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Fleeing the supernova chain reaction at the galactic core, the cowardly Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds have---just barely---survived. They've stumbled from one crisis to the next: The rebellion of their human slaves. The relentless questing of the species of Known Space. The spectacular rise of the starfish-like Gw'oth. The onslaught of the genocidal Pak. Catastrophe looms again as past crises return---and converge. Who can possibly save the Fleet of Worlds from its greatest peril yet? Louis Wu? Trapped in the Wunderland civil war, all he wants is to go home---but the only possible escape will plunge him into unknowable danger. Ol't'ro ?The Gw'oth ensemble mind fled across the stars to establish a colony world free from tyranny. But some problems cannot be left behind, and other problems---like the Fleet of Worlds itself---are racing straight at them. Achilles? Despite past disgrace, the charismatic Puppeteer politician knowshe is destined for greatness. He will do anything to seize power---and to take his revenge on everyone who ever stood in his way. Nessus? The insane Puppeteer scout is out of ideas, out of resources, with only desperation left to guide him. Their hopes and fears, dreams and ambitions are about to collide. And the winner takes . . . worlds.

They were the usual motley collection of freelance vampire hunters. Two men, wearing combinations of jungle camouflage and leather. Two women, one almost indistinguishable from the men though with a little more style in her leather armour accessories, and the other looking like she was about to assault the south face of a serious mountain. Only her mouth was visible, a small oval of flesh not covered by balaclava, mirror shades, climbing helmet and hood. They had the usual weapons: four or five short wooden stakes in belt loops; snap-holstered handguns of various calibers, all doubtless chambered with Wood-N-Death® low-velocity timber-tipped rounds; big silver-edged bowie or other hunting knife, worn on the hip or strapped to a boot; and crystal vials of holy water hung like small grenades on pocket loops. Protection, likewise, tick the usual boxes. Leather neck and wrist guards; leather and woven-wire reinforced chaps and shoulder pauldrons over the camo; leather gloves with metal knuckle plates; Army or climbing helmets.

Flies buzzed around the edges of the huge stone block, gathering at the rivulets of blood that ran down to the floor. A bit of what looked like it might be intestine hung off one corner, drawing special attention. It was a testament to the force of the collision that fragments of bone and tissue were scattered all the way down the passage, some even wedged in the carvings in the stone walls. Two men surveyed the scene with dismay. "See? And this just keeps happening. It's getting so we can't get anything done around here," said the taller of the two, a grey-haired man with red eyes and a patchy beard. The other man, younger but not precisely young, hauled himself up on top of the block and examined the mechanism. "This bar's been sliced right through." He looked back down at his client. "You say this was a poltergeist?"

Wren Hex-Yemenni woke early. They had to teach her everything from scratch, and there wasn't time for her to learn anything new before she hit fifty and had to be expired. "Watch it," the other techs told me when I was starting out. "You don't want a Hex on your hands." By then we were monitoring Wren Hepta-Yemenni. She fell into bed with Dorado ambassador 214, though I don't know what he did to deserve it and she didn't even seem sad when he expired. When they torched him she went over with the rest of the delegates, and they bowed or closed their eyes or pressed their tentacles to the floors of their glass cases, and afterwards they toasted him with champagne or liquid nitrogen. Before we expired Hepta, later that year, she smiled at me. "Make sure Octa's not ugly, okay? Just in case-for 215." Wren Octa-Yemenni hates him, so it's not like it matters. Rated PG for political machinations and waiting…

When I met Skinhorse, my first thought was old. Which was weird. Nobody gets old these days. We all die young, some of us after living a long time, if we're lucky. He was in Piet's Number Seven, a bar-cum-caravanserai in an illegal orbit trailing far enough behind Vesta to be ignorable. Piet's had been instantiated in an old volatiles bladder that had done the Jovian run a few too many times before falling into the surplus circuit. You could store entire cities in Piet's cubage, which made for a somewhat attenuated bar experience. Plus the place had one of those gravity cans - yes, those gravity cans - which meant your drink stayed stuck down long as you were near a Higgs carpet. So there I was annoying myself with three perfectly disrespectable rock jocks, each of us out to fleece the others, when this cadaver starts to stand over me. We're all forever young or forever dead, but this armstrong looked like he'd shaved about half a cent too deep across his whole body, then restored his dermis with spray-on thermal insulation.

"I have done over fifteen hundred dives," I said, and let that sink in. The number was astronomical for a guy my age, even for a professional. "I have done free diving down to eighty meters. I have worked as a commercial diver and in commercial salvage." They were listening and nodding, concentrating on me while recording the conversation. "Then you, of all people, should have known better," said the little guy. "I did know better!" They were acting like the shark was the victim, not me. "How many people in the whole fucking galaxy could have come up alive, huh? How many would have had the technology and experience and conditioning?" "If you want our congratulations, you got 'em," said Odenny. "But we're more interested in what you were doing."