Pinning one’s hopes on anticipating Zajinet thinking was risky, but there was no point in Roger’s saying so: everyone in the room would know that.
‘We want you to aid in planning a series of deception raids,’ said Whitwell. ‘Counter-strikes that you’ll take part in.’
‘I see.’ Roger glanced at Max Gould.
‘And you’d better survive, Captain Blackstone. Because we expect you to lead the enemy to this location.’ Whitwell stabbed a finger at the holo showing the decoy base location. ‘You understand the objective?’
‘I do.’
And it would be subtle in the execution, or it would be unsuccessful, because at every stage the Zajinets had to believe in what they were seeing and learning. Plus there was the possibility of counter-bluff: Zajinets mounting a deception strike of their own against the decoy, while targeting Labyrinth whose forces were committed elsewhere.
Speaking of which . . .
‘If the decoy is here in realspace,’ asked Roger, ‘what is the congruent mu-space location? Is it—? Oh.’
Smiles around the war chamber matched his own, as he examined the infinite twists and whorls in the holovolume he had picked out.
‘Mandelbrot Nebula,’ he added. ‘That is very nice indeed.’
The perfect hiding place for a battle fleet mounting an ambush.
It’ll need more than good topography.
There was also the matter of leading the fleet to victory, and while Roger would have had little idea on how to start organising a fleet, none of the people in the room, not even Max Gould – master of the decades-long covert operation and always as ruthless as he had to be – struck him as being a war leader, a simultaneous strategist, tactician and messianic figure that others would follow.
But this was a personal perception based on incomplete data, and there were limits to what even a special forces captain dared say to senior command. If they must mount this operation, then the primary requirement was to do it right, or they really would be playing into Helsen’s hands, even though the bitch was dead.
Later he would realise he had forgotten someone, despite having talked to the legend’s own mother in person. Perhaps the battle planners were more astute than Roger had imagined, or perhaps this was simply the unravelling of fate, and sometimes you got lucky.
He could only hope.
Twenty-seven days later by mean-geodesic time, two days before the operation was due to commence, Roger was in a hangar deep within Ascension Annexe, looking over his beautiful black ship, her powerful form webbed with lines of scarlet and shining gold, her newly grown weaponry impressive, actually frightening. She was fantastic, and if anyone could get through the dangers to come, it was her.
A pulse signal indicated an authorised visitor approaching. Roger strode across the deck, his beloved ship behind him, and stared at the area of hangar wall about to open. Soon it liquefied and drew apart, revealing a wide-shouldered, strong-looking adventurer. And suddenly Roger thought they might succeed in this insane venture against the Zajinets.
‘Admiral,’ he said. ‘Sir.’
Formality might not be SRS’s strong suit, but this was a legend walking towards him with an arrogant grin and easy muscularity.
‘Dirk McNamara.’
‘Roger Blackstone.’
As Roger held out his hand, an unwelcome image flitted through his mind’s eye: Dirk’s twin, Kian, face disfigured by the Molotov cocktail, one hand a claw, a mysterious figure who was rumoured to appear from time to time on realspace worlds and nudge people towards peace; while here was Dirk, the twin who had taken immediate vengeance on the mob, left them with eyeballs smoking, and made a daring escape from custody that led eventually to his centuries-swallowing hellflight. Son to Ro, the First Pilot, and in his own right a deadly fighter who could take action while others were only starting to assess the situation.
They shook hands, Dirk’s strength and aura palpable.
‘If all goes to plan,’ said Dirk, ‘you’re going to have Zajinets on your arse. And they might decide to blast you out of existence, instead of sneaking along to see where you end up.’
‘They’ll have to be fast to catch me, sir.’ Roger could not help grinning.
‘You’ve one hell of a beautiful ship, Captain Blackstone.’ Dirk’s eyes were assessing her lines. ‘Powerful as anything, and I’ll bet she tumbles through manoeuvres like nobody’s business.’
‘She does that.’
‘Hmm. Well, good.’ Dirk’s obsidian gaze was on Roger now. ‘That answers my question.’
‘Sir?’
‘I needed to know you’re a fighter.’
The rest had no need to be spoken, because there had been non-verbal recognition between the two of them, at the primate and even reptilian level, the instant Dirk walked inside the hangar.
It takes one to know one.
In this case meaning a warrior who would die sooner than quit.
A soundless message pulsed through the hangar.
=A devil-may-care leader can bring a fleet to victory when even the best of the others would fail.=
Dirk looked up at the ceiling.
‘Are you talking about me or him?’
The response came so fast that Roger wondered if Labyrinth had anticipated the question.
=Yes.=
Roger and Dirk laughed together, and then they bumped fists.
Soon enough, the shit and chaos of battle would be upon them, the blood and screaming and awful fear, when desperation and focus and camaraderie would see them through or they would die; and none of that would matter except that Labyrinth herself needed to be safe, because she was the past, present and future of Pilotkind.
And here she had her defenders.
FORTY-THREE
EARTH, 798 AD
The stench of the middens was strong, as the man who had been Ulfr and Fenrisulfr rode past them on the edge of the city. This place was huge, a vast complex of longhalls and other buildings including wharves, and for the first time he believed the travellers’ tales were true: Lundenwic contained fully ten thousand folk, living together in one gigantic settlement, constructed around the ruined fortifications that once enclosed Londinium.
A quartet of warrior-guards was extracting tax from new arrivals. He pressed his knees inwards, and his mare walked forward and stopped.
‘And you are—?’ The warrior stared up at him.
‘My name is Wulf.’
He understood the puzzled, careful looks. They would sense that he could fight, and well – though they could not know of his berserkergangr ferocity and his ability to control it – and his cloak was of better cloth than theirs. But whether he was thegn or ceorl, the lowest of aristocrats or the highest of commoners and a freeman, they could not tell.
Wulf leaned over and handed the nearest guard a coin.
‘We all piss, shit and fart,’ Wulf told him, grinning. ‘Even eorls. Even kings.’
They laughed at that, fellow fighting men stuck with boring duty. And after five years of working to lose his accent, Wulf-once-Ulfr no longer sounded like a foreigner to beware of. His spear, slung against his saddle, had leather wrapped and tied around its head, and its haft was scarred: an old weapon, nothing special, giving no hint that it was tipped with crystal, not metal.
‘King Coenwulf will be shitting out westerners,’ said one of them. ‘On account of he’s chewed them all up.’
‘What is that?’ asked Wulf.
‘Deorwine has the right of it,’ said the nearest guard. ‘Our boys killed old Cartog what’s-his-face, King of Gwynedd. We heard yesterday. Sheep-shagging bastards, the lot of them.’
‘That’ll be Caradog ap Meirion.’ Wulf nodded. ‘Biggest sheep shagger of them all.’
The oldest guard shrugged, and Wulf knew exactly what he meant: kings fought kings and ordinary soldiers died, and afterwards what had changed?
‘I’ll see you men around,’ Wulf added.