In perverse irony, a large percentage had perished more recently when Molsin’s sky-cities, the best part of a thousand in number, in close proximity because of a Conjunction celebration, had annihilated each other or committed suicide using seppuku bombs. The violence was born of confusion and deception, initiated and orchestrated by one person: Petra Helsen, creature of the darkness, creator of the Anomaly and now this. A society destroying itself out of fear – itself and the refugees it had taken in, when other worlds rejected them.

‘Son of a hero?’ Clayton meant Roger. ‘Hardly an asset in Tangleknot.’

‘An additional challenge to overcome, then.’

‘Well, OK, and getting through the training is only the beginning. I understand that, Max. An officer’s operational record is everything. But given that he’s our most reliable observer for detecting this darkness phenomenon, how exactly would you deploy him?’

‘Carefully.’ Max’s voice was mild. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

Clayton’s mouth puckered in a downward smile. ‘Guess I’d better try to stay high in your ratings, boss. I like careful ness. Wouldn’t want Control putting me into the field on a whim.’

‘Sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice a high value piece,’ said Max. ‘Careful calculation is not necessarily to the field officer’s advantage.’

‘I can’t tell you how reassuring that is.’

Max allowed his lips to twitch, acknowledging the ambiguity, as a holo brightened.

‘Stay for the chat,’ he said.

‘Roger’s arrived?’

‘He’s right there.’ Max pointed his big hands forward like a springboard diver, and pulled them apart, causing a flowpath rotation to drop a fit looking young Pilot into place. ‘Pilot Blackstone.’

‘Sir.’

Max caused a flowmetal chair to rise. Roger sat on it.

Hard edged. Tough looking, not like before.

Roger Blackstone was not quite nineteen standard years old, but he was no longer the soft student Max had met during Roger’s first visit here from Fulgor, before everything went to hell. Then, Max had determined the lad’s extraordinary sensitivity to the darkness; now he had a potential field agent before him.

‘Tell us about Molsin,’ said Max.

‘I was there with Jed Goran, part of our plan’ – Roger nodded in Clayton’s direction – ‘to keep me away from Schenck’s surveillance. But Helsen was there, no coincidence, I’m assuming, since that was where most of the refugees ended up. She stole an autodoc, which was a tactical mistake, because other wise I would never have known she—’

As the debriefing continued, Max analysed Roger and watched Clayton doing likewise, enumerating the changes in the young Pilot. When Roger came to the part of the story where Rhianna Chiang revealed herself as a Pilot agent-in-place – dear Rhianna, always the best – and took Roger through an intense mind-body training regime that ended with a total cognitive restructuring, everything made sense: the thousand-metre stare that spoke not of trauma but a heightened reliance on peripheral vision, hearing and smell.

A present from my beloved Rhianna.

Which was to say, a weapon Max had yet to learn how to wield. A weapon called Blackstone. That thought remained as Max picked up the conversation, led the debriefing to its conclusion, and told young Roger to take time out for relaxation and wait for a call. One fastpath summons later and the flowmetal chair was empty, already beginning to melt back into the floor.

Clayton was staring at the ceiling, or rather something in his mind’s eye. Without looking at Max, he said: ‘You realise he never attended Graduation.’

A ceremony was irrelevant. Max parsed the sentence for unspoken semantics.

‘Yet he has a ship. Good point.’ Earlier, separately, they had each watched holo footage of a triumphant return to Labyrinth, Roger and his black ship webbed with scarlet and gold: a ship no one had known existed. ‘And so very like his father’s.’

‘Exactly. I don’t have a fixation with mindwipe’ – Clay ton was clearly lying, because the continuing inability of his former partner, Darius Boyle, to regain a normal life following selective amnesia induction that went too deep still burned like acid – ‘but we caused Carl Blackstone’s wiped memories to resurface, me and Darius, when we questioned him.’

‘What are you saying?’ asked Max. ‘That his ship might have possessed the same memories all along?’

‘And couldn’t share them because of the mindwipe.’

The amnesia treatment would have affected Carl Black stone’s ability to retrieve the memories in his ship’s mind as well as his own: that was a known phenomenon.

‘Whether his ship knew already,’ said Max, ‘is irrelevant when you consider that Carl regained his memories before his last two flights, to Fulgor and back. During one or both of those trips, his ship must have grown a daughter, wouldn’t you say?’

Without the guidance and shelter of Labyrinth, parthenogenetic ship reproduction was so very rare.

‘If you’re worried about the content of those wiped memories,’ added Max, ‘I can tell you what they—’

‘Don’t, please,’ said Clayton. ‘Darius and I learnt them once, and look what happened.’

It was ironic, that their probing had reawakened memories which they themselves, Clayton and Boyle, did not have clearance for: hence the mindwipe, and the neurological side-effects that ended Darius Boyle’s career.

‘Except that inside the Admiralty, everyone now should know this.’ Max knew better than anyone how fast the strategic landscape, and specific needs for secrecy, could change. ‘Carl Blackstone saw the realspace base at the galactic core, over two decades ago. The trail led to a young Pilot Schenck, though it took years. That’s how my whole counter operation began, Deke, and I had to keep it buried.’

‘Shit,’ said Clayton.

It was the first time he had sworn inside Max’s office, since Max had officially become director of the intelligence service. But then, Max had never used Clayton’s first name before – people rarely did – which signalled that this was an apology, or close facsimile.

Max looked up at the ceiling.

‘You could have told us,’ he said. ‘About the Blackstone ship.’

Both he and Clayton belonged to the minority of Pilots able to perceive Labyrinth’s direct communications. But the chances of receiving a reply were millions to—

=Yes.=

Clayton smiled.

‘Getting an answer is one thing. A satisfying answer, that’s something else again.’ Like Max’s apology, he implied.

But it was as far as Max would go.

I can’t help other people’s neediness.

The Anomaly had enveloped Fulgor, Molsin society was gone, and the renegades’ massive base at the galactic core seemed merely a bridgehead for an invading darkness whose origins lay so very far away, somewhere on the far side of a cosmic void, itself one hundred and fifty million lightyears in diameter. An invasion was in progress, albeit one initiated aeons ago, and whether its arrival was imminent or a million years away, no one yet knew.

In the face of all this, weak-hearted feelings signified nothing.

Max accepted responsibility because he had to – because no one else had his background or talents, of which the primary one was this: since schooldays he had hated bullies. In the end, his own rotten childhood might help to save humanity; and how ironic was that?

When Clayton left, Max was enveloped in sour meditation, scarcely noticing the man’s departure. But Clayton was going to approve Roger’s recruitment, officially and on Max’s behalf, so that was something: another small piece moving forward a square in the tactical game that was Max’s life work.

Another day at the office, except that soon he would have to find another way to phrase that thought – office being deprecated – because nothing remains unchanging, not even the language in which you communicate and think. The ground might shift beneath your feet, but so long as you remembered what you were fighting for, that was enough.