‘Come on, L’Eesh. It’s business, just as you said. You know what happened. These palettes extract their energy from the vacuum energy sea.’

‘Leaving some kind of deficit in their wake, into which I flew. Yes? And so we both die here.’ He forced a laugh. ‘Ironic, don’t you think? In the end we’ve cooperated to kill each other. Just like the inhabitants of these desolate moons.’

But I was thinking it over. ‘Not necessarily.’

‘What?’

‘Suppose I head up to the midpoint of the bridge and burn my way through the wall. Pohp ought to see me and come in for me. I’d surely be far enough out of the vacuum field for the Spline to approach safely.’

‘What about the quarantine ships?’

‘They must primarily patrol the moons’ low orbits. Perhaps I’d be far enough from the surface of either moon to leave them asleep.’

He considered. ‘It would take days to get there. But it might work. You have something of your mother’s pragmatism, little Raida. I guess you win.’

‘Maybe we both win.’

There was silence. Then he said coldly, ‘Must I beg?’

‘Make me an offer.’

He sighed. ‘There has been a sighting of a school of Spline. Wild Spline.’

I was startled. ‘Wild?’

‘These Spline are still spacegoing. But certain of their behavioural traits have reverted to an ancestral state. They believe they swim in their primordial ocean—’

I breathed, ‘Nobody has ever hunted a Spline.’

‘It would be glorious. Like the old days. Hily would be proud.’ It was as if I could hear his smile.

I was content with the deal. It was enough that I’d beaten him; I didn’t need to destroy him.

Not yet. Not until I knew who killed my mother.

We argued percentages, all the way down towards the light.

The human victory was probably always inevitable. We were better at waging war: after all, we had spent a hundred thousand years practising on each other.

But the war transformed humanity too. After seventeen hundred years of conflict the Coalition’s grip on mankind, body and soul, was total.

We undying kept out of sight, tending our own long-term concerns. But we never went away.

The Expansion swept on across the face of the Galaxy, centralised, united, purposeful, ideological, purified by war.

It was not healthy to be in its way.

PART THREE - ASSIMILATION

PART THREE

ASSIMILATION

LAKES OF LIGHT - AD 10,102

LAKES OF LIGHT

AD 10,102

The Navy ferry stood by. From the ship’s position, several stellar diameters away, the cloaked star was a black disc, like a hole cut out of the sky.

Pala was to descend to the star alone in a flitter - alone save for her Virtual tutor, Commissary Dano.