BLACK watched from a distance, figuratively if not literally, as Major-General Rench - now RIM Commander - took office.

Black expected a settling in period and was pleasantly surprised when Rench launched himself into a full-scale shakedown of RIM, unashamedly revealing his true colours. Rench was, without a doubt, one of the most unpleasant individuals Black had ever encountered. Toad-like in appearance, he had the temper - and the temperament - of a viper. He was also the type of small-statured man that society sometimes throws up to confound the ambitions of less fragile egos and those with healthier self-esteem. The Bonaparte Syndrome, as it was sometimes called, had more than once changed the course of history.

Rench knew that someone had helped him to office. He did not know the identity of the individual, only a codename: Methuselah. He also knew the cost of forgetting his obligations.

At the first Council meeting, which Black attended,

Rench slammed his fist on the table and laid down the law. ‘Things will be changing around here,’ he said, his voice close to a permanent snarl. ‘I have here a list to get started on. Anyone who doesn’t like the way I do things can tender their resignation by the end of the day.’

He glared around at the assembled officers and former field agents. Jake Ferren was conspicuously absent. Black was the co-coordinator of the Task Force to find the mole inside RIM. He sat in one of the back rows, taking notes on his e-pad.

No one said anything. A chill wind was blowing through RIM, not unlike the one blowing through the galaxy, and no one doubted Rench’s words.

‘Good. I’ll take silence as agreement. First off, a number of officers are retiring.’ He read off a list of names. jake Ferren’s was at the top. Black suppressed a smile. Ferren was his contribution, but it seemed Rench had his own reasons for wanting to see the back of him. There were a few soft gasps as the names were reeled off, but no one objected. There was no point. ‘Next matter,’ said Rench. ‘This mole-hunt business is coming to an end. It’s tearing RIM apart and wasting valuable resources. Personally, I think the whole thing is a figment of an overactive imagination, a gambit designed to inflate their value to the service and achieve accelerated promotion. That person will be dealt with in due course. I am therefore terminating Operation Mole Hunt. It is to be dismantled immediately. Rench looked up and caught Black’s eyes. Black looked slightly startled, which - fortunately - was a normal reaction for such a situation.

‘Maximus Black. You’re attache to Colonel Ferren, am I right?’

Black held his voice at just the right note of nervousness as he replied. ‘Ah, yessir. I am.’

‘Not anymore. You’re now assigned to my office. Your new assignment and duties are being cut now. See me after the meeting.’

‘Yessir. Thank you, sir!’

Rench looked around at the assembled personnel. He tried, and failed, to assume an avuncular tone.

‘The galaxy is changing, ladies and gentlemen. RIM needs to change with it or else join the long list of species that failed to adapt and became extinct. I feel that our role in the past has been too confrontational, that we may have created as many problems as we have solved. Let the Sentinels handle the policing of the galaxy. They do a damn fine job, though only God knows why they bother.’

He paused, as if for dramatic effect. ‘Unrest, upheaval, may be in store for the federated systems. RIM cannot contain this. We are stretched too thin, our resources and supply lines dangerously exposed. Look at what is happening in the Scorpius sector. Kanto Kantoris is throwing its weight about. Can we stop them if they go on the rampage, as they’ve done in the past? No. Those days, I fear, are gone. That’s why we shall, in future, build up the diplomatic side of RIM and tone down the shock troops and guns approach. Any questions?’

A large bearded man spoke up. ‘Surely we need intensive impact studies on such a radical change in operation? Perhaps, with the coming upheaval you foresee, we need more shock troops and guns, not less.’

‘Your point is well taken, Colonel Phrax, but my decision has been made. Now, if that is all, this meeting is over. Detailed briefings on the forthcoming changes are being downloaded to your desks. I suggest you jack in and study them. Good day!’

Rench rose sharply and left the room by a rear door. Black waited till everyone, still grumbling, had left, then he approached the door and knocked.

A voice barked, ‘Come in, Black!’

Maximus stepped inside. The commander’s ready room, a meet-and-greet chamber with lounges and refreshments, led directly to Rench’s new office. Rench was pouring a Ruvian coffee. He handed one to Black and poured another for himself then motioned for Black to sit down in a self-moulding armchair.

‘I’ve had my eye on you for a while, Black. Those fools Viktus and Ferren did not value your talents highly enough. I won’t make their mistake.’

Black sat stiffly on the armchair, as became a sublieutenant in the presence of the High Commander, and barely sipped his cup-heated coffee whilst Rench guzzled greedily. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Rench waved that away. ‘I’m not doing you any favours, Black. But I can’t abide resources being wasted. I know that feeling only too well.’

So. Rench felt himself unjustly treated by the service. Sidelined. A short man who believed he was capable of great things. Mika’s profile of him was on the nose. Which made him all that easier to manipulate.

‘May I ask, sir, what brought me to your attention?’ Black watched the man carefully, pretending to be nervously surprised by what was being offered to him. But he had to know if Rench suspected that he, Black, was the man’s ‘benefactor’ - if a double edged blade could be called a benefactor.

Rench showed no sign of such knowledge and Black doubted the man had the capacity to hide it. ‘Your work on the Task Force, though doomed to failure by those above you, was exemplary. Outstanding, perhaps.’ He locked eyes with Black.

‘You see, I make it my business to recognise talent when I see it, especially when others don’t.’

‘Permission to ask a question, sir.’

‘Of course. As my attache and adviser, Captain, it will be your duty to speak up when you believe it is necessary.’

‘Yes, sir, and thank you, sir. Do you believe then, sir, that the Combine Cartel has formed or is forming a Majoris Corporata?’

Rench raised an eyebrow. ‘Straight to the point. I like that. And no, I am not convinced of it. Nor would I necessarily be against such a concentration of resources. I’m not for one minute supporting such a notion, mind you,’ he hastened to add, ‘but unlike my predecessors, I believe that the Cartel members act from the best and most predictable of motives: profit. And as such, it is in their interest to promote and maintain peace. I do believe therefore that if a Majoris Corporata were to exist, we could do business with it. Does that answer your question?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But really, Black, I ask you, what is the likelihood of such a combination? The Cartel members can barely agree on carbon nanotube tariffs. No, I think the idea of an MC is alluring to the young, but in cold hard reality such a thing is never likely to be.’

Rench waved a hand imperiously. ‘Take the rest of the day off to shake down, Captain. Move into your new quarters and report here in the morning. If I’m not mistaken, you have a bright future ahead of you.’

Black kept one eye on the netclock as he injected three ampoules into the intravenous feed dripping the transmogrifier virus into the arm of an unwilling and unsuspecting volunteer. Right about now, Black mused, Kilroy’s hit team would be annihilating Fat Fraddo’s squalid empire of crooks and contrabandists.

Fat Fraddo had made the mistake of aiding and abetting Anneke Longshadow on her journey to Reema’s End in the Cygnus Sector a year ago, a journey that caused Black a great deal of pain. He glanced at the two smallest fingers of his aching left hand, now pink and regrown via gene therapies. He had taken the opportunity to implant nano-devices into them. Fraddo also had the bad luck to be part of Anneke’s curious support network, the closest thing she had to a family since Black had murdered her uncle Viktus.

Black smiled at the thought that, bit by bit, he was making Anneke Longshadow more of an orphan. More alone. More like Black himself Kilroy did not know about the old underground complex Fat Fraddo had deeded to Anneke. It had never been purchased by any of Fraddo’s companies or affiliates. What Kilroy did know about was Fraddo’s command centre in the Draco Quarter. And far from being underground, which might have afforded Fraddo some protection, the idiot had built it in the penthouse of a thirty-storey high-security complex.

As if height conferred safety.

Kilroy, of course, hired a floater, a noiseless transport that moved within the shifting and overlapping fields of invisibly intersected sky above Lykis Integer, much as Anneke’s pre-cybernetic ‘glider’ had ridden the repulsor field beneath Arcadia, the cloud city, when she had first penetrated Quesada.

From the floater, at precisely 12.05am local time, twenty-five black-clad meres abseiled down, riding invisible thread-like lines of force, using deflectors to cushion their landing. Once on the rooftop, the meres deployed as planned. Above them, the floater drifted serenely away. Kilroy intended leaving by drop tube; no one would oppose his forces by then.

The penthouse complex comprised the top four floors of the building, so entry would have to be effected from the outside. Disarming the multitude of alarms would take too long (aside from those they’d damped down on the rooftop before alighting) and besides, Kilroy preferred straightforward shock and-awe tactics, when the situation permitted. Which this did.

The meres hooked into computer-controlled grappling lines and positioned themselves atop the circular parapet. At Kilroy’s signal, and moving in unison, they flung themselves out into space. Their tethers flexed under software command and used the meres’ momentum to whip them down towards the windows of the twenty-sixth floor in blurring arcs. Before they impacted the unbreakable safety glass, all twenty-five meres fired specially designed laser-tipped rounds, called penetrators, at over 3000 rounds per minute.

The penetrators made short work of the glass and moments later every mere smashed through whatever remained of it, landing inside, on their feet, guns pumping out a lethal hail of high velocity water slugs. At the same time, their iris cams flipped to infrared enhanced vision. Everything leapt at them in eerie green, bright as day, except for red hot spots and flames of orange. If Kilroy had been a different kind of artist he might have admired the colour scheme.

The meres went through the command centre like a hot knife through butter. Once finished with the main control floor they moved up to the next level and then the next. The top two levels were Fraddo’s personal living quarters. Here, they encountered more stringent deflector and protective fields. Fat Fraddo was as paranoid as the next kingpin who made enemies as a matter of business.

The complex retardation fields slowed Kilroy’s meres down. He grunted in annoyance, monitoring local frequencies, unsure of Fraddo’s alliances and who might come to his aid. While he waited for his tech unit to neutralise the defensive fields, Kilroy did a body count. He’d lost six meres. Not bad. Six for nearly forty, by Kilroy’s estimate. And few wounds. If modern body armour saved you, it saved you. If it didn’t, you weren’t around to complain about it.

‘What’s taking so long?’ he growled.

‘He’s got state-of-the-art stuff here, boss,’ said one of the techies.

‘Pity he didn’t think to put that round the whole place.’

A couple of meres grinned. Then they heard a soft explosion nearby and the air currents shifted.

Kilroy glanced over his shoulder. ‘See to it.’

‘N-space detonation. Five gramme yield,’ said a mere monitoring incursions.

‘Why would anybody set off one of those for?’ Kilroy mumbled.

The techie frowned. ‘I’m not sure. It’s possible the radiation and shock waves could destabilise the field harmonics.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning,’ said a second techie, ‘that somebody might’ve just built themselves a door in and out of the field wall.’

‘They could do that?’

‘Theoretically, like drawing a bunch of lines on a page then cutting out a hole in the middle. The lines are gone, they can’t exist in that gap.’

‘Get the fields down now!’ Kilroy said quietly. One minute later, the fields came down. Kilroy and the other meres smashed and shot their way into Fraddo’s inner sanctum, a bedroom with a large and messy bed in the middle and no butler droid.

Of Fraddo there was no sign.

Kilroy’s face remained deathmask-still. Nothing was ever easy.

Aware of Kilroy’s failure, Black proceeded with his experiments. He did not sleep much and preferred to work late at night, sensing that the incessant ‘hum’ of other human beings going about their daily business was missing. The absence of the humming soothed him.

Black had constructed an experimental lab adjacent to the underground complex where Karl, Mika andJeera Mosoon worked, though none knew what he did there. Through one-way windows of padded cells he watched as a man and a woman were gradually transformed into monsters.

Since his first experiments on Reema’s End, and his initial field test on the Engineering Platform orbiting Telegus, Black had refined his DNA resequencing technique; he had also verified, for the nth time, the artificial chromosomes containing the active genes for transformation. The designed virus inserted the new chromosomes reasonably rapidly. But what was still lacking was the elusive element of control. And without that the experiment would be deemed as much a failure as his attempts to export Anneke Longshadow.

Two hours later Black was back where he had started. He paced, frustrated. When he received word that the Envoy had arrived with Kilroy, he sat quietly behind his desk and told the door to open.

Kilroy entered first. The Envoy followed, moving as silently as a shark.

Black raised an eyebrow, his own seething emotions forgotten for the moment. ‘I take it Fat Fraddo, glutton-extraordinaire, is still on the loose? All two hundred-and-forty highly trained and mobile flabby kilos?’

The sarcasm brought Kilroy to a momentary stop.

‘I have people out looking for him.’

‘Is there a leak in your squad?’

Kilroy’s head twitched ever so slightly. ‘No leak. Maybe at your end?’

‘Good point. Someone on the Quesadan council.

I’ll look into that.’

Kilroy glanced at the nearest chamber where the transmogrified female was having a noiseless seizure on the floor. Kilroy wandered over and stared dumbly at the horrific spectacle. Finally he turned and glanced at Black, then the Envoy. A man of few words, his question was easily read.

‘My science experiment,’ Maximus said.

‘She’s dead.’

‘What do you feel, Kilroy?’ Maximus asked.

‘Nothing,’ Kilroy replied. But his eyes betrayed him. Already he had glanced at the Envoy twice. He had come in here unarmed, of course, and sensed his own imminent danger.

‘That’s twice now you have failed me, Kilroy.

Suffice to say I’m very disappointed.’ He gave the Envoy a nod.

Kilroy dodged to one side, saving his life for two seconds. In the next he was dying. The method was simple, and appallingly fast. As if by magic his throat opened in a yawning red gash.

Kilroy sagged to the floor and lay there. As bloody froth bubbled from his lips, he tried to speak. Famous last words, Black thought, aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

But that wasn’t Black’s main concern. What exercised his mind just then was how shockingly vulnerable he was to the Envoy. If the alien decided to kill him, there was little he could do about it.

Black didn’t like that feeling. He felt as though he’d woken from a dream to find himself standing on the edge of a deep dark chasm. One more step and ...

Black took a deep breath, calming his sudden jag of nerves. ‘Put him in chamber three. Let’s see what the virus does with newly necrotic tissue.’

The Envoy picked up Kilroy and did as he was told.

Black slowly brought his thoughts to order, but the irony almost made him laugh. Here he was trying to construct the deadliest fighting force the galaxy had ever seen, only to realise there was a vastly superior force out there already. Only one that claimed it did not fight en masse.

What a pity ...