‘Our IN’s in lockdown, Commander,’ said the ’esque. ‘The Sophos have restricted access.’
‘Mau,’ said Farr.
The huge teranu grabbed the ’esque by the tunic and lifted him off his feet, shaking him.
Farr folded his arms. ‘Unrestrict it.’
The official paled and nodded.
Petalu Mau dropped him to the floor and gave him a shove.
The terrified official hurried forward. Mau followed him with Farr striding on Mau’s heels. He didn’t bother to acknowledge Balbao’s presence, and his soldiers nudged Ra and Balbao along quickly to keep up.
The station was chaotic and at capacity, bodies crowding every standing space. It seemed to Balbao that everyone there was either arguing or pleading with someone else.
Getting to the information node became a nightmare of mini-confrontations between Petalu Mau and Farr’s soldiers, and those in their way. The red robes of the Scolar police punctuated the milling throng, but even they only seemed to be able to contain pockets of the confusion.
Scolar station was close to anarchy. Balbao saw it in the aggressive stares; felt it in the undercurrent of panic. Everyone wanted off, but the planet-transit ships were backlogged, and the sphere itself could only process at a certain speed. Farr must have used extreme coercion to get docking permission.
The IN entrance was guarded by a contingent of four tired station security guards. Farr ordered several his of soldiers to stay with them and the rest to accompany him inside.
Balbao followed Ra and the others into the darkened chamber. The smell of sweat and the whirr of fans assailed his senses, twenty or more data dispersal technicians working on top of each other.
‘Ra?’ Farr’s calmness unnerved Balbao.
Ra pointed to a workstation on the other side of the chamber.
Petalu Mau advanced on the person using it and cleared her with a clout of one large hand. The IN supervisor stormed across but Farr’s soldiers backed him up against the wall at gunpoint. Soon all the technicians and scientists were next to him.
Balbao guessed the same was happening to the guards outside the door.
Ra sat himself at the chosen station and began to generate, as far as Balbao could tell, pseudo-code.
‘Balbao,’ Ra tapped the desktop. ‘Come over here. I need you to breed a Henon map.’
Balbao felt something hard thrust up under his armpit into the soft part of his skin in line with his heart.
‘Now,’ Farr said in his ear.
Balbao pulled away stiffly and threaded through the other workstations to join Ra. His own face, he was sure, matched the angry fearful stares from the techs herded against the exterior wall behind them.
‘What do you want?’ he growled as he sat down.
‘An orbital diagram,’ said Ra.
‘What for? What did you build on Belle-Monde?’
‘A bifurcation device,’ Ra answered absently.
‘That’s not possible.’
Ra took a brief moment to give Balbao a deprecating stare before turning back to his workstation. ‘What did you think we were learning on Belle-Monde, Balbao? How to culture fungi?’
With a tremor in his hands, Balbao reached for the interaction pads. Ra’s sarcasm had jolted him. He’d taken the tyros far too lightly, concerned as he’d been with collecting empirical data about the Entity. But a bifurcation device – a device that can predict futures – surely not! ‘So you’re trying to re-create the same thing? Here?’
‘That’s not possible without the Entity’s assistance. And as you may have noticed, Sole seems to have deserted us,’ Ra replied softly.
‘Then what in Crux’s name are you doing?’
‘I’m searching for a repeller, something to destabilise the dynamic system of the universe.’
Balbao’s frill stiffened to the point of pain. ‘What?’
‘A repeller will disrupt whatever changes Tekton has set in place with the DSD.’
Tekton? Balbao sucked in a deep noisy breath. ‘If this bifurcation device really exists, then a repeller – in theory – risks causing a dysfunction that could have any number of catastrophic results. You would do that simply to thwart your cousin?’
Ra gave a small and wholly unpleasant smile. ‘No more catastrophic than what we currently face. It may even disrupt the final outcome of the invasion.’
‘May? But you don’t know that.’
Ra turned his multi-faceted eyes on Balbao. His thin skin concertinaed into a frown. ‘If you say that any louder, I will kill you myself.’ He slid a thin knife from inside his robe and rested it on his knee.
Balbao felt a surge of uncontrolled fury. He glanced over at Lasper Farr. The commander watched their whispered conversation, as he watched everything, with suspicion. Ra had convinced the Commander that he could somehow deter the Extros’ invasion. That was why Farr had bought them here.
Balbao looked for Petalu Mau, who’d taken up a position near the lab hostages. He wanted to deliver Sammy’s message to him, but something other than the knife on Ra’s knee held him back. Not yet, he thought, not quite yet.
Instead he clenched his teeth, slapped the I-pads on his neck and entered the virtual patterner.
THALES
‘The commander’s here,’ whispered Fariss.
She brushed past Thales and crouched close to Janne and Magdalen. Getting this far had been harder than they’d anticipated; the station was frenzied. They’d travelled in small groups so as not to attract the attention of the red robes, who were scattered among the crowds. Linnea knew the way to the information node and had given precise instructions to the Feohte.
Now they’d reassembled a corridor away from the IN and Fariss had just scouted the last stretch. The news she had to give was the last that Thales expected to hear. He joined their huddle, anxious to know exactly what she’d seen.
‘There’re a bunch of soldiers at the door. Some mercs have got station sec baled up against the wall. I’ve seen the mercs before. For some Crux-damned reason, Commander Lasper Farr’s in the IN.’
Magdalen and Janne stared at her.
‘Commander Farr,’ said Magdalen. ‘Of the—’
‘Stain Wars. Yeah.’ Fariss turned to Thales. ‘Ideas?’
Thales shook his head. He couldn’t imagine what had bought Lasper Farr here at this time. What could be so important that he would risk his ship by coming to Scolar station?
‘We could go through the front door,’ said Janne.
Fariss shook her head. ‘They’ll have more Robes at
Shift Command than anywhere else. It’s this way or none. We’ve got surprise on our side. Don’t imagine the Commander’s expectin’ to see us either.’
‘Will the mercs know you?’ asked Thales.
She thought about it for a moment. ‘Yeah, but that might not be a bad thing. A little reputation, you know …’
Thales’s stomach clenched even tighter. ‘Fariss, please—’
She ignored him and spoke directly to Janne. ‘I’ll get close enough to deal with two or three. When I make that move you need to get down the corridor quick. Take the mercs first. Station sec won’t know what the fuck is going on. My guess is they‘ll run.’
Janne nodded.
Both women were bright in a way that brought a bitter taste to Thales’s mouth, but he set his jaw and swallowed. His idea had brought them here.
Fariss’s large hand descended on his shoulder. ‘You stay behind Janne and the Feohte with Magdalen and Linnea. Got it? Sammy might be inside there – don’t let any of the Feohte shoot her.’
‘Fariss?’ He wanted to thank her for this – it was his world not hers – but the words dried up in his mouth.
She didn’t wait for him to free his tongue. Slipping her weapon into her belt, she sauntered straight out into the IN corridor.
Janne and the Feohte crouched closer to the bend. Thales couldn’t see past them, or hear anything until the first shout. Then suddenly the
Feohte were gone, a dozen women swarming up the passage.
Magdalen put a restraining hand on him. ‘We’ll just give them more to worry about. When the hatch is clear, we go.’
Thales waited in an agony of dread while Linnea crept forward and peered after the Feohte. A moment later she flattened herself back against the wall. Instinctively Thales did the same but Magdalen was slower to react.
The station sec guards bolted past them, one of them colliding with the slight woman, knocking her against the rough conduit. The guard picked himself up and kept running but Magdalen lay still.
Linnea went to her and felt over her head. ‘She’s out.’
‘Can you get her back to Ling-Ma’s ship by yourself?’ asked Thales.
Linnea nodded. ‘Should do. She weighs less than a bag of beans. Now, remember that the common wall is the one behind the node. You cut through the wrong one and you’ll be floating – permanently.’
Thales gave a grim nod. ‘May Villon protect you, Linnea.’
She gave him a strange look. ‘That’s what Mira Fedor said too.’
He watched the brawny woman lift Magdalen into her arms and leave. When she’d gone he walked into the IN passage.
Farris was crouched at the hatch. A mess of tangled bodies lay before her on the floor, throats cut. Most of the dead were Farr’s mercs but not all. Two Feohtes were being shifted aside from the mercs and covered out of respect.
As Thales drew closer he saw the surviving Feohte sheathing curved bloody swords in their belts alongside their soft-projectile guns. He wanted to force his way past them to Fariss’s side and touch her for reassurance, but he wouldn’t get that chance again, not until this was over.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw him. A quick frown creased her blood-dirtied face. ‘Where are they?’
‘Magdalen was knocked out by a station guard. Linnea’s taking her back to Ling-Ma.’
She pressed her lips together, unimpressed. ‘Janne, you got that cutting gear? Could get messy in here, depending on how many Lasper’s got with him. I’m bettin’ on not too many.’
Janne tossed her the sack. ‘Sounds like a good bet.’
BALBAO
Balbao didn’t register the intruders at first. He was deep in a sea of virtual images: Lorenz attractors, Tangent and Rossler maps and Listovich equations, the elegance and mystery of which had transported him far from the fraught IN chamber. Ra had shown him things he’d never dreamed to know, reconstructing a chaotic beauty and symmetry from an ancient humanesque theorem.
We’ve had the key to read our futures all this time, said virtual Balbao. But we’ve not known which way to turn it.
Frustrating and amusing, said virtual Ra.
And now?
And now to perturb the stability of the system.
Virtual Ra flew at the ocean of fractals with fierce active hands. As he worked, their symmetries faltered and began to change, so that they became a chain of staggered links. Ra stabbed at the breaks in their flow, prising them apart. Then he began picking at them like a carrion bird, searching through them for … what?
Aaah. There. Virtual Ra disappeared, funnelling down into the break in the fractal like water draining through a low point.
Virtual Balbao felt the pull as well, the attraction of the break that Ra had manufactured. His perspective began to alter, the diagrammatic vanished and he found his mind-self immersed in a spinning well of images – fleeting, overwhelming rushes of information that Balbao couldn’t possibly process.
Ra was ahead of him diving in and out of information accumulations, ripping and tearing and flinging segments about.
What in Crux is he searching for? Balbao fretted. What is he doing?
That’s when he heard the fracas.
He ripped the pad from his neck and blinked into a nightmare: gunfire and screams as plain-garbed women – insurgents of some kind – swarmed over Farr’s soldiers with scimitars and soft-projectile guns. The soldiers replied with their own weapons.
The coralled technicians dropped to the floor on instinct, spreading out in all directions, and over against the far wall a large figure was crouched over a glowing cutting tool. Another woman, not quite as big but with equal purpose about her, held anyone who might interfere with the cutting at bay with her gun.
‘Stop them!’ Farr screamed at Petalu Mau.
Mau moved across the IN towards the two women.
The armed one cocked her weapon.
‘Stay back!’ she yelled.
‘Petalu Mau. It’s Thales, Bethany’s friend. We have to close the shift sphere; otherwise the Post-Species will annihilate the planet.’ This shrill shout came from the hatchway of the IN where a lean young ’esque stood.
Balbao knew the face, the scar and the fine features, the cultured voice; this ’esque had spoken at the summit meeting on Intel station.
Mau stopped, momentarily confused.
‘Thales Berniere. What in—’ Lasper Farr didn’t bother to finish. He snatched a gun from one of his soldiers and fired across the room. It took the armed woman in the shoulder and she went down.
‘Janne!’ Thales Berniere started into the IN.
At the same time Balbao became aware of Ra. The Godhead had removed his pads and was standing, fists clenched.
Balbao rose automatically. ‘What?’
‘It’s him,’ muttered Ra. ‘He’s the disruption.’
‘Who? What do you mean?’
But Ra moved without answering, lunging towards Thales Berniere.
His movement snapped Balbao from his daze and he made a quick and unalterable decision.
‘Petalu Mau!’ he roared in full Balol battle voice. ‘Sammy says the time is now! THE TIME IS NOW!’ The huge bodyguard jerked his head towards Balbao, who nodded vigourously. ‘I’ve been in the ship’s containment with her.’
As the meaning of the message seeped in, Mau changed direction. He swung at Lasper Farr as the Commander raised his weapon to shoot the woman cutting through the wall. The teranu threw out a powerful jaw-breaking sideswipe that sent Farr down without a sound. He seized the scimitar from Janne’s bleeding hand and hacked into the Commander’s neck. Violent chopping motions splintered his backbone in a gush of blood.
Balbao wrenched his horrified attention back to Ra. The Godhead was advancing on Thales Berniere. Though not much bigger or heavier than Thales, Ra had a burning intensity about him, a feverish unholy energy. He waved a knife with eager but inexpert hands.
Thales stepped behind a workstation and stumbled over a body.
‘We’re in!’ roared the woman with the cutting tools. She kicked in the wall panel, calling the insurgents with her. Mau followed as well.
The knot of technicians lying on the floor scrambled to their feet and ran for the hatch.
Suddenly, only three people were left alive and on their feet in the IN: Thales, Ra and Balbao.
‘Ra!’ bellowed the Balol chief. ‘Stop!’
THALES
Lasper Farr is dead. The notion stunned Thales. As did the sight of the Commander’s savaged body.
‘We’re in!’ shouted Fariss.
Her voice delivered Thales from his shock. He saw the Feohte and Mau follow her through the wall panel, and the comm technicians rush for the hatch.
Then he was alone with the dead and two ’esques he’d never seen before: a Balol who stood behind his workstation as if rooted there and a Lostolian with strange multi-faceted eyes. The latter advanced on Thales with a knife in his hand.
Thales backed towards the direction the technicians had fled, but the Lostolian cut him off from the hatch so he crouched down and looked around for something to defend himself. He spotted a gun partially covered by a body.
‘Ra!’ bellowed the Balol. ‘Stop!’
Ra? The name meant something, but fear prevented him from being able to remember.
‘He’s the disruption. His death will be the repeller,’ hissed the Lostolian. He moved closer as he spoke
, stopping just short of stabbing distance from Thales.
‘Him. Why is he important?’ said the Balol.
‘He’s not. It’s his connection to others. How his death will affect their actions.’
‘You’re being insane, Ra. You can’t possibly believe—’ The Balol broke off as Thales grabbed the gun and raised it.
With one tiny movement of his thumb, Thales knew he could end the Lostolian’s life, but he baulked.
Thoughts cartwheeled through his mind, and emotions deluged his body. He felt as if the whole point of his existence hinged on what he did right now. He’d left Scolar as a naive young man who, for a time, deserted his Jainist principles. But now he’d returned, knowing much more of himself. He wished Villon was here to tell.
Then, just as quickly as he’d become paralysed and confused, the right choice became clear. He would not kill anyone. Not even to defend his life.
He threw the gun away and stared at Ra.
The Lostolian, surprised by his action, hesitated.
And as he did, the Balol made a choice of his own. He pushed aside the workstation and leapt forward. With nearly as much force as Petalu Mau had used on Lasper Farr, the Balol punched Ra in the back of the head.
Ra fell.
Thales watched the Balol dive forward, teeth bared and face contorted. Heaving his body at the Lostolian, the Balol impaled Ra with the spikes of his stiffened frill.
Ra made one short gurgling sound of pain then fell still.
Immediately, the Balol withdrew his frill and wiped the spikes clean on Ra’s robe. When he stood up again, his teeth were still bared but his face was composed.
‘He wanted to change the course of events,’ the Balol told him, as if Thales should understand.
But Thales shook his head in bewilderment.
The Balol gave a rough laugh. ‘My name is Balbao, formerly Chief Astronomein of Belle-Monde. That was Ra of Lostol, one of the tyros. The rest of it will take a while in the telling.’
‘Thales!’
Farriss was back, covered in blood. ‘It’s done!’ Her eyes narrowed and she looked between him and the Balol.
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