From his office window, Representative Helmer had watched the history of Second Miltia since its inception. He had stood here, a newly elected representative on a newly terraformed world, nearly seventeen years ago, when the first gray towers pushed above the horizon and the first roads lifted from the ground. Development of the surrounding areas had followed, filling in the outlines of city blocks so rapidly that at first the skyline never looked the same from one day to the next. Later the expansion became more gradual, the changes sprawling over weeks and months and years instead of days, but even now, the city and the world were in constant motion, as clouds and water and stars moved while appearing to stand still. They were moving now, in the tableau framed by the window: the clouds, the sky, the people on the ground in the streets of Mitrei.

They would be going about their business as always, even while the screens in every shop window and public square ran twenty-four-hour news broadcasts from the war front. Events were unfolding now at the edge of the civilized universe--at a distance that would have seemed unfathomable in another era, but that the advent of hyperspace travel had rendered merely inconvenient, a few gate-jumps from any given point--that would resonate here like the aftershocks of a wave, in ways even the analysts on the news and the experts in the government couldn't predict. But for now life on Second Miltia continued undisturbed, not because the citizens were indifferent or oblivious, but because they were all too aware of events in the world outside, and they were determined to preserve what stability they had while they had it.

After all, many of them had witnessed this before. Nearly two decades after the Miltia Conflict, a majority of Second Miltia's population still consisted of survivors from Old Miltia, people who had seen for themselves just how quickly the world could turn on itself, the rational order of things tipping over into madness. Second Miltia itself had neared that threshold on several occasions--when the Federation Fleet had surrounded the planet and the Song of Nephilim and the Proto Merkabah appeared in the sky like omens, or when the UMN collapsed and left half the population stranded in space and the other half confined here, an island in the universe, until they had nearly succumbed, as Senir and countless other planets had done, to a strain of self-preservation that would have destroyed them. But they had survived through the worst of it; they always did.

Seventeen years wasn't a long history against the millennia-long history of humanity's exodus into space. It wasn't even a long time by the standards of a single human lifespan; in its current incarnation as a settled, terraformed planet, Second Miltia was younger than many of its inhabitants. But for a world that had emerged from one conflict and lived through another, it wasn't a bad start.

The AMN terminal on his desktop sounded a muted alert from behind him. He turned his chair away from the window and punched a button on the main control panel. "Good afternoon, Captain Roman. I was waiting for your call."

On the screen, Roman saluted curtly, a habit she had kept up long after he had assured her it wasn't necessary to defer to his status every time they spoke. "Sir, any word from Dr. Mizrahi?"

"Yes, I just received a call from her about an hour ago. They're on their way to the Dämmerung now, thanks to your help."

"You're welcome, sir. It was no trouble." Her eyes showed a veneer of relief over a deeper concern. "That's something else, though, about the DIRE. Even I would never have suspected ...."

Helmer nodded gravely. "It's ironic, isn't it? Poor Dr. Mizrahi seemed absolutely devastated the last time I talked to her. All this time we were convinced someone in the government was aiding those groups, and they turned up in the last place we would have thought to look." The nine Ormus conspirators exposed in the chairman's report had been apprehended yesterday, at the same time as the raid on Juli's office; by morning all nine had died in custody, victims of brainjacking, like the chairman himself. The Federation Police never had a chance to question any of them.

"What about the chairman? From what you told me, it sounded like he was trying to warn Dr. Mizrahi about the others. Why would he do that if he was in on it?"

"I wish I knew," said Helmer. "The chairman was an old military comrade of mine. We worked together on the plan for postwar reparations after the Miltia Conflict, and back then he was one of the most vehemently anti-Ormus politicians I'd ever met. That's why I thought it was so strange when I heard he'd been supporting them." That, and there had been a delay between the release of the chairman's initial statement accusing the nine other DIRE members, and the falsified evidence linking Juli with Ormus that turned up in his office. Perhaps he really had been an enemy agent, but when ordered to set up Juli, he had suffered a last-minute attack of conscience and exposed the real conspirators instead. It still didn't make sense, though--and Helmer had already lost enough sleep last night trying to figure it out.

"Anyway," said Roman, "I'm afraid I may have some bad news. The Intelligence Bureau has been monitoring communications on the shadow network for the past few days, and we have reason to believe they may be planning another attack."

"Were you able to determine any details?"

"All we've been able to find out so far is that it has to do with something called 'Apocryphos.' We assume it's some kind of weapon they're building, but we don't know any of the specifications. And apparently, they--" She hesitated, and her gaze strayed off to the side. "Well, sir, I ... I don't know how to tell you this, but it appears their target may be Second Miltia."

He took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap. "Well, I can't say I wasn't expecting that. I suppose they're after the sealed column again. And you weren't able to find out anything else?"

"Not as pertains to their plan of attack, sir. We've been having some difficulty interpreting their broadcasts; they're in a cipher disguised as plain speech, but with a lot of those religious references thrown in. I'll inform you as soon as I know more, but in the meantime, I've already requested a transfer to the Fleet stationed in Second Miltia, so I can keep a closer watch on the situation from there."

"I understand. I'll do all I can to ensure your request gets approved."

"Thank you for your help, sir." She didn't smile--she almost never did--but she looked pleased.

"It's no trouble," he said, and he meant it. He always tried to keep a reserve of people on hand who owed him for one political favor or another; as long as he held plenty of strings, it was just a matter of pulling the right ones. He had learned early in his career that most of the important business of running a state got accomplished that way, and the endless hours of debating and deliberating that went on in Parliament were mostly for show. There wasn't much room for idealism in his job; he had made more compromises and concessions than he cared to remember, but he tried to do what he felt was right even if he had to accomplish it through underhanded means. "And really, I should be thanking you."

Roman gave a slight shake of her head, just enough to set her hair swaying. "Don't thank me now, sir. If we manage to prevent the next attack, then, maybe ...." She glanced off to the side again, apparently reading another screen. "Anyway, there's more. And this might actually be good news, depending on how you look at it."

He leaned forward again and brought up his hands to rest on the desktop. "Go on."

"Apparently, despite the existence of this imaginary-domain entity who's been coordinating all the Ormus groups, there's still some dissension in the ranks. It seems there are actually two factions: the majority who follow this Executor figure, and a minority who don't."

"A schism within the church," he said. "I understand it used to happen quite often when the faith was in its infancy on Lost Jerusalem."

Roman nodded. "I gathered that as well, though I'm afraid I don't know as much about ancient history as you do. From what we can tell, this minority faction appears to exist as an underground movement. The Executor's followers have denounced it as heresy, and they're doing their best to stamp it out, but it's been gathering strength in spite of their efforts. They have their own hierarchy, their own Inquisitors--they've even appointed a Patriarch, although for obvious reasons they've kept his true identity and whereabouts a secret."

Helmer sat up with renewed interest. "An opposition Patriarch? That's a bold move. It sounds like they're arguing that their movement has more legitimacy than the 'official' movement led by the Executor."

"Just what I thought. That's probably what has the Executor and his followers so outraged. That, and the new Patriarch chose a rather provocative name when he received his appointment. He's calling himself Julius."

Helmer closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose to relieve the mental haze of exhaustion. The last Patriarch with that name had been assassinated over one hundred years ago, in the terrorist incidents on Abraxas. "I suppose that means the new Julius shares the political views of his namesake?"

"To an extent. The Julian Sect is moderate by Ormus standards, although from the Federation's perspective it's just a milder brand of extremism. Still, this could be good news for us. It means our enemies aren't the unified front they'd like us to think they are. It means they have a weakness, and we might be able to use that against them. And that would make this war a lot quicker and less painful."

Or longer and more costly in every sense of the word, thought Helmer. Roman was sharp, but she lacked experience--she had been too young to fight in the Miltia Conflict, and sometimes Helmer forgot that she hadn't seen a fraction of what he had, that she didn't fully appreciate the nuances of wartime politics. "You're proposing we support the opposition and hope the two factions destroy each other?"

"Something like that." She hesitated, and Helmer got the impression she hadn't actually thought that far ahead yet. "Unfortunately, we have no idea how to contact them. All of our information comes from reports we've been able to decipher on the majority side. We think the Julian Sect may be using radio signals that have been scrambled to avoid detection, or else they've devised some other way of communicating outside of the shadow network; regardless of the method, we haven't intercepted any of their broadcasts."

"I see. Well, perhaps it's best if we just focus on preventing the next attack for now."

"Yes, sir." She nodded again, with the sharp formality of a salute. "In the meantime, would you send my regards to Dr. Mizrahi the next time you speak with her?"

"Of course. You heard about her little girl, I'm sure?"

"MOMO? I remember when I met her, back when we got caught up in that mess with the Foundation and U-TIC. Seemed like a tough little kid."

"She was." On that day, too, Helmer had looked out at the capital from his office window; the sky had been unusually clear and bright, and it was strange to imagine the threat gathering behind it.

"Terrible," said Roman. "What happened to her, I mean. I feel sorry for Dr. Mizrahi, having to go through that twice."

"So do I." He had been there the first time, during the URTV project, overseeing the experiments on Juli's daughter Sakura. At thirty, Juli hadn't been young even then, but she had been innocent and vulnerable in ways she wasn't anymore. After Sakura died, Juli had become a different person. The grief had broken her down and recast her in stone, made her stronger but harder. It was only in the last three years that he had seen her open up again, and he knew it was because of MOMO's influence, because she had a family now. He didn't know what would happen if she lost another daughter; maybe she would close up forever. As her friend, he hated to imagine it. "I feel sorry for her too," he said. "And not just for Dr. Mizrahi. MOMO's work has been invaluable to the Federation. That little girl has done more to put the world back together than all the representatives in Parliament combined--including myself. We'll all be at a loss if they can't bring her back."

"Especially given our current situation."

"Right. Well, Vector's still working on her. They're not optimistic about her chances, but they haven't given up yet either. We'll just have to hope that something can be done."

∞

This time the Executor waited until Sellers had his back to the screen, and startled him when he turned around.

Bloody flaming hell-- He broke off mid-thought and composed himself--he really was getting used to it now--but he hated knowing that the Executor must have seen him jump. "I take it your plan didn't go as well as expected," said Sellers mildly, trying not to sound as vindictive as he felt. Failure would have meant disaster for him as well, but it had given him some relief to learn that the Executor was capable of human error, that for all his pretensions to godliness, he could still misjudge the loyalties of his subordinates. That knowledge might come in handy if Sellers himself ever had to bail out. Which had begun to look increasingly like his only hope for survival once he'd finished his work on Apocryphos.

"And why do you say that?" A trace of amusement, one that might have accompanied the merest upturn of the mouth if the Executor's face hadn't been masked in shadows. "The chairman behaved exactly as I suspected he would. Unlike the others, he intended to betray us from the beginning. I only had to wait for the right moment."

Sellers didn't buy it. "You'd sacrifice them all to get rid of Mizrahi? The DIRE were our closest allies in the Federation. Now we've lost our main line of material support; there's no way we can get any more supplies to our bases without being detected. I hope you considered that when you made your plans."

"Of course I did. I based my decision on your reports, after all. We won't need the government's assistance now that Project Apocryphos is ready to deploy." What he didn't say--what he didn't have to say--was, And soon we won't need your assistance either. But he continued anyway, as if reading Sellers' thoughts. "Dr. Sellers, has it ever occurred to you that there is no such thing as loyalty?"

Sellers narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. "I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at."

"Really. I would have thought you'd understand it better than most, given your history. What I mean is that every relationship has an expiration date. A point at which the ties of subservience no longer hold. Given enough time and the right set of circumstances, even the most useful servant will turn against his master. Everyone, Sellers, is a traitor at heart. And the key to obtaining power is to use your subordinates while you have them under your command, and to dispose of them before they betray you."

"Of course, Adviser." Sellers forced a smile, although the back of his throat felt like a stretched elastic, and a cold sweat had started at his hairline. If the Executor wasn't Yuriev, he still knew enough to make Sellers uncomfortable. The sooner he could get out of here, the better--and just thinking that made him shift uneasily in his chair, with those unseen eyes piercing into him from behind the shadow as if they could read his intention.

"But I didn't call you to discuss my personal philosophy," the Executor went on, with a twist of contempt now. "While you were busy toying with Mizrahi, the Nov-OS database suffered another breach of security. A minor one, but troubling nonetheless. It seems an unknown party infiltrated our S-Line firewall last night and made off with certain sensitive information before the macrophages could respond. Were you aware of this?"

"I'm not in the habit of checking the NSN security logs, Adviser. If I'm not mistaken, that's part of your job description, not mine." He caught himself growing irritated again and toned down the sharpness in his voice. "Was it another Scientia raid?"

"Most likely, given the lack of any traceable signature. She'll be on Mizrahi's side as well. I would have expected no less from her."

Sellers didn't bother asking who she was; he didn't think he'd get a straight answer anyway. "What do you propose we do about it?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? But--"

"We proceed as planned. They may not realize it now, but they're already too late. There's nothing they can do to stop us." The purple-black corona flickered; the shadow grew translucent and began to fade. "Make the final preparations. I'll contact you when I've taken care of a few personal matters of my own."

Before Sellers could wonder what kind of personal matters an individual who tried to pass himself off as a god might have, the Executor's hologram vanished, and Sellers felt a rush of relief in his absence. He had already begun to consider where he'd go after he escaped. Sellers knew better than anyone--except, perhaps, the Executor himself--what might happen when Apocryphos was activated, and he had no intention of staying around to determine the accuracy of his hypothesis. He might be insane, but he wasn't that insane; at least, not yet.