David Weber - The Armageddon Inheritance

 

 

BOOK ONE

 

 

The sensor array was the size of a very large asteroid or a very small moon, and it had orbited the G6 star for a very, very long time, yet it was not remarkable to look upon. Its hull, filmed with dust except where the electrostatic fields kept the solar panels clear, was a sphere of bronze-gold alloy, marred only by a few smoothly-rounded protrusions, with none of the aerials or receiver dishes which might have been expected by a radio-age civilization. But then, the people who built it hadn't used anything as crude as radio for several millennia prior to its construction.

 

 

The Fourth Imperium had left it here fifty-two thousand one hundred and eighty-six Terran years ago, its electronic senses fueled only by a trickle of power, yet the lonely guardian was not dead. It only slept, and now fresh sparkles of current flickered through kilometers of molecular circuitry.

 

 

Internal stasis fields spun down, and a computer roused from millennia of sleep. Stronger flows of power pulsed as testing programs reported, and Comp Cent noted that seven-point-three percent of its primary systems had failed. Had it been interested in such things, it might have reflected that such a low failure rate was near miraculous, but this computer lacked even the most rudimentary of awarenesses. It simply activated the appropriate secondaries, and a new set of programs blinked to life.

 

 

It wasn't the first time the sensor array had awakened, though more than forty millennia had passed since last it was commanded to do so. But this time, Comp Cent observed, the signal which had roused it was no demand from its builders for a systems test. This signal came from another sensor array over seven hundred light-years to galactic east, and it was a death cry.

 

 

Comp Cent's hypercom relayed the signal another thousand light-years, to a communications center which had been ancient before Cro-Magnon first trod the Earth, and awaited a response. But there was no response. Comp Cent was on its unimaginative own, and that awakened still more autonomous programs. The signal to its silent commanders was replaced by series of far shorter-ranged transmissions, and other sensor arrays stirred and roused and muttered sleepily back to it.

 

 

Comp Cent noted the gaping holes time had torn in what once had been an intricately interlocking network, but those holes were none of its concern, and it turned to the things which were. More power plants came on line, bringing the array fully alive, and the installation became a brilliant beacon, emitting in every conceivable portion of the electromagnetic and gravitonic spectra with more power than many a populated world of the Imperium. It was a signpost, a billboard proclaiming its presence to anyone who might glance in its direction.

 

 

And then it waited once more.

 

 

Months passed, and years, and Comp Cent did not care. Just over seven years passed before Comp Cent received a fresh signal, announcing the death of yet another sensor array. This one was less than four hundred light-years distant. Whatever was destroying its lonely sisters was coming closer, and Comp Cent reported to its builders once again. Still no one answered. No one issued new orders or directives. And so it continued to perform the function it had been programmed to perform, revealing itself to the silent stars like a man shouting in a darkened room. And then, one day, just over fifteen years after it had awakened, the stars responded.

 

 

Comp Cent's sensitive instruments detected the incoming hyper wake weeks before it arrived. Once more it reported its findings to its commanders, and once more they did not respond. Comp Cent considered the silence, for this was a report its programming told it must be answered. Yet its designers had allowed for the remote possibility that it might not be received by its intended addressees. And so Comp Cent consulted its menus, selected the appropriate command file, and reconfigured its hypercom to omni-directional broadcast. The GHQ signal vanished, replaced by an all-ships warning addressed to any unit of Battle Fleet.

 

 

Still there was no answer, but this time no backup program told Comp Cent to do anything else, for its builders had never considered that possibility, and so it continued its warning broadcasts, unconcerned by the lack of response.

 

 

The hyper wake came closer, and Comp Cent analyzed its pattern and its speed, adding the new data to the warning no one acknowledged, watching incuriously as the wake suddenly terminated eighteen light-minutes from the star it orbited. It observed new energy sources approaching, now at sublight speeds, and added its analysis of their patterns to its broadcast.

 

 

The drive fields closed upon the sensor array, wrapped about cylindrical hulls twenty kilometers in length. They were not Imperial hulls, but Comp Cent recognized them and added their identity to its transmission.

 

 

The starships came closer still at twenty-eight percent of light-speed, approaching the sensor array whose emissions had attracted their attention, and Comp Cent sang to them, and beckoned to them, and trolled them in while passive instrumentation probed and pried, stealing all the data from them that it could. They entered attack range and locked their targeting systems upon the sensor array, but no one fired, and impulses tumbled through fresh logic trees as Comp Cent filed that fact away, as well.

 

 

The starships approached within five hundred kilometers, and a tractor beam-a rather crude one, but nonetheless effective, Comp Cent noted-reached out to the sensor array. And as it did, Comp Cent activated the instructions stored deep within its heart for this specific contingency.

 

 

Matter met anti-matter, and the sensor array vanished in a boil of light brighter than the star it orbited. The detonation was too terrible to call an "explosion," and it reduced the half-dozen closest starships to stripped atoms, ripped a dozen more to incandescent splinters, damaged others, and-just as its long-dead masters had intended-deprived the survivors of any opportunity to evaluate the technology which had built it.

 

 

Comp Cent had performed its final function, and it neither knew nor cared why no one had ever answered its warning that after sixty thousand years, the Achuultani had returned.

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

It was raining in the captain's quarters.

 

 

More precisely, it was raining in the three-acre atrium inside the captain's quarters. Senior Fleet Captain Colin MacIntyre, self-proclaimed Governor of Earth and latest commanding officer of the Imperial planetoid Dahak, sat on his balcony and soaked his feet in his hot-tub, but Fleet Captain Jiltanith, his tall, slender executive officer, had chosen to soak her entire person. Her neatly-folded, midnight-blue uniform lay to one side as she leaned back, and her long sable mane floated about her shoulders.

 

 

Black-bottomed holographic thunderheads crowded overhead, distant thunder rumbled, and lightning flickered on the "horizon," yet Colin's gaze was remote as he watched rain bounce off the balcony's shimmering force field roof. His attention was elsewhere, focused on the data being relayed through his neural feeds by his ship's central command computer.

 

 

His face was hard as the report played itself out behind his eyes, from the moment the Achuultani starships emerged from hyper to the instant of the sensor array's self-immolation. It ended, and he shook himself and looked down at Jiltanith for her reaction. Her mouth was tight, her ebon eyes cold, and for just a moment he saw not a lovely woman but the lethal killing machine which was his executive officer at war.

 

 

"That's it, then, Dahak?" he asked.

 

 

"It is certainly the end of the transmission, sir," a deep, mellow voice replied from the empty air. Thunder growled again behind the words in grimly appropriate counterpoint, and the voice continued calmly. "This unit was in the tertiary scanner phalanx, located approximately one hundred ten light-years to galactic east of Sol. There are no more between it and Earth."

 

 

"Crap," Colin muttered, then sighed. Life had been so much simpler as a NASA command pilot. "Well, at least we got some new data from it."

 

 

"Aye," Jiltanith agreed, "yet to what end, my Colin? 'Tis little enow, when all's said, yet not even that little may we send home, sin Earth hath no hypercom."

 

 

"I suppose we could turn back and deliver it in person," Colin thought aloud. "We're only two weeks out...."

 

 

"Nay," Jiltanith disagreed. "Should we turn about 'twill set us back full six weeks, for we must needs give up the time we've but now spent, as well."

 

 

"Fleet Captain Jiltanith is correct, Captain," Dahak seconded, "and while these data are undoubtedly useful, they offer no fundamental insights necessary to Earth's defense."

 

 

"Huh!" Colin tugged at his nose, then sighed. "I guess you're right. It'd be different if they'd actually attacked and given us a peek at their hardware, but as it is-" He shrugged. "I wish to hell they had, though. God knows we could use some idea of what they're armed with!"

 

 

"True," Dahak agreed. "Yet the readings the sensor array did obtain indicate no major advances in the Achuultani's general technology, which suggests their weaponry also has not advanced significantly."

 

 

"I almost wish there were signs of advances," Colin fretted. "I just can't accept that they haven't got something new after sixty thousand years!"

 

 

"It is, indeed, abnormal by human standards, sir, but entirely consistent with surviving evidence from previous incursions."

 

 

"Aye," Jiltanith agreed, sliding deeper into the hot water with a frown, "yet still 'tis scarce credible, Dahak. How may any race spend such time 'pon war and killing and bring no new weapons to their task?"

 

 

"Unknown," the computer replied so calmly Colin grimaced. Despite Dahak's self-awareness, he had yet to develop a human-sized imagination.

 

 

"Okay, so what do we know?"

 

 

"The data included in the transmission confirm reports from the arrays previously destroyed. In addition, while no tactical information was obtained, sensor readings indicate that the Achuultani's maximum attainable sublight velocity is scarcely half as great as that of this vessel, which suggests at least one major tactical advantage for our own units, regardless of comparative weaponry. Further, we have reconfirmed their relatively low speed in hyper, as well. At their present rate of advance, they will reach Sol in two-point-three years, as originally projected."

 

 

"True, but I'm not too happy about the way they came in. Do we know if they tried to examine any of the other sensor arrays?"

 

 

"Negative, Captain. A hypercom of the power mounted by these arrays has a maximum omni-directional range of less than three hundred light-years. The reports of all previously destroyed sensor arrays were relayed via the tertiary phalanx arrays and consisted solely of confirmation that they had been destroyed by Achuultani vessels. This is the first direct transmission we have received and contains far more observational data."

 

 

"Yeah." Colin pondered a moment. "But it doesn't match very well with what little we know about their operational patterns, now does it?"

 

 

"It does not, sir. According to the records, normal Achuultani tactics should have been to destroy the array immediately upon detection."

 

 

"That's what I mean. We were dead lucky any of the arrays were still around to tell us they're coming, but I can't help thinking the Imperium was a bit too clever in the way it set these things up. Sucking them in close for better readings is all very well, but these guys were after information of their own. What if they change tactics or speed up on us because they figure someone's waiting for them?"

 

 

"Methinks thy concern may be over great," Jiltanith said after a moment. "Certes, they needs must know some power did place sentinels to ward its borders, yet what knowledge else have they gained? How shall they guess where those borders truly lie or when their ships may cross them? Given so little, still must they search each star they pass."

 

 

Colin tugged on his nose some more, then nodded a bit unhappily. It made sense, and there wasn't anything he could do about it even if Jiltanith were wrong, but it was his job to worry. Not that he'd asked for it.

 

 

"I guess you're right," he sighed. "Thanks for the report, Dahak."

 

 

"You are welcome, Captain," the starship said, and Colin shook himself, then grinned at Jiltanith.

 

 

"Looking forward to sickbay, 'Tanni?" He put an edge of malicious humor into his voice as an anodyne against their worries.

 

 

"Hast an uncommon low sense of humor, Colin," she said darkly, accepting the change of subject with a smile of her own. "So long as I do recall have I awaited this day-yea, and seldom with true hope mine eyes might see it. Yet now 'tis close upon me, and if truth be known, there lies some shadow of fear within my heart. 'Tis most unmeet in thee so to tease me over it."

 

 

"I know," he admitted wickedly, "but it's too much fun to stop."

 

 

She snorted and shook a dripping fist at him, yet there was empathy as well as laughter in his green eyes. Jiltanith had been a child, her muscles and skeleton too immature for the full bioenhancement Battle Fleet's personnel enjoyed, when the mutiny organized by Fleet Captain (Engineering) Anu marooned Dahak in Earth orbit and the starship's crew on Earth. The millennia-long struggle her father had led against Anu had kept her from receiving it since, for the medical facilities aboard the sublight parasite battleship Nergal had been unable to provide it. Jiltanith had received the neural computer feeds, sensory boosters, and regenerative treatments before the mutiny, but those were the easy parts, and Colin was fresh enough from his own enhancement to understand her anxieties perfectly... and tease her to ease them.

 

 

"Bawcock, thou'lt crow too loud one day."

 

 

"Nope. I'm the captain, and rank-"

 

 

"-hath its privileges," she broke in, shaking her head ominously. "That phrase shall haunt thee."

 

 

"I don't doubt it." He smiled down at her, tempted to shuck off his own uniform and join her... if he hadn't been a bit afraid of where it might lead. Not that he had any objection to where it could lead, but there was plenty of time (assuming they lived beyond the next two years), and that was one complication neither of them needed right now.

 

 

"Well, gotta get back to the office," he said instead. "And you, Madam XO, should get back to your own quarters and catch some sleep. Trust me-Dahak's idea of a slow convalescence from enhancement isn't exactly the same as yours or mine."

 

 

"Of thine, mayhap," she said sweetly.

 

 

"I'll remember that when you start moaning for sympathy." He drew his toes from the tub and activated a small portion of his own biotechnics. The water floated off his feet on the skin of a repellent force field, and he shook the drops away and pulled on his socks and gleaming boots.

 

 

"Seriously, 'Tanni, get some rest. You'll need it."

 

 

"In truth, I doubt thee not," she sighed, wiggling in the hot-tub, "yet still doth this seem heaven's foretaste. I'll tarry yet a while, methinks."

 

 

"Go ahead," he said with another smile, and stepped off the edge of the balcony onto a waiting presser. It floated him gently to the atrium floor, and his implant force fields were an invisible umbrella as he splashed through the rain to the door/hatch on the far side of his private park.

 

 

It opened at his approach, and he stepped through it into a yawning, brightly-lit void over a thousand kilometers deep. He'd braced himself for it, yet he knew he appeared less calm than he would have liked-and felt even less calm than he managed to look as he plunged downward at an instantly attained velocity of just over twenty thousand kilometers per hour.

 

 

Dahak had stepped his transit shafts' speed down out of deference to his captain and Terra-born crew, though Colin knew the computer truly didn't comprehend why they felt such terror. It was bad enough aboard the starship's sublight parasites, yet the biggest of those warships massed scarcely eighty thousand tons. In something that tiny, there was barely time to feel afraid before the journey was over, but even at this speed it would take almost ten minutes to cross Dahak's titanic hull, and the lack of any subjective sense of movement made it almost worse.

 

 

Yet the captain's quarters were scarcely a hundred kilometers from Command One-a mere nothing aboard Dahak-and the entire journey took only eighteen seconds. Which was no more than seventeen seconds too long, Colin reflected as he came to a sudden halt. He stepped shakily into a carpeted corridor, glad none of his crew were present to note the slight give in his knees as he approached Command One's massive hatch.

 

 

The three-headed dragon of Dahak's bas relief crest looked back from it. Its eyes transfixed him for a moment across the starburst cradled in its raised forepaws, fierce with the fidelity which had outlasted millennia, and then the hatch-fifteen centimeters of Imperial battle steel thick-slid open, and another dozen hatches opened and closed in succession as he passed through them to Command One's vast, dim sphere.

 

 

The command consoles seemed to float in interstellar space, surrounded by the breath-taking perfection of Dahak's holographic projections. The nearest stars moved visibly, but the artificiality of the projection was all too apparent if one thought about it. Dahak was tearing through space under maximum Enchanach Drive; at seven hundred and twenty times light-speed, direct observation of the cosmos would have been distorted, to say the very least.

 

 

"The Captain is on the bridge," Dahak intoned, and Colin winced. He was going to have to do something about this mania Dahak had developed for protecting his commander's precious dignity!

 

 

The half-dozen members of Colin's skeleton bridge watch, Imperials all, began to stand, but he waved them back and crossed to the captain's console. Trackless stars drifted beneath his boots, and Fleet Commander Tamman, his Tactical officer and third in command, rose from the couch before it.

 

 

"Captain," he said as formally as Dahak, and Colin gave up for the moment.

 

 

"I have the con, Commander." He slipped into the vacated couch, and it squirmed under him as it adjusted to the contours of his body. There was no need for Tamman to give him a status report; his own neural feed to the console was already doing that.

 

 

He watched the tactical officer retire to his own station with a small, fond smile. Tamman was Jiltanith's contemporary, one of the fourteen Imperial "children" from Nergal's crew to survive the desperate assault on Anu's enclave. All of them had joined Colin in Dahak, and he was damned thankful they had. Unlike his Terra-born, they could tie directly into their computers and run them the way the Imperium had intended, providing a small, reliable core of enhanced officers to ride herd on the hundred pardoned mutineers who formed the nub of his current crew. In time, Dahak would enhance and educate his Terra-born to the same standard, but with a complement of over a hundred thousand, it was going to take even his facilities a while to finish the task.

 

 

Colin MacIntyre reclined in his comfortable command couch, and his small smile faded as he watched the stars sweep towards him and the sleek, deadly shapes of Achuultani starships floated behind his eyes once more. The report from the sensor array replayed itself again and again, like some endless recording loop, and it filled him with dread. He'd known they were coming; now he'd "seen" them for himself. They were real, now, and so was the horrific task he and his people faced.

 

 

Dahak was more than twenty-seven light-years from Earth, but the nearest Imperial Fleet base had been over two-hundred light-years from Sol when Dahak arrived to orbit Earth. The Imperium proper lay far beyond that, yet despite the distances and the threat sweeping steadily towards his home world, they'd had no choice but to come, for only the Imperium might offer the aid they desperately needed to save that home world from those oncoming starships.

 

 

But Dahak had been unable to communicate with the Imperium for over fifty thousand years. What if there no longer was an Imperium?

 

 

It was a grim question they seldom discussed, one Colin tried hard not to ask even of himself, yet it beat in his brain incessantly, for Dahak had repaired his hypercom once the spares he needed had been reclaimed from the mutineers' Antarctic enclave. He'd been calling for help from the moment those repairs were made-indeed, he was calling even now.

 

 

And, like the sensor arrays, he had received no reply at all.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

Lieutenant Governor Horus, late captain of the mutinous sublight battleship Nergal and current viceroy of Earth, muttered a heartfelt curse as he sucked his wounded thumb.

 

 

He lowered his hand and regarded the wreckage sourly. He'd worked with Terran equipment for centuries, and he knew how fragile it was. Unfortunately, Imperial technology was becoming available again, and he'd forgotten the intercom on his desk was Terran-made.

 

 

His office door opened, and General Gerald Hatcher, head of the Chiefs of Staff of Planet Earth (assuming they ever got the organization set up), poked his head in and eyed the splintered intercom panel.

 

 

"If you want to attract my attention, Governor, it's simpler to buzz me than to use sirens."

 

 

"Sirens?"

 

 

"Well, that's what I thought I heard when my intercom screamed. Did that panel do something, or were you just pissed off?"

 

 

"Terran humans," Horus said feelingly, "are pretty damned smart-mouthed, aren't they?"

 

 

"One of our more endearing traits." Hatcher smiled at Jiltanith's father and sat down. "I take it you did want to see me?"

 

 

"Yes." Horus waved a stack of printout. "You've seen these?"

 

 

"What are-?" Horus stopped waving, and Hatcher craned his neck to read the header. He nodded. "Yep. What about them?"

 

 

"According to these, the military amalgamation is a month behind schedule, that's what," Horus began, then paused and studied Hatcher's expression. "Why don't you look surprised or embarrassed or something, General?"

 

 

"Because we're ahead of where I expected to be," Hatcher said, and Horus sat back with a resigned sigh as he saw the twinkle in his eye. Gerald Hatcher, he sometimes thought, had adapted entirely too well to the presence of extra-terrestrials on his world.

 

 

"I suppose," the general continued unabashedly, "that I should've told you we've deliberately set a schedule no one could make. That way we've got an excuse to scream at people, however well they're doing." He shrugged. "It's not nice, but when a four or five-star general screams at you, you usually discover a few gears you weren't using. Wonderful thing, screaming."

 

 

"I see." Horus regarded him with a measuring eye. "You're right-you should've told me. Unless you're planning on screaming at me?"

 

 

"Perish the thought," Hatcher murmured.

 

 

"I'm relieved," Horus said dryly. "But should I take it you're actually satisfied, then?"

 

 

"Given that we're trying to merge military command structures which, however closely allied, were never really designed for it, Frederick, Vassily and I are pleased at how quickly it's moving, but time's mighty short."

 

 

Horus nodded. Sir Frederick Amesbury, Vassily Chernikov, and Hatcher formed what Vassily was fond of calling Horus's military troika, and they were working like demons at their all but impossible task, but they had barely two years before the first Achuultani scout forces could be expected.

 

 

"What's the worst bottleneck?" he asked.

 

 

"The Asian Alliance, of course." Hatcher made a wry face. "Our deadline hasn't quite run out, and they still haven't gotten off the fence and decided whether to fight us or join us. It's irritating as hell, but not surprising. I don't think Marshal Tsien's decided to oppose us actively, but he's certainly dragging his feet, and none of the other Alliance military types will make a move until he commits himself."

 

 

"Why not demand that the Alliance remove him, then?" It was a question, but it didn't really sound like one.

 

 

"Because we can't. He's not just their top man; he's also the best they have. They know it, too, and so much of their political leadership was in Anu's pocket-and got killed when you took out the enclave-that he's the only man the Alliance military still trusts. And however much he may hate us, he hates us less than a lot of his juniors do." Hatcher shrugged. "We've asked him to meet us face-to-face, and at least he's accepted. We'll just have to do our best with him, and he's smart, Horus. He'll come around once he gets past the idea that the West has somehow conquered him."

 

 

Horus nodded again. All three of his senior generals were "Westerners" as far as Tsien and his people were concerned. The fact that Anu and his mutineers had manipulated Terran governments and terrorist groups to play the First and Third Worlds off against one another was just beginning to percolate through Western brains; it would be a while yet before the other side could accept it on an emotional basis. Some groups, like the religious crackpots who had run places like Iran and Syria, never would, and their militaries had simply been disarmed... not, unhappily, without casualties.

 

 

"Besides," Hatcher went on, "Tsien is their senior commander, and we'll need him. If we're going to make this work, we don't have any choice but to integrate our people and their people-no, scratch that. We have to integrate all of Earth's military people into a single command structure. We can't impose non-Asian officers on the Alliance and expect it to work."

 

 

"All right." Horus tossed the printout back into his "IN" basket. "I'll make myself available to see him if you think it'll help; otherwise, I'll stay out of it and let you handle it. I've got enough other headaches."

 

 

"Don't I know it. Frankly, I wouldn't trade jobs with you on a bet."

 

 

"Your selflessness overwhelms me," Horus said, and Hatcher smiled again.

 

 

"How's the rest of it going?"

 

 

"As well as can be expected." Horus shrugged. "I wish we had about a thousand times as much Imperial equipment, but the situation's improving now that the orbital industrial units Dahak left behind are hitting their stride.

 

 

"A lot of their capacity's still going into replicating themselves, and I've diverted some of their weapons-manufacturing tonnage to planetary construction equipment, but we should be all right. It's a geometric progression, you know; that's one of the beauties of automated units that don't need niggling little things like food or rest.

 

 

"We're just about on schedule setting up the tech base Anu brought down with him, and the part Dahak landed directly is up and running. We're hitting a few snags, but that's predictable when you set about building a whole new industrial infrastructure. Actually, it's the planetary defense centers that worry me most, but Geb's on that."

 

 

Geb, once Nergal's Chief Engineer and currently a senior member of the thirty-man (and woman) Planetary Council helping Horus run the planet, was working nineteen-hour days as Earth's chief construction boss. Hatcher didn't envy his exhausting task. There were all too few Imperials available to run the construction equipment they already had, and if purely Terran equipment was taking up a lot of the slack, that was rather like using coolie labor in light of their monumental task.

 

 

Geb and Horus had rejected the idea of reconfiguring Imperial equipment-or building new-to permit operation by unenhanced Terra-born. Imperial machinery was designed for operators whose implants let them interface directly with it, and altering it would degrade its efficiency. More to the point, by the time they could adapt any sizable amount of equipment, they should be producing enhanced Terra-born in sufficient numbers to make it unnecessary.

 

 

Which reminded Horus of another point.

 

 

"We're ready to start enhancing non-military people, too."

 

 

"You are?" Hatcher brightened. "That's good news."

 

 

"Yes, but it only makes another problem worse. Everyone we enhance is going to be out of action for at least a month-more probably two or three-while they get the hang of their implants. So every time we enhance one of our top people, we lose him for that long."

 

 

"Tell me about it," Hatcher said sourly. "Do you realize-well, of course you do. But it's sort of embarrassing for the brass to be such wimps compared to their personnel. Remember my aide, Allen Germaine?" Horus nodded. "I dropped by the Walter Reed enhancement center to see him yesterday. There he was, happily tying knots in quarter-inch steel rods for practice, and there I sat in my middle-aged body, feeling incredibly flabby. I used to think I was pretty fit for my age, too, damn it! And he'll be back in the office in another few weeks. That's going to be even more depressing."

 

 

"I know." Horus's eyes twinkled. "But you're just going to have to put up with it. I can't spare any of my chiefs of staff for enhancement until you get this show firmly on the road."

 

 

"Now there's an efficiency motivater!"

 

 

"Isn't it just?" Horus murmured wickedly. "And speaking of getting things on the road, how do you feel about the defensive installations I've proposed?"

 

 

"From what I understand of the technology, it looks pretty good, but I'd feel better if we had more depth to our orbital defenses. I've been reading over the operational data Dahak downloaded-and that's another thing I want: a neural link of my own-and I'm not happy about how much the Achuultani seem to like kinetic weapons. Can we really stop something the size of, say, Ceres, if they put shields on it before they throw it at us?"

 

 

"Geb says so, but it could take a lot of warheads. That's why we need so many launchers."

 

 

"Fine, but if they settle in for a methodical attack, they'll start by picking off our peripheral weapons first. That's classic siege strategy with any weaponry, and it's also why I want more depth, to allow for attrition of the orbital forts."

 

 

"Agreed. But we have to put the inner defenses into position first, which is why I'm sweating the PDC construction rates. They're what's going to produce the planetary shield, and we need their missile batteries just as badly. Not even Imperial energy weapons can punch through atmosphere very efficiently, and when they do, they play merry hell with little things like jet streams and the ozone layer. That's one reason it's easier to defend nice, airless moons and asteroids."

 

 

"Um-hum." Hatcher plucked at his lip. "I'm afraid I've been too buried in troop movements and command structures to spend as much time as I'd like boning up on hardware. Vassily's our nuts-and-bolts man. But am I correct in assuming your problems're in the hyper launchers?"

 

 

"Right the first time. Since we can't rely on beams, we need missiles, but missiles have problems of their own. As Colin is overly fond of pointing out, there are always trade-offs.

 

 

"Sublight missiles can be fired from anywhere, but they're vulnerable to interception, especially over interplanetary ranges. Hyper missiles can't be intercepted, but they can't be launched from atmosphere, either. Even air has mass, and the exact mass a hyper missile takes into hyper with it is critical to where it re-enters normal space. That's why warships pre-position their hyper missiles just inside their shields before they launch."

 

 

Hatcher leaned forward, listening carefully. Horus had been a missile specialist before the mutiny; anything he had to say on this subject was something the general wanted to hear.

 

 

"We can't do that from a planet. Oh, we could, but planetary shields aren't like warship shields. Not on habitable planets, anyway. Shield density is a function of shield area; after a point, you can't make it any denser, no matter how much power you put into it. To maintain sufficient density to stop really large kinetic weapons, our shield is going to have to contract well into the mesosphere. We can stop most smaller weapons from outside atmosphere, but not the big bastards, and we can't count on avoiding heavy kinetic attack. In fact, that's exactly what we're likely to be under if we do need to launch from planetary bases."

 

 

"And if the shield contracts, the missiles would be outside it where the Achuultani could pick them off," Hatcher mused.

 

 

"Exactly. So we have to plan on going hyper straight from launch, and that means we need launchers big enough to contain the entire hyper field-just over three times the size of the missiles-or else their drives will take chunks out of the defense center when they depart." Horus shrugged. "Since a heavy hyper missile's about forty meters long and the launcher has to be air-tight with provision for high-speed evacuation of atmosphere, we're talking some pretty serious engineering just to build the damned things."

 

 

"I see." Hatcher frowned thoughtfully. "How far behind schedule are you, Horus? We're going to need those batteries to cover our orbital defenses whatever happens."

 

 

"Oh, we're not really in trouble yet. Geb allowed for some slippage in his original plans, and he thinks he can make it up once he gets more Imperial equipment on line. Give us another six months and we should be back on schedule. By Dahak's least favorable estimate, we've got two years before the Achuultani arrive, and we should only be looking at a thousand or so scouts in the first wave. If we can hurt them badly enough, we'll have another year or so to extend the defenses before the main fleet gets here. Hopefully, we'll have more warships of our own by then, too."

 

 

"Hopefully," Hatcher agreed. He tried to radiate confidence, but he and Horus both knew. They had an excellent chance of beating off the Achuultani scouts, but unless Colin found the help they needed, Earth had no hope at all against the main incursion.

 

 

The cold winter wind and dark, cloudy sky over T'aiyuan's concrete runways struck Marshal Tsien Tao-ling as an appropriate mirror for his own mood. Impassive and bulky in his uniform greatcoat, Tsien had headed the military machine of the Asian Alliance for twelve tumultuous years, and he had earned that post through decisiveness, dedication, and sheer ability. His authority had been virtually absolute, a rare thing in this day and age. Now that same authority was like a chain of iron, dragging him remorselessly towards a decision he did not want to make.

 

 

In less than fifty years, his nation had unified all of Asia that mattered-aside from the Japanese and Filipinos, and they scarcely counted as Asians any longer. The task had been neither cheap nor easy, nor had it been bloodless, but the Alliance had built a military machine even the West was forced to respect. Much of that building had been his own work, the fruit of his sworn oath to defend his people, the Party, and the State, and now his own decision might well bring all that effort, all that sacrifice, to nothing.

 

 

Oh, yes, he thought, lengthening his stride, these are the proper skies for me.

 

 

General Quang scurried after him, his high-pitched voice fighting a losing battle with the wind. Tsien was a huge man, almost two hundred centimeters in his bare feet, and a native of Yunnan Province. Quang was both diminutive and Vietnamese, and all rhetoric about Asian Solidarity notwithstanding, there was very little love lost between the Southern Chinese and their Vietnamese "brothers." Thousands of years of mutual hostility could not be forgotten that easily, nor could Vietnam's years as a Soviet proxy be easily forgiven, and the fact that Quang was a merely marginally competent whiner with powerful Party connections only made it worse.

 

 

Quang broke off, puffing with exertion, and the marshal smiled inwardly. He knew the smaller man resented how ridiculous he looked trying to match his own long-legged stride, which was why he took pains to emphasize it whenever they met. Yet what bothered him most just now, he admitted, was hearing a fool like Quang say so many things he had thought himself.

 

 

And what of me? Tsien frowned at his own thoughts. I am a servant of the Party, sworn to protect the State, yet what am I to do when half the Central Committee has vanished? Can it be true so many of them were traitors-not just to the State but to all humanity? Yet where else have they gone? And how am I to choose when my own decision has suddenly become so all important?

 

 

He looked up at the sleek vehicle waiting on the taxi way. Its bronze-sheened alloy gleamed dully in the cloudy afternoon, and the olive-brown-skinned woman beside its open hatch was not quite Oriental-looking. The sight touched him with something he seldom felt: uncertainty. Which made him think again of what Quang had been saying. He sighed and paused, keeping his face utterly impassive with the ease of long practice

 

 

"General, your words are not new. They have been considered, by your government and mine-" what remains of them, idiot "-and the decision has been made. Unless his terms are utterly beyond reason, we will comply with the demands of this Planetary Governor." For now, at least.

 

 

"The Party has not been well-advised," Quang muttered. "It is a trick."

 

 

"A trick, Comrade General?" Tsien's small smile was wintry as the wind. "You have, perhaps, noticed that there is no longer a moon in our night skies? It has, perhaps, occurred to you that anyone with a warship of that size and power has no need of trickery? If it has not, reflect upon this, Comrade General." He nodded in the direction of the waiting Imperial cutter. "That vehicle could reduce this entire base to rubble, and nothing we have could even find it, much less stop it. Do you truly believe that the West, with hundreds of even more powerful weapons now at its disposal, could not disarm us by force as they already have those maniacs in Southwest Asia?"

 

 

"But-"

 

 

"Spare me your comments, Comrade General," Tsien said heavily. Especially since they are so close to my own doubts. I have a job to do, and you make it no easier. "We have two choices: comply, or be deprived of the poor weapons we still possess. It is possible they are honest, that this danger they speak of is real. If that is true, resistance would spell far worse for all of us than disarmament and occupation. If they are lying, then at least we may have the opportunity to observe their technology at first hand, possibly even to gain access to it ourselves."

 

 

"But-"

 

 

"I will not repeat myself, Comrade General." Tsien's voice was suddenly soft, and Quang paled. "It is bad enough when junior officers question orders; I will not tolerate it in general officers. Is that clear, Comrade General?"

 

 

"I-It is," Quang managed, and Tsien raised an eyebrow over one arctic eye. Quang swallowed. "Comrade Marshal," he added quickly.

 

 

"I am relieved to hear it," Tsien said more pleasantly, and walked towards the cutter once more. Quang followed silently, but the marshal could feel the man's resentment and resistance. Quang and those like him, particularly those with a base in the Party, were dangerous. They were quite capable of doing something utterly stupid, and the marshal made a mental note to have Quang quietly reassigned to some less sensitive duty. Command of the air patrols and SAM bases covering the Sea of Japan, perhaps. That once prestigious post had become utterly meaningless, but it might take Quang a few months to realize it.

 

 

And in the meantime, Tsien could get on with what mattered. He did not know the American Hatcher who spoke for the... beings who had seized control of Earth, but he had met Chernikov. He was a Russian, and so, by definition, not to be trusted, but his professionalism had impressed Tsien almost against his will, and he seemed to respect Hatcher and the Englishman Amesbury. Perhaps Hatcher was truly sincere. Perhaps his offer of cooperation, of an equal share in this new, planet-wide military organization, was genuine. There had, after all, been fewer outrageous demands by his political masters in the "Planetary Council" than Tsien had feared. Perhaps that was a good sign.

 

 

It had better be. All he had said to Quang was correct; the military position made resistance hopeless. Yet that had been true before in Asia's history, and if these Westerners meant to make effective use of Asia's vast manpower, some of their new military technology must fall into Asian hands.

 

 

Tsien had used that argument with dozens of frightened, angry juniors, yet he was not certain he believed it, and it irritated him to be unsure whether his own doubts were rational or emotional. After so many years of enmity, it was difficult to think with cold logic about any proposal from the West, yet in his heart of hearts, he could not believe they were lying. The scope of their present advantage was too overwhelming. They were too anxious, too concerned over the approach of these "Achuultani," for the threat to be an invention.

 

 

His waiting pilot saluted and allowed him to precede her into the cutter, then settled behind her controls. The small vehicle rose silently into the heavens, then darted away, climbing like a bullet and springing instantly forward at eight times the speed of sound. There was no sense of acceleration, yet Tsien felt another weight-the weight of inevitability-pressing down upon his soul. The wind of change was blowing, sweeping over all this world like a typhoon, and resistance would be a wall of straw before it. Whatever Quang and his ilk feared, whatever he himself thought, they must ride that wind or perish.

 

 

And at least China's culture was ancient and there were two billion Chinese. If the promises of this Planetary Council were genuine, if all citizens were to enjoy equal access to wealth and opportunity, that fact alone would give his people tremendous influence.

 

 

He smiled to himself. Perhaps these glib Westerners had forgotten that China knew how to conquer invaders it could not defeat.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

 

Gerald Hatcher and his fellows rose courteously as Marshal Tsien entered the conference room, his shoulders straight and his face impassive. He was a big bastard for a Chinese, Hatcher reflected, taller even than Vassily, and broad enough to make two of Hatcher himself.

 

 

"Marshal," he said, holding out his hand. Tsien took it with the briefest of hesitations, but his grip was firm. "Thank you for coming. Won't you sit down, please?"

 

 

Tsien waited deliberately for his "hosts" to find seats first, then sat and laid his briefcase neatly on the table. Hatcher knew Frederick and Vassily were right in insisting that he, as the sole charter member of Earth's new Supreme Chiefs of Staff with no prior connection to the Imperials, must serve as their chief, but he wished he could disagree. This hard-faced, silent man was the most powerful single serving military officer on the planet, critical to their success, and he did not-to say the least-look cheerful.

 

 

"Marshal," Hatcher said finally, "we asked you to meet us so that we could speak without the... pressure of a civilian presence-yours or ours. We won't ask you to strike any 'deals' behind your leaders' backs, but there are certain pragmatic realities we must all face. In that regard, we appreciate the difficulties of your position. We hope-" he looked levelly into the dark, unreadable eyes "-that you appreciate ours, as well."

 

 

"I appreciate," Tsien said, "that my government and others which it is pledged to defend have been issued an ultimatum."

 

 

Hatcher hid a wince. The marshal's precise, accentless English made his almost toneless words even more unpromising, but they also showed him the only possible approach, and he reached for it before prudence could change his mind.

 

 

"Very well, Marshal Tsien, I'll accept your terminology. In fact, I agree with your interpretation." He thought he saw a flicker of surprise and continued evenly. "But we're military men. We know what can happen if that ultimatum is rejected, and, I hope, we're also all realists enough to accept the truth, however unpalatable, and do our best to live with it."

 

 

"Your pardon, General Hatcher," Tsien said, "but your countries' truth seems somewhat more palatable than that which you offer mine or our allies. Our Asian allies. I see here an American, a ConEuropean, a Russian-I do not see a Chinese, a Korean, an Indian, a Thai, a Cambodian, a Malaysian. I do not even see one of your own Japanese." He shrugged eloquently.

 

 

"No, you don't-yet," Hatcher said quietly, and Tsien's eyes sharpened. "However, General Tama, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Staff, will be joining us as soon as he can hand over his present duties. So will Vice Admiral Hawter of the Royal Australian Navy. It is our hope that you, too, will join us, and that you will nominate three additional members of this body."

 

 

"Three?" Tsien frowned slightly. This was more than he had expected. It would mean four members from the Alliance against only five from the Western powers. But was it enough? He rubbed the table top with a thoughtful finger. "That is scarcely an equitable distribution in light of the populations involved, and yet..."

 

 

His voice trailed off, and Hatcher edged into the possible opening.

 

 

"If you will consider the nations the men I mentioned represent, I believe you'll be forced to admit that the representation is not inequitable in light of the actual balance of military power." He met Tsien's eyes again, hoping the other could see the sincerity in his own. The marshal didn't agree, but neither did he disagree, and Hatcher went on deliberately.

 

 

"I might also remind you, Marshal Tsien, that you do not and will not see any representative of the extreme Islamic blocs here, nor any First World hard-liners. You say we represent Western Powers, and so, by birth, we do. But we sit here as representatives of Fleet Captain Horus in his capacity as the Lieutenant Governor of Earth, and of the five men I've named, only Marshal Chernikov and General Tama-both of whom have long-standing personal and family connections with the Imperials-were among the chiefs of staff of their nations. We face a danger such as this planet has never known, and our only purpose is to respond to that danger. Towards this end, we have stepped outside traditional chains of command in making our selections. You are the most senior officer we've asked to join us, and I might point out that we've asked you to join us. If we must, we will-as you are well aware we can-compel your obedience, but what we want is your alliance."

 

 

"Perhaps," Tsien said, but his voice was thoughtful.

 

 

"Marshal, the world as we have known it no longer exists," the American said softly. "We may regret that or applaud it, but it is a fact. I won't lie to you. We've asked you to join us because we need you. We need your people and your resources, as allies, not vassals, and you're the one man who may be able to convince your governments, your officers, and your men of that fact. We offer you a full and equal partnership, and we're prepared to guarantee equal access to Imperial technology, military and civilian, and complete local autonomy. Which, I might add, is no more than our own governments have been guaranteed by Governor MacIntyre and Lieutenant Governor Horus."

 

 

"And what of the past, General Hatcher?" Tsien asked levelly. "Are we to forget five centuries of Western imperialism? Are we to forget the unfair distribution of the world's wealth? Are we, as some have," his eyes shifted slightly in Chernikov's direction, "to forget our commitment to the Revolution in order to accept the authority of a government not even of our own world?"

 

 

"Yes, Marshal," Hatcher said equally levelly, "that's precisely what you are to forget. We won't pretend those things never happened, yet you're known as a student of history. You know how China's neighbors have suffered at Chinese hands over the centuries. We can no more undo the past than your own people could, but we can offer you an equal share in building the future, assuming this planet has one to build. And that, Marshal Tsien, is the crux: if we do not join together, there will be no future for any of us."

 

 

"So. Yet you have said nothing of how this... body will be organized. Nine members. They are to hold co-equal authority, at least in theory?" Hatcher nodded, and the marshal rubbed his chin, the gesture oddly delicate in so large a man. "That seems overly large, Comrade General. Could it be that you intend to-I believe the term is 'pad'-it to present the appearance of equality while holding the true power in your own hands?"

 

 

"It could be, but it isn't. Lieutenant Governor Horus has a far more extensive military background than any of us and will act as his own minister of defense. The function of this body will be to serve as his advisors and assistants. Each of us will have specific duties and operational responsibilities-there will be more than enough of those to go around, I assure you-and the position of Chief of Staff will rotate."

 

 

"I see." Tsien laid his hands on his briefcase and studied his knuckles, then looked back up. "How much freedom will I have in making my nominations?"

 

 

"Complete freedom." Hatcher very carefully kept his hope out of his voice. "The Lieutenant Governor alone will decide upon their acceptability. If any of your nominees are rejected, you'll be free to make fresh nominations until candidates mutually acceptable to the Asian Alliance and the Lieutenant Governor are selected. It is my understanding that his sole criterion will be those officers' willingness to work as part of his own command team, and that he will evaluate that willingness on the basis of their affirmation of loyalty under an Imperial lie detector." He saw a spark of anger in Tsien's eyes and went on unhurriedly. "I may add that all of us will be required to demonstrate our own loyalty in precisely the same fashion and in the presence of all of our fellows, including yourself and your nominees."

 

 

The anger in Tsien's hooded gaze faded, and he nodded slowly.

 

 

"Very well, General Hatcher, I am empowered to accept your offer, and I will do so. I caution you that I do not agree without reservations, and that it will be difficult to convince many of my own officers to accept my decision. It goes against the grain to surrender all we have fought for, whether it is to Western powers or to powers from beyond the stars, yet you are at least partly correct. The world we have known has ended. We will join your efforts to save this planet and build anew. Not without doubts and not without suspicion-you would not believe otherwise, unless you were fools-but because we must. Yet remember this: more than half this world's population is Asian, gentlemen."

 

 

"We understand, Marshal," Hatcher said softly.

 

 

"I believe you do, Comrade General," Tsien said with the first, faint ghost of a smile. "I believe you do."

 

 

Life Councilor Geb brushed stone dust from his thick, white hair as yet another explosive charge bellowed behind him. It was a futile gesture. The air was thin, but the damnable dust made it seem a lot thicker, and his scalp was coated in fresh grit almost before he lowered his hand.

 

 

He watched another of the sublight parasites Dahak had left for Earth's defense-the destroyer Ardat, he thought-hover above the seething dust, her eight-thousand-ton hull dwarfed by the gaping hole which would, when finished, contain control systems, magazines, shield generators, and all the other complex support systems. Her tractors plucked up multi-ton slabs of a mountain's bones, and then the ship lifted away into the west, bearing yet another load of refuse to a watery grave in the Pacific. Even before Ardat was out of sight, the Terra-born work crews swarmed over the newly-exposed surface of the excavation in their breath masks, drills screaming as they prepared the next series of charges.

 

 

Geb viewed the activity with mixed pride and distaste. This absolutely flat surface of raw stone had once been the top of Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo, but that was before its selection to house Planetary Defense Center Escorpion had sealed the mountain's fate. The sublight battleships Shirhan and Escal arrived two days later, and while Escal hovered over the towering peak, Shirhan activated her main energy batteries and slabbed off the top three hundred meters of earth and stone. Escal caught the megaton chunks of wreckage in her tractors while Shirhan worked, lifting them for her pressers to toss out of the way into the ocean. It had taken the two battleships a total of twenty-three minutes to produce a level stone mesa just under six thousand meters high, and then they'd departed to mutilate the next mountain on their list.

 

 

The construction crews had moved in in their wake, and they had labored mightily ever since. Imperial technology had held the ecological effects of their labors to a minimum impossible for purely Terran resources, but Geb had seen Chimborazo before his henchmen arrived. The esthetic desecration of their labors revolted him; what they had accomplished produced his pride.

 

 

PDC Escorpion, one of forty-six such bases going up across the surface of the planet, each a project gargantuan enough to daunt the Pharaohs, and each with a completion deadline of exactly eighteen months. It was an impossible task... and they were doing it anyway.

 

 

He stepped aside as the whine of a gravitonic drive approached from one side. The stocky, olive-brown Imperial at the power bore's controls nodded to him, but despite his rank, he was only one more rubber-necker in her way, and he backed further as she positioned her tremendous machine carefully, checking the coordinates in her inertial guidance systems against the engineers' plat of the base to be. An eye-searing dazzle flickered as she powered up the cutting head and brought it to bear.

 

 

The power bore floated a rock-steady half-meter off the ground, and Geb's implants tingled with the torrent of focused energy. A hot wind billowed back from the rapidly sinking shaft, blowing a thick, plume of powdered rock to join the choking pall hanging over the site, and he stepped still further back. Another thunderous explosion burst in on him, and he shook his head, marveling at the demonic energy loosed upon this hapless mountain. Every safety regulation in the book-Imperial and Terran alike-had been relaxed to the brink of insanity, and the furious labor went on day and night, rain and sun, twenty-four hours a day. It might stop for a hurricane; nothing less would be permitted to interfere.

 

 

It was bad enough for his Imperials, he thought, watching the dust-caked woman concentrate, but at least they had their biotechnics to support them. The Terra-born did not, and their primitive equipment required far more of pure muscle to begin with. But Horus had less than five thousand Imperials; barely three thousand of them could be released to construction projects, and the PDCs were only one of the clamorous needs Geb and his assistants had to meet somehow. With enhanced personnel and their machinery spread so thin, he had no choice but to call upon the primitive substitutes Earth could provide. At least he could lift in equipment, materials, and fuel on tractors as needed.

 

 

A one-man grav scooter grounded beside him. Tegran, the senior Imperial on the Escorpion site, climbed off it to slog through the blowing dust to Geb's side and pushed up his goggles to watch the power bore at work.

 

 

Tegran was much younger, biologically, at least, than Geb, but his face was gaunt, and he'd lost weight since coming out of stasis. Geb wasn't surprised. Tegran had never personally offended against the people of Earth, but like most of the Imperials freed from Anu's stasis facilities, he was driving himself until he dropped to wash away the stigma of his past.

 

 

The cutting head died, and the power bore operator backed away from the vertical shaft. A Terra-born, Imperial-equipped survey team scurried forward, instruments probing and measuring, and its leader lifted a hand, thumb raised in approval. The dust-covered woman responded with the same gesture and moved away, heading for the next site, and Horus turned to Tegran.

 

 

"Nice," he said. "I make that a bit under twenty minutes to drill a hundred-fifty-meter shaft. Not bad at all."

 

 

"Um," Tegran said. He walked over to the edge of the fifty meter-wide hole which would one day house a hyper missile launcher and stood peering down at its glassy walls. "It's better, but I can squeeze another four or five percent efficiency out of the bores if I tweak the software a bit more."

 

 

"Wait a minute, Tegran-you've already cut the margins mighty close!"

 

 

"You worry too much, Geb." Tegran grinned tightly. "There's a hefty safety factor built into the components. If I drop the designed lifetime to, say, three years instead of twenty, I can goose the equipment without risking personnel. And since we've only got two years to get dug in-" He shrugged.

 

 

"All right," Geb said after a moment's thought, "but get me the figures before you make any more modifications. And I want a copy of the software. If you can pull it off, I'll want all the sites to be able to follow suit."

 

 

"Fine," Tegran agreed, walking back to his scooter. Geb followed him, and the project boss paused as he remounted. "What's this I hear about non-military enhancement?" he asked, his tone elaborately casual.

 

 

Geb eyed him thoughtfully. A few other Imperials had muttered darkly over the notion, for the Fourth Imperium had been an ancient civilization by Terran standards. Despite supralight travel, over-crowding on its central planets had led to a policy restricting full enhancement (and the multi-century lifespans which went with it) solely to military personnel and colonists. Which, Geb reflected, had been one reason the Fleet never had trouble finding recruits even with minimum hitches of a century and a half... and why Horus's policy of providing full enhancement to every adult Terran, for all intents and purposes, offended the sensibilities of the purists among his Imperials.

 

 

Yet Geb hadn't expected Tegran to be one of them, for the project head knew better than most that enhancing every single human on the planet, even if there had been time for it, would leave them with far too few people to stand off an Achuultani incursion.

 

 

"We started this week," he said finally. "Why?"

 

 

"Wellllllllll..." Tegran looked back at the departing power bore, then waved expressively about the site. "I just wanted to get my bid for them in first. I've got a hell of a job to do here, and-"

 

 

"Don't worry," Geb cut in, hiding his relief. "We need them everywhere, but the PDCs have a high priority. I don't want anybody with implants standing idle, but I'll try to match the supply of operators to the equipment you actually have on hand."

 

 

"Good!" Tegran readjusted his goggles and lifted his scooter a meter off the ground, then grinned broadly at his boss. "These Terrans are great, Geb. They work till they drop, then get back up and start all over again. Enhance me enough of them, and I'll damned well build you another Dahak!"

 

 

He waved and vanished into the bedlam, and Geb smiled after him.

 

 

He was getting too old for this, Horus thought for no more than the three millionth time. He yawned, then stretched and rose from behind his desk and collected his iced tea from the coaster. Caffeine dependency wasn't something the Imperium had gone in for, but he'd been barely sixty when he arrived here. A lifetime of acculturation had taken its toll.

 

 

He walked over to the windowed wall of his office atop White Tower and stared out over the bustling nocturnal activity of Shepard Center. The rocket plumes of the Terran space effort were a thing of the past, but the huge field was almost too small for the Imperial auxiliaries and bigger sublight ships-destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and transports-which thronged it now. And this was only one of the major bases. The largest, admittedly, but only one.

 

 

The first enhanced Terra-born crewmen were training in the simulators now. Within a month, he'd have skeleton crews for most of the major units Dahak had left behind. In another six, he'd have crews for the smaller ships and pilots for the fighters. They'd be short on experience, but they'd be there, and they'd pick up experience quickly.

 

 

Maybe even quickly enough.

 

 

He sighed and took himself to task. Anxiety was acceptable; depression was not, but it was hard to avoid when he remembered the heedless, youthful passion which had pitted him in rebellion against the Imperium.

 

 

The Fourth Imperium had arisen from the sole planet of the Third which the Achuultani had missed. It had dedicated itself to the destruction of the next incursion with a militancy which dwarfed Terran comprehension, but that had been seven millennia before Horus's birth, and the Achuultani had never come. And so, perhaps, there were no Achuultani. Heresy. Unthinkable to say it aloud. Yet the suspicion had gnawed at their brains, and they'd come to resent the endless demands of their long, regimented preparation. Which explained, if it did not excuse, why the discontented of Dahak's crew had lent themselves to the mutiny which brought them to Earth.

 

 

And so here they were, Horus thought, sipping iced tea and watching the moonless sky of the world which had become his own, with the resources of this single, primitive planet and whatever of Imperial technology they could build and improvise in the time they had, face-to-face with the bogey man they'd decided no longer existed.

 

 

Six billion people. Like the clutter of ships below his window, it seemed a lot... until he compared it to the immensity of the foe sweeping towards them from beyond those distant stars.

 

 

He straightened his shoulders and stared up at the cold, clear chips of light. So be it. He had once betrayed the Fleet uniform he wore, but now, at last, he faced his race's ancient enemy. He faced it ill-prepared and ill-equipped, yet the human race had survived two previous incursions. By the skin of their racial teeth and the Maker's grace, perhaps, but they'd survived, which was more than any of their prehistoric predecessors could say.

 

 

He drew a deep breath, his thoughts reaching out across the light-years to his daughter and Colin MacIntyre. They depended upon him to defend their world while they sought the assistance Earth needed, and when they returned-not if-there would be a planet here to greet them. He threw that to the uncaring stars like a solemn vow and then turned his back upon them. He sat back down at his desk and bent over his endless reams of reports once more.

 

 

Alheer va-Chanak's forehead crinkled in disgust as a fresh sneeze threatened. He wiggled on his command pedestal, fighting the involuntary reflex, and heard the high-pitched buzz of his co-pilot's amusement-buried in the explosive eruption of the despised sneeze.

 

 

"Kreegor seize all colds!" va-Chanak grunted, mopping his broad breathing slits with a tissue. Roghar's laughter buzzed in his ear as he lost the last vestige of control, and va-Chanak swiveled his sensory cluster to bend a stern gaze upon him. "All very well for you, you unhatched grub!" he snarled. "You'd probably think it was hilarious if it happened inside a vac suit!"

 

 

"Certainly not," Roghar managed to return with a semblance of decent self-control. "Of course, I did warn you not to spend so long soaking just before a departure."

 

 

Va-Chanak suppressed an ignoble desire to throttle his co-pilot. The fact that Roghar was absolutely right only made the temptation stronger, but these four- and five-month missions could be pure torment for the amphibious Mersakah. And, he grumbled to himself, especially for a fully-active sire like himself. Four thousand years of civilization was a frail shield against the spawning urges of all pre-history, but where was he to find a compliant school of dams in an asteroid extraction operation? Nowhere, that was bloody well where, and if he chose to spend a few extra day parts soaking in the habitat's swamp sections, that should have been his own affair.

 

 

And would have been, he thought gloomily, if he hadn't brought this damned cold with him. Ah, well! It would wear itself out, and a few more tours would give him a credit balance fit to attract the finest dam. Not to mention the glamour which clung to spacefarers in groundlings' eyes, and-

 

 

An alarm squealed, and Alheer va-Chanak's sensory cluster snapped back to his instruments. All three eyes irised wide in disbelief as the impossible readings registered.

 

 

"Kreegor take it, look at that!" Roghar gasped beside him, but va-Chanak was already stabbing at the communications console.

 

 

More of the immense ships-ninety dihar long if they were a har-appeared out of nowhere, materializing like fen fey from the nothingness of space. Scores of them-hundreds!

 

 

Roghar babbled away about first-contacts and alien life forms beside him, but even as he gabbled, the co-pilot was spinning the extractor ship and aligning the main engines to kill velocity for rendezvous. Va-Chanak left him to it, and his own mind burned with conflicting impulses. Disbelief. Awe. Wonder and delight that the Mersakah were not alone. Horror that it had been left to him to play ambassador to the future which had suddenly arrived. Concern lest their visitors misinterpret his fumbling efforts. Visions of immortality-and how the dams would react to this-!

 

 

He was still punching up his communications gear when the closest Achuultani starship blew his vessel out of existence.

 

 

The shattered wreckage tumbled away, and the Achuultani settled into their formation. Normal-space drives woke, and the mammoth cylinders swept in-system, arrowing towards the planet of Mers at twenty-eight percent of light-speed while their missile sections prepped their weapons.

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

The endless, twenty-meter-wide column of lightning fascinated him. It wasn't really lightning, but that was how Vlad Chernikov thought of it, though the center of any Terran lightning bolt would be a dead zone beside its titanic density. The force field which channeled it also silenced it and muted its terrible brilliance, but Vlad had received his implants. His sensors felt it, like a tide race of fire, even through the field, and it awed him.

 

 

He turned away, folding his hands behind him as he crossed the huge chamber at Dahak's heart. Only Command One and Two were as well protected, for this was the source of Dahak's magic. The starship boasted three hundred and twelve fusion power plants, but though he could move and fight upon the wings of their power, he required more than that to outspeed light itself.

 

 

This howling chain of power was that more. It was Dahak's core tap, a tremendous, immaterial funnel that reached deep into hyper space, connecting the ship to a dimension of vastly higher energy states. It dragged that limitless power in, focused and refined it, and directed it into the megaton mass of his Enchanach Drive.

 

 

And with it, the drive worked its sorcery and created the perfectly-opposed, converging gravity masses which forced Dahak out of normal space in a series of instantaneous transpositions. It took a measurable length of time to build those masses between transpositions, but that interval was perceptible only to one such as Dahak. A tiny, imperfect flaw the time stream of the cosmos never noticed.

 

 

Which was as well. Should Dahak dwell in normal space any longer than that, catastrophe would be the lot of any star system he crossed. As those fields converged upon his hull, he became ever so briefly more massive than the most massive star. Which was why ships of his ilk did not use supralight speed within a system, for the initial activation and final deactivation of the Enchanach Drive took much longer, a time measured in microseconds, not femtoseconds. Anu had induced a drive failure to divert the starship from its original mission for "emergency repairs," and a tiny error in Dahak's crippled return to sublight speeds explained the irregularity of Pluto's orbit which had puzzled Terran astronomers for so long. Had it occurred deep enough in Sol's gravity well, the star might well have gone nova.

 

 

Chernikov plugged his neural feed back into the engineering subsection of Dahak's computer net, and the computers answered him with a joyousness he was still getting used to. It was odd how alive, how aware, those electronic brains seemed, and Baltan, his ex-mutineer assistant, insisted they had been far less so before the mutiny.

 

 

Chernikov believed him, and he believed he understood the happiness which suffused the computer net. Dahak had a crew once more-understrength, perhaps, by Imperial standards, but a crew-and that was as it should be. Not just because he had been lonely, but because he needed them to provide that critical element in any warship: redundancy. It was dangerous for so powerful a unit to be utterly dependent upon its central computer, especially when battle damage might cut Comp Cent off from essential components of its tremendous hull.

 

 

So it was good that men had returned to Dahak at last. Especially now, when the very survival of their species depended upon him.

 

 

"Attention on deck," Dahak intoned as Colin entered the conference room, and he winced almost imperceptibly as his command team rose with punctilious formality. He smoothed his expression and crossed impassively to the head of the crystalline conference table, making yet another mental note to have a heart-to-diode talk with the computer.

 

 

Dozens of faces looked back at him from around the table, but at least he'd gotten used to facing so many eyes. Dahak was technically a single ship, but one with a full-strength crew a quarter-million strong, a normal sublight parasite strength of two hundred warships, and the firepower to shatter planets. His commander might be called a captain, yet for all intents and purposes he was an admiral, charged with the direction of more destructiveness than Terra's humanity had ever dreamed was possible, and the size of Colin's staff reflected that.

 

 

There were a lot of "Fleet Captains" on it, though Dahak's new protocol demanded that they be addressed in Colin's presence either as "Commander" or simply by the department they headed, since he was the only "Senior Fleet Captain" and there could be but one captain aboard a warship. The Imperium had used any officer's full rank and branch, which Colin and his Terra-born found too cumbersome, but Dahak had obstinately resisted Colin's suggestion that he might be called "Commodore" to ease the problem.

 

 

Colin let his eyes sweep over them as he sat and they followed suit. Jiltanith was at his right, as befitted his second-in-command and the officer charged with the organization and day-to-day management of Dahak's operation. Hector MacMahan sat at his left, as impeccable in the space-black of the Imperial Marines as he had ever been in the uniform of the United States. Beyond them, rows of officers, each department head flanked by his or her senior assistants, ran down the sides of the table to meet at its foot, where he faced Vlad Chernikov, the man who had inherited the shipboard authority which had once been Anu's.

 

 

"Thank you all for coming," Colin said. "As you know, we'll be leaving supralight to approach the Sheskar System in approximately twenty-one hours. With luck, that means we'll soon re-establish contact with the Imperium, but we can't count on that. We're going into a totally unknown situation, and I want final readiness estimates from all of my senior department heads-and for all of you to hear them-before we do."

 

 

Heads nodded, and he turned to Jiltanith.

 

 

"Would you care to begin with a general overview, XO?" he asked.

 

 

"Certes, Captain," Jiltanith said, and turned confident eyes to her fellows. "Our Dahak hath been a teacher most astute-aye, and a taskmaster of the sternest!" That won a mutter of laughter, for Dahak had driven his new crew so hard ten percent of even his capacity had been committed full-time to their training and neural-feed education. "While 'tis true I would be better pleased with some small time more of practice, yet have our folk learned their duties well, and I say with confidence our officers and crew will do all mortal man may do if called."

 

 

"Thank you," Colin said. It was scarcely a detailed report, but he hadn't asked for that, and he turned to Hector MacMahan.

 

 

"Ground Forces?"

 

 

"The ground forces are better organized than we could reasonably expect," the hawk-faced Marine replied, "if not yet quite as well as I'd like.

 

 

"We have four separate nationalities in our major formations, and we'll need a few more months to really shake down properly. For the moment, we've adopted Imperial organization and ranks but confined them to our original unit structures. Our USFC and SAS people are our recon/special forces component; the Second Marines have been designated as our assault component; the German First Armored will operate our ground combat vehicles; and the Sendai Division and the Nineteenth Guards Parachute Division are our main ground force.

 

 

"There's been a bit of rivalry over who got the choicest assignment, but it hasn't gotten physical... not very often, anyway." He shrugged. "These are all elite formations, and until we can integrate them fully, a continued sense of identity is inevitable, but they've settled in and mastered their new weapons quite well. I'm confident we can handle anything we have to handle."

 

 

"Thank you," Colin said again. He turned to General Georgi Treshnikov, late of the Russian Air Force and now commander of the three hundred Imperial fighters Dahak had retained for self-defense. "Parasite Command?"

 

 

"As Hector, we are ready," Treshnikov said. "We have even more nationalities, but less difficulty in integration, for we did not embark complete national formations to crew our fighters."

 

 

"Thank you. Intelligence, Commander Ninhursag?"

 

 

"We've done all we can with the non-data Dahak has been able to give us, Captain. You've all seen our reports." The stocky, pleasantly plain Imperial who had been Nergal's spy within Anu's camp shrugged. "Until we have some hard facts to plug into our analyses, we're only marking time."

 

 

"I understand. Biosciences?"

 

 

"Bioscience is weary but ready, Captain," Fleet Captain (B) Cohanna replied. Fifty thousand years in stasis hadn't blunted her confidence... or her sense of humor. "We finished the last enhancement procedures last month, and we're a little short on biotechnic hardware at the moment-" that won a fresh mutter of laughter "-but other than that, we're in excellent shape."

 

 

"Thank you. Maintenance?"

 

 

"We're looking good, Captain." Fleet Captain (M) Geran was another of Nergal's "children," but, aside from his eyes, he looked more like a Terran, with dark auburn hair, unusually light skin for an Imperial, and a mobile mouth that smiled easily. "Dahak's repair systems did a bang-up job, and he slapped anything he wasn't using into stasis. I'd like more practice on damage control, but-" He raised his right hand, palm upward, and Colin nodded.

 

 

"Understood. Hopefully you'll have lots of time to go on practicing. We'll try to keep it that way. Tactical?"

 

 

"We're in good shape, sir," Tamman said. "Battle Comp's doing well with simulators and training problems. Our Terra-born aren't as comfortable with their neural feeds as I'd like yet, but that's only a matter of practice."

 

 

"Logistics?"

 

 

"Buttoned up, sir," Fleet Commander (L) Caitrin O'Rourke said confidently. "We've got facilities for three times the people we've actually got aboard, and all park and hydroponic areas have been fully reactivated, so provisions and life support are no sweat. Magazines are at better than ninety-eight percent-closer to ninety-nine-and we're in excellent shape for spares."

 

 

"Engineering?"

 

 

"Engineering looks good, sir," Chernikov replied. "Our Imperials and Terra-born have shaken down extremely well together. I am confident."

 

 

"Good. Very good." Colin leaned back and smiled at his officers, glad none of them had tried to gloss over any small concerns they still had. Not that he'd expected them to.

 

 

"In that case, I think we can conclude, unless there are any questions?" As he'd expected, there were none. In a very real sense, this meeting had been almost ceremonial, a chance for them to show their confidence to one another.

 

 

"Very well." He rose and nodded to them all. "We shall adjourn." He started for the door, and a mellow voice spoke again.

 

 

"Attention on deck," it repeated, and Colin swallowed a resigned sigh as his solemn-faced officers stood once more.

 

 

"Carry on, ladies and gentlemen," he said, and stepped out the hatch.

 

 

"Supralight shutdown in two minutes," Dahak remarked calmly.

 

 

Colin took great pains to project a matching calm, but his own relaxation was all too artificial, and he saw the same strain, hidden with greater or lesser success, in all of his bridge officers. Dahak was at battle stations, and a matching team under Jiltanith manned Command Two on the far side of the core hull. The holographic images of Command Two's counterparts sat beside each of his officers, which made his bridge seem a bit more crowded but meant everyone knew exactly what was happening... and that he got to sit beside Jiltanith's image on duty.

 

 

A score of officers were physically present at their consoles on the starlit command deck. In an emergency, Colin could have run the ship without any of them, something which would have been impossible with the semi-aware Comp Cent of yore. But even though Dahak was now capable of assessing intent and exercising discretion, there were limits to the details Colin's human brain could handle. Each of his highly-trained officers took his or her own portion of the burden off of him, and he was devoutly thankful for their presence.

 

 

"Sublight in one minute," Dahak intoned, and Colin felt the beginnings of shutdown flowing through his interface with Chernikov's engineering computers. The measured sequence of commands moved like clockwork, and a tiny, almost imperceptible vibration shook Dahak's gargantuan bulk.

 

 

"Sublight... now," Dahak reported, and the stars moving across the visual display were abruptly still.

 

 

A G3 star floated directly "ahead" of Colin in the projection. It was the brightest single object in view, and it abruptly began to grow as Sarah Meir, his astrogator, engaged the sublight drive.

 

 

"Core tap shutdown," Dahak announced.

 

 

"Enhance image on the star system, Dahak," Colin requested, and the star swelled while a three-dimensional schematic of the Sheskar System's planetary orbits flicked to life about it. Only the outermost planet was visible even to Dahak at their present range, but tiny circles on each orbit trace indicated the position each planet should hold.

 

 

"Any artificial radiation?"

 

 

"Negative, Captain," Dahak replied, and Colin bit his lip. Sheskar was-or had been-the Imperium's forward bastion on the traditional Achuultani approach vector. Perimeter Security should have detected and challenged them almost instantly.

 

 

"Captain," Dahak broke the silence which had fallen, "I have detected discrepancies in the system."

 

 

The visual display altered as he spoke. Oddly clumped necklaces of far smaller dots replaced the circles representing Sheskar's central trio of planets, spreading ominously about the central star, and Colin swallowed.

 

 

Dahak had gone sublight at the closest possible safe distance from Sheskar, but that was still eleven light-hours out. Even at his maximum sublight velocity, it would have taken almost twenty-four hours to reach the primary, yet it had become depressingly clear that there was no reason to travel that deep into the system, and Colin had stopped five light-hours out to save time when they left.

 

 

At the moment, he, Jiltanith, Hector MacMahan, and Ninhursag sat in Conference One, watching a scaled-down holo of the star system while they tried to decide where to leave to.

 

 

"I have completed preliminary scans, Captain," Dahak announced.

 

 

"Well? Was it the Achuultani?"

 

 

"It is, of course, impossible to be certain, but I would estimate that it was not. Had it been an incursion, it would, of necessity, have followed a path other than that traditionally employed by the Achuultani, else the scanner arrays which reported this incursion had already been destroyed. Since they were not, I conclude that it was not the Achuultani who accomplished this."

 

 

"Just what we needed," Hector said quietly. "Somebody else who goes around blowing away entire planets."

 

 

"Unfortunately, that would appear to be precisely what has happened, General MacMahan. It would not, however, appear to be of immediate concern. My scans indicate that this destruction occurred on the close order of forty-eight thousand years ago."

 

 

"How close?" Colin demanded.

 

 

"Plus or minus five percent, Captain."

 

 

"Shit." Colin looked up apologetically as the expletive escaped him, but no one seemed to have noticed. He drew a deep breath. "All right, Dahak, cut to the chase. What do you think happened?"

 

 

"Analysis rules out the employment of kinetic weaponry," Dahak said precisely, "distribution of the planetary rubble is not consistent with impact patterns. Rather, it would appear that the planetary bodies suffered implosive destruction consistent with the use of gravitonic warheads, a weapon, so far as is known to the Imperium's data base, the Achuultani have never employed."

 

 

"Gravitonic?" Colin tugged on his prominent nose, and his green eyes narrowed. "I don't like the sound of that."

 

 

"Nor I," Jiltanith said quietly. "If 'twas not the Achuultani, then must it have been another, and such weapons lie even now within our magazines."

 

 

"Exactly," Colin said. He shuddered at the thought. A heavy gravitonic warhead produced a nice, neat little black hole. Not very long-lived, and not big enough to damage most suns, but big enough, and a hyper-capable missile with the right targeting could put the damned thing almost inside a planet.

 

 

"That is true," Dahak observed, then hesitated briefly, as if he faced a conclusion he wanted to reject. "I regret to say, Captain, that the destruction matches that which would be associated with our own Mark Tens. In point of fact, and after making due allowance for the time which has passed, it corresponds almost exactly to the results produced by those weapons."

 

 

"Hector? Ninhursag?"

 

 

"Dahak's dancing around the point, Colin," MacMahan's face was grim. "There's a very simple and likely explanation."

 

 

"I agree," Ninhursag said in a small voice. "I never would have believed it could happen, but it's got all the earmarks of a civil war."

 

 

A brief silence followed the words someone had finally said. Then Colin cleared his throat.

 

 

"Response, Dahak?"

 

 

"I... am forced to concur." Dahak's mellow voice sounded sad. "Sheskar Four, in particular, was very heavily defended. Based upon available data and the fact that no advanced alien race other than the Achuultani had been encountered by the Imperium prior to the mutiny, I must conclude that only the Imperium itself possessed the power to do what has been done."

 

 

"What about someone they ran into after the mutiny?"

 

 

"Possible, but unlikely, Captain. Due in no small part to previous incursions, there are very few-indeed, effectively no-habitable worlds between Sol and Sheskar. Logic thus suggests that any hostile aliens would have been required to fight their way across a substantial portion of the Imperium even to reach Sheskar. Assuming technical capabilities on a par with those of this ship-a conclusion suggested, though not proven, by my analysis of the weaponry employed-that would require a hostile imperium whose military potential equaled or exceeded that of the Imperium itself. While it is not impossible that such an entity might have been encountered, I would rate the probability as no greater than that of an Achuultani attack."

 

 

Colin looked around the table again, then back at the silent holo display. "This isn't good."

 

 

"Hast a gift for understatement, my Colin." Jiltanith shook her head. "Good Dahak, what likelihood wouldst thou assign to decision by the Imperium 'gainst fortifying Sheskar anew?"

 

 

"Slight," Dahak said.

 

 

"Why?" Colin asked. "There's nothing left to fortify."

 

 

"Inaccurate, Captain. No Earth-like planets remain, but Sheskar was selected for a Fleet base because of its location, not its planets, and it now possesses abundant large asteroids for installation sites. Indeed, the absence of atmosphere would make those installations more defensible, not less."

 

 

"In other words," MacMahan murmured, "they would have come back if they were interested in re-establishing their pre-war frontiers."

 

 

"Precisely, General."

 

 

Another, longer silence fell, and Colin drew a deep breath.

 

 

"All right, let's look at it. We have a destroyed base in a vital location. It appears to have been taken out with Imperial weapons, implying a civil war as a probable cause. It wasn't rebuilt. What does that imply?"

 

 

"Naught we wish to discover." Jiltanith managed a small smile. "'Twould seem the Imperium hath fallen 'pon hard times."

 

 

"True," MacMahan said. "I see two probabilities, Colin." Colin raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue.

 

 

"First, they wiped each other out. That would explain the failure to rebuild, and it would also mean our entire mission is pointless." A shiver ran through his human audience, but he continued unflinchingly.

 

 

"On the other hand, I don't believe anything the size of the Imperium wiped itself out completely. The Imperium is-or was, or whatever-huge. Even assuming anyone could have been insane enough to embark on destruction on that scale, I don't see how they could do it. Their infrastructure would erode out from under them as they took out industrialized systems, and it seems unlikely anyone would follow leaders mad enough to try."

 

 

"Yet 'twas done to Sheskar," Jiltanith pointed out.

 

 

"True, but Sheskar was primarily a military base, 'Tanni, not a civilian system. The decision to attack it would be evaluated purely in terms of military expedience, like nuking a well-armed island base in the middle of an ocean. It's a lot easier to decide to hit a target like that."

 

 

"All right," Colin nodded. "But if they didn't wipe themselves out, why didn't they come back?"

 

 

"That's probability two," MacMahan said flatly. "They did so much damage they backslid. They could have done a fair job of smashing themselves without actually destroying all their planets. It's hard for me to visualize a high-tech planet which wasn't nuked-or something like it-decivilizing completely, but I can accept that more easily than the idea that all their planets look like this." He gestured at the holo display.

 

 

"Besides, they might have damaged themselves in other ways. Suppose they fought their war and found themselves faced with massive reconstruction closer to the heart of the Imperium? Sheskar is-was-a hell of a long way from their next nearest inhabited system, and, as Dahak has pointed out, this area isn't exactly prime real estate. If they had heavily damaged areas closer to home, they could've decided to deal with those first. Afterward, the area on the far side of the Imperium, where damage from the Achuultani hadn't wrecked so many planets to begin with, would have been a natural magnet for future expansion."

 

 

"Mayhap, yet that leaveth still a question. Whyfor, if Sheskar was so vital, rebuild it not?"

 

 

"I'm afraid I can answer that," Ninhursag said unhappily. "Maybe Anu wasn't as crazy-or quite as unique in his craziness-as we thought." She shrugged as all eyes turned to her. "What I'm trying to say is that if things got so bad the Imperium actually fought a civil war, they weren't Imperials anymore. I'm the only person in this room who was an adult at the time of the mutiny, and I know how I would've reacted to the thought of wiping out a Fleet base. Even those of us who didn't really believe in the Achuultani-even the 'atheists,' I suppose you might call them, who violently rejected their existence-would have hesitated to do that. That's why Anu lied to us about his own intent to attack the Imperium."

 

 

She looked unhappily at the holo for a moment, and none of the others intruded upon her silence.

 

 

"None of you were ever Imperial citizens, so you may not understand what I'm trying to say, but preparing to fight the Achuultani was something we'd societized into ourselves on an almost instinctual level. Even those who most resented the regimentation, the discipline, wouldn't have destroyed our defenses. It would be like... like Holland blowing up its dikes because of one dry summer, for Maker's sake!"

 

 

"You're saying that disbelief in the Achuultani must have become general?" Colin said. "That if it hadn't, the Fleet would never have let itself be caught up in something like a civil war in the first place?"

 

 

"Exactly. And if that's true, why rebuild Sheskar as a base against an enemy that doesn't exist?" Ninhursag gave a short, ugly laugh. "Maybe we were the wave of the future instead of just a bunch of murderous traitors!"

 

 

"Easy, 'Hursag." MacMahan touched her shoulder, and she inhaled sharply.

 

 

"Sorry." Her voice was a bit husky. "It's just that I don't really want to believe what I'm saying-especially not now that I know how wrong we were!"

 

 

"Maybe not, but it makes sense," Colin said slowly.

 

 

"Agreed, Captain," Dahak said. "Indeed, there is another point. For Fleet vessels to have participated in this action would require massive changes in core programming by at least one faction. Without that, Fleet Central Alpha Priority imperatives would have precluded any warfare which dissipated resources and so weakened Battle Fleet's ability to resist an incursion. This would appear to support Fleet Commander Ninhursag's analysis."

 

 

"All right. But even if it's not the Imperium we came to find, there may still be an Imperium somewhere up ahead of us." Colin tried to project more optimism than he felt. "Dahak, what was the nearest piece of prime real estate? The closest star system which wasn't purely a military base?"

 

 

"Defram," Dahak replied without hesitation. "A G2-K5 binary system with two inhabited planets. As of the last Imperial census in my data base, the system population was six-point-seven-one-seven billion. Main industries-"

 

 

"That's enough," Colin interrupted. "How far away is it?"

 

 

"One hundred thirty-three-point-four light-years, Captain."

 

 

"Um... bit over two months at max. That means a round trip of just over eleven months before we could get back to Earth."

 

 

"Approximately eleven-point-three-two months, Captain."

 

 

"All right, people," Colin sighed. "I don't see we have too much choice. Let's go to Defram and see what we can see."

 

 

"Aye," Jiltanith agreed. " 'Twould seem therein our best hope doth lie."

 

 

"I agree," MacMahan said, and Ninhursag nodded silently.

 

 

"Okay. I want to sit here and think a little more. Take the watch, please, 'Tanni. Dismiss from battle stations, then have Sarah get us underway on sublight. I'll join you in Command One when I finish here." Jiltanith rose with a silent nod, and he turned to the others.

 

 

"Hector, you and 'Hursag sit down and build me models of as many scenarios as you can. I know you don't have any hard data, but put your heads together with our other adult Imperials and Dahak and extrapolate trends."

 

 

"Yes, sir," MacMahan said quietly, and Colin propped his chin in his hands, elbows on the table, and stared sadly at the holo as the others filed out the hatch. He expected no sudden inspiration, for there was nothing here to offer it. He only knew that he needed to be alone with his thoughts for a while, and, unlike his subordinates, he had the authority to be that way.

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

"Well, Marshal Tsien?"

 

 

Tsien regarded Gerald Hatcher levelly as they strode down the hall. It was the first time either had spoken since leaving the Lieutenant Governor's office, and Tsien crooked an eyebrow, inviting amplification. The American only smiled, declining to make his question more specific, but Tsien understood and, in all honesty, appreciated his tact.

 

 

"I am... impressed, Comrade General," he said. "The Lieutenant Governor is a formidable man." His answer meant more than the words said, but he had already seen enough of this American to know he would understand.

 

 

"He's all of that," Hatcher agreed, opening a door and waving Tsien into his own office. "He's had to be," he added in a grimmer voice.

 

 

Tsien nodded as they crossed the deserted office. It was raining again, he noted, watching the water roll down the windows. Hatcher gestured to an armchair facing the desk as he circled to reach his own swiveled chair.

 

 

"So I have understood," Tsien replied, sitting carefully. "Yet he seems unaware of it. He does not strike one as so... so-"

 

 

"Grand? Self-important?" Hatcher suggested with a grin, and Tsien chuckled despite himself.

 

 

"Both of those things, I suppose. Forgive me, but you in the West have always seemed to me to be overly taken with personal pomp and ceremony. With us, the office or occasion, not the individual, deserves such accolades. Do not mistake me, Comrade General; we have our own methods of deification, but we have learned from past mistakes. Those we deify now are-for the most part-safely dead. My country would understand your Governor. Our Governor, I suppose I must say. If your purpose is to win my admission that I am impressed by him, you have succeeded, General Hatcher."

 

 

"Good." Hatcher frowned thoughtfully, his face somehow both tighter and more open. "Do you also accept that we're being honest with you, Marshal?"

 

 

Tsien regarded him for a moment, then dipped his head in a tiny nod.

 

 

"Yes. All of my nominees were confirmed, and the Governor's demonstration of his biotechnics-" Tsien hesitated briefly on the still unfamiliar word "-and those other items of Imperial technology were also convincing. I believe-indeed, I have no choice but to believe-your warnings of the Achuultani, and that you and your fellows are making every effort to achieve success. In light of all those things, I have no choice but to join your effort. I do not say it will be easy, General Hatcher, but we shall certainly make the attempt. And, I believe, succeed."

 

 

"Good," Hatcher said again, then leaned back with a smile. "In that case, Marshal, we're ready to run the first thousand personnel of your selection through enhancement as soon as your people in Beijing can put a list together."

 

 

"Ah?" Tsien sat a bit straighter. This was moving with speed, indeed! He had not expected these Westerners- He stopped and corrected himself. He had not expected these people to offer such things so soon. Surely there would be a period of testing and evaluation of sincerity first!

 

 

But when he looked across at the American, the slight, ironic twinkle in Hatcher's eyes told him his host knew precisely what he was thinking, and the realization made him feel just a bit ashamed.

 

 

"Comrade General," he said finally, "I appreciate your generosity, but-"

 

 

"Not generosity, Marshal. We've been enhancing our personnel ever since Dahak left, which means the Alliance has fallen far behind. We need to make up the difference, and we'll be sending transports with enhancement capability to Beijing and any other three cities you select. Planetary facilities under your direct control will follow as quickly as we can build them."

 

 

Tsien blinked, and Hatcher smiled.

 

 

"Marshal Tsien, we are fellow officers serving the same commander-in- chief. If we don't act accordingly, some will doubt our claims of solidarity are genuine. They are genuine. We will proceed on that basis."

 

 

He leaned back and raised both hands shoulder-high, open palms uppermost, and Tsien nodded slowly.

 

 

"You are correct. Generous nonetheless, but correct. And perhaps I am discovering that more than our governor are formidable men, Comrade General."

 

 

"Gerald, please. Or just 'Ger,' if you're comfortable with it."

 

 

Tsien began a polite refusal, then paused. He had never been comfortable with easy familiarity between serving officers, even among his fellow Asians, yet there was something charming about this American. Not boyish (though he understood Westerners prized that quality for some peculiar reason), but charming. Hatcher's competence and hard-headed, forthright honesty compelled respect, but this was something else. Charisma? No, that was close, but not quite the proper word. The word was... openness. Or friendship, perhaps.

 

 

Friendship. Now was that not a strange thing to feel for a Western general after so many years? And yet.... Yes, "and yet," indeed.

 

 

"Very well... Gerald," he said.

 

 

"I know it's like pulling teeth, Marshal." Hatcher's almost gentle smile robbed his words of any offense. "We've been too busy thinking of ways to kill each other for too long for it to be any other way, more's the pity. Do you know, in a weird sort of way, I'm almost grateful to the Achuultani."

 

 

"Grateful?" Tsien cocked his head for a moment, then nodded. "I see. I had not previously thought of it in that light, Comr-Gerald, but it is a relief to face an alien menace rather than the possibility of blowing up our world ourselves."

 

 

"Exactly." Hatcher extracted a bottle of brandy and two snifters from a desk drawer. He set them on the blotter and poured, then offered one to his guest and raised his own. "May I say, Marshal Tsien, that it is a greater pleasure than I ever anticipated to have you as an ally?"

 

 

"You may." Tsien allowed a smile to cross his own habitually immobile face. It was hardly proper, but there was no getting around it. For all their differences, he and this American were too much alike to be enemies.

 

 

"And, as you would say, Gerald, my name is Tao-ling," he murmured, and crystal sang gently as their glasses touched.

 

 

Out of deference to the still unenhanced Terra-born Council members, Horus had the news footage played directly rather than relayed through his neural feed. Not that it made it any better.

 

 

The report ended and the Terran tri-vid unit sank back into the wall amid the silence. The thirty men and women in his conference room looked at one another, but he noted that none of them looked directly at him.

 

 

"What I want to know, ladies and gentlemen," he said finally, his voice shattering the hush, "is how that was allowed to happen?"

 

 

One or two Councilors flinched, though he hadn't raised his voice. He hadn't had to. The screams and thunder of automatic weapons as the armored vehicles moved in had made his point for him.

 

 

"It was not 'allowed,' " a voice said finally. "It was inevitable."

 

 

Horus's cocked head encouraged the speaker to continue, and Sophia Pariani leaned forward to meet his eyes. Her Italian accent was more than usually pronounced, but there was no apology in her expression.

 

 

"There is no doubt that the situation was clumsily handled, but there will be more 'situations,' Governor, and not merely in Africa. Already the world economy has been disrupted by the changes we have effected; as the further and greater changes which lie ahead become evident, more and more of the common men and women of the world will react as those people did."

 

 

"Sophia's right, Horus." This time it was Sarhantha, one of his ten fellow survivors from Nergal's crew. "We ought to've seen it coming. In fact, we did; we just didn't expect it so soon because we'd forgotten how many people are crammed into this world. Hard and fast as we're working, only a small minority are actively involved in the defense projects or the military. All the majority see is that their governments have been supplanted, their planet is threatened by a menace they don't truly comprehend and are none too sure they believe in, and their economies are in the process of catastrophic disruption. This particular riot was touched off by a combination of hunger, inflation, and unemployment-regional factors that pre-date our involvement but have grown only worse since we assumed power-and the realization that even those with skilled trades will soon find their skills obsolete."

 

 

"But there'll be other factors soon enough." Councilor Abner Johnson spoke with a sharp New England twang despite his matte-black complexion. "People're people, Governor. The vested interests are going to object-strenuously-once they get reorganized. Their economic and political power's about to go belly-up, and some of them're stupid enough to fight. And don't forget the religious aspect. We're sitting on a powder keg in Iran and Syria, but we've got our own nuts, and you people represent a pretty unappetizing affront to their comfortable little preconceptions." He smiled humorlessly.

 

 

" 'Mycos? Birhat?' You don't really think God created planets with names like that, do you? If you could at least've come from a planet named 'Eden' it might've helped, but as it is-!" Johnson shrugged. "Once they get organized, we'll have a real lunatic fringe!"

 

 

"Comrade Johnson is correct, Comrade Governor." Commissar Hsu Yin's oddly British accent was almost musical after Johnson's twang. "We may debate the causes of Third World poverty-" she eyed her capitalist fellows calmly "-but it exists. Ignorance and fear will be greatest there, violence more quickly acceptable, yet this is only the beginning. When the First World realizes that it is in precisely the same situation the violence may grow even worse. We may as well prepare for the worst... and whatever we anticipate will most assuredly fall short of what will actually happen."

 

 

"Granted. But this violent suppression-"

 

 

"Was the work of the local authorities," Geb put in. "And before you condemn them, what else could they do? There were almost ten thousand people in that mob, and if a lot of them were unarmed women and children, a lot were neither female, young, nor unarmed. At least they had the sense to call us in as soon as they'd restored order, even if it was under martial law. I've diverted a dozen Shirut-class atmospheric conveyers to haul in foodstuffs from North America. That should take the worst edge off the situation, but if the local authorities hadn't 'suppressed' the disturbances, however they did it, simply feeding them wouldn't even begin to help, and you know it."

 

 

There were mutters of agreement, and Horus noted that the Terra-born were considerably more vehement than the Imperials. Were they right? It was their planet, and Maker knew the disruptions were only beginning. He knew they were sanctioning expediency, but wasn't that another way to describe pragmatism? And in a situation like the present one...

 

 

"All right," he sighed finally, "I don't like it, but you may be right." He turned to Gustav van Gelder, Councilor for Planetary Security. "Gus, I want you and Geb to increase the priority for getting stun guns into the hands of local authorities. And I want more of our enhancement capacity diverted to police personnel. Isis, you and Myko deal with that."

 

 

Doctor Isis Tudor, his own Terra-born daughter and now Councilor for Biosciences, glanced at her ex-mutineer assistant with a sort of resigned desperation. Isis was over eighty; even enhancement could only slow her gradual decay and eliminate aches and pains, but her mind was quick and clear. Now she nodded, and he knew she'd find the capacity... somehow.

 

 

"Until we can get local peace-keepers enhanced," Horus went on, "I'll have General Hatcher set up mixed-nationality response teams out of his military personnel. I don't like it-the situation's going to be bad enough without 'aliens' popping up to quell resistance to our 'tyrannical' ways-but a dozen troopers in combat armor could have stopped this business with a tenth the casualties, especially if they'd had stun guns."

 

 

Heads nodded, and he suppressed a sigh. Problems, problems! Why hadn't he made sufficient allowance for what would happen once Imperial technology came to Terra in earnest? Now he felt altogether too much like a warden rather than a governor, but whatever happened, he had to hold things together-by main force, if necessary-until the Achuultani had been stopped. If they could be-

 

 

He chopped off that thought automatically and turned to Christine Redhorse, Councilor for Agriculture.

 

 

"All right. On to the next problem. Christine, I'd like you to share your report on the wheat harvest with us, and then..."

 

 

Most of Horus's Council had departed, leaving him alone with his defense planners and engineers. Whatever else happened, theirs was the absolutely critical responsibility, and they were doing better than Horus had hoped. They were actually ahead of schedule on almost a fifth of the PDCs, although the fortifications slated for the Asian Alliance were only now getting underway.

 

 

One by one, the remaining Councilors completed their business and left. In the end, only Geb remained, and Horus smiled wearily at his oldest living friend as the two of them leaned back and propped their heels on the conference table almost in unison.

 

 

"Maker!" Horus groaned. "It was easier fighting Anu!"

 

 

"Easier, but not as satisfying." Geb sipped his coffee, then made a face. It was barely warm, and he rose and circled the table, shaking each insulated carafe until he found one that was still partly full and returned to his chair.

 

 

"True, true," Horus agreed. "At least this time we think we've got a chance of winning. That makes a pleasant change."

 

 

"From your lips to the Maker's ears," Geb responded fervently, and Horus laughed. He reached out a long arm for Geb's carafe and poured more coffee into his own cup.

 

 

"Watch it," he advised his friend. "Remember Abner's religious fanatics."

 

 

"They won't care what I say or how I say it. Just being what I am is going to offend them."

 

 

"Probably." Horus sipped, then frowned. "By the way, there was something I've been meaning to ask you."

 

 

"And what might that be, oh dauntless leader?"

 

 

"I found an anomaly in the data base the other day." Geb raised an eyebrow, and Horus shrugged. "Probably nothing, but I hit a priority suppression code I can't understand."

 

 

"Oh?" If Geb's voice was just a shade too level Horus didn't notice.

 

 

"I was running through the data we pulled out of Anu's enclave computers, and Colin's imposed a lock-out on some of the visual records."

 

 

"He has?"

 

 

"Yep. It piqued my interest, so I ran an analysis. He's put every visual image of Inanna under a security lock only he can release. Or, no, not all of them; only for the last century or so."

 

 

"He must have had a reason," Geb suggested.

 

 

"I don't doubt it, but I was hoping you might have some idea what it was. You were Chief Prosecutor-did he say anything to you about why he did it?"

 

 

"Even if he had, I wouldn't be free to talk about it, but I probably wouldn't have worried. It couldn't have had much bearing on the trials, whatever his reasoning. She wasn't around to be tried, after all."

 

 

"I know, I know, but it bothers me, Geb." Horus drummed gently on the table. "She was Anu's number two, the one who did all those hideous brain transplants for him. Maker only knows how many Terra-born and Imperials she personally slaughtered along the way! It just seems... odd."

 

 

"If it bothers you, ask him about it when he gets back," Geb suggested. He finished his coffee and rose. "For now, though, I've got to saddle back up, my friend. I'm due to inspect the work at Minya Konka this afternoon."

 

 

He waved a cheerful farewell and strode down the hall to the elevator whistling, but the merry little tune died the instant the doors closed. The old Imperial seemed to sag around his bioenhanced bones, and he leaned his forehead against the mirrored surface of the inner doors.

 

 

Maker of Man and Mercy, he prayed silently, don't let him ask Colin. Please don't let him ask Colin!

 

 

Tears burned, and he wiped them angrily, but he couldn't wipe away the memory which had driven him to Colin before the courts martial to beg him to suppress the visuals on Inanna. He'd been ready to go down on his knees, but he hadn't needed to. If anything, Colin's horror had surpassed his own.

 

 

Against his will, Geb relived those moments on deck ninety of the sublight battleship Osir, the very heart of Anu's enclave. Those terrible moments after Colin and 'Tanni had gone up the crawl way to face Anu, leaving behind a mangled body 'Tanni's energy gun had cut almost in half. A body which had been Commander Inanna's, but only because its brain had been ripped away, its original owner murdered and its flesh stolen to make a new, young host for the mutinous medical officer.

 

 

Geb had used his own energy gun to obliterate every trace of that body, for once it had belonged to one of his closest friends, to a beautiful woman named Tanisis... Horus's wife... and Jiltanith's own mother.

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

 

Fifty Chinese paratroopers in Imperial black snapped to attention as the band struck up, and Marshal Tsien Tao-ling, Vice Chief of Staff for Operations to the Lieutenant Governor of Earth, watched them with an anxiety he had not wasted upon ceremonial in decades. This was his superior's first official visit to China in the five months since the Asian Alliance had surrendered to the inevitable, and he wanted-demanded-for all to go flawlessly.

 

 

It did. General Gerald Hatcher appeared in the hatch of his cutter and started down the ramp, followed by his personal aide and a very small staff.

 

 

"Preeee-sent arms!"

 

 

Energy guns snapped up. The honor guard, drawn from the first batch of Asian personnel to be bioenhanced, handled their massive weapons with panache, and Tsien noted the perfection of their drill without a smile as he and Hatcher exchanged salutes. The twinkle in the American's brown eyes betrayed his own amused tolerance for ceremonial only to those who knew him very well, and it still surprised Tsien just a bit that he had become one of those few people.

 

 

"Good to see you, Tao-ling," Hatcher said under cover of the martial music, and Tsien responded with a millimetric smile before the brief moment of privacy disappeared into the waiting tide of military protocol.

 

 

Gerald Hatcher placed his cap in his lap and leaned back as the city of Ch'engtu fell away astern. The cutter headed for Minya Konka, the mountain which had been ripped apart to hold PDC Huan-Ti, and he grimaced as he ran a finger around the tight collar of his tunic.

 

 

He lowered his hand, wondering once again if it had been wise to adopt Imperial uniform. While it had the decided advantage of not belonging to any of the rival militaries they were trying to merge, it looked disturbingly like the uniform of the SS. Not surprisingly, considering. He'd done what he could to lessen the similarities-exaggerating the size of the starbursts the Nazis had replaced with skulls, restoring the serrated hisanth leaves to the lapels, adopting the authorized variation of gold braid in place of silver-but the over-all impact still bothered him.

 

 

He put the thought aside-again-and turned to Tsien.

 

 

"It looks like your people've done a great job, Tao-ling. I wish you didn't have to spend so much time in Beijing to do it, but I'm impressed."

 

 

"I spend too little time here as it is, Gerald." Tsien gave a very slight shrug. "It is even worse than it was while you and I were enemies. There are at least eight too few hours in every day."

 

 

"Tell me about it!" Hatcher laughed. "If we work like dogs for another six months, you and I may finally be able to hand over to someone else long enough to get our own biotechnics."

 

 

"True. I must confess, however, that the speed with which we are moving almost frightens me. There is too little time for proper coordination. Too many projects require attention, and I have no time to know my officers."

 

 

"I know. We're better off than you are because of how Nergal's people infiltrated our militaries before we even knew about them. I don't envy your having to start from scratch."

 

 

"We will manage," Tsien said, and Hatcher took him at his word. The huge Chinese officer had lost at least five kilos since their first meeting, yet it only made him even more fearsome, as if he were being worn down to elemental gristle and bone. And whatever else came of the fusion with the Asian Alliance, Hatcher was almost prayerfully grateful that it had brought him Tsien Tao-ling.

 

 

The cutter dropped toward the dust-spewing wound which had once been a mountain top, and Hatcher checked his breathing mask. He hated using it, but the dust alone would make it welcome, and the fact that PDC Huan-Ti was located at an altitude of almost seventy-five hundred meters made it necessary. He felt a bit better when he saw Tsien reaching for his own mask... and suppressed a spurt of envy as Major Allen Germaine ignored his. It must be nice, he thought sourly as he regarded his bioenhanced aide.

 

 

They grounded, and thin, cold air, bitter with dust, swirled through the hatch. Hatcher hastily clipped on his mask, and his uniform's collar was a suddenly minor consideration as the Imperial fabric adjusted to maintain a comfortable body temperature and he led the way out into the ear-splitting, dust-spouting, eye-bewildering bedlam of yet another of Geb's mighty projects.

 

 

Tsien followed Hatcher, hiding his impatience. He hated inspection tours, and only the fact that Hatcher hated them just as badly let him face this time-consuming parade with a semblance of inner peace. That and the fact that, time-consuming or no, it also played its part. Morale, the motivation of their human material, was all important, and nothing better convinced people of the importance of their tasks than to see their commanders inspecting their work.

 

 

Yet despite his impatience, Tsien was deeply impressed. Enough Imperial equipment was becoming available to strain the enhancement centers' ability to provide operators, and the result was amazing for someone who had grown up with purely Terran technology. The main excavation was almost finished-indeed, the central control rooms were structurally complete, awaiting installation of the computer core-and the shield generators were already being built. Incredible.

 

 

He bent to listen to an engineer, and movement caught the corner of his eye as a breath-masked officer disappeared behind a heap of building material, waving one hand as he spoke to another officer at his side. There was something familiar about the small figure, but the engineer was still talking, and Tsien returned his attention to him.

 

 

"I'm impressed, Geban," Hatcher said, and Huan-Ti's chief engineer grinned. The burly ex-mutineer was barely a hundred and fifty centimeters tall, but he looked as if he could have picked up a hover jeep one-handed-before enhancement.

 

 

"Really impressed," Hatcher repeated as the control room door closed off the cacophony beyond. "You're-what, four weeks ahead of schedule?"

 

 

"Almost five, General," Geban replied with simple pride. "With just a little luck, I'm going to bring this job in at least two months early."

 

 

"Outstanding!" Hatcher slapped Geban's shoulder, and Tsien hid a smile. He would never understand how Hatcher's informality with subordinates could work so well, yet it did. Not simply with Westerners who might be accustomed to such things, either. Tsien had seen exactly the same broad smile on the faces of Chinese and Thai peasants.

 

 

"In that case," Hatcher said, turning to the marshal, "I think we-"

 

 

A thunderous concussion drowned his words and threw him from his feet.

 

 

Diego McMurphy was a Mexican-Irish explosives genius from Texas. Off-shore oil rigs and dams, vertol terminals and apartment complexes-he'd seen them all, but this was the most damnable, bone-breaking, challenging, wonderful project he'd ever been involved with, and the fact that he was buying his right to a full set of biotechnic implants was only icing on the cake. Which is why he was happy as he waved his crew forward to set the charges on the unfinished western face of Magazine Twelve.

 

 

He died a happy man, and six hundred and eighty-six other men and women died with him. They died because one of McMurphy's men activated his rock drill, and that man didn't know someone had wired his controls to eleven hundred kilos of Imperial blasting compound.

 

 

The explosion rivaled a three-kiloton nuclear bomb.

 

 

Gerald Hatcher bounced off Tsien Tao-ling, but the marshal's powerful arm caught him before he could fall. Alarms whooped, sirens screamed, and Geban went paper-white. The door barely had time to open before he reached it; if it hadn't, he would have torn it loose with his bare hands.

 

 

Hatcher shook his head, trying to understand what had happened as he followed Tsien to the open door. A huge mushroom cloud filled the western horizon, and even as he watched, a five-man gravitonic conveyer with a full load of structural steel turned turtle in mid-air. It had been caught by the fringes of the explosion, and the pilot had almost pulled it out. Almost, but not quite. Its standard commercial drive had never been designed for such abuse, and it impacted nose-first at six hundred kilometers per hour.

 

 

A fresh fireball spewed up, and the death toll was suddenly six hundred and ninety-one.

 

 

"My God!" Hatcher murmured.

 

 

Tsien nodded in silent, shocked agreement. Whatever the cause, this was disaster, and he despised himself for thinking of lost time first and lost lives second. He turned toward the control block ramps in the vanished Geban's wake, then stopped as a knot of men headed towards him. They were armed, and there was something familiar about the small officer at their head-

 

 

"Quang!" he bellowed.

 

 

The fury in Tsien's voice jerked Hatcher's eyes away from the smoke. He started to speak, then gasped as the marshal whirled around and hit him in a diving tackle. The two of them crashed back into the control room, hard enough to crack ribs, as the first burst of automatic fire raked the open doorway.

 

 

"Forward!" General Quang Do Chinh screamed. "Kill them! Kill them now!"

 

 

His troopers advanced at the run, closing on the unfinished control block, and Quang's heart flamed with triumph. Yes, kill the traitors! And especially the arch-traitor who had tried to shunt him aside! What a triumph to begin their war against the invaders!

 

 

As he and his men sprinted forward, construction workers raced to drag dead and wounded away from the explosion site, and six other carefully infiltrated assault teams produced automatic weapons and grenades. They concentrated on picking out Imperials, but any target would do.

 

 

"What the hell is happening?!" Gerald Hatcher's voice was muffled by his breath mask, but it would have been hoarse anyway-a hundred kilos of charging Chinese field marshal had seen to that. He shoved up onto his knees, reaching instinctively for his holstered automatic.

 

 

"I do not know," Tsien replied tersely, checking his own weapon's magazine. "But the Vietnamese leading his men this way is named Quang. He was one of those most opposed to joining our forces to yours."

 

 

Another burst of fire raked the open doorway, ricochets whining nastily, and Hatcher rose higher on his knees to hit the door button. The hatch slammed instantly, but it was only lightweight Terran steel; the next burst punched right through it.

 

 

"Shit!" Hatcher scurried across the control room on hands and knees. Major Germaine already stood with his back to the wall on the left side of the door, and his grav gun had materialized in his right hand like magic.

 

 

"What the fuck do they think they're going to accomplish?!"

 

 

"I do not know, Gerald. This is pointless. It simply invites reprisals. But their ultimate objective is immaterial-to us, at least."

 

 

"True." Hatcher flattened himself against the wall as another row of holes appeared in the door. "Al?"

 

 

"I already put out the word, sir." Unlike his boss, Germaine had a built-in communicator. "But I don't know how much good it's going to do. More of the bastards are shooting up the rescue crews. Geban's down-hurt bad-and he's not the only Imperial."

 

 

"Goddamn them!" Hatcher hissed, and fought to think as the half-forgotten terror and adrenalin-rush of combat flooded him. Continuous firing raked the panel now, and he gritted his teeth as bullets and bits of door whined about his ears. This room was a deathtrap. He tried to estimate where their attackers had been when Tao-ling tackled him. On the ground to the south. That meant they had to climb at least three ramps. So whoever was firing at the door was covering them until they could get here... probably with a demolition charge that would turn them all to hamburger.

 

 

"We've got to get ourselves a field of fire," he grated. His automatic was a toy compared to what was coming at them, but it was better than nothing. And anything was better than dying without fighting back.

 

 

"I agree," Tsien said flatly.

 

 

"All right. Tao-ling, you pop the hatch. Al, I think they're coming up from the south. You can cover the head of the ramp from where you are. Tao-ling, you get over here with me. We'll try to slow 'em down if they come the other way, but Al's got our only real firepower."

 

 

"Yes, sir," Germaine said, and Tsien nodded agreement.

 

 

"Then do it-now!"

 

 

Tsien hit the button and rolled across the floor, coming up on his knees beside Hatcher. They both flattened against the wall as yet another burst screamed into the room, and Hatcher cursed as a ricochet creased his cheek.

 

 

"Can you get that sniper without getting yourself killed, Al?"

 

 

"A pleasure, sir," Germaine said coldly. His eyes were unfocused as his implants sought the source of the fire, then he crouched and took one step to the side. He moved with the blinding speed of his biotechnics, and the grav gun hissed out a brief burst, spitting three-millimeter explosive darts at fifty-two hundred meters per second.

 

 

Quang swore as his covering fire died. So, they had at least one of the cursed grav guns. That was bad, but he still had twenty-five men, and they were all heavily armed.

 

 

He had no idea how the rest of the attack was going, but Tsien's reactions had been only too revealing, and the only man who could identify him must die.

 

 

His men pounded up the ramp ahead of him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Her name was Litanil, and, disregarding time spent in stasis, she was thirty-six. It took her precious moments to realize what was happening, and a few more to believe it when she had, but then cold fury filled her.

 

 

Litanil hadn't thought very deeply when Anu's people recruited her, for she'd been both young and bored. Now she knew she'd also been criminally stupid, and, like her fellows, she'd labored with the Breaker's own demons on her heels in an effort to atone. Along the way, she'd come to like and admire the Terra-born she worked with, and now hundreds of them lay dead, butchered by the animals responsible for this carnage. She didn't worry about why. She didn't even consider the monstrous treason to her race the attack implied. She thought only of dead friends, and something snarled inside her.

 

 

She turned her power bore towards the fighting, and her neural feeds sought out the safety interlocks. It was supposed to be impossible for any accident to get around them-but Litanil was no accident.

 

 

Allen Germaine went down on one knee, bracing his grav gun over his left forearm, as the first three raiders hurled themselves over the lip of the topmost ramp, assault rifles on full automatic.

 

 

They got off one long burst each before their bodies blew apart in a hurricane of explosive darts.

 

 

Litanil goosed her power bore to max, snarling across the stony plain at almost two hundred kilometers per hour. Not even a gravitonic drive could hold the massive bore steady at that speed, but she rode it like a bucking horse, her implant scanners reaching out, and her face was a mask of fury as she raised the cutting head chest-high.

 

 

Private Pak Chung of the Army of Korea heard nothing, but some instinct made him turn his head. His eyes widened in horror as he saw the huge machine screaming towards him. Rock dust and smoke billowed behind it like a curdled wake, and the... the thing at its front was aimed straight at him!

 

 

The last thing Private Pak ever saw was a terrible brilliance in the millisecond before he exploded in a flash of super-heated body fluids.

 

 

General Quang cursed as his three lead men died, but it had not been entirely unexpected. It must be the American's African aide, yet there was only one of him, bioenhanced or not, and the ramp was not the only way up.

 

 

"They're spreading out," Germaine reported. "I can't get a good implant reading through the ramp, but some of them are swinging round front."

 

 

"There is a scaffold below the edge of the platform," Tsien said.

 

 

"Damn! Remind me to detail armed guards to each construction site when we get home, Al."

 

 

"Yes, sir."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Litanil wiped out Private Pak's team and raged off after fresh targets. Ahead of her, half a dozen bioenhanced Terra-born construction workers armed with steel reinforcing rods and Imperial blasting compound began working their way around the flank of a second assault group.

 

 

Quang poked his head up. This was taking too long. But there would still be time. His men were in position at last, and he barked an order.

 

 

"Down!" Germaine shouted, and Hatcher and Tsien dropped instantly as the stubby grenade launchers coughed. Two grenades hit short or exploded against the outer wall; the third headed straight into the door, and Germaine's left hand struck it like a handball. The explosion ripped his hand apart, and shrapnel tore into his chest and shoulder.

 

 

Agony stabbed him, but his implants stopped the flow of blood to his shredded hand and flooded his system with a super-charged blast of adrenalin. The first wave came up the ramp after the grenades, and he cut them down like bloody wheat.

 

 

Hatcher fired as a head rose over the edge of the scaffolding. His first shot missed; his second hit just above the left eye. Beside him, Tsien was flat on his belly, firing two-handed. Another attacker dropped.

 

 

A sudden burst of explosions ripped the dusty smoke as the construction workers tossed their makeshift bombs. The attack squad faltered as three of their number were blown apart. A fourth emptied a full magazine into a charging man. He killed his assailant, but he never knew; the steel rod his victim had carried impaled him like a spear.

 

 

His six surviving comrades broke and ran-directly in front of Litanil's power bore.

 

 

Eight more of Quang's men died, but a ninth slammed a heart-rupturing burst into Allen Germaine. Major Germaine was a dead man, but he was a bioenhanced corpse. He stayed on his feet long enough to aim very carefully before he squeezed the trigger.

 

 

Gerald Hatcher swore viciously as his aide toppled without a sound, grav gun bouncing from his remaining hand. Bastards! Bastards! He squeezed off another shot, hitting his target in the torso, then dropped him with a second.

 

 

It wasn't enough, and he knew it.

 

 

Quang's number four attack squad had a good position between two huge earth-movers, but there were no more targets in their field of fire. It was time to go, and they began to filter back in pairs, each halting in turn to provide covering fire for their fellows. It was a textbook maneuver.

 

 

As the first pair reached the ends of their shielding earth-movers, a pair of bioenhanced hands reached out from either side. Fingers ten times stronger than their own closed, and two tracheas crushed. The twitching bodies were tossed aside, and the crouching ambushers waited patiently for their next victims.

 

 

Quang popped his head up and saw the grav gun lying two meters beyond the door. Now! He clutched his assault rifle and rose, waving his surviving men forward, and followed up the ramp in their wake.

 

 

A last attacker crouched on the scaffolding. He'd seen what happened when his fellows exposed themselves, and he poked just the muzzle of his rifle over the edge. It was a sound idea, but in his excitement he rose just too high. The crown of his head showed, and Gerald Hatcher put a pistol bullet through it in the instant before the automatic fire shattered both his legs.

 

 

Litanil swung her power bore again and knew they were winning.

 

 

The attackers had achieved the surprise they sought, but they hadn't realized what they were attacking. Most of the site personnel were unenhanced Terra-born, but a significant percentage were not, and those who were enhanced had full Fleet packages, modified at Colin MacIntyre's order to incorporate fold-space coms. They might be unarmed, but they were strong, tough, fast, and in unbroken communication.

 

 

And, as Litanil herself had proved, a construction site abounded in improvisational weapons.

 

 

Tsien Tao-ling was no longer a field marshal. He was a warrior alone and betrayed, and Quang was still out there. Whatever happened, Quang must not be allowed to live.

 

 

Tsien tossed aside his empty pistol, his mind cold and clear, and rose on his hands and toes, like a runner in the blocks.

 

 

General Quang blinked as Tsien exploded from the control room. He would never have believed the huge man could move that quickly! But what did he hope to gain? He could not outrun bullets!

 

 

Then he saw Tsien drop and snatch up the grav gun as he rolled towards the scaffolding. No!

 

 

Assault rifles barked, but the men behind them had been as surprised as Quang. They were late, and they tried to compensate by leading their target. They would catch him as he rolled over the edge of the scaffolding into cover.

 

 

Tsien threw out one leg, grunting as a kneecap shattered on concrete, but it had the desired effect. He stopped dead, clutching Germaine's grav gun, and the bullets which should have killed him went wide. He raised the muzzle, not trying to rise from where he lay.

 

 

Quang screamed in frustration as Tsien opened fire. Three of his remaining men were down. Then four. Five! He raised his own weapon, firing at the marshal, but fury betrayed his aim.

 

 

Tsien grunted again as a slug ripped through his right biceps. A second shattered his shoulder, but he held down the grav gun's trigger, and his fire swept the ramp like a broom.

 

 

Quang's last trooper was down, and sudden terror filled him. He threw away his rifle and tried to drop down the ramp, but he was too late. His last memory on Earth was the cold, bitter hatred in Tsien Tao-ling's pitiless eyes.

 

 

Gerald Hatcher groaned, then bit his lip against a scream as someone moved his left leg. He shuddered and managed to raise his eyelids, wondering for a moment why he felt so weak, why there was so much pain.

 

 

Tao-ling bent over him, and he bit off most of another scream as the marshal tightened something on his right leg. A tourniquet, Hatcher realized dizzily... and then he remembered.

 

 

His expression twisted with more than pain as he saw Allen Germaine's dead face close beside him, but his mind was working once more. Poorly, slowly, with frustrating dark patches, but working. The firing seemed to have stopped, and if there was no more shooting and Tao-ling was working on him, they must have won, mustn't they? He was rather pleased by his ability to work that out.

 

 

Tsien crawled up beside him. One shoulder was swollen by a makeshift, blood-soaked bandage, and his left leg dragged uselessly, but his good hand clutched Allen's grav gun as he lowered himself between Hatcher and the door with a groan.

 

 

"T-Tao-ling?" the general managed.

 

 

"You are awake?" Tsien's voice was hoarse with pain. "You have the constitution of a bull, Gerald."

 

 

"Th-thanks. What... what kind of shape are we... ?"

 

 

"I believe we have beaten off the attack. I do not know how. I am afraid you are badly hurt, my friend."

 

 

"I'll... live...."

 

 

"Yes, I think you will," Tsien said so judiciously Hatcher grinned tightly despite his agony. His brain was fluttering and it would be a relief to give in, but there was something he had to say first. Ah!

 

 

"Tao-ling-"

 

 

"Be quiet, Gerald," the marshal said austerely. "You are wounded."

 

 

"You're... not? Looks like... I get my... implants first."

 

 

"Americans! Always you must be first."

 

 

"T-Tell Horus I said... you take over...."

 

 

"I?" Tsien looked at him, his face as twisted with shame as pain. "It was my people who did this thing!"

 

 

"H-Horse shit. But that's... why it's important... you take over. Tell Horus!" Hatcher squeezed his friend's forearm with all his fading strength. It was Tsien's right arm, but he did not even wince.

 

 

"Tell him!" Hatcher commanded, clinging to awareness through the shrieking pain.

 

 

"Very well, Gerald," Tsien said gently. "I will."

 

 

"Good man," Hatcher whispered, and let go at last.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The city echoed with song and dance as the People of Riahn celebrated. Twelve seasons of war against Tur had ended at last, and not simply in victory. The royal houses of Riahn and Tur had brought the endless skirmishes and open battle over possession of the Fithan copper mines to a halt with greater wisdom than they had shown in far too long, for the Daughter of Tur would wed the Son of Riahn, and henceforth the two Peoples would be one.

 

 

It was good. It was very, very good, for Riahn-Tur would be the greatest of all the city-states of T'Yir. Their swords and spears would no longer turn upon one another but ward both from their neighbors, and the copper of Fithan would bring them wealth and prosperity. The ships of Riahn were already the swiftest ever to swim-with Fithan copper to sheath their hulls against worms and weed, they would own the seas of T'Yir!

 

 

Great was the rejoicing of Riahn, and none of the People knew of the vast Achuultani starships which had reached their system while the war still raged. None knew they had come almost by accident, unaware of the People until they actually entered the system, or how they had paused among the system's asteroids. Indeed, none of the People knew even what an asteroid was, much less what would happen if the largest of them were sent falling inward toward T'Yir.

 

 

And because they did not know such things, none knew their world had barely seven months to live.

 

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

 

Colin MacIntyre was not afraid, for "afraid" was too weak a word.

 

 

He sat with his back to the conference room hatch as the others filed in, and he felt their own fear against his spine. He waited until all were seated, then swung his chair to meet their eyes. Their faces looked even worse than he'd expected.

 

 

"All right," he said at last. "We've got to decide what to do next."

 

 

Their steady regard threw his lie back at him, even Jiltanith's, and he wanted to scream at them. We didn't have to decide; he did, and he wished with all his soul that he had never heard of a starship named Dahak.

 

 

He stopped himself and drew a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, the shadows within them had retreated just a bit.

 

 

"Dahak," he said quietly, "have you got anything more for us?"

 

 

"Negative, Captain. I have examined all known Imperial weapons and research. Nothing in my data base can account for the observational data."

 

 

Colin managed not to spit a curse. Observational data. What a neat, concise way to describe two once-inhabited planets with no life whatever. Not a tree, not a shrub, nothing. There were no plains of volcanic glass and lingering radioactivity, no indications of warfare-just bare, terribly-eroded earth and stone and a few pathetic clusters of buildings sagging into wind and storm-threshed ruin. Even their precarious existence said much for the durability of Imperial building materials, for Dahak estimated there had been no living hand to tend them in almost forty-five thousand years.

 

 

No birds, he thought. No animals. Not even an insect. Just... nothing. The only movement was the wind. Weather had flensed the denuded planet until its stony bones gaped through like the teeth of a skull, bared in a horrible, grinning rictus of desecration and death.

 

 

"Hector?" he said finally. "Do you have any ideas?"

 

 

"None." MacMahan's normally controlled face was even more impassive than usual, and he seemed to hunker down in his chair.

 

 

"Cohanna?"

 

 

"I can't add much, sir, but I'd have to say it was a bio-weapon of some sort. Some unimaginable sort." Cohanna shivered. "I've landed unmanned probes for spot analyses, but I don't dare send teams down."

 

 

Colin nodded.

 

 

"I can't imagine how it was done," the biosciences officer continued. "What kind of weapon could produce this? If they'd irradiated the place.... But there's simply nothing to go on, Captain. Nothing at all."

 

 

"All right." Colin inhaled deeply. "'Tanni, what can you tell us?"

 

 

"Scarce more than 'Hanna. We have found some three score orbital vessels and installations; all lie abandoned to the dead. As with the planets, we durst not look too close, yet our probes have scanned them well. In all our servos have attended lie naught save bones."

 

 

"Dahak? Any luck accessing their computers?"

 

 

"Very little, Captain. I have been unable to carry out detailed study of the equipment, but there are major differences between it and the technology with which I am familiar. In particular, the computer nets appear to have been connected with fold-space links, which would provide a substantial increase in speed over my own molecular circuitry, and these computers operated on a radically different principle, maintaining data flow in semi-permanent force fields rather than in physical storage units. Their power supplies failed long ago, and without continuous energization-" The computer's voice paused in the electronic equivalent of a shrug.

 

 

"The only instance in which partial data retrieval has been possible is artifact seventeen, the Fleet vessel Cordan," Dahak continued. "Unfortunately, the data core was of limited capacity, as the unit itself was merely a three-man sublight utility boat, and had suffered from failed fold-space units. Most data in memory are encoded in a multi-level Fleet code I have not yet been able to break, though I believe I might succeed if a larger sample could be obtained. The recoverable data consist primarily of routine operational records and astrogational material.

 

 

"I was able to date the catastrophe by consulting the last entry made by Cordan's captain. It contains no indication of alarm, nor, unfortunately, was she loquacious. The last entry simply records an invitation for her and her crew to dine at the planetary governor's residence on Defram-A III."

 

 

"Nothing more?" Ninhursag asked quietly.

 

 

"No, Commander. There undoubtedly was additional data, but only Cordan's command computer utilized hard storage techniques, and it is sadly decayed. I have located twelve additional auxiliary and special-function computer nets, but none contain recoverable data."

 

 

"Vlad?" Colin turned to his engineer.

 

 

"I wish I could tell you something. The fact that we dare not go over and experiment leaves us with little hard data, but the remotes indicate that their technology was substantially more advanced than Dahak's. On the other hand, we have seen little real evidence of fundamental breakthroughs-it is more like a highly sophisticated refinement of what we already have."

 

 

"How now, Vlad?" Jiltanith asked. "Hath not our Dahak but now said their computers are scarce like unto himself?"

 

 

"True enough, 'Tanni, but the differences are incremental." Vlad frowned. "What he is actually saying is that they moved much further into energy-state engineering than before. I cannot say certainly without something to take apart and put back together, but those force field memories probably manifested as solid surfaces when powered up. The Imperium was moving in that direction even before the mutiny-our own shield is exactly the same thing on a gross scale. What they discovered was a way to do the same sorts of things on a scale which makes even molycircs big and clumsy, but it was theoretically possible from the beginning. You see? Incremental advances."

 

 

Jiltanith nodded slowly, and Colin leaned his elbows on the table.

 

 

"Bearing that in mind, Dahak, what are the chances of recovering useful data from any other computers we encounter?"

 

 

"Assuming they are of the variety Fleet Captain (Engineering) Chernikov has been discussing and that they have been left unattended without power, nil. Please note, however, that Cordan's command computer was not of that type."

 

 

"Meaning?"

 

 

"Meaning, Captain, that it is highly probable Fleet units retained solid data storage for critical systems precisely because energy data storage was susceptible to loss in the event of power failure. If that is indeed the case, any large sublight unit should provide quite considerable amounts of data. Any supralight Fleet combatant would, in all probability, retain a hard-storage backup of its complete data core."

 

 

"I see." Colin leaned back and rubbed his eyes.

 

 

"All right. We're five and a half months from Terra, and so far all we've found is one completely destroyed Fleet base and two totally dead planets. If Dahak's wrong about the Fleet retaining hard-storage for its central computers, we can't even hope to find out what happened, much less find help, from any system where this disaster spilled over.

 

 

"If we turn back right now, we'll reach Sol over a year before the Achuultani scouts, which would at least permit us to help Earth stand them off. By the same token, it would be impossible for us to do that and then return to the Imperium-or, at least, to move any deeper into it-and still get back to Sol before the main incursion arrives. So the big question is do we go on in the hope of finding something, or do we turn back now?"

 

 

He studied their faces and found only mirrors of his own uncertainty.

 

 

"I don't think we can give up just yet," he said finally. "We know we can't win without help, and we don't know there isn't still some help available. In all honesty, I'm not very optimistic, but I can't see that we have any choice but to ride it out and pray."

 

 

Jiltanith and MacMahan nodded slightly. The others were silent, then Chernikov raised his head.

 

 

"A point, sir."

 

 

"Yes?"

 

 

"Assuming Dahak is right that Fleet units are a more likely source of information, perhaps we should concentrate on Fleet bases and ignore civilian systems for the moment."

 

 

"My own thought exactly," Colin agreed.

 

 

"Yet 'twould be but prudent to essay a few systems more ere we leave this space entire," Jiltanith mused. "Methinks there doth lie another world scarce fifteen light-years hence. 'Twas not a Fleet base, yet was it not a richly peopled world, Dahak?"

 

 

"Correct, ma'am," Dahak replied. "The Kano System lies fourteen-point-six-six-one light-years from Defram, very nearly on a direct heading to Birhat. The last census data in my records indicates a system population of some nine-point-eight-three billion."

 

 

Colin thought. At maximum speed, the trip to Kano would require little more than a week....

 

 

"All right, 'Tanni," he agreed. "But if we don't find anything there, we're in the same boat. Assuming we don't get answers at Kano, I'm beginning to think we may have to move on to Fleet Central at Birhat itself."

 

 

He understood the ripple of shock that ran through his officers. Birhat lay almost eight hundred light-years from Sol. If they ventured that far, even Dahak's speed could not possibly return them to Earth before the Achuultani scouts had arrived.

 

 

Oh, yes, he understood. Quite possibly, Dahak alone could stop the Achuultani scouts, particularly if backed by whatever Earth had produced. But if Colin continued to Birhat, Dahak wouldn't be available to try... and the decision was his to make. His alone.

 

 

"I recognize the risks," he said softly, "but our options are closing in, and time's too short to scurry around from star to star. Unless we find a definite answer at Kano, it may run out on us entirely. If we're going to Birhat at all, we can't afford to deviate or we'll never get back before the main incursion arrives. If we make a straight run for it from Kano, we should have some months to look around Fleet Central and still beat the real incursion home. Even assuming a worst-case scenario, assuming the entire Imperium is like Defram, we may at least find out what happened and where-if anywhere-a functional portion of the Imperium remains. I'm not definitely committing us to Birhat; I'm only saying we may not have another choice."

 

 

He fell silent, letting them examine his logic for flaws, almost praying they would find some, but instead they nodded one by one.

 

 

"All right. Dahak, have Sarah set course for Kano immediately. We'll go take a look before we commit to anything else."

 

 

"Yes, Captain."

 

 

"I think that's everything," Colin said heavily, and rose. "If any of you need me, I'll be on the bridge."

 

 

He walked out. This time Dahak did not call the others to attention, as if he sensed his captain's mood... but they rose anyway.

 

 

"Detection at twelve light-minutes," Dahak announced, and Colin's eyes widened with sudden hope. The F5 star called Kano blazed in Dahak's display, the planet Kano-III a penny-bright dot, and they'd been detected. Detected! There was a high-tech presence in the system!

 

 

But Dahak's next words cut his elation short.

 

 

"Hostile launch," the computer said calmly. "Multiple hostile launches. Sublight missiles closing at point-seven-eight light-speed."

 

 

Missiles?

 

 

"Tactical, Red One!" Colin snapped, and Tamman's acknowledgment flowed back through his neural feed. The tractor web snapped alive, sealing him in his couch, and Dahak's mighty weapons came on line as raucous audio and implant alarms summoned his crew to battle.

 

 

"No offensive action!" Colin ordered harshly.

 

 

"Acknowledged." Tamman's toneless voice was that of a man intimately wedded to his computers. Dahak's shield snapped up, anti-missile defenses came alive, and Colin fell silent as others fought his ship.

 

 

Sarah Meir was part of Tamman's tactical net, and she took Dahak instantly to maximum sublight speed. Evasive action began, and the starfield swooped crazily about them. Crimson dots appeared in the holographic display, flashing towards Dahak like a shoal of sharks, tracking despite his attempts to evade.

 

 

His jammers filled space and fold-space alike with interference, and blue dots flashed out from the center of the display, each a five-hundred-ton decoy mimicking Dahak's electronic and gravitonic signature. More than half the red dots wavered, swinging to track the decoys or simply lost in the jamming, but at least fifty continued straight for them.

 

 

They were moving at almost eighty percent of light-speed, but so great was the range they seemed to crawl. And why were they moving sublight at all? Why weren't they hyper missiles? Why-

 

 

"Second salvo launch detected," Dahak announced, and Colin cursed.

 

 

Active defenses engaged the attackers. Hyper missiles were useless, for they could not home on evading targets, so sublight counter-missiles raced to meet them, blossoming in megaton bursts as proximity fuses activated. Eye-searing flashes pocked the holographic display, and red dots began to die.

 

 

"They mount quite capable defenses of their own, Captain," Dahak observed, and Colin felt them through his feed. ECM systems lured Dahak's fire wide and on-board maneuvering systems sent the red dots into wild gyrations, and they were faster than the counter-missiles chasing them.

 

 

"Where are they coming from, Dahak?"

 

 

"Scanners have detected twenty-four identical structures orbiting Kano-III," Dahak replied as his close-range energy defenses opened fire and killed another dozen missiles. At least twenty were still coming. "I have detected launches from only four of them."

 

 

Only four? Colin puzzled over that as the last dozen missiles broke past Dahak's active defenses. He found himself gripping his couch's armrests; there was nothing else he could do.

 

 

Dahak's display blanked in the instant of detonation, shielding his bridge crews' optic nerves from the fury unleashed upon him. Anti-matter warheads, their yields measured in thousands of megatons, gouged at his final defenses, but Dahak was built to face things like that, and plasma clouds blew past him, divided by his shield as by the prow of a ship. Yet mixed with the anti-matter explosions were the true shipkillers of the Imperium: gravitonic warheads.

 

 

The ancient starship lurched. For all its unimaginable mass, despite the unthinkable power of its drive, it lurched like a broken-masted galleon, and Colin's stomach heaved despite the internal gravity field. His mind refused to contemplate the terrible fury which could produce that effect as gravitonic shield components screamed in protest, but they, too, had been engineered to meet this test. Somehow they held.

 

 

The display flashed back on, spalled by fading clouds of gas and heat, and a damage signal pulsed in Colin's neural feed. A schematic of Dahak's hull appeared above his console, its frontal hemisphere marred by two wedge-shaped glares of red over a kilometer deep.

 

 

"Minor damage in quadrants Alpha-One and Three," Dahak reported. "No casualties. Capability not impaired. Second salvo entering interdiction range. Third enemy salvo detected."

 

 

More counter-missiles flashed out, and Colin reached a decision.

 

 

"Tactical, take out the actively attacking installations!"

 

 

"Acknowledged," Tamman said, and the display bloomed with amber sighting circles. Each enclosed a single missile platform, too tiny with distance for even Dahak to display visually, and Colin swallowed. Unlike their attackers, Tamman was using hyper missiles.

 

 

"Missiles away," Dahak said. And then, almost without pause, "Targets destroyed."

 

 

Bright, savage pinpricks blossomed in the amber circles, but the two salvos already fired were still coming. Yet Dahak had gained a great deal of data from the first attack, and he was a very fast thinker. Battle Comp was using his predicted target responses well, concentrating his counter-missiles to thwart them, alert now for their speed and the tricks of defensive ECM, killing the incoming missiles with inexorable precision. Energy weapons added their efforts as the range dropped, killing still more. Only three of the second salvo got through, and they were all anti-matter warheads. The final missile of the last salvo died ten light-seconds short of the shield.

 

 

Colin sagged in his couch.

 

 

"Dahak? Any more?" he asked hoarsely.

 

 

"Negative, sir. I detect active targeting systems aboard seven remaining installations, but no additional missiles have been launched."

 

 

"Any communication attempts?"

 

 

"Negative, Captain. Nor have they responded to my hails."

 

 

"Damn."

 

 

Colin's brain began to work again, but it made no sense. Why refuse all contact and attack on sight? For that matter, how had Dahak gotten so deep in-system before being detected? And if attack they must, why use only a sixth of their defensive bases? The four Tamman had destroyed had certainly gone all out, but if they meant to mount a defense at all, why hold anything back? Especially now, when Dahak had riposted so savagely?

 

 

"Well," he said finally, very softly, "let's find out what that was all about. Sarah, take us in at half speed. Tamman, hold us on Red One."

 

 

Acknowledgments flowed back to him, and Dahak started cautiously forward once more at twenty-eight percent of light speed. Colin watched the display for a moment, then made himself lean back.

 

 

"Dahak, give me an all-hands channel."

 

 

"All-hands channel open, sir."

 

 

"All right, people," Colin said to every ear aboard the massive ship, "that was closer than we'd like, but we seem to've come through intact. If anyone's interested in exactly what happened-" he paused and smiled; to his surprise, it felt almost natural "-you can get the details from Dahak later. But for your immediate information, no one's shooting at us just now, so we're going on in for a closer look. They're not talking to us, either, so it doesn't look like they're too friendly, but we'll know more shortly. Hang loose."

 

 

He started to order Dahak to close the channel, then stopped.

 

 

"Oh, one more thing. Well done, all of you. You did us proud. Out.

 

 

"Close channel, Dahak."

 

 

"Acknowledged, Captain. Channel closed."

 

 

"Thank you," Colin said softly, and his tone referred to far more than communications channels and the starship's courtesy. "Thank you very much."

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

The holo of what had once been a pleasant, blue-white world called Keerah hung in Command One's visual display like a leprous, ocher curse. Once-green continents were wind and water-carved ruins, grooved like a harridan's face and pocked with occasional sprawls where the works of Man had been founded upon solid bedrock and so still stood, sentinels to a vanished population.

 

 

Colin stared at it, heartsick as even Defram had not left him. He'd hoped so hard. The missiles which had greeted them had seemed to confirm that hope, and so he had almost welcomed them even as they sought to kill him. But dead Keerah mocked him.

 

 

He turned away, shifting his attention to the orbiting ring of orbital forts. Only seven remained even partially operational, and the nearest loomed in Dahak's display, gleaming dully in the funeral watch light of Kano. The clumsy-looking base was over eight kilometers in diameter, and a shiver ran down Colin's spine as he looked at it.

 

 

Even now, its targeting systems were locked on Dahak, its age-crippled computers sending firing signals to its weapons. He shuddered as he pictured the ancient launchers swinging through their firing sequences again and again, dry-firing because their magazines were empty. It was bad enough to know the long-abandoned war machine was trying to kill him; it was worse to wonder how many other vessels must have died under its fire to exhaust its ammunition.

 

 

And if Dahak and Hector were right, most of those vessels had been killed not for attacking Keerah, but for trying to escape it.

 

 

"Probe One is reporting, Captain." Dahak's mellow voice wrenched Colin away from his frightening, empty thoughts to more immediate matters.

 

 

"Very well. What's their status?"

 

 

"External scans completed, sir. Fleet Captain (Engineering) Chernikov requests permission to board."

 

 

Colin turned to the holo image beside his console. "Recommendations?"

 

 

"My first recommendation is to get Vlad out of there," Cohanna said flatly. "I'd rather not risk our Chief Engineer on the miserable excuse for an opinion I can give you."

 

 

"I tend to agree, but I made the mistake of asking for volunteers."

 

 

"In that case," Cohanna leaned back behind her desk in sickbay, a thousand kilometers from Command One, and rubbed her forehead, "we might as well let them board."

 

 

"Are you sure about that?"

 

 

"Of course I'm not!" she snapped, and Colin's hand rose in quick apology.

 

 

"Sorry, 'Hanna. What I really wanted was a run-down on your reasoning."

 

 

"It hasn't changed." Her almost normal tone was an unstated acceptance of his apology. "The other bases are as dead as Keerah, but there are at least two live hydroponics farms aboard that hulk-how I don't know, after all this time-and there may be more; we can't tell from exterior bio-scans even at this range. But that thing's entire atmosphere must've circulated through both of them a couple of million times by now and the plants are still alive. It's possible they represent a mutant strain that happened to be immune to whatever killed everything on Keerah, but I doubt it. Whatever the agent was, it doesn't seem to have missed anything down there, so I think it's unlikely it ever contaminated the battle station." She shrugged.

 

 

"I know that's a mouthful of qualifiers, but it's all I can tell you."

 

 

"But there's no other sign of life," Colin said quietly.

 

 

"None." Cohanna's holographic face was grim. "There couldn't be, unless they were in stasis. Genetic drift would've seen to that long ago on something as small as that."

 

 

"All right," Colin said after a moment. "Thank you." He looked down at his hands an instant longer, then nodded to himself.

 

 

"Dahak, give me a direct link to Vlad."

 

 

"Link open, Captain."

 

 

"Vlad?"

 

 

"Yes, Captain?" There was no holo image-Chernikov's bare-bones utility boat had strictly limited com facilities-but his calm voice was right beside Colin's ear.

 

 

"I'm going to let you take a closer look, Vlad, but watch your ass. One man goes in first-and not you, Mister. Full bio-protection and total decon before he comes back aboard, too."

 

 

"With all respect, Captain, I think-"

 

 

"I know what you think," Colin said harshly. "The answer is no."

 

 

"Very well." Chernikov sounded resigned, and Colin sympathized. He would vastly have preferred to take the risk himself, but he was Dahak's captain. He couldn't gamble with the chain of command... and neither could Vlad.

 

 

Vlad Chernikov looked at the engineer he had selected for the task. Jehru Chandra had come many light-years to risk his life, but he looked eager as he double-checked the seals on his suit. Not cheerful or unafraid, but eager.

 

 

"Be cautious in there, Jehru."

 

 

"Yes, sir."

 

 

"Keep your suit scanners open. We will relay to Dahak."

 

 

"I understand, sir." Chernikov grinned wryly at Chandra's manifestly patient reply. Did he really sound that nervous?

 

 

"On your way, then," he said, and the engineer stepped into the airlock.

 

 

As per Cohanna's insistence, there was no contact between Chernikov's workboat and the battle station, but Chernikov studied the looming hull yet again as Chandra floated across the kilometer-wide gap on his suit propulsors. This ancient structure was thousands of years younger than Dahak, but the warship had been hidden under eighty kilometers of solid rock for most of its vast lifespan. The battle station had not. The once bright battle steel was dulled by the film of dust which had collected on its age-sick surface and pitted by micro-meteor impacts, and its condition made Chernikov chillingly aware of its age as Dahak's shining perfection never had.

 

 

Chandra touched down neatly beside a small personnel lock, and his implants probed at the controls.

 

 

"Hmmmmm...." The tension in his voice was smoothed by concentration. "Dahak was right, Commander. I've got live computers here, but damned if I recognize the machine language. Whups! Wait a minute, I've got something-"

 

 

His voice broke off for an agonizing moment, then came back with a most unexpected sound: a chuckle.

 

 

"I'll be damned, sir. The thing recognized my effort to access and brought in some kind of translating software. The hatch's opening now."

 

 

He stepped through it and it closed once more.

 

 

"Pressure in the lock," he reported, his fold-space com working as well through battle steel as through vacuum. "On the low side-'bout point-six-nine atmospheres. My sensors read breathable."

 

 

"Forget it right now, Jehru."

 

 

"Never even considered it, sir. Honest. Okay, inner lock opening now." There was a brief pause. "I'm in. Inner hatch closed. The main lighting's out, but about half the emergency lights're up."

 

 

"Is the main net live, or just the lock computers?"

 

 

"Looks like the auxiliary net's up. Just a sec. Yes, sir. Power level's weak, though. Can't find the main net, yet."

 

 

"Understood. Give me a reading on the auxiliary. Then I want you to head up-ship. Keep an eye out for..."

 

 

Colin rested in his couch, eyes closed, concentrating on his neural feed as Chandra penetrated the half-dead hulk, gaining in confidence with every meter. It showed even in the technicalities of his conversation with Vlad.

 

 

Colin only hoped they could ever dare to let him come home again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"... and that's about the size of it," Cohanna said, deactivating her personal memo computer. "We hit Chandra's suit with every decon system we had. As near as Dahak and I can tell, it was a hundred percent sterile before we let him unsuit, but we've got him in total isolation. I think he's clean, but I'm not letting him out of there until I'm certain."

 

 

"Agreed. Dahak? Anything to add?"

 

 

"I am still conversing with Omega Three's core computers, Captain. More precisely, I am attempting to converse with them. We do not speak the same language, and their data transmission speed is appreciably higher than my own. Unfortunately, they also appear to be quite stupid." Colin hid a smile at the peeved note in Dahak's voice. Among the human qualities the vast computer had internalized was one he no doubt wished he could have avoided: impatience.