he had seen at the galactic core in realspace.

**That space station was human-built.**

**It was.**

He thought about Davey Golwyn’s death, and the others’.

**We should fly in side by side, Commodore. With me broadcasting the all-OK.**

**Agreed.**

They moved out of cover, into golden nothingness.

In a wide café overlooking Borges Boulevard, a lean-faced Pilot jerked in his seat. A cup of daistral, freshly ordered, rose through the tabletop; but he ignored it. Instead he stared into space, then muttered: ‘I’ll be right there.’

He got up from his seat, found a clear area, and summoned a fastpath rotation. It whirled into place, he stepped inside, and then he was gone.

That was when three other diners, scattered around the café, looked up from their meals. They rose, walked carefully among the tables, and met as if by chance at the spot where the first Pilot had exited. Almost as one, they tapped their prepared turings, which began to glow.

‘All right,’ said one of them.

Together, they brought a fastpath into existence. Had any of the innocent clientele possessed the means and ability to analyse the rotation’s geometric precision, they would have found it identical to the previous manifestation, set for the same destination, capable of transporting three Pilots at once.

They stepped inside.

After a moment, another diner, a young Pilot just off a long shift at the Med Centre, looked up from her omelette, trying to work out what was odd about the departure she had peripherally seen. She stared, then shook her head, and returned her attention to her food.

Had she realized that a thousand similar events were taking place throughout Labyrinth, she might have taken notice.

Into the vast docking space they floated. An immensity of distant wall lay in every direction, forming an approximate hollow sphere that was kilometres across in mean-geodesic units. Their progress was slow, the two ships; and they separated as they neared one of the great promenades, each docking sideways on, so a wingtip touched with kiss-like gentleness.

Max, sleeves pushed up from his huge forearms as always, stepped on to a powerful wing of black, deepest blue and white. Off to one side, Jed was exiting in parallel; but the danger, if it came, would be focused on Max Gould, commodore, former senior intelligence officer, now enemy of Labyrinth.

=Welcome back.=

Enemy of those who claimed to represent Labyrinth, more precisely.

On the promenade, walkers stopped, looking not at Max but at their surroundings, puzzled by what they were sensing. Some of them, more perceptive or survival-oriented, began to hurry away. A few tried to summon fastpath rotations, but the nascent activity made this difficult, as if spacetime were becoming turgid and viscous, impossible to handle.

Here they come.

Hundreds of Pilots rippled into existence, all along the promenade, and upon the various floating platforms that serviced the docks, and other vantage points which had one thing in common: all provided a view of their common target, him. The full complement, once they rotated into place, numbered a thousand, give or take a handful.

Ionization rendered the air heady, pleasant unless you realized it was due to so many weapons emitting spill-over radiation, their resonant energies desperate to spurt forth.

In the centre of them all, a uniformed man rotated onto the promenade.

‘Garber,’ called out Max. ‘How loathsome to see you, Colonel.’

Even from this distance, Garber’s cold smile sent a message: fuck off. Beside him, a larger rotation spun then dissipated, leaving five more figures, including one who wore ceremonial brocade, as if he had been interrupted in official duties, or considered the capture of one renegade commodore to be a state occasion in itself.

‘Admiral Schenck,’ said Max. ‘How unusual to see you down among the working Pilots.’