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Mama. You must. Nova had been quiet throughout, but now she sent another urgent thought. With it, her

child sent her a sense of confidence and inevitability. ‘I must,’ said Mira. ‘I must.’

BALBAO

They came for him sooner than even Hob or Sammy could have guessed. The lights flared, disturbing their slumber, and guards dragged him from his bunk soon after he’d returned to it.

Miranda and Jise roused enough to make a faint protest, but Sammy and Hob simply watched. Connit never stirred.

They marched him through the convoluted corridors of the ship to the transport lock. Farr was waiting on the station side of the hatch, speaking with a harassed official. Ra was with him, and a huge teranu with a fleshy face and broad shoulders that he had to compress to fit in the narrow tube. Petalu Mau.

‘Balbao.’ The Godhead nodded.

‘What am I doing here?’ snarled Balbao.

‘I need your assistance,’ said Ra.

‘For what?’

Ra ignored him, focusing back on Farr’s conversation with the official. As Sammy had guessed, the Commander was trying to get access to the station information node.

‘Our IN’s in lockdown, Commander,’ said the ’esque. ‘The Sophos have restricted access.’

‘Mau,’ said Farr.

The huge teranu grabbed the ’esque by the tunic and lifted him off his feet, shaking him.

Farr folded his arms. ‘Unrestrict it.’

The official paled and nodded.

Petalu Mau dropped him to the floor and gave him a shove.

The terrified official hurried forward. Mau followed him with Farr striding on Mau’s heels. He didn’t bother to acknowledge Balbao’s presence, and his soldiers nudged Ra and Balbao along quickly to keep up.

The station was chaotic and at capacity, bodies crowding every standing space. It seemed to Balbao that everyone there was either arguing or pleading with someone else.

Getting to the information node became a nightmare of mini-confrontations between Petalu Mau and Farr’s soldiers, and those in their way. The red robes of the Scolar police punctuated the milling throng, but even they only seemed to be able to contain pockets of the confusion.

Scolar station was close to anarchy. Balbao saw it in the aggressive stares; felt it in the undercurrent of panic. Everyone wanted off, but the planet-transit ships were backlogged, and the sphere itself could only process at a certain speed. Farr must have used extreme coercion to get docking permission.

The IN entrance was guarded by a contingent of four tired station security guards. Farr ordered several his of soldiers to stay with them and the rest to accompany him inside.

Balbao followed Ra and the others into the darkened chamber. The smell of sweat and the whirr of fans assailed his senses, twenty or more data dispersal technicians working on top of each other.

‘Ra?’ Farr’s calmness unnerved Balbao.

Ra pointed to a workstation on the other side of the chamber.

Petalu Mau advanced on the person using it and cleared her with a clout of one large hand. The IN supervisor stormed across but Farr’s soldiers backed him up against the wall at gunpoint. Soon all the technicians and scientists were next to him.

Balbao guessed the same was happening to the guards outside the door.

Ra sat himself at the chosen station and began to generate, as far as Balbao could tell, pseudo-code.

‘Balbao,’ Ra tapped the desktop. ‘Come over here. I need you to breed a Henon map.’

Balbao felt something hard thrust up under his armpit into the soft part of his skin in line with his heart.

‘Now,’ Farr said in his ear.

Balbao pulled away stiffly and threaded through the other workstations to join Ra. His own face, he was sure, matched the angry fearful stares from the techs herded against the exterior wall behind them.

‘What do you want?’ he growled as he sat down.

‘An orbital diagram,’ said Ra.

‘What for? What did you build on Belle-Monde?’

‘A bifurcation device,’ Ra answered absently.

‘That’s not possible.’

Ra took a brief moment to give Balbao a deprecating stare before turning back to his workstation. ‘What did you think we were learning on Belle-Monde, Balbao? How to culture fungi?