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  He had been sheltered for a while by the Ascended War-Minds that ruled a dozen systems hard by the great black hole at the galaxy’s heart. Moss had fallen upon him once again, and Trader again fled for his life with mocking laughter ringing in his ears.

  Centuries before, Hugh Moss had begun life as a Shoal-member called Swimmer-in-Turbulent-Currents. He had been made an example of by Trader as punishment for his attempt to broker peace with the Emissaries by having his body radically altered, cell by cell, until he was transformed into something neither human nor Shoal.

  The process had driven Swimmer insane, and towards the end of the battle for control of Ocean’s Deep, Dakota had given Hugh the means to find Trader, regardless of how far he fled across the face of the galaxy, so that he could exact a terrible revenge upon his tormentor.

  But now, at last, Trader would be free of the monster.

  Trader had parked his yacht in orbit around the moon of a gas giant, in an unoccupied system no more than a few hundred light-years from the Hegemony’s borders. Within a few hours, a Shoal coreship had appeared within range of his yacht’s scanning instruments, a planet-sized craft with heavy weaponry dotting its armoured crust. The coreship had quickly manoeuvred itself into one of the moon’s Lagrange points, precisely balanced between the gravitational attraction of the moon and the gas giant it orbited.

  When the arranged hour of the meeting arrived, Trader departed his yacht and dropped towards the moon’s dense atmosphere, protected from the hard vacuum of space by a shaped-field bubble that surrounded him and contained the liquid environment he required for breathing. A cloud of machines the size of dust-motes followed him down, spread out around him for kilometres.

  Trader directed his descent with gentle pulses of energy applied to different points around the spherical field’s surface. Before long he was dropping down through a near-impenetrable layer of cloud until, at last, the darkened oceans beneath were revealed to him, and the great towers that rose from their liquid depths.

  Trader guided his field-bubble below the surface of the waters. He had been one of the Shoal Hegemony’s most adept agents for more than a hundred millennia, tasked with suppressing any knowledge of the existence of the Magi ships, a duty he had pursued with aggressive diligence. That he had been granted this private audience with Commander-of-Shoals only proved how desperately the Hegemony needed his unique skills once more.

  Trader made his way towards a cathedral-like building, its apex long ago drowned beneath the waters, and made his way inside. He soon found himself within a high-vaulted space and set about deploying the microscopic defensive units he had brought along in preparation for this meeting.

  Through the lenses of more devices seeded through the ocean surrounding the tower, Trader watched the descent of Commander-of-Shoals’s own private vessel. Its belly cast a deep shadow across the ocean, before plunging deep beneath its surface. It came to a halt on a sub-aquatic plain a few kilometres distant before disgorging its sole occupant.

  After that, it was just a matter of waiting.

  ‘Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals,’ said the Commander once he arrived within the cathedral chamber, ‘I can’t say it’s a pleasure. Why did you pick this . . . place for our meeting?’

  ‘It used to be a Meridian outpost, Commander,’ he explained. ‘They disappeared off the galactic stage a long time ago, a fact that tends to curb occasional bouts of hubris on my own part.’

  ‘I see,’ the other Shoal-member replied, clearly unimpressed. ‘I presume you heard about General Desire?’

  Desire-for-Violent-Rendering had been Trader’s superior commanding officer. ‘Executed for crimes against the Hegemony,’ Trader replied, noting how the Commander’s manipulators were tipped with razor-sharp steel. ‘Or so I heard.’

  ‘Oh, it’s quite true. And the same would happen to me if anyone got even an inkling I was here with you. Now why don’t you say whatever it is you have to say, so I can get out of this hell-hole?’

  All around the chamber, a thousand tiny but lethal devices armed themselves. ‘I take that to mean you’ve considered my terms?’

  Commander-of-Shoals twisted his manipulators in anger. ‘Have you no conception of what’s happened in the last few days? The home world is destroyed, and the Hegemony is on the verge of being torn apart. Do you really think I have any interest in playing these ridiculous games of yours?’

  Trader fanned the waters around him with his fins. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It was hit by asteroids converted for short-range superluminal jumps and accelerated to relativistic speeds. Totally wiped out, Trader.’

  ‘I . . . I never heard of this,’ Trader stammered. It had been some time since he’d last had an opportunity to check on the progress of the war. ‘The Emissaries?’

  ‘On the contrary, recidivists who blamed the Deep Dreamers for the war, and didn’t have too much of a moral problem with wiping out a few hundred million of our fellow Shoal-members while they were about it. You can imagine the chaos.’

  Trader suddenly remembered General Desire-for-Violent-Rendering telling him the Dreamers had predicted their own demise. ‘I can, yes. I am . . . sorry to hear of this.’

  ‘Sorry!’ Commander-of-Shoals barked. ‘A plague of fire spreading across the face of the galaxy because you gambled on the Emissaries having no nova-class weaponry, and you’re sorry. I wonder how sorry you’ll feel once the Hegemony’s interrogators get hold of you?’

  ‘I understand that Desire was a sacrifice to public opinion, but I must remind you that you were the one who gave Desire his orders, as he gave me mine. I could easily have implicated you.’ Not to mention dozens of key members of the Hegemony’s highest ruling councils.

  The Commander’s manipulators rippled in grudging agreement. ‘Yes, yes, Trader. I know this. And I’m grateful that you didn’t. But concerning these terms of yours . . . the Mos Hadroch is an old fish’s tale, a daydream, nothing more.’

  ‘It was enough to bring the Magi across the void to our galaxy. I headed an expedition to the Maker swarm which found evidence to suggest it was much more than a story.’

  Commander-of-Shoals’s steel-tipped manipulators clicked as their razor edges clashed with each other. ‘An expedition, I recall, that ended in ignominy and failure. There’s a limit to how much you can demand of me in return for your silence, Trader. I came here only because your record of past service earns you a final audience. The Emissaries are making tremendous gains, while we are pushed back and back. But if all you have for me are pipe dreams of yore, then I suggest you leave now in peace for ever and make yourself a new life somewhere very, very far away.’

  ‘This may interest you, then,’ Trader replied, making a gesture.

  A tiny sparkling glyph representing a data package appeared, hovering in the water between them. Commander-of-Shoals regarded it warily, then accepted the package with visible ill grace.

  Trader waited while his superior scanned the package’s contents. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of this!’ Commander-of-Shoals exclaimed after some moments. ‘There was a second expedition?’

  ‘One I myself led a few centuries after my encounter with the Maker. Except this time I travelled to the Greater Magellanic Cloud itself

  ‘Why was I never made aware of this?’

  Trader twisted his manipulators in the Shoal equivalent of a laugh. ‘With all respect, Commander, you are a soldier, good for taking and giving orders. There was no need for you to know. We spent the better part of fourteen centuries roaming what had once been the most densely populated regions of the Cloud.’

  ‘Do not keep me waiting, Trader. What did you find?’

  ‘I found the proof that the Mos Hadroch exists, or did once exist, but found no trace or clue to its whereabouts – that is, until recently. The Maker is still searching for it.’

  He declined to mention that this new knowledge originated in intercepted transmissions originating from Ocean’s Deep.
/>   ‘Then it is in our galaxy? And it’s real?’ Commander-of-Shoals swam closer. ‘What exactly can it do?’

  ‘You will find the details in the data package I just gave you.’

  Commander of Shoals tapped two steel-tipped manipulators together and a small ball of light appeared between them. Shoal glyphs flickered rapidly before finally freezing in place. The Commander read what was there, before dismissing the projection after several moments.

  ‘Remarkable,’ said Commander-of-Shoals, the twist of his manipulators indicating he was impressed. ‘A solution of quite stunning elegance.’

  ‘Based on my own findings, the Mos Hadroch takes advantage of certain flaws in the design of the caches seeded by the Maker swarm. If anything, the existence of such flaws tells us that whatever beings created the swarm were rather less godlike than the Magi believed them to be.’

  ‘This is a tremendous achievement, Trader. Yet I can’t help feeling that recent events have failed to bring you the humility you claim to value.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your petty character judgements,’ Trader snapped. ‘Do you accept my terms? I will find the Mos Hadroch, rid us of the Emissaries, and bring this war to an end.’

  ‘Have you considered that it might be easier for me to simply hand you over to my interrogators and have them extract the information from you?’

  ‘I have considered it, Commander, and you do indeed have that option, if you wish to see the finer details of your own illegal subterfuge become immediate public knowledge throughout the length and breadth of the Hegemony. If I were not to have taken such precautions, I would not deserve the reputation I have.’

  ‘Then on behalf of the Hegemony, I see that I have no choice but to accept your terms.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  Commander-of-Shoals’s manipulators signalled defeat. ‘And if you succeed, we will reinstate you to your former position within the Hegemony, with full resumption of special rights and privileges. But let me be clear that there are many within the upper ranks of the Hegemony who would be more than happy to see you die in this attempt.’

  ‘Then I shall take added pleasure in my triumphant return. Now, there were certain other matters contained within my terms . . .’

  ‘Ah, yes, a fleet of your own, and the capture of the monster you created out of Learner-of-Secrets. Neither, I fear, will be possible.’

  ‘These are fundamental requirements,’ Trader responded angrily. ‘That. . . creature has chased me across the entire face of this galaxy. Wherever I flee, he manages to find me. And without a fleet of my own, my chances of success are severely reduced. Surely you can—?’

  ‘No, Trader, I cannot,’ Commander-of-Shoals replied coolly. ‘I will, however, supply you with his current location. That may give you some small advantage, whether you choose to confront or escape him. He calls himself by a human name these days, doesn’t he? Hugh Moss?’

  Beyond the vaulting walls of the tower chamber, thousands of lenses showed to Trader the waters around the Commander’s vessel beginning to boil. ‘We have no fleets to spare, certainly not on the scale you’ve requested. If I were to provide them to you, it would lead to certain questions being asked – questions I would not care to answer. And if such a scandal were to be exposed at a time such as this, it would shatter the Hegemony so thoroughly that no weapon, no matter how legendary or powerful, could possibly save us.’

  ‘If you refuse to help me, you condemn us all to death!’ The Commander paused in the act of turning to leave. ‘I am offering you the slim chance of returning a victorious hero, rather than as a fugitive. Which is more than some might think you deserve. Find your own fleet, if you can, Trader. Then return triumphant, or do not return at all.’

  Chapter Eight

  A holographic simulation of the Milky Way filled the shallow dome of the debriefing room as Corso entered, angled so that the wispy trail of a spiral arm hovered just a few metres above the floor. The air inside the room felt pleasantly chilly, the atmosphere in the rest of the Bandati orbital station being too warm and humid for his comfort. He had only just arrived back at Ocean’s Deep aboard a transport called the Kilminster, along with more than a hundred newly recruited technical specialists who would continue on to the research base at Tierra.

  Lamoureaux stepped towards him from out of the gloom. ‘Senator.’

  Corso nodded and dropped into one of twenty chairs arranged around the circumference of the room and facing towards its centre. ‘I literally just came down the spoke. I got your report about White-cloud. Where is he now?’

  ‘Still up at the hub, on board a ship. Ray and Leo both felt it was safer keeping him there.’

  Corso nodded tiredly and glanced towards the glistening star-simulation. ‘Fair enough. How about we get started?’

  Lamoureaux nodded and stepped back towards the centre of the room. ‘This is where we are,’ he said, turning slightly to regard the simulation.

  A minuscule ball of light representing the Consortium blinked into life deep inside the Orion spiral arm. It was easy to miss amongst the surrounding starscape.

  ‘I can never get over how tiny it looks,’ Corso muttered.

  ‘It is tiny,’ Lamoureaux agreed, ‘on the galactic scale of things. Now, remember some of what I’ll be showing you consists of best guesses and conjecture.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  Half a dozen yellow pinpricks, their brightness oscillating rapidly to make them stand out from the surrounding starscape, appeared at various points scattered through the Orion Arm and beyond. Lines representing trajectories connected each pinprick to the ball of light representing the Consortium.

  ‘The yellow dots represent the furthest points reached by our experimental probes,’ Lamoureaux explained.

  ‘I thought we sent out more than this,’ said Corso with a frown.

  ‘We did. We lost contact with some, particularly the ones we sent in the direction of the Emissaries. They might have been captured or destroyed, but they managed to return useful data before they disappeared.’

  Corso grunted. ‘What about the Magi ships we sent out to reconnoitre?’

  ‘We suffered some losses, but there are others out there trying to trace the progress of the war. The probes are a lot more disposable, and even with just this many we’ve managed to identify the location of quite a few of the Shoal’s tach-net transceiver relays. The relays boost transmissions around the Shoal’s territory, and their signal strength is uniform. As a result we were able to work out the rough shape and size of the territory covered by the relays.’

  As Corso watched, a roughly ovoid section of the Milky Way, encompassing a large chunk of the Orion Arm and reaching in towards the core, changed in colour to a uniform magenta.

  ‘And that’s the Hegemony?’ he asked, not quite able to keep his voice under control. An empire made of light, he thought to himself.

  ‘So we think.’ Lamoureaux glanced over at Corso and smiled on seeing his expression. ‘There’s some guesswork involved, like I said, but we’re still looking at a region several thousand light-years across at its widest point.’

  ‘It’s incredible, but it’s still not quite the galaxy-spanning empire they sold themselves as.’

  Lamoureaux nodded. ‘Not quite, no. But huge enough.’

  ‘And the Emissaries?’

  Lamoureaux nodded. ‘Coming up next.’

  Another region of space, immediately adjacent to that representing the Hegemony, now changed colour. It reached towards the rim of the galaxy, and encompassed an area roughly half that of the Hegemony itself.

  ‘You can see the galaxy’s outer rim puts a clear boundary on their expansion,’ said Lamoureaux. ‘So, unless they want to stick to the halo stars, they have to pass through Shoal territory in order to access the rest of the Milky Way.’

  A translucent blue panel appeared in the simulation, placed between the two empires and brushing against the outer rim of the Orion Arm. Corso recognized it
as the region of the Long War.

  ‘We think their conflict with the Shoal has forced the Emissaries to expand sideways, up and down the outer arms,’ Lamoureaux continued. ‘But with the escalation to using nova-class weapons, they’re clearly pushing the Shoal’s fleets back towards us and deeper into the Orion Arm.’

  ‘And how long before the fighting actually reaches us?’

  ‘Based on the latest analyses, not long. We may have less than six months before they arrive here in force. Most of the strategic analysts I’ve spoken to think the Shoal are preparing for a major retreat in order to bolster older, better-defended systems closer to the heart of their territory. That way they sacrifice us as well as a lot of their other client species, but stand a much better chance of either surviving the war with their culture intact, or more likely – judging by how it’s playing out so far – reaching some kind of détente.’

  Corso shook his head and quietly swore under his breath. A tightness in his scalp heralded an oncoming migraine. ‘So exactly where was Dakota last time we heard from her?’ Her garbled warning had been forwarded to him on board the Kilminster less than twenty-four hours before.

  ‘Over here,’ came the answer. Another brightly coloured pinprick appeared far around the curve of the galaxy, between three and three and a half kiloparsecs distant – a little more than seventeen thousand light-years from Ocean’s Deep. The simulation of the galaxy rotated rapidly until the icon representing her last-known location was directly overhead, while the Consortium now hovered just underneath the ceiling.

  ‘As you can see,’ said Lamoureaux, ‘she’s gone a long, long way.’

  ‘Show me the coordinates Whitecloud dug up. Draw a line from here to there.’

  Lamoureaux nodded, and a single pale line reached out from the Consortium towards a sparse stellar region not much more than a thousand light-years away.