I stepped over Clay’s outstretched legs to get a better look. Had we come out the other side of the Brain, into space? We were moving incredibly quickly, but surely we hadn’t been travelling that fast. And yet, we were floating in the light of a rust-coloured star. The pinprick lights of a billion other stars surrounded us.

Only…

“Those aren’t stars,” I said. “They’re lights on an inner surface.”

Preston’s eyes were wide. “We’re still inside the Brain?”

I felt a wild laugh boiling in my throat, and swallowed hard to suppress it. “Seems so.”

“But…” He put a hand against the glass, and spread his fingers against the light of the little sun. “How can all this fit? There isn’t room…”

I shook my head. I had no way to explain what we were seeing. Instead, I focused on the space between the light and us, in which lay rank upon rank of knife-like white vessels. Following my gaze, Preston’s jaw hinged open.

“Are those ships?” he asked.

I squinted. It was difficult to tell scale without anything to compare them with, but each looked to be comfortably larger than the Trouble Dog.

“Well,” I said, “they aren’t Christmas decorations.”

He gave a low whistle. “There must be hundreds of thousands of them.”

“More than that.” Even though the ships couldn’t possibly hear us, our voices had dropped to a whisper. The vessels were arranged in rectangular divisions, with a hundred and seven ships along one edge of each division, and eighty-four along the other. I did a quick calculation, and worked out there were just shy of nine thousand ships in each division, and there were more than a hundred divisions visible, maybe even a hundred and fifty.

A million ships!

As far as I knew, there had never been a force so large. The cost of building that many would bankrupt most civilisations—let alone the ongoing expenses associated with crewing, fuelling and maintaining them.

“Whose are they?”

“I have no idea.” I had been trained to recognise military vessels from every star-faring civilisation in the Multiplicity, but these were of an unfamiliar design.

“Look.” He pointed to one of the nearer vessels. It had begun to twitch like a restless sleeper. At various points around its hull, weapons began to extend and retract. Jade-hued energy fields shimmered like auroras. Sensor arrays unfurled and then relaxed.

Another movement caught my eye. The next ship along had also stirred. In fact, the whole division seemed active, like animals stretching and flexing their claws after a long hibernation.

“What’s happening?” Preston asked.

I swallowed, feeling suddenly small and insignificant compared to the size of the armada before us.

“I think they’re waking up.”

Sixty-One: Ona Sudak

SIXTY-ONE

ONA SUDAK

The bear-like thing raised its snout to the domed ceiling.

There are others here.

I glanced up by reflex. “On the surface?”

Within the structure.