metres in length, a metal walkway suspended over its floor. He gazed into the interior of a room on the far side. The floor of the room was at an angle with respect to the cavern in which he stood, indicating that the gate and its opposite end had not been correctly aligned. Dense metal plating hid the wormhole’s horizon, the tori ringing each mouth of the gate shielding a core of highly exotic matter without which the wormhole could not exist. And if all that wasn’t evidence enough, he could feel the hairs on his arms and scalp standing up, an epiphenomenon caused by inadequate shielding on the containment fields.
It was real, all right. That room might be located in another part of the complex, or might be light-years away, in some entirely different star system. There was, after all, no limit to how widely separated the two mouths of a wormhole could be.
Luc stepped onto the walkway and felt even Aeschere’s minimal gravity drop away once he was halfway across, meaning the far end of the gate was almost certainly on board a spacecraft of some kind. He stepped off the walkway at the far end, drifting through the air until he came to a stop against the wall opposite.
This, then, was Antonov’s exit strategy. Luc couldn’t help but feel a little awed at the scale of the man’s planning.
He heard laboured breathing from behind, and turned to find Winchell Antonov propped against a bulkhead to one side of the gate entrance, one of his hands pressed over a dreadful chest-wound, his skin pale and waxy. His breath came in long, drawn-out gasps, and his thick, dark beard glistened with sweat.
‘I’m impressed,’ he grunted, fixing his gaze on Luc. ‘Really, I am.’
Winchell Antonov: once the Governor of Benares, later the leader of Black Lotus, the single greatest threat the Temur Council had ever faced. In that moment he looked small, despite his nearly six and a half foot frame.
‘It’s over, Antonov,’ Luc heard himself say, his voice ragged. ‘It’s time to give up.’
Antonov chuckled, then drew his breath in sharply, squeezing his eyes shut and clutching at his wound.
Something click-clacked from nearby. Luc turned to see that several mosquitoes had hopped onto the walkway bridging the wormhole, their tiny needle-like weapons aimed towards him.
‘I fear,’ grunted Antonov, ‘that we find ourselves at a mutual impasse.’
‘There’s nothing left to fight for,’ said Luc. ‘Even if you kill me, the Sandoz are going to tear this place apart until they find you.’
Antonov squinted up at him, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards in a grin. ‘Aren’t you the least bit curious why you’re still alive?’
‘You want to know what I care about?’ asked Luc. ‘I’m from Benares. Black Lotus carried out an orbital assault on Tian Di forces stationed there on
‘Ah.’ Antonov nodded. ‘The Battle of Sunderland, you mean.’
‘That decision wiped out half a continent. My parents, my brother and sister – they all died in that attack, along with almost everything I’d ever known. Since then, the only thing I ever really gave a damn about was finding you. You took my life away.’
‘Then you might be interested to know that Black Lotus never carried out that assault,’ said Antonov, his voice growing weak. ‘Father Cheng ordered that attack, and blamed it on us.’
Luc wanted to tear that deathless smirk off Antonov’s face with his bare hands. He was the devil made flesh, the Prince of Lies embodied in a man who’d been on the run for longer than Luc had even been alive.
Again, the metallic click of a mosquito manoeuvring on some surface.
He glanced up to see his own face staring back at him from the mirrored carapace of a mosquito clinging to the ceiling overhead with needle-like limbs.
Something stung his neck and he reached up to slap it. A moment later he felt a sudden, numbing coolness spread across his chest, quickly penetrating his skull.
The room reeled about him, his legs giving way beneath him as he collapsed.
Luc opened his eyes to the harsh actinic glare of overhead lights and found himself bound by a length of cord into a chair on the spacecraft’s bridge. He had been stripped of his powered suit, and wore only the thin cloth one-piece overall given him by Sandoz technicians prior to boarding the lander. Projections hovered in the air all around him, and when he tried to move, his body obeyed only with extreme sluggishness. Whatever drug he’d been shot full of was clearly still working its magic on him.
Antonov stood by the chair, one hand still clutched to his injured chest as he gazed down at Luc. Even so, Antonov didn’t look nearly as weak as he had in the moments before Luc had lost consciousness.
Behind Antonov, Luc could see a single mosquito, balanced on a railing on the opposite side of the bridge, peering back at him with mindless intent.
‘What are you doing?’ he demanded through lips that were half-numb.
‘Quiet now,’ Antonov muttered, leaning in towards him. Luc saw for the first time that the Black Lotus leader was clutching something in his free hand that squirmed as if alive. ‘This is going to be tricky.’
Antonov lifted his other hand away from his chest wound and winced, then used it to tug Luc’s head back against the chair’s headrest, holding it there. Luc found himself staring almost straight up at the ceiling of the bridge.
Breathing hard, afraid of whatever it was Antonov was about to do to him, Luc twisted his hands and feet in their restraints to no avail. However, he had the sense that whatever paralytic
