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  Before Lawrona answered, the AI missiles exploded into Line’s tiny attack force, destroying Implacable’s host.

  “Filters to max,” said the First Leader, hands shading his eyes. Even to AI eyes, the holographic projection was a single unbearable ball of red-orange flame.

  “Well done, First Leader,” said Orlac as the fireball slowly dissipated.

  Long and dark, something burst from the flames, growing in size until it filled the projection.

  “Laal-class cruiser, Kronarin Fleet,” said Operations. “Heavily armed. She’ll break up against our shield.”

  “Suicide run,” said Orlac.

  “A very elaborate one,” noted Sutak wryly.

  “Are you pilots?” asked Kyan.

  More than that, My Lord, said a voice in his head.

  “Every emperor needs an Imperial Guard,” said Admiral Laguan.

  “Not mindslaves?” said Kyan. He stood with the Grand Admiral, watching the gray-uniformed figures file silently into a briefing room, led by Captain Sakur.

  “Biofabs, My Lord,” said Laguan.

  “Biofabs?!” Kyan stared at Sakur. “You’re a biofab?”

  “Syal’s Guard were at first all biofabs, all of us crafted by Line,” said Sakur. “Later as his madness grew, he came to mistrust us and returned most to stasis, where my comrades have been ever since.”

  “Organics can’t survive stasis,” said Kyan. “Except for the fluke that saved Sakur.”

  “I very much improved that technology, My Lord,” said Line.

  “Will you ever run out of surprises, Line?”

  “I exist but to serve, My Lord.”

  Kyan looked at the biofabs, a seeming racial cross-section of the Confederation. The biofabs looked back. “This isn’t an illusion?”

  “No,” said Laguan. “Though they’ve the same abilities as the Scotar biofabs—telepathy, telekinesis.”

  “So why are you standing here so obediently?” Kyan asked the biofabs.

  “They are—” began Line.

  “I asked them,” said Kyan. “Why don’t you just leave? You could have you own empire—you don’t need to serve ours.”

  “We’d be dead within a month without Line’s sustaining witches’ brew, My Lord,” said Sakur. “It’s how the Imperials controlled us. We’d quickly die without it.”

  “Pity the Scotar weren’t made that way,” said Kyan.

  But they were, thought Line. But you stopped them mostly on your own—as hoped. “Indeed, My Lord,” said Line.”

  “Sheila Ractol’s is one of the personalities comprising Line, My Lord,” said Laguan, naming the renegade governor and geneticist whose biological fabrications, the Ractolian Biofabs, had overrun her forces and made the Empire totter. “The Imperials captured her. She was publically brainstripped and incorporated into Line. Thus its skill in crafting biofabs.”

  “How many are you?” asked the Heir.

  “Five hundred or so, quartered here,” said Sakur.

  “Can they be stripped of their special abilities, Line?” He regretted the word as soon as he said it.

  “As in brainstripped, My Lord?” asked Sakur, stone-faced.

  “I apologize. I meant your abilities lessened or deactivated.”

  “They can be,” said Line.

  “And your ‘witches’ brew?’ Can they be weaned from it?”

  “With genetic surgery. May I ask why, My Lord? They’re dangerous. We’ve learned from Ractol’s mistakes—she had no control over the biofabs she spawned. They almost destroyed Empire.”

  “They certainly took the sheen off of ‘Empire and Destiny.’ Are you and yours dangerous, Captain Sakur?”

  “Deadly, My Lord. But only to your enemies.”

  “What’s Implacable’s status, Admiral?”

  “Coming within range of target.”

  Kyan stood looking at the biofabs, considering. “You’re an unexpected boon. I’ve a quick proposal for you, and then I have to leave.”

  “If the shield frequencies Devastator carried are still correct,” said Lawrona, watching the battleglobe grow to fill the scan, “then we’ve a chance.”

  Thick red fusion beams lashed Implacable, tearing at her shield as she closed on the battleglobe.

  “Here we go,” said Detrelna, sending the cruiser into the AI’s shield, blue and red merging.

  A brief confusion of colors on the board, the scan breaking up into a tumbling kaleidoscope, then it cleared.

  “We’re through!” shouted Detrelna. Hands dancing over the helm controls, he dropped the cruiser lower. Outside, the fusion fire raking them slackened, ending as Implacable dropped below the cannons’ minimum azimuth.

  Endless sensor and comm nodules clusters, missile and fusion batteries flashed by, massive and gray, as Implacable raced for the battleglobe’s southern pole.

  “What a brilliant ruse,” said Sutak, admiring as Implacable flew unopposed across his command ship.

  “Enemy ship identified as battle cruiser Implacable,” reported Orlac. “Figured prominently in all engagements with our contemporary recons into this universe. Defeated us at Terra Two unaided. Defeated us at Dalin with allies.”

  “Why isn’t he firing?” frowned Sutak. “We can’t touch him.”

  “Perhaps he’s going to board us,” Orlac chuckled.

  The two AIs looked at each other.

  “He is!” said the First Leader, eyes flashing. “The audacity!” he laughed.

  “But …”

  “Operations,” said Sutak. “Do we have a probable on enemy ship’s destination?”

  “Hangar green alpha 13.”

  “Where is that?” It was Larn. The First Cyberist was an agitated red sphere, bobbing about the First Leader’s station.

  Sutak pointed past Larn toward the command center’s thick blast doors. “First right, second left. Just wait here, though, Larn—he’s coming for us.”

  “What are you doing about this?!” he shrieked.

  “Unless you leave now,” said Sutak, “I’m sending every cyberist on this globe into that hangar bay. If we’re fortunate, the enemy will mistake you for intelligent life.” He turned to Orlac. “Ever see a blaster explode a vacuum-sealed cyberball?”

  “It was fools like that who brought us to this,” called Orlac as Larn streaked for the bridge portal. “A dying race with no future.”

  “Don’t come back, Larn,” called Sutak.

  “What are your orders?” asked Orlac.

  “Security Condition One. All blades to repel boarders. Advise the Security Commander I’ll coordinate the counterattack. Transfer command of the fleet to our esteemed Second Leader in the lead phalanx. Emphasize it’s temporary, not a promotion.”

  “All he’ll hear is ‘take command.’ Hasi’s not to be trusted. He’s a Traditionalist.”

  “I don’t think he likes me.”

  “‘Hedonistic, fornicating race-traitor’ wasn’t it?”

  “He’d had a bad day—he so wanted to be Third Leader. It’s all penis-envy—no one stopped him from changing to human form—some rutting would’ve cleared his cluttered mind. Still, for a mad xenophobe, he’s a very able commander. Come, Orlac, let’s go welcome Implacable. Before they die, I want to see this ship and crew that have given us so much trouble.”

  Chapter 28

  “Target penetrated,” Lawrona’s voice echoed through the cruiser’s hangar deck. “Stand by for Go.” Absent Kyan, he’d taken command of the attack, Lieutenant Satil by his side. “Line, where is the Heir? It’s his party—he needs to host it.”

  “En route, Captain.”

  “We can’t wait any longer.”

  “Weren’t going to start without me, Hanar?” said Kyan, appearing between Lawrona and Satil. A cheer went up from the waiting troopers. Kyan acknowledge, clenched fist high. “Lieutenant,” he nodded.

  “My Lord,” she saluted.

  Neither saw Lawrona suppress a smile. “We are yours, My Lord,” said the cap
tain, clenching hand to breast in the old Imperial salute. The Heir returned the salute.

  “Positions!” cried Kyan, drawing his blaster. “Form on me!”

  “Landing zone imminent,” said Detrelna from the bridge.

  “Never thought to see you leading the charge,” said Satil as the troopers formed an assault line stretching the width of the air curtain.

  “Me neither,” said Kyan, stepping through the long line of troopers to take up position center front. “I’ve been in messy firefights, but nothing like this.” He looked down the assault line, left, then right. Brown uniforms intermingled with black, commandos with starship and ground personnel. What few officers and NCOs survived were positioned along the line’s front. All stood nervously gripping their rifles, waiting, staring through the faint shimmer of the atmosphere curtain at the end the hangar deck. Outside, dark and diffuse, vast inchoate shadows flickered across the air curtain as Implacable sped across the battleglobe.

  “This is the final assault!” Kyan said, facing them, his voice ringing across the hangar deck. “We win here, or we die here. If we die, humanity dies with us. Who follows me to victory?!” he shouted, blaster raised high.

  “We do! We do! We do!” answered the roar.

  “He’s certainly firing them up,” said Detrelna on Lawrona’s private comm band as the captain headed back to the bridge.

  “Kyan lacks your taciturn style,” replied the captain as the cheers continued.

  “I’m taciturn, Hanar?”

  “Don’t you have a unit?” Kyan asked Satil as quiet returned to the hangar deck.

  The commando officer shook her head. “No.”

  “Fine,” said the Heir. “You’re now my aide and a full colonel. If we win, I’ll make it permanent.”

  “If we win,” said Satil, drawing her sidearm, “we’ll have that quiet talk.”

  “At the very least, Corin.”

  “I’ve seen it before, but it still impresses me,” said Detrelna. “How millions of slaves died and how many planets were raped to build this horror?”

  “Times one hundred million,” added Lawrona.

  One of the battleglobe’s many such cavernous wombs, the hangar held a fleet of destroyers, fighters and assault craft with room left for a hundred Implacables.

  The Kronarin cruiser slipped silently past the AI ships, moving toward the cavern’s distant end.

  “Closing on bridge access portal,” said Lawrona, eyes shifting between the diagram on his complink and the forward view on the bridge screen. “They must know we’re here—probably pulling a reaction force together.”

  “They already have,” said Detrelna, bringing the cruiser to a hovering stop. Security blades were surging into the hangar, forming a three-layered line blocking the corridor leading to the battleglobe’s heart.

  Lawrona touched the commlink as Implacable settled on her landing struts. “Hostiles to your front, My Lord.”

  Kyan raised his pistol as the atmosphere curtain winked off. “Assault!” he cried, leaping onto the enemy deck, afraid to see if any one followed.

  “Permission to join the attack, Commodore?” asked Lawrona.

  “Not without me,” said Detrelna, rising. The bridge crew rose as one. “No,” he said. “Mind the ship. If they come, run for it. If you can’t run, blow her up. We’ve logged the order. Luck.”

  “Where’s Nakil?” demanded the First Leader. “He’s supposed to be coordinating the reserves.” Sutak stood in Flight Control, looking down on the hangar through the armorglass wall. Outside, the humans were charging, an impossibly small number against the blades rushing to meet them.

  “Dead,” said the blade beside Sutak, Security Commander Jnor. “Plague.”

  The blaster fire, muffled explosions, screams—Sutak was only dimly aware of it. “So it’s here. And this fight’s the death throes of man and machine. They won’t appreciate the gesture, but we’ll let them die valiantly,” he said as his blades knifed into the humans.

  “Why the cross?” asked John.

  Guan-Sharick turned from the time-worn stone. “You’ve no monopoly on it. It symbolizes sacrifice, here the sacrifice of the hope that we could all be better than we were, all the universe’s squabbling, murderous races. I built it and set it in the ground. Our home stood here. And here my heart was forever broken. There were many happy memories, but today all I feel is an ineffable sadness.”

  “Which of the squabbling races are you?” asked Kiroda after a moment.

  “None,” she said. She knelt on the ground, fingering a thin blade of grass. “We lived here under the Trel. They created us as their helpers and we became their partners. Originally we had no human form—we were given that later—the Trel meant well by it. Daklan was a world of intellect and inquiry, a Trel scientific haven where good things were created—needed things. It was indeed a place of joyous discovery. And of happiness—we were happy.”

  “Joys like the plague?” asked John.

  “But this isn’t the Trel’s home universe,” said Zahava before Guan-Sharick could reply.

  “That’s why we worked here—if something went wrong, if something bad got loose, it would stay on this side of the Rift.”

  “Destroying only the AIs and humans who lived here,” said Kiroda. “Thoughtful.”

  “The Trel never imagined anything as devastating as the plague.”

  “And the AIs’ human slaves?”

  “Weren’t so until the AIs enslaved them—the Trel despised slavery. It was one of the reasons the AIs attacked the Trel. After the Revolt, the human exodus to your universe brought with it that memory. It helps explain your Empire’s terror of their own AIs, the Talag, and the Talags’ ultimate extermination by Syal.”

  “Despite the Trel’s precautions, something bad got loose,” said Kiroda. “It’s destroying two universes.”

  “We didn’t unleash the plague—the AIs did. But we should never have created it—we knew the risks. We wanted to craft a virus that could infect any sentient life, a benign biophage with limitless medical possibilities, a universal pharmacopeia. But the first prototypes were deadly. We destroyed all but one, the most deadly and of course the most promising. I should have killed it, but it was a part of me, my creation. I knew I could tame it, given time. But the AIs came and Daklan fell. They took or destroyed all we’d created.

  “The AIs can be winsome and the Trel had hopes of an easy peace—they ignored the early signs of invasion—good-hearted, trusting Trel. The AIs were on their way to attack what’s now free man’s home universe, but their onslaught fell first on Daklan. It was fierce and pitiless, an endless sea of blades and combat droids, assault ships blackening the sky. They weren’t expecting us or our abilities—we fought fiercely, but they won—we were never many. We delayed the AIs long enough for the Trel to rally and send them scuttling back through the Rift. Their parting gift was my stolen virus, scattered behind them as they fled. They didn’t bother dosing dead Daklan with it.

  “The Trel died—all the Trel, the last and best of them in my arms. For a long time I was all rage and grief. But I stayed and worked in the ashes of my life.” She vanished, reappearing with a small flat case, giving it to John, who took it uneasily. It bore the now-familiar pyramid on both sides, the uncanny blue eyes staring up at him. “My life, my folly. Use it to heal as I never did.”

  “This heraldic device we’re always seeing—what is it?” asked John, unsure what to say, overwhelmed by the immensity of Guan-Sharick’s confession.

  “The pyramid of knowledge, the eye of knowing. It’s the mark of Trel and their unworthy servants. It holds the vaccine that kills the plague. This is the last of it. As is the plague, it’s generic, protection for all.”

  “How do we reproduce it, adapt it, apply it?” asked Kiroda.

  “It will do that itself.” She saw his skepticism. “It’s self-spawning, self-adapting, distributed by Tau energy. Release it in an infected area and watch.”

  John tu
cked the most precious artifact in two universes under his arm.

  “Don’t open it until you need it,” she added.

  “We could return to Devastator—purge it,” said Kiroda.

  “A noble gesture saving everyone here in the AIs’ home universe from the plague—and condemning your own people back home to death, Tolei,” said Guan-Sharick with a humorless smile.

  Zahava broke the silence. “You were part of the first revolt against the AIs—The Revolt—that sent humans fleeing to our universe?”

  “Several of us were—you met Lan-Asal. We wanted revenge and to honor the Trel’s memory. They had our respect, our love. Their visions were as lofty as their cities, they soared among the stars, helped many and all but one race called them friend.”

  “That was a very long time ago,” said Kiroda.

  “Not to all, Tolei. I can see the faces and hear the laughter in this place as though it were yesterday.”

  “Without a ship, how do we get this where it’s needed?” asked John, lifting the white case.

  “I can send you to fight beside your friends on the AI command globe. It’s standing off Kronar with them desperately trying to take it, as you did Devastator. But their greatest enemy’s the enemy of all—the one they can’t see. Last question, Commander Kiroda,” she smiled as Tolei began to speak.

  “What did the Trel look like?”

  “Much like you—though as you know, you’re making required more than the six days the Terrans say. We made more than viruses here on Daklan.”

  It seemed to John that Guan-Sharick looked suddenly younger, her cares gone. “And you? What now?” asked John.

  She shook her head. “Sending you through the Rift will deplete the special energy keeping this planet and me from time. I’ll try to be with you, to serve as a catalyst, but I may not survive—or not for long—a price I’ll happily pay.” She touched the vaccine case. “Use it wisely. You’ve only one chance.” Her cool green eyes looked into John’s. “Good-bye, John. Zahava. Oh, and Tolei,” she said to the young Kronarin. “Sometimes we can choose between a long life or a happy one. I didn’t have that choice. Follow your heart.”

  The humans vanished. An instant later the planet and its star were gone.