EVERGENCE: THE DARK IMBALANCE

PROLOGUE

The former COE Intelligence Head of Strategy didn't need to study her stolen fighter's instruments to know that something strange was going on in Sol System. Something strange and very unsettling.

Page De Bruyn swung her fighter down into the plane of the ecliptic, braving a navigational nightmare as she went. The reopening of the Sol anchor point behind her had allowed -- and continued to allow -- a flood of vessels into the system. In the first few minutes she catalogued fifty vessels whose design matched none in her records and logged markings of fifteen new nations. None of them was the one she sought -- and she had barely touched the surface. According to the fighter's instruments, the total number of ships, stations and launchers present in the system might well be in the order of several hundred thousand. Given that she hadn't properly surveyed the inner- and outermost extremes, she wouldn't be surprised if that figure doubled by the end of the day.

Possibly a million ships, then, representing maybe tens of thousands of nations, near and far. She had heard of larger gatherings, but never in a solar gravity well. Even the combined fleet that had assembled in this very place to destroy the Sol Apotheosis Movement two thousand years earlier had, according to records, barely numbered ten thousand ships. Whether or not that record was accurate, she was now unsure, but the point remained: nothing like this had occurred in or near the Commonwealth of Empires before. It would make finding her quarry that much more difficult.

As she skimmed the morass, she was scanned and hailed twice but not challenged. There didn't seem to be a central authority operating anywhere. The system was a mess. But the longer she looked at it, the more she realised that this might not be a bad thing after all. It might even work to her advantage. She could travel freely through it, confident that no-one would notice a single fighter among the other ships. That was indeed a good thing, for the journey to Sol System had been long and exhausting, and she was going to need rest to prepare for the days ahead.

She had work out what was going on, and how it related to an unaspiring orphan whom she appeared to have completely underestimated. And to do that, she needed to be closer to those who had spurned her.

She instructed the fighter to hunt for COE signals among the babble of transmissions filling the spectra around her. It wasn't a sophisticated craft, but it would do that for her. Once registered as TBC-14, she had renamed it Kindling upon stealing it from Intelligence HQ. Although she was, theoretically, a fugitive from justice, in reality she had enough friends remaining in high places to divert attention from her, provided she didn't ruffle anyone's feathers too soon. The time would eventually come, though, when she wouldn't care who she offended or how she offended them. The question of why she had been so abruptly dismissed from her post in COE Intelligence was proving a vexing one, and one that became increasingly far-reaching the more she probed. She refused to let it go unasked.

Obtaining an answer was all that mattered to her, now. That, and revenge ...

Six hours after she had arrived in Sol System, Kindling detected signals from a vanguard of the COE Advance Fleet. De Bruyn ordered the fighter to approach, carefully. She didn't know quite what to expect -- although, given the COE's proximity to Sol System, it was only natural to suppose that it would have a role to play in the emerging power base in the system, however small. That there would be such a power base before long she didn't doubt, for it was the nature of Humans to coalesce into groups. Maybe not one single group, but something larger than isolated clumps would do. Looking for such an emerging group in the obvious Pristine camp was something she was sure others would be doing also.

Whether this focus of attention on the Advance Fleet would work to its advantage or detriment was difficult to tell. De Bruyn wasn't convinced the COE Armada commanders had the ability to exploit such a situation properly. It needed someone with a flair for intrigue, someone prepared to be ruthless, someone who knew an opportunity when she saw it.

She smirked in the dim light of Kindling's cockpit. It would be the COE's loss, disposing of her the way they had. She would show them that she wasn't a trifle to be used up and tossed away. She would pursue the mystery of her dismissal no matter where it led. And if it brought down the Eupatrid himself, then so be it. She would allow nothing and no-one to come between herself and the answer ...

And Roche.

The thought of that name made her fists ball, as it always did. Damn that woman! Roche had disobeyed her superior officers, jeopardised her mission as an Intelligence Field Agent, even caused a diplomatic incident over the theft of the Ana Vereine -- yet she had been allowed to walk away -- free. And the sole person who seemed to care about righting this wrong was penalised for being 'unduly enthusiastic'.

De Bruyn would give Burne Absenger -- chief liaison officer with the COE Armada -- unduly enthusiastic. That she promised herself. She would expose the truth: a truth so large even he would choke on it; a truth she sensed hiding deep in the data, deep in the mystery that was Morgan Roche.

All she needed was information. All she wanted was proof. No matter how long it took, she was dedicated to finding it.

She sent a coded message to a drone on the edge of the Advance Fleet. It relayed her message to a nexus deeper within the COE camp. There, her message triggered a coded response from a communications AI, which sent another message higher still in the command structure. From there, it was out of her hands -- but she was sure one of her contacts would se the message and work out what it meant. It was just a matter of tracing her message to its source. To her.

In the middle of the second largest fleet ever assembled by Humanity, she settled back to wait.

And when, finally, Kindling told her that it had recognised the distinctive camouflage signature of the Ana Vereine as it entered the system, she clasped her hands together with something approaching eagerness. This was precisely what she had been hoping for. If Roche thought she could just walk in and throw everything into a spin to suit her own ends, whatever they were, she was about to be disappointed.

De Bruyn sent a brief, coded message to a Dato warship she had found lurking nearby, notifying it that the stolen property of its Ethnarch had arrived in the system.

Then she settled back to see what happened next.