Resolution (89 page)

Two hours later, half a regiment of Collegiate Dragoons failed to spot thirteen shadows flitting through their lines like ghosts. Within minutes, Tom and the twelve clone-warriors were past the first defences, and into one of the Collegium’s Outer Courts.

At the centre of the Court stood a glistening membranous tent, framed with narrow ribs: a commander’s tent. The clone-warriors slipped inside, and Tom followed. They found empty chairs set up around a briefing table, and no-one in sight. They looked at each other, grinned, and sat down.

It was twenty minutes before the commanding officer, his uniform draped with silver braid, entered his own tent and stopped dead.

‘How do you do.’ Tom remained sitting. ‘My friends and I have an appointment with Viscount Trevalkin, in Chronos Court. To save misunderstandings, perhaps your people could escort us?’

For a long moment, the officer could not speak. Then he went down on one knee and bowed, and greeted Tom in a way he had not expected.

‘Warlord. Thank Fate you’re here.’

~ * ~

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Instantia Hall was long and spacious, a right-angled triangle from whose polished walls slender buttresses protruded. The ceiling arced, light and airy; but despite the clean lines, the overall shape suggested broken symmetries and odd intrusions.

Be on guard in this place.

Tom was alone. General Ivion of the Dragoons had invited the clone-warriors to his chambers, along with his own staff officers. An escort had left Tom here.

A doorshimmer evaporated. In the archway, Magister Strostiv bowed.

‘So you got out of Realm Buchanan,’ said Tom.

‘Aye, my Lord Corcorigan. Or should I say
Warlord?’

‘Perhaps you should.’

‘Ah...’ Strostiv took a pace forward. ‘You wonder how I escaped intact.’

‘The Anomaly descended quickly.’

‘You don’t need to tell
me,
Warlord. I was there.’

Tom blew out a breath. This was getting them nowhere. ‘My apologies, Magister. How did you escape?’

Strostiv’s laugh was short and cynical. ‘An old friend of yours got me out.’

Tom looked around the hall, hiding his thoughts. Odd glass flanges and panels reflected strange, sliding combinations of unsettling hues.

‘Trevalkin,’ said Tom. ‘I should have guessed.’

‘As a strategist and organizer, he’s extraordinary. If we survive ... this ... then I expect we’ll offer him the Chancellorship.’

‘Good for him.’

Strostiv gestured. ‘This way, my ... Warlord.’

But as they walked past one of the strange glass panels, a vision moved inside it, and Tom could not look in any other direction but inside the illusion.

Around the table, in a raw stone chamber, a family laughs. There is a fleshy man, in his mid-thirties but with the heaviness of middle age that often envelops non-athletes, and for a moment Tom jerks in recognition - Father! - but he is mistaken. The man turns and Tom sees ... himself.

A bulkier version of himself who lifts a bowl of broth in
both
hands to drink. Opposite him, Elva, likewise softer-looking than he has known her, drinks and compliments the woman standing over them, whose red hair is streaked with grey.

‘That was marvellous, Ranvera,’ Elva says. ‘You‘ve excelled yourself this
—’

Mother!

Tom ripped himself away from the shimmering glass.

‘What did you see, Warlord? The past or the future?’

‘I saw myself - Tom surprised himself by revealing the truth - ‘the same age as I am now. Poor but happy, living out life in Salis Core. A
different
life, Strostiv.’

And Elva was there.

But Elva had lived in the same district, working as a member of the astymonia patrol. If Tom had never met Pilot deVries, then the Oracle would not have descended to their humble stratum, would not have taken Mother ... but Tom might still have met Elva. Life
could
have turned out that way.

Strostiv sucked in a breath. ‘That’s ... unusual. To see a different Fate.’

But the man I saw,
thought Tom,
wasn‘t me. He was soft and useless.

If he wanted to save Nulapeiron, Tom Corcorigan would have to be a very different kind of man.

‘Chronos Court,’ added Strostiv, gesturing towards another door-shimmer, ‘is through there. The Viscount will be waiting for us.’

‘Marvellous.’

Other visions swirled in Tom’s mind as they entered Chronos Court.

Dead carls litter the floor. Fighting men and creatures of the Anomaly swarm through the vast hall, despatching the wounded of both sides. And on those three gigantic plinths
—

On one of them, the wreckage of a destroyed shuttle belches black toxic smoke. But the other two plinths stand bare.

Tom moaned, squeezing his eyes shut, feeling Strostiv grasp his sleeve. ‘Are you all right, Warlord?’

In one of the two escaped shuttles, Kraiv is in the cockpit behind the pilot’s seat, staring down at the receding ground. His face is half-covered in glistening blood. Outside the membrane window, another shuttle is visible, flying alongside, matching speed.

Tom brought his attention back to the moment.

‘I’m fine.’

The carls had just taken their captured shuttles into the air, without waiting for Tom’s signal. Tom’s vision suggested that Anomalous forces had mounted a counterattack, trying to recapture the shuttle bay, and the carls had been forced to take off early.

None of this helped.

And Tom wondered, as he sat down to face Trevalkin, whether Collegiate sensors could detect the flow of information through the Calabi-Yau dimensions of realspace, and knew that the Warlord sitting here was no longer just a human being, but something similar to the Seers which Oracular engineering programmes occasionally produced.

‘Greetings, Warlord.’

‘Viscount. How interesting to see you.’

‘I can see we’re going to have a friendly conversation, filled with reminiscence and nostalgia.’

‘We’re on a timetable, Trevalkin. A tight timetable.’

In the shuttles, the pilots - both of them carls - redplane the acceleration, ignoring the soft moans of the wounded lying in the cabins behind them, knowing they dare not slow down.

‘Then we’d better proceed, Corcorigan. If you don’t mind.’