Myraian was sitting on the end of the bed, her legs folded neatly as she regarded him thoughtfully. Today her hair was green and blue. Purple skinlight shone through a loose white lace top.

“You’re losing,” she said with a sweet smile.

He gave those fangs of hers another mistrustful look. Even though he’d been sleeping, there was no way she should have been able to creep up on him; bionomics should have detected her approaching. Tactical secondary routines were supposed to inform him of any proximity violation, bestowing an instinctive knowledge when he awoke. Hell, even natural instincts should have kicked in. He hadn’t been this surprised for a long time. That’s bad. “Losing what?” he asked sourly. Biononics scanned around, making sure there were no other surprises, such as a fully armored Chikoya waiting for breakfast downstairs.

“Your mind.”

He grunted and rolled off the bed, finally freeing himself from the sheet. “It’ll be joining yours, then.”

“You dreamed of home when she came for you. You can’t retreat much further. Your childhood will be an even worse defense. No child could withstand her.”

Aaron paused as he was reaching for trousers that Ozzie’s replicator had fashioned for him. “Her who?”

She giggled shrilly. “If you don’t know, I can’t.”

“Sure.” He was trying to ignore the dream. But it was more than a dream, and they both knew it. Besides, it was worrying him at a fundamental level. Something deep in his mind was wrong. It wasn’t a war he understood, and there was certainly no tactical withdrawal.

Unless I go basic again.

But today was going to require patience and diplomacy. Not his best features even with full faculties engaged.

Myraian skipped off the bed and stretched her arms behind her back, linking her fingers. Her head rocked from side to side in time with an unheard beat. Aaron was unimpressed by the whole fairy princess routine, suspecting she was covering up something.

“So are you a physicist?” he asked.

“I’m just good for my Ozzie,” she said in her silly light voice.

“Okay.” He pulled on a black T-shirt.

“You should have someone for yourself. Everyone should. This is not a universe to be lonely in, Aaron. Besides, you need help to hold her back.”

“I’ll think about that.” He put his feet into his boots, allowing the semiorganic uppers to flow over his ankles, then grip.

“They’re here.”

“Huh?”

“The starship. Oscar called eleven minutes ago.”

A message his u-shadow should have monitored and told him about. He started to get concerned about the string of tactical failures. They couldn’t all be coincidence. “Great. Did he say who he’d brought with him?”

“No, but I’m going to fetch them now. I’ll be back soon.”

He wanted to go with her and greet the arriving starship himself, but he couldn’t abandon Inigo. Taking him along would increase exposure risk. No choice. He had to wait and rely on Myraian. Which is pretty much an oxymoron.

Downstairs, Ozzie and Inigo were sitting at the big table in the kitchen. Dirty plates and cutlery had been pushed to one side. Ozzie was drinking coffee, and Inigo had a pot of hot chocolate. Corrie-Lyn was slumped in the fat old sofa at the far end of the room, looking incredibly bored.

“A great-grandfather on my mother’s side was allegedly a Brandt,” Inigo was saying. “My mother was always telling me that her grandmother had some kind of trust fund when the family lived on Hanko. I don’t know how much that was a fable about the old homeworld and how much better life had been back then. If the money ever existed, then it got lost in the Starflyer War and the move to Anagaska. All anyone brought through the temporal wormhole was what they could physically carry with them. We certainly didn’t have much money when I was growing up. If we were Brandts, the hard core left us to sink or swim by ourselves.”

“Sounds like a dynasty, okay,” Ozzie said.

“But you covered up your family history,” Aaron said as he made his way over to the culinary unit. “I was at the Inigo museum in Kuhmo. There’s nothing about any connection to a dynasty.”

“You know why I did that,” Inigo said. “I was born Higher. My mother was basically raped by one of the radical angels, my aunt, too. You think I want the Greater Commonwealth drooling over that piece of personal history? And they would; my opponents would have loved that.”

“Sure, I dig that. But even if that Brandt lineage gives you a family connection to a colony ship, that doesn’t explain how the ship got inside the Void in the first place.”

“Same way as Justine, I suppose.”

“No. She was close to the boundary. This has to be something else, a long-distance teleport.”

“The dynasty colony ship could have gotten up close if they were trying a quick route to the other side of the galaxy.”

“Not a chance. The Raiel have been acting as traffic cops ever since their invasion failed. They turn everyone around before they reach the Gulf, starting with Wilson on the Endeavor.”

“I’m not disputing that,” Inigo said. “But equally indisputable, a human ship got inside. That was the foundation of our hope the Void would be able to open some kind of portal to the Commonwealth.”

“See, this is where theory just collapses with a big sigh of bad air. How did the Void know the colony ship was there? It seems to have a lot of trouble with the whole ‘outside’ concept.”

“The Skylords do. You can’t claim the same for the Heart. It has to be a lot smarter.”

“But that implies a perception that can reach just about anywhere. If it wanted minds, why not just teleport each sentient species off its homeworld as soon as they developed a coherent thought?”

“It doesn’t have to be perception. Araminta dreamed a Skylord. Other connections are available to it.”

“Not its own. They piggybacked the Silfen Motherholme presence to get Araminta’s attention.”

“That doesn’t disqualify-”

Aaron collected his bacon roll and a mug of tea from the culinary unit and went to sit next to Corrie-Lyn. “Still at it, then?”

“Oh, yeah,” she grunted.

Five days solid now. Inigo would try to dream a Skylord, an endeavor that so far had proved fruitless. Between his attempts, he and Ozzie would argue about the nature of the Void and try to conjure up possible methods of getting through the boundary. That was exactly what Aaron wanted. He just wasn’t quite prepared for how mind-breakingly dull their conversations would be. Every minute, an irrelevant concept was dragged out and discussed at extreme length. They didn’t seem to develop ideas so much as entire wishful philosophies. In other words, after four days neither one of them had produced a single helpful notion.

“Have you talked to Myraian at all?” he asked.

Corrie-Lyn gave the briefest shrug. “She talks? Sense?”

“Yeah, got a point there.”

“I have been watching the Greater Commonwealth through the unisphere.”

“And?”

“The Last Dream; it’s not popular. Living Dream’s new Cleric Council denounced it as a fake, but everyone knows Inigo’s thoughts. There’s some hefty infighting breaking out among the faithful. More than I expected have said they’re worried by the outcome of traveling into the Void.”

“But everyone on the Pilgrimage fleet is in suspension.”

“Yes. So it was too little, too late. It’s confirmed what all the non-followers believed about us, but they’re irrelevant as always. None of the crews on the Pilgrimage ships are showing any sign of rebellion.”

“Ah, well, at least we can all die with a clear conscience.” He bit into the bacon roll. There was far too much butter; it dribbled down his fingers.

Corrie-Lyn gave him a strange look, crinkling her cute nose. “That’s a first.”

“What is?”

“You mentioning the possibility of defeat. Even if it was a joke. I didn’t know you could think like that.”