‘Is that plyplastic?’ she asked. Skylady didn’t use much of the substance, but there were hundreds of references in her newly implanted memories.

‘Yes,’ Nigel confirmed.

‘So that’s . . .’

‘A cargo module, by the looks of it.’

‘Correct,’ Coulan said. ‘I found another eleven of them underneath the palace. The bussalore drone managed to get inside one. It’d been stripped clean. Even some of the internal structure had been removed.’

‘Useful material,’ Nigel muttered. ‘Probably propping up some aristo’s mansion roof.’

‘Indeed. Then two weeks ago, I found this.’

The image changed to another large vault, this one annular with a ribbed ceiling. It enclosed a big ellipsoid made of smooth hexagonal panels which stood on its wide end, supported by brick buttresses. Metal struts which protruded from the panel intersections appeared to have been broken off. Tangles of cables and pipes formed a tattered web around the object. Six thick seamless tubes emerged from the panels around the narrow end, extending upwards so they almost touched the vault’s curving roof.

‘It took a while, but the drone eventually found a way in; some of the conduit mouldings had perished,’ Coulan said with a note of pride.

The recording switched to a weird spectrum of cobalt-blue and black. Scale was difficult to make out, and the interior of the ellipsoid was filled with a dense lattice of support struts and cables and wire tubes, which made the picture confusing. Lean lines of scabbed electromuscle had distended from various mechanisms, oozing flaccid knobs that hung limply over dark gulfs, as if it had briefly turned liquid, only to resolidify. Cradles held blurred shapes; spheres, cylinders, discs . . .

‘Freeze,’ Nigel commanded.

The recording focused on a long cylinder with a wasp-waist middle and a mushroom-profile head.

‘Oh, holy crap,’ Nigel whispered. His lips parted in a soft lopsided smile.

‘My thoughts exactly,’ Coulan said.

Kysandra wanted to shout the question at them, but she knew the way this game was played now.

‘This changes everything,’ Nigel said. ‘We have to get in there. I need them.’

‘Not going to happen,’ Coulan said. ‘Not easily, anyway.’

‘I could ask nicely.’

‘I’ve studied Varlan’s society closely while I’ve been in the city; it’s conservative and sliding down the decadence decay curve. Can you imagine your impact? Hi there, Captain Philious, I’m from the Commonwealth. I have more knowledge than you, so just give me what I need and I’m going to try and get you all out of here, back to a universe where you will have none of your wealth and power, where you’re just the same as everyone else.’

‘Yeah,’ Nigel drawled, and scratched the back of his head. ‘So, we put together a crew of master criminals and pull off the crime of the millennium.’ He grinned. ‘Finally, something to rival the Great Wormhole Heist of 2243. I’d love to see Ozzie’s face at that news.’

‘It took me nearly three weeks to get a seven-centimetre remote drone into that vault. The palace has about a hundred armed guards on duty at any one time. There’s a Marine barracks five minutes away. And the Captain’s police aren’t idiots or slack. I just don’t see how we can realistically get into the vault, let alone take those out through the palace and back to the Skylady.’

‘So we have to get rid of the guards and Marines and the police, then.’

‘And manufacture a time crazy enough so no one will notice them being carted off down Walton Boulevard in broad daylight.’

‘Ah, hell. I suppose so. We don’t have a lot of options right now.’

Kysandra gave up. ‘Right, you two! What the crud is that thing?’

Nigel turned to face her, actually expressing some genuine gusto for once. ‘The Vermillion’s armoury.’

BOOK SIX

Those who Rise

1

Even though he’d sworn not to return, Slvasta had enjoyed seeing his old regimental comrades again. He’d made the journey back to Cham just ten days after he’d returned to Varlan from agreeing the deal with Nigel. Sergeant Yannrith had written, asking him to be a character witness for Trooper Tovakar. He was to be court-martialled, Yannrith’s letter explained: there had been one too many charges of drunk and disorderly behaviour. Major Rachelle was to be the prosecuting officer. If found guilty, Tovakar would be given a dishonourable discharge and stripped of his pension.

That it was Major Rachelle was a big factor in Slvasta’s return. That and the injustice. Tovakar was no saint, but to strip a trooper of his pension – a man who’d faced terrible danger to keep his fellow citizens safe – well, that was exactly the kind of thing Democratic Unity and their organization were fighting in Varlan.

His arrival caused a stir. Even provincial old Cham had heard of the Hero of Eynsham Square and looked favourably on a famous son. Ultimately, though, it had made no difference. Slvasta’s testimony appealed to emotion; Rachelle deployed cold logic and impeccable legal precedent. Tovakar was kicked out of the regiment and his pension rights revoked.

Afterwards, Slvasta almost didn’t bother with the subtle recruiting questions, but routine and paranoia made him ask them anyway. He wasn’t asking them with the usual protection of anonymity, and Uracus alone knew how furious Bethaneve would be with him for that breach of security. But Tovakar was absolutely perfect material for their movement, so Slvasta made him an offer to accompany him back to Varlan and help Democratic Unity with certain politically useful acts. Tovakar didn’t even hesitate, which got Slvasta thinking. The trooper would be extremely useful when it finally (Giu forbid) came to using the weapons that Nigel had agreed to supply. There weren’t many ex-regiment people in their organization yet, and they could really use someone with that kind of experience. In his own way, Tovakar was indisputably loyal and reliable.

So he went and sat down with Andricea, and then Sergeant Yannrith. It helped that the Cham regiment hadn’t been having the happiest time since he left. True, they didn’t take mods with them on sweeps any more, but most of the other reforms he’d instituted had quietly been dropped. There were more officers, recruited from the county’s gentry – junior sons and daughters who received no income from their family estates, and who saw the regiment purely as a way of maintaining their lifestyle. To pay for them, there were fewer troopers. Brigadier Venize was withdrawing from the day-to-day running of the regiment, with Major Rachelle stepping up to fill the gap. So when he made them the offer, Yannrith and Andricea were on the train with him and Tovakar back to Varlan.

It turned out to be the smartest recruiting move he’d made. Even Bethaneve agreed with that. Eventually.

*

As always these days, Yannrith, Andricea and Tovakar were the ones standing with him on Varlan’s quayside in the grim meagre twilight, waiting for the ferry to chug its way over the Colbal. It was raining hard, a thin drizzle swirling out of featureless grey clouds that formed an unbroken ceiling over the city. Despite the rain, Slvasta was suffering a clammy warmth. Under his coat he wore a protective waistcoat of drosilk. Bethaneve insisted on that at all times. As the official leader of Democratic Unity he was a public figure, and not all the public admired him. The waistcoat would help against any sudden attack.

Drosilk, which had started to come on the market eighteen months ago, was astonishing: a light glossy thread that formed a fabric with a beautiful moiré shimmer. But it was also fantastically strong; there had been nothing like it on Bienvenido before. At first it had been used by society ladies for their couture dresses. But soon the factory looms had begun to weave tighter fabrics, strong enough to turn a blade. Really thick weaves were supposedly bullet proof. Everybody wanted the stuff, which had first appeared from Gretz county. Slvasta had been mildly alarmed to learn that drosilk came from a mod. Some adaptor stable had produced what it was calling a mod-spider which spun the stuff out. The spider, barely the size of a human hand, was utterly harmless. That was going to add complications for his anti-neut policy. Drosilk was becoming an important commodity, helping the city’s battered post-mod economy along. Democratic Unity couldn’t afford to be seen opposing it; weaving and tailoring the bales of cloth into finished clothes provided a lot of work. A couple of the old adaptor stables in the city were already bringing in the mod-spiders, adapting their old barns to accommodate them, and nobody was protesting. Slvasta considered that the thin end of the wedge, but Coulan had advised him to say nothing and bide his time over the problem.