He used the tap-screen to get a better idea of the relevant galactic topography. He called up a usefully scaled hologram and flicked between the local civilisational state of play as it had been understood until today — effectively two and a half centuries out of date — and the updated version that the AI signal had brought with it, which was only seventeen years old. As he did so, whole vast volumes of stars changed from one false colour to another, indicating where this Cluster Epiphany Five Disconnect hegemony had spread its influence.

“ — Resist them with all our might!” Fleet Admiral Brimiaice roared.

“I’m sure you will,” the hologram said. “However, all the indications are that even if you devoted yourself to all-out, full-time emergency war-craft construction and a full war economy, you will still be outnumbered several times over.”

Fleet Admiral Brimiaice then blustered.

Fassin had a question of his own, but it was a question for inside his own head, not one that he wished to ask the AI. It was a question he had the unpleasant feeling would at some point shortly be answered, though he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t. It was: What the hell does all this have to do with me?

“May I continue?” the image said after the next few contributions showed unmistakable signs of heading in the direction of becoming not so much questions as attestations of innocence, pledges of heroic determination, position-protection statements and attacks on other functionaries present within a wide spectrum of subtlety, biased towards the low end. The hologram gave a small, thin, regretful smile. “I realise that all the foregoing has come as something of a shock, for all of you. However, it is, I am afraid to say, in effect just a preamble to the most significant part of this communication.”

The image of Admiral Quile paused to let that sink in, too. Then the hologram said, “Now then. There is a gentleman amongst you who has no doubt been wondering for some little time what exactly he is doing here.”

Oh, shit, Fassin had time to think, then the image looked at him. Was it really looking at him now? Could everybody see the hologram looking at him? Heads, or other parts as appropriate, turned in his direction. That probably meant yes.

“Seer Fassin Taak, would you make yourself known to the others?”

Fassin heard the blood roar in his ears as he stood and gave a slow, if shallow, bow towards the Hierchon. He was getting that flesh-shrinking thing again. The chamber looked to be tipping, and he was glad to sit down again. He tried to control the blush that he felt building under his throat.

“Seer Taak is a young man, though born centuries ago,” the image said. “He has spent a productive and dutiful career with the gas-giant Dwellers of the planet Nasqueron. I understand that many of you may have heard of him already. He has now been given the rank of major within the Shrievalty Ocula, for reasons which will become clear in due course.”

Fassin, still feeling very much looked-at, noticed that Colonel Somjomion, the human female who was acting chief of staff of the Shrievalty contingent in the Ulubis system, smiled cautiously at him from the podium across the chamber when the holo-gram said this. Unsure whether the Shrievalty saluted or not, Fassin rose fractionally in his seat, and nodded formally.

Oh, fuck, were his precise thoughts.

The image floating above the cooking-pot AI said, “The reason that Seer — Major — Taak is here today to hear what I have had to tell you all is that it was something which he discovered — stumbled over might be an equally accurate description, with no disrespect to Seer Taak — that has led to my being here in the first place.”

Oh, fucking hell. I always thought delving would be the death of me but I assumed it would be an equipment failure, not something like this. On the other hand, that smile from Colonel Somjomion had been restrained, even careful, not mean or mocking. Might live yet.

“Which brings us, of course, to the real, or at least the most pressing, reason for my appearance here, in this almost unprecedented form,” the hologram said, then made a show of taking a deep breath.

It looked around them all, slowly, before saying, “Ulubis, I’m sure we would all agree, is a pleasant and fairly favoured system.” It paused again.

Fassin was listening fairly hard at this point, and would have taken decent odds on the literal truth of the old you-could-have-heard-a-pin-drop saying. “And,” the projection said with a smile, radiantly confident that it now had their full attention, “as a centre of Dweller Studies, it is not without significance galactically, unquestionably from an antiquarian and intellectual standpoint.” Another pause. It occurred to Fassin that an AI controlling a hologram could put a quite literal twinkle in its eye. “However, one might think it reasonable to ask — again, with no disrespect intended, or, I hope, taken — why Ulubis has attracted the attention of our new-found adversaries from Cluster Epiphany Five. One might even — knowing the importance that the Mercatoria attaches to reconnecting all the many, many systems which have been without Arteria access all these millennia — wonder why the expedition from Zenerre to Ulubis with a new portal was dispatched with such alacrity, given the arguably still greater claims that more populous, more classically strategically important and more at-the-time obviously threatened systems might have had upon the resources and expertise of our esteemed colleagues in the Engineering faculty.

“One might also pause to give thought to the reasons why the Engineership Est-taun Zhiffir is accompanied by those elements of the Summed Fleet of which my original has the honour of being part — why, indeed, the Eship Est-taun Zhiffir is escorted by such a preponderance of force at all.” The hologram raised its head, looked all around again. “It might not even be totally unreasonable to call into question the apparently unchallenged assumptions and settled conclusions concerning the destruction of the Ulubis portal by the Beyonders, over two centuries ago.”

That caused a little frisson in the chamber, Fassin noticed. Is any of this still about me and anything I might have found? he wondered. The more I hear, the more I hope it isn’t.

“There is one circumstance, one nexus of contingent information,” the image said with a broad, unamused smile and something like relish, “which is, we strongly suspect, behind all of this.” The projection turned to look directly at the Hierchon Ormilla. “Sir, at this point I must ask that those not specifically cleared to be present at this meeting be withdrawn. I believe we might make an exception for the troopers, providing their ear mikes are turned off, but I would be disobeying my orders if I continued with those not invited still present.”

“Admiral Quile,” the Hierchon boomed, with just sufficient emphasis, “I vouch for all those present who were inadvertently excluded from the clearance list you refer to. You may continue.”

“And were it up to me, sir, that would of course be more than enough reason to proceed without care or reservation,” the Admiral’s image said. “However, devastated though I may be at being seen to offer even the slightest suggestion of an insult to your esteemed court, I am specifically forbidden to continue, bound as I am by the orders of the Complector Council.”

Ouch, Fassin thought. He almost felt sorry for the Hierchon. He’d not just had rank pulled on him, he’d been made to look small. A Sarcomage outranked a Hierchon, and was in turn answerable to a Complector, any single one of which — supremely powerful as they were in every other exercise and iteration of power within the civilised galaxy — themselves had at least to take into account the will of the Complector Council. The unspeakably omnipotent members of the Complector Council were bound by nothing else save the laws of physics, and were generally held to be putting considerable effort into getting round those.