At the heart of the Great Network lay Grand Central. All the main lines of the galaxy met there, which meant that whichever corporate family controlled Grand Central controlled the whole Network. For the past few generations that had been the Noons. Portraits of the Noon Emperors and Empresses beamed down from holoscreens, and the smiling golden sun of Noon flapped on bright banners above a garden city, which covered half the planet, the buildings spread wide apart, diamondglass towers and golden station canopies rising from a sea of trees. The imperial palace, the senate, the K-bahn Timetable Authority, all the dull, complicated departments that kept the Great Network running had their headquarters on Grand Central. The Guardians themselves kept data centers here: deep-buried vaults of computer substrate from which those wise old AIs could keep watch over human affairs. The Imperial College of Data Divers was always standing by to pass on their advice and instructions to the Emperor, although the Guardians seemed content these days to let Mahalaxmi XXIII rule without their instructions and advice. The Network ran itself happily enough in these peaceful times.
On Grand Central there were always silvery trains snaking from one K-gate to another across the long viaducts, and the sky was forever busy with drones and air-taxis. At morning and evening these were joined by green parakeets, which rose from the treetops to fly in raucous, swirling flocks between the towers. The buildings used magnetic fields to warn the flocks away, and the birds flowed around them like water around the prows of huge ships.
The shadows of their wings fell upon Captain Malik, who stood at a window high in the Railforce tower, looking out over the parks and lakes and malls of the galactic capital. The peace and luxury of the place unsettled him. He belonged on colder, rougher, dirtier worlds, and he was angry at being ordered back to Grand Central.
“Yanvar!”
He turned from the window as Rail Marshal Delius came into the room. A tall woman, taller than him, very dark skinned, her white hair combed and lacquered into a high arch like the crest of an ancient warrior. Her face was a warrior’s, too: stern and handsome, but lovely when she smiled, which she did when she saw Malik. He let her hug him. A row of medals was pinned across her tunic. They reminded him of the coins that he and Rail Marshal Delius used to leave on the K-bahn rails when they were kids together in the rail yards on Lakshmi’s Lament. They’d creep out to the lines and lay the coins on them like offerings, then hide and wait for a K-train to come by…
Lyssa Delius was one of the very few people Malik thought of as a friend. They had joined Railforce together, and fought side by side against the Empire’s enemies all over the Network. But he doubted her friendship could help him much now. A wrecked wartrain was a serious business. He had whiled away his journey from Cleave by trying to calculate how many millions the armored loco must have cost. The Empire would be looking for someone to blame, and Lyssa did not have the imagination to blame Raven. Like the rest of Railforce Command, she did not even believe that Raven existed.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” she told him. “I’m sorry to have to drag you here, but this is a serious business…”
“It was a trainkiller,” said Malik. “It cut straight through our firewalls, killed my data diver…”
“I read your report.” Delius sat down on a gray sofa and patted the cushion beside her, inviting him to sit down too. Malik stayed standing. She said, “Our technicians went through what was left of your train’s systems. They found no trace of any virus.”
“If he can design a virus like that,” said Malik, “he can design it to leave no trace.”
“Mmm,” said the Rail Marshal, with a half smile, but he knew that she didn’t believe him. He noticed that she’d had her scar fixed the half-moon scar on her forehead from that firefight on Bandarpet. A pity, he thought. Old soldiers should wear their scars with pride.
“You were supposed to be on a routine patrol of the trans-Chiba branch lines—” she started to say.
“I was. I was in Ambersai when I detected Raven’s Motorik, trailing a kid in the Bazar.”
“Yes…” Lyssa Delius was embarrassed. Her smile looked like pain. “Yanvar, this theory of yours, that Raven is still at large—”
“It’s more than a theory.”
The Rail Marshal sighed. “Our data divers have spoken to the Guardians. They know nothing of Raven.”
“They told you that?”
“Not in so many words—you know how they are—but if he was still out there, they would tell us.”
“Raven knows how to evade them,” said Malik. “They think that because he does not operate in the Datasea anymore, he is no danger. But he is.”
“Oh, Yanvar,” said the Rail Marshal gently. “If you would report in more often, go to the right parties, meet people, you would probably be General Malik by now. Railforce needs good people like you, here on Grand Central. But you’re always out on the branch lines, chasing this… this… ghost. Raven is dead. We killed him, Yanvar. Twenty years ago.”
“Raven is no ghost. He’s planning something. He made contact with this kid from Cleave, a small-time thief named Zen Starling. I brought the boy aboard the train for questioning. That’s when the trainkiller hit.”
“And where is this boy now?”
“He escaped,” said Malik.
“You have searched Cleave?”
“He’s not in Cleave.”
“Then how did he leave? Bearing in mind that your train was blocking the tunnel that leads to Cleave’s only K-gate?”
“There is a second K-gate there. Cleave-B, on the old Dog Star Line. That’s how Raven moves. That’s where he hides.”
“And do you have any actual—”
“There is no evidence, Lyssa. But I know it’s true. If you give me another train, and let me take it onto the Dog Star Line…”
She looked away, sighing. When they were kids she would wait in the shadows with Malik, simmering with giggles, until the K-train passed. Then they would scurry back to the rails and find the coins they’d balanced there transformed: crushed thin as leaves by the weight of the wheels, and scoured to a high shine. Some similar change had come over Lyssa Delius in the forty years since then. She was no longer the girl he had grown up with. They were not alike anymore, he realized. Age and ambition had smoothed the hard edges off her; she was happy here in this civilized city, playing politicians’ games. But Malik was made of hard edges: a violent, vengeful man. He wanted to hurt people, and he needed a war to let him do it. He needed a train.
“Let me hunt Raven down.”
Lyssa Delius looked at him, and he knew what she would say before she said it. “I’m sorry, Yanvar. No more ghost hunting. Your team has already been reassigned. If it wasn’t for me—if I hadn’t put in a good word for you—you would be facing serious punishment. As it is, you will take six months’ leave, and report for psychological evaluation.”
She stopped in surprise as a sudden clattering sound filled the room like gunfire. Malik looked behind him. One of those wheeling flocks of parakeets had mistaken the window of the Rail Marshal’s office for empty sky and flown straight into the diamondglass.
“Our magnetic field must be on the blink again,” said Lyssa Delius. “You see, Yanvar? That’s the trouble with peacetime. The Emperor keeps cutting our funding. We can’t even afford bird repellers, let alone to keep you out there, wrecking K-trains, following this hunch…”
Malik went to the window. Dead birds were tumbling toward the treetops, leaving the glass smeared with blood and feathers. He took the Railforce badge from the breast of his jacket and set it carefully on the sill.
“I’ll find Raven on my own,” he said.
Lyssa Delius called his name as he walked to the elevator. He did not look back.