*Yes, sir.'

*But really, Black, I ask you, what is the likelihood of such a combination? The Cartel members can barely agree on carbon nanotube tariffs. No, I think the idea of an MC is alluring to the young, but in cold hard reality such a thing is never likely to be.'

Rench waved a hand imperiously. *Take the rest of the day off to shake down, Captain. Move into your new quarters and report here in the morning. If I'm not mistaken, you have a bright future ahead of you.'

Black kept one eye on the netclock as he injected three ampoules into the intravenous feed dripping the transmogrifier virus into the arm of an unwilling and unsuspecting volunteer. Right about now, Black mused, Kilroy's. .h.i.t team would be annihilating Fat Fraddo's squalid empire of crooks and contrabandists.

Fat Fraddo had made the mistake of aiding and abetting Anneke Longshadow on her journey to Reema's End in the Cygnus Sector a year ago, a journey that caused Black a great deal of pain. He glanced at the two smallest fingers of his aching left hand, now pink and regrown via gene therapies. He had taken the opportunity to implant nano-devices into them. Fraddo also had the bad luck to be part of Anneke's curious support network, the closest thing she had to a family since Black had murdered her uncle Viktus.

Black smiled at the thought that, bit by bit, he was making Anneke Longshadow more of an orphan. More alone. More like Black himself Kilroy did not know about the old underground complex Fat Fraddo had deeded to Anneke. It had never been purchased by any of Fraddo's companies or affiliates. What Kilroy did know about was Fraddo's command centre in the Draco Quarter. And far from being underground, which might have afforded Fraddo some protection, the idiot had built it in the penthouse of a thirty-storey high-security complex.

As if height conferred safety.

Kilroy, of course, hired a floater, a noiseless transport that moved within the shifting and overlapping fields of invisibly intersected sky above Lykis Integer, much as Anneke's pre-cybernetic *glider' had ridden the repulsor field beneath Arcadia, the cloud city, when she had first penetrated Quesada.

From the floater, at precisely 12.05am local time, twenty-five black-clad meres abseiled down, riding invisible thread-like lines of force, using deflectors to cushion their landing. Once on the rooftop, the meres deployed as planned. Above them, the floater drifted serenely away. Kilroy intended leaving by drop tube; no one would oppose his forces by then.

The penthouse complex comprised the top four floors of the building, so entry would have to be effected from the outside. Disarming the mult.i.tude of alarms would take too long (aside from those they'd damped down on the rooftop before alighting) and besides, Kilroy preferred straightforward shock and-awe tactics, when the situation permitted. Which this did.

The meres hooked into computer-controlled grappling lines and positioned themselves atop the circular parapet. At Kilroy's signal, and moving in unison, they flung themselves out into s.p.a.ce. Their tethers flexed under software command and used the meres' momentum to whip them down towards the windows of the twenty-sixth floor in blurring arcs. Before they impacted the unbreakable safety gla.s.s, all twenty-five meres fired specially designed laser-tipped rounds, called penetrators, at over 3000 rounds per minute.

The penetrators made short work of the gla.s.s and moments later every mere smashed through whatever remained of it, landing inside, on their feet, guns pumping out a lethal hail of high velocity water slugs. At the same time, their iris cams flipped to infrared enhanced vision. Everything leapt at them in eerie green, bright as day, except for red hot spots and flames of orange. If Kilroy had been a different kind of artist he might have admired the colour scheme.

The meres went through the command centre like a hot knife through b.u.t.ter. Once finished with the main control floor they moved up to the next level and then the next. The top two levels were Fraddo's personal living quarters. Here, they encountered more stringent deflector and protective fields. Fat Fraddo was as paranoid as the next kingpin who made enemies as a matter of business.

The complex r.e.t.a.r.dation fields slowed Kilroy's meres down. He grunted in annoyance, monitoring local frequencies, unsure of Fraddo's alliances and who might come to his aid. While he waited for his tech unit to neutralise the defensive fields, Kilroy did a body count. He'd lost six meres. Not bad. Six for nearly forty, by Kilroy's estimate. And few wounds. If modern body armour saved you, it saved you. If it didn't, you weren't around to complain about it.

*What's taking so long?' he growled.

*He's got state-of-the-art stuff here, boss,' said one of the techies.

*Pity he didn't think to put that round the whole place.'

A couple of meres grinned. Then they heard a soft explosion nearby and the air currents shifted.

Kilroy glanced over his shoulder. *See to it.'

*N-s.p.a.ce detonation. Five gramme yield,' said a mere monitoring incursions.

*Why would anybody set off one of those for?' Kilroy mumbled.

The techie frowned. *I'm not sure. It's possible the radiation and shock waves could destabilise the field harmonics.'

*Meaning?'

*Meaning,' said a second techie, *that somebody might've just built themselves a door in and out of the field wall.'

*They could do that?'

*Theoretically, like drawing a bunch of lines on a page then cutting out a hole in the middle. The lines are gone, they can't exist in that gap.'

*Get the fields down now!' Kilroy said quietly. One minute later, the fields came down. Kilroy and the other meres smashed and shot their way into Fraddo's inner sanctum, a bedroom with a large and messy bed in the middle and no butler droid.

Of Fraddo there was no sign.

Kilroy's face remained deathmask-still. Nothing was ever easy.

Aware of Kilroy's failure, Black proceeded with his experiments. He did not sleep much and preferred to work late at night, sensing that the incessant *hum' of other human beings going about their daily business was missing. The absence of the humming soothed him.

Black had constructed an experimental lab adjacent to the underground complex where Karl, Mika andJeera Mosoon worked, though none knew what he did there. Through one-way windows of padded cells he watched as a man and a woman were gradually transformed into monsters.

Since his first experiments on Reema's End, and his initial field test on the Engineering Platform orbiting Telegus, Black had refined his DNA resequencing technique; he had also verified, for the nth time, the artificial chromosomes containing the active genes for transformation. The designed virus inserted the new chromosomes reasonably rapidly. But what was still lacking was the elusive element of control. And without that the experiment would be deemed as much a failure as his attempts to export Anneke Longshadow.

Two hours later Black was back where he had started. He paced, frustrated. When he received word that the Envoy had arrived with Kilroy, he sat quietly behind his desk and told the door to open.

Kilroy entered first. The Envoy followed, moving as silently as a shark.

Black raised an eyebrow, his own seething emotions forgotten for the moment. *I take it Fat Fraddo, glutton-extraordinaire, is still on the loose? All two hundred-and-forty highly trained and mobile flabby kilos?'

The sarcasm brought Kilroy to a momentary stop.

*I have people out looking for him.'

*Is there a leak in your squad?'

Kilroy's head twitched ever so slightly. *No leak. Maybe at your end?'

*Good point. Someone on the Quesadan council.

I'll look into that.'

Kilroy glanced at the nearest chamber where the transmogrified female was having a noiseless seizure on the floor. Kilroy wandered over and stared dumbly at the horrific spectacle. Finally he turned and glanced at Black, then the Envoy. A man of few words, his question was easily read.

*My science experiment,' Maximus said.

*She's dead.'

*What do you feel, Kilroy?' Maximus asked.

*Nothing,' Kilroy replied. But his eyes betrayed him. Already he had glanced at the Envoy twice. He had come in here unarmed, of course, and sensed his own imminent danger.

*That's twice now you have failed me, Kilroy.

Suffice to say I'm very disappointed.' He gave the Envoy a nod.

Kilroy dodged to one side, saving his life for two seconds. In the next he was dying. The method was simple, and appallingly fast. As if by magic his throat opened in a yawning red gash.

Kilroy sagged to the floor and lay there. As b.l.o.o.d.y froth bubbled from his lips, he tried to speak. Famous last words, Black thought, aren't all they're cracked up to be.

But that wasn't Black's main concern. What exercised his mind just then was how shockingly vulnerable he was to the Envoy. If the alien decided to kill him, there was little he could do about it.

Black didn't like that feeling. He felt as though he'd woken from a dream to find himself standing on the edge of a deep dark chasm. One more step and ...

Black took a deep breath, calming his sudden jag of nerves. *Put him in chamber three. Let's see what the virus does with newly necrotic tissue.'

The Envoy picked up Kilroy and did as he was told.

Black slowly brought his thoughts to order, but the irony almost made him laugh. Here he was trying to construct the deadliest fighting force the galaxy had ever seen, only to realise there was a vastly superior force out there already. Only one that claimed it did not fight en ma.s.se.

What a pity ...

ANN EKE waited for the shock waves to subside then dived through the *hole' she'd blown in Fat Fraddo's wall of intersecting defensive fields. She came to her feet in one fluid move then snap-rolled aside as a disruptor beam tore through the s.p.a.ce she'd just inhabited.

Her infrared readouts told her the shot came from an auto-drone. She blew it to smithereens then ramped up the readouts. A large hot spot lay dead ahead, presumably Fat Fraddo, keeping as quiet as he could. On the far side of the building, Anneke counted the adrenaline-pumped heat-signatures of nineteen meres and, on the lower floors, almost four dozen cooling bodies.

*Fraddo?' she called. *You there?'

A voice came out of the darkness. *Anneke? That you?'

*We've got to get out of here. Now!'

Fat Fraddo, still in silk pyjamas, was at her side in an instant. Despite his bulk, Fraddo could move as nimbly as a ballerina. *Nice togs,' she said.

*I'll get you a pair.'

*Spare me.'

She led him back to the hole she'd blown with the n-s.p.a.ce grenade.

*Nice job,' said Fat Fraddo. *You'll have to show me how you did that some time.'

Together they slipped through the hole, sprinted for the external balcony, and skidded to a stop.

*Now what?' asked Fraddo, peering over the railing.

*Now this.' She grabbed Fraddo and shoved him off the balcony. He dropped into s.p.a.ce with a strangled cry. Anneke jumped after him.

She caught up with him ten storeys down, grappled him with a harness field, and then deployed a chute field. Suddenly they were floating serenely towards the ground. Fat Fraddo regarded her truculently.

*You could have warned me.'

*You would have argued.'

He scowled at her, and then conceded. *Yes, you're right. I would have.'

They landed amid a group of drunken s.p.a.cers who reeled back and stared at them in shock. Then one said, *Hey, it's rainin' women!'

Fat Fraddo fumed. *I look like some woman to you, fuzzbrain?'

The s.p.a.cer took a step back. Anneke and Fraddo hailed a late-night taxi pod and got out of there.

In the back seat, as Anneke checked their getaway through the rear window, she said, *Those pyjamas really don't suit you ...'

*In that case, we'll go someplace where I can get me some decent skins. And one big juicy botchi burger. Then we got some talkin' to do.'

Fraddo decided to join the team. Not that he had a choice. His empire was gone, his employees dead or missing or gone to ground. There was still a hit fee on him, making it unhealthy for him to hang around.

In view of this, he appointed himself head of the control centre he'd already donated to Anneke and set about recruiting indebted techies, a process not unlike the Sentinel oath, involving deep level conditioning to prevent betrayal. a.n.a.lysts, too, hypnotised to avoid divulging company secrets. Such conditioning cost money, but Fraddo still had access to his enormous fortune, and these days money could buy you anything.

Well, almost anything. It couldn't buy you absolute safety, since someone else's fortune could buy your death. And it couldn't buy you a family, Anneke thought darkly, as she took a taxi pod to what had once been her family - RIM headquarters.

She'd left the control centre in capable hands. Fraddo had codenamed it Camelot, from his perverse love affair with long-dead myths. In just three days, Fraddo had put together a competent team, including a squad of brain-wiped meres and his erstwhile employee, Mobus, and liaised them with Josh and Oracle at Enigma.

Together, they had a chance of cracking the location code of the second set of lost coordinates - processing enough data, however odd and seemingly unrelated, to look for patterns in the tide of strange events that had taken place in the last year or so. These events included the ongoing enigma of the Envoy, the statistical likelihood of finding a derelict dreadnought at this point in time, and the mutated monsters Anneke had encountered on the Orbital Engineering Platform - which still visited her in nightmares.

So many odd events. Pieces in a galaxy-sized jigsaw puzzle. But unlike such puzzles, Anneke did not know what the final picture looked like.

She wondered if the mole did.

At RIM headquarters, she disembarked from the taxi pod and strode into the main lobby, bold as bra.s.s. She'd decided this was the safest move. Let people know she was there, let herself be seen. It was unlikely that a hit would be attempted on her here, at RIM HQ, and in any case the mole's fatwa had been conspicuous by its absence, another puzzling piece of data. It was as if someone had issued an anti deathward against her, if there were such a thing. Then again, maybe jake had organised his *fiduciary gift'.

Even Fat Fraddo had frowned at that. *Maybe you got somebody on your side, girl, somebody you don't know nothin' about.'

*Well, that's rea.s.suring.'

Despite her confidence, Anneke was on high alert as she walked into the lobby. She saw startled looks registering on faces, gestures in her direction. The whispers hummed like swarming insects. One or two faces scowled, the rest were curious or admiring. After all, she was the girl who had saved a million lives on the floating city of Arcadia. She was also the girl who had supposedly died in the process. And those *in the know' thought she had been killed in an inexplicable attack on a certain hospital.

Some people didn't like their heroes coming back from the grave. And certainly not twice.

At the security check she pa.s.sed over her credentials. After a full body scan, she was allowed in, her credentials handed back by a young security guard who smiled at her then thrust out his hand to shake. Surprised by his gesture, she did so. just wanted to shake your hand, Ms Longshadow. Outstanding what you did on Arcadia. Brilliant!'

And then all the guards were shaking her hand. Bemused, she was ushered through to the appointments desk where an officious and stern-faced individual greeted her. *Please state your name and the nature of your business.' Even the man's voice sounded like the electronic *larynx' of an AI. Indeed, it reminded her of a suitcase she'd once owned.

*Agent Anneke Longshadow. I'd like to see Commander Rench, please.'

*Really? And do you have an appointment?'

*No, but I suspect Commander Rench would like to see me.'

*The Commander is a very busy person, Agent Longshadow. He certainly doesn't have time for chit-chat with anybody who walks in off the street.'

*Perhaps you should let him decide. Of course, if you want to risk incurring his displeasure, then that's up to you.'

The man's eyes narrowed. He was being cornered and he knew it. *Let me talk to his attache.' He activated a dampening field, which was pointless since Anneke could read his lips.

*Sir? It's the lobby here. I'm sorry to disturb you, but I have Special Agent Anneke Longshadow here. Yes, sir. I know that, sir. She wants to see the Commander. I thought - very well, sir. Right away, sir!'

He put down the phone and eyed Anneke with dislike.