said. ‘It’s normal procedure. We have very good relations with the Convention, Clavain.’ ‘Where are you taking me? Straight to Demarchist HQ?’ ‘Don’t be silly. We’ll take you somewhere nice and secure and remote to begin with. There’s a small Demarchist camp on the far side of Marco’s Eye… of course, you know all about our operations.’ Clavain nodded. ‘But not your precise debriefing procedures. Have you had to do many of these?’ The other person in the room was a male Demarchist, also of high status, whom Voi had introduced as Giles Perotet. He had a habit of constantly stretching the fingers of his gloves, one after the other, from hand to hand. ‘Two or three a decade,’ he said. ‘Certainly you are the first in a while. Do not expect the red-carpet treatment, Clavain. Our expectations may have been coloured by the fact that eight of the eleven previous defectors turned out to be spider agents. We killed them all, but not before valuable secrets had been lost to them.’ ‘I’m not here to do that. There wouldn’t be much point, would there? The war is ours anyway.’ ‘So you came to gloat, is that it?’ Voi asked. ‘No. I came to tell you something that will put the war into an entirely different perspective.’ Amusement ghosted across her face. ‘That’d be some trick.’ ‘Does the Demarchy still own a lighthugger?’ Perotet and Voi exchanged puzzled glances before the man replied, ‘What do you think, Clavain?’ Clavain didn’t answer him for several minutes. Through the window he saw Carousel New Copenhagen diminishing, the vast grey arc of the rim revealing itself to be merely one part of a spokeless wheel. The wheel itself grew smaller until it was nearly lost against the background of the other habitats and carousels that formed the Rust Belt. ‘Our intelligence says you don’t,’ Clavain said, ‘but our intelligence could be wrong, or incomplete. If the Demarchy had to get its hands on a lighthugger at very short notice, do you think it could?’ ‘What is this about, Clavain?’ Voi asked. ‘Just answer my question.’ Her face flared red at his insolence, but she held her temper well. Her voice remained calm, almost businesslike. ‘You know there are always ways and means. It just depends on the degree of desperation.’ I think you should start making plans. You will need a starship, more than one, if you can manage it. And troops and weapons.‘ ‘We’re not exactly in a position to spare resources, Clavain,’ Perotet said, removing one glove completely. His hands were milky white and very fine-boned. ‘Why? Because you will lose the war? You’re going to lose it anyway. It’ll just have to happen a little sooner than you were expecting.’ Perotet replaced the glove. ‘Why, Clavain?’ ‘Winning this war is no longer the Mother Nest’s primary concern. Something else has taken precedent. They’re going through the motions of winning now because they don’t want you or anyone else to suspect the truth.’ Voi asked, ‘Which is?’ ‘I don’t know all the details. I had to make a choice between staying to learn more and defecting while I had a chance to do so. It wasn’t an easy decision, and I didn’t have a lot of time for second thoughts.’ ‘Just tell us what you do know,’ Perotet said. ‘We’ll decide if the information merits further investigation. We’ll find out what you know eventually, you realise. We have trawls, just like your own side. Maybe not as fast, maybe not as safe … but they work for us. You’ll lose nothing by telling us something now.’ ‘I’ll tell you all that I know. But it’s valueless unless you act on it.’ Clavain felt the military ship adjust its course. They were headed for Yellowstone’s only large moon, Marco’s Eye, which orbited just beyond the Ferrisville Convention’s jurisdictional limit. ‘Go ahead,’ Perotet said. ‘The Mother Nest has identified an external threat, one that concerns all of us. There are aliens out there, machinelike entities that suppress the emergence of technological intelligences. It’s why the galaxy is such an empty place. They’ve wiped it clean. I’m afraid we’re next on the list.‘ ‘Sounds like supposition to me,’ Voi said. It isn’t. Some of our own deep-space missions have already encountered them. They are as real as you or I, and you have my word that they’re coming closer.‘ ‘We’ve managed fine until now,’ Perotet said. ‘Something we’ve done has alerted them. We may never know precisely what it was. All that matters is that the threat is real and the Conjoiners are fully aware of it. They do not think they can defeat it.’ He went on to tell them much the same story that he had already told Xavier and Antoinette about the Mother Nest’s evacuation fleet and the quest to recover the lost weapons. ‘These imaginary weapons,’ Voi asked. ‘Are we supposed to think that they’d make any practical difference against hostile aliens?’ ‘I suppose if they were not considered to be of value, my people would not be so eager to recover them.’ ‘And where do we come in?’ ‘I’d like you to recover the weapons first. That’s why you’ll need a starship. You could leave a few weapons behind for Skade’s exodus fleet, but beyond that…’ Clavain shrugged. ‘I think they’d be better off in the control of orthodox humanity.’ ‘You’re quite a turncoat,’ Voi said admiringly. ‘I’ve tried not to make a career out of it.’ The ship lurched. There had been no warning until that moment, but Clavain had flown in enough ships to know the difference between a scheduled and unscheduled manoeuvre. Something was wrong. He could see it instantly in Voi and Perotet: all composure dropped from their faces. Voi’s expression became a mask, her throat trembling as she went into subvocal communication with the shuttle’s shipmaster. Perotet moved to one window, making sure he had at least one limb attached to a grappling point. The vessel lurched again. A hard blue flash lit the cabin. Perotet looked away, his eyes squinting against the glare. ‘What’s happening?’ Clavain asked. ‘We’re being attacked.’ He sounded fascinated and appalled at the same time. ‘Someone just took out one of the Ferrisville escort craft.’ ‘This shuttle looks lightly armoured,’ Clavain said. ‘If someone was attacking us, wouldn’t we be dead by now?’ Another flash. The shuttle lurched and yawed, the hull vibrating as the engine load intensified. The shipmaster was applying an evasive pattern. ‘That’s two down,’ Voi said from the other side of the cabin. ‘Would you mind releasing me from this chair?’ Clavain asked. ‘I see something approaching us,’ Perotet called.
