‘It’s a boy.’

FIFTY-EIGHT

LUNA, 703017 AD

Kenna remembered her era of involvement with human affairs, at the beginning of her existence in this form, seven hundred centuries earlier, and the Anomaly’s defeat on Nulapeiron, a defeat never replicated elsewhere, except for a handful of absorption attempts interrupted at an early stage. The twisty complexity of humans plotting and engaging in treachery were not the only things that came to mind, when it came to multitudinous lives intertwined and conflicting, but they became foremost during the dream awakenings, when she induced past-mind resonances in this particular crystalline body.

It was the same recruitment process she had employed for the other members of the Council, but this individual was different, though he might be their salvation. In admitting the Trickster, the risk was awful.

Knowing this, she awoke him in private, away from the others, on every occasion. In his earlier organic life as he dreamt, he was in his later years. Those who fully belonged to the darkness never heard her call across the aeons; those who were strongly affected yet also fought it were paradoxically the most sensitive to the possibility of resonance. Of that number, one stood out above the others in his dark, twisted strength. His was the subconscious call that she answered, and drew him forward across time from his dreams, and talked to him.

In the vast majority of other destinies, she avoided recruiting any hint of chaos, and in doing so met eventual defeat – assuming her pseudo-memories had any basis in reality, and were not imaginary workings-out, in her vast computational subconscious, of different paths through the events she perceived.

The slumbering crystalline form was thin in appearance, and the first symptom of resonance engaging was the twisted smile, even before the transparent eyelids opened and he sat up.

—Kenna. Nice to see you again. Particularly since I was already dreaming, before I fell into this dream. It was very strange.

This was the Trickster, with whom no conversation could be taken at face value. Nevertheless, she asked him to elucidate.

—Tell me more about that, since it is on your mind.

Her name meant one-who-knows, but she did not know everything, though others often acted as if she did.

—I tore my own eye out, and then I crucified myself. It was not pleasant.

—Punishing yourself for the things you have done?

She knew much about the atrocities that were part of his original life.

—That is a pretty thought, Queen Kenna, but the dream is one I have encountered before, and it is not fantasy but memory.

—I understand.

—Truly? Then enlighten me, please.

He was always polite to her.

—You understand music. She knew this about him. Call it a subharmonic in the standing wave that is your mind. Or consider two wires alongside each other, one slightly longer than the other, vibrating together when plucked.

—I am not just me, is that what you mean?

Kenna regarded him with stillness, as only a living-crystal being could.

—In this place, we are all more than we once were, Dmitri Ivanovitch Shtemenko.

—But not necessarily better, is that it?

—To what are you alluding?

—You wake me away from the others, every time. Until I wake permanently and the transformation is complete, you do not wish them to— Oh!

The Trickster’s eyes widened, and his body shuddered. Kenna knew him to be capable of practical jokes, but this was not one of them.

—What is happening to me, Kenna?

Their previous sessions had on occasion been filled with rage, or calm, chilling descriptions of the darkest needs that drove him in his younger years, and any number of devious debates, games that he played because he was yet to make a final resolution, the commitment to join the Council for real. This was the first time his thoughts had sounded small with fear.

—It just happened, Kenna told him.

—I do not understand.

She smiled, knowing that he was fighting against the knowledge inside him.

—In your sleep, as you dreamt this dream, you—

His face showed horror.

—No!

—Yes. You died, my Loki-Óthinn, my Dmitri-Stígr.

Even as they were talking.

—That is not possible.

But of course it was and, after a moment, that familiar self-mocking, universe-mocking smile appeared.

—I appear to have made my decision, he added. And accept you as my war-queen.

She held out her hand.

—Welcome to the Council.

He took her fingers gently, and went down on one knee, head bowed. It was a graceful gesture of obeisance, a promise of fealty, performed with such feeling that a human leader might have been taken in by emotion alone. But Kenna knew that what bound him was logic and self-interest, for his resurrection was by her machinations; and only the Council and the forces they commanded were of his kind, now that he lived in this form (for not even he could live totally alone for ever); and when the darkness came, its goal would be to obliterate them. The only special treatment that the Trickster might receive would be a more agonising destruction, suitable for one who had betrayed the betrayer.

Thus would he fight hard and craftily and well, loyal to Kenna as a side effect of loyalty to self, hoping that through victory he might survive the Final Days.

The Trickster was nothing if not adaptable.

While the touch of chaos he brought to their armies might be the edge they needed against the enemy. Or it might be their ruin.

She led him in to meet the others.

FIFTY-NINE

MU-SPACE, 3607 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

A thousand years had passed since The Trapping of Schenck’s Armada, and it was almost time.

The evacuation of Labyrinth was complete.

Fleets of ships, hundreds of millions of shining vessels, hung at a safe distance from the city-world, also keeping far away from that region of shining nothingness soon to collapse and reveal the massed enemy ships. All of the Labyrinthine ships were armed; but none expected to use those weapons.

This was Labyrinth’s moment.

=It has been an honour, Pilots.=

The moment of her death.

**We love you.**

Every ship conjoined in sending Labyrinth that message. Then she split apart—

**We love you!**

—becoming a thousand fragments as she died.

Giving birth.

To a thousand daughters.

Much had occurred during that millennium, including the Stochastic Schism that so divided Pilots. Many aimed for secession as the darkness had wanted, but for different reasons, seeking to divorce mu-space, which seemed cleansed, from the home universe where the darkness still manifested and would one day come in strength.

Others argued for increasing involvement, citing the success in using Haxigoji allies to root out those who were corrupted by the darkness, realspace allies who were literally incorruptible – who died if the darkness started to take hold – and in the spacetime shields that prevented several new hellworlds from forming, though the Anomaly did gain new worlds from time to time, and no existing hellworld was ever freed.

Both sides of the Schism evoked the legendary image of Dirk McNamara in their rhetoric; but there was also the mysterious, crippled figure who appeared from time to time as a moderator, and was supposed to have lived in semi-secrecy in Labyrinth for a while, before returning to his wanderings; and whether it was truth or fiction that Kian McNamara originated the Tri-Fold Way, what was certain was the success of that philosophy in eventually merging both views, both halves of Pilotkind, once more.