‘Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.’

Charles James Napier

‘I nominate Corbin for the role of Ambassador in perpetuity,’ said Reeve after a brief exchange of formalities.

Up to this point the meeting itself was a formality; it was rare for anyone to propose a motion without knowing that they would win. All the important work had already been done. The members of the Security Council glanced at each other briefly, then raised their hands in unison. An aide made a note that the motion had passed. And that was that.

Sander Reeve was the youngest of those gathered here, but was already making a name for himself. Sensing opportunity, he had aligned himself with Corbin. Reeve flashed him a grin, all perfect white teeth and dead, ice-blue eyes.

‘I’m honoured to have been chosen for this office. I shall endeavour to continue the diligent work of my predecessor,’ said Corbin, smiling magnanimously.

‘Of course, none of this will matter if the Dyn refuse to accept you,’ said Koslov, Director-General of the Department of Internal Security. Corbin nodded serenely.

‘I will make the call to the Dyn and announce my candidacy as soon as I return to the Hollow Tower.’ It was Koslov’s turn to smile. Corbin got the impression of a shark contemplating its prey.

‘It’s already been arranged. You should expect their call. As you are Vash’s natural successor I doubt there will be a problem.’

Corbin kept his expression carefully neutral. So the Ambassador wasn’t the only one with a direct line to the Dyn – he shouldn’t have been surprised. The subtext was obvious. Remember where the real power lies.

‘Now that that’s dealt with, I propose the Council turn its attention to the other item on the agenda,’ suggested Alarcón, the Americas’ sharp-eyed general, who had left just enough time for Koslov’s words to sink in. ‘I assume you’ve all seen the footage. Reeve, would you like to bring us up to speed on your investigation?’

‘We’ve examined the crater left by the Dynic strike, not that there’s much to examine. There’s nothing left; no wreckage, nothing to indicate what the revolutionaries were doing.’

‘No clues there then,’ sighed Alarcón.

‘No. However there’s reason to suspect somebody may have gotten off the beach,’ continued Reeve, robotically. ‘We have surveillance footage from a high altitude drone showing a catamaran fleeing the area in the moments prior to the strike. It was also caught by the blast but was carrying what looked like a submarine, of which there is no sign.’

‘A sea-skimming submarine?’ smirked Zhao, Secretary-General of something – Corbin had seldom crossed paths with her. Reeve nodded humourlessly.

‘I feel it is also important to note that the footage provided by the Dyn omits this detail, in direct contradiction of our own intel.’

A couple of those present looked as though they were about to ask the obvious, but none yet seemed ready to bring up the question of Vash’s fate.

‘So the Dyn are hiding something?’ prompted Koslov.

‘It appears so. My suspicions were confirmed by a second omission. A passive sonar net off the coast detected a very unusual signature. The anomaly was very deep underwater and moving rapidly – easily supersonic. From the speed it must be a supercavitating torpedo, but it far surpasses anything we have. Or the Dyn for that matter. Strictly speaking, taking into account the depth and estimated speed, what we observed wasn’t possible.’ Reeve passed the relevant intel around the table.

‘This is news to me,’ admitted Corbin.

‘As I say, it was only noticed hours after the fact, once we belatedly received Dynic surveillance data and were able to compare the two sets,’ explained Reeve.

‘I think I speak for the entire Council when I say that we were quite disappointed to only discover the severity of the situation when we lost several dozen soldiers and a square kilometre of coastline in a Dynic strike yesterday,’ snarled Alarcón, his ire clearly directed at Corbin. ‘Leaving us to figure out what happened after the fact. Now our esteemed former Ambassador is missing in action, but what was he doing in a warzone in the first place?’

‘It’s simple. The man’s cracked,’ said Zhao. She turned conspiratorially towards Koslov. ‘I’ve never trusted him, but it’s quite clear that he’s finally lost touch with reality.’

Corbin smiled blandly.

‘Well, thank you for offering that diagnosis,’ he said, only just stopping short of rolling his eyes. Zhao looked as though she was about to say something more, opened her mouth and then shut it.

‘Make it easy for us, Corbin,’ said Koslov, reasonably. ‘Tell us what you know.’

‘On Vash’s behalf, I issued a request for information regarding the revolution’s insignia days ago and received nothing. So how about you tell me what you know first and then I’ll reciprocate.’

‘You really think you can address us like that?’ Zhao demanded, but the others weren’t interested, their focus on Koslov instead. Koslov made a subtle gesture at an uncomfortable looking Reeve.

‘I looked into the insignia as part of my own investigations,’ Reeve coughed, clearing his throat. ‘The revolutionary group was unremarkable, obscure. They never amounted to more than about a hundred members, most now presumed dead. Until they took the Dynic hostage and hijacked the crawler they’d never attempted an operation anywhere near as audacious as this.’

‘They kept a low profile,’ confirmed Alarcón. ‘Military intelligence didn’t even have a file on them until a few months ago.’

‘More than that. Their behaviour, even discounting the events of the last few days, was unusual to say the least. The picture became more concerning when I got a hit for dragon’s teeth from the archives,’ Reeve elaborated, before turning to Corbin to address him directly. ‘The symbol was a direct match. It’s a codename. Old tech; a type of self-replicating weapon.’

‘Self-replicating?’ Corbin pressed, unable to disguise his interest. Reeve’s subterfuge could be ignored for the moment.

More printouts were handed round; everything they had on dragon’s teeth.

‘They called it a warseed,’ said Reeve, sounding reverent. ‘It’s a machine that makes war, soaking up surrounding matter and twisting it, turning it into weaponry. Powerful beyond belief. We think they must have picked up the name from some old legend, then used the symbol to get our attention, for their own unguessable reasons.’

‘Perhaps,’ Corbin said distractedly as he scanned down the page. It was cluttered with annotations, giving context and explaining unfamiliar terminology. His mind spun back to the look of shock on Vash’s face. Now that he knew what Vash had seen in the symbol, everything else he’d said and done fell into place.

That was the thing about Vash; he could seem unpredictable because he simply followed his own sense of duty wherever it led him. Apparently, it had now led him beneath the sea to awaken an unimaginable weapon.

‘So there you have it, Corbin, everything we know,’ said Koslov, spreading his hands, softly spoken as ever. ‘Your turn.’

Corbin had contemplated lying, but something told him now wasn’t the time for reticence. He had to admit, he had underestimated them. They already had most the pieces of the puzzle, after all.

‘As I’m sure you’re aware, Vash had a direct meeting with the Dyn, conversing with one that introduced itself as Liar to Animals. What’s not on record is that the Dynic Ambassador informed Vash that its heir had been taken hostage and insisted that he resolve the situation himself, involving as few people as possible.’

‘Have you speculated as to why that might be?’ Koslov inquired.

‘Vash said that this Dyn was unlike the others; most notably, it spoke through a human conduit.’ Corbin paused for a moment whilst Alarcón and a few of the others made sounds of disgusted disapproval. ‘The Dyn was concerned that if its line looked to be threatened then others would move against it, Dyn from a hardline faction apparently pushing for the immediate extermination of humanity.’

That got their attention. The members of the Security Council murmured anxiously among themselves until Koslov silenced them.

‘So Vash, with your help, did as he was asked and attempted to secure the hostage? How do you explain the Ambassador’s abrupt change of heart?’

‘Vash didn’t have a change of heart,’ Corbin replied smoothly. ‘Although I thought we were simply doing the Dyn’s bidding, I believe he intended to contact the revolution from the outset. He recognised that symbol and understood its implication. He saw an opportunity to do his duty and seized it.’

‘His duty?’ thundered Alarcón. ‘His duty, as Ambassador, is to act as a mouthpiece for the Dyn. His duty, in service to Arco, is to protect the people. Instead he has failed to resolve the hostage situation and in doing so has put the entire world in jeopardy. Even as we speak, this hardline faction of the Dyn may be moving to implement their final solution. Certainly his actions will have bolstered their cause.’

‘I never took you for a Quisling, Alarcón,’ retorted Corbin. ‘Look around you. Can you honestly say that the people are protected from the depredations of the Dyn? The only thing that’s protected is the status quo. Vash, the man you decried as a puppet, is the only one behaving as though he isn’t. If we are to claim to be anything more than a puppet government, then we must act in the interests of the people we serve. It is not in their interests that the occupation lasts a moment longer than necessary,’ he finished.

‘Careful, Corbin… ’ cautioned Koslov. ‘You’re beginning to sound like a revolutionary yourself.’

‘You can’t possibly mean they had a warseed on that vehicle?’ someone demanded, to general assent. ‘Do you honestly expect us to believe the word of an unstable struldbrug and his rebel propaganda?’

‘I don’t expect you to take my word on any of it,’ Corbin said. ‘I expect you to wait and see. Reeve’s observations alone are enough to show that there are forces in motion that we do not yet understand. There is greater risk in acting prematurely, before we have all the facts.’

‘This world stands on the brink of annihilation and you suggest we wait and see? I have heard enough,’ Alarcón shouted, slamming his fist down on the table. He stood to leave, his retinue and a handful of allies following suit. ‘I sincerely hope – and not just for your sake – that your trust in Vash is not misplaced. Such a spectacular miscalculation would carry dire consequences.’

With that Alarcón marched from the room, aides and lesser generals tripping over each others heels to keep up. An uneasy quiet settled over the room.

‘Alarcón has a point,’ conceded one of the remaining generals, breaking the silence. ‘I shouldn’t have to remind anyone here that a sword hangs over all our heads. And I’m not talking about the pebbles they’ve flung at us thus far. The Dyn have a dozen asteroids in steep elliptical orbits – the tiniest nudge of thrust and the firmament comes crashing down on us. Even one impact could render the Earth’s surface virtually lifeless. It is quite a gamble you’re suggesting.’

‘We make that gamble every day the occupation continues,’ Corbin said, unconvinced. ‘If anything it speaks to the Dynic character that it hasn’t happened already. Just think! If a fanatical element got control of even one of those rocks they could kill billions.’

‘That’s why we work with the moderates and trust them to police their own. Vash, by taking this unprecedented course, has undermined this strategy,’ said Zhao, exasperated.

‘Appeasement won’t work forever,’ came Corbin’s blunt reply.

‘Enough,’ insisted Koslov. ‘This meeting has gone on long enough and is getting nowhere. Regardless of the merits of a new approach to our relationship with those above, these decisions were not Vash’s to make, nor are they yours, Ambassador. However, I agree with Corbin’s assessment that given the current state of affairs we must act carefully. We remain vigilant and we put everyone on high alert.

Reeve, you are to continue your investigation. And Corbin, when you receive your courtesy call from the Dyn, see if you can discern whether we are still dealing with the murderous bastard we know, as opposed to the even more murderous bastards we don’t.’

A chorus of confirmation sounded from around the table and the meeting broke up. The various members of the Security Council collected their papers and departed silently, exchanging respectful nods. There was a charge in the air, a sense of impending upheaval, but nothing concrete.

Corbin stayed behind, reviewing the meeting in his mind. It had been fraught, but Corbin relished such exchanges. Crucially, he had the support of the Council; as long as Koslov remained behind him, so would the majority of the others. Tentative and conditional though it was, this support would be enough. For his part Corbin could only hope that the revolution would succeed. What an irony that was.

Just as he was about to leave there was a knock on the door. An aide entered.

‘Sir, before you leave for Conurbation One, Koslov would like to see you in his office.’

Koslov met him at the door, waving the aide away.

‘Make sure we’re not disturbed,’ he instructed the guards as he beckoned Corbin inside.

The office was vast and yet cluttered with the detritus of the past; a dozen pieces of exquisitely formed furniture jostled for space and every surface was scattered with objets d’art. An entire wall was filled with a bookcase, another by a sweeping picture window that flooded the room with light.

‘You’ll forgive our mutual friend. Alarcón is under immense pressure. The revolutionaries themselves may have died in the strike, but a dozen copycat movements have sprung up in their place. Some of the footage must have leaked. That damned dragon’s tooth is everywhere.’

‘I’m sure someone as experienced as General Alarcón can handle it,’ said Corbin, contemptuously.

‘Of course. Far more concerning is that the Dyn are acting unilaterally – they’re only hitting militants out in the wasteland for the moment, but we cannot rule out an escalation. Conurbation Fifteen is on the brink of an outright uprising. Anyway,’ Koslov said, waving his hand dismissively, ‘That’s not what I called you up here to discuss. Have a seat.’

‘Drink?’ he asked, once Corbin was sitting, indicating a cut glass decanter filled with golden liquid. It looked incredibly expensive and had probably been distilled before the fall. Koslov poured him a glass without waiting for an answer, then poured himself one.

Corbin thanked him, taking a sip before setting the glass aside.

‘I suggest you finish it,’ Koslov said, no hint of humour in his voice. Corbin did so, his curiosity piqued.

‘Just what is it you called me in here for?’

‘You already know that we’ve kept certain information from the Ambassador’s office,’ said Koslov, crossing over to the expansive windows to lower the blackout blinds. ‘It was regrettable but I hardly need to explain it to you. Some information is too dangerous to be free.’

‘I worked for this department long enough to understand that. I have served Arco long enough to understand that.’

‘Indeed. But you must also know that Arco is as riven by factionalism as any institution. Those factions and individuals, from the merest regional Directorate to the Ambassadorial office, do not always act on the information they have in a way that serves the interests of the whole.’

‘And what interests might those be?’

‘The preservation of Arco, of its monopoly on power and this delicate equilibrium, of course.’

‘Naturally best served by the Department of Internal Security,’ Corbin smirked.

‘Come, Corbin. Don’t play devil’s advocate with me. There’s no crowd to play to here. If InSec does not serve such interests, then what is its purpose? Surely you are not naive enough to toy with ideas of revolution? The rebels and their sympathisers are a threat to us all. Vash has become a threat.’

‘If you brought me in here for a lecture, you’re wasting your time,’ said Corbin.

‘I brought you in here because I believe I can trust you, Corbin. With one of our own in the role of Ambassador I expect that we’ll have a much more productive working relationship with the office,’ said Koslov, making his way over to the bureau. Corbin resisted an urge to roll his eyes at the attempted flattery.

Koslov fished a small key from his pocket, unlocked one of the drawers and removed a nondescript brown envelope from it. ‘What I’m about to show you doesn’t leave this room, understand? Only members of the Security Council have seen it. Consider it an initiation.’

‘I’m flattered,’ joked Corbin. Koslov shot him a withering look.

‘We’re here at the sufferance of the Dyn. Never forget that,’ said Koslov as he slipped a reel of microfilm from the envelope. ‘The Broadcast makes it perfectly clear what they’re capable of.’

‘I can practically hear the capital B. What’s it a broadcast of? What’s its provenance?’

‘It’s Dynic in origin, that much we know. It was relayed to Earth by the ship that made first contact with the Dyn. Unfortunately it arrived a decade too late and succeeded only in causing significant distress. After that all copies but this one were destroyed. The subject matter is… disturbing.’

‘Yes, all very ominous. Let’s get this over with,’ sighed Corbin.

Koslov inserted the reel into a projector. The projector whirred and displayed a flickering white square on the wall opposite as he took a seat beside Corbin. Then the Broadcast began.

There was no sound, only the image of a planet against the black backdrop of space. It was cloaked in cloud, one side bathed in brightness and the other lost in the dark, whilst storms swirled in the narrow twilight strip between the two. The view shifted to an image of a planetary surface taken from an aircraft. Armies were charging at each other as rockets arced overhead, fronts dozens of kilometres wide running with whatever the Dyn used for blood. Like the world wars of ancient history, but on a still larger scale; whole populations up in arms and charging headlong to their deaths.

Flying machines like stub-winged boats dumped incendiaries onto forests that were already ablaze, choking the sky with smoke. Dyn stalked between bunkers and warrens, using flamethrowers to clear them out. He watched as Dyn burst from one, dozens of them, burning. They made it a few paces before the flames totally consumed them.

Mushroom clouds bloomed and the image faded to black, before opening up again to a shadow left on a wall. Cut. A lone, pitiful Dyn scavenged for food in a lifeless waste. Cut. A lifeless litter, born twisted and malformed. Corbin hunched forwards, transfixed by the endless litany.

The view shifted again, and it was clear that much time had passed. The image format seemed clearer, more colourful. If that had been an age of chaos, this was an age of peace. The trenches were replaced by irrigation ditches, the planet’s surface divided up into a patchwork of grey fields. Walled settlements with high central towers like motte and bailey castles loomed over the farms. It looked calm and orderly. But the nightmare wasn’t over. The view changed again and Corbin found himself gazing into hell.

A seething mass of hunched-over, pale, four-limbed creatures were crammed densely into a pen. Corbin realised they must be young Dyn. Some were holding crude tools or dressed in harnesses, while others were naked. Taller Dyn moved through the seething mass; marching regularly like robots. They were killing them as they fled, impaling them with long spears. Other Dyn collected the bodies, heaping them high on huge vehicles that trundled behind. The murder was randomised and passionless.

More time passed, and the video format changed again. A camera was being pulled through a warren of narrow tunnels into a big womb-like structure. This was clearly a freefall environment. Dyn swarmed over the walls and through the tunnels; mostly small and immature. They tumbled over each other, seemingly adept in the null gee environment. Larger Dyn, masked and suited, emerged from one tunnel and began spraying the chamber with choking white gas. The tiny young thrashed and died. The process took several minutes, and the camera lingered on every detail. Their physiology might have been alien, their expressions unreadable, but the terrible pain inflicted upon them came through with dreadful clarity.

That was just the start; Corbin saw other worlds around other stars and all were the same. There were ships, too; collections of nozzles, radiators and fuel cylinders that resembled delicate flowers coated in foil. They dispersed from asteroid stations to colonise new worlds, spreading Dynic suffering across the universe. The Broadcast continued in a broadly similar fashion for thousands of years and ended about half an hour later. The new Ambassador had not moved for the duration of the video.

Corbin sat staring as the images played on a loop, vaguely aware of the projector ticking away off to his right. It was only when he dragged his eyes away from the screen and they continued to play that he realised it was blank. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead lightly. Somewhere far away, Koslov was speaking.

‘Do you understand now, Corbin? Do you see why we kept this from Vash? His bleeding-heart sympathies, the understanding he showed them; none of it could be maintained if he knew their true nature. The Dyn are evil, pure and simple. It’s a miracle they didn’t just wipe us out, when they can inflict that on their own without flinching.’

Corbin wasn’t listening, his mind elsewhere. He had long since realised that his last conversation with Vash held the key to making sense of all of this – to think at the time he had almost dismissed it out of hand as empty speculation! Now the significance of Vash’s words was finally apparent.

The logic of it all unfolded within Corbin’s mind in perfect, crystalline clarity, like his dream of seeing the sunrise a hundred miles above the Earth’s surface, its rays untrammeled by atmosphere. He was struck dumb by the revelation. A short, inexplicable laugh escaped him.

‘Corbin?’ Koslov looked at him searchingly. ‘I know it can be shocking -’ he began to say. Corbin stood with a sharp motion. He looked at the ceiling, trying to order his thoughts, then rounded on Koslov.

‘You just don’t see it, do you? The whole Council, all of you so blinded by your own fear that you don’t even realise what this is. You’ve taken the most crucial insight we have on the Dyn and reduced it to some petty initiation ceremony!’ Corbin laughed again, despairingly. Koslov looked momentarily taken aback, but he quickly recovered.

‘Enlighten me,’ he growled.

‘You really think this is about the Dyn being evil?’

‘What else is there to learn, it not the murderous nature of those above?’

‘This was relayed by the vessel that made first contact, right? But it’s clearly Dynic in origin.’

Koslov nodded slowly.

‘The Dyn willingly broadcast this,’ Corbin said, jabbing an arm towards the screen. ‘They must have compiled it from thousands of years of recorded video, a vast monument to the progress they’ve made. I think that whoever sent that saw it as propaganda, or maybe a kind of survey – ‘this is how we live’. They wanted to give humanity a measure of who they were.’

‘We have their measure. Certainly this was propaganda. It was intended to cower us into submission.’

‘Clearly it has cowed the Security Council, but that was not its intent. If it had been the Arco Department of Communications would be broadcasting this on a loop. Instead the Dyn have done everything in their power to hide their true nature ever since, including ordering Arco to destroy every copy of this film – that means they didn’t anticipate our initial reaction.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ conceded Koslov. ‘But what does it matter? We watched the same film Corbin. They’re compassionless and depraved. They kill each other just as they killed us’

‘Watch the opening footage from the broadcast again and tell me you don’t sense compassion in the lingering shots of the mother and her stillborn children, in the way the camera follows the lone Dyn scavenging for food. Tell me you don’t sense the horror in their documenting of war.’

‘The Broadcast doesn’t end there. I saw no such compassion thereafter,’ Koslov countered.

‘If they were truly compassionless they would have wiped us all out instead of merely subduing us. In fact, they’d never have even got this far. They’d have fought themselves to extinction. This is much more basic. This is biological. This is the only way they can live. Those giant swarms of immature Dyn didn’t come from nowhere. They must spawn vast numbers of offspring, like… I don’t know, like fish or frogs. We’ll need to bring in scientists, people who understand these things better than I do…’ Corbin trailed off, then started again.

‘I’m no expert – I barely understood half of what I saw – but this must be the way their world operates. A handful of Dyn, like our very own Liar to Animals, exert some kind of control over their descendents; the older, more mature ones. They become perfect slaves, sterile robots; perhaps they lose consciousness altogether, dying inside right there and then. Perhaps nearly every Dyn dies when they reach adulthood. You and I both saw them; they’re like zombies.’

He spun on the balls of his feet as he turned, pacing manically up and down the room.

‘And they don’t want to go; of course. Evolution takes care of anyone who wants to die. But the very youngest are always too numerous and impossible to govern; each one of them is a potential threat. A population explosion just waiting to happen. So they’re culled – by gas and blades and bullets. They’re intelligent and independent; they protest, they flee, they struggle but it doesn’t matter, they die all the same. Billions upon billions of them. By the look of their Broadcast, this has been going on for so long that the Dyn have evolved whole new classes of emotion to handle it. A species where peace is synonymous with killing and prosperity requires slavery. Where good is bad, and bad is good. They don’t think like us; that’s what we try to remind ourselves. But they also don’t feel like us.’

‘We all have our own theories. But again, what does it matter?’ asked Koslov. ‘So the Dyn do what they do because of their biology, forced to constantly choose between war or infanticide. What crucial insight am I missing here? You almost sound glad to have seen the Broadcast… ’

‘Of course I’m glad,’ Corbin said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘This is still happening; this has always been happening. The killing would have continued even if we didn’t know about it. But now we have a chance, and now we know why they had to invade Earth.’

‘Yes,’ said Koslov impatiently. ‘I think the forced climate alterations and the spreading band of settlements around Earth’s equator made that abundantly clear. They conquered and enslaved us just as they once fought each other.’

Corbin shook his head.

‘No, no! He may not have seen the Broadcast, but Vash understood the Dyn better than any of you. Liar to Animals explained it to him – that when we made contact, humanity saw Dynic nature as something that needed righting. The Broadcast makes it abundantly clear why. They may have acted preemptively, but they were acting in self-defence! For the sake of survival, for the sake of truth, justice and the Dynic way, humanity had to be defeated. You said this message arrived a few years after the invasion? Suppose it had reached an Earth that hadn’t been invaded. Just imagine how the old world would have reacted to this.’

Koslov seemed to be thinking it over, but Corbin answered for him.

‘There isn’t any force in the universe that could have prevented the human race of two centuries ago from subjugating the Dyn and doing something, transforming them somehow to prevent the killing. Fixing them. But from the Dyn’s point of view it would be tantamount to extinction. They were confronted by an unfathomable alien species that was utterly committed to the termination of their way of life, of all that they consider good and natural and they only responded by wiping out our warmaking capabilities to ensure we weren’t a threat. Would you be so merciful?’

‘You genuinely believe him don’t you?’ Koslov asked, stunned. The Director-General, arguably the most powerful man alive, was utterly thrown. ‘You believe Vash is doing the right thing. First him, now you – the entire Ambassadorial department, rotten from the top down. Corrupted by a revolutionary’s lies and the whispered half-truths of a Dyn. You said to wait and see, but you’re just playing for time… ’

‘Don’t you care?’ Corbin exploded, grabbing his glass and throwing it at the projector, smashing the lens and plunging them both into gloom. ‘The human imagination isn’t scalable, but try anyway! Just try to imagine what is going on right now, everywhere the Dyn have spread! Imagine the death toll of a hundred Dyn invasions every single year, or a thousand! I can’t even put an order of magnitude estimate on the deaths the Dyn inflict on themselves. Once the occupation is over, that’s when the real work begins.’

‘I can’t let whatever this crazed plan is go ahead. You’ll kill us all.’ Koslov’s tone suggested he had decided Corbin was a madman.

‘The Dyn attacked out of fear. The Security Council is motivated by fear, this whole world lives in fear. Enough! The plan should be blindingly obvious. Once the Dyn are gone, we’re going to do the one thing they fear the most. The right thing. We haven’t got any choice.’

‘But you said it yourself. For the Dyn it would be tantamount to extinction -’

‘So? They didn’t choose this. The scale of their suffering, it’s inconceivable; that’s reason enough to put an end to it! It can’t possibly be true, can it? Perhaps it is; of all the people who saw the Broadcast, I’m the only one who understood.’

Corbin took a deep breath, straightened his uniform and turned to leave, pausing a moment before unlocking the door.

‘If I’m the only good man left in Arco, it falls to me.’