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As the marines closed on the shack-like farm buildings, Stillich considered intervening. This was no way to run an empire, this use of brute force. But he didn’t want to contradict his First Officer in front of the marines; the fate of this farmer wasn’t important enough for that.

Pella stood with him, breathing hard, still angry. ‘Actually, I’m not sure how concerned we should be, sir. Now I stand here, amid the rubble of these colonists’ petty dreams – if some of them have taken their GUTships off into the dark, so what? There’s no G-class star until you get to Delta Pavonis, eight more light years out from Sol. Too far away to bother us. Why should we care?’

But it wasn’t obvious to Stillich that this new jaunt had been outwards at all.

Human space was sparsely settled, save for the Solar System itself, and Alpha System. And if you weren’t to travel outwards, a return journey to Alpha was by far the most likely destination. Stillich had visited Alpha himself, on the two previous interstellar missions of his career. It was a big, sprawling, increasingly crowded system – richer in resources than even the Solar System itself. And as a junior officer he had detected signs of rebelliousness there, hints that the Alphans were chafing under the yoke of the taxes and political control of the light-years-distant Shiras, signs he had dutifully reported to his superiors.

It might be harmless. Maybe the GUTships had gone back to Alpha, to pick up another cadre of colonists for Tau Ceti. But if they had returned covertly, for some other reason . . .

‘Tidy up here,’ he said to Pella. ‘But do it fast; the sooner we get out of here the better. I’m going back to the Facula to send a message to Earth.’ Which itself would take twelve years to get there. He turned and stalked back to the flitter.

Pella called, ‘Sir, the colonists – are they to be permitted to stay?’

He considered. ‘No.’ That was the tidiest solution. ‘We have sleeper pods enough to transport these ragged villagers back to Sol. We should remove any trace of the colony. Expunge the records – hide the existence of a habitable planet here, so nobody tries again. We must have control. Get on with it, Pella. And avoid excessive violence.’

‘Sir.’

Stillich heard screaming from the farmer’s children. He did not look back.

AD 4814. Starfall minus 6 years. Armonktown, Footprint, Alpha System.

Suber’s youngest son, little Suber, Su-su, called him out of the house. ‘Dad, come see. I think there’s another one up there, another GUTship!’

Suber had been helping Fay prepare the evening meal. Fay – Suber’s second wife – was, at thirty, nearly seventy years Suber’s junior, though thanks to his AS treatment she actually looked a little older. She grinned across at him. ‘Go. A GUTship is a GUTship, but Su-su will only be seven years old once. Go!’

So he grabbed his jacket and let his son drag him out of the house, down the darkened street towards the park, where, away from the streetlights of Armonktown, you got the best view of the sky. But Suber was soon winded as he tried to keep up with Su-su. He had been born on Earth – though Su-su did not know that, and nor did Fay, and they never would – and even after seven decades here and extensive nano treatments, Footprint’s stronger gravity still hung on Suber as heavy as a lead coat.

They came to the park. It was a fall evening, and the dew lay on the grass and on the roses’ thorns, and glistened on the blisters of the rope-trees, a native species allowed to prosper in their own little bubbles of Footprint air inside the town dome. And there on the grass, little Su-su turned his button face up to the sky. ‘See, Father?’

Suber looked up.

The sky was crowded and complex. From Footprint, a world of Alpha A, sun B was a brilliant star in the sky, closer to Alpha A than planet Neptune was to Sol, and bright enough to cast sharp shadows; on this world there were double sunrises, double sunsets, strange eclipses of one star by the other. And there was a line of light drawn across the sky: dazzling, alluring, that zodiacal gleam was the sparkle of trillions of asteroids. The mutual influence of A and B had prevented the formation of large planets; all the volatile material that in the home system had been absorbed into Sol’s great gas giants was here left unconsolidated, asteroids drifting in huge lanes around the twin stars. Footprint’s sky was full of flying mines.

But what interested Su-su wasn’t the natural wonders of the sky but the signs of human activity. He pointed with his small finger, to a cloud of light slivers not far from the zenith. ‘Can you see, Father? I can count them. One two three four five seven twelve! And there’s a new one since they passed over yesterday.’

‘Your eyes are better than mine,’ Suber said. ‘But, you know, I think you’re right . . .’

The splinters of light were indeed ships: GUTships, a veritable fleet of them in a medium-altitude orbit over Footprint. Under magnification they showed the classic Poole-era design, lifedome and GUTdrive pod connected by a spine kilometres long. Somebody was assembling an orbital armada – and presumably even bringing in the ships from other star systems, for there was no facility to construct GUTships anywhere save the Solar System itself.

Suber had heard no announcement about this mustering, seen no news source refer to it, even though it was clearly visible to everybody. He wondered why no imperial official had been out to inspect it. He had even considered trying to get some message to the Empress’s court himself. But it was unlikely in the extreme he’d be able to do that without blowing his personal cover.

It was while he was thinking of Earth, oddly, in that quiet moment with his son, that his life on Footprint ended.

The voice behind him was soft. ‘Densel Bel?’

He turned, unthinking. ‘Yes?’ And then, ‘Ah.’ He had responded to a name he hadn’t heard spoken since he left Earth.

The man facing him was dressed entirely in black, in some fabric so dark it seemed to absorb the light from the sky; he was a shadow, even his face concealed.

Densel/Suber did not dare glance around for Su-su. ‘May I say goodbye to my son?’

‘No.’ The man pointed a finger.

There was a shock, not of pain, but of cold. He felt his heart stop before he hit the ground.

And when he could see again, he was enclosed by walls, in a room, bathed in bright light.

He winced, and lifted a hand to shield his eyes. And he staggered, for he was standing, held by a mesh web.

Somebody handed him a beaker of liquid. He drank, and felt warmth course through his system.

A man stood before him. A broad face, aged – no apparent recourse to AS – stocky build, crop of grey hair. Densel thought he recognised him. A young woman stood at the man’s side, perhaps a daughter. Densel wondered if they were armed.

The room had a single window, which opened on blackness. The smart webbing filled the room, holding the people unobtrusively. He was in microgravity then, in orbit perhaps.

The man studied him. ‘Are you all right, Densel Bel? You were injected with a nano anaesthetic. I hope it didn’t hurt; you were obviously unprepared.’

‘I’m fine.’ He drew a breath. His chest ached vaguely; he wondered if he had suffered some minor heart attack. ‘You know who I am.’

‘Obviously. And you know me, don’t you?’

‘You are Flood. Ambassador to the Empress’s court.’ Flood’s was one of the more famous faces in the small pool of Alpha cultural life.

‘Former ambassador. I retired some years ago. Now I am engaged on other projects.’

‘I want to speak to my family—’