CHAPTER ONE

A TREE FALLS

"Guv?" My barman was a mechanical, multi-limbed lifeform from a system in the vicinity of Arcturus.

"Yes, Siegfried?"

"You'd better get in here."

I sighed. "What are we dealing with?"

Siegfried looked like a football thrown through a cutlery drawer. "Attempted shakedown."

"Another one?" I rolled my eyes. "What's that, like three this month?"

"Four."

"Where are they?"

"Standing at the bar. You can't miss them. They're the ones that look like geckos in sweatpants."

I pulled open my office door, to be greeted by the buzz of a dozen conversations in half a dozen languages. The place smelled of desperation and black mould. The only illumination came from a row of lights hanging above the counter. Tonight's would-be gangsters were standing in a tight group at one end, trying to look simultaneously menacing and inconspicuous.

"For goodness' sake," I said. "They can't be much older than hatchlings."

I walked around the counter to face them. The tallest only came up to my chest, but they had pointed snouts filled with sharp teeth, and scalpel-like claws on their three-fingered hands.

"Are you the owner?" one of them asked in the Common Tongue. Judging by the length of the spines protruding from between his shoulder blades, he was the oldest of the bunch, and probably their leader.

"How can I help?"

"We have an offer for you."

"Let me guess." I folded my arms. "Does this offer have something to do with me paying you a percentage of my takings in return for protection?"

Eyelids flicked back and forth across large, black reptilian eyes. "Uh, yesss."

"Sorry, kids. Not interested."

The leader pulled himself up to his full height. "We could make thingsss very difficult for you."

"I don't doubt it, but I'm still going to have to say no."

A hush fell as the patrons smelled a confrontation. Some of the smaller reptiles in the group looked around, unnerved to suddenly find themselves the centre of attention. The tall one didn't seem to have noticed. His attention remained fixed on me. "This is your lassst chance," he hissed. "A place like thissss, with a lot of wood and packing materialsss. Very flammable. Anything might happen."

I uncrossed my arms. "You boys must be new in town. I assume you're trying to carve out a little territory for yourselves. A little notoriety?"

"What of it?"

"You think you're the first to try something like this? I've been here two years, and there are always parasites about, looking to take what they haven't earned. I've seen gangs come and go. You're no different."

Claws flexed. "Are you going to pay or not?"

I shook my head. "The thing is, kids; if I needed protection, I'd already have it. There are plenty of hoodlums to choose from, and a lot of them are tougher than you."

The leader held my gaze for a few seconds, then he held out a three-fingered hand. One of his henchmen produced a stolen emergency flare and passed it to him. "How about we torch the place now?"

"I wouldn't recommend it."

"Oh, really?" The leader twisted the flare's base, igniting it. For a moment, the only sound in the bar was the roar of the red flame.

I sighed. The flare was designed to be seen through rain and fog by search helicopters. It probably contained a mix of strontium nitrate, potassium perchlorate, and an energetic fuel such as aluminium or magnesium. Which meant it had a burn temperature of at least a thousand degrees centigrade-certainly hot enough to set fire to anything in this place. I couldn't let that happen, so I reached out and snuffed it with my hand.

The reptiles looked at me aghast. The leader said, "How did you do that?"

I smirked and held up my hand. In the overhead light, my palm glistened with an iridescent rainbow sheen.

"Alien nano-virus," I said. "I picked it up on an archaeological dig, a long way from here." I slapped the extinguished flare from his hand. "It makes me very, very hard to kill." I hauled back and punched him across his scaly face. His jaw snapped shut and he crashed back into his little entourage, who fled, leaving their fallen leader sprawled unconscious on the concrete floor. "And a lot stronger than I look."

Scattered applause broke from the tables around the room. The locals always appreciated a show. I ignored them, turning instead to where Siegfried hovered like a rotund Swiss Army knife. "Drag that outside, would you?"

"My pleasure, guv."

* * *

As the conversation among the drinkers turned back to the latest reports from the front line, I stepped out to the small concrete yard at the back of the ramshackle bar. Leaning there against the corrugated iron wall, nostrils filled with garbage fire smoke from the surrounding refugee encampment, I gazed up at the vast foam ships being constructed in orbit and wished I had the guts to book a berth.

Beyond the lamps and circles of firelight, the night was very dark, and a cold breeze ruffled up from the salt marshes to the southwest to flutter tent walls and fluster laundry. Like everyone else, I had come here fleeing the war; but unlike the majority in the camp, this was where I had stopped, too scared and too stubborn to cash in my chips and leave altogether.

From the campfires, I caught snatches of competing songs; the crackle of burning plastic; children crying; food cooking. From further afield, the brine stink of the marshes and the occasional echoing thunder of a shuttle lifting from the civilian port. I kicked aside a tin can. Once, a lush grass analogue had covered the ground here; now, the passage of thousands of refugees had worn it to a bare, hard-packed dirt, strewn with the detritus of their half-abandoned, makeshift lives. Beyond the sea of tents, barbed wire gates marked the camp's entrance. The wire wasn't there to keep the refugees from leaving; it was there to deter the local wildlife, especially the nocturnal Komodo-jackals that prowled the edges of the salt marsh and picked off the occasional incautious security guard.

Whenever a completed foam ship broke orbit, which happened about once a week, the entire encampment looked up. Some of them muttered blessings and good wishes, kissed prayer beads or raised their hands to the skies in the knowledge that another ten thousand sleeping souls had cast themselves into the abyss in the hope of finding sanctuary among the uncharted stars on the far side of the gap. Others shook their heads and cursed at the sight, lamenting a missed opportunity. They knew there would only ever be a finite number of foam ships, and never enough to take every refugee. Eventually, the Cutters would find their way here along the tramline network.

The tramlines were a web of furrows in the undervoid, which a correctly positioned ship could use to glide from one star system to the next, expending very little energy. Every known species employed them. They had been arteries for colonisation, conflict, and commerce, the roads of empire; but now the enemy were using them against us.

That was the part I didn't want to think about.

I pulled a joint from behind my ear. Smoking wasn't one of my customary vices, but one of my regular customers had slipped the little hand-rolled cylinder to me in lieu of payment and it seemed a shame to let it go to waste. I cupped my hands and lit the end with a borrowed lighter. The first drag made my head feel light. The second brought a surge of nausea. I managed two further inhales before coughing, giving up, and flicking the butt over the fence. If I wanted to feel sick, I could huff the toxic smoke from the garbage fires. I stood for a moment, letting the wooziness subside. The bar was a familiar presence at my back, its conversational weight sensed rather than heard. It had been mine since I'd taken over from its former owner when he shipped out. He had left it a stripped-out derelict mess and I'd been the only one interested in fixing it up and reopening. It didn't really have a name, but under my stewardship, it had become one of the few places on the planet where people said the beer came cold, and the gin didn't taste like a reactor leak.

Sparing a final, rueful glance at the orbital construction platforms, I turned back through the door into the storeroom where, between the stacked kegs and cases of spirits, I kept a small bed made from pallets.

The one thing I had in common with every other lifeform in this stinking camp was that I'd left somebody behind. The trouble was, I didn't know how to move on. At first, owning a bar had seemed like a good survival strategy. If I was going to be stuck in a place where everybody else was just passing through, it made sense to have something permanent. But now, after two years of waiting, the novelty of it all had worn thinner than a twice-used tissue. I sat down and regarded my palm. Closing my hand over the flare had been momentarily agonising, but now there wasn't even so much as a scorch mark. My knuckles, which should have been torn to shreds where they'd impacted the rough hide covering the kid's jawbone, were similarly unscathed.

I should get out of here, I thought. I should just throw my clothes into a bag without bothering to fold them and apply to be on the next foam ship out. It didn't matter what waited on the other side of the gulf, it would be preferable to a life spent rotting here.

"Guv?" Siegfried...