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  The Envoy said nothing for a long moment. Black never knew how to interpret his pauses. ‘Great secrecy enshrouds them,’ he said, finally. ‘And there is a terrible thing, a dread that can not be spoken of, that lies at the heart of their pledge.’

  ‘What kind of dread?’ Black leaned forward, eager to hear.

  ‘I do not know. It is very old. And old secrets that have stayed secret are the hardest to unearth, for the very nature of being has closed about them like the fist of life.’ He seized thin air in his own chitinous fist, and squeezed. ‘Indeed, we say such secrets are entwined in the structure of reality itself But there is no doubt that the world the Sentinels have guarded for the last thousand years is the key to this secret.’

  ‘Tell me what you think they guard on Arachnor.’

  The Envoy looked at him. ‘What makes you think they guard anything there? What if they guard us from Arachnor?’

  For the second time that day, Black was startled. Then he nodded curtly. The Envoy was right. Something in his words stirred an idea in the back of Black’s mind, but it was too tenuous and faded before he could grasp it.

  No matter. It would come back. Such stirrings always did. ‘What else did you find?’

  ‘I travelled far, listening to the pulse of the rumours. The Sentinels figure in mythologies, nightmares. Sometimes in such things there is a kernel of truth.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I need more data. The Sentinels are called monsters, demons, saviours and saints. They are linked with the old archetypes of Satan and God. Some believe they are the expression of humanity’s collective guilt, the anima made manifest.’

  ‘This is all you return with?’ Black was disappointed. If he could not find the weakness of the Sentinels, he could not control them. And without controlling them, he could not win.

  His Grand Plan depended on it.

  Only no one had ever bribed the mysterious beings. They were said to be untouchable. Temporalis inviolate. Beyond the touch of the times: neither corruptible nor controllable.

  Black intended to put such myths to the test.

  ‘No.’

  Black blinked. He’d forgotten that he had asked a question.

  ‘It is not all that I return with,’ said the Envoy.

  ‘Well? Spit it out.’

  ‘An odd expression,’ the Envoy said. ‘Spitting for us is a form of attack. To blind. To maim. To win. But for you, it is to reveal, to unburden, to share.’

  ‘Spare me the comparative etymology lesson,’ said Black, irritated. ‘What exactly did you find?’

  ‘The unfindable.’

  Black sighed. It was one of those days. ‘Okay. I’ll play along. And what was the unfindable thing that you found?’

  ‘It is more a rumour, but from a credible source. A dreadnought.’

  Black blinked. Twice. Then sat up slowly.

  The Envoy went on, unaware that Black’s heart was thumping. ‘Floating off the end of Orion’s Belt. Five kilometres long. It is said that it blotted out the background stars like a hole in the fabric of space.’

  Black found his voice. ‘What - what class?’

  The Envoy peered at Black, eyes glittering beneath the blood red cowl he wore. ‘M-class.’

  Black breathed out. ‘A Destroyer.’

  Unbelievable. Preposterous. How could it be? All the dreadnoughts had been mothballed, hidden. That’s why he sought the lost coordinates! But -

  As if reading his mind, the Envoy said, ‘Space is vast. Vaster than humans know. Yet when something wishes to be found, it usually is.’

  THE dead don’t always die. Someone had spoken those words, but Anneke couldn’t remember whom. Nor could she tell if the dream was real or the reality a dream. She was running for her life, pounding across cloud tops shaped like the canopy of a vast forest. Coming to a gap she leapt, trusting her Normanskian muscles to carry her across. But she misjudged, clawed at the far edge of the gap, and fell.

  And fell and fell.

  As she plummeted, she started to burn. Screaming, she lunged awake, breathing heavily, sweating. Anneke Longshadow looked about. She was in a plain room, simply furnished, a soft light creeping from optical fibres embedded throughout the ceiling. Heavy velvet curtains hid the windows.

  She planted her feet firmly on the floor, feeling the texture of the cold stone. Many feet had worn a shallow depression where she had placed hers. Thus anchored, she reviewed her memories. She was in the House of Healing on Stormhagen and she had been one month out of the womb-like drench vats that had saved her life, rebuilding her after the terrible ordeal of Arcadia, the cloud city that had nearly been destroyed. The healing, of course, was more mental than physical.

  I saved a million people, but couldn’t save myself

  She dressed quickly and went down to breakfast, limping slightly. Healer Elinor said the limp was psychosomatic. Not real. A payment for guilt.

  ‘But I don’t feel guilty. I saved those people. Jake said so.’

  ‘You did save them. But the guilt is older than that, I think.’

  Anneke bowed her head. ‘My parents,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Perhaps. Survivors often feel great blame.

  Children more so.’

  ‘I dreamt of them while I was in the vats.’

  ‘Perfectly normal.’

  ‘I thought I’d put all that behind me.’

  ‘You thought wrong.’

  Anneke shut her eyes. ‘I don’t think I have the strength to deal with it again.’

  ‘You are stronger than you think and weaker than you believe. Like us all.’

  ‘Weak? My work is far from done.’

  ‘You misunderstand me, child. Strength and weakness, yin and yang, light and dark. Both are needed. Rest now.’

  She’d closed her eyes, dreamed of her parents again, dreamed of being on the space liner, a bubbly six-year-old with no more concern than what to dress her dolly in that day. But her dolly never did get dressed. Instead, space pirates struck. And in the cacophony of alarms and laser violence, smoke filled the air and she lost sight of her parents, her mother reaching for her, her face torn by terror.

  Anneke never saw them again. Her Uncle Viktus identified the bodies. Then he adopted her. He gave her what he could: a family, of sorts. RIM, with its archaic morality and its lonely vigil as guardian of humanity from itself Special Agent Anneke Longshadow limped down the stone staircase and into the refectory where the smells of breakfast were almost overpowering.

  Healer Elinor was three hundred years old and refused to look young, though like most older people she also refused wrinkles. Anneke watched her bent figure with its distinctive silver grey hair as Elinor dashed back and forth behind the serving counter, then looked up at Anneke with a huge smile. Anneke grabbed a tray and Elinor piled it high with food, so much that Anneke protested.

  ‘I’ll go nova if I eat all this!’

  ‘You need protein, Anneke. Lots of it. This is grade-A stuff from ancient gourmet specs. Now stop quibbling and go stuff your face. That’s an order.’

  Grumbling good-naturedly, Anneke took a seat with others newly emerged from the vats. They were a mixed lot, from different walks of life. There were no other RIM agents there that she knew of, but considering identities and pasts were suppressed, that was no surprise. The Houses of Healing were neutral territory, open to all, friend and enemy alike.

  Anneke sat beside fat and solid Talika, devouring more food than Anneke had been given. Anneke could never understand why people refused slimming therapies. There was something pedantic about it. An agent who had to change his or her appearance frequently could not afford such scruples. Opposite sat the twin brothers, caught in a bomb blast at the same time: Hekor and Tyker. Miraculously, they still looked identical, despite their different injuries. And they both had the same infectious sen
se of humour, whereas Talika scowled a lot.

  ‘I thought they were putting you back in the vats?’ quipped Hekor. His brother, beside him, laughed. This was their ongoing joke. They insisted Anneke wasn’t ‘finished’ yet since this was the Twin Table and she and Talika looked nothing alike.

  ‘Try a scowl,’ Tyker suggested. ‘Let me see.’ Anneke dutifully scowled and he shook his head sadly. ‘Nope. Not nearly good enough. Healer Elinor, this one needs more vat time!’

  ‘You leave Anneke alone,’ Elinor shouted back,

  ‘or I’ll turn you into your brother’s twin sister!’

  Tyker made a face and went back to shovelling in food.

  Anneke sighed. She loved this place, loved the camaraderie of her fellow ‘patients’. Oddly enough, here in the House of Healing, where misery and carnage were put right, she had discovered normality, like the ghost of something she’d known long ago.

  And wanted again.

  More and more lately her thoughts turned to Deema, the slave child she had rescued on Reema’s End in the Cygnus Sector. Deema had quickly become like a little sister to her and Anneke knew whatever else happened she had to protect the child, and that meant building some kind of normality for her. For now, Jake Ferren - her late uncle’s friend - was looking after the girl, but that could not go on indefinitely. Deema was Anneke’s responsibility.

  She needed to think long and hard on the matter.

  Later that day Anneke worked out in the gym with the physiotherapist. It was painful, sweaty, backbreaking work, but she had to rebuild neural pathways, re-establish fully functional nerve links, to become fit again, in more than one sense. Afterwards she plugged her neural jack into the House of Healing’s AI network, allowing it to scan every muscle and major nerve in her body as well as the nanomechanical components floating inside and between her cells.

  Maximus Black was still out there and she had no doubt he had been busy these last six months. She had thwarted him time and again, but in the end he had stayed one step ahead. Kind of what she expected from an evil genius.

  That evening she had two surprises.

  Alone in her room, she established a secure comm link with Enigma, the shadowy group of computer geniuses her Uncle Viktus had put her onto long ago. Based mainly on Lykis Integer, the galactic headquarters of RIM, they included the mysterious Oracle AI with its robot body. Enigma had many members scattered throughout the star systems. All used electron-spin state encryption software designed by Oracle, the most powerful in the galaxy, and impervious to the likes of the mole, aka Maximus Black, aka Nathaniel Brown.

  The head geek at Enigma wasjosh, a ‘boy’ in his late thirties who still looked like he’d just crawled out of adolescence.Josh grinned at her from the screen.

  ‘Wondered when you’d be checking in,’ he said, then called over his shoulder: ‘Hey, guys, it’s Anneke. Back from the dead.’

  There was a chorus of ‘hi’ and ‘hello’ and not a few, ‘Man, she looks good for somebody who just died!’

  Anneke laughed, filling with a lightness she hadn’t known for a while. It made her realise she had several families: RIM, Deema and jake, and now these wired nerds who lived for technology and didn’t know what day it was.

  ‘Guess you want an update, right?’ Anneke nodded.

  Josh lowered his voice. ‘You okay, Anneke? Really?’ She was touched by his concern and nodded, blinking back tears, the easy tears of the invalid. ‘I’m okay, Josh. Just need to get back in the game.’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Jake. I mean, Colonel Ferren.’

  ‘You saw him?’

  Josh nodded. ‘He stopped by. Said we needed to bring you up to speed a-sap.’

  ‘Probably the best medicine for me right now. I’m going stir-crazy in here.’

  ‘You don’t look it. You know what you do look like? Serene. Happy even.’

  Anneke groaned, hiding a grin. ‘Enough of the psych-babble, okay?’

  Josh smiled. ‘Hey, that’s the old Anneke I know and love! Okay. Down to business. The lost coordinates. We cracked the main code. Not too hard, just time-consuming. Needed the equivalent of several picotech supercomputers. So we used Gooper instead.’ A grinning bearded face popped into view and waved. Anneke waved back. ‘Anyhow, the upshot is this: the first set is a key to the second set. Without it, you won’t be able to decipher the second set or even access the “language” it’s in.’

  ‘And the location of this second set?’

  ‘Much harder. It’s a catalytic code, but we’re trying cutting-edge probability theory to crack it. It may contain speech and positional coding.’

  ‘I thought you couldn’t employ probabilities with a catalytic code.’

  ‘You can’t. That’s why we’re not bothering with quantum superpositioning. It’d give us every conceivable probability, but still wouldn’t work. So we’re using a different quantum technique.’

  He paused. Knowing what he expected, she played along. ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Time travel.’

  ‘Beg your pardon?’

  ‘Time travel. On the quantum scale. As you know, particles not only move through objects, and become entangled allowing for synchronicity, they also move through time. In fact, there’s a form of entanglement that specifies for time travel.’

  ‘In plain English?’

  ‘Well, at some point the catalytic code will just appear, right? And you can’t run probability theory because it doesn’t factor in time and although it appears to, since eventually we’d hit the right code key, it doesn’t really. By using quantum time entanglement, we can pick up the solution that eventually cracks the code in the future, and retrieve it here now, in the past. Clear?’

  ‘As mud. But all I really need to know is that you may be on to something. What’s the likelihood that the mole could also use this technique?’

  ‘Hmmn, doubtful. This is really new stuff, stuff Gooper came up with while he was looking at his girlie holozines. You know how they spark ideas in his neocortex and sometimes -’

  Anneke held up a hand. ‘Too much information. I get the picture. So the mole may not be going down this path. In any case, he’d have a lot of balls in the air at the same time. That juggling act might be to our advantage. Okay, keep at it, Josh. And thanks.’

  ‘Any time, Anneke. You take care now.’

  She nodded and cut the connection.

  Weighing up what Josh had said, she went to the kitchen, made herself a Ruvian coffee, and took it back to her room. She instructed the house computer to calljake.

  A holofax from Jake Ferren appeared in the centre of the room, doll-sized, sitting at his plasteel desk. Rows of ancient books on military law, a cavalry sword and flags back-dropped him.

  ‘This message is keyed to your neural signature, Anneke, so no one else can hear me. I’m away at the moment. Sorry I can’t take your call. Something urgent has come up. I’ll be in touch soon. Bye for now.’

  The image dispersed.

  Anneke stared hard at the after-image, her breathing speeding up. Why wasn’t he there? She desperately needed to talk to him.

  She got up and paced, aware she was having a mild panic attack. Elinor said she would experience these for some time. The body memory of immense pain and near death could not be eradicated quickly and often small incidents could set off the ancient ‘fight or flight’ reaction.

  Anneke stopped pacing, closed her eyes, and recited a mantra Elinor had taught her. She felt her body’s stress subside, her heart beat drop back to normal, and her breathing steady.

  A sudden knock on the door sent another dose of adrenaline surging through her. ‘Who is it?’ she stammered, an atypical tremor in her voice.

  ‘Why don’t you open the door and see for yourself?’ She frowned, yanking open the door. J
ake Ferren stared back at her and, beside him, looking anxious, was Deema.

  Anneke burst into tears.

  They had the stone refectory to themselves. While Deema scooped up spoonfuls of Stormhagen ice cream, Jake and Anneke talked.

  ‘You’re looking well.’

  ‘Yeah. I always burst into tears like that.’

  ‘Give it time,’ said Jake, patting her hand. ‘What you went through - well, it must have been hell.’

  After chatting about old times, Anneke broached what had been pressing her for some time. ‘So what’s my position back at RIM?’

  Jake, about to sip his coffee, froze briefly, and then avoided her eyes. ‘Well, it’s good. It’s good.’

  Anneke laughed. ‘In other words, it’s not good. Right?’

  Shamefaced, Jake nodded. ‘Let’s say it’s good and bad.’

  ‘Give me the good first.’

  ‘Well, you’re a hero.’

  ‘And the bad?’

  ‘You’re a dead hero.’ Anneke stared.

  ‘Look, before you go off, let me explain. I had a tough choice to make and you weren’t there and I didn’t know if -’

  ‘That’s wonderful,Jake!’ Her eyes sparkled.

  Jake frowned, like he’d missed something. ‘It is?’

  ‘It’s the best thing possible. This way, Nathaniel thinks I’m dead. That means he’s not looking for me. More importantly, he’s not looking for- Deema.’ She mouthed the last word silently so the child would not hear.

  Deema said, ‘I can lip-read, you know.’

  Anneke snorted and ruffied the girl’s hair. ‘Well, stop eavesdropping on my lips.’

  Jake eyed Anneke oddly. ‘I thought you’d be mad.’

  ‘I think you made the right decision, Jake. For everyone concerned. Please bring me up to date.’

  Jake sighed. ‘Where to begin?’ He pursed his lips and took a deep breath. ‘The whole mole hunt has badly shaken RIM. The place is riven by paranoia and suspicion. But I told you that in my last call. What has changed is that Colonel Rench - you remember him? - is now Major-General Rench and for reasons I can’t explain, he’s been fast-tracked for promotion. Somebody at the highest level is grooming him for big things.’