Nova War

The warrior sniffed Remembrance's credentials, then bade him enter the Queen's chamber alone.

The Royal Chamber, by necessity, demanded the most space within the yacht. The Queen of Darkening Skies Prior to Dusk herself towered above Remembrance of Things Past, the main part of her bulk resting in a hammock-like construction of wires and fabric built to take the weight of her gigantic frame.

Small-bodied attendants – their scent organs surgically blocked to prevent over-exposure to the valuable oils that constantly issued from the Queen's glands – stood upon wheeled ladders that were, in turn, pushed by other attendants. Yet more of them carried waste material away in barrows, while others were engaged in grooming her, removing scales of dead skin from her vestigial wings, or collecting the valuable scent as it dripped from her pores, before then carrying it away in decorative ceremonial cups each of which might easily be a thousand years old.

The Queen's eyes glistened as she turned to regard Remembrance of Things Past. As ever, he experienced a frisson of lust such as he had not enjoyed since his last audience with her long ago.

A wheeled platform was rolled into the centre of the chamber, until it stood directly before the Queen, and finally all her various attendants scurried away through doors or hatches, leaving her alone with Remembrance. He stepped forward and clutched the first handhold on a ladder leading to the top of the platform, and began pulling himself upwards, suddenly heedless of his injuries. He soon found himself face to face with the morbidly corpulent features of his Queen.

'My beautiful knight,' she chittered, her breath wheezing with a deep resonance from having to work its way up through such a formidable bulk. 'How long has it been?'

'Too long, my lady,' he replied, barely able to manage the words as her scent wove its intoxicating magic on him. 'Too long. Wind Sighing, I think, was uncomfortable that he could not be present.'

'Wind Sighing will know the details of our business before very long, but for the moment what we have to discuss must remain between you and me. I have been watching you closely, Remembrance. There are remote visual scans showing your escape from the slopes of Mount Umami. These images, scavenged from an Immortal Light security network, are enjoying a brisk trade as a bootleg, and to many within the upper echelons of our Hive you are a hero.'

And yet, Remembrance knew, such an act of open confrontation would lead only to a renewal of the ancient conflict between the two Hives.

He clicked in a

'Hush, my knight,' the Queen replied, reaching out with one enormous, fleshy arm to brush at an uninjured wing. He shook with near-uncontrollable desire at her touch. 'I myself was responsible for the release of the images. It is done by way of a message to my hateful sister: one of my own outwitting the best of her own Hive, despite apparently overwhelming odds. This ca

'Yet, my Queen, it only makes my work that much harder. We still have not ascertained the origin of the Giantkillers-'

'And nor will we, at least for the moment,' she interrupted.

Remembrance twitched his wings in confusion, but remained silent as she continued.

'You covertly accessed their highest-security databases, in order to track Alexander Bourdain to the maul-worm's lair, did you not?'

'Yes, but not without difficulty. I used subversion routines created by your finest programmers, and found your sister's own security forces were actively protecting Bourdain from us. We had to fu

The Queen made a gesture of a

Remembrance could not contain his surprise. 'There was?'

'As necessary as it was for you to find the source of the Giantkillers, even that is not reason enough for me to come personally to Night's End for the first time in three mille

'I see.'

'To be specific, Remembrance, it appears my dear sister the Queen of Immortal Light is involved in much more than mere technology-smuggling. It appears she may have entered into negotiations with a species known as the Emissaries.'

'I… am not familiar with that name.'

'They are one of the Shoal's best-kept secrets: a rival interstellar empire with its own faster-than-light technology, viciously expansionist and constantly encroaching upon the Shoal's own domain. The Shoal have their own good reasons for hiding the very existence of the Emissaries. I myself encountered an Emissary, a very long time ago, when I was barely a young proxy, and the possibility of an alliance between our race and theirs seemed at that time less than remote.'

Remembrance stared at her. 'You met these creatures?'

'And pray you never have to,' she added. 'They are… formidable. And not so congenial as the Shoal, by a very long way.'

'I see.' It was an enormous revelation; coming from anyone but his Queen he would have taken the story as an outright lie. And yet – 'Why did this alliance not take place?'

'Put simply, we had nothing to offer them and they had nothing as yet to gain. We might as well have been pre-Reformation primitives offering glass beads to the Shoal.'

Remembrance clicked and chittered to himself for a moment, while thinking out loud. 'Then your sister presumably does have something to offer them now?'

'Correct, my dear Remembrance. The Queen of Immortal Light has been smuggling couriers into extremely distant areas of the galaxy not normally permitted to our species.'

'And they managed that without the Shoal even becoming aware of it?'

'As far as we know, yes, although, from what we gather, at least one of their envoys disappeared en route. My sister clearly has something unique to bargain with this time round. Something that's hidden, I believe, within this very system.'

Lust faded in the face of overwhelming curiosity. 'Something hidden. What?'

The Queen paused briefly. 'The details will be ready for you before your departure. You have a new mission, Remembrance, one of the most vital urgency, and it requires you to return to Ironbloom at once.'

'The peace between you and your sister is over, I fear.'

'You are correct, Remembrance. Too much is at stake now to allow the filial bonds of sister Hives to interfere. One piece of vital information concerns two humans currently being held in the city of Darkwater. There is extremely good reason to believe they are closely involved with these matters, so they will be the focus of your next mission.'

The vast, fleshy arm reached out once again and stroked Remembrance's wings, making him shiver with delight. 'We will need to transmute you,' she murmured, 'as Immortal Light know your current scent too well. You will have a new identity.'

'I have a scent and name ready,' Remembrance replied quickly, producing the bottle the Physician had given him. He opened the tiny flask and held it before his Queen.

The Queen cocked her enormous head to one side and regarded him. 'Let me guess, another human name?'

'I know you disapprove, my Queen, but I ca

'Yet their scents are so bland – if unusual in some respects,' she murmured, favouring the open flask with a glance.