“The Accelerators must have an active team down there,” Digby reported to Paula as the Accelerators’ starship landed. “Do you want me to contact our local office for support?”

“We’re long past a tussle between enriched agents to achieve our objectives,” she told him. “You’ll have to follow the ship’s pilot through scruitineers in the planetary cybersphere. That will leave you positioned to apply firepower from orbit to achieve our objectives.”

“We have objectives?”

“Yes. One. And it’s very simple: No one else must acquire Araminta. No one. No matter what the cost.”

“Ozzie! You want me to shoot into an urban area?”

“If that’s what’s required. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. I don’t believe she’ll ever come to Oaktier.”

“Then why is the Accelerator agent here?”

“Laril, Araminta’s ex-husband, is currently on the inward migration. He’s living in Darklake City.”

“Oh. And you think she’ll make contact?”

“She already has. I’ve analyzed his node logs. They’ve had a couple of chats. The last one was interrupted by my shotgun on Chobamba.”

“Ah.” Digby ordered his u-shadow to run a search through local records. “There’s no history of a Silfen path on Oaktier.”

“No. But if Laril is the one she’s turning to for advice, I imagine the Accelerators are going to snatch him and apply some pressure.”

“That’s logical. Did your u-shadow track her new unisphere address code?”

“She doesn’t have one. She’s been accessing the unisphere manually, through nodes. No records.”

“Clever. Do you think the Silfen will shelter her?”

“Not a chance.”

“Have you got any contacts there?” That was almost a stupid question, but he’d learned a long time ago never to underestimate his great-grandmother.

“I’ve had occasion to join the Motherholme communion, but you never get anything definite out of the Silfen. Unless you’re unlucky enough to bump into one of them called Clouddancer-then you get a whole load of bad-tempered information.”

“So there’s no telling where she’s going to come out?”

“No. But when she does, we need to be ready.”

Digby accessed the spaceport sensors, watching the Accelerator emerge from her ship. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, though her gray skin was more a toga-suit haze than anything living, and it looked as though it was constricting tightly across her small skeleton. Two long streamers of blood-red fabric flowed out horizontally behind her, fluttering as if in a breeze. As she looked around, her eyes glimmered with a faint pink luminescence. “Valean,” he said ruefully. “I might have guessed after what happened on Ellezelin.” She made Marius look subtle by comparison. The Accelerators used her only when they needed extreme measures.

“That just emphasizes how important Araminta is to them,” Paula said. “You are going to have to keep a very tight watch. She cannot be allowed to reach Laril.”

“Shall I just target her now? She’s outside her ship defenses.”

There was a slight hesitation. “No,” Paula said. “We don’t know the rest of the Accelerator team on Oaktier. Once you’ve identified them, we’ll discuss direct elimination.”

“Okay. I’m on it.”

Mellanie’s Redemption accelerated smoothly up to fifty-two light-years an hour and held steady. Troblum’s exovision was completely full of display graphics, allowing him no glimpse of the cabin. His secondary routines twinned the new drive’s management programs. With his mentality expanded to maximum capacity, he effectively was the ultradrive, feeling the exotic energy flow, sensing the quantum fields realign into standard hyperspace configuration. Fluctuations were tremors along his hull/flesh that were countered and calmed instantaneously, leaving only the phantom memory of disturbance. Within the body/machine, power flooded along specific patterns, twisting and compressing into unnatural formations that collapsed spacetime. Functionality was absolute, flowing so smoothly and effortlessly that his consciousness was elevated to Zen levels, making his world seem perfectly ordered.

With great reluctance he shrank away from the drive, designating it to an autonomic monitor routine. Now he was simply aware of the system and its myriad components in the same way he knew his heart beat and lungs inhaled. The sensation of loss was nearly physical, as if he were coming down off a sugar high.

A servicebot slid over, carrying a plate of caramel-coated pecan doughnuts and a coffeepot. He put a whole doughnut into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Catriona Saleeb sat in the chair opposite, long legs folded neatly to one side, which had pushed her shorts up to the very top of her thighs. Her slack top with its tiny straps shifted to show off even more cleavage as she leaned forward.

“That was impressive,” she cooed huskily.

“Kit assembly is tedious,” he said. “And that’s all this was. It’s the principle behind the drive which is impressive.”

“But you did it; you mastered the beast.”

He swallowed another doughnut and drank some coffee. There was a lot of tease in her voice; he wondered if she was missing her usual companions. Somehow he just couldn’t bring himself to reboot Trisha’s I-sentient personality. Seeing the Sentient Intelligence subvert her image and routines had spoiled the effect for him, making her less than a person.

“Are you going to reinstate a full gravity field now?” she asked. There was a thread of concern in her voice.

“Soon. After I’ve had a rest.” He knew he was going to pay for keeping the onboard gravity low, but it reduced the physical stress on his body. I deserve that after everything I’ve been through. He popped another doughnut in.

“Don’t leave it too long,” she said. Her legs straightened, and she came over to him. An elegant hand touched his knee. Her routines must have meshed with his sensory enrichments; he could feel the delicate touch as if feathers were stroking him through the worn toga-suit fabric. “There’s just us left now,” she said, and her beautiful features sketched a tragic sadness. Dark hair fell around her, almost brushing against him. “You’ll look after me, Troblum, won’t you? You won’t let anything bad happen. Please. I couldn’t stand that, not going the way the others went: left behind, ruined.”

He was staring at the hand, allowing the sensations to continue. He could even feel the warmth of the fingers, exactly human body temperature. Perhaps he didn’t need to replace Howard Liang to experience being with a woman. Perhaps it would just be he and Catriona. After all, it was a long way to the Andromeda galaxy.

The thought shook him out of his reverie, and he quickly brought the coffee cup up again. Such concepts shouldn’t be rushed into; it would need close examination, thinking about, implications considered. He looked around the cabin, everywhere but her face. She would know what he’d thought if she saw his eyes. Know him. That was wrong.

Catriona must have perceived his sudden shift. She gave him a small sympathetic smile and backed off in a rustle of silky fabric.

There might have been just the faintest scent from her proximity. “I need to check what’s happening,” he told her.

The smartcore opened a TD link to the unisphere. Almost immediately, Trisha’s projector produced a knot of undulating tangerine and turquoise sine waves above one of the cabin’s empty seats.

“Are you aware of events?” the SI asked.

“Why? What’s happened?” Troblum asked.

“The Accelerator faction has imprisoned Sol.”

Troblum felt a flash of wondrous satisfaction. “The Swarm worked?”

“That was your secret? The bargaining chip you wanted to use with Paula?”

Satisfaction gave way to a sudden flare of guilt. “Yes,” he said, then hurriedly added: “I didn’t know what they were going to use it for.”