They shared a grin, and Steel sank back in his chair and sipped gingerly at his coffee. It was real coffee.

Where the h.e.l.l had she found real coffee? He decided not to ask. It would only embarra.s.s her. He sighed contentedly. He hadn't felt this good in ages. The crisis was over, he was still alive, and Mistport was safe. It had been a b.l.o.o.d.y close thing, but they'd come through, and that was all that mattered. He glanced about him, and smiled wryly. He hadn't come out of it entirely unscathed. His living room was a mess, with blood and gla.s.s everywhere. Someone was on the way to replace the shattered window, and he hated to think how much that was going to cost him. For the time being he kept the curtains closed and tried to pretend he couldn't feel the cold. Thinking about it, Steel was surprised to find he didn't really give much of a d.a.m.n. He was alive, and the port was safe . . . He'd been thinking about redecorating anyway.

The Watch had taken Mary away, still unconscious. The hospital would keep her safely sedated, until the port espers could work out some way to defuse her programming. She wasn't to blame for all the things she'd done; Mary was just another Empire victim. There were lots of those on Mistworld.

On the couch opposite Steel, a somewhat revived and repaired Cyder was sitting with her arm round Cat, who was cheerfully nursing the heavily bandaged right hand he'd broken on Mary's jaw. Steel studied the young burglar thoughtfully, and Topaz followed his gaze.

"Know anything about him. Steel?"

"Not a d.a.m.n thing. Roof runner by the look of him, but he hasn't said a word so far. Just appeared out of nowhere and saved all our lives by flattening Mary. I suppose he's ent.i.tled to the reward."

"I'd forgotten about that."

"I'll bet he hasn't."

"Be that as it may, Steel; right now I'm rather more interested in what one of Mistport's most notorious fences was doing here in your apartment."

Steel glanced briefly at Cyder, smiled weakly, and became very interested in his coffee. Topaz glared at him, and moved over to stand before the couch. Cat studied her warily, while Cyder smiled graciously and nodded a polite h.e.l.lo.

"How are you feeling, Cyder?"

"I'll live, Investigator. In the meantime, I am this young man's agent. When can he collect the reward?"

"He'll get it, but first I want a few answers from him. He looks remarkably like a burglar who once stole a memory crystal from me."

Cat smiled innocently, and Cyder hugged him to her.

"I'm afraid we'll never know, Investigator. Unfortunately he's a deaf mute, and can't answer questions."

Topaz turned away, shaking her head in disgust. Steel chuckled softly, caught Cat's eye, and dismissed him with a wave of his hand toward the door. Cat shook his head, grinning. He rose quickly to his feet, padded over to the shattered window, pushed back the curtains and disappeared out into the thick fog.

Steel raised an eyebrow, but Cyder just smiled back at him, unperturbed. Topaz decided not to ask.

"If it's all right with you, Gideon," said Cyder, "I'll be getting back to my tavern. I want to get these bloodstains out of my dress before they set."

"Of course. I'm sure Topaz can find you an escort."

"Thanks, that won't be necessary."

Cyder got to her feet, wincing slightly as her cracked ribs protested. Steel levered himself out of his armchair and escorted her to the door. He wrapped her cloak about her shoulders, and opened the door for her. Cyder paused a moment in the doorway.

"Goodbye, Gideon. It would have been a lovely dinner, I'm sure."

"Thanks for keeping me company."

"Any time."

Cyder blew him a kiss, and left. Steel shut the door quietly behind her. He went back to his chair and sank gratefully into it. Topaz plumped up his cushions for him with a rough efficiency.

"Drink your coffee, Steel. It's getting cold."

Steel picked up his mug again and sipped obediently at his coffee. He sighed appreciatively, and then looked round his ruined living room with an abstracted air.

"What's wrong, Steel?"

"Mary's sapphire; what happened to it?"

"Is that all you can think of? Don't you want to know what's happened to the Imperial Fleet?"

"I imagine they've realised by now that the esper shield isn't going to fall, and they've all dropped quietly back into hypers.p.a.ce."

Topaz nodded. "They left one ship on sentry duty, but no doubt that'll be gone tomorrow. If it isn't, I'll let the Poltergeists play a few practical jokes on it."

"So, we've weathered another storm. What were the final figures from the hospital?"

"More than twelve thousand brainburned; eight hundred and thirty dead."

Steel sighed. "Not much of a victory."

"We stood off the Imperial Fleet and survived," said Topaz calmly. "I'll settle for that."

"To h.e.l.l with the Empire; where's that d.a.m.ned sapphire? I put it on top of the desk, but that got knocked over when Mary sang. She didn't have it when they carried her out, and neither did any of the Watch. It's got to be here somewhere, but d.a.m.ned if I can find it."

"Cyder; she must have taken it."

Steel shook his head firmly. "No. The sensors built into my door frame would have detected the jewel even if she'd swallowed it."

"The roof runner?"

"I had his suit checked while the medics were treating him. No sapphire."

"Then who's got it? That jewel's worth a small fortune."

Steel shrugged, then relaxed suddenly and sank back in his chair. "What the h.e.l.l; it's only a sapphire."

Topaz looked at him. "Are you sure you're feeling all right, Steel?"

Steel laughed. "Perfectly all right, I a.s.sure you."

"Good." Topaz leaned forward suddenly to stare him straight in the eye. "Because the next time we meet, Director, I'm going to find the evidence that will nail you once and for all."

"You're welcome to try, Investigator. You're welcome to try."

Topaz laughed, and left. Steel grinned, and sipped his coffee.

In the dark, overshadowed alleyway opposite Steel's apartment Cyder leaned wearily against the rough stone wall and waited for her head to settle. She was sweating heavily, despite the freezing cold, and her hands were trembling. The Watch medic had done a good job strapping up her cracked ribs and putting a few st.i.tches in her torn scalp, but she'd still lost a fair amount of blood from her various cuts and gashes. She felt awful, but she hadn't dared stay any longer in Steel's apartment. There was no telling when they might start asking awkward questions. The medic had wanted her to spend the night at the hospital for observation, but Cyder had curtly refused. She had a morbid fear of hospitals, and besides, they were expensive. She leant her head back against the cold stone wall. Half killed by a rogue esper, and all for nothing . . . She jumped despite herself as Cat dropped out of the fog to land beside her. He frowned as he took in her condition, and moved quickly forward to take her arm.

"I'm all right," she insisted, but let him help her away from the wall. Her legs seemed a little steadier now she wasn't alone. "Are you all right, Cat?"

He smiled, and nodded.

"After all we've been through, I didn't even get the sapphire. Still, the reward money will come in handy.

. . . What are you grinning at?"

Cat opened his mouth, reached in, and took out a small blue jewel. Cyder stared at the sapphire a moment, and then started to laugh. It hurt her ribs, but she didn't care.

"Of course; there were no sensors left in the broken window! Cat, my love, I'll make a master thief out of you yet." She hesitated, and studied him searchingly. "n.o.body ever risked anything for me before; you risked your life to save me. I'll have to think about that. Now let's get back to the tavern. There's still a lot of work to be done before we can open for business again."

Cyder leaned heavily on Cat's supporting arm, not wholly through weakness, and slowly, together, they disappeared back into the ever-curling mists of Mistport.

GHOSTWORLD.

Inside Base Thirteen, nothing moves. Doors remain closed, elevators are still, and shadows lie undisturbed. One by one the flickering lights gutter and go out, and a growing gloom stalks the empty steel corridors. The few computers remaining on-line mutter querulously to each other in the growing dark, until finally they fall silent in the night.

In the silence, in the dark, something stirs.

CHAPTER ONE

Something in the Storm TheDarkwind' s pinnace fell away from the mother ship, a gleaming silver needle against the endless night. It hung for a moment above the Rim World called Unseeli, and then its nose dropped, the engines roared silently, and the pinnace slipped into Unseeli's churning atmosphere like a knife into a belly. The engines burned bright, powering the slender ship through the violent storms by sheer brute force.

Lightning flared round the pinnace's hull, and winds gusted viciously from every side, but nothing swayed the ship from its course. It punched through the roiling clouds with arrogant ease, dropping like a stone towards the metallic forest below.

Unseeli had no oceans and no mountains, only an endless arid plain covered by a brightly shining forest stretching from pole to pole. A forest whose colossal metal trees knew nothing of leaf or bud, autumn or spring. They rose unbending from the grey earth in the millions, cold and unfeeling, like so many gleaming metal nails. Towering almost to the edge of the planet's atmosphere in places, the huge trees stood firm and unyielding against the turbulent storms. Winds whipped viciously around leafless branches, radiating out from smooth, featureless trunks in needle-sharp spikes. Violet and azure, gold and silver and bra.s.s, the trees reached up into the thunder and lightning to welcome the falling craft.

Captain John Silence sat slumped in his command chair, watching the sensor display panels before him.

They changed from moment to moment with bewildering speed, far too fast for him to follow. Which was why the ship's AI was piloting them down and he had nothing to do but strain his eyes at the displays.

The thick storm clouds hid the metal trees from sight, but the AI picked them up on the pinnace's sensors and changed speed and direction accordingly, making decisions and evaluations in spit-second bursts.

Since the AI could think faster and react more quickly than Silence ever could, even when he was mentally linked to the onboard computers, there was never any question as to which one of them would get to pilot the pinnace down. But the AI was programmed to be considerate of people's feelings, so it might let him actually land the pinnace, if it didn't seem too difficult.

Deepening his concentration, Silence accessed the ship's sensors through his comm implant. The bulkhead walls before him were suddenly transparent as the sensors displayed a real-time simulation of what was happening outside the ship. Dark, swollen storm clouds rushed toward and around the pinnace at heart-stopping speed, and lightning struck viciously at the craft. Silence winced inwardly, but kept his face calm so as not to upset his pa.s.sengers. The storm could rage and spit all it liked; nothing could harm the ship as long as its force screen was up. Gleaming metal trees appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye as the pinnace surged this way and that, threading a path through the metallic forest to the landing pads by Base Thirteen. The storm clouds were too thick and too dark for Silence to make out the forest itself, but his imagination pictured it as an endless, vicious pincushion; solid metal spikes waiting for him like the sharpened stakes at the bottom of a pit dug to trap animals.

The image disturbed him, and he cut off the display and swung round in his chair to see how his pa.s.sengers were doing. A good Captain never neglected his crew. Supposedly, loyalty was programmed into them these days, but it never hurt to be careful.

The ship's young esper, Diana Vertue, was looking distinctly green about the gills from being tossed around by the pinnace's sudden changes in direction. Investigator Frost sat beside her, cool and composed as always, her face almost bored. The two marines, Stasiak and Ripper, sat behind the two women, pa.s.sing a gunmetal flask back and forth between them. Silence's mouth tautened. He hoped it was just alcohol, and not some new battle drug they'd cooked up in the medlabs. Officially he was supposed to encourage such initiative, but Silence didn't believe in chemical courage. He preferred the real thing whenever possible. Chemicals wore off.

"We'll be touching down soon," he said evenly. "There shouldn't be any immediate danger, but keep your eyes and ears open anyway. Due to the urgent nature of the situation, we're going in pretty much blind on this one. The mission's simple enough. Base Thirteen isn't answering any calls. Our job is to find out why."

"Question, Captain?"

"Yes, esper Vertue?"

"According to the computers, Unseeli is a dead world. Nothing's lived here since all indigenous species were wiped out after the Ashrai rebellion, ten years ago. . . ."

"That's right," said Silence as the esper paused.

"But if that's the case, Captain, if there's nothing on this planet that could be harmful, why all the panic? It could just be a case of cabin fever. It's not exactly unknown, out here on the edge of the Empire."

"A good point, esper. But four days ago, Base Thirteen declared a Red Alert emergency, raised a force screen round the Base, and cut off all communications with the Empire. The Empire doesn't like being cut off. So, we're going in to find out what's happened. Don't frown, esper; it'll give you wrinkles."

"I was just wondering, Captain; well, what is the Investigator doing here?"

"Yeah," said Investigator Frost. "I've been wondering that too."

Silence took his time about answering, openly studying the two women. They made an interesting contrast. Diana Vertue was short, slender, and golden-haired, and reminded Silence very much of her mother, Elaine. The young esper had only just turned nineteen, and had that arrogant innocence that only youth could produce and maintain. She'd lose it soon enough, trying to maintain law and order and sanity out on the edge of the Empire, among the newly developed Rim Worlds. There was little civilisation to be found on the new frontier-and even less law, never mind justice.

Investigator Frost was only a few years older than the esper, but the difference between them was that of the hunter and its prey. Frost was tall and lithely muscular, and even sitting still and at rest, she looked dangerous. Dark blue eyes burned coldly in a pale, impa.s.sive face framed by short-cropped auburn hair.

The jolting descent didn't seem to be bothering her at all, but then, it wouldn't. Investigators were trained to withstand much worse than this. Which was at least partly why they made such efficient killers.

Silence realised he'd paused longer than he'd intended. He leaned forward in his chair, frowning as though he'd just been marshalling his thoughts, knowing even as he did that he wasn't fooling the Investigator one bit.

"You're here, Investigator, because we don't know what we're going to find when we get down there.

There's always the possibility that Unseeli has been visited by some new alien species. This is the Rim, after all, where starships have been known to disappear into the long night, never to be seen again. And aliens are your specialty, are they not?"

"Yeah," said Frost, smiling slightly. "That's one way of putting it."

"On the other hand," said Silence, "Unseeli is a mining planet, and the metals extracted here are of vital importance to the Empire. Any number of factions might have an interest in disturbing production. Which is why I'm overseeing this mission myself."

"If it's that important, why are there only five of us?" asked the marine Stasiak. "Why not go in mob-handed with a full Security team, surround the Base and then charge in and hammer anything that moves?"

"Because Base Thirteen controls all the mining equipment on Unseeli," said Silence steadily. "Systems are already running at barely thirty per cent efficiency. We don't want to risk damaging the Base and making things even worse. And, as the esper pointed out, there's always the possibility this is just some new form of cabin fever, and all the Base personnel need is a nice little chat with theDarkwind' s psych department. We're here to find out what's going on and to report on it, not run a crash-and-burn mission on the only people who can tell us what's happened."

"Understood, Captain," said the other marine, Ripper. "We'll run this one nice and easy, by the numbers.

No problem."

Silence nodded curtly, and studied the two marines un.o.btrusively. Lewis Stasiak was average height and weight, only in his early twenties but already looking hard-used and running to seed. His hair was a little too long, his uniform rumpled, and his face had a kind of slackness to it. Silence recognised the danger signs; Stasiak had gone too long without any real action or challenge, and grown soft and careless. Which was at least partly why Silence had chosen him for the exploratory team. If something went wrong, Stasiak wasn't going to be any great loss. It was always useful to have someone expendable on hand, to send into dangerous situations before taking a look for yourself. Still, it would be well to keep an eye on the man. Marines who got sloppy tended not to last long under pressure, and when they snapped they had a nasty habit of taking down anyone who happened to be with them at the time.

Alec Ripper, on the other hand, was everything that Stasiak wasn't. Ripper was a career marine, and looked it. Twenty-nine years old, fourteen years in the Service, big as a brick outhouse and twice as mean. Sharp and tidy from his close-cropped head to his shiny boots. Four medals, and three commendations for courage in the field. Could have been an officer, if he'd only had the right Family connections. As it was, he'd been a noncom twice, busted both times for daring to suggest a superior officer might just possibly be wrong. That wasn't wise in the Service. Especially in front of witnesses.

Also, according to the records, Ripper was a good soldier and a better fighter, with a positive gift for survival. If anyone was going to come back alive from this mission, it was Ripper.

If anyone was.