Into the Light by Jane Wallace

He stooped forward, screwing up his eyes. ‘No, still can’t …’ He grunted as Zendra’s knee rammed into his groin. As he doubled up in pain, she smashed the mace of her clenched hands down on the back of his neck. He fell to her feet and dropped his blaster on the landing. She bent down to pick it up, but he grabbed her round the waist and tried to push her over. They struggled until she found the button on his helmet which retracted the visor. She drove her fingers into his eyes, then shoved hard enough to send his upper body over the edge of the platform and a fifteen metre drop. He was wriggling backwards when Zendra seized his boots and heaved them overboard, leaving the pitiful hooks of his fingers.

She heard a groan and looked left. Marik was taking punches to the head and stomach from the second sturmganger. A blow sent him staggering backwards and almost off the platform, taking a lucky turn at the last minute to land several steps down the stairway. As his opponent lumbered forward to the head of the stairs, Zendra pulled the rackarman from her belt and sent three or four charges into the his back. He belly-flopped on to the stairs and bumped down them past Marik before slopping on to the midlevel landing.

Feeling a grabbing at her ankles, Zendra looked down. The sturmganger was trying to latch on to her boots. She shook off the grip and casually stamped her heel into the clawing fingers. There was a howl which started loud then faded away, followed by a subdued thump.

‘Thanks,’ she heard muttered in her ear. Marik was beside her, grinning. He slapped his palm against the door controls and the hatch opened. ‘Thank the gods,’ he said, sticking two fingers in his mouth to give a shrill whistle. Hauki and Lauden returned the signal with shouts from below, they were already out of the limousine and running up the stairs.

‘Here they come,’ said Zendra, meaning a squad of sturmgangers who had witnessed the attack and were moving in from the other end of the launch pads.

‘You go get the shields up,’ said Marik. ‘I’ll get them in then close up.’

‘Wilco.’ Zendra climbed in through the hatch and ran to the bridge, motion sensors activating light as she passed. She made the flight deck and went straight for systems holostation where she managed to initialise the engines and raise the shields.

‘Safe for now but there’s not so much power,’ she told the others as they entered the bridge.

‘We don’t want to stay here for ever,’ said Hauki.

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ said Lauden, throwing himself into seat of the comms desk. ‘Hey Zen, I didn’t know you could speak Gharst. You been learning?’

‘No. I got the school cert, lower and higher. Double A in both, actually. Sevin’s not the only one around here who can speak a few languages, you know.’

‘What about Sevin?’ said Hauki. ‘How long d’you think he’ll take?’

‘Maybe we can go get him in a shuttle or something,’ said Lauden.

‘Nah, we’d get shot down. Can you hear them now?’ said Marik. Blaster fire was whining into the outer shield. ’We need that teleport working. That’d be so treffo, we could zap ’em in without leaving our seats.’

‘Yeah, and Sevin’s got a necklace already,’ said Lauden.

‘He’s got a necklace?’ said Zendra.

‘Yup, that’s how he escaped from the cell, I asked him.’

‘So it does work,’ said Marik.

‘I dunno, I guess so. Maybe just not all the time.’

Hauki slapped her leg. ‘Mother above, that’s how we’ll get them out.’

‘How’s that?’ asked Lauden.

‘Xin’s got a necklace too, hasn’t she? Or did the Gharst take it?’

‘She was still wearing it when I last saw her.’

‘Even if she’s lost it, she’ll understand what’s going on if Sevin starts going all fuzzy. Her and Wen can both cling on to him as he goes. Like she did with Wen. She was wearing the necklace but she got to take Wen with her, remember?’

‘That’s right,’ said Marik. ‘But what if it doesn’t work, like when they teleported back into the raefnschip?’

’It will work. D’you hear what she said, when they reappeared? Wen said something like “the packet locator” and Xin said that it had worked from the base station. Well, Infinity has to be the base station, don’t you think? Where else would it be?’

‘I think she’s right,’ said Marik.

‘Okay Lauden, we need your brain here,’ said Hauki. ‘See if you can make the teleport work, get them back here.’

‘Alright,’ he said, getting to his feet.

‘Marik, why don’t you get all the cameras and scanners working so we can locate them coming in and Zendra, give me a hand to prepare the beamers and disintegrators, in case we need them.’ Hauki smiled contentedly as the crew set to work. ‘Now I feel we’re doing something useful.’

κ

The way Wen took to the basement of the castle was not marked on any plans of the Hellenhaus Sevin had studied. Following the faltering tallow she carried, they went up steps and down ladders, through alleys ankle-deep in water, crawling once under a false floor through which they could hear footsteps and shouted commands. At times they seemed to be progressing through the metre-thick walls of the castle exterior itself. After a good twenty minutes, they heard a muted baying.

‘How do you know all this?’ asked Sevin when they finally stopped by a door set into the wall of the tunnel. He had to raise his voice over the yelps of the animals on the other side.

‘I’ve been planning to escape for a long time,’ said Wen. ‘This was the route I was working on. Separate people told me about the different tunnels, I didn’t realise they connected until later. It took a while to clear it all out, but I did it, eventually.’ She grabbed the door handle. ‘Quiet please, and don’t be afraid. The dogs look wild but they’re animorphs, harmless unless instructed to be otherwise. This door goes into the back of their pen. We’ll have to crawl through it on hands and knees to avoid being seen. They’re kept in the dark but there are windows to the outside. The pen door is kept unlocked and the masterboard for the dogs is on its left hand. There is normally a guard on duty and they will have the code to activate the dogs. That’s where you come in, Major.’ Wen looked at the rackarmen in Sevin’s hand.

He nodded. ‘Alright, what then?’

‘When the dogs are ready, we’ll head to the sleds which are parked outside the pen. They’re big, we can all get into one of them. Then we’ll drive out.’

‘Where’s the exit?’ asked Xin.

‘You’ll see it, an open-air gap in the wall with a ramp below. Don’t worry, the dogs know what to do.’

Wen opened the door gently and they followed her into the gloom on all fours. Immediately they were surrounded by presences, countless pairs of glowing red eyes. They seemed to be waiting for a command, alert and ready to strike. Unlike real animals, they made no noise and their smell was musty not musky, like vegetables in a cold store. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Sevin could make out individual beasts. They were a kind of wolfhound, slender-bodied with long powerful legs, bristly pelts and swishing tails.

He heard Wen speaking firmly and quietly to the dogs up ahead. This had the unforeseen effect of encouraging them. The dogs pushed hard snouts into their sides, whimpering, snuffling and jumping up. A cold, dry tongue licked Sevin’s face.

They had almost reached the front gate when the barking started, the dogs sensing their pen was about to open. Their cover blown, they stood flat against the front wall, Sevin closest to the door with the rackarmen ready, Xin and Wen behind him, trying to keep the dogs down. As their howls reached a crescendo, light swept across the swirling mass of shaggy coats as the gate eased open and a woman said in Gharst: ‘Sssh, sssh, what’s going on here?’

She didn’t get far before Sevin had the rackarmen’s tip lodged in her temple. ‘Activate the masterboard,’ he told her in Gharst, pushing her back through the door and towards the touchpad and viewer configuration set in the wall. He confiscated the gun from her belt while she tapped in a number with a shaking hand and waited. Her eyes shifted constantly, looking for a way out. Sevin followed their direction to make sure there wasn’t one.

They were standing in a half-moon area bored from the rock. The pen took up about one-third of the space. It faced a rectangular opening on to the night sky, the exit Wen had mentioned, through which drifts of snow had blown and settled in crevices around the bare stone floor. Between the pen and the exit sat the sleds, portly black and white constructions. The guard’s attention was fixed behind Sevin on a brick wall light with spotlights. It had three doors which Sevin guessed led into a heated section for warm-blooded creatures. Help, if it was available, was inside.

The masterboard was taking far too long to initiate.

‘Is that the right code?’ Sevin demanded, pressing the gun harder into her head.

‘Yes, yes it is.’

‘Why isn’t it working?’ He sent a charge into her foot and she gasped as he brought the rackarmen up to her neck. ‘Do it properly,’ he said, watching apply another code, tears starting in her eyes. The machine hiccupped and the viewer lit up.

‘We’re on,’ he shouted to the women still inside the pen. Wen opened the barred gate and the dogs spilled out, milling around the dozen or so sleds and looking to Xin and Wen for directions. Sevin waved the guard to one side, keeping his gun on her, allowing Wen to march straight to the masterboard.

‘Hurry, hurry,’ said Xin, scanning the warm section doors.

‘Get up,’ Sevin told the guard who had bent down over her wounded foot.

‘It hurts, it really hurts,’ she said, muffled under hat and hair. He grabbed her by the throat and pulled her up still talking into a bracelet communicator.

‘Go now,’ he cried, punching the guard unconscious and thrusting the listless body to one side.

‘Oya!’ came a bellow from their right. Four guards were running from the warm section towards them. Wen was focused on the masterboard. As the guards approached, six hounds broke away from the pack and coursed towards them, fangs bared.

‘To the sleds,’ Wen shouted, sprinting after a pack of dogs with Xin. Sevin followed, stopping behind the contraption the women had mounted. They didn’t look roadworthy. Decorated with the stiff monochrome patterns of native Gharst art, the body of the sled was like an oversized bath with a curving lip. The tub sat on top of a frame which extended a long single shaft from its centre. Attached to the underside of the frame were three parallel skis, made of wood or some wood-effect material. It looked hundreds of years old and fragile enough to break apart going over the slightest hillock.

Xin and Wen had already taken the front pair of the four seats. They sat behind a polypro windscreen with a reinforced slot in its centre to feed through the dog reins. Wen had taken the seat on the right and had the reins in her hands, ready to take off. He had no choice but to jump into the fur-covered seats behind them.

‘In position,’ Wen yelled. Each dog grew a horizontal spike out of either its left or right rib cage and slotted itself into holes on the central shaft of the sled. When all eight were attached, Wen slapped the reins against the back of the lead dog.

‘Go!’

The guards were still fighting the first wave of dogs as they took off, scraping across the uneven rock. Then they got momentum and cannoned through the rectangular exit to crash down on to the ramp the other side with a bone-breaking jolt. Like a boat through rapids, they shot down the slope and were away across the glazed surface of the lake.

The temperature was so cold Sevin could hardly breathe as he looked back towards the livid castle.

‘No-one’s following,’ he yelled forward.

‘No need,’ Wen shouted back. ‘There’s only one place to go and that’s the space port, they’ll wait for us there.’

The dogs fell into a rhythmic pace and the sled ran smoothly over the hivernal landscape, past the frozen shoreline and through forests of spruce crusted with white. The sky above was cloudless and filled with twinkling stars. For about twenty-five minutes they travelled with the simple accompaniment of ski sloughing through snow and the scuffle of paws. Sevin spent the time checking the two rackarmens and the blaster.

At length, the gold-hued horizon in the south-west transfigured into the floodlit control towers and hangars of the Reinn space port. There was about five kilometres to run, Sevin guessed. He thought he saw the distinctive shape of Infinity on the south-western edge of the complex and patted Xin on the shoulder to point it out to her. His hand went through air instead.

‘Xin! Where is she?’ he shouted at Wen.

‘I don’t know.’ Wen looked over her shoulder to see if Xin had fallen from the sled. She had not.

‘She must have teleported,’ said Sevin, clambering into her seat. ‘But how? Didn’t the Gharst take the necklace?’

‘Necklace? You mean breaker, yes, she had two,’ said Wen. ‘We were going to use the one she had hidden but you showed up instead. I didn’t see her use it, though, I would have noticed.’

‘Me neither, so how did she do it?’

‘It wouldn’t happen involuntarily unless someone’s operating the base station. Someone on the ship must have called her in.’

‘I’ve got a breaker here. Can we use it?’

‘You’ve got to set the co-ordinates first. Twist the six middle beads, then pull down. Where would you go?’

’Infinity.’

‘You know the co-ordinates?’

‘No.’ They had no digi, no map, not even a moon to calculate their location.

Wen gave him a half-smile much like Xin’s. ‘We’ll have to wait until we’re called. If you start feeling dizzy, let me know.’

They sat back while the sled carried them further into the unknown, Sevin chafing against the lack of control. The track tended downwards as they left the highlands on the final approach to the space port. They had to cut through a narrow valley, cliffs rising steeply on either side, then they were over the highest point of an undulating slope and running down it, a two-kilometre stretch edged with thick woodland that would take them to the western entrance of the space port. Sevin could see Infinity on a launch pad behind the fences of the complex and, what was that? He strained his eyes at the black speckles on the white expanse by the entry gates: pin men and vehicles, a check point, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, three skidoos homing in on them.

‘Get down,’ he told Wen. She retreated far enough into her seat to shelter everything up to her eyes. The dogs raced on, regardless of the danger ahead. Sevin prepped the blaster and took aim.

The Gharst attack started well before the skidoos were in range, the screeching of blaster fire carrying towards them on the wind. Sevin tracked the white helmet of the nearest sturmganger and waited. When a pulse burned off the upturned tip of one of the sled’s skis, Sevin returned fire, knocking the sturmganger off the skidoo which plunged on through the snow without its driver.

The other skidoos were bearing down on them. As they neared, they separated and shot past on either side, raking the body of the sled with invisible talons. Sevin sent a barrage of bolts after them with zero effect, the superior speed of the skidoos carrying them out of range. Executing a sharp turn, each skidoo twisted around and, engines roaring, headed back to buzz the sled again.

Sevin was ready this time. As the skidoo passed, riddling the topsides of the sled, Sevin popped up, locked the blaster’s aim on to the upper body of the driver and unloaded. The sturmganger slumped into the handlebars. Out of control, the skidoo barged into the side of the sled and bounced out again before snarling into a bank and flipping over.

The collision tipped Sevin on to Wen who screamed as he landed on her. The shriek of laser from behind got him up quickly. The last skidoo was on top of them, its driver firing at the dogs, blowing away the rump of one and the ear off another. With no instruction to stop, the animorphs pressed on, unaware of the damage. Sevin sent off a salvo but it went wide. Seeing an opportunity, the sturmganger forged ahead by few metres, catching Wen’s outside shoulder with a speculative shot. She cried out, releasing the pressure on the reins. The dogs’ pace began to slow, the pack leader looking around to see what was happening. Before Sevin could get a fix on it, the skidoo overtook them and the sturmganger turned around to fire again. Distracted by the injury, Wen was exposed, the beam catching her in the chest. The sled started to snake as the dogs followed their own path. Sevin emptied his own blaster into the back of the sturmganger and the rear engines of the skidoo. It seized up and veered off to the side as the sled overtook it, hurtling forward.

’Give me the reins,’ said Sevin, taking them from Wen’s hand and restoring control. Now they were a few hundred metres from the check point at the front gates. The train station was about a kilometre in from the gates and Infinity was a couple of kilometres directly south of that. Sevin could see her to his right through the perimeter fence. In front of the gates, a double line of sturmgangers barred access to the space port, more skidoos and a few rough-roaders lined up between them and the entrance. Sevin ran some scenarios in his head. They could make for Infinity itself and hope to clear the fence somehow or they could go round to the eastern gate and find the same situation there. Either way the outcome was the same, total annihilation before they got anywhere near the ship.

He turned to his co-pilot. ‘How bad are you hurt?’

’Quite bad,’ she said, pressing her hands into her stomach. From what he could see, that was an underestimation. If there was a chance for one of them to get back to Infinity, her need was greater. Sevin wrenched the breaker from his neck and offered it to her.

She pushed it away. ‘It won’t be necessary.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, put it on.’ Wrapping the reins around his wrists, he leaned over to fix the clasp around her neck. The job done, he headed the dogs at the sturmgangers massed in front of the gates.

‘You’re going straight at them?’ she asked in wonder.

‘Yes.’

‘Are we going to die here?’ Her voice was hardly audible.

‘Probably.’ He flashed a bold grin at her, knowing the risk was too high.

‘I understand,’ she said, putting a hand on his arm briefly. Then her face filled with surprise as her body began to quiver. He watched her fragment into the tiniest of atoms until she disappeared completely, leaving no more than a memory of her presence.

‘Goodbye,’ he said, relieved she would not have to suffer the certain hell he would endure any second now. With the check point less than a hundred metres away, the blaster fire started. One lash caught the lead dog, whipping off its front torso, leaving the back legs to trail along the ground from the connecting spar. The other dogs took the strain and the sled charged forward. Sevin threw himself across the front seats, gaining what little protection the windscreen could offer. He raised himself once or twice to fire the rackarmen but had to duck down again, the sheer volume of firepower unleashed against him was too great.

His last view was of the line of white helmets parting in front of the pounding dogs, the squealing of blasters as they slalomed past the parked vehicles and hurled themselves towards the closed gates. Crossing his arms in front of his face, Sevin braced himself. He pulled back hard on the reins for maximum speed and waited.

There was an explosion, then a crash, but no impact. Sevin lifted his head in time to see the space port’s gate-posts fly past. They were powering towards the train station. Confused, Sevin looked back to the entrance. The gates had not fallen or bent to the side, they had simply vanished. He thought he must be dreaming, or was already dead, until he remembered Infinity’s capabilities. If the crew was on board, they might have activated the disintegrators and evaporated the obstacle away.

Taking a ninety-degree turn right, Sevin steered the dogs south towards the ranks of launch pads and the nebulous outline of Infinity on the foolish hope that he might clear the two kilometres of flat unmolested.The sturmgangers from the check point took off in the same direction, planning to cut him off with a couple of skidoos outrunning the main unit. But they had not reckoned on Infinity’s artillery. Swivelling in its ball and socket mounting, there was no hiding place from the port disintegrator; it decimated the Gharst, forcing them to fall back. Both skidoos impressively detonated, one after the other, the parts spraying across the airfield.

The going was easy now. Sevin cut through the middle of the first row of launch pads and pointed the sled slightly to the right of Infinity’s bow, preparing to abandon ship. Tying the reins around the windshield, he stood on the front left seat, swaying precariously then bailing out as they reached Infinity’s pad, the dogs rushing ever onwards, not noticing their driver had fallen by the wayside.

Sevin landed in a billowing drift, rolling a few turns until he came to a stop below Infinity’s nose. Gathering himself up, he almost dived for cover again, not realising the Gharst body metres away from him was dead. He waded though the knee-deep snow towards the starboard ladder heaved himself up. Never had he been more pleased to see Lauden’s jowly smile in the hatchway above.

‘Good timing, sir,’ called Lauden. ‘We were just about to leave.’

λ

A day later, the Infinity crew were sitting around the briefing table waiting for Sevin to arrive at the meeting he had scheduled. Xin also was absent, effectively on bereavement leave. Despite their best efforts, they had not been able to save Wen, the stress of the teleport transmission proving to be the final blow. She had died several hours after they took off from Isvarld.

‘Thanks for waiting,’ said Sevin, striding through the iris behind them. He chose one of the two seats at the foot of the table, facing in the same direction as Infinity was travelling, rather than taking the single seat at the top where he would have his back to the bow. He rested his hands flat on the table and looked around the faces, two dark, two fair.

‘I’ll cut straight to the point,’ he said. ‘I wanted us to discuss what we are going to do next, in the short term and the long term. Does anyone have any plans?’

The question went unanswered, Zendra pulling a face and Marik shrugging.

’We could hit Zudan, find ourselves a nice ’mock beachside and push out some Zs for a while,’ said Lauden, stroking his moustache.

‘I mean a sensible plan. Let me put it like this. We are public enemy number one for the Gharst, especially after our little trip to the Hellenhaus. So do we want to be fugitives forever, always watching our backs? Or d’you think we could turn the tables on them, stand up and fight?’

There was a long pause. Lauden cleared his throat. ‘You know guys, when I joined up, I left everything behind. Space Command became my life, my wife - it was all I had. Now that’s gone too, ain’t nothing left. So, I guess I’ll stick with Major Sevin.’

‘Thank you Jes,’ said Sevin. ‘What about you others?’

‘I’m happy with that,’ said Marik. ‘I reckon we can have some fun along the way.’

‘It’s got to be better than a spell in the Hellenhaus,’ said Zendra.

They turned to look at Hauki who had kept quiet.

‘Can’t we go home, you know, for some R&R, just for a little while, then carry on?’ she said.

‘Home is not home since the Gharst moved in,’ said Sevin. ‘Home will never be home until they move out.’

‘It sounds like you want to make them go,’ said Hauki.

‘Damn right.’

They shifted in their seats. ‘So, ah, what exactly are you planning?’ asked Lauden.

‘To find a resistance movement and join it. We’ve got a crack team and an incredible ship, they’d welcome us with open arms.’

’What happens if we can’t find them? Or there’s none there?’ said Marik.

‘We’ll start our own. Join up with the Corazon, maybe partner the independents, Akapura, Andalia. Eventually we’d have a big enough force to turn the subjugated planets, maybe even start an uprising.’

He stopped, knowing he was getting carried away on his own fervour.

‘So sir, where will find this resistance that nobody knows nothing about just yet?’ Lauden asked.

‘Delta Nine.’

‘Delta Nine! No sirree, not Delta Nine. You so don’t wanna go there, place’s crawling with gribs.’

‘Delta Nine is also crawling with illegals, drug-runners, arms dealers and many other nasty types of people. If something’s going on, it’ll be going on there.’

‘You lived there for years, Lauden, don’t you want to go visit?’ asked Hauki.

Lauden shook his head vehemently. ‘Full of nothing but bad memories. You know, sir, Tala an’ all that.’

‘Ah yes, Tala Baran, the society princess who broke your heart.’

‘And my bank balance,’ Lauden sighed. ‘Driven into Space Command by a woman, I was.’

‘Huh? You told me you were so moved by the sacrifices made by our troops that you donated your wealth to the war effort and joined up,’ said Zendra.

‘Ah, yeah, well, it was like a mixture of things,’ Lauden said quickly. ‘You see, Tala an’ me…’

‘So everyone’s onboard with that?’ said Sevin. ‘We’ll go to Delta Nine, see what we can find, with the long-term aim of destroying the Gharst?’

They all nodded their agreement, even Hauki. ‘So long as I can take time out at some stage to see my son,’ she said.

Sevin inclined his head. ‘Any more questions?’

‘No sir,’ they chorused.

’One last thing,’ he said. ‘As we aren’t Space Command any more, we should stop using ranks. My name is Sevin from now on, not Major, not sir.’

He stood up. ‘Hauki, if you can set a course for Delta Nine, I’ll find out if we have a chief engineer to take with us.’

μ

He found Xin curled up in her cubbyhole at the back of the workshop. Old photographs of friends and family were pinned up next to the old bunk where she lay. She had torn one down and was looking at it when Sevin knocked on the jamb of the open door. She scowled when she saw him.

‘How you doing?’

‘Fine,’ she said, concentrating on the picture in her hands.

‘Mind if I come in?’

‘If you must,’ she said, grudgingly making room beside her.

He settled down in the space. ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’

‘So am I.’

‘The Gharst killed my parents too, actually.’

‘Seems to happen a lot.’

‘They blasted my mother, my brother and my sister in front of me. I was sixteen at the time.’

She looked at him for the first time since he had come in. ‘That explains a lot.’

‘Who’s in the picture?’

‘My parents,’ she said, passing it to him. ‘This was taken outside their house in Tian City before I was born, before the occupation. They look so young, so happy.’ She put a hand up to her mouth.

‘I’m sure they will be again, wherever they are now,’ he said, handing back the image. He kept his arm by his side rather than putting it round her shoulders, knowing she’d flinch away.

‘Xin,’ he said, trying to place the name. ‘Wasn’t there a Xin in the Tian uprising, soon after the Gharst took control?’

’Yes, the ’65 rebellion, my father was one of the leaders. They killed him, of course.’

‘You come from a line of heroes, you should be proud.’

‘I am. I only wish I’d had more time to get to know my Dad,’ she said, stroking her fingertip over her father’s youthful face.

‘Maybe you could follow in his footsteps. I’ve asked the others to help me find a resistance movement or to make our own, to keep fighting against the Gharst. Will you join us?’

‘Join you? You don’t need me. You have the ship, you have everything.’

‘I’d like to have you with us too.’

She reflected on the picture. ‘Mother said you were a good man. I know you tried to save her.’

‘I failed.’

‘That’s not the point. I owe you for trying.’

‘You’ll come with us then?’

She nodded.

‘That’s great news.’ He got up from the bunk and walked towards the doorway. Then he turned back.

‘One last question. When we first got on board, before we decided on the plan to rescue Wen – did you tell the Gharst we were here?’

‘Tell the Gharst? I most certainly did not.’

’Someone sent a com from Infinity to Herengelden HQ with the names of everyone onboard, before we started messaging Daas.’

‘Well it wasn’t me. You don’t think it was me, do you?’ she said, leaping up. ‘What could I have possibly gained by that?’

‘I don’t know. Your behaviour wasn’t exactly exemplary, remember?’

‘Agreed, but you were irrelevant really, it made no difference to me if you were there or not, I was always going to use the teleport. And you were armed. If I wanted to hand you over, I would have disabled the stunners.’

‘Irrelevant?’ he asked, pretending to be offended.

‘Well, yes, now I know better,’ she said. Her eyes swung to his abruptly. ‘Wait a minute. If it wasn’t me, who was it?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m afraid of.’

4. DELTA NINE

α

‘Sure is a funny-looking place.’

‘Isn’t it.’

Sevin and Lauden stared out of the starboard windows of the captain’s cabin at the gaudy baubles of Delta Nine which dangled like a drop earring between themselves and the grey mass of the homeworld it orbited, Borredan.

‘They’ll be putting out the flags,’ Sevin said. ‘The prodigal son returns to the helm of Banco Delta, it’ll be street parties and everything.’

‘Reckon not! I ain’t bothered if I never see that place again. It’s a dumper.’

‘It’s the financial capital of the Altan system and they say it’s got the best nightlife in the whole of the Known Worlds. Or did, before the Gharst took over.’

‘So they say. Believe me, the place is stuffed with hookers, hustlers and pay jockeys. I don’t wanna go back.’

‘You’re the only one who knows the territory.’

‘Hey, I only ever saw the inside of an office. Sure it’s not just me’s been there. You must’ve been there yourself.’

‘Once or twice with the IPP, but that was years ago, before the war.’ The place had not appealed to Sevin. It was series of man-made hubs built on to an asteroid, overcrowded and claustrophobic. Delta Nine had been founded a century ago when a handful of entrepreneurs bought the unwanted space debris from the Borredan government for a healthy fee. In exchange they got unrestricted development options and a zero-tax jurisdiction. The media of the time labelled them insane. Life on the rough hemisphere of rock, some sixteen kilometres in diameter, would have to be supported by an artificial atmosphere. Undeterred, the entrepreneurs constructed, at vast expense, a biodome over the topside of the asteroid under which climate, atmosphere and gravity could be regulated at acceptable levels.

Corporate headquarters soon set up on Delta Nine, along with luxury accommodation around them. Other businesses followed, keen to take advantage of the beneficial tax regime and the blind eye turned to trade practices illegal elsewhere. They built the new hubs of Centre, Midway and Apex and were happy to pay the outrageous costs of attaching them to the original asteroid, now called Base, the milky dust of its surface carpeted in real estate. Within a decade, the founding fathers had made back their original investment some twenty times over. One year’s budget surplus was enough to join a new space terminal and a separate waste disposal facility on to the underside of Base and there was always talk of adding new hubs.

It had seemed like a great termite nest to Sevin, with countless drones obediently marching out of their pods at the same time every morning to file into the trading houses which they only left at the prescribed hour to return to the pods. The population had expanded during the war years, swelled with refugees from the Gharst-occupied territories. Most of them laboured in Delta Nine’s burgeoning financial sector, the rest provided services to them. An estimated two million residents, some legal, some not, traded, broked or haggled their days away, war or no war, in the single-minded pursuit of money.

Sevin dropped his eyes below the window to the viewer of the workstation where he sat with Lauden. ‘Has that thing finished yet?’ he asked.

‘Yup, coming online now,’ said Lauden. ‘Here it is, check that out.’

Sevin focused on the indicated lines of code. Lauden had discovered what he termed ‘a bug in the butt’ and was keen to show him the anomaly.

‘What is it? I can’t see anything.’

‘Look, here, and here, and there.’ Lauden pointed at a string that reappeared at regular intervals.

‘What does it mean?’

‘It’s a program, a teensy little program, right inside the operating commands of life support!’

‘What’s it do?’

‘Well, it’s kinda weird but it’s triggered by the in-cabin temperature. Every time the envirocon turns up the heat, this waggie sends out its message. And it won’t show up in any of the comms logs because it ain’t coming from any manual platform! Course, you could see it if you printed out all the machine talk, but who’s gonna do that?’

‘Alright, what’s the message?’

‘Ah now, that’s the bit I can’t figure out – it’s nothing, just two pulses. Blip blah, nothing else. Maybe it’s some kind of code.’

‘Or a homing signal.’

Lauden clicked his fingers. ‘That’s it!’ He smiled at having solved the conundrum, then his face fell. ‘So like, who’s tracking us? The Gharst?’

‘Or someone working for them. And I’ll bet it’s the same person who tipped them our names before we got to Isvarld.’

Lauden thought for a while. ‘It’s Xin. It’s gotta be her.’

‘She says she didn’t send the names.’

‘Like she’s gonna admit it!’

‘I believe her, actually. Think about her history.’

‘But she worked for them for years, I dunno, maybe it’s a double bluff. Aw, it has to be her, I can’t see none of us Special Ops doing it.’

‘That would be the natural conclusion, but it’s not the correct one.’

‘So who d’you think it is?’

‘I really don’t know.’

Lauden’s face was puckered by unpleasant thoughts. ‘Like it’s hard enough with the enemy out there all the time, let alone them being in our middle!’

‘Right.’

‘So whaddaya gonna do about it?’

‘Keep my eyes open and watch my back.’

‘Huh?’

‘We can’t do anything else for the moment. Whoever it is, or they are, they’ll trip themselves up eventually.’

Lauden was not convinced. ‘Whaddabout this?’ He pointed at the viewer where the homing signal continued to advertise their location.

‘Leave it on. If we shut it down, whoever set it will know it’s been discovered. It’ll be more useful if they think we don’t know about it.’

’Wilco. Hey, I figure it’s lunchtime. You coming to the ’fec?’

‘No, I’ll stay here, got some things to do.’ The infinicom on the desktop chirruped and he answered it.

‘I think I’ve found someone we should meet on Delta Nine,’ said Zendra’s voice.

‘Who?’

‘A dissident, goes by the name of Singing Lark. He puts out an anti-Gharst zine, also called Singing Lark, for “anarchists and other subversives”, or at least that’s what it says on the gridsite.’

‘Good work. I’ll get Lauden to help you with the search.’ He clicked off the speaker. ‘There’s something for you to chew on, Jes.’

‘But I already got the New Dawn Brotherhood!’ It had taken Lauden most of their four weeks’ travel time from Isvarld to winkle out a name.

‘They are gangsters, one outfit among hundreds of others we can buy guns from. Revolutionaries seem to be a rarer species and Zendra’s man sounds like the real deal. Come on, the more work we do up here, the easier it will be on the ground.’

‘I s’pose so,’ Lauden grumbled and left for the refectory, his troubles evident in his expression. When he had gone, Sevin restarted the workstation, sure that another pair of eyes on the matter would not be a wasted effort. Four hours later, he was beginning to regret his dedication to detail. He was about to give up when he noticed an odd sub-directory. Inside was a trail of comms directed to an address with a grid provider on Delta Nine, some were encoded, some were not. He opened one and read: ‘Its’ ben two long we havnet seen each oter, plz meet a old frend wen I com to Dellta 9, so much to tell uoy.’ Others suggested venues, one was the Andromeda Hotel. The spelling was bad enough to be the work of a dyslexic - Lauden.

Sevin sat back from the viewer, refusing to believe what it told him. Lauden claimed he didn’t want to go back to Delta Nine yet here he was trying to set up a meeting with a contact. A bleak nausea rose in his throat. ‘Old friend, I hope this isn’t what I think it is,’ he said, exiting the directories abruptly, as if he could make the problem disappear as easily. He stood up from the desk to stare out of the window, needing the blank canvas of space to focus his thoughts on. He remembered all the campaigns he had been through with Lauden at his side, always there, always reliable. And always loyal, until now. It seemed so out of character, but Sevin had long ago realised that the worst mistake a commander could make was to take things for granted.

Yes, he had to consider all eventualities, including the possibility that he might never succeed against the Gharst. This quest to find a resistance – was it really worth it? Life would be so much easier if he hid from the authorities in a beach village on Zudan. He could even flee to Gaia, he still had his birth papers, take refuge there. Until the Gharst set their sights on that system too. That thought rallied his survival instinct. Escape was not an option. He had a ship and a crew; it was a start, a good one, and it was ridiculous to throw it all away because of the treachery of one or two – he hoped it was not more.

He needed a strategy. Putting his emotions aside, he tried to see the situation from the Gharst point of view. They knew who was onboard and the ship’s location. They might also know their plans, and, with that amount of information, they could strike at any time. So why didn’t they? They seemed to be holding off, waiting for … what? Sevin was aiming to hook up with rebels and partisan factions, if he could find them. If he were the Gharst, he would want to seek out those people too, to crush them. Why not let Sevin do the dirty work, let him lead them to the revolutionaries and then swoop on them both? They would be caught redhanded, plotting against the establishment. Then they could be indicted on charges of treason and executed, a nice neat job. That is exactly what he would do and the Gharst would be fools not to do the same. So far, so good: he felt relatively sure he understood their thinking. Now all he had to do was come up with some of his own.

β

Sevin decided to maintain the pretence they were operating free of surveillance. Those crew members who knew otherwise, Lauden and Xin, had been briefed to keep quiet. Sevin was confident they would because, even if either or both of them were the Gharst agent, it would serve no advantage to have the whole team knowing the true situation. In Xin’s case, there was no-one to confide in anyway. The professor had kept to her beloved workshop during the journey and had made no attempt to befriend Sevin or the others.

Although Sevin privately believed they would be not stopped even if they drove Infinity to the front door, so determined were the Gharst to reclaim the ship, he agreed publicly it would be impossible to approach Delta Nine in Infinity without attracting unwelcome attention. Instead, a plan was concocted to enter Delta Nine via a commercial flight from Borredan.

The ground team was assembled: Lauden, for his local knowledge, Zendra, who could speak Rakka, the Borredan dialect used on Delta Nine, and Sevin, who was to focus on negotiations with potential allies. Hauki and Xin would stay on board with the three remaining morphs, while Marik, who claimed he would have preferred seeing more of the action, ungracefully accepted the role of chauffeur. He would deliver the ground team in one of Infinity’s two shuttles to Borredan’s space port. From there, they could walk through the quarantined section to the domestic terminal where they could pick up the flight to Delta Nine’s Chengy terminal without passing immigration. The final test would come at Delta Nine where they would hopefully look like tourists and be processed accordingly.

Much preparation had gone into creating aliases for the ground team. Lauden had hacked into his former employer’s customer database and cloned some existing identities into false travel documents for the three of them, complete with copies of retina scans which Xin had managed to inscribe onto contact lenses. He had also created some well-stocked cash accounts.

Marik burst into laughter when they assembled around the briefing table, fitted out as their new personas. Infinity had been provisioned with civilian clothes as well as flight uniforms and they had raided its wardrobe. ‘Unrecognisable!’ Marik chortled, pinching at Lauden’s old-fashioned jacket. ‘Who are you?’ With his hair greyed and sporting spectacles, Lauden looked like a raddled university lecturer who spent more time with the kava than his students.

‘I am Clemence Veritan,’ he said, poking at the contact lens which jigged across his eyeball. ‘Purveyor of antique books to the rich and famous.’

‘You certainly fit the part,’ Hauki clapped her hands. ‘What about you Zendra?’ she asked, entranced by the statuesque beauty in a floral dress with flowing auburn hair.

’I’m Flight Steward Rell Morena and I’m crewed to Xanadu, a starcruiser that leaves in 80 hours for the tropics of Zudan,’ she said, flouncing her skirt. ‘This is my first stopover in three months and I’m out to have fun!’

‘Unlikely. I read that the Gharst have closed all the sweat boxes,’ said Sevin, dropping his ID and value tags into a suede pouch.

‘Huh?’ said Lauden.

‘Dancing is immoral and encourages promiscuity, you know that.’

‘It’s only immoral if you dance like Lauden,’ quipped Marik, earning a good-humoured punch in the chest.

‘It’s immoral that he shouldn’t be given the chance to learn.’ Sevin turned his hand over to inspect the palm, intrigued by its new colour which was several shades darker than his true pigmentation.

He looked up. ‘I can’t get used to this.’

‘It’s a big change,’ said Xin. ‘You look nothing like your real self.’

‘You could be Tarangan,’ Hauki said. ‘A Tarangan made good on bad money!’

‘Yeah, a real rough trader,’ said Marik with a tinge of envy, sizing up Sevin’s natty leather blouson with its wide lapels and metallic trim. ‘What are you supposed to be in: drugs or guns?’

‘Worse than that, property development,’ said Sevin, pocketing his pouch. ‘I am Parrish Khan, chief executive of Altan Real Estate Investments.’

‘Unreal. How long does it last, the colour?’

‘Seventy-two hours, then the dermadark will fade,’ Xin said. ‘You’ll have to make contact with Singing Lark and be back onboard by then.’

‘I know,’ Sevin said. ‘Listen up everyone, we’ll go through it one more time. We’ll split up as soon as we get to Borredan. We’re all booked on the same flight but we’ll travel individually to Delta Nine arriving at 14:12 GST. We’ll each find our own place to stay and, for security reasons, we won’t inform each other of those locations.’

‘Can we stay in a nice hotel?’ asked Zendra.

‘You can stay wherever you like, as long as it’s discreet. Remember our tourist visas only last for three days before we have to apply for an extension, so we’ll have to work quickly. I’ve allowed us twenty-four hours to establish contact with the targets. Zendra, you’ll find Singing Lark. Lauden, you’ll concentrate on the New Dawn Brotherhood. We’ll reconvene at 14:22 GST tomorrow at the Galaxy Bar on Base to discuss progress, you have the address. The day after, we’ll rendezvous at 14:32 GST at the Heaven Sent Kava Klub. The next time to remember is the important one – Chengy space terminal at 14.42 GST on the third day, Gate 89, for pick up.’

‘We know,’ said Zendra.

’So turn up on time, it’s your one chance to get back to the ship safely! Air team, what time are you expecting my signal?’ He rattled the slender grey cylinder which would send a one-off untraceable cue to Infinity over thousands of linials to wherever she was hiding.

‘12:00 GST on the third day,’ said Hauki.

‘Right, what d’you do then?’

‘Bring the ship into shuttle range of Delta Nine and dispatch Marik to collect.’

‘Good. What about if you don’t get a signal?’

‘Get the hell out and don’t come back,’ said Marik. ‘That’ll be the most fun I have this mission.’

‘This isn’t about fun,’ said Sevin. ‘I mean it. No signal and you take the ship as far away from here as possible.’

‘What about you? What are you doing?’ Hauki asked.

‘I have my own mission.’

‘Which is?’

‘Which is confidential.’ It was public knowledge that Fleet Commander Brodie was being kept under house arrest at a secret location on Delta Nine. Sevin had worked his sources to discover that location, a house on Apex, the top hub of Delta Nine where the foremost financiers and government officials maintained exclusive residences. It was Sevin’s intention to access Brodie and convince him to play a role in the nascent resistance, maybe as the leader. Depending on his answer, which he was sure would be in the affirmative, they could also investigate how to spirit him away to a safe haven.

‘You’re not going to tell us?’ said Marik.

‘No, it’s safer for you if I don’t.’

‘What if you get into trouble?’ said Zendra.

‘I won’t, or I’ll find a way to tell you.’

The others looked concerned.

‘I can help with that. You should be TAC-enabled before you go,’ Xin said, placing the small case she carried on the briefing table and decanting pieces of a silver gun from it.

‘Tac? What’s that?’ said Lauden, unnerved by the equipment.

‘Thought-activated connectivity,’ Xin said, fitting the barrel into the stock. ‘It’s a mobile telecoms system. This,’ she held up a round pellet, ‘is a synaptic activity decoder. It picks out the brain’s signals and transmits them via the transceiver,’ she showed a tiny disc, ‘to the destination transceiver where the signals are modulated into speech patterns and relayed as audible output.’

‘Can someone translate?’ said Marik.

‘It’s the mind-reading function, like the pilot headgear,’ said Sevin. ‘You don’t have to speak into the phone, the phone picks up your thoughts and carries them to the earpiece of whoever you want to call where they are turned into sound, presumably words that you can hear, is that right?’

Xin nodded. ‘Yes, except this is injected into the tragus, not worn around the head.’

‘Into the what?’ said Lauden, alarmed.

‘Your tragus, the cartilage flap over the ear canal. It doesn’t hurt.’

‘You gonna chip me like a sturmganger?’

‘It’s not like that! It’s removable. The decoder stays in but if you take the transceiver out, the whole thing’s deactivated. It’s like wearing an earring, you won’t even notice it’s there.’

‘How does it work?’ asked Marik.

‘Think of who you want to talk to and it’ll make the connection, provided they’re in the contacts list.’

‘Extreme!’ said Marik. ‘I’m up for that. Think what you could get away with when no-one could hear you!’ He nudged Lauden with his elbow.

‘Ah yeah,’ said Lauden, getting into the idea. ‘Whaddaya call it again?’

‘TAC, but Mother always called it the novocom or novo, short for non-vocal communication.’

‘Do me first,’ said Marik, rushing around to where Xin stood on the other side of the briefing table.

’I’ll do you all, then you can go,’ said Xin. She looked at Sevin. ‘Don’t bother calling the ship, the novo will only work on Delta Nine and its traffic is easily traceable. Emergency use only, please.’

He nodded. ‘I’m hoping it won’t come to that.’

γ

They split up as soon as they reached Borredan, sitting apart during the short sperry ride to Delta Nine. The Chengy space port was too small to accept the interstellar cruisers and freighters, so most cargoes and passengers were offloaded at Borredan into smaller craft for the hop across.

Sevin had a window seat for the flight and an uninterrupted view as they approached Chengy. A cutting-edge design, the space port looked like a glassy black ball on the end of a matchstick leg. A ring of hatches formed its equator, the access to and from the two hundred gates which comprised its middle section like pieces of a pie. Their own hatch clanged behind them as the sperry came to a rest in Gate 17 and they waited for the atmosphere to be regenerated before the doors opened.

As agreed, Sevin kept his distance from the others, letting them disembark before him and staying in the rear of the line of travellers drifting towards the exit at the vertex of the triangular gate. Beyond the exit doors, Sevin was guided by stewards through a grand hall towards the central elevators which carried him up to Arrivals on the top floor.

The faked ID and retina scans went through without a hitch. They also loaded up their value tags easily from the Banco Delta machines in the terminal. Fully equipped, all they had to do was wave the tags at the gates of the Chengy Express, the maglev train which connected Chengy to Base through an enclosed tunnel.

Lauden and Zendra opted for the third and fourth coaches out of the six available, so Sevin took the last, choosing to stand in the central unseated area by the doors. The coach was full: another sperry had come in from Zudan at the same time as their flight from Borredan, full of smart-suited executives, including a few Gharst. Digis applied to ears, they crammed on to the Express, banging their luggage into Sevin’s legs and oblivious to the armed sturmganger, a conspicuous reminder of the satellite’s new administration, at either end of the carriage.

By mistake, Sevin caught the eye of the young Gharst man who stood three people down. His regard was far too inquisitive to be the casual observation of a bystander. Sevin angled himself out of sight and focused intently on the infotainer over the central exit which was playing an advert for dommies. Two green-sheen models were cleaning a spotless kitchen as a well-dressed Tian woman looked on, drinking a cup of cha. ‘Only 999 munits, our best-ever price!’ sung the voiceover. ‘From Psi-Tech Corporation, always with you in mind.’

The chirr of the train’s motion intensified as they broke out of the Chengy annex and started up the incline to Base. On the adjacent track, another Express barrelled past in a blur of faces, heading in the opposite direction. It was like being inside a transparent artery. Through the windows in the roof of the Express, Sevin could see the bare rock of the underside of Base and the biodome which bulged from its top. A lack of planning regulations had allowed developments to get out of control, so here and there, the tops of towers pierced the skin of the biodome and jutted into space. Red shaws, small spacecraft with a distinctive tail like a upright scallop shell, buzzed between the protrusions, providing a quicker, jam-free route across Base for those prepared to pay the taxi fare.

Rising from Base, through the middle of the dome, Sevin could see a golden cylinder, the spine to which the three other discs of Delta Nine were skewered. Inside the cylinder was the flower of Delta Nine’s engineering prowess, the Central Transit Elevator or CTE, two perpendicular chains of twenty cars each which rode up and down between the discs. The underside of Centre, a grey quoit perforated with concentric circles of windows like a colander, formed the ceiling of Sevin’s vision.

The train drew into the station at Base. Sevin ensured he was close to the doors and disembarked as soon as they opened, pushing through the crush waiting to board and dodging a large family group in sunhats. Businessmen seemed to be everywhere, hot drinks in their hands. He smacked into two small children playing with a rope before he was through the parade of snack stalls and newsstands and up the escalator to the exit level. As he ascended, he looked down behind him, spotting the young Gharst mired in the mass below. He smiled to himself as he stepped off at street level: he had lost the first tail of the trip.

Outside the station, Sevin blinked in the daylight. He looked up, remembering from his last visit the peculiar whitish sky of Base. While the other hubs looked straight into the black of space, the artificial atmosphere here was enough to scatter some of the rays from the Altan system’s suns. They appeared as two creamy spots in a wash of the palest blue. Delta Nine’s temperature was kept at a moderate 26°C - in the shade. The relentless sunshine made Sevin too hot in the leather blouson. He took it off as he strolled down Avenue H towards the intersection with Ninth Street where he knew the cheap hotels were located.

Base was the poor end of town for Delta Nine. Its proximity to noise from Chengy and pollution from its twin annex, the waste disposal facility nicknamed Below, made Base real estate cheap, compared to the rest of the satellite, attracting the poorest workers and businesses. Space was at a premium so everything had been built upwards. Great towers fortified each side of the street, linked by overhead pedestrian walkways. No corner was left untouched, every last centimetre had been rented out for retail space or promotion. The exteriors of entire bridges were given over to advertising boards showing images of timepieces and jewellery, Zudanese beach villas and premium financial services, all luxury items that no-one really needed.

Underneath, the pavement teemed with people, occasionally spilling into the road to be honked at by the electric buggies snailing past in heavy traffic. Every race in the Known Worlds seemed to be represented. The majority were Borredan or Tian, slant-eyed and sallow-skinned with black hair, some wearing native dress and others choosing more extreme outfits: micro-skirts, high-heeled clogs and face masks, the latter in elaborate designs or studded with gemstones, which Sevin assumed must be the height of Deltan fashion. Interspersed between the locals, he saw the dark faces of Gridins and the occasional fair-skinned Thalian picking over fresh produce on display outside the open-fronted shops. Sweeping the streets were two Zudanese women, sweet-featured and smiling. And there were Gharst too, mingling with the throng, obtrusive in service uniform.

As Sevin walked further into the heart of Base, the quality of the buildings compressing his route began to deteriorate. Like the grander edifices close to the station, their paintwork was immaculately clean, there being no emissions or rain on Delta Nine to roughen the exteriors. But bleaching from sunlight was evident on paintwork and signage, and where there had been a fire in the middle floors of an industrial premises, the soot-blackened windows remained blown out.

After ten more minutes, he came to the junction with Ninth, turning left past a steaming cha shop on the corner with its name, Jululu, painted in white capitals on a red and yellow striped awning. A group of schoolgirls in white tunics sat in its shade on low chairs, shrieking and giggling in the lilting tones of Rakka one of the few Coalition languages he did not speak. He carried along Ninth for a few metres until he reached a turning to the left, Night House Lane, one of the many back streets that laced together the matrix of Base’s main roads. Sevin could guess at the original use of the bland-fronted blocks, from which their current purpose wasn’t far removed: low-rent accommodation and soup-noodle restaurants, with a few bargain stores selling household inessentials for variety. And there, the third building on the left, was the hostel that was to be his own lodgings, the Good Night Hotel.

Its reception was as unwelcoming as its neglected porch. Sevin pinged the bell at the desk and watched a cockroach scuttle between the plastic pot-plants on either side of the elevator while he waited. After a while, a wizened Borredan man in grubby pyjamas emerged from the room behind the desk where a totavision blared.

‘What d’you want?’ he asked in Standard, peeved at being called away from the flickball.

‘A room. If it’s not too much trouble.’

The concierge sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘We might have something.’ He jabbed at the touchpad on his side of the desk and squinted at the results. ‘Tenth floor, room number 5. Fifty munits a night – in advance.’

‘I’ll take three nights.’ Sevin pointed his value tag at the terminal on the counter and pressed pay. After a few seconds, the transaction was authorised.

‘ID.’ The concierge tapped the black box next to the payment terminal. Sevin bent down and looked into the optical scanner. His name flashed up as Parrish Khan.

‘Here’s the key,’ said the concierge, pushing a card towards Sevin. ‘Checkout’s at 11:00 GST sharp, don’t hang about.’ He retreated to the flickball.

‘Thanks,’ Sevin muttered to the concierge’s back. He took the card and walked over to the elevator, waiting a few minutes for it to arrive. Carried upwards to the tenth, Sevin did not see the concierge resurface, look both ways to check the hall was empty, and scurry back to the reception desk where he caught up a digi and pressed out a number.

‘Target has arrived,’ said the concierge. ‘Yes, yes, will do.’