**Come on, then.**

Wrapped up and hooded, the four scurried back to the dig site, Seeker-once-Harij holding hands with Zirkana, while Kolarin and Seeker-once-captive forged ahead. Then, at the exposed hull, the two Seekers went forward together, knelt down, and placed their palms and foreheads against the metal.

**There is something. Not a door mechanism, but . . .**

**Yes, deep inside. I’ve got it.**

Together, they caught a tumbling fragment of an Idea and hauled it out through the hull, allowing it to float between them:

** . . . labelled Minissimus, Minor, Magnus – our destination which we will not reach – along with Major and Maximus. That last is the only logical site for crash-landing given the state of our . . .**

It was a shard, a tiny piece, but of such clarity!

**The World. By Maximus it means the World.**

That was Zirkana.

**Yes, you’re right.**

But her silver skin was darkening, because the sun was almost up.

**We need to get into shelter.**

**And quickly.**

They rushed back towards the caverns, Seeker-once-Harij and Zirkana supporting each other, because the person you loved was and always would be precious, more precious by far than any ancient find, however culturally significant it might turn out to be.

Even a Seeker knew that life is defined by more than Ideas.

SEVEN

LABYRINTH, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

Rhianna would not hug Roger in case he misunderstood, but she was proud that he was now enrolled officially (though secretly) in Tangleknot. Her own days at the academy were strong in her memory, and always would be: the pain as much as elation; the endless training and striving; stoicism always, the Aeternal term derived from shūgyo, implying austere discipline, unflinching and with total focused effort.

They said farewell in a turquoise and silver hall used to impress security cleared visitors without exposing them to the harsh realities of Tangleknot Core.

‘I don’t know how often we’ll get breaks,’ said Roger, ‘or be allowed to exit the place.’

‘Less than you’d like.’

‘Probably, but it’s where I want to be. And will you even be in Labyrinth?’

He was a trainee asking an established intelligence officer about the next step in her career; but they had survived Molsin together, and that made a difference.

‘I’m full time inside Admiralty premises for now. Short-term tasks to occupy me while I work out what to do next.’ And because this was Roger, her only protégé: ‘I’m meeting Max today.’

‘The Commodore? That’s impressive.’

Not many officers dealt directly with the director of the service. Even a neophyte knew that.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Look, I’m not going to wish you luck, because you’ll be great.’

‘If I am, it’s thanks to you.’

Roger had toughened up – more than that, had been transformed – but right now his emotions were open, on display. Reversing her previous decision, Rhianna hugged him hard.

‘I’m proud of you,’ she whispered.

Then she stepped back, summoning a rotation.

Roger nodded.

Everything revolved around a host of axes, and as Tangleknot and Roger disappeared from sight, Rhianna wondered for a moment whether she would ever see him again, because meetings with Uncle Max had a way of changing one’s life, not always in expected ways.

You’ll do fine, Pilot Blackstone.

They were senpai and kohai, he and her, as much as sensei and deshi, a bond inexplicable to one who had not experienced mentoring through harshness for mortal stakes. In teaching him, she had learnt much about herself; more importantly, she had bequeathed all she knew to someone worthy, someone who would fight for Labyrinth just as she would, willing to sacrifice the same.

Meaning everything.

She had not met Clayton before, but Roger had mentioned him during the long hypnosis session back on Molsin when she had uncovered all his memories, including the ones that he accessed only in dreams of the far future, the most disturbing of all. Other enquiries since returning to Labyrinth had unearthed only good reports about Clayton.

He was waiting, a large bearish man, in the director’s ante chamber. They shook hands as he introduced himself.

‘The Commodore wondered if you knew this guy.’ Clayton gestured a holo into existence. ‘This was taken yesterday, mean geodesic.’

It was a head-and-shoulders shot of a scar-faced, hard-looking man.

‘So he survived.’ Rhianna nodded, still looking at the image. ‘His name’s Tannier, and he’s a peacekeeper – was – on Barbour. That’s a Molsin sky-city. If you’ve access to Roger Blackstone’s debriefing—’

‘I was there when he delivered it.’

‘Then you’ll know Tannier’s the man who helped him. And that’s definitely Tannier in the holo. But how did he get away?’

When the sky-cities perished, she meant. Then she remembered their confrontation with Helsen and her assistant Ranulph, dead at Roger’s hands.

‘I’m guessing it was the Zajinets,’ she added. ‘Returning the favour, after Helsen tried to get at them, and Tannier, Roger and I stopped her.’

Clayton looked as if he were trying not to bite his lip.

‘Thanks for the confirmation,’ he said.

‘You don’t sound happy about—’

A ginger cat with white patches walked out of the wall from the direction of Max’s office, stopped, and turned to look at them with unblinking obsidian eyes. Then he continued on, walked inside the opposite wall, and was gone.

Clayton sighed.

‘Don’t ask,’ he said.

When they entered Max’s office, there was a cream-coloured cat, too elegant to be male, sitting on Max’s lap. She flowed onto the floor, turned in circles like a kitten chasing her tail, and fastpath-rotated out of sight. Had any Pilot besides Max attempted the same, here in the heart of his defences, they would have been obliterated.

He stood up with massive arms open wide.

‘Rhianna. My favourite niece.’

‘Uncle Max.’

They hugged strongly and kissed each other on the cheek, while Clayton stood with his mouth open, like a man whose heart has stopped.

‘Er,’ he said.

Clearly being assigned to assist the director of the intelligence service meant one surprise after another. Knowing Uncle Max, poor Clayton probably had not learnt the half of it, not yet.

The floor budded flowmetal chairs, and everyone sat.

‘Pilot, um, Chiang,’ said Clayton, ‘confirms Tannier’s identity in the file.’

‘That’s not good.’ Max looked at Rhianna. ‘His survival is good news, but not the circumstances by which he arrived in our hands.’

Together, the three of them went through the logs and reports from the watch-squadron placed on Fulgor surveillance, along with background on one Piet Gunnarsson, who seemed to have a knack for causing disaster, although Rhianna knew that careful, rigorous statistical analysis was always required to distinguish guilt from unlucky coincidence.

And then Max played a segment from Tannier’s debriefing interview, held on board a Pilot’s vessel in realspace, in which Tannier described his confrontation with Helsen, how she dropped through a cracked-open sky-city hull, in what looked like suicide at first, except that a silver-and-scarlet Pilot’s ship had been hovering underneath, waiting to catch her.

‘Schenck,’ said Clayton, at the first mention of the ship’s colours. ‘Bound to be Schenck.’

‘Shit,’ muttered Rhianna. ‘Too bad the bitch got to live.’

They replayed the footage of the Zajinet ship launching a torpedo like tube, which of course contained a comatose Tannier, while Piet Gunnarsson interpreted the action as an attack and launched a strike that destroyed the Zajinets.