'Buy you all a drink, Chae said. 'I know how bad this hurts, believe me. I've had smartarse lawyers get scum off on worse charges than this.

'A double of something illegally strong, Macsen said. The others nodded in grudging agreement. They looked at Edeard.

'Sure, he said.

Arminel saluted him with two fingers to his forehead. His smile was gloating.

Edeard quashed his impulse to dive across the court and smash his fist into the man's face. Instead he winked back. 'Be seeing you, he whispered.

The Unisphere had never been a homogenous system, nor was it designed along logical principles, which was quite an irony considering the purely digital medium it dealt with. Instead it had grown and expanded in irregular spurts to accommodate the commercial and civil demands placed on it by a proliferating interstellar civilization. By definition the Unisphere was nothing more than the interface protocols between every planetary cyber-sphere, and they were incredibly diverse. lust about every hardware technology the human race had developed was still in operation across the Greater Commonwealth Worlds, from old fashioned macro-arrays running RI programs, to semi-organic cubes, quantum wire blocks, smartneural webs, and photonic crystals, all the way up to ANA which technically was just another routing junction. The interstellar linkages were equally varied, with the Central Commonwealth Worlds still using their original zero-width wormholes, while the External Worlds used a combination of zero-width and hyperspace modulation. Transdimen-sional channels were becoming more common especially among the latest generation of External Worlds. Starships were also able to link in providing they were in range of a star system's spacewatch network. The massive gulf between technologies and capacities within the Unisphere meant the management software had swollen over the centuries to accommodate every new advance and application. With effectively infinite storage capacity, the upgrades, adaptors, retrocryptors, and interpreters had accumulated like binary onion layers around each node. They had the ability to communicate with every other chunk of hardware to come on line since the end of the twenty-first century; but with such a complex procedure dealing with every interface, the problem of security increased proportionally. It was relatively easy for a specialist e-head to quietly incorporate siphoning and echoclone routines amid centuries' worth of augmentation files. The problem was one which every user got round by using their own encryption. However, in order to decrypt a secure message, the receiver had to be in possession of the appropriate key. Ultra secure keys were never sent via the Unisphere, they were physically exchanged in advance, a common method for financial transactions. A less secure method was for a user's u-shadow to dispatch a key using one route, then call on another. Given the phenomenal number of (randomly designated) routes available within the Unisphere, most people (who even considered it) regarded that as sufficient. It would, after all, require a colossal amount of computing power to monitor every route established to a specific address code for a key, then follow up by intercepting the message.

Of course, that assumption had been made in the early centuries, prior to ANA. For any individual downloaded into ANA, access to that quantity of processing capacity was an everyday occurrence. The Advancer Faction routinely ran a scan of all messages to ANA: Governance to check if any of its own activities had been noticed and reported.

When the Faction's monitor routine detected a starship TD connection established to Wohlen's spacewatch network downloading a key fragment to ANA: Governance's security division an alert was flagged. Over the next two point three seconds, the remaining seven key fragments arrived via routes from seven different planets, and the monitor acknowledged that someone was trying to establish a very secure link. Nothing too out of the ordinary in that, it was the security division after all. However, all eight planets were within twenty-five lightyears of the Advancer Faction's secret manufacturing station. That bumped the alert up to grade one.

Three seconds later, Ilanthe's elevated mentality was observing the secure call itself, placed through the ninth planet, Loznica, seventeen lightyears from the station.

'Yes Troblum? ANA: Governance asked.

'I need to see someone. Someone special.

'I will be happy to facilitate any request in relation to Commonwealth security. Could you please be more specific?

'I work for the Advancer Faction. Make that «worked». I have information, very important information concerning their activities.

'I will be happy to receive your data.

'No. I don't trust you. Not any more. Parts of you are bad. I don't know how far the contamination has spread.

'I can assure you, ANA: Governance retains its integrity, both in structural essence and morally.

'Like you'd say different. I can't even be sure if I'm talking to ANA: Governance.

'Scepticism is healthy providing it does not escalate into paranoia. So given you don't trust me, what can I do for you?

'I'm entitled to be paranoid after what I've seen.

'What have you seen?

'Not you. I'll tell Paula Myo. She's the only person left that I trust. Route this call to her.

'I will ask if she will be willing to listen to you.

Fifteen seconds later, Paula Myo came on line. 'What do you want? she asked.

'There's something you need to know. Something you'll understand.

'Then tell me.

'I need to be certain it's you. Where are you?

'In space.

'Can you get to Sholapur?

'Why would I want to?

'I'll tell you everything I know about their plans for fusion, all the hardware they've built, all the people involved. All that, if you'll just listen to me. You have to listen, you're the only person left who'll deal with it.

'With what?

'Come to Sholapur.

'Very well. I can be there in five days.

'Don't stealth your starship. I'll contact you.

The connection ended.

As ANA and its abilities were to the Unisphere, so there were hierarchal levels within ANA. Discreet levels of ability surreptitiously established by a few of the humans who had founded ANA. Abilities only they could utilize. They couldn't corrupt ANA: Governance, or use the Navy warships for their own ends. That magnitude of intervention would be easily detectable. But there was a backdoor into several of ANA's communication sections, allowing them to watch the watchers without the kind of effort which the Advancers had to make for the same intelligence. And as they were there first, they had also observed the Advancers and other Factions spread their monitors into the Unisphere nodes as their campaigns and reach grew. They knew which messages the Advancers intercepted.

'Ilanthe is going to go apeshit over that kind of betrayal, Gore said.

At least we know Troblum is still alive, Nelson replied.

'Yeah, for the next five seconds.

'Until he gets to Sholapur at the very least. And never ever underestimate Paula.

'I don't. If anyone can collect him in once piece, she can.

'So we might just be able to sit back and relax if Paula does bring back information on what the Advancers are up to. Hardware, Troblum said. That has to be the planet-shifting ftl engine.

'Maybe so, Gore said. 'But he was offering that as a bribe to make sure Paula listened to something else, something big and scary enough to get him really worried. Now what the fuck could that be?

Marius sprinted down the corridor. It wasn't something the universe got to see very often. With his Higher field functions reinforcing his body, the speed was phenomenal. Malmetal doors had to roll aside very quickly or face complete disintegration. His dark toga suit flapped about in the slipstream, for once ruining the eerie gliding effect he always portrayed. Marius didn't care about appearance right now. He was furious.