“Who did that?” he asked.

“No idea,” Sarha said. “It happened during the battle, we didn’t even know until afterwards. But it sure as hell wasn’t random combat wasp strikes.”

“I’ll monitor the drive tubes,” Joshua said. “Sarha, take systems coverage, please. Liol, you’ve got fire control.”

“Aye, Captain,” Liol said.

It was a strictly neutral tone. Joshua was satisfied with that. He triggered Lady Mac ’s fusion drives, bringing them up to a three-gee acceleration.

“Where are we going?” Liol asked.

“Bloody good question,” Joshua said. “For now I just want us out of here. After that, it rather depends on what Ione and the agents decide, I expect.”

There must be someone who knows. One of you.

We know it is real. We know it is hidden.

Two bodies await. A male and a female. Youthful, splendid. Do you hear them? Do you taste them? Pleading for one of you to enter them. You can. All the riches and pleasures of reality can be yours again. If you have the admission price, one tiny piece of information. That’s all.

She didn’t hide it by herself. She had help from somebody. Probably many. Were you one?

Ah. Yes. You. You are being truthful. You know.

Come then. Come forwards, come through. We reward you with—

He cried out in wonder and misery as he struggled his way into the victim’s agonized nervous system. There was pain, and shame, and humiliation to cope with; tragic, terrible pleas from the body’s true soul. One by one, he faced them down, mending the broken flesh, suppressing and ignoring the protest, until there was only his own shame left. Not so easily abandoned.

“Welcome to the Organization,” said Oscar Kearn. “So, you were part of Mzu’s mission?”

“Yes. I was with her.”

“Good. She’s a clever woman, that Mzu. I’m afraid she’s eluded us once again, thanks to that traitor bitch Barnes. Even so, only the amazingly resourceful can duck an ironberg when it’s falling on their heads. I didn’t realize what I was dealing with before. I don’t suppose she would have helped us even if we had caught her. She’s like that, tough and determined. But now her luck’s run out. You can tell me, can’t you? You know where the Alchemist is.”

“Yes,” Ikela said. “I know where it is.”

Alkad Mzu floated into the bridge, accompanied by Monica and Samuel. She acknowledged Joshua with a small twitch of her lips, then blinked when she saw Liol. “I didn’t know there were two of you.”

Liol grinned broadly.

“Before we all start arguing over what to do with you, Doctor,” a serjeant said. “I’d like you to confirm the Alchemist does or did exist.”

Alkad tapped her toe on a stikpad beside the captain’s couch, preventing herself from drifting about. “Yes, it exists. And I built it. I wish to Mary I hadn’t, now, but the past is past. My only concern now is that it doesn’t fall into anybody’s hands, not yours, and certainly not the possessed.”

“Very noble,” Sarha said, “from someone who was going to use it to kill an entire planet.”

“They wouldn’t have been killed,” Alkad said wearily. “It was intended to extinguish Omuta’s star, not turn it nova. I’m not an Omutan barbarian; they’re the ones who kill entire worlds.”

“Extinguish a star?” Samuel mused in puzzlement.

“Please don’t ask for details.”

“I propose Dr Mzu is taken back to Tranquillity,” the serjeant said. “We can formalize the observation to insure she doesn’t pass the information on. I don’t think you will anyway, Doctor, but intelligence agencies are highly suspicious entities.”

Monica consulted Samuel. “I can live with that,” she said. “Tranquillity is neutral territory. It isn’t all that different to our original agreement.”

“It isn’t,” Samuel agreed. “But, Doctor, you do realize you cannot be allowed to die. Certainly not until the problem of possession has been resolved.”

“Fine by me,” Alkad said.

“What I mean, Doctor, is that when you are very old, you must be placed in zero-tau to prevent your soul from entering the beyond.”

“I will not give anyone the Alchemist technology, no matter what the circumstances.”

“I’m sure that is your intention at the moment. But how will you feel after a hundred years trapped in the beyond? A thousand? And to be indelicate, the choice is not yours to make. It is ours. You lost the right to self-determination when you built the Alchemist. If you give yourself enough power to make a galaxy fear you and what you can achieve, you abrogate that right to those whom your actions affect.”

“I agree,” the serjeant said. “You will be placed in zero-tau before you die.”

“Why not just put me in now?” Alkad said crustily.

“Don’t tempt me,” Monica said. “I know the kind of contempt you moron intellectuals hold the government services in. Well listen good, Doctor, we exist to protect the majority so they can run around living their lives as decently and as best they can. We protect them from shits like you, who never fucking stop to think what you’re doing.”

“You didn’t protect my bloody planet, did you!” Alkad yelled back. “And don’t you dare lecture me on responsibility. I’m prepared to die to stop the Alchemist being used by anybody else, especially your imperialist Kingdom. I know my responsibilities.”

“You do now. Now you realize what a mistake you made, now people are dying just to keep your precious arse safe.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Joshua said loudly. “We’re all agreed where the doc is going, end of discussion. Nobody is going to start shouting about moral philosophy on my bridge. We’re all tired, we’re all emotional. Pack it in, the pair of you. I’m going to plot a course to Tranquillity, you go to your cabins and cool off. We’ll be home inside of two days.”

“Understood,” Monica said through clenched teeth. “And . . . thank you for getting us off. It was—”

“Professional?”

She almost snapped back at him, but that grin . . . “Professional.”

Alkad cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said apologetically. “But there is a problem. We can’t go straight back to Tranquillity.”

Joshua massaged his temple and asked: “Why not?” if only to stop Monica from flying at Mzu’s throat.

“The Alchemist itself.”

“What about it?” Samuel asked.

“We have to collect it.”

“All right,” Joshua said in a far-from-reasonable tone. “Why?”

“Because it isn’t secure where it is.”

“It’s managed to stay secure for thirty years. Jesus, just take the secret of its location to zero-tau with you. If the agencies haven’t found it by now, they never will.”

“They won’t have to look anymore, nor will the possessed, especially if our current situation continues for more than a few years.”

“Go on, we may as well hear it all.”

“There were three ships on our strike mission against Omuta,” Alkad said. “The Beezling , the Chengho , and the Gombari. Beezling was the Alchemist’s deployment vessel, I was on board; the other two were our escort frigates. We were intercepted by blackhawks before we could deploy the Alchemist. They destroyed the Gombari , and hit us and the Chengho pretty badly. We were left for dead in interstellar space. Neither of us could jump, and the nearest inhabited star was seven light-years away.

“After the attack, we spent a couple of days repairing our internal systems, then we rendezvoused. It was Ikela and Captain Prager who came up with the eventual solution. Chengho was smaller than Beezling , it didn’t need as many energy patterning nodes to perform a ZTT jump. So the crew removed some of the Beezling ’s intact nodes and installed them in the Chengho . We didn’t have the proper tools for that kind of job; and then the nodes had different power ratings and performance factors, they had to be completely reprogrammed. It took us three and a half weeks, but we did it. We rebuilt ourselves a ship that could make a ZTT jump—not very well, and not very far, but it was functional. That was when things started to get difficult. The Chengho was too small to take both crews, even for just a small jump. There was only one life-support capsule, and it could hold eight of us at a push. We knew we couldn’t risk a flight back to Garissa, the nodes would never last that long, and we guessed that Omuta would have launched some kind of big attack by then. After all, that’s why we’d been dispatched in the first place, to stop them. So we jumped to the nearest inhabited star system, Crotone. The idea was that we’d charter a ship and get back to Garissa that way. Of course, when we arrived at Crotone, we heard about the genocide.