Much regret. Little patience.

“That’s a shame. But the castle looks great now it’s finished. I wish we had some flags to stick on top. I’ll see what I can find to use for tomorrow.”

Tomorrow the sand will be dry. The top will crumble in air, and we must start again.

Jay looked along the row of shapeless mounds that now ran along the shoreline. Each one carried its own particular memory of joy and satisfaction. “Honestly, Haile, that’s the whole point. It’s even better when there’s a tide, then you can see how strong you’ve built.”

So much human activity is intentionally wasteful. I doubt my ever knowing you.

“We’re simple, really. We always learn more from our mistakes, that’s what Mummy says. It’s because they’re more painful.”

Much oddness.

“I’ve got an idea; we’ll try and build a Tyrathca tower tomorrow. That’s nice and different. I know what they look like, Kelly showed me.” She put her hands on her hips and considered the castle warmly. “Pity we can’t build their Sleeping God altar, or whatever it was, but I don’t think it would balance, not if you make it out of sand.”

Query Sleeping God altar or whatever?

“It was sort of like a temple that you couldn’t get inside. The Tyrathca on Lalonde all sat around it and worshipped with chanting and stuff. It was this shape, really elaborate.” Her hands swept through the air in front of the Kiint, tracing broad curves. “See?”

Lacking perception, I. This is worship like your ritual to support Jesus the Christ?

“Um, sort of, I suppose. Except their God isn’t our God. Theirs is sleeping somewhere far away in space; ours is everywhere. That’s what Father Horst says.”

There are two Gods, query?

“I don’t know,” Jay said, desperately wishing she hadn’t got on to this topic. “Humans have more than two Gods, anyway. Religion is funny, especially if you start thinking about it. You’re just sort of supposed to believe. Until you get old, that is, then it all becomes theology.”

Query theology?

“Grown-up religion. Look here, don’t you have a God?”

I will query my parents.

“Good; they’ll explain everything much better than me. Come on, let’s go and wash this horrid sand off, then we can go riding together.”

Much welcome.

•   •   •

The Royal Kulu Navy ion field flyer swept in over Mortonridge’s western seaboard, its glowing nose pointed directly at the early morning sun. Ten kilometres to the south, the red cloud formed a solid massif right across the horizon. It was thicker than Ralph Hiltch remembered. None of the peninsula’s central ridge of mountains had managed to rise above it; they’d been swallowed whole.

The upper surface was as calm as a lake during a breathless dawn. Only when it started to dip earthwards along the firebreak border were the first uneasy stirrings visible—while right on the edge there appeared to be a full-scale storm whipping up individual streamers. Ralph had the uncomfortable impression that the cloud was aching to be let free. Perhaps he was picking up the emotional timbre of the possessed who created it? In this situation he could never be quite sure that any feeling was the genuine article.

He thought he could see a loose knot swirling along the side of the cloud, a twist of vermillion shadow amid the scarlet, keeping pace with his flyer. But when he ordered the sensor suite to focus on it, all he could see were random patterns. A trick of the eye, then, but a strong one.

The pilot began to expand the ion field, reducing the flyer’s velocity and altitude. Up ahead, the grey line of the M6 was visible, slicing clean across the virgin countryside. Colonel Palmer’s advance camp was situated a couple of kilometres outside the black firebreak line. Several dozen military vehicles were drawn up along the side of the motorway, while a couple were speeding along the carbon concrete towards the unnervingly precise band of incinerated vegetation.

Any possessed marching up to the end of the red cloud would see a predictably standard garrison operation being mounted with the Kingdom’s usual healthy efficiency. What they couldn’t see was the new camp coming together twenty-five kilometres further to the north; a city of programmable silicon laid out in strict formation which was erupting across the endless green undulations of the peninsula’s landscape. With typical military literalism it had been named Fort Forward. Over five hundred programmable silicon buildings had already been activated, two-storey barracks, warehouses, mess halls, maintenance shops, and various ancillary structures; though as yet its only residents were the three battalions of Royal Kulu Marine Engineers whose job it was to assemble the camp. Their mechanoids had ploughed the ground up around each building, installing water and sewage pipes, power lines, and datalinks. Huge drums of micro-mesh composite were being unrolled over the fresh soil to provide roads which wouldn’t turn to instant quagmires. Five large filter pump houses had been established on the banks of a river eight kilometres away to feed the expanding districts.

Mechanoids were already busy digging out vast new utility grids ready for more buildings, giving an indication of just how big Fort Forward would be when it was completed. Long convoys of lorries were using the M6 to deliver matériel from the nearest city spaceport, fifty kilometres away. Though that arrangement would soon be cancelled as Fort Forward’s own spaceport became operational. Marine engineers were levelling long strips of land in preparation for three prefabricated runways. The spaceport’s hangars and control tower had been activated two days ago so that technical crews could fit and integrate their systems.

When Ralph’s battleship emerged above Ombey he had seen nine Royal Navy Aquilae-class bulk transport starships in parking formation around a low-orbit port station along with their escort of fifteen front-line frigates. There were only twenty-five of the huge transporters left on active service; capable of carrying seventeen thousand tonnes of cargo they were the largest starships ever built, and hugely expensive to fly and maintain. Kulu was gradually phasing them out in favour of smaller models based on commercial designs.

They were being supported by big old delta-wing CK500-090 Thunderbird spaceplanes, the only atmospheric craft capable of handling the four-hundred-tonne cargo pods carried by the Aquilae transporters. Again, a fleet on the verge of retirement; they had been the first consignment ferried to Ombey by the transports. Most of the Thunderbirds had spent the last fifteen years in mothball status at the Royal Navy’s desert storage facility on Kulu. Now they were being reactivated as fast as the maintenance crews could fit new components from badly depleted war stocks.

Even more portentous than the buildup of navy ships were the voidhawks. Nearly eighty had arrived so far, with new ones swallowing in every hour, their lower hull cargo cradles full of pods (which could be handled by conventional civil flyers). Never before had so many of the bitek starships been seen orbiting a Kingdom world.

Ralph had experienced the same kind of uncomfortable awe he’d known at Azara as he observed them flitting around the docking stations. He was the one who had started this, creating a momentum which had engulfed entire star systems. It was unstoppable now. All he could do was ride it to a conclusion.

The ion field flyer landed at Colonel Palmer’s camp. The colonel herself was waiting for him at the base of the airstairs, Dean Folan and Will Danza prominent in the small reception committee behind her, both grinning broadly.

Colonel Palmer shook his hand, giving his new uniform a more than casual inspection. “Welcome back, Ralph, or should I say sir?”