THE ONE THING Finbar Charles Louis Griffin Jalgori-Tobu (Finn to his friends) promised himself was that under no circumstances would he ever scream. He wasn’t going to give his captors the satisfaction. So he remained silent as their sharp knife sliced through his soiled one-piece thermal regulator undersuit, gritting his teeth every time the blade nicked his skin. Nor did he flinch as his now-naked body was shoved to the ground and his wrists and ankles were bound. He refused to grunt in pain as they dragged him up to the rooftop landing pad, deliberately knocking his shins on the metal stairs as they went. His jaw remained resolutely shut as they dumped him on the utilitarian floor of the sleek squad-deployment plane waiting on the pad.

Finn didn’t know if it was the fury he felt at his betrayal or the stubbornness that his family always chided him for, but he managed to keep his mouth closed throughout the whole flight as he endured the humiliation of being used as a footstool for their boots—a footstool they had fun kicking.

A couple of hours after takeoff, when they were in Anoosha’s southern hemisphere and cruising eight kilometers above the Camurdy Mountains, the plane’s rear ramp hinged down, letting in a blast of freezing wind. His captors pulled on their oxygen masks and laughed as he sucked down the perilously thin air. He even managed not to scream as they hauled him onto the ramp. One last kick sent him tumbling off the end into the clear night sky.

He saw the delta shape of the plane silhouetted against the vibrant clouds of the Poseidon Nebula, which filled the skies above Anoosha. A bright orange strobe flared underneath the fuselage as it dwindled away. Then he was hurtling down at terminal velocity toward the jagged snow-capped mountains below.

Finn started screaming.

.

THE STARSHIP ALUMATA was an elegant sculpture of polished silver-white metal, consisting of a cylindrical engineering section two hundred meters long that sprouted sinuous copper-shaded spokes to connect it to a broad life support ring. Its fuselage was inset by the shallow contours of photothermal radiators, glowing an outlandish grenadine as they disposed of excess heat from the internal machinery.

Sitting on a couch in the lounge at the forward end of the ring, where the bulkhead was a curving window of ultrabonded diamond, Makaio-Yalbo, Archon of the Now and Forever Queen of Wynid, stared out at the dramatic vista provided by the Pillar of Zeus nebula in which the starship was immersed. The nearby star, Tinaja, was the only visible light source, and behind it the extravagant blues and greens and purples of the cloud strands swirled in complex ragged patterns that took millennia to dance around each other as they slowly expanded outward from their ancient explosion core.

Visits to the Tinaja system were rare for Makaio-Yalbo. His assignment as one of the queen’s spymasters was to cover the Kelowan system. Yet this meeting had been agreed upon five years ago, after he’d received an unexpected message from Olomo, Archon of the Heresy Dominion, whose brief was similar to his own. It was a heavy investment in time. The trip through the Gates of Heaven that connected Kelowan and Tinaja had taken only a couple of weeks relativistic dilation time on board the Alumata, while nearly two years had elapsed outside. Then after they arrived at Tinaja, they’d taken ten days to fly just over an astronomical unit, 150 million kilometers, from the Gate of Heaven to this gas giant Lagrangian point—a location so remote that no one would ever observe them by accident. Such an in-person meeting between dominion archons was extremely rare; normally their business was conducted by secure encrypted messages at pre-agreed drops. The rarity was the reason Makaio-Yalbo had accepted the invitation without question. The Heresy archon clearly believed it was exceptionally important—in itself a worrying notion.

The Alumata’s life support ring rotation slowly brought the HeSea into view—a sinuous onyx blemish with dainty intergrowths of scarlet filigrees, so dense it could easily be mistaken for a solid object against the nebula’s gentle iridescence. It was an astronomical anomaly Makaio-Yalbo never grew tired of seeing: a unique high-density zone of helium-3, a sea of the gas half a light-year in diameter, the residue of a mini-nova. None of the astronomers of the Celestial dominions in the Centauri Cluster understood the mechanism of such a nova. Yet somehow a helium gas macroplanet, four thousand times the mass of old Jupiter yet too small for fusion ignition, had exploded, flinging out the cloud, which was such a significant resource to the Crown Dominion.

Fleets of large scoopships owned by the five Royal Families gathered up the helium on decade-long flights, bringing it back to Tinaja’s Gate of Heaven, and from there distributed it across the stars of the Crown Dominion. Every civilian and commercial starship in the Centauri Cluster used helium-3 for fusion fuel, as did all the industrial fusion generators powering the habitable worlds of the dominions. Having the HeSea inside their boundary gave the Crown Dominion an economic resource which many dominions envied.

“That’s amazing,” Faraji said. “I see what you mean now.”

Makaio-Yalbo turned stiffly to look at his son on the couch next to him. The boy was seven years old and, like all Imperial Celestials, had almost reached his full height. Already he was over two meters tall, although his torso was still childishly narrow; he wouldn’t begin to broaden out until he was over ten and puberty triggered the final growth phase of his marsupial womb.

“It is something quite admirable, is it not?” Makaio-Yalbo conceded. “For darkness to draw the eye, it must possess its own brand of majesty.”

“Yeah. Has the HeSea always been so dark?”

Makaio-Yalbo did his best not to frown in disapproval at such a graceless question. “Just about. I believe it might have been even darker four thousand years ago when I first saw it. However, nostalgia always aggrandizes reality.”

Faraji grinned happily. “How many bodies have you—I mean, we—had?”

“It is not the quality of the glass that matters, only the wine that it holds.”

“Okay. Got to be about seventy or eighty, though. Am I right?”

“I expect you are.”

The smile grew wider. “And I’m next.”

“Indeed.”

“When? When will I be you? I mean, when do I inherit the mindline?”

Makaio-Yalbo’s hands rose of their own volition to caress the elaborate configurations of bloodstone that were growing from his head in a final flourish that anticipated the body’s approaching death. Under his direction, the calcium-like biotech had spent the last eighteen months expanding to cover most of his skull and cheeks, leaving only his mouth, nose, and eyes unencumbered. From that base a crown of scalloped horns had wound their way out, curling around each other and embellishing the pattern of surface scissures with faint hues of turquoise and gold.

The rest of his body, beneath the formal toga he wore, was equally brocaded by growths of bloodstone. It made moving his arms and legs increasingly difficult as it continued to spread along them in a lacework pattern. Within a few years the progression would finish engulfing his flesh entirely, at which point he would gift his mindline into the Faraji body, becoming Makaio-Faraji. All that he was would continue inside the new host, ensuring athanasia. And the boy’s immature first-level personality element had been right: there were seventy-seven previous host bodies. They lay in the Family Gaziz crypt, where his current host body would join them after the succession was fulfilled, newly interred in its own mausoleum of bloodstone. It would be the eighth such bloodstone entombment, which was surprising. Makaio-Yalbo had always considered the symbiote a fashion fad, but it had lasted far longer than he expected. Still, the queens of the Crown Dominion enjoyed it, so everyone else obediently followed suit.

“Soon,” Makaio-Yalbo said.

“Yes, but . . .”

“Enough. Enjoy the knowledge that, of all your brothers, it is you that I have selected to host me.”

“I am so grateful, father,” Faraji said admiringly.

“Good.” Makaio-Yalbo placed his hand on one of the small connection bulbs at the side of the couch. Information flowed into him through the neural induction pad in the center of his palm. Was it imagination or was the knowledge not as clear as it used to be? Definitely a sign that he’d lived in this body too long. But finding the time to move on was difficult at best in his profession. And this unexpected voyage hadn’t helped.

“I believe his ship is approaching,” Makaio-Yalbo said.

Faraji frowned. “Believe?”

The basic scan of space around the Alumata unfolded within his brain, similar to a sphere of dusky water. A fuzzy point slipped across it, so insignificant many would take it for a glitch.

“How ironic,” Makaio-Yalbo murmured. “A peacock pulling in his feathers.” He looked up at the lounge’s window and pointed at a tattered scarlet curlicue within the glowing nebula.

A small, pale oval appeared against it, exposed now as darkness drained away from its surface. As they watched it decelerate to rendezvous with their own ship, it began to change shape with the ease of a liquid. By the time it finished decelerating and came to rest a kilometer away, it was a long cone with a crown of ten spikes emerging from its base and curving around to run parallel to the main bulk. Makaio-Yalbo found something about its shape intrinsically disturbing—undoubtedly because the tip of each spike was aligned unwaveringly on the Alumata.

“That is really cool,” Faraji announced happily.

“Each dominion has its own areas of excellence.” Even so, he couldn’t help admire the Heresy Dominion starship. Perhaps there was some envy as well; it was nearly twice the length of the Alumata, which spoke to how they valued their archon. But the Heresy lacked traditional warships, which meant individual ships were fitted with powerful defensive systems.

“Our starships are good, though, aren’t they?” Faraji asked.

“Yes. Especially our navy ships.”

“Are we going on board?”

Makaio-Yalbo hesitated. Those spikes . . . “Yes.” He put his hand back on the connection bulb and told the Alumata network to negotiate a docking protocol with the visitor.

“So what do we—” Faraji began.

Makaio-Yalbo held up a hand. “A moment, please. I must prepare myself. The Heresy archon can be challenging.”

“Are you going to use a rider?”

“Yes. It will assist my focus.”

“Honestly, father, I can’t see how it’ll make a difference. You’re like the calmest person in the whole Centauri Cluster.”

“You don’t have to adulate me. You are already part me. You will be me.”

Faraji shrugged.

.

FINN’S SCREAM FAILED after a couple of seconds. It was so cold he could feel his extremities shutting down as the air howled ferociously around him. Not that it mattered. The lack of oxygen was already diluting his thoughts, drawing him mercifully away from the real world. The wind was delivering a street-gang beating to his flesh, sending him tumbling. With his wrists and ankles bound, he couldn’t even attempt to halt the crazy spin. Confusingly, he thought he glimpsed the plane’s orange strobe whipping past again. The plane itself had vanished. Opalescent light played across his freezing skin.

After ten seconds hurtling down through the hostile air, Finn finally stopped his chaotic spinning. The weird orange light shone across him again. He almost didn’t notice it, his body was so numb now. Below him, the rugged sprawl of mountains had grown significantly larger.

A dark shape slid into view beside him, a cylinder barely a meter long, with a small pair of fins at the back, framing a nozzle whose ion jet glowed an intense turquoise as it emitted a high-pitched rumble. An orange strobe flashed on the tip of its pointed nose cone. It matched his speed and held itself half a meter away.

His vocal cords were so cold, all he could manage was to grunt: “Huh?”

“Greetings, passenger,” the cylinder said. “I am a type seven emergency air rescue module. I detected your unscheduled separation from the transport aircraft and launched. Do you require assistance?”

A massive surge of adrenaline banished Finn’s lethargy. “FUCKING YES!”

“Please extend your arms so I can engage my support harness.”

“Can’t,” Finn groaned through gritted teeth. “Arms. Legs. Immobile.” He had no idea how the module’s very basic-sounding Construct Intelligence manager would respond if he said he’d been deliberately restrained.

“I understand,” the CI manager replied. “May I engage the harness around your torso? Warning, there may be discomfort when the parachute deploys if the harness is not in the stable one position.”

“Yes! Engage harness.”

“In addition, ground impact may result in physical damage if you are not upright upon contact.”

The mountains were huge now, their ice-sword pinnacles lethally sharp. Closing at terrifying speed. “Do it!”

The rescue module glided in smoothly and bumped against Finn’s back. It kept pressing against him, pushing them sideways through the air as it sought to maintain contact. Finn saw rather than felt the four black straps of the harness curve around him. They locked together just as he fell level with the top of a mountain.

“Harness engagement confirmed.”

“Chute,” Finn yelled desperately. “Deploy chute!”

The mountain’s bulk was rearing up to swat him, the snow of the crest giving way to a pine forest that covered the lower slope, spreading out to fill the steep valley. “NOW!” The dark mass of the forest resolved into individual trees, their peaks lengthening into lances, eager to impale him.

Finn screamed again. The chute streamed out of the module with a loud, leathery rustling sound, as if a flock of bats were racing for freedom. For an instant he was poised between the nebula and the trees, then the chute billowed outward and his body was wrenched up. He felt and heard ribs crack below the awkwardly placed harness straps.

He yelped in pain as he hit a small upper branch, which knocked the wind out of him. “No!” He ricocheted into another branch, which kicked him off. A tiny fall onto a bigger branch below. Ice-hardened pine needles jabbed savagely into what must have been every square centimeter of skin he possessed. The chute lines tugged hard, and he was abruptly inverted. A wide branch was directly underneath, about to strike his head. Then the chute lines jerked again, sending him bobbing about as they slam-braked his chaotic descent. Snow burst out of the branches it had settled on, cascading around him. Then nothing was moving apart from the gentle swaying motion of his own body.

.

THE ALUMATA FIRED its maneuvering thrusters in small bursts, nudging them closer to the other starship. In his mind, Makaio-Yalbo reviewed the library of riders he’d assembled over his long life—those passive constellations of thoughts and behavioral traits that would adapt him to meet whatever challenge he was facing, becoming exactly who he needed to be.

The one he sought wasn’t used often. Thankfully. Even sensing it stir at his examination caused him to shiver; there were unwelcome associations inherent with its application. Like a slumbering creature greeting the dawn, it rose up to dominate his primary consciousness, bringing a host of concomitant memories—the previous times he’d talked to archons of other dominions, the deals and maneuvers he’d made on behalf of the Crown Dominion, and more importantly his own queen, to advance the Great Game in their favor. This rider—this foreign aspect of him—had conducted several of those negotiations with the icy assurance of a person who could—and would—unleash destruction at a planetary level if a single concept were to be misspoken. A personality from which emotion was banished, replaced with logic and determination alone. It was the only way he could carry the fearsome responsibility.

Just a few years ago his very flesh would have responded appropriately to the emergence of the disdainful persona, subcutaneous protocells shifting his features to project the superiority of his elevated mentality. But now, almost his entire face was hidden beneath bloodstone. And as for posture, the encrustations caging his limbs made every move stiff and measured. Not for the first time, his plaintive wish was that the wretched fad would finally be discarded.

The Alumata’s network showed him the two starships were now close enough to extend their docking tunnels toward each other. He rose from the couch, a single finger beckoning Faraji. The boy got to his feet, his humor darkening as they made their way to the lift that took them up to the starship’s central section.

When the doors slid open, they were in free fall. A few instinctive flicks of his fingers sent Makaio-Yalbo out into the broad, featureless corridor that ran along the axis of the engineering section. He pivoted around a handhold and headed for the airlock. Faraji kept level with him, zipping along as if his body had acquired some kind of avian heritage. The boy’s plain white toga fluttered lazily around him, and Makaio-Yalbo could tell he was making an effort not to smile.

“Remember,” Makaio-Yalbo said, “although the Heresy Dominion is technically our ally, anything you say in the archon’s ship will be heard.”

“So don’t say anything. Got it.”

“No, you will speak politely when and if you are addressed by the Heresy archon, but at all other times you will remain silent. I especially do not wish to be informed of your opinion, and neither does he. You are simply to listen to our conversation; nothing more.”

“Yes, father. Uh, is their archon going to be aggressive?”

“No.” They passed into the airlock chamber. The docking tunnel stretched out ahead, a basic tube three meters in diameter, ribbed with bright lighting strips. Makaio-Yalbo paused at the rim. “We will be perfectly safe—a courtesy we also extend to the Heresy archon. Without the basic tenets of diplomacy, the whole Centauri Cluster would collapse into anarchy. The archon will respect this. After all, the citizens of the Heresy consider themselves superior to us.”

“Why?”

“They believe they have evolved further from the original human baseline than we have.”

“They haven’t!”

“Your loyalty does you credit. Celestial evolution took many forms as we progressed out of the Dawn Times. None of the other dominions have matched our mindline immortality. Therefore, none of them can acquire our wisdom in their woefully short lives. The majority of Heresy don’t even live beyond four or five hundred years. They are true children. Large, powerful, and well armed, but children nonetheless.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Come now.” Makaio-Yalbo launched himself into the docking tunnel. When they passed the halfway point, the lighting was subtly different. Softer, Makaio-Yalbo decided; the white light of the Alumata, which matched Wynid’s primary, had drifted into the yellow spectrum. He didn’t know which of the Heresy star systems it was supposed to portray; the habitat clusters of their dominion were established across many, and the tentacles of its influence grasped still further. The alliance they had with the Wynid Royal House was established and occasionally fruitful, but Makaio-Yalbo was under no illusion it would switch in an instant if there was an advantage to be gained in becoming closer to one of the other four remaining Royal Houses of the Crown Dominion. Just as I would switch ours.

The airlock at the end of the docking tunnel was a broad spherical chamber, with a single multi-segment door opening into a smaller compartment.

“Secure your feet,” Makaio-Yalbo instructed Faraji, gesturing at the gripband.

They both settled, and the door segments closed up. A slight acceleration force pulled at them as the chamber started moving. In less than a minute it had built to a full gravity. The door opened. Olomo, the Heresy archon, was waiting for them. Like the majority of Heresy citizens, he was close to three meters tall thanks to a spindly body and six long, slim limbs—two legs and four arms—that had a strength equal to the biotech muscles dominions favored for their armor suits. The folds of his multilayered robe swirled as he extended an arm from his top set. The hand was close to standard in that it had four fingers and a thumb, though the elongated fingers had three joints apiece. His lower set of arms dangled out of the robe like inflexible ropes with bulbous elbows, and their hands were a simple triple claw arrangement. The anatomy was designed to provide excellent mobility in zero-gee environments, which Makaio-Yalbo never did understand, given that their habitats all had rotational gravity. Also inexplicable in terms of environment was the archon’s head; both sides of the skull were extended cones that came out level with his shoulders. Skin, such as it was, was almost reptilian, and wrapped his body so tightly it could easily be mistaken for an exoskeleton shaded with subtle hues of blue and green.

Makaio-Yalbo extended his own hand, holding it vertical so their neural induction pads could touch to exchange the traditional self-perceptual greeting directly between their minds. He received a brief flash of sensation, as if his body had suddenly dried in a tingling wind, while he effused a soothing warmth. Outside the induction pad, his hand experienced the coolness of Olomo’s fingers. Heresy citizens had a low body temperature, necessary to stop the large brains inside their inflated skulls from overheating.

Olomo’s four eyes blinked simultaneously. “Fire and ice,” he said equably. “A fitting conjunction.”

Makaio-Yalbo inclined his head as much as his bloodstone-shrouded neck would allow. “We represent balance in a discordant universe.”

“Of course. Please.” Olomo gestured with an upper and lower arm, welcoming them into the big hemispherical cabin. It was a garden modeled in ancient Hellenic style, ringed by tall palms, while stone troughs held a multitude of lavish ferns. Big colorful fish slipped through the water in a number of pools. Makaio-Yalbo could hear the distinct sounds of bees somewhere. It made sense; there were enough bright flowers dripping from extensive vine webs to give the air a sweet tang.

Makaio-Yalbo’s rider personality analyzed it all dispassionately, aware how much his usual self would be admiring such an extravagance.

“You are very gracious, agreeing to accept my invitation,” Olomo said as they sat on a bench that was covered in a thick layer of emerald-and-white moss.

“I am privileged to receive such a request. And I confess to curiosity.”

“I apologize for naming such an obscure location, but there are certain individuals I do not wish to notice our partnership.”

“I believe most of my contemporaries amid the Crown Dominion are aware that the Heresy and Wynid regard each other favorably.”

“Yes. However, there are specifics involved here that are best avoided. I wish to emphasize the importance of this particular topic.”

Despite the rider balancing his thoughts, Makaio-Yalbo was suddenly very interested what the meeting was about. For an archon of Olomo’s stature, this was the equivalent of screaming: Help. “If there’s any assistance we can quietly offer the Heresy, I will be more than willing to consider it.”

“There is an issue that would be detrimental to both our dominions which has come to our attention.”

“I’m listening.”

“The Heresy has always been intrigued by the formation of the HeSea. A helium macroplanet is a rare entity, especially in the Centauri Cluster—and thus presumably the rest of the galaxy. That one exists and then somehow goes nova is extraordinary. In fact, unbelievable. Which is why we are pleased you granted our research teams access. For which I once again thank you for your assistance.”

“Not at all. The Crown Dominion shares the Heresy’s interest. It is our long-held belief that the nova was not a natural astronomical event.”

“Quite. Those who fought in the Malakbel Formation War against the Pouli are believed to have developed strangelets. Such a thing could conceivably trigger a gas macroplanet nova. The Heresy would be interested to know if the theory is true, and if there are any strangelets still in existence.”

“As would the Crown Dominion. Did your researchers find evidence of this?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

“However, one of our ships on a long-range flight around the periphery of the Pillar of Zeus did discover evidence of even earlier Elohim activities.”

“Such as?”

“Planetary engineering.”

“The Elohim created every Eden world in the Centauri Cluster,” Makaio-Yalbo said. “There are millions of them. They are the bounty of our civilization, and we are eternally grateful to the Elohim for their gift. Planetary engineering is hardly uncommon.”

“I will be more specific. In order for the Elohim to create multiple habitable planets in the Cluster’s star systems, the planets have to orbit in the life band: a specific zone where the star’s output sustains terrestrial life, neither too hot nor too cold. This was not the case when the Elohim arose and began their great work of the Dawn Era; planets do not naturally align themselves so conveniently for terrestrial biology. So the Elohim used their Archimedes Engines to move our worlds into place so they could terraform them.”

“Are you saying the Elohim are creating a new habitable system in the Poseidon Nebula? I thought that era was well and truly over.”

“Not a new one, no; we believe this particular activity dates back to the Remnant Era. Our research ship observed and analyzed an anomalous pattern within the gas and dust of the Poseidon Nebula. I say pattern, but what it actually found was a line of distortion. A track through the clouds, if you like, caused by a planet-sized object flying through it. This track was faint and broken in many places, but its existence is incontrovertible. The ship followed the course, and that’s where things got interesting.”

“How so?”

“The planet is a gas giant. As is the ancient right of discovery, we named it Dolod. Its track was aligned on JK67b.”

Makaio-Yalbo’s rider permitted him to raise an eyebrow at the rim of his bloodstone. “That’s where the Gomatu Celestials are building their megastructure, a Dyson sphere, is it not?”

“Indeed it is. Which would make sense as a destination for Dolod. They need all the mass they can acquire to construct such an artifact. Perhaps the Elohim agreed to help. Who knows? However, seven thousand years ago, Dolod passed close to one of the brown dwarf stars skirting the Pillar of Zeus, and its Archimedes Engine performed a significant course alteration.”

“What kind of course alteration?” Makaio-Yalbo asked wearily.

“It is now on its way into the Kelowan system. And given Kelowan is the capital of the Crown Dominion, I thought you might like to know.”

.

FINN MADE AN involuntary gurgling sound as his pendulum motion gradually decreased. Despite the freezing air, every working muscle was tensed up, braced for another agonizing blow. Nothing happened for several seconds, and he let out a semi-hysterical guffaw. “Status?” he gasped.

“Situation uncertain,” the rescue module manager replied.

Finn looked up past his feet. The chute lines threaded their tangled way into the canopy of branches above. Relentless flashes of the orange strobe revealed folds of the chute snagged across several branches. He tipped his head back. The ground was about three meters below him: a thin layer of snow lay over flinty soil and scabby tufts of grass. If he fell now, his skull would probably crack open when he hit.

The sight made him hurriedly check the chute again. It seemed to be stuck fast in the tree.

“Are the chute lines extendable? Can you lower me down?”

“Negative. But I can activate my crash beacon.” The CI sounded hopeful.

“No. Do not activate crash beacon.” The last thing he needed was Liliana’s goons flying back to search for him. Maybe they’re already coming? The pilot must have seen that the rescue module had launched.

“Confirmed.”

“Okay. Er . . .” He took another look round. Panic, like the cold, was starting to grip him. “Do you have any manipulator arms?”

“Negative.”

“Can you detach from the chute?”

“Yes. Currently not recommended.”

“What about flying me? Can your ion engine support my weight if you disengage the chute?”

“Negative. My ion drive has a maximum thrust of seven kilograms.”

“Crap.” He looked along his body again. Maybe if the rescue module unlocked three of the harness straps, his center of gravity would shift, swinging him around so his legs would be dangling over the ground. Then when the final strap unlocked, he’d fall feet first. Maybe.

“Do you have a procedure to lower me to the ground from this position?”

“Negative. I have no methodology on file to assist in this situation.”

“Damnit.” Finn paused, desperately trying to think of a solution. Probably because he was hanging upside down, his head seemed to be unnaturally heavy. He could definitely hear his heart thumping. And the insidious cold was penetrating further and further into his body, but at least that was acting as an anesthetic for all the pain.

He had no idea how he was going to get out of this. It was ridiculous. He’d survived being entombed, then getting thrown out of an aircraft. Now the last three meters to the ground would likely kill him—if not from hanging here in the cold for any length of time, then the fall. “Okay, do you carry any sort of cutting implement?”

“Confirmed. I have a ten-centimeter powerblade in my survival pack. And there are two scalpels in the medikit.”

“Good.” If he was on the ground, and the rescue module was released from the chute line, he was sure he could wriggle over to it. Then somehow his fingers could scramble for the blades. Not that he could feel them moving much. And the cold was progressing . . . “Let’s do this.”

“Awaiting instruction.”

“I want you to unlock the harness strap closest to my hips.”

“Please confirm instruction.”

“The top harness strap. Unlock it.”

“Understood. I recommend I activate my crash beacon . . .”

“No. This is a clear order. You’re not—”

“Hello?”

Finn gasped, and every muscle went rigid. “Who’s there?” he croaked.

“Hello? Where are you? Oh.”

He strained, looking about to see a woman in a thick hooded coat peering cautiously around the trunk of a tree fifteen meters away. The orange strobe kept illuminating a heart-shaped face with a fringe of dark hair spilling out from the hood. It also showed her open-mouthed expression of incredulity.

“Please,” he said. “Help.”

“What the hell?”

“Please.”

“How did you . . . No, never mind.” She came around the tree, and Finn caught sight of the carbine she was carrying. It looked primitive, but he didn’t doubt it was effective. She walked over and stared up at him.

“Can you get me down?”

“Yes. I can. But I have a question. Don’t laugh.”

“I promise. Just . . . Please.”

“Okay.” She shouldered the carbine. “Are you human?”

“What?”

“Simple enough: Are you human?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m human. Well, a uranic.”

“Uranic?”

“I have neural interfaces, so I can connect with other uranics or with Celestial tech. They’re not as good as an Imperial Celestial’s, but apart from that I’m one hundred percent human.”

“Okay, that makes as much sense as anything around here.” She craned her neck, looking up at his predicament. “Your hands are tied.”

“And my feet. If you could cut the lokstrips off, I should be able to lower myself.”

“Should I ask why you’re tied up?”

“I . . . I was stupid. Crossed the wrong people. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

She patted the carbine. “Just so we understand each other, I will use this if I have to.”

“You won’t have to. Please.”

“Right.” She took her gloves off and stuffed them in her pockets, then started climbing the tree.

It took her a minute, but she crawled along the branch until she was above him, then hung on to the chute lines to clamber down to him. She produced a sharp blade from a sheath on her belt. “Here goes.”

The knife cut clean through the lokstrip around his feet. Then she hung down and cut his wrists free.

“Rescue module: unlock top harness strap.”

“Confirmed.”

The strap parted. After the second strap was unlocked, Finn started to shift around as he’d predicted. He grabbed at the two dangling straps as the third was unlocked. His body shifted in an ungainly lurch. He wasn’t sure if his hands could hold on, but at least he was the right way up. “Unlock strap four.”

He was right, his hands had no strength. He fell to the ground, yelping like an animal at the pain of landing. The next thing he knew, the woman was kneeling beside him. Her expression turned to real concern as she took in the bloody lacerations and heavy bruising.

“Who did this to you?” she asked.

“My ex.”

“Really? Breakups are pretty rough around here, huh?”

“You have no idea. Rescue module: detach medikit and survival pack.”

The two items thudded to the ground.

“Can you—?” he began.

“Sure. But you need to tell me what to do.”

“I can do that. Uh, I’m Finn.”

“Eleanor. Ellie.”

“Ellie, thank you. You saved my life.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

He told her what to do, how to use the sprays, how to apply the groflesh patches. It was strange that she didn’t seem to be familiar with any of the kit’s contents. The survival pack had a thermosheet. Ellie wrapped him in the tissue-thin silver cloth, and he immediately felt warmer—or at least convinced himself he did. The biomonitor strip she stuck on his left forearm displayed his vitals, and just about every symbol was amber.

“We need to get you back to my camp,” she said. “It’s not far. We’ve got a fire going, and there’s food and water as well.”

Finn was instantly wary. “We? How many of you are camping out here?”

“Just me and my grandfather. Is that a problem?”

It might have been his imagination, but she suddenly seemed equally as mistrustful as he was. “No. Of course not. But . . . it’s going to be hard for me to walk.”

“Yeah.” She gave him a thoughtful look. “Back in a minute.”

He huddled up tight inside the thermosheet and watched her climb the tree again. She went up to the chute and started cutting off long strips.

Ten minutes later his feet were completely wrapped in the chute fabric; there was so much of it they were practically footballs. When he wobbled unsteadily upright, she used the remaining strips like belts to hold the thermosheet tightly around him.

“Let’s go,” she said briskly.

.

“FOR REAL?” Faraji exclaimed in delight. “A gas giant is flying into Kelowan?”

Makaio-Yalbo gave the boy a warning glance but didn’t admonish him for the breach of etiquette. Given the circumstances, it was understandable. Besides, he could tell Olomo had more to say; reading the body language of a Heresy Celestial wasn’t easy, but the smugness was a complete giveaway.

Olomo’s four eyes remained focused on Makaio-Yalbo. “Indeed, young man. Exciting, isn’t it?”

“Yes! But . . .” Faraji faltered. “Why didn’t we know? Why hasn’t the Crown Dominion Navy seen a gas giant flying into the system?”

Olomo turned to the boy and smiled benignly. “Because no one was looking for such a thing. The Poseidon Nebula that surrounds all the stars of your dominion generates a magnificent spectacle across the sky, but it also blocks all long-range visual observation of the universe. And Dolod is both cold and dark. The navy sensors in the Kelowan system that watch for malevolent ships approaching out of interstellar space are designed to look for the million-degree fusion plasma exhausts of any intruder decelerating in from relativistic speed. Not this.”

Makaio-Yalbo cleared his throat. “The Crown Dominion is most grateful to the Heresy for this information.”

“You are welcome. But that’s not the issue here.”

Makaio-Yalbo took a moment—one he knew Olomo would be enjoying. “Then please enlighten me—Oh. You said it was already heading into the Kelowan system. What is Dolod’s current position?”

“It has passed the outer cometary belt. It will achieve closest approach to the star in just over forty years’ time.”

It took Makaio-Yalbo’s rider’s full effort to stop him from swearing in Olomo’s face. “Is it going to hit any of the planets?”

“No.”

“I am relieved. However, none of this makes sense. The Kelowan system was arranged into its present configuration at least twenty thousand years ago. We have two orbital bands of habitable planets, asteroids with a wealth of minerals, gas giants . . . It is complete. There is no need for another gas giant to be added. In truth, I’ve never heard of the Elohim moving gas giants across interstellar space.”

“That’s because there aren’t many gas giants like Dolod. It’s even more rare than a helium macroplanet,” Olomo said.

“What is it?”

“Our ship’s long-range spectroscopy revealed an interesting composition: Dolod is an iron exotic,” Olomo said in triumph.

“Great Asteria!”

“Father?” Faraji said. “What’s an iron exotic?”

“It’s a variety of gas giant,” Makaio-Yalbo told him. “If you put it in an orbit close enough to a star, the dayside gets hot enough to vaporize iron. The nightside, then, is cool enough to make the iron condense and rain.”

“Which would give any dominion a considerable economic asset,” Olomo said. “It is easier and cheaper to collect iron rain in atmospheric harvester vessels than it is to dig out and refine the ore on a solid world.”

“So that’s good for us, right?” Faraji said. “Cheaper iron will help the Crown Dominion economy.”

Makaio-Yalbo and Olomo exchanged a glance.

“The royal house of Wynid does not have any large metal fabrication enterprises in the Kelowan system,” Makaio-Yalbo said. “Our focus since the Accord has been on Gondiar with its agriculture. The estates are cheap to run, thanks to the humans.”

Olomo shook his head slowly. “I never understand why you let them settle in your dominion.”

“They are well suited to basic manual labor, which makes them economically useful. Plus, there are no manufacturing costs like there are for androids.”

“Indeed. But as I understand it, the arrival of an iron exotic will shift the economic nature of the Kelowan system,” Olomo said. “Given the way the queens carved up the Kelowan system after the Imperial Accord was signed, it was Verak’s Grand Families who wound up with enterprises on Anoosha, where the humans mine ores and minerals out of the ground. If anyone is going to undergo a downturn when this new resource eventually comes online, it will be them. And in forty years’ time, Verak’s Queen Carolien will still be sitting upon the throne of the empress. She will be the one who grants the first licenses to harvest the iron rain. No doubt she will be fair, and grant them to any and all of the dominion’s Great Families.”

“Of course she will,” Makaio-Yalbo said, hoping Faraji wouldn’t pick up on Olomo’s less than subtle irony.

“Fortunately, cheaper, more plentiful resources will, as young Faraji says, do nothing but improve the Kelowan system’s economy. Of course, Verak would probably need to increase a different economic asset to compensate for the loss of its Anoosha monopoly. For instance, if there were an opportunity to increase one of its exports.”

The bloodstone prevented any significant facial expression, but Makaio-Yalbo narrowed his eyes. “Much as the Wynid Royal House is aligned with the Heresy, the Verak Royal House is aligned with the Talloch-Te Dominion.”

“Indeed, and the ships of the Talloch-Te consume a considerable amount of helium-3 fuel. One supposes that, as empress, Carolien might be inclined to allow them greater access to the HeSea. The additional revenue would help compensate Verak for the reduced income from Anoosha.”

“Only Crown Dominion ships can scoop the HeSea. The other queens would not sanction any policy change of that magnitude. It would shatter the entire Imperial Accord.”

“Yes, but who would be best placed to provide additional scoopships to Verak’s Great Families? Perhaps a dominion with the largest ship fabrication astroengineering industry within twenty light-years, which of course is the Talloch-Te . . .”

“Very probably. What do you propose, then?”

“Propose? Why nothing, of course. The Heresy are simply providing our friends in the Wynid Royal House with some interesting astronomical data. How you apply it is entirely up to you.”

Makaio-Yalbo took a deep breath. Of course the Heresy aren’t going to get involved in any conflict with the Talloch-Te; they’re just dumping all this on us. “The critical part of Dolod’s flight is at its closest approach to the Kelowan star,” he said thoughtfully. “Which is where the Archimedes Engine will initiate any momentum transfer. That’s when we get to find out if the Elohim plan to bring it into orbit around the star.”

“Yes,” Olomo said. “Yet if there is no momentum transfer, for whatever reason, Dolod would simply fly past the star and leave the Kelowan system behind. Nothing would change.”

“Such a failure to reach orbit would be unfortunate. And none of our queens would condone such an act.”

“No. Of course they wouldn’t.”

.

FINN HAD TO lean against Ellie the whole way to her camp. The anesthetic spray was blocking most of the pain coming from his limbs and ribs, but even so, it was hard work hobbling along beside her.

They must have shambled along for a couple of minutes when he saw a fire flickering up ahead. Then they came out into a broad stretch of rock where no trees grew. It sank away toward the valley below like a natural road before the forest closed in on it again. Two hundred meters away, close to the fire, a narrow delta-winged craft had rammed its nose into a clump of small trees. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see the furrows it had carved out of the snow and gravel as it skidded along.

“Bad landing?”

“Anything you can walk away from . . .” Ellie sounded defensive.

As Finn limped toward the fire, fatigue fuddling his mind, he grew more confused by what was obviously a spaceplane. For a start, the wings were swept upward, and the rear of the fuselage had two tiny rocket nozzles sticking out. A pair of dark, curving windscreens like dead eyes peered out over the crumpled nose section. The whole thing was inexplicably crude. It wasn’t any kind of design he’d ever seen before.

“Grandpa,” Ellie called.

What Finn had taken to be a boulder next to the fire moved, revealing itself to be a man with several blankets pulled tight around his shoulders. He had the thickest beard Finn had ever seen.

“Look what I found,” Ellie said. She sounded bemused.

“Well, well!” the man’s voice boomed. “Who was right?”

“Yes, you’re always right.” She sighed. “This is Finn. His parachute got caught in the trees. His backpack had an orange strobe on it.”

“I saw that! I saw that light come down. She didn’t believe me, Finn.”

Finn made it to the circle of slush surrounding the fire and dropped to his knees with a broken whimper.

“Whoa there,” the man exclaimed. “What is that you’re wearing?”

“He’s not wearing anything, Grandpa,” Ellie chortled.

“Ah, my dear, only for you does a naked man fall out of the sky. Talk about manna from heaven.”

Finn fought to stay conscious as the man came closer. The gray-blue eyes that stared down at him were the most judgmental he’d ever known. The man’s lips curled up in amusement. “Tough day at the office, my boy?”

Finn could only nod. He thought he was about to pitch facedown in the runnels of half-melted snow. Somehow the warmth of the fire was hardly registering. His body felt practically nothing now, and he knew damn well that wasn’t the effect of the anesthetic spray.

“The name’s Josias. Josias Aponi.” Spoken with the expectation that Finn should know it, and indeed be grateful to meet the owner of that name. “Ah, well. I suppose we are a long time from home.” Josias stuck his hand out. Finn didn’t move; couldn’t.

“He needs to rest, Grandpa. We’ve got to get his temperature up.”

“Well, let’s get our poor lost flying lamb closer to the fire. We have some spare clothes in the lander. I’ll go and get them.”

“I have to get w-warm,” Finn stuttered. The cold was so all-consuming his muscles had even stopped trembling. “Can you get me into the lander?”

“Sorry, it’s colder than Pluto in there,” Josias said. “No power. The crash saw to that.”

“Shit.” Finn peered around, alarmed at how his vision seemed to be tunneling. He could barely make out the spaceplane’s fuselage now. In desperation he scanned the ground along the tree line. There was real soil there. “That outcrop,” he said, and raised a hand to point. It took an age; his body wasn’t responding well.

“I’ll put you in a sleeping bag,” Ellie said. “That should help.”

“No, not enough. Get me over there. I can sculpt it.”

She and Josias exchanged a glance. “Sculpt what?”

“The livestone. I told you, I’m uranic.”

“Grandpa, help me get him into a sleeping bag.”

“No,” Finn pleaded. “The livestone. Please. It can warm me. I don’t think I can last much longer.” He glanced at the biomonitor. “I’m going into hypothermic shock.”

“Finn—”

“No, no,” Josias said smoothly. “I want to see this.”

“He’s delusional. The cold’s killing him.”

“We’re strangers here. We don’t know what he can do.”

Finn wanted to thank him, to promise to put on a show—anything. But now the effort just to speak was excessive. The world was shrinking, its dark boundary tightening around him.

“Okay, my boy, here we go.”

Between them they lifted Finn and dragged him over to the smooth outcrop.

“I’m going to get a sleeping bag,” Ellie announced crossly. She hurried off to the little spaceplane.

Finn could see the contact bulb atop the clump of livestone. He reached out, his arm trembling, and brought his hand down on top of it.

The livestone was as strange as always. There was no animal-like awareness, but rather a sense of immutable timeless existence. He and his twin, Otylia, had spent hours in the palace park when they were kids, feeding shape impulses to the livestone paths and walls, to the dismay of the gardeners, who found looping curves and rude-shaped protrusions emerging amid the ornate formal layout. Afterward, their father would shout at them and send them back to reverse it all. If anything, that refined their understanding of the medium, enhancing their ability.

Those frisky twists and bulges sculpted during a misspent youth were irrelevant now. This was going to be his crudest sculpt ever. The livestone wasn’t sentient—nothing close—yet somehow its basic nerve strands resisted the coarse impulses Finn was sending through the connection, as if it knew they would cause its demise.

The Celestials who had created livestone used it for fashioning buildings, supplying them with an almost infinite source of willing silicate structure that required no industry, only patience: the foremost Celestial trait. Tens of thousands of Eden worlds in the Crown Dominion were scattered with raw outcrops, ready for any new town or city to be founded. A blank livestone outcrop was never intended to produce anything quickly. The kernels would take decades to grow into an outcrop that was ready to sculpt. After that, a sculpting architect would impart a design, and the livestone would gradually metamorphose into that shape. If the building had to be larger than the outcrop’s original volume, the livestone would continue to grow, and the architect would provide additional guidance as the years progressed.

Finn’s impulses bullied the livestone’s reticent nerve strands, forcing change regardless of the damage it inflicted on the outcrop. He could grasp the livestone’s shape—a gray shadow filling his mind, his perception tracing out the solid lumps that extended down into the soil, and on from there the roots thrusting out under the trees. But the mountain’s rock made sure the soil wasn’t deep. This outcrop was stunted; it was never destined to be a mansion, or even a simple house.

The livestone emitted sharp snapping sounds as its surface fluctuated in a hurry the original creators had never anticipated.

“Oh my,” Josias purred in delight as he watched the erratic movements.

Finn concentrated on the three-dimensional image he’d drawn in his mind, merging it with the livestone’s existing shape. Just above the ground, a horizontal fissure split open with a loud crack, the two rims pushing away from each other. The split continued deep into the outcrop, and air rushed in.

Ellie returned with the sleeping bag. “What’s happening? How’s he doing this to rock?”

“I’ve no idea. But isn’t it fantastic? The potential here is beyond anything I was expecting.”

The gap Finn created in the outcrop began to inflate. Soil around the livestone was shoved out of the way as its bulk expanded outward.

Finn took his hand off the contact bulb and slithered down the side as it grew steeper. “Inside,” he whispered. “Get me inside.”

Josias hesitated, looking into the horizontal gash in the livestone that had opened. He shone a torch in, revealing perfectly smooth gray-white walls, which opened back into a hemispherical room. “That’s warm,” he said in surprise. “Can you feel that, Ellie? There’s warm air in there.”

“Yeah. I can feel it.”

“Okay, then, let’s get our guest inside.”

Finn was barely aware of them hauling him into the shelter. They opened out the sleeping bag and laid him on it. He inhaled warm air, then consciousness left.

KELOWAN’S CAPITAL CITY was named after the world itself, which in turn carried the star system’s name; and like all capitals of the Crown Dominion, it sat on the planet’s equator. The fabulous mansions and towers of the city occupied a hilly geology whose long valleys hosted winding rivers and deep lakes. Right in the center was Mount Vaxjo, which used to measure four and a half kilometers high. The six founding fleets of the Crown Dominion, who arrived at the start of the Crucible Era more than eleven thousand years earlier, had removed the top five hundred meters to form a sheer plateau, to which they proceeded to anchor the planet’s first orbital tower. Kelowan now had fifteen of the massive structures reaching out to geostationary orbit. Their pinnacles were linked by the georing: a wide gridwork of ultrabonded carbonsteel that wrapped around the planet, providing more stability to the towers and balanced tether points for a multitude of habitats, commercial ports, and microgee industrial stations. The georing also had a classified number of defense bases (rumored to possess antimatter weapons) and fifty dedicated navy docks. As the home of the empress, Kelowan was the most heavily protected planet in the Crown Dominion. Its citizens could see the georing from anywhere on the surface and have complete confidence they were safe.

Helena-Chione, the Now and Forever Queen of the Royal House of the Wynid system, enjoyed the transition from space to atmosphere as her capsule slid down the Vaxjo tower. She stood before the observation deck’s high arched window as they sank through the thermosphere. Faint glints of St. Elmo’s fire flickered over the outer layer of the window’s ultrabonded diamond as the capsule ripped through the tenuous atoms outside.

Above them, the georing was a crisp golden ribbon bisecting the eternal glimmer of the Poseidon Nebula. It was surrounded by a swarm of dazzling pinpoints of light emitted by the ion drives of spaceships. Hundreds of big commercial freighters were heading out to the planets that were strung along the star’s first and second habitation bands: the specific orbits inside the life zone where the twelve Eden worlds orbited. Kelowan and four others occupied first band, 1.2 AUs out from the G3 primary, while the seven planets of the second band were 1.9 AUs out, giving those worlds a more temperate climate. All of them gleamed brightly against the nebula. She could even make out the small crescent of Gondiar, the solid-giant that trailed Kelowan along its orbit.

Looking down, vast stretches of the city were visible to her through jagged gaps between the long clouds that streamed in from a storm away to the east. She could see flashes of light reflected off the still lakes, while pristine white towers rose out of the luxuriant vegetation that thrived in the balmy climate.

As the air thickened and the capsule’s speed slowed, Helena-Chione could see the individual details of the city resolve. She smiled grimly at the Imperial Palace. The massive building was separated from Mount Vaxjo by rolling parkland and Lake Kyzak. At one time it too had been a naked mountain, then Queen Zuberi had chosen Kelowan as her capital, and outcrops of livestone had been sculpted into the pinnacles, producing curving ziggurats that slowly climbed their way up the mountain. Today the vast merged buildings formed terraces that encircled the slopes, with broader shelves cut deeper into the mountain’s bulk to support crystalline domes and elevated towers with buttress wings. There was no sign of the mountain anymore; the palace had engulfed it completely.

Helena-Chione’s head tilted slightly as she frowned at an oval stretch of livestone only ten or so stories high that was extending out from the base of the Imperial Palace, as if the livestone were putting out a tentative pseudopod toward the lake. Her hand rose, and a forefinger extended.

“I don’t remember that section,” she said.

The court datamaster, Lord Stethos-Thierry, stepped forward. At two and a half meters tall he was shorter than his queen, but then at three meters she was the tallest of her court. His scarlet-and-gray robes flared out into a collar that almost touched the bloodstone petals that embellished his skull. The calcium swirls weren’t merely ornamental; they also covered the permanent connection bulb melded with the neural interface patch at the top of his spine. It was the court datamaster’s function to provide the queen with whatever information she required. After all, Helena-Chione hadn’t deigned to connect with a network for more than a thousand years. What would be the point when you had a court to do your every bidding? That she made them attend each minuscule task for her was a simple emphasis of her power.

“It is recent, Majesty,” Lord Stethos-Thierry said. “Empress Luus-Kinza commissioned it twenty years ago. It is used to domicile her beast handlers.”

“What was wrong with their original quarters?”

“They are now being used by a division of Bassa security officials.”

“More security? Luus always was insecure.”

“Indeed, Majesty.”

“You know, I remember the palace mountain when it was Zuberi’s Royal Palace; only the bottom third was livestone in those days. It had some very pretty mekas trees on the summit as I recall; they had such a sweet scent. And the fruit, it was sort of like a fig.”

“I’m very sorry, Majesty, I don’t have access to that information. I can launch a deep archive search.”

Helena-Chione sighed. “It wasn’t a question, datamaster. Do lighten up.”

“Apologies, Majesty.”

The big capsule began to decelerate harder as they reached the end of the mesosphere. A faint whistling sound became audible, and the flickering ion flames died away.

“Perhaps I should replant some mekas in the palace gardens when I’m empress next, to remind people of their heritage.”

“An excellent idea, Majesty.”

Helena-Chione gave up. Even her fellow queens probably didn’t recall the mountain from the time of the Imperial Accord seven thousand years ago, when they formally agreed to a shared rule of the dominion. Of course, more than half the city had been in ruin that day, and Kelowan’s Grand Families had all fled—at least, those that survived the Alliance invasion that had killed Queen Zuberi-Dulcina and every member of her tainted family.

“Funny what memories remain,” she mused. In the epoch since, she’d maintained her mindline through countless congregant daughters, yet her personality remained steadfast. But memories . . . Even an Imperial Celestial brain could only retain about two or three hundred years’ worth. Choosing what to pass on to the next host was always a difficult decision. Long ago she’d decided it was imperative not to lose the founding of the Accord—if nothing else, to simply prevent anything like Zuberi-Dulcina’s horrific neural weapons and deranged evolution dogma from ever rising again. Also always retained was Helena’s knowledge of the other queens, and how little she trusted them. Presumably they held her in equal disregard. Not that the five of them needed trust, just balance.

“Girls,” she beckoned.

The five Princess Congregants accompanying her to the Coronation hurried forward from the rank of courtiers filling the back of the observation deck. They were aged between eleven and fifteen, all of them clearly her daughters from their height and long limbs. Other than sharing the same intense green eyes, however, they had a variety of hair and skin colors. Each sporting quiescent bloodstone buds on their temple, they weren’t old enough to instigate their growth yet. That wouldn’t happen until she replaced them with younger princesses, or (unlikely, given her current body’s age) took one as her mind’s new host.

“Behold the center of our rule.” One by one, she touched her palm induction pad to theirs and conferred a simple linear memory gift of the Kelowan palace—from her earliest diplomatic state visits with Queen Zuberi to the missile-shattered wreckage with smoke pouring out, then its regrowth over the seven millennia since. All of the girls cooed excitedly at the gift and pressed themselves against the carriage window, trying to match current reality with the personal glimpses into a past dating back eleven thousand years. “And what is it, do you think?” Helena-Chione queried.

“Big!” Heba said excitedly, looking around urgently for approval.

At just eleven, she was the youngest of the Princess Congregants, and lacking all the mental self-control the others had been gifted.

Although all of Helena’s daughters had her basic neural personality, bestowed upon spawning, the time between that private ceremony and the final succession allowed them to develop a distinct personality that would be an influence over the decades when Helena remained in that body. Chione, whose body was the current host of Helena’s mindline, had been imposingly stoic. A trait Helena-Chione favored—possibly too often.

“An office for the dullest bureaucrats in the whole Centauri Cluster,” Princess Bennu answered derisively.

“No,” Jomana said evenly. “It’s a symbol, Mother Queen, that’s all. A focus for the empress. If you wiped it off the face of Kelowan, nothing would change. The center would simply shift to wherever the empress sits.”

“Very good, dear,” Helena-Chione said.

Jomana kept her face impassive, but she couldn’t hide her satisfaction from Helena-Chione; after all, she was her.

“If that were to happen, where would the empress sit next?” Heba asked.

“In her dreadnaught flagship at the middle of a very big Imperial navy fleet,” Helena-Chione replied wryly. “With the fleets of the other queens on her flanks. If there is one thing that keeps our Accord, it is that it cannot be challenged. A threat would unite us as nothing else. And the possibility of threat to our rule is what keeps us in agreement, no matter our petty quarrels.”

“I hate them,” Bennu declared.

“Imagine how they feel about us,” Helena-Chione told her princesses sardonically.

The capsule’s deceleration reached maximum as they entered the stratosphere. Although the vista of the land and the sky was comprehensive, the position of the observation deck didn’t allow Helena-Chione to see the orbital tower itself. “Are the others on time?” she asked.

“Yes, Majesty,” Lord Stethos-Therry replied. “Their capsules are keeping to schedule.”

She avoided trying to peer down. It would be pointless, and lack dignity. Carolien-Amaia’s carriage would be on another facet of the tower, which was pentagonal, in honor of the number of queens. Carolien-Amaia would be the first to reach the ground to be greeted by Luus-Kinza, the current empress. Helena-Chione herself would be next, followed by Ramona-Ursule, then finally Inessa-Pierinaierina. It was the same order in which they shared the role of empress.

“To tradition,” she said quietly. “Not to schedule.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

For tradition was the absolute ruler of the Crown Dominion. Tradition was stability. And stability was the basic requirement of every Imperial Celestial. Stability meant their mindlines could endure, allowing an uninterrupted personality continuation: effective immortality.

Helena-Chione turned away from the window. “Come along now, girls,” she said. “We must get ready and look our formal best for the procession.”

The courtiers parted silently, bowing as the queen led her Princess Congregants across the observation deck to her suite of private staterooms. Major Siskala-Ingrid of the Royal Tiger Guard led the way, resplendent in her silver-and-crystal armor, the breastplate embossed with the teal griffin of her Grand House. The curving black glass rectangle of her helmet visor concealed her eyes, but Helena-Chione knew she would be studying every member of the court as she approached them, eternally alert for treachery. Siskala-Ingrid was one of her own daughters, spawned sixty years ago, back when she was Helena-Idunn. Siskala had been a Princess Congregant, then when Helena had chosen another daughter to host herself in, she’d sought a military career.

The officers of the Tiger Guard were always from Helena’s bloodline. Family as well as tradition helps provide the dominion’s grail of stability.

Inside the suite, the Princess Congregants were quickly shooed away into the care of her waiting equerry. Helena-Chione carried on to her resting room. Lord Valdier-Mímir, her father and therefore Master of the Court, was waiting for her beside the double doors. “Lord Gahiji-Calder has requested an audience, ma’am,” he said as she approached. “He’s inside.”

“Of course he is,” Helena-Chione replied stoically. “Thank you, Daddy. Please make sure we’re not disturbed.” She straightened her back, making sure her modest gold-and-turquoise bloodstone ornamentations were level as she entered the room.

Lord Gahiji-Calder waited beside the desk, his gray-and-silver robes of state hanging like badly fitting curtains. Helena-Chione suppressed a smile at that. His bloodstone headdress spur was little more than a cap of black and green curlicues that concealed his spine connection patch. Her chief archon had always paid minimal observance to court decorum; he was one of the very few members of her privy council who could get away with such behavior.

“My Lord, welcome,” she said as she sat behind the desk. “Is this to be a formal audience?”

“I’m afraid so, Majesty.”

“We disembark in twenty minutes. I need to berobe accordingly for my Procession to the Imperial Palace.”

“Yes, Majesty. I do consider the information I bring to be of value. I believe you should hear it before you sit in the Council of the Empress.”

“All right. Let’s make it snappy, please.”

“Your archon, Lord Makaio-Yalbo, has recently returned to the Kelowan system. He sent a diplomatic communiqué as soon as he passed through the Gate of Heaven, which the fleet picked up as we docked at High Vaxjo. We’ve only just decrypted it.”

“Returned? I thought the Kelowan system is his brief.”

“It is his main brief. He does undertake additional minor roles for us on occasion.”

“I see. And on this particular occasion?”

“An unobserved meeting with the Archon Olomo.”

Helena-Chione raised an eyebrow. “The Heresy archon? What did that little rat want?”

Lord Gahiji-Calder cleared his throat. “It would seem, Majesty, there is a rogue gas giant heading for the Kelowan system.”

Helena-Chione listened with growing surprise as Lord Gahiji-Calder explained the situation. “So it was heading for the Gomatu Dominion then changed course? That seems unusual.”

“Very, Majesty. There hasn’t really been planetary engineering on this level since the Remnant Era. But momentum transfers are basic physics, no matter what scale it occurs at. Given that, I’d expect the Archimedes Engine to initiate a small course refinement when Dolod passed the brown dwarf, not a massive change of vector like this. I mean, it makes no sense.”

“Dolod will have a significant impact on Kelowan’s economic structure if our enterprises harvest the iron rain,” Helena-Chione said. “Why would they do that? There simply is no precedent for the Elohim to meddle in dominion economics.”

Lord Gahiji shifted uncomfortably. “Dolod has been on its way to JK67b since the start of the Remnant Era, and the Gomatu megastructure is a phenomenal undertaking. I can almost understand if the Elohim wished to assist that. If they do succeed in building a Dyson sphere, it will be a godlike accomplishment. That is something the Elohim might indulge.”

“Speculation, my Lord.”

“Perhaps. But now there is the course change to consider. It was huge. If the Elohim wanted Kelowan to be Dolod’s ultimate destination, why not fly along a vector to us from the start?”

“You believe Olomo’s theory that the Talloch-Te are behind this, then?”

“I believe somebody other than the Elohim changed its course. Anything more than that is truly speculation.”

“Which makes me ask, can someone other than the Elohim change its course?”

“It would be a difficult undertaking, but Celestials should be capable of such a feat, yes. There are many factors, but for a start you’d need to understand how an Archimedes Engine operates. A dominion with sufficient resources and determination should be able to achieve that.”

“But to what end?”

“Change, Majesty. The one thing the Crown Dominion fights against the most.”

“The Talloch-Te!” she said in tight-lipped disapproval.

“That’s conjecture, Majesty. But I would give that prospect a high probability.”

“The Heresy will know more than they are telling us. But . . . it is the Talloch-Te that the Heresy worry about? They certainly don’t care about our internal politics. Wynid’s alignment with them is practically in name only.”

“Of course.”

“But Olomo is right about the economic consequences. The Verak Grand Families will suffer if Anoosha’s economy declines, forcing Carolien-Amaia into the Goddess knows what action. She’s always too impetuous. I don’t need that kind of uncertainty, because it’ll be my time as empress when it all comes to a head, damnit!”

“The human economy on Anoosha will likely take a downturn, too. It is based around mining, after all. That might become an issue.”

She waved an irritated hand. “No one cares about humans. And anyway, the Anoosha ones are Carolien’s problem.” She gave the chief archon a questioning glance. “Do you think she already knows about this?”

“The Verak Royal Family has an alliance with the Talloch-Te, ma’am. Even I don’t know the full details.”

“This is starting to look like a play in the Talloch-Te’s Great Game to me,” Helena-Chione said. “They’re trying to manipulate their way to access the Helium Sea. That cannot come to pass.”

“You can point that out at the Council of the Empress after Carolien ascends to the throne. The other queens will back you.”

Helena-Chione drummed her fingers on the desk, considering the implications. “No.”

“Majesty?”

“My advantage here is that the other queens do not yet know about Dolod. You and I will have to see if this can be turned to Wynid’s economic gain, although it won’t be long before the navy monitoring satellites spot an incoming gas giant. Once it does become common knowledge, then all of my dear sister queens will maneuver for their own benefit. Besides, we need a united front after her Coronation today. You saw the fleet intelligence report on the Mara Yama?”

“Yes, Majesty. Admiral Naeem-Folmir was quite clear about their movements. The fleet we’re tracking seems to be heading for Capo Frois, although it will pass uncomfortably close to Hoa Quinzu in a few years.”

“And he’ll have quietly briefed the other admirals in our glorious Accord. We’ll all be under pressure from our navies at the Council.”

“The military always has a reason why their budget should be increased.”

“Yes, but this time it might be genuine. The Mara Yama have never ventured close to the Crown Dominion before.”

“Their presence could be a unifying factor for the Accord. It has grown lax of late.”

“Urgh—and while Carolien’s on the throne, too. She’ll never let us forget it.”

“You know how to deal with her, Majesty. You’ve had thousands of years’ experience.”

“Indeed I have.”

.

FINN WAS VAGUELY aware of someone pressing a nozzle into his mouth. His groan of complaint became reflexive sucking, and a fluid that tasted utterly vile slithered into his throat. He half gagged, and his eyelids blinked open. The whole world was blurred.

“Drink it, please, Finn,” a woman’s voice said. “It’ll help.”

He couldn’t avoid swallowing the wretched stuff, and the nozzle remained in his mouth despite his feeble squirming. More blinking, and he could just make out the opening he’d force-sculpted into the livestone outcrop. A human shape slid across it. He tried to remember who it was. She belonged to his recent past, didn’t she?

The stream of fluid finally stopped, and he groaned at the memory that was erupting. The face above him was completely out of focus, but the nebula was as vibrant as it had been the day he met her in Zaita City.

It had been the most pathetic folly, he realized now, to leave his home on Gondiar and travel across the Kelowan system to Anoosha. At the time it had been sticking up an impudent finger of defiance to the suffocating traditionalism of his indecently languid family. The various Jalgori-Tobu marchionesses—of which his mother was the thirteenth to proudly carry that title—had run Santa Rosa, Gondiar’s capital prefecture, for the eight hundred years since its founding: a governance that had become as immutable as the bedrock on which the city sat. Every son and daughter born into the dynasty was destined to enjoy a life of wealth and privilege until the day they died; tradition and duty had formalized their entire existence.

It was a life that Finn had come to hate with a vehemence that tipped him into outright rebellion before he’d even finished adolescence. By the time the investitures to his hereditary duties came along, he knew he could never survive the unceasing monotony of responsibility that came with his meaningless titles: the endless formal parties, the empty ceremonies, and eventually an arranged marriage to a girl from a good uranic family. He despised the very thought of the golden days stretching out ahead of him, where every whim and aristocratic vice was anticipated and obliged, because every single one of those days would be utterly identical.

His first almost-escape had been with Graça, a musician and poet he’d met at university. She was a uranic, too, but her family had ordinary humans in their lineage; her ability wasn’t as strong as his. Besides, their other crime was far worse: they weren’t rich. Finn’s mother would never permit him to marry anyone with such a low pedigree. A girl who laughed at the strictures that shaped his life, who knew how to have fun, who was dedicated to her music, who hated the injustices in the city—injustices that he’d never known about. It was a glorious, passionate affair. She’d taught him how to dance properly and appreciate the wilder music that came out of the poorer districts. They reveled in the zest of the city’s nightlife culture. He got to meet people his own age who were free in a way he’d never grasped. She’d been his rock as they experimented with sprays, which took on a whole new expanse as they shared each other’s psychoactive voyages through neural contact.

But Graça always wanted to go further, immersing herself in achingly soulful music, stronger sprays, more ardent protests against City Hall for dubious causes. He began to worry about her determination, her desire for the thrill of a life on the edge. Vivacity made her feel properly alive, she explained earnestly, but his own ultraconservative outlook still managed to hold him back from the extremes that captivated her. Then one day he arrived at her accommodation block to find the paramedics treating her for a severe reaction to a spray.

After that, his family had come down hard on his meager freedoms. He spent two months incarcerated in an exclusive recovery clinic with other broken adolescents from wealthy, important families. Simply being there was the greatest motivator to get clean and get out.

Back home, the family responded by filling his every waking hour with events and duties. The marchioness even produced a list of nice young girls from good uranic families that would be an acceptable match. The one time he tried to call Graça, just to see if she was okay, her lnc code had been canceled. His overwhelming schedule gave him no time to rebel—a slow torture that ultimately broke him.

He actually left a turd on the middle of the three-hundred-year-old stalloak desk that was the traditional workstation of the Minsterialis of Hafnir—and pushed over the priceless six-hundred-year-old statue of Cardisious, his ancestor and the very first Minsterialis of Hafnir. Priceless presumably because nobody would ever want to buy the stupid thing.

He had smiled triumphantly down at the fragments of the handsome young face he’d shattered before realizing the poor youth looked as utterly bored and resentful as he did. “We’re both free now,” he had told the pieces. Hafnir was a vast sprawl of land on the eastern seaboard, nine hundred kilometers from Santa Rosa, uninhabited and valueless. It was the task and honor of its Minsterialis to maintain the whole estate in good order for future generations, just like the other half dozen pointless obligations Finn had inherited.

With his futile statement made, he transferred a considerable number of watthours from his official account to a Treasury coin and walked out of Zetian Palace.

Two weeks of living among the ordinary citizens of Santa Rosa followed. Two weeks of staring up with renewed longing at the incredible orbital tower that rose from the south side of the city. He watched the bright points of light swarming around the geostationary dock at the far end, envying the big interplanetary cargo vessels taking the produce from Gondiar’s massive estates to the Imperial Celestials on their habitats and exquisite Eden worlds. There were starships, too, accelerating harder than the commercial vessels as they flew off into the glow of the Poseidon Nebula to excitement and opportunity.

“I’m coming with you,” he told them solemnly.

His first step was cultivating the Travelers, the humans who actually owned and flew their own starships, a class of people his family would never even allow to walk through the gates of Zetian Palace, let alone befriend. Finn was almost resentful of them; they lived the life he’d dreamed of while he was incarcerated in the palace for the whole twenty-three years of his life. They flew through the Gates of Heaven to other star systems—not just those in the Crown Dominion, but to dominions across the Centauri Cluster. Living lives as unlimited as the wonders they experienced. They were the ones who traded, who explored Remnant worlds for forbidden relics, who helped humans on dangerous worlds, who late at night after too many drinks and sprays told stories of piracy and political fights, of the human struggle against Celestials in oppressive dominions.

Finn could have bought himself a trip on a starship; he had enough money for that logged in his coin. But it wasn’t a single trip he wanted—not when he could spend a lifetime out there among the stars as a Traveler. He started meeting younger Dynasty members at clubs and parties, and swiftly learned that to be accepted among the Traveler chapters he needed to have experience and respect, had to be acknowledged as someone reliable and ruthless—the man you always asked for when you needed to cover your back. It was the only way to be taken on as crew. There were few enough opportunities for that, and inevitably they were all missions to Remnant worlds, where you had to fight.

His first step along the path was to leave Gondiar, buying a cheap ticket to Anoosha, a planet in Kelowan’s outer habitable band. It was a small world, but dense, its heavy ores giving it a gravity field of 1.15 standard, which was why the empress had allowed human settlement there; the Imperial Celestials with their height didn’t enjoy that extra fifteen percent. As on Gondiar, they ruled by proxy through the human uranic families. Unlike Gondiar, Anoosha’s uranic families ran dynamic commercial enterprises, not bucolic farm estates. Under license from the Celestial Great Families of Verak, they mined and refined their world’s plentiful ores and minerals, then shipped it all offworld to the industries on planets and astroengineering habitats throughout the Kelowan system, who were hungry for cheap raw material. Their exports were the engines of a vibrant economy that animated everyone’s outlook; nobody here dismissed ambition as nouveau and gauche. It was so different from his sleepy homeworld, and Finn relished it.

A month after arriving, he wound up in Zaita, the second most important city on Anoosha after the capital Swiftville, where the orbital tower reached the ground. Zaita’s three-hundred-kilometer-long canal was the major route from the sprawling mines of the northern continent to the orbital tower on the equator, with twenty percent of the planet’s exports passing through. That made Zaita City a huge industrial and financial hub, a town dominated by the enterprises of the largest uranic families.

He rented a cheap apartment in one of the city’s run-down districts and got himself a low-wage job at a local club, as a janitor during the day and a doorman at night. The people he met there had associates who knew people whose friends needed simple foot soldiers for sharp-edged jobs. Finn listened to some offers, which to him sounded like nothing more than delivering basic punishment beatings to associates who’d stepped out of line. He rejected those, unsure he could even do something that cold. Then, after three weeks, the Ozan job came up.

It would require a team of four—people who had some technical knowledge. Finn claimed he had network skills, which he sort of did, thanks to his uranic ability to connect directly to electronics systems via his neural induction pads. After all, the alarm systems he had to access and disable weren’t that complicated. Probably.

The Ozan company had a big compound a hundred klicks outside Zaita. It served as a parking lot and maintenance facility for its fleet of heavy-duty quarry-mining trucks. These behemoths weighed in at more than three hundred tons each, with a load capacity of four hundred fifty tons. Ozan was contracted to move ore around for three of the five local deep pit copper mines. A rival company was keen to get its hands on one or more of those contracts.

Finn met the other members of the team as they were given a briefing by the leader, Iyane Enfoe, who was only a few years older than Finn. The Enfoes were an established Traveler Dynasty on Gondiar, and like Finn, Iyane was a younger son keen to make his name. He’d only flown a couple of interplanetary trips to date, so his goal was to gain some security experience, which he hoped would draw the attention of one of his myriad cousins who actually flew the Dynasty’s starships. To Finn he was a perfect example of how to climb the ladder.

The team didn’t wear armor, at least not the full-body augmented muscle suits that mercenaries and dark ops squads favored. Just some light body shielding and a helmet with enhanced vision. Weapons were a nervejam and a small rapid-fire pistol. “There are no human guards,” Iyane said, “so we don’t need firepower here. Our employers require a quiet mission.”

There were several gates to the compound. They chose the smallest and went through at one o’clock in the morning. There was a security pillar outside with a contact bulb at the base. All networks in the Crown Dominion were required by law to have such a connection point, even on the human-settled worlds. Finn was relieved that the routines he connected with were actually very simple. He took the observation systems offline and ordered the gate to unlock.

Five huge maintenance sheds dominated the compound. As they jogged toward the first one, the team’s night sight visors showed them four trucks inside. Another five were parked on the far side of the compound. According to the inventory Finn accessed, there were a further seven undergoing repairs, just like Iyane had said.

They reached the shed and went inside. If Finn was honest with himself, machines so large that appeared so primitive were something he found mildly intimidating.

“One each,” Iyane said. “Go.”

They split up. Finn went for the second truck, hurrying around a front wheel that was at least four meters high and almost as wide. He stood behind it and unclipped the DK wand from his belt.

They were Remnant Era tech, Iyane had told them, not quite classed as a weapon. The effect field they emitted did something to molecular structures, weakening the bonds as if they were aging them; any physical force they were subjected to afterward would result in stress fractures and collapse.

The wheel’s axle bearing was half a meter in diameter. Finn had to apply the DK to it for eighteen seconds; Iyane had been very specific about that. They wanted the bearing to withstand being driven away from the compound. Then when the truck was laden with hundreds of tons of ore and rock, the stress would be enough to shatter it. There’d be no suspicion that Ozan’s trucks had been sabotaged, and the engineering company that supplied the bearings would argue long and hard that the components were the correct spec, an argument that would be so costly to the losing side it would have to go to court—which could take up to eighteen months.

That part was almost irrelevant, though it would help. The main hit on Ozan would be that its trucks would be out of commission within a couple of days. They wouldn’t be able to fulfill their haulage contract with the mines. Financially, they’d be doomed. Rival companies would be quick to offer replacement contracts to the mines. Ozan’s trucks would probably be put up for sale by the bankruptcy lawyers; those rivals would buy them. It was a corporate battle; no one would get hurt.

The growling made Finn stiffen. He’d taken care of all the network security systems. Iyane hadn’t mentioned anything about Awakened hounds patrolling the compound. It was an Alsatian coming around the tire, its nose snuffling along the ground as it followed Finn’s scent. “Asteria’s arse,” Finn whispered. The beast must have been half his height, and probably twice his weight. And now it was raising its head, jaws opening to turn the bass growl into a snarl.

Finn snatched frantically at the nervejam on his belt, confusing it for the pistol. The Alsatian barked, its legs bending, ready to pounce. The nervejam was unwieldy, or maybe it was his sheer panic that made him fumble. He knew he should have drawn the pistol—a mistake that was about to cost him his life. The animal’s teeth revealed themselves to be diamond-tipped thanks to an oddly enchanting sparkle in his night vision, and he knew they’d bite clean through his body shielding. It was utterly terrifying.

The dog began its pounce as Finn fired the nervejam. It wasn’t aimed properly, of course; he hadn’t bothered to practice. In fact, he’d done no real preparation at all, he realized miserably. He’d approached this mission with the same blasé arrogance as he did everything in life.

The nervejam numbed the dog’s left hind leg, so it jolted off to one side. It didn’t land on Finn. Instead its nose slammed into his arm, and he yelped in shock as the nervejam went skittering away. Stupidity or instinct, Finn never knew, but as they both fell to the ground, he slapped his hand down on top of the Awakened dog’s head, and their neural induction pads made contact.

FREEZE, he ordered, his single command projected with an almost physical strength. The animal’s thoughts were a thunderstorm of fury and hatred. But Finn persevered, those lazy indulgent hours riding the Awakened horses of the family stables giving him the ability to wrestle the Alsatian’s instinct down under control. That’s it, calm; I’m your friend, okay: friend.

There were the remnants of commands woven through its mind. Its master-friend’s wishes that it spend the nights roaming the compound, alert for intruders. And when it did find any, to respond immediately—attack, disable, kill. There would be big rewards, tasty treats, a run through the woodlands, free and happy.

No, no; not tonight. No attacks. Tonight this friend will bring the treats.

The fury ebbed. Finn kept his hand in place as the Awakened animal’s harsh breathing slowed. Slowly they both stood up. The dog’s hind leg was trembling, alight with a tingling like thorns jabbing into flesh.

Soothe, Finn commanded the puzzled brain. Soothe it away. There we go.

The Alsatian emitted a happy, excited whine.

“Good boy,” Finn exclaimed in shaky relief.

“What’s going on?” Iyane demanded over the comms band.

“We have company,” Finn said, keeping his hand firmly on the dog’s head. Banishing well-ingrained routines was difficult. If he broke the contact, the dog’s previous conditioning would resurrect. “Three Awakened Alsatians. I’ve tackled one.”

Slowly, still pouring calm into the beast, he picked up the nervejam. He placed the nozzle gently on the dog’s head in front of his hand, and with a reassuring sentiment flowing through the neural connection, he pulled the trigger, sending the beast into a deep sleep.

Somewhere in the maintenance shed, the rapid thrum of a pistol sounded. The buzz uplifting Finn’s whole body was incredible. He realized he wasn’t scared at all, simply exhilarated. It was like nothing he’d known before.

“I did it,” he murmured. Me, by myself. I didn’t call for help, didn’t cower away. I stood my ground and won. A deep chuckle came from the back of his throat. “I was right,” he declared to the world. “I was born for this.”

Ten days later, Ozan went bankrupt.

After that, offers for more jobs started to arrive through Finn’s lnc. Mostly corporate—some outright criminal heists, some subtler, breaking machines or infrastructure utilities at a critical moment, failures that would act like dominos somewhere out there in Anoosha’s cutthroat corporate ecology, accelerating takeovers and mergers and crashes he knew he’d never get to hear about. It didn’t matter. His all-important reputation as a reliable freelancer was building.

Then, two years after Ozan, he received an urgent call.

“I apologize for the short notice,” Iyane said, “but someone dropped out last minute. I have no idea why, other than he’s clearly an idiot. This job is top-grade and pays accordingly.”

“So I’m the fallback option?”

“Hey, come on. You know I trust you.”

Finn raised his glass to that. They were drinking in a bar on the seventeenth story of a skyscraper in downtown Zaita. To the south the ocean glittered enticingly under Kelowan’s star, an expanse of azure water crowded with big cargo ships—all of them using the docks that lined either side of the Zaita canal for tens of kilometers.

“Who dropped out?” Finn asked. By now he knew a lot of people based in Zaita who did the same kind of work.

“Emre.”

“Never heard of him.”

“I’m surprised.” Iyane grinned. “He’s a uranic like you.”

“I heard that.”

“What?”

“The silent ‘useless’ before uranic.”

“Maybe you did, but Emre is from an Anoosha family. They aren’t as careful with their precious bloodlines as you lot. You’re high quality; we need that. Your neural interface gives you a faster response time when you connect to weapons. That gives you an advantage in difficult situations.”

“Asteria’s arse, I’m not sure I can take this much flattery.”

“So you’re in?”

“What is it?”

“Okay, this is how it rolls. One of our biggest and wealthiest uranic families, the Quinitai, is currently using its dominance in the senate to rewrite aspects of corporate law, along with overhauling the statutes on voting procedure for other uranic representatives. There are some other families who don’t like the way this is headed. The Quinitai need reminding that they share this world with others and should play nice. So you’ll be the good guys, the ones defending the correct balance of uranic governance the way the Imperial Celestials laid it down in the settlement constitution. You’re on the side of righteous justice here.”

Finn frowned. “Don’t you mean us? Us guys? You said you were operational commander for this.”

“Ah no, sorry. I’m also dropping out. Yatras is going to take over as operational commander.”

“Why?”

“I got word through planetcom that my cousin Domelvo has just arrived back on Gondiar. He offered me a security squad leader position on the Keket. I can’t turn it down, Finn, you know that. I’ve got to get my arse over to Swiftville by tomorrow morning, get up the tower, and take a flight out. I can’t turn down an opportunity like this, I just can’t.”

“Yeah. I get it. Congratulations,” Finn answered bitterly. “Hey—”

“Sure. When we get back, I’ll take you on as a squad member. But I can’t do that now. You know how it goes.”

“I know how it goes. Where is the Keket flying to?”

“Utral, then possibly on to Oxanotol after that; depends what trades we make.”

“So you’ll be gone . . . ?”

“Fourteen years. Maybe nineteen or twenty if we do visit Oxanotol.”

“Crap! I’ll be forty-three by the time you get back.”

“No way, man. You’ll get yourself an interstellar flight before then. You know you will. I offered you this gig, didn’t I? You’re bloody good, for a—”

“Useless uranic?”

Iyane grinned and raised his beer. “Your words, not mine. Look, even a couple of short interstellar flights, and the time difference will vanish. That’s what it is to be a Traveler; relativistic flight means you get to visit the future.”

“Other people’s future.”

“Only the ones you leave behind planetside. The ones who count, they’re on the starship with you.”

They touched bottles.

“I’ll miss you,” Finn said. In more ways than one. He’d been sort of counting on Iyane to get him on a Traveler ship.

So instead of a flight among the stars it had been the raid, one of the good guys safeguarding a just society. He was on the team designated to break into the Quinitai family’s corporate headquarters— a fifty-story skyscraper near the center of downtown. When he’d been briefed by Yatras, he’d been surprised by the scale of events planned. As well as the headquarters team, the syndicate of families opposing the Quinitai had hired two submersible assault cruisers that were lurking offshore, equipped with hyperkinetic missiles, and twenty-seven combat squads. It wasn’t just the senior Quinitai family members who were scheduled for elimination, either; the syndicate was taking advantage of the moment to destroy the Quinitai refineries and warehouses, as well as any of their ships lining up to pass through the canal.

“That’s not restoring order, that’s a slaughter,” Finn exclaimed to Liliana, who headed up his team, the evening before the operation. He’d not met her before, but Iyane had assured him she was one of the best. She was only a couple of years older than him, he guessed, and had a lot more operational experience, which was why she was leading the elimination team.

“What were you expecting?” she asked. “If you’re going to aim for the empress, it has to be a guaranteed kill shot.”

“I know, but . . . There’s a lot of people going to get themselves dead. Innocent people.”

“Look, we’re going in at night. The refineries are on a skeleton shift, and the warehouses are basically managed by a Construct Intelligence running a whole bunch of andys anyway. Minimum casualties.”

“I suppose.” Finn gave her a lame grin. He liked Liliana.

Still, he’d been mildly surprised when she suggested they go out for a drink. But they’d spent ten hours that day reviewing the plan and familiarizing themselves with their new equipment, some of which was genuine Remnant Era tech, so he was more than ready for a drink. She’d chosen a bar beside one of the city’s marinas, where an impressive array of yachts was berthed along the wharfs. Overhead, the nebula clouds seemed even more vivid than usual, their opalescent light shimmering off dozens of glossed-to-perfection wooden decks.

“If you’re going to get squeamish on me, I need to know,” she said intently.

“Why, so you can drop me from the op?”

“Yep.”

“You would, too, wouldn’t you?”

“Damn right. To be honest, I don’t think you really understand what tomorrow night is. There’s more to this than the violence. This is politics at its most brutal. It’s got nothing to do with restoring balance for the benefit of society. This is the syndicate’s play for total power. What happens tomorrow decides the future of Zaita City for the next fifty years.”

“Trust me, I know a lot about politics. Though Anoosha is more like naked anarchy.”

“You’re not far wrong there. Look, I’m going to be honest with you. I have you down as a nice guy, so I don’t get why you’re in this business anyway.”

“This is my ticket out.”

“You can buy a ticket offworld.”

“That’s not the ticket I’m interested in. I want out—right out—of my life. I want out of this star system. I want out of the whole fucking Crown Dominion.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Where do you think you’ll go?”

“I don’t know. I guess Lidon will be a good start.”

“It’s a shithole.”

“Maybe. But it’s not here, and that’s what matters to me.”

“So you want me to believe you’ll do anything—kill those ‘innocent’ guards protecting the senior family members—just so you can cozy up to a Traveler chapter?”

“According to you, they’re not innocent.”

“None of us are; not in this game. You put on an armor suit anywhere in the Centauri Cluster, it’s like losing your virginity. There ain’t no way to get it back.”

He raised his margarita glass and took a sip. “I know. I accepted that two years ago on my first op. Don’t drop me. I can do this. I’m the one you can rely on.”

“Really? I’m trying to understand you, Finn. I know you’re not from Zaita City. I’m pretty sure you’re not even an Anoosha native.”

“I’m from Gondiar.”

“Farm boy, huh?”

“Something like that. What about you?”

Liliana smirked. “Lidon.”

“No shit! Have you ever seen a—”

“Earthdragon? You really are a farm boy, aren’t you?”

“Well, have you?”

“Not up close. I’m not suicidal. But my suit uses earthdragon bioware muscle.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Half the tech coming out of Lidon is chunks of bioware stripped out of an earthdragon carcass. They are incredible pieces of Celestial biomechanics. And they don’t die easy.”

“Now I really want to see one!”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Maybe, but at least I have a plan. I want to join a Traveler crew, and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.”

“An idiot with a dream. That’s even worse.”

“It makes me dependable, though. Which is what you need.”

“All right. I hope I don’t regret this.” She drained the remainder of her glass in one gulp. “So? A just in case?”

He gave her a puzzled glance; the way she’d said it was like it meant something.

“Bloody farm boy.” She sighed. “Tonight. We find a hotel and shag each other’s brains out. Just in case—because there’s a good chance it’ll be the last time for both of us. This op is not a fuck with the empress. None of them ever are.”

“Oh. Right. Yes!”

.

LADY SUSAN-ADELE, the keeper of the royal wardrobe, dressed Helena-Chione in her formal Coronation regalia: two layers of protective armor, woven from nanoactive molecular chains, making it thinner than her own skin; then an emerald polonaise robe embroidered with gold and platinum thread that glowed from within, courtesy of embedded nanoparticles, and a train so long it took all five of the princesses to carry it. Her springtime crown, a simple band of antique white-gold leaves, adorned her head. It was the most unassuming article from the Wynid Royal Jewels, but the value came in the gold, which was from Old Earth itself.

She was ready by the time the capsule sank through the shaft running down the center of Mount Vaxjo, taking her to the huge ground-level cavern that was the Queen’s Station. Lord Dinasel, Luus-Kinza’s Master of the Imperial Court, greeted her as she alighted from the capsule. Then the two of them walked between the lines of the honor guard, made up of knights from Luus-Kinza’s Household Company and her own Tiger Guards.

Helena-Chione settled into her Procession landau—a coach so weighed down by gems and precious metals the axles had to be made of ultrabonded steel. It took four big Awakened elephants to pull it. She sat on the top, under an invisible dome of nanofiber, on a couch that was also an egression chair. At the first sign of trouble, it would slam her straight down into the lower deck of the coach, where the armor of her safe chamber was warship-grade.

The elephants lumbered out of the Queen’s Station entrance tunnel, accompanied by columns of Tiger Guards who marched along on both sides. All the Princess Congregants were seated on the couch facing Helena-Chione. Not that they looked at her; they were too busy twisting about, pointing, giggling, and waving. Three kilometers ahead, Carolien-Amaia’s state coach was rolling along, drawn by eight Awakened bears. Helena-Chione stared at it with distaste. She could understand that expanding Verak’s scoopship fleet would benefit their Grand Families, but indebting herself to the Talloch-Te was inexcusable. Does she no longer know how to play the Great Game?

It was fifteen kilometers to the base of the Imperial Palace along the city’s Grand Boulevard, lined with giant white oaks. Beyond the trees, filling the parks, were the capital’s citizens—millions of them. Helena-Chione regarded them impassively, occasionally raising a hand in an imperious wave, acknowledging their existence.

The Coronation was the usual dreary ritual. It was a mystery to Helena-Chione how that was so. The palace enthronement hall was a staggeringly elegant livestone amphitheater, allowing an audience of six thousand Grand Family members to witness the transfer of power—a thousand from each queen’s home system, plus a thousand from the shared fief of Kelowan itself. The political significance was massive. The ceremony was deeply moving and dignified, and the choir perfection. Yet still, here she was again, for the one-hundred-twenty-first time since the Imperial Accord began, utterly bored.

As the service droned on, she started looking around at the vast audience, all of them so deadly intent. Of course they were; not one of these effective immortals wanted anything to go wrong. This was the ultimate foundation stone of their dominion.

But if she didn’t play her part, if she kicked the foundation . . . Why, who knows what might happen?

As she grinned at the sheer foolishness of the notion, she met the gaze of a tall Celestial man up near the back of the amphitheater’s tiered seating. Something about him, not just how attractive and youthful he looked, resonated. He seemed to share her contemptuous amusement at this whole ridiculous ceremony. She knew he was young, that his mindline was a short one, that he was possibly even a first life. Genuine youth in an Imperial Celestial was like an aurora, always visible to those with the experience, instinct honed over millennia. He smiled back at her—more a smirk, really.

Helena-Chione turned her attention back to the throne, where Carolien-Amaia was seating herself.

Carolien doesn’t have to look so smug; it’s so ungracious, and yet every time . . .

She exchanged a knowing glance with Ramona-Ursule, the same glance they always shared when Carolien ascended the throne. Then it was the turn of the queens to kiss the imperial ring, their acknowledgment that Carolien-Amaia was the new empress. As she was due to ascend to the throne next, Helena-Chione was first, and it was just a kiss; they’d thrashed that out seven thousand years ago. Their positions were equal. Nobody was going to take the knee here.

After the acknowledgment from the four queens came Carolien-Amaia’s acceptance proclamation, followed by the last canticle—a stirring ode of glory—and that was it. Helena-Chione tried not to hurry out of the amphitheater into the palace’s Ozreak ballroom, where the ascension’s reception party was held.

“A drink,” Helena-Chione said, clicking her fingers in impatience as her entourage closed around her. This, too, was in danger of becoming tradition. Her exasperation, the impatience, the need to put the enthronement behind her. Not her own, of course.

What is wrong with me?

Lord Valdier-Mímir handed her a glass of chilled sparkling rosé, his expression sympathetic. “Well done, ma’am.”

She looked across the ballroom, where each of the other queens was surrounded by their entourage. Carolien-Amaia was smiling and happy, greeting the Grand Family members who were lining up to offer their congratulations. Helena-Chione saw several Wynid notables in the queue and fought back a frown.

Then she was receiving her own line, exchanging the same small talk with overeager Grand Family members, keen to show off their beautiful new youthful host bodies, proposing enterprise schemes, bidding for royal support of esoteric scientific projects, or requesting commissions in the navy for new life cousins. She couldn’t foist it off on the senior courtiers; patronage was the most valuable commodity in the Crown Dominion. Besides, she’d known most of the Grand Family members for millennia. Then there were the nouveaux, Great Families who had only come to prominence over the last few thousand years. And also . . .

“Count Bekket, Majesty,” Lord Valdier-Mímir announced.

It was the youth from the back of the amphitheater. He was tall, if not quite her height. His auburn hair was long and mildly unkempt, which gave him a slightly wild appearance so different from the other over-manicured Imperial Celestials thronging the ballroom. His small bloodstone adornments provided him an air of rebellion, which she found fascinating. And no second host name.

“Hello,” she said dryly and held out her hand. The touch of his neural induction pad against hers was the briefest of contacts, but the self-perceptual greeting was vivacious. He was spirited and energetic, respectful of the Coronation, and delighted to be introduced.

It was all her prodigious personality could do not to award him a smile. “You’re a new life,” she said.

“I’m afraid so, Majesty.”

“Afraid?”

“My family is relatively minor. It is the first time we have been represented at Coronation.”

“And you’re the family member who received the invitation?”

“Yes.”

“You must have worked hard for it.”

“One does what one can, Majesty.”

“And where are you from?”

“Uixic. We have estates there. Some enterprises, too.”

“Ah, yes. I don’t ever recall visiting.” Which was a polite way of saying the Wynid forces had never attacked that world during the war that ended in the Accord. It wasn’t important enough.

“It would be a great honor were you to ever grace us with your presence, Majesty.”

“And you like it there?”

“Indeed I do. It is full of potential—like all of the worlds the Cluster has been blessed with.”

“You’ve traveled out of our dominion to see these worlds?”

“Alas not yet, Majesty. But one day I will. We live for so long, and it is a vast universe full of wonder. What use is that life if you can’t spend it to experience the infinite?”

“Indeed.” She tipped her head forward slightly, looking down serenely at him. “I have never left the Crown Dominion myself.”

“I meant no offense, Majesty,” he said quickly.

“None taken. I am pleased the dominion provides you with opportunity.”

“I am determined to make the most of it.”

“Good. Now please enjoy the reception.”

As Bekket backed away, Lord Valdier-Mímir started to introduce the next guest.

.

FINN FOUND SUITING up into his armor stressful; it was the point of no return. The team he was with in the safe house were all professionals, already owning the reputation he was striving to achieve. He didn’t want to be the one they thought of as the weak link. For a moment he considered taking a mild spray to calm his nerves—one quick sniff wouldn’t hurt; it’s not like I’d relapse—but in the end decided not to. I’m here because I’m right for the op. I don’t need a spray to prove that.

Yatras had chosen eight people for the elimination team. Each of them had their own customized armor suit, starting with Jaks in his bulky tac-assault model: a collection of brutish black metal segments marred by dozens of surface scars and blast patterns. But it had the strength to carry two shoulder-mounted high-caliber magrail barrels, in case they encountered any unexpectedly tough resistance. On the opposite end of the combat spectrum was Liliana’s lightweight bioware muscle outfit, which made her look like a beefed-up wrestler whose skin had been stripped away. Finn’s own suit was a foammetal actuator skeleton supporting a metalloceramic composite shell. It was a tight fit over his thermal-regulator undersuit, but there were so many power-hungry components, and it was hermetically sealed, that he needed a way of dissipating the heat his body gave off. The armorer he’d bought it from five months earlier had sworn the actuator skeleton was from a Remnant Ghost—a cyborg soldier built eighteen thousand years ago and recovered by Travelers. The outer-shell sections were from another Ghost model, anti-kinetic and energy-strike resistant.

“You’ll be as safe as if you were inside the palace of an Imperial Celestial Queen,” she’d boasted when Finn inspected the suit in her workshop. “They knew how to build proper weapon tech in those days.”

Finn reluctantly agreed. It had cost him nearly all the watthours he’d made on illicit ops at the time, and he’d never regretted spending the money.

With the team suited, they started adding the specialist equipment Yatras was providing. Finn was childishly excited about the ups kit: the four overgrips fitted around his boots and gauntlets. The Remnant tech contained molecular binders, allowing him to stick to just about any solid material. He watched with only mild envy as Yatras gave Jaks a series of specialist grenades for his shoulder-mount guns. But at least they were all issued with night ghost overalls to wear over their armor. The fabric had come from a Remnant Era spaceship’s stealth envelope, so they’d be almost invisible to most visual-spectrum sensors and to radar. All they had to do was avoid standing in front of a light, which would leave them perfectly silhouetted.

“I can do that,” Finn told Liliana.

She didn’t reply. Now that they were on duty, she acted as if last night had never happened—an attitude that he admired, even though it was hard not to take it personally.

The senior Quinitai family members were convening at eight o’clock—a strategy session that was scheduled to last until eleven. Zaita City sunset was just after nine. Insect-sized drones with encrypted comms watched their limousines arrive and drive down into the skyscraper’s underground car park. With their presence confirmed, the entire operation was moved to active status. The team trooped out of the safe house and into a pair of small trucks. They had human drivers; Yatras wasn’t leaving deployment positioning dependent on CI traffic control.

As they were driving through Zaita City, Finn’s suit received a feed from the truck cameras, allowing him to watch the nighttime streets slide past. The canalside district, with its streets of clubs and bars and restaurants, was livening up; every building seemed to be wearing a glowing hologram coat of gaudy images, beckoning the crowds in, promising them the night of their lives.

“The assault cruisers are ready to surface,” Yatras announced over their encrypted comms circuit. “We’ll launch the missiles once you have ingress.”

“Roger that,” Liliana said. “Four minutes from target building.”

Truck cameras showed Finn they were heading into the downtown district. The roads were wider, with tall palm trees planted along the central reservation; buildings were sophisticated shapes, their structural pillars curving gracefully, illuminated in sparkling colors. Scrupulously maintained plazas were devoid of people walking amid their fountains and artistic photon sculptures.

“Final equipment check,” Liliana announced curtly.

“Diagnostic,” Finn told his suit manager.

“Running,” it replied. “Internal system functions nominal. Power cells ninety-seven percent charge.” His helmet display ran detailed graphic streamers down the visual feeds. He didn’t study them in any detail, just made sure there were no amber icons. “All green,” he reported back.

His right hand went instinctively to the YouBuster on his utility belt. Sensors in the gauntlet acknowledged the physical contact, and the suit manager ran the weapon’s data across his display in a ribbon of purple and green symbols. The YouBuster was the reason he’d agreed to take the job when Iyane offered it to him. A fight was a fight. If the opposition came for you in the middle of a raid, weapons active, then so be it, but Finn didn’t think he could perform a straight-up murder. It wasn’t exactly the proudest moral choice in his life, but at least he could justify it to himself.

The YouBuster had to be applied to the back of the head, but not by smashing it down on the target; it wasn’t supposed to inflict physical damage. You either had to sneak up on the target and take them by surprise—not easy given the YouBuster was a disk fifteen centimeters across that looked like a geode surrounded by buzz-saw teeth, with a trigger handle on the back—or the target had to be held down and the YouBuster applied firmly. Also, it had to make direct contact with the target’s head; it didn’t work through an armor suit helmet. Finn knew the elimination op would wind up going with option two; the targets weren’t going to submit to a YouBuster without a severe struggle. He’d already decided he was going to use a nervejam to stun them. The YouBuster would still work when they were unconscious. Its pulse was designed to wipe the target’s brain of every memory and personality trait. The person in the body would be dead, while the body’s biological functions continued unimpeded and the brain cells remained intact. They were still alive, making them a newborn, no matter their age. They could be raised and educated afresh, but they’d never be the original them again.

Finn had even heard creepy stories of a victor bringing up their former enemy’s body as their own child, who loved the new parent as only a child can. That wouldn’t happen tonight, though. As soon as the senior Quinitai members were hit by a YouBuster pulse, the elimination team was evacuating fast. Their family would care for them, bringing them up in the same traditions as always. He could live with that. Maybe. Hopefully Asteria would understand.

“Thirty seconds,” Liliana said. “Releasing deep burn drones.”

The trucks had turned onto Rosemount Avenue, where the Quinitai headquarters stood. A fifty-strong swarm of drones fluttered up off the roof of the trucks: bioware constructs mimicking the regal butterflies that swarmed around the city’s ubiquitous crimson jasmine plants all year round. Transmitters in their antenna began to burn malcode into the skyscraper’s external sensors.

The door on the side of the truck opened. Finn jumped out, a couple of seconds behind Liliana. They crossed the paved plaza quickly, reaching the broad marble-clad pillars at the base of the skyscraper.

“This is where we find out if they stuck to building codes,” Liliana muttered. “Let’s hope the inspectors didn’t log too many bribes.”

Finn looked up. The dark tower stretched away for a giddying distance into the night sky, a dark blank rectangle like a door cutting into the warm radiance of the nebula. “Activate ups,” he told the suit manager. Four bright blue icons blinked up in the display. He reached up with his hands open and slapped his right palm against the marble. It stuck fast, the ups’ small molecular binder locking its structure to the glossy stone surface. The icon flashed green. “Begin auto climb sequence.”

The suit took over, limb actuators moving his legs and arms. He was pleased he didn’t try to fight the actions as his body was moved into a crouch position, legs bending up to stick the ups on the soles of his boots to the wall. Then his arms moved. The ups were switched on and off in sequence as he started his predetermined scamper up the front of the skyscraper. There were always two ups stuck to the façade at any given moment, allowing his other two limbs to move into place, carrying him quickly upward.

His initial worry was that Liliana might have been right, and the skyscraper surface didn’t have the correct tensile strength to support the armor suit. But even when he moved up off the marble base and onto the glass windows, nothing cracked or sagged. Finn just let the suit keep on going. “Block downward view,” he told the suit manager. The helmet’s visual display narrowed. He had confidence in the ancient Remnant artifacts, trusting the suit to get him up to the fiftieth floor. It was only himself he doubted; the vertigo from looking down now would surely turn him to gibbering jelly.

Looking up. Always. The tower shrank away with unnerving speed, giving the impression he was rushing up into the tattered, glowing clouds of the nebula. He had a hundred sixty-five meters to cover. The armor suit powered over the distance in thirty-nine seconds. As it carried Finn up, all his doubts and nerves drained away, replaced again by the incredible buzz. He couldn’t wait for the action to begin. And this mission was a huge deal. It might even be the one that earns me some attention from the Travelers.

All eight suits arrived at the window line of the forty-ninth floor. Finn’s upper arm dispenser released the thermpunch ribbon, which uncoiled over the window next to him, forming a broad circle.

“Everyone ready?” Liliana asked.

The team all acknowledged. Their countdowns synchronized.

Two seconds later, eight sets of thermpunch ribbons detonated, cutting straight through the window. Finn launched himself into the skyscraper before the glass shards had fallen five meters. He powered forward, leg and arm silos pumping out chaff. Electronic warfare pulses hammered against the building’s network, while dazzling pinpoints of light burned at a thousand degrees as they whirled about, filling the air with glare and smoke.

Three paces. He was in a long reception room. Typical corporate excess: but the expensive couches were starting to smolder from the chaff assault, the thick living carpet moss shriveling to crisp black strands. Two more paces, suit muscles on maximum, almost turning his steps into leaps. He was ten meters in now. Twin curving staircases loomed dead ahead, rising up to the next floor, where the senior Quinitai had gathered. Nav graphics designated the left curve, guiding him on. The walls on either side were half bronzed cedar panels, half glass—the fronts of massive aquariums where purple-white light illuminated fabulous coral reefs. Shoals of remarkably colorful fish darted around in shock as they fled from the bullying flare of the chaff.

One of the aquariums shattered, and Finn’s suit manager software flashed up a proximity aggression alert. A wall of water slammed out, streaking across the reception room directly ahead. The aggression alert tracked a grenade shot from behind him. He was moving too fast to stop and ran into the knee-high water. That was okay; it wasn’t a threat. It surged around his legs. Two more aquariums burst apart the instant they were hit by grenades. Instinct told him his team wasn’t launching them. The massive rivers of water surging across the reception room weren’t giving them any advantage—the opposite, actually.

Liliana confirmed it, shouting: “Defenses!”

Aggression graphics flared red across Finn’s helmet display. More grenades were slamming through the air—again coming from behind. The suit manager overrode his sprint, forcing him into a shallow dive. Chaff bursts screamed out of his arm silos to confuse whatever targeting mechanism was releasing the grenades.

Finn hit the surf as it gushed across the floor. Suit sensors tracked the grenades as they vanished into the great waves pouring out of the aquariums. There was a weird detonation.

“Xeefoam alert,” the suit manager declared.

Finn had heard of that. A Remnant Era weapon. When it struck water it expanded, the volume ramping up by some incredible factor. Was it hundreds of times the original volume? And fast.

He could see that for himself. The huge cascades of water had turned snow white as they hurtled upward like tsunamis.

“Xeefoam!” Finn bellowed. “Get out of it.” Together he and the suit scrambled at the slick floor, trying to get traction as it inflated upward and outward with terrifying speed. The suit manager switched the ups back on. Useless. A relentless tide of xeefoam sloshed around his flailing limbs, denying him any kind of grip. Then the main bulk of the xeefoam’s fizzing expansion washed over him. His visual display turned black. Only navigation graphics remained, orientating him, showing him a theoretical route to the nearest doorway . . .

Finn thrashed about, his feet skittering out from under him. Xeefoam made every movement sluggish. The suit’s artificial muscles continued to push, though. He was wading through sludge, but still moving; the inertial guidance sensors showed that. A meter. Half a meter. Then movement became really tough—something he’d always thought impossible in an armor suit. Amber graphics flared up, warning the suit muscles were approaching their stress limits. The xeefoam was starting to solidify.

“No!” Finn cried in panic. “Can I use a grenade?”

“Negative,” suit management replied. “In this environment it will not separate from the suit. Detonation shock will kill you.”

Finn’s legs stopped moving as the xeefoam gripped him like concrete.

“Thermpunch ribbon?” His fingers were still wriggling, instinctively scraping their way to freedom.

“Dispenser hatch unable to open.”

“My powerblade! Activate. Activate now!”

The blade slid out of the forearm sheath, smoothly slicing its way forward through the xeefoam to its full sixty-centimeter length. He couldn’t move his fingers anymore, let alone his arm. Couldn’t use the blade to carve a hole through the solid xeefoam.

“Fuuuuck!”

Graphics loyally reported his breathing was too fast, heart racing. Adrenaline-fueled panic was churning his thoughts to incoherence. He made an effort to calm down. Slow the breathing, come on, the suit supplies your air. You’re okay.

He studied the graphics, building a picture of his situation. That might have been a mistake. The cameras were completely blank. Even the sonic sensors couldn’t pick up any vibration. The foam was damping out everything.

His body was trapped in a half-crouch, arms and legs bent, like a sprint start that had frozen mid upward lunge.

I’m buried alive.

“Crap. How long will the suit keep me alive?”

“This environment is extremely hostile. Heat build-up will advance to critical levels within ninety minutes.”

“Ninety minutes?” he yelped.

“Correct. Xeefoam is an efficient insulation material. Your undersuit channels your body heat into the suit radiators, but they are no longer able to dissipate any heat. I have shut down all systems except the air regenerator and my processor.”

“Shit. Is there any way of getting through the xeefoam?”

“I have no methodology on file.”

“There’s got to be something?”

“I have no methodology on file.”

“What do I do?”

“Unknown.”

“But . . . but . . .”

Finn watched his heart rate digits flick back upward again. He knew he couldn’t move, but he strained himself against the horribly constricting shell of the suit. All that did was hurt.

“LET ME OUT OF HERE!”

“That option is not currently available. Biometrics indicate you may be experiencing psychological stress. I would suggest you take a sedative.”

He desperately wanted to scream, but he knew the only sound that would come out was a pitiful whimper. He wanted to bang his forehead on something solid and hard, to pound his fists in frustration. The undersuit fabric gave him less than a millimeter of movement.

When he checked the time display, only forty-five seconds had elapsed since the xeefoam had engulfed him. “Cancel time display.”

The glowing green figures vanished, leaving precious few symbols left. The darkness seemed to constrict around him like a physical force. Without the display he really would be alone, a corpse that could think. All that was left was a super awareness of his situation, and what it led to.

“No, actually, show time display.” He frowned at the figures when they re-emerged. One minute fifty-three seconds since the xeefoam had detonated.

Finn started to sob. “Who did this to me?” he wailed. “Who? Why?”

“I recommend a sedative,” the suit manager said.

“No,” he gasped. It was the coward’s way out. While there’s life there’s hope. Said no one ever trapped like this. “Wait.” Time elapsed was now two minutes thirty-two seconds. I can’t take another hour and a half of this. I’ll go insane, and then there’ll be no option but to suffer. “Mild,” he said. “A mild sedative, enough to make me drowsy but not fully unconscious.” Maybe, if I daydream, Graça will be there for me.

“Confirmed. Administering sedative.”

“And you’re to tell me when it’s wearing off.”

“Confirmed.”

“And fill the helmet display with every external sensor feed, even if they’re not registering anything.”

“Confirmed. Maximum sensor display.”

The light blobs were skittering and chittering around him in such fabulous patterns, Finn thought he was standing in the middle of neon rain. He smiled at them. They were pleasant. “Music,” he murmured. “The Derochford symphony number eight, Santa Rosa Philharmonic recording.” Even in this ultimate degradation, his roots were unbreakable; he really was a Jalgori-Tobu to the bitter end. Congratulations, mother, you get the last laugh.

“Confirmed.”

The orchestra started playing. Finn exhaled with intoxicated bliss.