Serene glanced round as her crocodile-skin bodyguard stepped out with a silver coffee pot, cream jug and sugar bowl on a silver tray. He strode over to her and dipped to place the tray on the pedestal table beside her. While he poured, and then stepped back, as previously instructed, she watched him. She now knew that he had no one, no relationship, and she studied his face for some sign of a reaction to her nakedness. She was just considering ordering him to take up the pot of sun cream on the floor beside the pedestal table, wondering what keroskin hands might feel like on her body, when her PA leader Elkin and two aides stepped out and stood there with attentive patience.

'I was told to inform you that your new aero is ready, ma'am,' Sack added.

The machine was a behemoth: twenty-four fans run on separate hydrogen Wankel engines, laminated impact armour, auto-defences, a helium bubblemetal structure also incorporating helium closed-cell gas bags so that, even if every engine was destroyed, it would still float to the ground rather than drop like a brick.

Serene added cream and sugar to her cup and stirred. 'Then perhaps, after this morning's meeting, it's time for me to take it for a spin.' She paused with the spoon held up as she considered. 'I think we'll go to Madagascar to see how things are turning out there.'

ETV had broadcast news of a terrible outbreak of the Scour on that huge island a one that had completely depopulated it. Now the only humans to be found there were in the clear-up teams steadily stripping away the island's layer of concrete, carbocrete and steel a the environmental scum humans always generated. It had been, Serene felt, a rather impulsive decision of hers to activate the Scour in every ID implant there, but the results were pleasing. A chameleon and four plant species, all thought to be extinct, had been rediscovered.

'Yes, ma'am.' Sack moved back and Elkin moved forward.

A lusciously sexual woman, wearing a primly loose-cut suit to try and hide her curves, she carried a single notescreen keyed to Serene's voice and functioning on predictive search so Elkin could provide facts and figures in an instant. The two aides were both pretty, blond men who possessed cerebral hardware just a few iterations below that of the seven comlifers guarding the computer systems of Earth. They were twins and the product of a genetic tweak for intelligence that Serene knew had proved successful in the past, two further examples of which were also aboard Argus Station. Through them Serene's orders would be acted upon instantly. They were a perfect choice, though Serene wondered how much their pretty appearance had affected Elkin's decision to employ them.

'I take it the teleconference room will be ready' a Serene checked her watch a 'in twenty minutes, as I specified, and that all those I summoned to be here in person have now arrived?'

'All but Delegates DeLambert and Chayter, who have simultaneously been delayed by scramjet faults,' replied Elkin, with no need to check her screen.

Serene nodded, aware that the two delegates mentioned had allowed political manoeuvring to get in the way of the efficient running of their regions, and had thus dropped low in production stats.

'Have them killed, at once,' she instructed. 'And tell their queued replacements to link in via teleconference.'

Elkin nodded to the aide on her right, who merely blinked. The order had instantly been relayed and, even at that moment, two strangulation collars would be closing. Delegation certainly had its usefulness, since Serene had not even needed to put down her coffee cup. She took a sip, contemplating further tasks she intended to delegate.

'Now give me a precis of the expert assessment requested on Project Push,' she instructed.

'With the resources in place, Calder can meet all the offworld targets,' Elkin began. 'As you have already divined, the problem is in getting those resources in place. Societal Asset's living standards will drop, while the general working week will have to be increased to one hundred hours. Those with critical placements will need to work longer still and will need support. However, robot manufacturing and our mining operations have sufficient redundancy already. Calder has already pushed high-tech manufacturing up to spec too.' Elkin paused, looking uncomfortable.

'Go on,' Serene prompted.

'It can therefore be achieved, unless we have another outbreak of the Scour in some critical area.'

'I see, well, let's just hope that doesn't happen.' Serene waved the thought away. 'What suggestions have been made?'

'We could increase production of military-grade stimulants and make them available to the working population, and also offer further achievement bonuses.'

'The stimulants are a good idea, but we already offer bonuses.'

'A suggestion has been that we offer things difficult for many SAs to buy via increased community credit,' said Elkin, thus ensuring that Serene knew the suggestion did not come from her. 'It has been suggested that bonuses could include removal of strangulation collars, actual cash for black-market purchases and higher placements in queues for advanced medicine.'

Serene nodded, finished her coffee, then poured herself another cup. 'So, does anyone offer any guarantees that, with such bonuses, my targets will be met any sooner?'

'No, ma'am, these are just suggestions based on mass psychological assessments of the SA population.'

'So, even without such bonuses, we will still have the core stations expanded and fully weaponized within two months, and three working space battleships ready in six months?'

'That is the expert assessment.'

'Very well,' said Serene, 'we'll offer the extra bonuses. We need to be ready as quickly as possible. Set things in motion a I want my delegates and other administrators able to respond immediately after I've made my announcement to them.'

Elkin now glanced at the aide on her right, who also blinked as he issued the orders that would effectively put the entire planet on a war footing. It was, after all, completely necessary to get those ships and Earth's defences ready, and yesterday if that were possible. With this new drive of his, and what it could do to any object it came into contact with, Alan Saul had now become an even greater danger than before. Moreover, she still needed Earth's Gene Bank back, and she still needed him visibly punished for his sins. Alan Saul had to die; therefore she needed the means to kill him.

Serene paused reflectively. For such a large change in the very structure of how Earth operated, she felt the need to announce all this to her delegates, and over ETV to the world population at large. She wanted the orders to be less impersonal, wanted the world to know the importance of this, but it also occurred to her that her taking such drastic measures in response to Saul might be perceived as a sign of fear.

'Sack a' Serene beckoned him over a 'get that new aero ready. We're going to Madagascar after I've got this nonsense out of the way. I could do with a bit of a break and then, afterwards, we'll take a tour on the way back to ensure our delegates are working diligently.' And maybe, during that trip, those hands . . .

News of her visit to the big island would spread a and so would her apparently nonchalant attitude to the immediate follow-up to her recent orders. Also the future threat of her maybe turning up unexpectedly right on a delegate's doorstep would prove motivational. Anyway, she felt that it might be a good idea to get a complete assessment of the Madagascar situation before she tried something a bit more ambitious, like, for example, Scouring the human scum from somewhere else equally containable a Indonesia, perhaps. Of course that would all have to wait until after all the human scum still out there had served her purposes.

Mars 'He's given them orders to capture us,' said Saul, 'and if they can't do that, then to kill us. Since they're armed and we are not, I think the former would be more likely.'

Yes, he was keeping something from her, but this was no game. For a moment, earlier, she had sensed a cold distance in him. He had some sort of surprise in the offing, something that was going to turn things their way, but it seemed likely to be something nasty and he wasn't sure how she would respond. Now he was coldly factual again, and Var felt she knew what the surprise was going to be. He was going to kill them.

'They'll be here within twenty minutes,' she said.

'Certainly,' he agreed.

She was damned if she was going to ask him again how he intended to respond. She'd been thinking about this all the way from the underground base, and now realized there could be only one answer. When the Scourge had engaged Argus Station, it had been fired upon. The Argus Station was now somewhere above them and probably had workable weapons aboard that he controlled. He must intend to hit the approaching four from orbit, thus reducing the odds against the two of them, but then?

Var turned from him to watch the ATV pull to a halt beside those proceeding on foot, and the three of them climbing inside. All of them wore vacuum combat suits obviously salvaged from Ricard's men, and all were armed with assault rifles. She grimaced, not liking the idea of seeing the ATV destroyed, even though it would be of little use where she hoped to end up. Then she too found herself a rock, and sat down.

'There,' he said, pointing towards the base airstrip.

Three dots resolved in the sky, grew larger, soon becoming identifiable as an object like a football coming down with two in-series parachutes attached to a line behind. Just a few metres from the ground, right at the far end of the airstrip, it shed its two chutes then hit and bounced. As it bounced for a second time, its outer layer of airbags was already deflating and thus absorbed even more of the shock of its ensuing impacts. Soon it was rolling, soggily, a great cloudy trail of dust behind it, finally coming to halt right up against one of the two fuel silos as its air bags continued deflating.

'Good shot,' said Var, the skin on her back crawling. Was it pure luck that the fuel drop tank had come down precisely where required? Or had Saul been able to make such a precise atmosphere insertion and adjustments, on its way down, to put it there? If it was the latter explanation, then he had just done something no one else had managed throughout the history of orbital drops on Mars. She shivered, then shrugged a no, just a lucky shot.

The gas bags finished deflating, and were sucked away into their compartments to deposit a cylindrical tank on the ground. A hemispherical heat shield on the end of it detached and fell away, exposing gleaming equipment underneath a by the looks of the tangle this probably comprised all the pumping gear and hoses. Var transferred her gaze back to the ATV. It was about ten minutes away now a about halfway between the base and the butte.

'Isn't it about time you took your shot?' she asked casually. 'What will you use, a railgun missile or a laser? Or did that maser work out?'

He glanced at her. 'None of them. They were all wrecked during the Scourge's attack and are now either being rebuilt or salvaged for undamaged components a the rest going into the smelters.'

'What?' Var stood up; then, distracted by a silvery flickering, she glanced over towards the airstrip, where she could see a faint dust trail leading away from the drop tank. Something must have overheated and blown up, scattering debris a probably one of the canisters that inflated the gas bags, but nothing large enough to damage a drop tank.

'I have been pondering something,' he said. 'Will those who supported Rhone be a help or a hindrance to me? Should I let them live even though they killed your friend Lopomac and have murdered people in your base? Should I capture them all, find out who the killers are, and have Hannah mind-wipe them?'

'What?' said Var, immediately feeling stupid for repeating herself, and hating it.

Saul stood up. 'Let's go down to meet them.'

'Are you crazy?' She paused. 'You are crazy.'

'Trust me,' he said, and gave a perfunctory smile. It wasn't a very good smile, but then he'd never really been able to muster a sincere one ever since he'd realized, at a young age, how most people were idiots to him. What he thought of other people now had to be a matter for much concern.

He headed for the path leading down off the butte, and Var hesitated before following. She had no choice but to trust him now because, with the open ground all around them, there was nowhere to run. It seemed he had walked them both into a trap.

The ATV had drawn to a halt at the base of the butte and its four occupants were now outside it. Saul paused beside a boulder just before he a and she a stepped out into sight.

'So, should I let them live?' he asked again.

'Only if they're no danger to us,' Var replied sharply, angry because she still had no idea what he had planned.

'Very well.' He turned away from her. 'This is Alan Saul,' he began, addressing the four gathered around the ATV as he stepped out from behind the boulder. 'I suggest you put your weapons on the ground and step back from them.'

'And I suggest you walk over here,' replied someone whose voice was vaguely familiar, but whom she couldn't put a name to as she too stepped out. 'I also suggest you put your hands on your heads and walk very slowly. Whether we have bodies or living prisoners for Galahad is a matter of indifference to me.'

'No,' said Saul patiently, 'you'll put your weapons on the ground now and step back from them. This is the only chance you will get.'

'And why the fuck should we do that?' asked the same voice as the four stepped away from their vehicle and began to approach.

'Because this one warning is the extent of my generosity to murderers.'

What the hell was he doing? Var suddenly felt very vulnerable as one of the four began raising his assault rifle to his shoulder. She felt a moment almost of betrayal. Because of everything he had done, her brother must have some insanely over-inflated opinion of his abilities. Did he really think these four would give up so easily? Did he really think the presence of Argus above and the lack of any support from Earth here would be enough to make them rethink?

'Please keep your finger off the trigger,' he said mildly. 'Last chance for you all.'

'One in her leg,' said one of them. 'She might survive if we get a patch on.'

A series of short thrums carried on the thin air. Dust exploded around the four, and they danced and spun in explosions and jets of vapour. Bits of EA suits and bits of human being sprayed out, rifles tumbled away, and the four went down.

'I needed them away from the vehicle,' Saul stated.

'It came down with the drop tank,' she said, suddenly understanding, 'behind the heat shield.'

'Certainly,' he said as, with delicate sinister steps, a spidergun rose from behind another nearby boulder and stalked closer, two of its weaponized limbs not wavering from the four corpses. 'Now let's take their ATV and go and pay Rhone a visit. I want to be back aboard Argus before the next Martian sunrise.'

Earth The giant aero was half a kilometre long, with a hammer head to the fore containing flight and weapons control, and also Serene's personal cabin with its viewing lounge. The long and fat main body contained quarters for the crew and her extensive staff, engines sitting over six fans, fuel tanks, weapon turrets that could be extended above and below, but with the largest area taken up by space-hogging helium-filled closed-cell foam. A further six Wankel engines, driving six fans for both lift and steering, sat in movable extended nacelles.

Serene's motorcade arrived even as the fuel hoses were being detached and the crew filing aboard. She gazed from her limousine at the behemoth and allowed herself a wry smile. Here was a quite practical demonstration of her power down here on Earth, but her thoughts were occupied by her tenuous hold on power beyond Earth's atmosphere. She had seen how an Alcubierre warp bubble could tear apart anything it touched, and the danger remained that Saul might, at any moment, decide to obliterate her installations up in orbit, and she needed something to counter him, hence the delay of a week before starting this trip.

She had given Calder full control of all orbital resources and the power to demand resources from Earth's industries. She had also instituted changes down here that should more than double supply from Earth. However, it had been necessary to alter Calder's main aim of building three workable Alcubierre drive battleships: Earth's defences needed to be upgraded first. To begin with, she had not known how, but a study conducted by a specialist tactical team had come up with the answer.

While under warp, the Argus Station had struck an asteroid and the tidal forces at the edge of the warp had torn the asteroid apart. However, the impact had also shut down the warp itself, and it had taken quite some time before Argus had managed to generate another one. This, then, was its weakness as a weapon.

'They are correct,' Calder had said, after reading the tactical team's report and talking to the new tactical adviser, Peshawar. 'The Newton impact required to shut down the warp is measurable. It is also evident that once the vessel generating this warp has set its course, it cannot deviate.'

'We need a larger railgun system up there,' Peshawar had noted, 'to give us the required coverage. It's not the case that we can target the warp vessel at long range, since we cannot predict when it will stop and change course, thus avoiding long-range fusillades. However, the closer the vessel gets to Earth, the fewer course-change options it will have.'

Which was, Serene had reckoned, just a fancy way of saying Saul could dodge the shots on the way in, but had less chance where the firing became gradually more concentrated. Now many of the components, including thousands upon thousands of the missiles those weapons fired, were being made down on Earth and sent into orbit by mass driver. Up there they were being assembled in the core and construction station, to be sited both there and in other positions up in orbit. Within just a week they would have four or five ready to fire, which would make the installations above just a little bit safer. Peshawar opined that at least fifty needed to be built to stop Argus Station in mid-flight, but he added that one attack initiated by the station would leave it vulnerable, since its warp bubble would then be down long enough for just a few railguns to disable it permanently.

Serene opened the door of her limousine and stepped out, Sack immediately at her side, Elkin and her two aides moving in, other PAs, executives and support staff swarming all around them like pilot fish about a shark. Beyond the razor-mesh fences, readergun towers and stalking spiderguns, she could see shepherds striding over compacted rubble, while beyond them dust clouds arose around the yellow and orange safety-painted steel of automated demolition machinery whose blades, wrecking balls and giant air chisels were tearing into the surrounding sprawl. This abandoned section of sprawl now being cleared for her private aeroport was one of the few places such machines were still at work. Elsewhere across Earth, sprawl clearance, but for a few special exceptions, had mostly been put on hold so that every resource could be concentrated on the work underway in orbit. It was annoying, but necessary.

'Update me.' Serene crooked a finger at Elkin, then turned and swept towards the ramp that had been hinged down from the body of the aero.

'Production in all sectors dipped by eight per cent, due to retooling, but is now up by twenty per cent,' Elkin replied as she fell in at Serene's shoulder. 'However, the impact of this has yet to be felt in orbit, due to various bottlenecks.'

'Like what?'

'Transport is the main problem: conveying materials to the mass-driver facilities and spaceports. Simultaneously there are some delays in getting space planes commissioned.'

'But no more than expected?'

'Precisely as expected, ma'am,' said Elkin, 'but with the good news that the two mass drivers previously thought to require a complete rebuild were not as badly maintained as reported, and will be online within ten days.'

Serene paused at the foot of the ramp. 'So why is that?'

'The manager of the Antarctic driver was found to be massaging the figures and, shortly after the head of the inspection team threw him out of the overseer's station on the top of the driver, the manager of the Sri Lanka Sigiria driver discovered some errors in her figures and was able to manage a test power-up the very next day.'

'I take it the leader of that inspection team was promoted?' Serene began to climb the ramp.

'The South Zealand and Antarctic delegate did promote him to head of regional inspection, also allowed his collar to be removed and his wife to have access to treatment for bone cancer.' Elkin paused for a second. 'I have a focus group investigating the possibility that perhaps his wife's condition was the reason for the inspector's diligence, and that therefore those with similar motivation might be moved into critical positions.'

'Very good.'

The stick had certainly been shown to work, and now the carrot seemed to be working too. As she entered the aero, Serene reflected on her basic aversion to the idea of using reward as a means of motivation, and realized that this was because, fundamentally, she just didn't much like human beings. Glancing at Sack, taking a seat beside her, his suit tight against bulky muscle overlaid with alien keroskin, she considered how this instinct probably influenced how she had started to feel about him, too.

Mars Saul strode on past the corpses and opened the outer airlock of the ATV, then paused and turned. Var had halted by the dead and was gazing down at them. Doubtless he had lost her now just as, to a certain extent, he had lost Hannah.

'The cold reality is that each of them was either a murderer or had assisted in committing murder,' he said by way of explanation a or perhaps justification.

She turned to him abruptly. 'And that bothers you?'

'Not much,' he continued, 'but they were in my way, so I removed them.'

'You could have brought the spidergun into view while we were still hidden,' she stated, 'and they would probably have surrendered instantly.'

He walked back over to stand beside her as she stooped beside one of the corpses to undo a belt holding a holstered sidearm, then stood up to buckle it around her waist.

'I'm sure those two,' she gestured to a couple of the corpses, 'were the ones who shot Lopomac, and also took a shot at me.'

'They also killed other personnel, after Rhone's return.' Saul pointed to a third corpse. 'This one too.'

'Then fuck them.' She stooped again to pick up an assault rifle and some spare clips.

'Yes, quite,' said Saul, realizing he had half expected the kind of moralizing he received from Hannah. 'Their lives turned on this moment, yet one of them decided to reach for a trigger.'

'No need to go on,' said Var grimly, turning away and trudging towards the ATV.

Saul overtook her and stepped inside the vehicle first.

She followed him inside as he plumped himself down in the driver's seat. As she closed the outer airlock door he started up the vehicle, took hold of the control column and turned it round, sending the ATV speeding back towards the base. A moment later, he summoned the spidergun, and it was soon flowing along beside them.

'The circle closes,' said Var.

'In what respect?' Saul asked.

'I was just thinking about the last time I drove back to the base this way,' said Var. 'I had one of Ricard's shepherds chasing me and ready to grab me once I stepped out.'

'And you gave it Gisender's corpse,' he stated.