He wasn’t completely used to the uniform himself yet, a smart dark blue tunic with three ruby pips glinting on his shoulder. “I don’t know, exactly. I’m a general in the official Liberation campaign army now, its very first officer. Apart from the King, of course. The formation was made official three days ago, announced in the court of the Apollo Palace. I’ve been appointed chief strategic coordination officer.”

“You mean you’re the Liberation’s numero uno?”

“Yeah,” he said with quiet surprise. “I guess I am at this end.”

“Rather you than me.” She gestured northwards. “Talk about coming back with reinforcements.”

“It’s going to get wonderfully worse. One million bitek serjeants are on their way, and God alone knows how many human troops to back them up. We’ve even had mercenaries volunteering.”

“You accepted them?”

“I’ve no idea. But I’ll use whatever I’m given.”

“All right, so what are your orders, sir?”

He laughed. “Just keep up the good work. Have any of them tried to break out?”

She turned her head to face the wall of angry cloud, her expression stern. “No. They stick to their side of the firebreak. There have been plenty of sightings. We think they’re keeping an eye on us. But it’s only my patrols who are visible to them.” A thumb jabbed back over her shoulder. “They don’t know anything about all this.”

“Good. We can’t keep it secret forever, of course; but the longer the better.”

“Some kids came out last week. It was the first interesting thing to happen since you left.”

“Kids?”

“A woman called Stephanie Ash bused seventy-three non-possessed children right up to the firebreak. Gave the roadblock guard a hell of a fright, I can tell you. Apparently she’d collected them from all over the peninsula. We evacuated them to a holding camp. I think your friend Jannike Dermot has got her experts debriefing them on conditions over there.”

“Now that’s a report I’d like to access.” He squinted at the red cloud. That elusive knot of shadow seemed to have returned. It was elliptical this time, hanging over the M6. It didn’t take much imagination to suspect it of staring at him. “I think I’ll take a closer look before I set up my command at Fort Forward,” he announced.

Will and Dean rode shotgun on the Marine Corps runabout which took him up to the orange roadblock. It was good to talk with them again. They’d been attached to Palmer’s brigade as combat liaison for the agency, supporting the various technical teams Roche Skark had dispatched to the firebreak. Both of them wanted to know every detail of his meetings with the King. They were annoyed he wouldn’t datavise his visual files of Prince Edward playing at the Apollo Palace, but they were confidential. And so grows the mystique, Ralph thought, amused that he should be contributing to it.

The marines at the roadblock saluted smartly as Ralph and the Colonel arrived. Ralph chatted to them as cordially as he could manage. They didn’t seem to mind the red cloud; he found it intimidating in the extreme. It loomed barely three hundred metres above him, vigorous thrashing streamers packed so close together there was no gap between them, layer upon layer stacked up to what seemed like the edge of space. The sonorous reverberations from its internal brawling was diabolically attuned to the harmonic of human bones. Millions of tonnes of contaminated water hanging suspended in the air by witchcraft, ready to crash down like the waterfall at the end of the world. He wondered how little effort on behalf of the possessed it would take to do just that. Could it be he really had underestimated their power? It wasn’t the scale of the cloud which perturbed him so much as the intent.

“Sir,” one of the barrier guards shouted in alarm. “Visible hostile, on foot, three hundred metres.”

Dean and Will were abruptly standing in front of Ralph, their gaussguns pointing across the firebreak.

“I think this is enough front-line inspection for today,” Colonel Palmer said. “Let’s get you back to the runabout, please, Ralph.”

“Wait.” Ralph looked between the two G66 troopers to see a single figure walking up the M6. A woman dressed in a neatly cut leather uniform, her face stained warrior-scarlet by the nimbus of the seething clouds. He knew exactly who it was, in fact he would almost have been disappointed if she hadn’t appeared. “She’s not a threat. Not yet, anyway.”

He slipped between Will and Dean to stand full square in the middle of the road, facing her down.

Annette Ekelund stopped at the forwards barrier on her side of the firebreak. She took a slim mobile phone from her pocket, extended its ten-centimetre aerial, then tapped in a number.

Ralph’s communications block announced a channel opening. He switched it to audio function.

“Hello, Ralph. I thought you would come back, you’re the kind that does. And I see you’ve brought some friends with you.”

“That’s right.”

“Why don’t you bring them on over and join the party?”

“We’ll pick our own time.”

“I have to say I’m disappointed; that’s not quite what we agreed to back in Exnall, now is it? And with a Saldana Princess, too. Dear me, you can’t trust anyone these days.”

“A promise made under duress is not legally binding. I’m sure you’ll have enough lawyers on your side to confirm that.”

“I thought I explained all this to you, Ralph. We can’t lose, not against the living.”

“I don’t believe you. No matter what the cost, we must defeat you. The human race will end if you are allowed to win. I believe we deserve to keep on going.”

“You and your ideals, the original Mr Focused. No wonder you found a profession which allowed you to give loyal service. It suits you perfectly. Congratulations, Ralph, you have found yourself, not everyone can say that. In another universe, one that isn’t so warped as this, I’d envy you.”

“Thank you.”

“There was a nasty little phrase coined in my era, Ralph; but it’s still appropriate today, because it too came from a dogmatic soldier in a pointless war. We had to destroy the village in order to save it. What do you think you’re going to do to Mortonridge and its people with this crusade of yours?”

“Whatever I have to.”

“But we’ll still be here afterwards, Ralph, we’ll always be here. The finest minds in the galaxy have been working on this problem. Scientists and priests scurrying for hard answers and bland philosophies. Millions—billions of manhours have already been spent on the quandary of what to do with us poor returned souls. And they’ve come up with nothing. Nothing! All you can do is mount this pathetic, vindictive campaign of violence in the hope that some of us will be caught and thrown into zero-tau.”

“There isn’t an overall solution yet. But there will be.”

“There can’t be. We outnumber you. It’s simple arithmetic, Ralph.”

“Laton said it can be done.”

She chuckled. “And you believe him?”

“The Edenists think he was telling the truth.”

“Oh, yes, the newest and most interesting of all your friends. You realize, don’t you, that they could well survive this while you Adamists fall. It’s in their interest for this monstrous diversion to work. Adamist planets will topple one by one while your Confederation is engrossed here.”

“And what about the Kiint?”

There was a slight pause. “What about them?”

“They survived their encounter with the beyond. They say there is a solution.”

“Which is?”

He gripped the communications block tighter. “It doesn’t apply to us. Each race must find its own way. Ours exists, somewhere. It will be found. I have a lot of faith in human ingenuity.”

“I don’t, Ralph. I have faith in our sick nature to hate and envy, to be greedy and selfish, to lie. You forget, for six centuries I couldn’t hide from the naked emotions which drive all of us. I was condemned to them, Ralph. I know exactly what we are in our true hearts, and it’s not nice, not nice at all.”