· Copy, said her own helm officer, then the other acknowledgements followed. In Tacspace, the flowering, widening ship tracks immediately started to bunch up again, the distances between them closing.

· C-one: Going to be tight.

But it was doable. They could get back to their earlier formation before they encountered the remains of the Petronel; that was all that mattered for now. Tacspace showed the fleet regrouping smoothly. The view ahead showed the fiercely glowing nebula of wreckage from the Petronel, seeming to spread across the sky as they approached it, encroaching onto the dark, starless tube on either side. She zoomed in, picking out a clear spot near the centre of the debris field, checking it in Tacspace. There.

The two hard contacts winked out, became orange and started to spread. Tacspace was throwing out probability cones, estimating where the ships might be. Ahead, the sky briefly glowed a pale uniform yellow, indicating that the rest of the Beyonder fleet could be anywhere within that volume. Then a scattering of bright red hard contacts firmed up out of the yellow wash, dispersing it.

The fleet re-formed. They were back where they had started. If nothing else, Taince thought, they ought to have confused the Beyonders.

— Pattern Zero, all ships.

Even in the life-pod, she felt the flagship lurch as it braked, manoeuvred and then accelerated again. She watched it all on Tacspace. The fleet was collapsing, thinning, extending itself forwards and back, ship after ship slipping into a single long line, nose to tail.

— BC-four, back down about ten. D-eleven, forward five. B-three and B-two, centre on D-eight. BC-four, maintain there.

Taince watched them all in Tacspace, shuffling, jostling, ordering them into position until they were all lined up.

— Ships of the line, yes, Vice? the Fleet Admiral sent, also watching.

— Sir.

There were no collisions, no botched moves, no drives left running too long, incinerating the craft behind. The line formation came together as smoothly as it ever had in VR sims. The battleship Gisarme led the way, blasting away a few tiny parti-cles left over from the wreck of the Petronel and laying down a stuttered laser barrage to try to intercept any mines, kinetic or otherwise, left in the way.

This was a gamble, too. If it worked they’d be through and away, one after another, charging mob-handed right behind the Gisarme like a long sequence of battering rams. If it didn’t work, there was a chance that first the Gisarme would hit something and then they’d all hit whatever was left of it. Potentially the whole fleet could be wiped out in one long pile-up of cascading collisions. The chances were small — smaller, the simulations indicated, than the risks associated with any of the other manoeuvres — but only because this one included a safety premium due to its assumed unexpectedness, its sheer novelty value. If they’d got that wrong, it was much riskier than all the rest.

The manoeuvre caught the Beyonders unawares. It was profoundly not standard Summed Fleet behaviour. The needle ships were one giant needle now, plunging through the debris field of the wrecked destroyer, firing all around them, scoring a couple of hits on distant hostiles desperately closing. Tacspace showed the lines of fire blazing out from the fleet like spokes from a filament-thin shaft and missiles spinning away like tiny glowing emeralds. The Beyonders were attempting to close, but it was too late. All that the nearest hostile units accomplished was their own destruction. In two minutes the Mercatorial fleet was through without loss, and a minute later its entire fire-pattern was rearward: a swirling skirt of crimson lines combing and coning into the emptying depths of space behind. Any further engagement now would be entirely on their terms, and the fleet’s vastly superior firepower would have the first word, and the last.

· Nice work, Vice. Fleet Admiral Kisipt sounded a little surprised, a little disappointed and moderately impressed. Taince knew that a lot of her fellow officers had wanted a proper battle, but this way had been better, quicker, more elegant. “Nice work’ — from a Voehn; that was real praise.

· Sir. Taince kept her thought-voice calm, but inside it was her turn to whoop. Submerged in her dark womb of fluid, tubes and wires, her fists clenched, a smile appeared on her until then frowning face, and a little shiver shook her cradled body.

The Kehar family house on Murla, an island off the south coast a few hundred kilometres from Borquille, was another spherical building, a quarter of the size of the Hierchon’s palace, but remarkable for being balanced on top of a great upthrust of water, precisely like a ball balanced on a water jet in a fairground.

Saluus Kehar, perfectly groomed, glowing with health and generally looking as smoothly gleaming as one of his company’s spaceships, met Fassin personally on the slim suspension bridge connecting the house with the spit of land jutting out into the ancient drowned caldera where the waters foamed and roared and spumed and the house balanced, barely trembling, on the giant column of water.

“Fassin! Great to see you! Hey! That uniform suits you!”

Fassin had thought he’d be briefed-indoctrinated-psyche-tested-pep-talked-fuck-knows-whatted and then bundled aboard ship to be whisked straight to Nasqueron. But even faced with arguably the single greatest emergency in its history, the Ulubine bureaucracy had a set way of doing things, and central to this ethos appeared to be not doing anything too momentous too quickly, just in case.

The rest of the session in the Hierchon’s audience chamber after the AI projection had issued its orders and asked for questions had involved a great deal of talk, speech-making, point-scoring, back-covering, back-targeting and pre-emptive blame-avoidance. The image of Admiral Quile answered all the questions tirelessly and with a patience that was probably the most sure sign possible that it really was an AI talking. A human — especially an admiral, used to being obeyed instantly and without argument — would have lost patience long before the proceedings finally ground to a halt. Fassin had been pointed at and referred to several times, and been left with the distinct impression that this was all his fault. Which, he supposed, in a way it was. It had all gone on so long that Fassin’s stomach had perhaps in sympathy with a large component of the mood in the chamber — started grumbling. He hadn’t eaten since early breakfast on ’glantine, after all.

“You are quite sure?” the image above the cooking-pot device asked eventually, when even the most talkative of those present seemed to have run out of questions to ask and points — and delicate portions of the anatomy — to cover. There was no hint of either pleading or relief in the projection’s voice. Fassin thought either would have been appropriate.

“Very well, then. I will bid you farewell, and good luck.”

The image of the human male with a bald, tattooed scalp and lined face, standing there in his much-decorated armoured suit, looked around them one last time, executed a short, formal bow to the Hierchon and disappeared. Nobody seemed to know quite what to do for a moment. Then the black, pot-bellied machine in the centre of the floor started to make a loud humming noise. Shrievalty Colonel Somjomion and Cessorian Clerk-Regnant Voriel, attending as best they could to the machines they had been put in charge of when the others had been required to leave the chamber, started peering intently at various screens and controls. The circle of mirror-armoured troopers each tapped one ear, then brought up their guns, pointing them at the cooking-pot device, which was humming loudly now and starting to glow in the infrared. The hum rose and took on extra harmonics, deepening until the machine was visibly vibrating. Some of those close to the device either drew back or looked like they wanted to, as if fearing that the machine was going to explode. The air around its ribbed flanks shimmered. Above it, the atmosphere seemed to writhe and quiver, as though some mutant ghost of the image that had stood there was still fighting to escape.