'Can't you do that?

'Yes. Are you familiar with the phrase: for everything a season?

'Uh, not really. But I understand it.

'For the moment I remain content with my current existence. However, like several species, I am concerned by your proposed Pilgrimage into the Void. That threat is enough to upset the status quo between myself and ANA.

'Not my Pilgrimage.

'You work for the Faction which engineered it.

So how the crap did it know that? 'How removed are you from our affairs?

'Not as much as ANA would like, nowhere near as much as conspiracy theorists would like to believe. As always, I observe and interpret. That is my function.

'You're still in the Unisphere, then?

'I have some monitoring capacity left. After all, I predate ANA by several centuries. I am not easy to purge from existing systems.

'So what do you want with me?

'There is a lot of attention focused on you. You wish to contact Paula Myo, your u-shadow has been trying to locate her. Why?

Troblum wasn't going to answer that. He didn't even have proof that he was talking to the SI. It would be easy enough for the Accelerators to pull a stunt like this; and they knew of his interest in the Starflyer War. 'I have information for her.

'Is it relevant to the current situation?

'Yes.

'Will it prevent the Pilgrimage?

'It will weaken the Accelerator Faction. I don't know how badly that will affect the Pilgrimage.

'Very well, I will establish a secure link for you.

'No! I want to see her in person.

'Why?

'I don't trust you.

'How very unoriginal.

'That's the way it is.

'She is en route to an unregistered star system.

'Why, what's there?

'If you are still working for the Accelerators that information will help them.

'I'm not. And you contacted me.

'I did.

'I'm not going to some unregistered system. I don't know what's there.

'Very well. What about Oscar Monroe?

'What about him?

'You tried to contact him on Orakum.

'Yes, I trust Oscar.

'Smart choice. He is on Viotia, in Colwyn City.

'Okay. Thank you.

'Now you know that will you seek him out?

'I'll think about it.

At three hundred and thirty five years old, it always galled Digby that his great-grandmother still thought he wasn't experienced enough to do his job. He suspected it would always be the case. Nonetheless, as soon as he received the shadow assignment he vowed it would be the epitome of professionalism.

His starship, the Columbia505, helped; a brand-new ultradrive designed and built by ANA in its secure replicator station on Io. Its systems were the most sophisticated in the Commonwealth. Tracking Chatfield's stealthed hyperdrive ship as it left Ganthia was no problem at all.

Digby followed Chatfield out to an uninhabited star system just inside the loose boundary that defined the Greater Intersolar Commonwealth. A small star whose mildly variable spectrum drifted between orange and yellow in two-hundred-year-cycles. It had been examined by CST's Exploratory division nine hundred years ago, a short visit which soon established there were no H-congruent planets. According to the Columbia505's smart-core there were no subsequent follow up ventures.

Chatfield's ship rendezvoused with the Trojan point of the biggest gas giant. The only object of any note there was a small ice moon which had been trapped by the gravitational null-zone over a billion years ago. With a diameter of just over two thousand kilometres, its grizzled surface glinted softly in the weak copper sunlight.

The first thing Digby found as he followed Chatfield in was the elaborate sensor network scanning space and hyperspace out to a hundred million kilometres from the ice moon. His stealth systems allowed him to get within twenty-thousand kilometres before he halted his approach. The on-board sensors had just managed to pick up eleven vehicles of some kind orbiting the moon. They were heavily stealthed, and his ship's registry didn't have anything like them on file. Digby couldn't get any kind of image using passive sensors from such a distance, so the Columbia505 released a flock of miniature drones on a flyby trajectory. The only flaw with that was the flight time. To avoid suspicion about their trajectory and velocity the pebble-sized drones would take nine hours to reach the ice moon and skim past its unknown sentries.

Chatfield's visit lasted three hours.

'What do you want me to do? Digby asked Paula as Chatfield's ship rose away from the frigid surface at five gees. 'Stay here or follow him?

'Follow him, Paula said. 'I'll investigate the base.

'My sensor drones will engage in another five and a half hours. They should be able to tell you more about the satellites. If they're as bad as I think they are you'll need a Navy squadron to break in.

'We'll see.

The Columbia505's sensors watched Chatfield's ship power into hyperspace. Five seconds later Digby followed him out of the unnamed system. Interestingly, they were now heading for

Ellezelin.

The Alexis Denken flew into the star system seven hours after the Columbia505 had departed. Its smartcore steered it towards the ice moon in full stealth mode. While it was still ten thousand kilometres out, Paula triggered the sensor drones that were now tumbling away from their brief encounter. All the data they'd amassed downloaded into the smartcore, which immediately set about analysing the information.

The orbiting sentries were impressive. Very little of their nature had leaked through the stealth effect, but the drones had managed to piece together a few fragments. What they'd glimpsed was some kind of ship over a hundred metres long, with a strange wrinkled teardrop-shape hull that sprouted odd lumps. Power signature leakage confirmed they were heavily armed. Technologically they weren't as advanced as the Alexis Denken (very few ships were, she acknowledged wryly), but their sheer size and power meant they'd be able to overwhelm her starship's force fields if they ever caught it.

The smartcore took eight minutes to analyse a flaw in their detector scans and configure the Alexis Denken's emissions so that it could pass among them unnoticed. Paula watched the surface of the ice moon grow larger as the Alexis Denken slipped placidly through the big defence sentries. Little attempt had been made to hide the station that sprawled across the fissured ice plain. Electronic and thermal emissions were strong. She saw a broad cross shape of dark metal, with each wing measuring nearly a kilometre long.

'This might just be the proof you need, Paula told ANA: Governance. 'We've never been able to find one of their bases before, let alone intact and still functioning.

'Now we know it exists do you want Navy support?

'No. This is just a reconnaissance trip. If the Navy tries to force its way in here, they'll self-destruct. I want to know what's here that's worth this level of secrecy and defence.

The Alexis Denken descended carefully until it was hovering above the craggy icescape a couple of kilometres away from the base itself. Quantum mass signature detectors built up a comprehensive pattern of the base's layout for Paula. It extended over half a kilometre below the top of the ice. The central section was largely empty, which she judged to be the starship docking bays. Around that, the wings had a much higher density average, reflecting the concentration of equipment inside. Whatever the Accelerators were doing in there, it required eight high-output mass energy generators to supply the power they needed.

Paula directed the smartcore to extend the ship's t-field, which inflated out to a five kilometre radius. A t-field wasn't exactly standard starship gear, not even for ultradrives; but then the Alexis Denken was pretty extraordinary even by ANA's standards. She waited anxiously for a couple of seconds, but the t-field didn't register with the base defence sensors.