'Let's go, he told the smartcore.

Compensator generators maintained a level gravity inside the cabin as the Artful Dodger rose on regrav. At fifty kilometres altitude, the limit of regrav, the smartcore switched to ingrav, and the starship continued to accelerate away from the planet. The Delivery Man began to experiment with the internal layout, expanding walls and furniture out of the cabin bulkheads. The dark lines flowed and bloomed into a great variety of combinations, allowing up to six passengers to have tiny independent sleeping quarters which included a bathroom formation; but for all its malleability, the cabin was basically variations on a lounge. If you were travelling with anyone, he decided, let along five others, you'd need to be very good friends.

A thousand kilometres above the spaceport, the Artful Dodger went ftl, vanishing inside a quantum field interstice with a photonic implosion that pulled in all the stray electromagnetic radiation within a kilometre of its fuselage. There were no differences perceptible to ordinary human senses, he might have been in an underground chamber for all he knew, and the gravity remained perfectly stable. Sensors provided him with a simplified image of their course as it related to large masses back in spacetime, plotting stars and planets by the way their quantum signature affected the intersecting fields through which they were flying. Their initial speed was a smooth fifteen lightyears per hour, near the limit for a hyperdrive, which the sophisticated Lytham planetary spacewatch network could track out to a couple of lightyears.

The Delivery Man waited until they were three lightyears beyond the network, and told the smartcore to accelerate again. The Artful Dodgers ultradrive pushed them up to a phenomenal fifty-five lightyears per hour. It was enough to make the Delivery man flinch. He had only been on an ultradrive ship twice before; there weren't many of them; ANA had never released the technology to the Central Worlds. Exactly how the Conservative Faction had got hold of it was something he studiously avoided asking.

Two hours later he reduced speed back down to fifteen lightyears an hour, and allowed the Ellezelin traffic network to pick up their hyperspacial approach. He used a TD channel to the planetary datasphere and requested landing permission for Riasi spaceport.

Ellezelin's original capital was situated on the northern coast of Sinkang, with the Camoa River running through it. He looked down on the city as the Artful Dodger sank down towards the main spaceport. It had been laid out in a spiderweb grid, with the planetary Parliament at the heart. The building was still there, a grandiose structure of towers and buttresses made from an attractive mixture of ancient and modern materials. But the planet's government was now centred in Makkathran2. The senior bureaucrats and their departments had moved with it, leading a migration of commerce and industry. Only the transport sector remained strong in Riasi now. The wormholes which linked the planets of the Ellezelin Free Trade Zone together were all located here, incorporated into the spaceport, making it the most important commercial hub in the sector.

The Artful Dodger landed on a pad little different to the one it had departed barely three hours before. The Delivery Man paid a parking fee for a month in advance with an untraceable credit coin, and declined an umbilical connection. His u-shadow called a taxi capsule to the pad. While he was waiting for it, the Conservative Faction called him.

'Marius has been seen on Ellezelin.

It was the second time that day the Delivery Man flinched. 'I suppose that was inevitable. Do you know why he's here?

'To support the Cleric Conservator. But as to the exact nature of that support, we remain uncertain.

'I see. Is he here in the spaceport? he asked reluctantly. He wasn't a front line agent, but his biononics had very advanced field functions in case he ever stumbled into an aggressive situation. They ought to be a match for anything Marius could produce. Although any aggression would be most unusual. Faction agents simply didn't settle their scores physically. It wasn't done.

'We don't believe so. He visited the Cleric Conservator within an hour of the election. After that he dropped out of sight. We are telling you simply so that you can be careful. It would not do for the Accelerators to know our business any more than they want us to know theirs. Leave as quickly as possible.

'Understood.

The taxi capsule took him over to the spaceport's massive passenger terminal. He checked in for the next United Commonwealth Starlines flight back to Akimiski, the closest Central World. All the time he waited in the departure lounge overlooking the huge central concourse he kept his scan functions running, checking to see if Marius was in the terminal. When the passengers boarded forty minutes later, there has been no sign of him, nor any other Higher agent.

The Delivery Man settled into his first class compartment on the passenger ship with a considerable sense of relief. It was a hyperdrive ship, which would take fifteen hours to get to Akimiski. From there he'd make a quick trip to Oronsay to maintain his cover. With any luck he'd be back on Earth in less than two days. It would be the weekend, and they'd be able to take the girls to the southern sanctuary park in New Zealand. They'd enjoy that.

The Rakas bar occupied the whole third floor of a round tower in Makkathran2's Abad district. Inevitably, the same building back in Makkathran also had a bar on the third floor. From what he'd seen in Inigo's dreams, Aaron suspected the furniture here was better, as was the lighting, not to mention the lack of general dirt which seemed so pervasive within the original city. It was used by a lot of visiting faithful who were perhaps a little disappointed by how small the nucleus of their movement actually was in comparison to the prodigious metropolises of the Greater Commonwealth. There was also a much better selection of drinks than the archetype boasted.

Aaron presumed that was the reason why ex-Councillor the Honourable Corrie-Lyn kept returning here. This was the third night he'd sat at a small corner table and watched her up at the counter knocking back an impressive amount of alcohol. She wasn't a large woman, though at first glance her slender figure made her seem taller than she was. Ivory skin was stippled by a mass of freckles whose highest density was in a broad swathe across her eyes. Her hair was the darkest red he'd ever seen. Depending on how the light caught her, it varied from shiny ebony to gold-flecked maroon. It was cut short which, given how thick it was, made it curl heavily; the way it framed her dainty features made her appear like a particularly diabolic teenager. In reality she was three hundred and seventy. He knew she wasn't Higher, so she must have a superb Advancer metabolism; which presumably was how she could drink any badboy under the table.

For the fourth time that evening, one of the faithful but not terribly devout went over to try his luck. After all, the good citizens of Makkathran had very healthy active sex lives. Inigo showed that. The group of blokes he was with, sitting at the big window seat, watched with sly grins and minimal sniggering as their friend claimed the empty stool beside her. Corrie-Lyn wasn't wearing her Cleric robes, otherwise he would never have dared to go within ten metres. A simple dark purple dress, slit under each arm to reveal alluring amounts of skin wound up the lad's courage. She listened without comment to his opening lines, nodded reasonably when he offered to buy a drink, and beckoned the barkeeper over.

Aaron wished he could go over and draw the lad away. It was painful to watch, he'd seen this exact scene play out many times over the last few nights. The barkeeper came over with two heavy shot glasses and a frosted bottle of golden Adlier 88Vodka. Brewed on Vitchan, it bore no real relation to original Earth vodka, except for the kick. This was refined from a seasonal vine, Adlier, producing a liqueur that was eighty per cent alcohol and eight per cent tricetholyn, a powerful narcotic. The barkeeper filled both glasses and left the bottle.