It was not a secret to be shared with humanity at large. The Chaos Conflict, war against the Zajinets, was open knowledge; the notion that Pilot might fight Pilot in all-out warfare, that was something to keep quiet for as long as possible.

Realspace populations needed to feel safe, and they could only continue to do so if they did not realise the extent to which Pilots felt fear, like anybody else.

And so, the prisoners.

This time around, there were in fact three Pilots, all caught while operating on realspace worlds undercover, all equipped with countersurveillance measures. Their captured tu-rings had been of great interest to Admiralty scientists. Two were caught simply because of superior concentrations of surveillance tech. The third had been recognised by a Pilot delivering goods to Göthewelt; after the prisoner was taken and fifty unconscious passers-by were revived from the smartmiasma-induced coma used in the arrest, local Sanctuary representatives had spun a story about a new Anomaly seed, rather than a darkness-corrupted Pilot. The local authorities were satisfied, and awarded a civic medal to the Pilot who had recognised the threat.

If renegade Pilots were beginning to operate undercover in greater numbers, Roger’s Haxigoji trainees had better know for sure they could spot them. So this time around, Pilots would be part of the final test.

Which the trainees had better, after all of his and Nectarblossom’s efforts, pass with ease.

When Roger had first boarded Metronome Station, protected by a quickglass suit, he had watched while engineers brought the lonely facility back to life, installing modern technology, bringing the station up to a stable spin and restoring warmth and breathable air, section by section, until the whole thing might have been in its heyday, had it not been for the lack of crew.

Because of his meetings with Ro McNamara, Roger had become something of a history buff where Pilots were concerned; and so he made a private pilgrimage to the long-abandoned control room where long ago a scientist on duty, one Dorothy Verzhinski, had picked up a wordless distress call whose audio signal contained only one thing: the sound of a baby crying.

The drifting mu-space ship contained an unconscious and fading Pilot, along with the baby she had given birth to before transiting into realspace: a breach birth delivered by performing a Caesarean upon herself, using her inboard robotic tool-arms. The Pilot, saved by shuttles despatched from Metronome Station, had been Karyn McNamara; and the baby grew up to be Dorothy McNamara, named after Verzhinski, except that she hated her first name and shortened it to Ro.

By mean-geodesic time, that had occurred four hundred and eighty-three years ago. No wonder Ro remained hidden from the rest of humanity: how could anyone cope with a society that had advanced by nearly half a millennium from the one they had grown up in?

Today, on the occasion of the final test for the third run of the six-month training programme, Metronome Station was once again warm and comfortable. Roger wore only a normal jumpsuit, though a nodule of quickglass fastened against his skin would spread to cover him should it be necessary, while Nectarblossom wore a heavy white tabard, decorated with gold brocade, over a pale-blue silk-like tunic and trews: her formal best, designed to intimidate the candidates before-hand, and increase the sense of ceremony afterwards, when they were told they had passed.

Assuming they did pass.

Roger and Nectarblossom walked along a grey-carpeted central corridor, wide and tastefully lit and scented, trailed by twenty-four hopeful Haxigoji of both sexes, dressed in the dark sleeveless jackets and breeches that served as tac uniforms, giving off a faint odour of excitement that even Roger had learned to recognise. To Nectarblossom, the scent would be anything but faint, he guessed. Then he stopped, and the recruits did likewise as Nectarblossom walked on to check the testing area.

‘All right.’ He turned to face them. ‘Good luck, everyone. We’ll call you in one by one. The exit from the testing-area is on the other side, where you’ll meet up afterwards. You can do it.’

Amber eyes with horizontal slits were fastened on him. Several Haxigoji nodded: a learned human gesture.

‘Crisp,’ he added, ‘you’ll be first. Two minutes, and we start.’

Then he strode ahead, passed through unfolding security doors, nodded to the two heavily armed Pilots on guard – there were half a dozen others stationed at sensible locations – and passed through to what had been a viewing gallery. The entire wall to his right formed a window on space, opposite a relaxation area on the left, now transformed into a series of seven open-fronted cells. Each cell’s opening glowed dull orange: inbuilt weaponry ready to blast any person or thing that tried to pass through.

Inside each cell was a single captive; and the central cell was occupied by a Pilot called Morik, the one captured on Göthewelt. He sat pale and glowering, darkness lapping strongly around him. A smartmiasma guarded him, sensitive to his biochemistry, ready to respond to a build-up of adrenaline, satanin or other precursor to physical action.

The teams of guards were highly trained, with careful procedures ensuring only one prisoner was on the move at a time. With Roger and Nectarblossom present, there was the added advantage that any change in the quality of darkness would be apparent to them. And also to the recruits they were about to test, they hoped.

Cells two and five contained guards who had been ‘volunteered’ to act as prisoners; the recruits were expected to detect their freedom from dark influence.

‘Time to start,’ said Nectarblossom, and summoned Crisp.

Crisp was tall even among Haxigoji, straight-shouldered as he walked to the first cell, stopped and considered the enemy for a few moments, moved to the second – this time a twitch of those shoulders indicated his amusement at the deception – and on to the next cell and the next. The prisoners this time were well-behaved, or rather subdued – during the two earlier tests, some had become aggressive – and when Crisp stopped before the cell containing Morik, he seemed rapt in concentration due to Morik being a darkness-controlled Pilot rather than ordinary human.

It took Roger over five seconds to realise that something was going wrong.

Shit!

Crisp shuddered as the darkness entered him.

‘Shut him down!’ Roger shouted. ‘Shut Morik down!’

One of the guards gestured, and in his cell, Morik collapsed. But that did nothing to stop Crisp falling back onto the deck, where a tremendous shaking took hold of him, limbs thumping in some awful response to the twists of darkness around his head, and how could anyone prevent such an infiltration? If Crisp became a creature of the darkness then what did that mean for—?

Stillness.

The change had happened so fast.

‘We will honour him,’ came softly from Nectarblossom’s torc.

‘What?’ said Roger.

Those amber eyes were matt-looking, no longer lustrous. Medical scanners opened up holo phase spaces all around, with textual annotations explaining the readings’ significance, summed up by three words: Crisp was dead.

When Roger looked up, he realised that all of the cells’ occupants were unconscious, including the two unfortunate volunteers. Guards swarmed, taking up new positions. Total lockdown.

‘I’m sorry, Nectarblossom.’ Roger did not know what else to say.

Morik had been careful, setting up whatever process he had used – perhaps it was similar to the way the Anomaly spread, perhaps it was something else: Admiralty analysts would be poring over data from the smartmiasma and other devices here – and aiming to influence one of the Haxigoji rather than a human, either because he thought the guards would be less likely to suspect what was happening, or because for the process to work, the intended target had to be an individual naturally sensitive to the darkness.