‘I agree, too,’ said Martinez.
‘I certainly don’t want the job,’ said Da Vinci.
They all agreed in turn, without reservation, some of them evidently anxious to avoid what they assumed might be a poisoned chalice.
‘Perhaps we should agree to reassess the situation in a year’s time,’ Var suggested, knowing that by then it would be clear enough whether they might survive longer than the predicted five years.
‘An interesting choice of timespan,’ said Rhone, obviously hiding something.
‘So that’s it,’ said Martinez. ‘Now we get to work.’
‘Not entirely,’ said Rhone. ‘Though we must now focus primarily on our survival here, there’s another rather worrying fact we’ll need to confront just after the one-year period you’ve mentioned.’
What was he getting at now? Did he intend to suggest some kind of inquiry at the end of her rule, some sort of investigation and maybe a trial?
‘Go on,’ she said, waiting for the knife in her back.
‘Those images you showed us are rather old, Var.’ Rhone pointed upwards. ‘A few hours ago, Argus Station did a low-fuel course change around the Moon, and unless its vector changes or it makes use of its engine again, it looks likely to be sitting right above us here in one year and three months’ time.’ He smiled at her. ‘Whoever or whatever just trashed Earth is now coming here.’
By Neal Asher
Cowl
The Owner
The Departure
Agent Cormac
Shadow of the Scorpion
Gridlinked
The Line of Polity
Brass Man
Polity Agent
Line War
Spatterjay
The Skinner
The Voyage of the Sable Keech
Orbus
Novels of the Polity
Prador Moon
Hilldiggers
The Technician
Short story collections
Runcible Tales
The Engineer
The Gabble
Novellas
The Parasite
Mindgames: Fool’s Mate
Acknowledgements
Thanks, as always, to the people who help bring this book to your shelves; to the Kindle, iPad or any other new-fangled electrical device that this science fiction author really ought to know more about, but is trying hard to ignore – mainly because he has less chance of spotting someone reading one of his books on a train, beach or elsewhere. Damn it, I can’t sign a Kindle, nor can I sneak into a bookshop and move it to a more prominent position on the shelves!
The people at Macmillan are Julie Crisp, Chloe Healey, Amy Lines, Catherine Richards, Ali Blackburn, Eli Dryden, Neil Lang, James Long and others whose names have fallen through the sieve that is my mind. Further thanks to Peter Lavery of the legendary scary pencil and Jon Sullivan who might not even use a pencil but has certainly produced some scary monsters for the covers. And, as always, thanks Caroline, for keeping me grounded in the real world and in my fictional ones.
First published 2011 by Tor
This electronic edition published 2011 by Tor
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-230-76170-4 EPUB
Copyright © Neal Asher 2011
The right of Neal Asher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements