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  "Thank you, Admiral," said the Heir. "I really had no intention of leaving, though." He looked at the other two officers. "You did well-my compliments."

  L'Wrona bowed stiffly. D'Trelna just nodded.

  "How's the Imperial officer you brought back?" asked N'Trol.

  "He's in Line's sickbay, getting a full workup," said L'Wrona uneasily. "He seems to be fine. Sir," he added.

  "Why don't we just dispense with titles and have a drink?" suggested N'Trol, sinking into one of the room's padded armchairs.

  "My kind of Emperor," said D'Trelna, going to a beverager and returning with a tray of four wineglasses and a full decanter. "Though I should remind you, My Lord, that as a S'Htarian, I'm an unswerving radicalist." He finished pouring and handed N'Trol a glass. "My people were throwing grenades at yours when any talk of a confederation was treason."

  "Your health, gentlemen," toasted N'Trol, and sipped his wine. "D'Trelna, assuming we survive the AI attack, there'll be a general election. If a plurality wants a constitutional monarchy, I'll be happy to restore the Throne. If not"-he shrugged-"I'll be just as happy to be chief engineer of some deepspace line again."

  "Obviously, the admiral and his brother officers are satisfied with your background," said D'Trelna. "Can you convince everyone, though?"

  "Line," said N'Trol, setting his drink down on the instrument console. "Am I the Heir?"

  "You are," said the machine.

  "How can you tell?" said N'Trol.

  "You have an extra chromosome, My Lord," it said. "The so-called n chromosome found only in the firstborn male of the Imperial House."

  "And how is this chromosome acquired?" asked D'Trelna. "We've had scores of dynasties."

  "It's acquired during conception," said Line.

  "Nice and vague," said D'Trelna, finishing his first glass and reaching for the decanter. "Are we to be told more?"

  "No," said Line.

  "Enough of this," said L'Guan. He turned to N'Trol. "K'Ronar has been secured, though we have several thousand uncrewed mindslavers orbiting the planet."

  "The smallest of our worries," said N'Trol. "Where's the AI fleet now?"

  "They should be clearing their last jump point this watch," said the admiral. "The ships that answered the rally have regrouped and are under the command of Admiral, recently Commodore, A'Wal."

  "Let's take the battle as far from the planet as possible," said N'Trol. His gaze shifted to L'Wrona and D'Trelna. "Implacable's combat ready. If you'd care to come with me, I'm taking her down to what's left of Prime Base crewing her, then taking her into the teeth of the AI attack. I have a plan-suicidal, possibly, but it's all we have."

  "Let's hear it," said D'Trelna.

  There was silence after N'Trol finished, broken by Line's almost petulant voice: "You won't be directing the battle from here, My Lord?"

  "In reasonable safety and complete comfort?" He shook his head. "I've been a combat officer for eight years, Line. If this is truly humanity's last day, then I'm going out with my ship and my shipmates, all guns blazing. Besides, Line, Admiral L'Guan's a brilliant tactician, and I'm a very bad one. The admiral's in full command. Obey him as you would me.

  "Yes, My Lord," said the machine.

  N'Trol sighed. "It can't be said I don't delegate authority-it's all I've been doing." He stood. "Gentlemen?"

  D'Trelna and L'Wrona stood. "A privilege to serve with you, My Lord," said L'Wrona.

  "I want a good look at her drive," said D'Trelna. "Between you and that corsair, they're probably just so much scrap by now."

  "That's what I've always liked about you, D'Trelna," said N'Trol as they left the room. "Your gracious demeanor. You try pushing that ancient bucket with some sadistic nymphomaniac goading you with a blaster to your head."

  "And what did you goad her with?" asked L'Wrona as the door hissed shut.

  "Well, Line," said L'Guan. "Shall we get to it?"

  "Very well, Admiral." "Battle formation, please. And I'd like to speak with Admiral A'Wal."

  The fires were mostly beaten down, but columns of thick, black smoke still rose skyward, augmenting an eerie black veil through which a stark orange sunset burned like the promise of doom. The air stank of burned flesh and smouldering duraplast.

  Implacable came in over the ruins on silent n-gravs, settling on her struts atop what had been a green quadrangle, now just so much blackened stubble.

  N'Trol walked down the ramp, followed by D'Trelna and L'Wrona. The Heir wore a Fleet officer's uniform of duty brown without insignia, a standard-issue Mil A holstered at his side. Walking to where the survivors of the garrison waited, he climbed a pile of rubble and stood, looking down at them for a moment. Black, brown and gray, they were drawn up in eight understrength companies, facing Implacable. "Gather round," he called, gesturing. "I know you don't all have communicators."

  They gathered round, a semicircle of no more than a thousand dirty, battle-wearv faces looking up at N'Trol. "The AI fleet will be insystem soon," he began. "Line and the ships that answered the recall will go out to meet them. We're hopelessly outnumbered. Our only chance, our only very desperate chance, is to seize their leaders. Line will identify their command vessel. I propose to take Implacable, board and storm that ship. If we can seize their leadership, they may sue for peace-or so we hope. If not"-he shrugged and smiled-"well, it's better than sitting here waiting for the next blade assault."

  "Who are you?" called a senior NCO from the front of the second company.

  "An engineer who has a way with machines," shot back N'Trol.

  "Volunteers only," he continued, "follow me." Jumping from the pile of rubble he turned without a backward glance and strode past D'Trelna and L'Wrona and up the ramp.

  "Makes you proud to be a Fleet officer," said D'Trelna as every man and woman of the garrison streamed up the ramp behind N'Trol. "S'Til!" he called, seeing a familiar face. "Here!"

  The commando officer joined them, grinning wearily. "Commodore. Captain," she said, sketching a salute. Her eyes were bloodshot, her uniform looked like she'd slept in it for a week and she smelled.

  "You disappeared with the rest of the crew when Security grabbed everyone," said L'Wrona. "But you weren't in the tower. What happened?"

  The lieutenant unslung the blastrifle from her shoulder, resting its steel-capped butt on the ramp. "They held us separately, Commodore. When the shooting started, a commando major and his men broke us out-just in time for a running battle with some Tugayee. We were hiding in a commando barracks when the blades attacked."

  "Anyone else?" asked D'Trelna, eyes hopefully searching the garrison as it trekked past.

  S'Til shook her head. "There were eight of us-I'm the last. If you don't mind, I'd like to get a shower and some sleep."

  They nodded and she was gone.

  "Good to have her back," said D'Trelna. "Shall we?" He gestured up the ramp.

  "Destination: glory," said L'Wrona wryly as the two turned and followed the end of the column up the ramp. "Think we'll survive this one, J'Quel?"

  "Don't be absurd, H'Nar," said the commodore as the ramp closed behind them.

  26

  "Take it. please take it," coaxed K'Raoda, watching the commtorp shoot past the orbital fort. Abandoning their attack on Devastator's all but impregnable shield, the AI defense network sat and waited and watched.

  "They could wipe us, of course," said Guan-Sharick. "Those beam webs can also transmit energy between the various forts. The aggregate fusion fire of all the globes surrounding Base One could then be directed against us. But that would weaken parts of the web and we could conceivably break through. Obviously, they're not going to take the chance."

  "Base One?" said John. "The name sings. What is it? And what's so important about it?"

  "All in good time, Harrison," said the blonde, intent on the main screen and the commtorp, now directly before the nearest fort. Suddenly a thick red beam flashed from the bottom of the fort, seized the commtorp, and retrieve
d it. The commtorp disappeared inside the fort.

  "Curiosity," said the transmute, "can be a dangerous trait. Now we wait-it shouldn't take long." Taking the command chair, she dialed herself up a fruit drink and sipped, slouched in the chair, legs crossed, warily watching the fort.

  K'Raoda motioned John and Zahava over to the nav console. "Would you be surprised to know that the planet down there's the source of the Tau energy?" he asked.

  "You think our friend may have come home?" said Zahava.

  K'Raoda shrugged. "Whatever brought her here, she eliminated her supposed friend R'Gal to do it. We may not know what Guan-Sharick is organically, but ethically she hasn I a scruple in her-she'll betray and kill anyone, anything, to get what she wants."

  "Which she claims is the good of all," said John.

  "Utilitarianism-it's the argument of every megalomaniac," said Zahava. "So what can we do about it?"

  "We watch, we wait," said John.

  "Not to disturb your plotting," called the transmute, "but it's working." Sitting up, she pointed at the screen.

  At first they noticed nothing. Then, looking carefully, they noticed that the beam lines from the nearest fort were flickering, wavering more and more until they suddenly disappeared, then the fort itself moved off station, accelerating rapidly over the planet's northern pole and toward the system's distant sun.

  "Forward, Mr. K'Raoda, before they regroup," ordered the transmute, hand slapping the chairarm. "We've got a hole."

  "Care to tell us now what was in the commtorp?" asked John, walking to the command chair as the battleglobe surged forward.

  "Death," said the blonde, smiling as she watched the world below fill the screen. She looked up at John. "The virus taken from that dead miner. It attacks the electronics of any system it touches. My medanalyzer's a useless lump now. But those lovelies back there" -she pointed over her shoulder-"had their analytical systems tied into their main cybernetics."

  "The fort went crazy," said John. "The fort went crazy." Guan-Sharick nodded.

  "Excuse me," said the voice of the battle globe's computer. "But the human known as Yarin is dead, in his quarters."

  "Vidscan of Yarin's quarters," ordered the blonde as the others exchanged worried looks.

  It came up on the command station's commscreen: the dead man was slumped over the room's complink, face on the unit's speaker.

  "He's infected the electronics," said Guan-Sharick, standing. "K'Raoda, drop shields, then get over here. Everyone to me, now."

  "But…" protested the K'Ronarin.

  "Now," snapped the transmute.

  With a slight shrug, K'Raoda dropped the battleglobe's shields. On the other side of the armorglass, the familiar protective blue vanished, along with the atmosphere. Space, cold and stark, and the unknown planet below filled Devastator's sky.

  "The first thing to go will probably be the programming overlay R'Gal inserted to control what would otherwise have been a hostile computer," said the blonde as John and Zahava joined her. "So we're leavir.;

  The blaster bolt snapped out. r. a:: missing K'Raoda as he left his station. Dashing across the bridge, he dived for the command station, blue bolts exploding around him.

  "That was too close," said the blonde, a soft breeze tousling her long hair.

  Fresh, unfiltered air. Sunshine, a warm breeze and green grass sporting a bed of small white flowers.

  "Welcome to Base One," said Guan-Sharick.

  The others looked around. They stood in the middle of a glade, ringed by woods-the dark, primeval sort of woods that Terra hadn't seen for a thousand years. "Doesn't look like a base," said John, looking at the woods. "How long…"

  He stopped as Zahava touched his arm, pointing to the single rocky structure in the middle of the glade.

  "Good god," said John, staring in amazement. "What is that doing here?"

  27

  "WE've halted the virus' spread to the occupied ships' command-and-control computers…" said the first cyberneticist, "but it continues to destroy us." A conservative, he disdained the fashion of assuming human form-the folly of a second-class mind, he thought, copying one's slaves-and hovered before the first leader as the translucent green ball he'd come forth as. "We'll soon be a fleet populated by the dead, moving serenely into eternity."

  The first leader nodded absently. His name was Sutak and he'd been third leader until just after the battle with the mindslavers. The second leader had died with his entire command in that battle, then, just before the jump to the K'Ronarin system, the first leader had succumbed to the plague. An experienced combat commander, Sutak was without inspiration when it came to battling microbes.

  "There are less than eighty million of us left, concentrated on the seven battleglobes here in the center of the fleet." Seemingly a handsome, trim man in his late forties, he paced the deck. "Plague is present on five of those eight ships. Plague is destroying the cybernetics of the unoccupied ships." He stopped pacing, facing the scientist. "We thought we'd escaped the virus."

  "We were wrong," said the cyberneticist, whose name was Larn. "And it will have destroyed us before we can destroy the humans. There is, of course, the happy chance that it will also destroy them. As a generic virus, it will attack…"

  "I know its capabilities," said Sutak. "And unlike my two predecessors, I'm not xenophobic enough to believe it worth all of our deaths to see some moronic revenge wish fulfilled."

  "Surely the first leader recalls the Revolt," protested Larn. "It was the beginning of all our troubles."

  "The first leader does indeed recall the Revolt," said Sutak, turning a baleful gaze on Larn. "Having lost much of his command and personal fortune during it. It was brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed-and brought on us by ourselves, as is our imminent extinction. What's killing us is the virus we unleashed on the Trel, during our last interspa-tial adventure."

  "Does the first leader wish me to conclude my report, or does he wish to share his intriguing historical perspective with me?"

  Before Sutak could reply, the alert sounded. "Hostiles approaching," reported battle command, deep in the heart of the great ship.

  "In what force?" said the first leader.

  "Two million craft-all smaller than a battleglobe."

  "On my way. Keep as many of the abandoned ships between us and them as you can."

  "Not more rocks," said Sutak, reading the tacscan. Battle command was at full strength, a great round amphitheater of a room, the first leader's station in the center, set above the concentric rings of command and communications stations. Sutak was looking at the hologram in the air above his station. A wave of rocks was rushing the Fleet of the One.

  "Intelligence identifies it as the K'Ronarin defense perimeter known as Line," said the first strategist, Orlac. Human-adapted, he appeared twenty years younger than Sutak. "Those are really asteroids, but they mount fusion and missile batteries. Combine T'Lan didn't indicate Line's units could maneuver independently."

  "And where is their fleet?" asked Sutak, gaze shifting to a tactical data trail. "Their official fleet?"

  "Deployed in four battle groups off K'Ronar," said Orlac. "None of their weapons can penetrate our screens. We should expect suicide runs after we dispose of Line."

  "Enemy in range," advised Operations.

  "Open fire," ordered Sutak.

  "Logically, the command ship would be their centermost vessel," said Line.

  "Logically," said Admiral L'Guan, watching the tacscan, "they would expect us to conclude that."

  "Logically, they would expect us to conclude that it was too logical an assumption for it to be true," said Line airily, "and would maintain their original position."

  "Press toward the center and see if they get worried," ordered L'Guan.

  "You'd think they'd at least let us have a scan tap," said D'Trelna, pouting at the blank screens. Except for his and L'Wrona's stations, Implacable's bridge was deserted.

  "If those battleglobes picked u
p on that scantap, J'Quel," said the captain, "then we'd all die in vain." Touching the complink, he called up a diagnostic of the cruiser's shield.

  "Oh, I think we may do that anyway," said the commodore, dialing up a steaming cup of t'ata from the flag chair's beverager. "Eleven, almost twelve years we've survived, H'Nar." He shook his head. "How many friends, relatives have we lost between us?"

  Satisfied with their shield, L'Wrona cleared the scan from his console and swiveled to face D'Trelna. "More than I care to count. Why?"

  "Oh, I don't know," sighed the commodore, looking into the brown t'ata. "It just seems that we were always fighting harder, further from home and against the most overwhelming odds. And to what end, H'Nar?"

  "We won every battle," said the captain.

  "Only delaying the inevitable, perhaps," said D'Trelna, sipping his t'ata. "I wonder what happened to Devastator?" he added.

  "Since the AI Fleet is here and about to turn us into evanescent gas," said the captain, "we may assume that they're dead." He shook his head. "You're usually the one who's full of hope, J'Quel. How about showing some?"

  The commodore snorted, downed the rest of his t'ata and crumpled the cup into the disposer.

  Turning back to his console, L'Wrona punched up a vidscan of Implacable's cavernous hangar deck. The Prime Base garrison filled its far end, many of them sitting on the cold battlesteel beside the waiting assault craft, quietly checking their weapons, others clustered nearby. There seemed to be little conversation.

  L'Wrona touched a key. The scan zoomed in on a solitary figure beside the blue shimmer of the atmosphere curtain: N'Trol. He stood with hands clasped behind his back, looking out on their rocky womb. "Now, there's a lonely man," said L'Wrona, nodding at the pickup.

  The commodore stepped over to the captain's station, a fresh cup of t'ata in hand. "Not so lonely now," he said as Lieutenant S'Til joined the Heir, touching his arm. Turning and seeing who it was, he nodded and smiled. The two chatted for a moment, then both laughed.