Horatio had insisted on setting up a cafe in the warehouse’s old management offices, maintaining its importance as social centre for the community as well as a vital resource. The staff were finally starting to close the counter down when he arrived. Maria O’Rourke was there, as he’d known she would be, putting the day’s unsold cupcakes into a fridge. His altme didn’t even have to splash the shift schedules; he knew them by heart. He and Maria had been together for three years now. She used to manage a pub in Walworth before Blitz2, then drifted through various volunteer jobs until she wound up helping in the exchange cafe. They’d argued a lot at first, because she had her own way of doing things and wasn’t his type at all. But love under the shield was a strange thing, and oh so welcome in such an abnormal existence.
Maria caught sight of him and smiled, a smile that soon faded as she puzzled what he was doing here now, when she was due to walk back to his flat in another twenty minutes. Then she saw his drawn expression, the worry he knew he couldn’t hide.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
That was when he caught sight of Niastus and Jazmin sitting at one of the tables, where Jaz was nursing their four-month-old baby. Horatio wanted to close his eyes and weep. Along with Martin, it was Niastus who managed the recycling machinery in the exchange; he and Jaz had contributed so much to the community. Horatio looked up at the heavens in dismay.
‘Horatio?’ Maria asked, more insistent now.
Horatio made a decision. She’ll kill me, but what else can I do . . .?
‘Come with me,’ he told the three of them. ‘No questions. I won’t ask again.’ He leant the bike against a table and turned around, walking for the door he’d just come in through. This way it was all down to them.
All he could see was Gwendoline’s face, lips shrinking towards disapproval. ‘The universe is a neutral canvas,’ she’d told him once. ‘It has no intrinsic good, only that which you paint onto it.’
Surely this counts as doing something good.
Maria caught up with him as he opened the door, grabbing his arm. ‘What is going on?’
‘We’re leaving. Please, don’t ask questions. Just trust me, okay.’
‘Leaving?’ Jaz said. ‘Leaving where?’
Niastus took her arm, his gaze never leaving Horatio. ‘Just go with it,’ he told her.
‘But . . .’
‘Come on,’ Horatio said insistently.
They made it to the old warehouse’s rear door. Horatio waved to the crew busy with a leaking manifold, feeling like shit. The one thing he couldn’t work out would be Gwendoline’s reaction to him bringing these people with him. The kids and their baby, okay, she’d deride him for being a sentimental old fool. True enough. But Maria? What would happen after they got offplanet? Would he have to shake hands and wish her well on her way? More likely Gwendoline will throw me out of the nearest airlock. But she said I could bring somebody. Was she kidding? Fuck! It was done now.
The door shut behind them, leaving them by themselves on the crumbling tarmac of a neglected street, without any lights. Horatio realized he’d relied on the bike headlight to get here. And he’d left the bike because it wasn’t practical, and – ‘Shit.’ He was normally so good at thinking things through. His altme activated the light amplifier function in his tarsus lenses, and the road became a little clearer, its surfaces speckled in indigo static.
‘Hey,’ Maria said calmly. She slid her arm around him. ‘Want to tell us what’s going on?’
‘We have to go,’ he said. ‘To my flat. First.’
‘Why?’ Jaz asked.
‘There’s a way out. And I think we’re going to—’ Gwendoline’s icon splashed into his tarsus lens, emergency coded. Horatio’s skin chilled down at the sight of it. ‘Yes?’ he asked.
‘Oh, God, Horatio,’ Gwendoline said. ‘They’re in orbit!’
‘What?’
‘The Olyix. Their wormholes just opened above Earth; they’re only five thousand kilometres up. The orbital sensors didn’t even detect the carrier ships coming through the Sol system. Resolution ships are flying out like a bloody locust plague. The first ones are already in the upper atmosphere.’
‘No fucking way!’ he gasped, and looked up in shock. The murky shield curved above the city, as mundane and eternal as always. Its unnaturally solid air made the crescent moon an insubstantial shimmer in the east, above Dartford.
‘They’re coming for all of us,’ Gwendoline said, her voice weak with fright. ‘Wormholes have opened at Delta Pavonis and 82 Eridani, the shield over the capital on Eta Cassiopeiae has already failed. And – oh Christ – Rangvlad has gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Yes, we’ve lost all the interstellar portal links to Beta Hydri. We have to go, Horatio. Now. Pasobla is starting its countdown. I can’t stop it. Not even Ainsley can.’
‘Ainsley?’
‘Yes, he was here for some ultra-level security conference with Emilja. Now he’s going to have to come with us; there’s no way back to Nashua. For the love of God, Horatio, open the portal!’
‘I’m coming. I’ll be there in five minutes.’
‘Shit, 82 Eridani just went. Hurry!’
He looked at the others. ‘The Olyix are here. I have a way offworld. I can take the four of you, but it’s now or never. You coming?’
‘Yes.’ Niastus took the baby from a trembling Jaz. ‘Do we run?’
‘Fuck, yeah,’ Horatio said. As he said it, the city’s sparse aurora of light died. Streetlights went off, along with all the house lights that didn’t have battery reserves. Behind them, the community exchange fell silent apart from a loud metallic buzzing of unbalanced pumps spinning erratically into shutdown.
‘Christ on a crutch,’ Maria exclaimed. ‘You’re not joking, are you?’
‘No. Come on.’ He started jogging towards Curtis Street. The others
