The Republic was also, I noted, about two rooms away from triggering a particularly resilient trap that had stood the test of ages and would easily wipe them all out. Assuming that they survived that trap, in another two rooms after that their route and the Ministers’ would intersect.

I stood up, smacking dust off my bloody trousers. I held my hand out again, palm up, and sent a little army of nanomachines out to inconvenience Benny a little longer. I sent a few more out to unlock all the sealed doors on the path between me and the Republic, and then I sent another group off to the Ministers to lock a couple of doors on them and slow their progress just enough.

When I was done, I staggered, a little woozy. The first few times I’d used the Dreamer-bots, I hadn’t felt any ill-effects; this last time it took some effort to set them free. There must be a finite number of nanomachines in my body, and none of the ones I’d sent out on tasks had returned—barring the scouts, who had come back to climb over my open eyes. But even those scouts, once they’d shown me their dreams, had climbed out of my eyes and hummed away into the dark. Perhaps the act of using the nanomachines ended the programming that bound them to me. If that was the case, then I would, eventually, run out.

I had only a few hours left before we all died in an explosion. After that, it wouldn’t matter whether I had any nanomachines running through my veins or not.

I stuck my hands in my pockets—the fabric crackled, stiff with dried blood—and whistled a cheerful little tune as I walked down the path I’d opened up for myself, through opened doors and winding around collapsed ceilings. I was off-key and the whistle echoed weirdly, sharp off the metal ceiling and muffled off the dusty walls, but all that mattered was that the Republic heard me coming. It seemed likely that my dwindling number of Dreamer-bots could save me from a bullet wound, unless it was to the skull, but I wasn’t keen on testing it. And Lantern-Eyes struck me as a crack shot.

I emerged into the room where the Republic was waiting just before they attempted to break through the door that was trapped, I knew, with a set of very well-designed explosives that would kill at least the twenty people or so who were clustered closest to that wall. I saw Lantern-Eyes in that group, almost unrecognizable with her hair pulled neatly back and her jacket buttoned up.

When I entered the room, hands spread to show I was unarmed, I stepped into a circle of light from their portable lanterns and a half-circle of soldiers all with their guns cocked and trained directly on me.

I stopped whistling and I stopped walking. The soldiers stared at me in shock, which was a pretty understandable reaction, I thought, to a man covered in blood emerging from the bowels of an allegedly abandoned spacecraft.