The Thousand Emperors

TWENTY

Any nagging doubts Luc had about the Coalition Ambassador’s location slipped away once he arrived in the vicinity of the Sequoia, and found it under attack from Sandoz forces.

An image of the Sequoia floated before him in the cockpit of his flier, rendered in real-time. One of its several domed arboretums dotted around its exterior had been torn open and exposed to vacuum, and as a result a glittering halo of debris and frozen atmosphere now surrounded the station, while here and there attack-pods of Sandoz design had locked onto the hull like so many fat metal leeches.

Something shot out of the darkness as Luc watched, striking the station’s primary hub and sending more glittering fragments spinning outwards. A dark shape silhouetted against the planet below proved, upon magnification, to be a Sandoz orbital platform, emitting a steady stream of heavily armed mechants making their way across the intervening gap.

Luc watched all of this with a terrible sinking feeling, debating whether it might be wiser to turn back. But if he could see the Sandoz forces attacking the Sequoia, then they undoubtedly could see his flier decelerating towards the station on an approach vector. Even if he chose to turn back, by the time he managed to accelerate away they would already be on his tail, and the chase would be as good as over.

That left him with only one choice: to go forward. He maintained his course, despite the awful tightness in his throat, and the growing conviction that at any moment kinetic slugs would rip his little craft to shreds.

In the last moments before the flier finally docked with the Sequoia, Luc allowed himself to believe he might actually escape the assault unharmed. He was rewarded with a stream of fire that scored the flier’s hull, shattering most of its external sensors.

For several seconds more than was good for his mental health, Luc found himself cut off from the outside world, unable to verify if the craft had even made it to the relative safety of the station’s dock. Then the emergency systems activated, and the flier informed him in cool machine tones that the external air pressure had equalized, and he could now disembark.

On exiting the flier, he briefly surveyed its cracked and burned hull with dismay. He didn’t need an expert to tell him it would very likely disintegrate if he tried using it to escape back down to Vanaheim’s surface. If he was ever going to get back off the Sequoia again, he’d have to find some other mode of transport.

On the other hand, if the Ambassador was hiding somewhere on the Sequoia, there must be a second flier somewhere. He made haste, exiting the dock and moving down the station’s long, central hub as fast as he was able.

Luc didn’t get far before a low, rattling boom travelled the length of the hub. After a moment, he found himself drifting slowly to one wall. Whatever had just hit the Sequoia had pushed it into a slow spin that he suspected was outside of its design limitations.

His bowels turned to water when the walls and bulkheads around him screamed in protest, and he felt the irrational yet nearly overwhelming urge to turn back. But after another minute the station’s gyroscopic systems appeared to reassert themselves, halting the spin. He pushed on, travelling along the length of the hub with the help of rungs embedded into its cylindrical walls.

A thin wail echoed down the hub, and a breeze tugged at him. Grabbing onto a rung, he realized it was getting harder to breathe. Up ahead, he saw an emergency pressure-field pop into existence.

And flicker out again.

And back again.

Clearly, the station was in bad need of maintenance.

In that same moment, several mechants, all with Sandoz livery, came rocketing out of a side passageway. Luc froze for a moment, then looked around for some kind of hiding place.

More mechants came hurtling after the first group, these ones lacking markings of any kind. They engaged the Sandoz mechants in a blur of clashing steel and directed-energy fire.

Luc scrambled for the meagre shelter of a flange that joined two sections of the hub, then cautiously peered over the top of the flange, watching through splayed fingers as the carapace of a Sandoz mechant turned first orange, then white, before exploding messily and sending molten steel and plastic spraying in all directions. He ducked back down, squeezing his eyes shut.

The next time he looked, Ambassador Sachs had appeared from the side passageway. Most of the Sandoz mechants had been destroyed, but the remainder appeared to sight Luc when he popped his head up, accelerating towards him.

Then something very remarkable happened.

One of the Sandoz mechants aiming straight towards Luc halted abruptly, its limbs weaving spastically for a moment before it began to drift, out of control, striking the flange behind which Luc hid before rebounding and drifting back towards the centre of the hub.

The same thing happened within moments to each of the two other surviving Sandoz mechants. They span out of control, apparently lifeless.

Luc stared over at the Ambassador, who gestured to him to come out of hiding. His unmarked mechants set about finishing off the enemy machines with their energy weapons.

Somehow, Luc knew Sachs had stopped the mechants with his lattice. He wondered if anyone in the Tian Di realized just how powerful the Ambassador apparently was.

‘Over here, Mr Gabion,’ Sachs called to him, his voice sounding thin and far away, as if he was shouting to Luc across mountaintops. The malfunctioning pressure-field continued to flicker on and off further down the hub.

Luc didn’t need any more encouragement and kicked himself across the hub, black dots swimming at the edges of his vision as he struggled for breath. He grabbed onto a handhold and pulled himself inside the passageway, following the Ambassador as he turned, passing through yet another pressure-field.

Suddenly Luc’s lungs were filled with moist, scented air. The Ambassador’s mechants followed them through the pressure-field moments before heavy doors swung into place behind them, blocking access to the hub.

Luc slumped against the side of the passageway, almost drunk on oxygen, while Ambassador Sachs regarded him from nearby, one gloved hand casually slung through a wall-rung.

‘Mr Gabion,’ the Ambassador said with wry humour, ‘we hope this wasn’t just a social call, because your timing is terrible.’

Luc followed Sachs along the passageway and into one of the arboretums with feelings of deep trepidation. These feelings only increased when he saw through its streaked and filthy transparent panes the battle that still raged beyond the fragile dome. He followed the Ambassador over to a low stone bench near the centre of the dome, where tall ferns spread broad leaves above their heads.

‘Why the hell do you want to talk here?’ Luc yelled after him. ‘One of the other domes is already cracked open and you’re losing atmosphere all over the station. If the Sandoz target this dome, we’re dead!’

At first, instead of responding, Sachs turned to face him, pushing back his hood to reveal a close-shaven skull. Then he pinched the front of his mask with two fingers, deftly peeling it away to reveal a mouth that was little more than a lipless line below a pair of indents where a nose should have been. His eyes were wide, and entirely black. Luc stared back at him in shock.

‘Contrary to appearances,’ said Sachs, ‘we are quite human. This body is optimized for survival, and can function in vacuum for short periods if required. In answer to your question, it is our belief the Sandoz forces are intent on capture rather than execution. That is why they are being so cautious.’

Luc laughed weakly. ‘You call what happened back there cautious?’

‘They could have destroyed this station in seconds,’ the Ambassador pointed out, ‘something they have manifestly not chosen to do. And that other arboretum was accidentally destroyed by one of our own mechants during an exchange of fire.’

This is crazy, Luc wanted to yell, but managed to hold it back.

‘All right,’ he said instead, ‘then you should be aware that I know you visited Javier Maxwell in his prison, because I visited him there myself not long after. I learned more about what’s been going on than I ever wanted to.’

The Ambassador regarded him with surprise. ‘How did you know we were there?’

‘By keeping a close eye on you after my previous visit here. When you disappeared from Zelia’s surveillance networks, we realized the nearest thing to your last known location was Maxwell’s prison.’

‘Very impressive,’ the Ambassador conceded. ‘We assume you want to know what we were doing there.’

‘I already have a pretty good idea what. I know Vasili was killed because he’d found out about Cheng’s secret entrance into the Founder Network.’

‘And how did you come by this information?’

Reaching inside his jacket, Luc withdrew one of the two books, holding it up before the Ambassador.

‘Ah,’ the Ambassador replied. ‘We should have guessed. But why bother coming all this way, just to tell us things we already know?’

‘Because there’s still something I don’t understand. Whether or not Cheng was exploring the Founder Network, that in itself still isn’t sufficient reason for the Coalition to threaten war against the Tian Di. So what is the reason?’

A dull boom directly overhead made them both look up at the same time. Luc could just make out something with multiple arms pressed up against the dome’s exterior, twisting around as it engaged at close quarters with a second mechant. The two machines suddenly pulled apart, and for a moment Luc almost imagined they were caught in some complicated dance.

A moment later one of the mechants darted away, disappearing from view in a flash. The second mechant launched itself away from the dome in the next moment, presumably giving chase.

The Ambassador brought his gaze back down to Luc. ‘We see no reason why we should discuss confidential affairs of state with a member of what is, as you yourself pointed out on your last visit, an enemy civilization.’

‘I can give you something in return,’ said Luc. ‘Something you don’t know.’

‘A moment,’ said the Ambassador, who then gazed blankly over Luc’s shoulder. He sat like this, unblinking, for several seconds, then returned his gaze to Luc. ‘We agree to your proposal, but request that you share your information first.’

‘And then you’ll answer my question?’

‘That depends on the usefulness of your information.’

‘All right,’ said Luc. ‘Cheng sent agents to the Coalition, to retrieve some kind of artefact your people recovered from your part of the Founder Network, and they’re going to try and bring that artefact back through the Darwin–Temur gate, assuming they haven’t done so already. I can’t tell you anyone’s name, or anything like that, but whatever it is Cheng sent them to look for is a planet-killer, the same kind of thing that brought about the Abandonment.’

‘And you learned this from where?’

‘Your turn,’ said Luc.

He waited, and the Ambassador’s shoulders rose and fell with a sigh.

‘Well?’ Luc demanded. ‘Or did you already know everything we just told you?’

‘No, we didn’t, Mr Gabion. Although it makes sense of certain recent events back on Darwin.’

‘Then you must know that your top priority is to stop whoever Cheng sent to Darwin from completing their mission, because literally billions of lives are at stake, as well as the future of the Tian Di. Is there any way you can get in touch with your people back home to warn them?’

‘They have already been warned,’ the Ambassador replied, ‘since you just told them.’

Luc frowned. ‘We’re being listened to? Right now?’

‘Every word you say is being transmitted via a secure link running through the Hall of Gates back to Temur, and then through the Darwin–Temur gate. We wish to know, for what purpose would Cheng want to acquire such an artefact?’

Luc imagined shadowy figures listening in to their conversation from untold light-years away. ‘My understanding is that Cheng is going to use the artefact to wipe out Benares, then blame the whole catastrophe on Black Lotus.’

‘Destroy one of the Tian Di’s own worlds?’ The Ambassador shook his head. ‘What could he possibly gain from that?’

‘He intends to use it as a pretext for staying in power indefinitely. He’ll also claim that the Coalition supplied the weapon to Black Lotus. Ambassador, you must take immediate action.’

‘While we agree that your intent is genuine, it may already be too late for the particular solution you seek.’

Luc shook his head, confused. ‘Too late? How?’

‘There are still certain details that you are not aware of. As you already know, I visited Maxwell with regard to preventing a war between our civilizations. I am sorry to tell you that war has already begun.’

Luc struggled to formulate a coherent answer. ‘It has?’

‘And has been under way, for some hours – not that this will be evident for some time yet.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘As you are now clearly aware, Tian Di exploration teams did indeed discover another gate leading into the Founder Network, following which Cheng authorized his own, secret assessment of any artefacts that might be found there, despite his stated reasons for bringing about the Schism.

‘However,’ the Ambassador continued, ‘as our ancestors once discovered for themselves, the Founder Network is an enormously dangerous place. The human race was lucky to avoid total extinction following the Abandonment, and so when we became aware that Tian Di expeditions had entered the Network, we were concerned not only for their safety, but that of our entire species, whether here or in the Coalition.’

‘So how exactly did you know Cheng had entered the Network?’

The Ambassador studied his gloved hands. ‘The point about a network is that it is interconnected. Given that, it was inevitable we would eventually become aware of Cheng’s presence within it. But what they were doing was placing us all in terrible danger.’

‘What kind of danger?’

At that point, the assault on the Sequoia grew more vicious. Luc heard a loud crash from the far side of the arboretum, and within moments a ferocious gale began to tear at the trees and bushes around them, filling the air with a terrible, deafening howl.

the Ambassador scripted.

Luc grabbed at the branches of the surrounding trees as the sudden expulsion of air dragged him backwards along the path. He yelled, then threw his hands over his face as a mechant came hurtling towards him. It gripped him in its manipulators, and fought to make headway against the outrushing air.

A moment later Luc felt his ears pop, and the arboretum grew eerily quiet. The air had already been sucked out of the dome. He felt like he was drowning, and caught sight of the Ambassador held in the grip of a second mechant. Perhaps the Sandoz had decided it wasn’t necessary to take them alive after all.

The two mechants hurtled back through the passageway by which Luc had entered the arboretum. The heavy doors that had isolated the dome from the rest of the station had already swung half-open again by the time they passed between them.

Luc struggled to stay conscious. The mechants carrying both him and the Ambassador took a sharp turn sideways into another tunnel, and through another pressure-field.

For the second time that day, Luc gasped and floundered like a fish as the mechant released him. He collapsed onto hard steel decking, coughing and gasping as his lungs again found purchase in breathable air.

‘We need to get off this station,’ Luc gasped, seeing the Ambassador climbing to his feet a few paces away, his robe now rumpled and stained. ‘You must have some way off of here, right?’

‘We have a flier,’ the Ambassador agreed, ‘but it only has room for one. You may use it if you wish.’

Luc gaped at him. ‘But . . . what about you? Why would you give a damn about saving my life?’

‘You think I’m sacrificing myself, but you’ll soon understand that that’s far from being the case. Besides, we have come to the conclusion that you may have it within your means to bring current events to a more peaceful conclusion than they might otherwise. If we may?’

The Ambassador peeled off a glove, revealing an entirely ordinary-looking hand, with long and tapering fingers, and carefully trimmed nails.

He stepped towards Luc, reaching out to him with his ungloved hand. Luc jerked back in alarm.

‘What the hell are you trying to do?’

‘A touch is all it takes, Mr Gabion,’ said the Ambassador. ‘You offered a trade. Let us then fulfil our side of the bargain. This way, you’ll see and understand everything in an instant.’

Luc felt his eyes widen. ‘Like Javier Maxwell’s books. Is that the kind of thing you mean?’

‘Encoding memories into all manner of physical substrates is an art in itself,’ the Ambassador replied, briefly drawing his hand back and showing his palm to Luc. ‘There are almost no limits to the possible substrates that can be used, since the information is stored on the deep quantum level. It is possible, in the Coalition, to ingest or even drink memories and data – even to breathe them in. Living flesh, allied with a lattice of the type Antonov gifted you with, can become a conduit for sensory data of all kinds.’

Irrational fear gripped Luc. ‘The last time I was here,’ he said tightly, ‘I mentioned that Antonov told me in what I thought was a dream that you could prevent a calamity, and save both our lives.’

Something rocked the station around them. ‘Perhaps it’s safest to keep moving for the moment,’ said the Ambassador. ‘We can reach the flier in just a few more minutes.’

They passed into another part of the station, walking quickly through what appeared to be a series of laboratories linked one to another by a common passageway. Luc observed a number of sealed compartments with glass walls, within which lay samples of mosses and lichens.

‘I have another question for you,’ Luc called after the Ambassador as he strode ahead. ‘The lattice in my head. Did Antonov get it from you?’

The Ambassador turned to regard him as they came to a door at the end of the passageway. ‘He did, yes, but I had no part in what Antonov did to you. You must understand that.’

Ambassador Sachs next led him through a dusty reception area filled with mouldering couches. Sachs moved through the zero-gee environment with a fluid grace like he’d been born to it – and then Luc remembered that he had.

Luc also remembered the anger written across Antonov’s face, reflected in the Ambassador’s mirrored mask. ‘He wasn’t very happy with you, for some reason. I saw part of one of his memories. He was arguing with you, clearly extremely upset. Why?’

‘He believed we in the Coalition had dangerously underestimated Father Cheng’s determination to remain in power at all costs. Given what you’ve told us since your arrival here, it appears we entirely misjudged the situation. Once it became evident Cheng had no intention of bringing his explorations of the Founder Network to a halt, we began conducting private negotiations with both Javier Maxwell and Winchell Antonov. In return for Antonov’s help, and as a gesture of goodwill, we supplied him with certain technologies he might need if either he or Maxwell were to have any chance at deposing Cheng.’

‘Such as my lattice?’

‘Such as your lattice, yes.’

Despite everything he’d learned, a part of Luc was scandalized. ‘All this time, and the Coalition really has been working against the Tian Di?’

‘No, Mr Gabion, against Father Cheng and the Eighty-Five, specifically, and out of a desperation to avoid the war Cheng has forced us to initiate. If Cheng should remain in power and continue his exploration of the Founder Network, he risks driving the human race into extinction.’

‘You keep telling me that, but you haven’t explained what you mean.’

‘We offered to show you, but you refused.’

‘Tell me first.’

‘The Network is vast, Mr Gabion, a billion open doors scattered all across space and time and leading who knows where. Some of Cheng’s reconnaissance teams encountered something quite terrifying during one of their forays into it.’

‘What?’

‘Intelligent life,’ Sachs replied, and turned back to the door.

Sachs cycled the mechants through the airlock first, the door sealing behind them. The docking bay where his flier waited had, he explained, suffered a breach during the initial stages of the assault. The mechants would venture ahead in order to seal the breach, following which he and Luc would be able to continue on their way.

‘As vast as the Founder Network is,’ the Ambassador explained as they waited, ‘it’s difficult to imagine a universe in which such a thing did not exist, given what we know of the mutability of space and time. It seems to be a historical inevitability that any race advanced enough to discover the means to generate worm-holes would then use them as a fast way to access their nearest star systems. And, over time, these scattered networks inevitably fused together, becoming what we call the Founder Network.’

‘And that’s who the Sandoz encountered?’ asked Luc, unable to keep a note of awe out of his voice. ‘The Founders?’

‘Remember there is no evidence of there ever being any one race of Founders,’ the Ambassador cautioned. ‘The name is merely a collective term for an unknown number of intelligent species who independently created their own wormhole networks, but ultimately used them to access the networks of other species, over vast epochs of time. As you know, the Coalition have continued to explore the Network, despite the Schism, but always with the greatest caution imaginable. By our standards, Cheng’s expeditionary forces have been behaving in a manner almost suicidally reckless.’

‘For all your caution,’ Luc growled, ‘you still didn’t prevent someone travelling to one of your worlds to steal something that could be used to murder billions.’

‘Which is extremely unfortunate, if it does prove to be the case,’ the Ambassador agreed, ‘and it reveals a serious lapse on our part. But to get back to the point, Mr Gabion, Cheng’s Sandoz teams were not the first to encounter alien life. We first made contact with the very same alien species a few decades after the Schism. At first, our discovery was a cause of celebration: first contact with another species, via the Network. But our joy didn’t last for long. If the creatures we encountered ever had a name for themselves, we never learned it, but it wasn’t long before we started calling them the Inimicals. Communication with them proved difficult from the start, indeed more or less impossible. There are many ways to build some kind of common language – by building mathematical and physical constants, for instance. At first we thought we might succeed in learning to communicate with them, and they with us; but every time we tried to advance beyond those initial building blocks towards anything remotely abstract, we ran into trouble.’

‘You mean you couldn’t understand them?’

The Ambassador shook his head. ‘Or they, us. They showed us images of one of their worlds, dotted with what we at first took to be cities, but then later proved to be graveyards, or perhaps some mixture of both. Every time we thought we had a grasp on how their minds worked or what they were trying to say to us, we’d find ourselves having to throw away all our carefully constructed strategies as new data came in.’ He shrugged. ‘Then things turned nasty.’

‘In what way?’

‘You must understand the extraordinary lengths we had gone to, from the very beginning, to prevent the Inimicals from uncovering the route back to our own time and space until we could be certain we would be safe. At the time we first encountered them, the Inimicals had already colonized an entire hub of the Network – thousands upon thousands of transfer gates placed in close orbit around a black hole with the mass of a million stars, located at the heart of a dying galaxy. We never knew just what triggered the hostilities – whether we somehow brought it on ourselves, or if they’d intended to attack us all along – but those of us who survived the attack in our physical forms managed to retreat and warn the rest. We destroyed transfer gates behind us as we went, hoping to block off their pursuit and prevent them from finding their way back to our own worlds, but had only limited success. The Inimicals had already spent millennia inside the Network, and knew routes through it we hardly knew existed. Our exploratory teams came under attack several more times over the next few decades, as the Inimicals attempted to find some way around our hastily erected defences. In response, we initiated research programmes that constructed weapons from certain artefacts we had recovered throughout the post-Abandonment period. Using these, we managed to halt the Inimicals’ progress – but only at a dreadful cost.’

The Ambassador came to a halt as something thudded and clanged on the far side of the airlock door.

‘And that’s what the Sandoz encountered inside the Network? The Inimicals?’

‘Several Sandoz Clans engaged in routine explorations of the deep future via the Network disappeared without trace. We know with great certainty that the Inimicals were responsible. Should they manage to trace the route of Cheng’s expeditions back to the Thorne system, we will all have a great deal more to worry about than just the destruction of Benares – such as the survival of our species.’

‘But you must have told Cheng all this!’

‘Oh, we have, Mr Gabion,’ the Ambassador replied, a trace of wistfulness in his voice. ‘Despite the abundance of evidence, he and his advisors have consistently ignored all of our warnings.’

‘And that’s why you threatened war?’

‘We have no objections to the Tian Di exploring the Founder Network,’ said the Ambassador, ‘so long as it is conducted with an appreciation of the considerable dangers involved. Cheng initially agreed to halt any further explorations for the duration of our negotiations with him, but he constantly reneges or ignores every agreement we have made. We now believe he has no intention of honouring any of our demands.’

‘But why would he do that? Why take such a huge risk with all our lives?’

‘A question that has been on our minds from the beginning, Mr Gabion, but the information you have brought us may answer that question. If Tian Di agents truly have attempted to retrieve artefacts from Darwin – and there is strong circumstantial evidence to support that conjecture – it may be that Cheng has simply been stalling for time until he can acquire those artefacts. It adds fuel to our growing conviction that neither Cheng nor his closest advisors are wholly sane.’

‘So what will you do now?’

‘Since he is apparently unprepared or unwilling to deal with the threat, we will have to deal with it for him, and either seal or destroy the Thorne gate. It is likely this will provoke violent action from the Sandoz, and become a full-fledged conflict throughout the Tian Di. We are extremely well prepared, however, for the coming conflict. Now, Mr Gabion,’ he said, again reaching out with his ungloved hand. ‘Time is running short.’

Luc hesitated for a moment, then reached out and gripped the Ambassador’s hand.

In a moment, the Sequoia slipped away.

He saw ships like shards of black ice tear the underlying structure of space apart, triggering the death of a star in a burst of blazing energy. He realized he was witnessing a battle between evenly balanced Inimical and Coalition forces, each side equipped with weapons the nature of which neither truly comprehended.

You see? said the Ambassador, from somewhere far away.

He remembered that once his name had been only Luc Gabion, but now he had a billion names and faces, scattered across multiple worlds, and in the cold, dark depths between stars.

Simultaneous with witnessing this battle, he stood in a busy street and watched figures – some more or less human in appearance, some multi-limbed and bizarrely alien – engage in what might have been a dance, or a ritual, or something else entirely, their emotions and thoughts tumbling around and through him.

He stood on the bottom of an ocean in a body constructed of plastic and metal, leaning in close to observe tiny, finger-like polyps that populated the edges of a volcanic fissure.

There were other eyes and other faces, some on the surfaces of worlds, and others floating above the roiling surfaces of stars, naked to the vacuum.

He was anyone and anything he chose to be.

It was, he thought, like being God.

But it was too much. Luc’s senses reeled under the assault of so many crowded perspectives and tumbling, chaotic thoughts.

Then, finally, he was all alone once more, and back in his own skull – all except for Antonov, somewhere in the depths of his thoughts, grinning toothily through a bushy black beard.

He opened his eyes to find he had folded his body into a ball next to the now open airlock door, his skin bright with sweat. Ambassador Sachs knelt on one knee by his side.

‘Now do you see?’ said Sachs. ‘Some of those weapons you saw being used were first developed so that we might defend ourselves against the Inimicals. We fought battles that destroyed entire star systems, but we did what we had to do because it was a choice between survival and extinction. But when it comes to a fight between the Tian Di and the Coalition, believe us when we say it is not a war we could possibly lose. Long ago, we seeded weapons fabricants in the outer reaches of several Tian Di systems, including this one, against the possibility that a day such as this might come.’

‘You’re not human,’ Luc gasped, the words rasping in his throat. ‘Not any more.’

‘We in the Coalition prefer to think we are more human,’ the Ambassador observed. ‘But perhaps you now more clearly understand the threat we all face, and the reason for our actions.’

‘I could be talking to anyone right now,’ said Luc. ‘There is no one, single Ambassador, is there?’

He’d seen how the Coalition’s citizens leapt from body to body at will, instantaneously, across continents and even light-years, using instantaneous communications technology, a constant shunting of encoded consciousnesses in and out of the lattices filling their skulls. Notions of privacy, as they were understood within the Tian Di, simply did not, could not exist for them. Bodies were there to be shared, rather than owned. A single mind might find itself in a dozen different bodies in the space of a week, a day, or an hour; a constant flow of conscious, living data across a civilization that now itself encompassed dozens of star systems.

In that brief moment of contact with the Ambassador, Luc had seen how a single mind could split itself into a dozen copies, each occupying a separate body simultaneously, before later reintegrating itself into a single consciousness. It was wonderful and terrifying in equal measure, and Luc wasn’t sure he could experience it all again without going insane.

‘We understand how all this must frighten you,’ said the Ambassador. ‘You think you would lose your individuality if you came to live amongst us. That’s not the case: the Coalition embraces change, since to become static is to stagnate and die. By contrast, very little in the Tian Di has changed in centuries. Your ruling Council live artificially extended lives, but they do not live well. You’ve seen how they have sunk into a mire of depredation and excess, down on that miserable sandpit of a world they call home. They keep life- and intelligence-boosting technology from the rest of you and have the audacity to claim it’s for your own good. Tell us honestly,’ Sachs continued, ‘after everything you’ve seen, who, may we ask, is more human? Men and women like Cripps and de Almeida, or what you’ve seen of the Coalition?’

Luc blinked sweat out of his eyes. ‘Was it you I spoke to when I last came here? Or was there someone else using that body?’

‘There are up to thirty agents using this body at different times,’ the Ambassador replied. ‘But the individual mind you are addressing just now is the same one that you spoke with then.’

‘So who exactly am I talking to right now? Is your name really Horst Sachs?’

‘That is the name of the individual occupying this body at this moment, yes,’ Sachs replied. ‘Of all of us, we – or rather, I – spend the most time in this body, but whatever you and I say to each other is heard by all.’

‘And where are you the rest of the time?’

The Ambassador shrugged. ‘In other places, other bodies – even other times, if duty calls me into the Founder Network. Now do you understand why Antonov did to you what he did? He was saving your life – and his own.’

‘No.’ Luc shook his head. ‘That’s not what you said to me before. You said I was just one life measured against billions.’

‘Much has changed since then, Mr Gabion. We did not yet fully understand your role in current events. Look.’

The Ambassador reached into a pocket and pulled out something metallic that squirmed in the open palm of his hand. Luc stared at the writhing thing with horrible fascination.

‘So why did Antonov put one of those things in me, instead of using it on himself?’

‘Because he was already equipped with the more primitive form of lattice still used by the Council,’ the Ambassador explained. ‘It cannot be removed, even by surgery. The only way to ensure his survival, or that of any member of the Temur Council, would be to acquire a clone body pre-equipped with its own lattice, then place backups of his preserved mind-state into that new body. Since such means were not available to him while he was trapped on Aeschere, the only option left to him under the circumstances was to imprint a number of his memories and some fragment of his personality onto a device such as this one, and implant it within you.’

‘Except that it’s killing me.’

‘Killing the body you currently occupy, yes,’ the Ambassador agreed, ‘but the same cannot be said for your mind. With the aid of your lattice, everything that defines you – every thought, memory, and learned skill, along with the manifold and near-infinite interrelationships between those thoughts and memories – can be stored, shuffled, or copied indefinitely, so long as there is Coalition instantiation technology to receive it all.’

Luc stared at the Ambassador’s single gloved hand. ‘That’s why you wear those gloves, isn’t it? Even shaking someone’s hand . . .’

‘Has considerably deeper meaning in our culture than in yours, yes,’ the Ambassador agreed. ‘It can allow the sharing of the most intimate gestures and thoughts, or it can reveal the very essence of one’s soul. When everything and everyone around you is capable of either imbuing you with its own thoughts and memories, or of absorbing your own, one must be careful in the extreme. Come.’

The Ambassador stood and pulled his glove back on, then reached down, helping Luc upright. Luc found himself wondering what kind of pronoun you used for more than one person taking turns sharing a single body – or was it safer just to refer to Ambassador Sachs as ‘they’?

The airlock door finally opened, letting them pass through into the now re-pressurized dock. The air inside was filled with the stink of burning plastic, and a pile of half-melted metal in one corner, still radiating heat, was only just recognizable as the remains of a Sandoz mechant. Luc saw that a lone flier sat in a launching cradle at the centre of the bay, watched over by one of the Ambassador’s own mechants. The flier’s hatch hissed open as they approached.

‘It’s best you leave immediately,’ said the Ambassador. ‘But first I have some more information for you. Within the past few days, an attack took place on an orbital facility above Darwin. The raid was both unexpected and unexpectedly sophisticated, and it appears an artefact originating from the Founder Network, in storage aboard that orbital facility, may indeed have been removed from it. Our consensus, given what you’ve already told us, is that the raid must have been carried out by agents working on behalf of Father Cheng.’

‘But can you stop them from bringing the artefact, whatever it is, back to Temur?’

‘Unfortunately, it may already be too late,’ the Ambassador replied with a pained expression. ‘Not long after the raid, there was an unexpected breach of security at the Darwin–Temur gate.’

Luc felt his insides turn hollow. ‘What kind of breach?’

‘Special Envoys originating from the Tian Di passed back through the Darwin–Temur gate less than half a day ago. On further investigation, it seems one of the Envoys did not precisely match our records. Our conclusion is that one of the Envoys was replaced, presumably by whichever agent acquired the artefact for Cheng.’

‘The last time I spoke to Zelia, she said the Council’s effectively gone to war with itself.’

‘We can corroborate that,’ said the Ambassador. ‘We have observed fighting in the vicinity of Liebenau and the Red Palace.’

‘Can’t you hold off your invading forces for a little while longer?’ Luc pleaded. ‘I have all the proof I need to discredit Cheng in the eyes of all but his most loyal supporters. I just need an opportunity to show it to them.’

‘We can perhaps delay for a few hours,’ the Ambassador admitted. ‘But Cheng appears to be winning the battle for control of Vanaheim. That will leave us no choice but to subjugate his forces, and Vanaheim, with utmost prejudice.’

‘I’ll talk to Zelia de Almeida, tell her everything you’ve told me. She can take it to the rest of the Council and make them understand just how bad things have become.’

The Ambassador thought for a moment. ‘Twelve hours,’ he said. ‘Is that enough?’

‘Not nearly enough.’

Sachs smiled gently. ‘But enough for now.’

The station emitted a series of howling, metallic shrieks, and Luc reached out to grab hold of the flier’s hatch as the station shuddered around them. An automated voice sounded, announcing in calm tones that anyone remaining on board the Sequoia should evacuate immediately.

‘What about you?’ Luc shouted over the din. ‘Why the hell won’t you come with me?’

‘We told you, the flier only has room for one. Besides, your chances are considerably improved if we don’t join you.’

‘Why?’

‘We intend to destroy the Sequoia immediately following your departure.’

‘What?’

‘At the very least, the detonation should disguise your departure, otherwise you would likely be blown out of the sky long before you reached the surface. And please remember, Mr Gabion, this is hardly an act of sacrifice. In fact, I – or rather, Horst Sachs – fully intend to speak to you again, regardless of what happens to either this body or yours.’

The station shook again. ‘Then I should go,’ said Luc, his throat tight.

‘You should be aware,’ the Ambassador added, ‘that we took the opportunity to make some necessary adjustments to your lattice when we made physical contact.’

Luc’s eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of adjustments?’

‘Your lattice required optimization. The crude surgery performed on you was insufficient to allow the full use of its potential.’

‘What potential?’

‘The ability to control mechants in the way you saw us do, to subvert attack-systems, or even boost physical response times. We have also given you the means to track down the stolen artefact, which we strongly urge you to do.’

Luc nodded wordlessly as the hatch hissed into place before him. He pulled himself into his seat restraints, then watched as the doors at the far end of the dock swung open to reveal a vista of stars.

With any luck, his departure wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as his arrival.