“Definitely possessed, sir,” he datavised to Colonel Palmer.

“We see that, thank you, Anver,” the colonel replied. “Be advised, the security committee is accessing your datavise now.”

“Sir.”

“There’s no other activity along the firebreak,” Admiral Farquar datavised. “We don’t think she’s a diversion.”

“Go see what she wants, Anver,” Colonel Palmer ordered. “And be very careful.”

“Yes, sir.”

Two of his squad slid a section of the barrier aside, and he stepped forwards. For all that it was only a hundred-metre walk, it lasted half of his life. He spent the time trying to think what to say to her, but when they stopped a few paces from each other, all he said was: “What do you want?”

She lowered her hand with the handkerchief and gave him a cautious smile. “We brought some children out. They’re in the buses back there. I, um . . . wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t . . . you know.” The smile became one of embarrassment. “We weren’t sure how you’d react.”

“Children?”

“Yes. About seventy. I don’t know the exact number, I never actually counted.”

“Does she mean non-possessed?” Admiral Farquar datavised.

“Are these children possessed?”

“Of course not,” Stephanie said indignantly. “What do you think we are?”

“Lieutenant Anver, this is Princess Kirsten.”

Anver stiffened noticeably. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Ask her what she wants, what the deal is.”

“What do you want for them?”

Stephanie’s lips tightened in anger. “I don’t want anything. Not in return, they’re just children. What I’d like is an assurance that you military types aren’t going to shoot them when we send them over.”

“Oh, dear,” Princess Kirsten datavised. “Apologize to her, Lieutenant, on my behalf, please. And tell her that we’re very grateful to her and those with her for bringing the children back to us.”

Anver cleared his throat, this wasn’t quite what he expected when he started his lonely walk out here. “I’m very sorry, ma’am. The Princess sends her apologies for assuming the worst. We’re very grateful to you for what you’ve done.”

“I understand. This isn’t easy for me, either. Now, how do you want to handle this?”

Twelve Royal Marines came back to the buses with her; volunteers, without their armour suits and weapons. The bus doors were opened, and the children came down. There were a lot of tears and running around in confusion. Most of them wanted a last kiss and a hug from the adults who had rescued them (Cochrane was especially popular), much to the amazement of the marines.

Stephanie found herself almost in tears as the last batch started off down the broad road, clustering around the big marine; one of them was even being given a piggyback. Moyo’s arm was around her shoulders to hold her tight.

Lieutenant Anver came over to stand in front of her and saluted perfectly (to which Cochrane managed a quite obscene parody). He looked badly troubled. “Thank you again, all of you,” he said. “That’s me saying it, I can’t datavise under the cloud.”

“Oh, do take care of the little darlings,” Tina said, sniffing hard. “Poor Analeese has the most dreadful cold, none of us could cure her. And Ryder hates nuts; I think he’s got an allergy, and—” She fell silent as Rana squeezed her forearm.

“We’ll take care of them,” Lieutenant Anver said gravely. “And you, you take care of yourselves.” He glanced pointedly out to the firebreak where a procession of vehicles was massing around the barrier to greet the children. “You might want to do that away from here.” A crisp nod at Stephanie, and he was walking back towards the barrier.

“What did he mean?” Tina asked querulously.

“Wowee.” Cochrane let out a long breath. “We like did it , man, we showed the forces of bad vibes not to mess with us.”

Moyo kissed Stephanie. “I’m very proud of you.”

“Ugh,” Cochrane exclaimed. “Don’t you two cats ever stop?”

A smiling Stephanie leaned forwards and kissed him on his forehead, getting hair caught on her lips. “Thank you, too.”

“Will somebody tell me what he meant,” Tina said. “Please.”

“Nothing good,” McPhee said. “That’s a fact.”

“So now what do we do?” Rana asked. “Go round up another group of kids? Or split up? Or settle that farm we talked about? What?”

“Oh, stay together, definitely,” Tina said. “After everything we’ve done I couldn’t bear losing any of you, you’re my family now.”

“Family. That’s cosmic, sister. So like what’s your position on incest?”

“I don’t know what we’ll decide,” Stephanie said. “But I think we should take the lieutenant’s advice, and do it a long way away from here.”

•   •   •

The spaceplane rose out of Nyvan’s stratosphere on twin plumes of plasma flame, arching up towards its orbital injection coordinate a thousand kilometres ahead. Submunitions were still peppering space with explosions and decoy flares, while electronic warfare drones blasted gigawatt pulses at any emission they could detect. Now its reaction drive rockets were on, the spaceplane was no longer invisible to the residuals of the combat wasp battle.

Lady Macbeth flew cover a hundred kilometres above it, sensors and maser cannon deployed to strike any missile which acquired lock-on. The starship had to make continual adjustments to its flight vector to keep the spaceplane within its protective radius. Joshua watched its drive flaring, reducing velocity, accelerating, switching altitude. Five times its masers fired to destroy incoming submunitions.

By the time the spaceplane had reached orbit and was manoeuvring to dock, the sky above Nyvan had calmed considerably. Only three other starships were visible to Lady Mac ’s sensors, all of them were frigates belonging to local defence forces. None of them seemed interested in Lady Mac , or even each other. Beaulieu began a thorough sensor sweep, alert for the inevitable chaotic showers of post-explosion debris which would make low orbit hazardous for some time to come. Some of the returns were odd, making her redefine the sweep’s parameters. Lady Mac ’s sensors shifted their focus away from the planet itself.

Joshua slid cleanly through the hatchway into the bridge. His clothes had dried out in the hot air of the spaceplane’s cabin, but the dirt and stains remained. Dahybi’s ship-suit was in a similar state.

Sarha gave him an apprehensive glance. “Melvyn?” she asked quietly.

“Not a chance. Sorry.”

“Bugger.”

“You two did a good job up here,” Joshua said. “Well done, that was some fine piloting to stay above the spaceplane.”

“Thanks, Josh.”

Joshua looked from Liol, who was anchored to a stikpad by the captain’s acceleration couch, to Sarha, whose expression was utterly unrepentant.

“Oh, Jesus, you gave him the access codes.”

“Yes, I did. My command decision. There was a war up here, Joshua.”

It wasn’t, he decided, worth making an issue out of, not in view of everything else that was happening. “That’s why I left you in charge,” he said. “I had confidence in you, Sarha.”

She frowned suspiciously. He sounded sincere. “So you got Mzu, then. I hope it was worth it.”

“For the Confederation I suppose it is. For individuals . . . you’d have to ask them. But then individuals have been dying because of her for some time now.”

“Captain, please access our sensor suite,” Beaulieu said.

“Right.” He rolled in midair, and landed on his acceleration couch. The images from the external sensor clusters expanded into his mind. Wrong. They had to be wrong. “Jesus wept!” His brain was already acting in conjunction with the flight computer’s astrogration program to plot a vector before he’d fully admitted the reality of the tide of rock descending on the planet. “Prepare for acceleration, thirty seconds—mark. We have to leave.” A fast internal sensor check showed him his new passengers hurrying towards couches; images superimposed with purple and yellow trajectory plots that wriggled frantically as he refined their projected trajectory.