ssssIn the Heart of Stars has been nominated for the 2012 Sir Julius Vogel awards. While it is the third book in the Prometheus trilogy, readers will pick up the characters and the plotline within a chapter or two. I hope the richness and quality of the writing will make up for this inconvenience.
ssssThe first chapter of the first book in the trilogy became the short story that won the 2011 ConteXT short story award.

ssss© 2011 W. Gibson
ssssALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ssssNo part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written consent from the author.


ssss ONE

ssssMenon beached his dooplehuel on a shingle bank at the back of the nearest island. Metris guided another of the sleek craft into the shallows beside him. Three Shellport villagers jumped down from the rib and hide deck of each, and soon had the long, double hulls off the beach and hidden under branches.
ssss“So far, so good,” muttered Menon.
ssssThe Shellport squad had travelled overland until they encountered a southern militia stronghold three days ago, then requisitioned the two dooplehuel from a coastal village on Hudnee’s orders. From there they’d sailed around the coast of Hud until they reached the eastern wastelands. Here a number of rivers formed a vast knot of coastal swamp, deep and impenetrable, until it petered out in the circle of islands known as the Barrens. Noxious ooze from the swamps had worked its way into the shallow seas inside the Barrens, so that nothing lived there. Sparse, dead grasses covered the rocky islands.
ssssIt was late in the afternoon, and Menon wanted to get a camp set up on one of the highest points before nightfall. He flicked his head toward the dry, rocky slope before them and Metris – now recovered from the fall at Saintsborough that had broken his leg in two places – scrambled to the top. He soon discovered the island was an insignificant mound of a place. That meant the squad would have to find another island, with a more commanding outlook, before it got dark.
ssssMenon sighed. Nothing about their mission was proving easy. He recalled the meeting at Shellport that had sent them off in such haste to the most remote parts of Hud.
ssss“You speak into that thing there and this boss, this headman at the other end, can hear you – even though he’s all the way over on another planet?” had said Hudnee, in disbelief.
ssss“Yes,” said Menona. She’d had the most to do with the pale strangers who’d provided medical support for the militia in the battle for Roum. They’d fixed her memory loss in their base at Shellport, and once Habna had helped her regain her damaged social skills she’d been the best choice to take over the communications device Reegas and Salan had left behind. “He’s a mining boss on a planet named Earth. Well, actually he’s not on Earth, but nearby, and ah . . ,” she tailed off. Habna looked up sharply, and made an imperious gesture with her head.
ssss“His name is Flinch, and he’s a master miner, just like you’re a master builder,” said Menona hurriedly. Habna nodded approval.
ssss“And he says the Carnii . . ,” she continued.
ssss“Who caused the rains and the changes to our weather, and who the pale ones are fighting,” interrupted Hudnee.
ssss“Yes,” said Menona. “The ones Earth are fighting, have started landing on some of the planets in the Spiral Arm and mining special minerals called ‘rare earths’.”
ssss“The Spiral what?’ said Hudnee, lost on a number of the points she was making.
ssss“That’s not important,” said Habna. “The point is the lights the villagers have been reporting around the eastern wastelands might have something to do with the Carnii.”
ssss“Who we really don’t like,” said Hudnee with a growl. This much he had grasped firmly. The change in the weather, the loss of whole species of plants and animals, and the deaths of many of the people of Hud, were directly due to the Carnii.
ssss“But there are always lights over the swamps,” said Menon, who had travelled wider and further than most in his lifetime on Hud. “Coloured gases bubble up there all the time, and in places there are lights that move over the ooze and through the scrub at night.”
ssss“Some of these reports are from experienced sailors, Menon,” said Habna, “and they suggest much more than that. You can respect their judgement, can’t you?”
ssssMenon nodded grudgingly.
ssss“And swamp lights didn’t take half the skin off that fisherman’s back,” said Habna.
ssssThere was silence in Habna’s front room, where the heads of the Shellport militia often held their meetings. This story seemed almost too strange to be true.
ssssTwo fishermen had been caught in a wind shift off the southern plateau, and had no choice but to run before the squally weather while it battered them from the south-west. Their dooplehuel had been blown round the southern part of Hud and past the eastern wasteland.
ssssSailing back they’d decided to save half a day by cutting through the Barrens, but darkness found them still some distance from open sea on the other side. Setting up camp on one of the islands they’d noticed flickering lights over the water, but soon dropped off into an exhausted sleep.
ssssOne of them woke much later to a loud, roaring sound. He saw a glowing orange shape, several times the size of either fishermen, then something hit him with such force he was knocked unconscious.
ssssWhen he came to he was floating in the sea, and one side of his body was a blaze of pain. Barely able to keep afloat, he’d struggled toward a dark shape he could see in the pre-dawn light, and barely made it to the shore of a small island. Later, in daylight, the Barrens looked as if nothing at all had happened, but there was no sign of the other fisherman. When the pain had eased a little he was lucky enough to spot the dooplehuel, floating upside down, and managed to turn it the right way up and bail it out.
ssssBy the time he got back to the southern plateau, and his fishing village, infection had worked its way into the burns that covered one side of his body. He was picked up delirious and severely dehydrated. His recovery had been slow, but news of what had happened to him had travelled quickly through every village in Hud.
ssssHabna now looked meaningfully at Hudnee, knowing this story added weight to what Menona had been saying.
ssss“One of Flinch’s people says something like this orange shape was recorded on Ba’H’Rok, another planet attacked by the Carnii.”
ssss“There are people on other planets than Ert?” said Hudnee, bewildered all over again. He had just been getting used to the idea there were many planets out there, and had not expected there would be ‘people’ of some sort on so many of them. “Are they all similar to the pale strangers who helped us?”
ssss“Earth,” corrected Habna, “and no, they are not all like the ones from Earth.”
ssssThere was a long silence.
ssss“But we must act now,” said Menona firmly. Habna nodded in agreement.
ssss“If Flinch and the people of Earth can get more information about what’s happening at the Barrens, they say they might be able to do something about it.”
ssss“Just because the civil war on Hud is over,” said Habna, “it doesn’t mean our responsibilities are over. Remember who ruined our weather and started this chain of miseries.”
ssss“All right, all right!” said Hudnee, throwing his hands up in a gesture of surrender. The only thing worse than being ganged up on by two women, was being ganged up on by two women who were right. The war between the Carnii and the rest of the races out there – however many there were, he thought wonderingly, then shut those thoughts out of his mind – needed the people of Hud to play a part too. The older members of the militia were on peacekeeping duties among the Descendants, and most of the younger members had volunteered to be pilots for the people of Ert. No, Earth, he corrected himself. Battrick, Tumbril, Carakas and the ArchOrdinate were overseeing the town council in Roum, making sure Hud’s largest population centre ran smoothly.
ssssI am so glad I’m a long way from the politicking in Roum, thought Hudnee gratefully.
ssssOn the edge of the Barrens, the men he had sent to investigate the strange reports about the place were trying to find somewhere for a camp, somewhere that would have a good view across the dry and lifeless islands before them.
ssssAt least they had some idea of what to expect reflected Menon, as he led the way along the shore toward another island that looked like it had some height to it – if the idea of strange lights and towering orange forms was all that useful, he muttered to himself.
ssssThe second island, when they finally floundered their way across to it, turned out to be one of the largest in the Barrens. As a bonus they were able to clean the ooze off themselves at the seaward end of it, once they’d hiked around the shoreline until the swamps petered out. Menon and Metris decided on a concealing hollow near the top of the island, and the squad began to set up camp.
ssssDarkness came on quickly, and after a cold meal of pre-soaked grains, seaweed and dried meats, they set two sentries for the first shift of the night, one at each end of the hollow. Menon figured they could swap ends every so often and this would help keep them awake. On a planet with no moon, the people of Hud had developed exceptional night vision, and Menon was content to trust his sentries to keep his squad safe. As darkness fell, the rest of the squad settled in for an uneasy night. Some were still awake when one of the sentries hissed urgently to the other, not long before the middle of the night.
ssssIn a few moments, every man in the squad was crouched along the seaward side of the hollow, staring in fascination at the light display out in the shallow sea. Bars of light raced past under the water, first one way then the other, each making one complete loop of a circuit that started offshore from the island and reached well out into the shallow sea.
ssssThe surface of the sea turned milky white, as a great cloud of silt rose from activity on the sea bottom. The looping bars of light redoubled their speed, and a faintly-glowing, iridescent mound in the centre of the display rose until it was clear of the surface. When the light circuit was one continuous and intense ring, a beam leaped from the middle of the mound, piercing the atmosphere of Hud until it was lost in space. A long, dark shape passed at extraordinary speed up the beam of light and was lost to sight. The ring lost some of its intensity, then brightened again. Three more of the dark pods were ejected from the ring in rapid succession.
ssss“What in the name of the Prophet is that?” whispered the squad member on Menon’s left.
ssss“A wagon,” said Metris, on the other side of the man.
ssss“You what?” said Menon in a low whisper.
ssss“Herdbeast with a wagon,” repeated Metris. “Think about it. Menona’s mining boss contact said the Carnii were after some sort of special minerals. What are they going to do with them when they’ve found some? Send them back ‘home’, wherever ‘home’ is, same as we would.”
ssssMenon smiled grimly. “Herdbeast with a wagon,” he repeated. “Same as we would.” He paused. “You’ve got a mind for the extraordinary, Metris, I’ll give you that.”
ssssThe little show seemed to be over. Once another salvo of three pods had been ejected by the ring, the lights that flashed back and forth around the circuit began to slow down.
ssss“Well, I guess that’s the kind of stuff the mining boss wants to know about,” whispered Menon.
ssssThe last of the lights in the ring below them winked out.
ssss“First watch,” continued Menon briskly, “remember to set the second watch in the middle of the night, same as we planned. The rest of you get some sleep. We’ve still got to make it back to Shellport in one piece and I want you sharp, now turn in!”
ssssThe men tried to make themselves comfortable along the side of the hollow once more, and the stillness of the Barrens returned. A light breeze blew from the land, and pushed any sounds from the sea away from them. Still, just after the second watch had begun, a sharp-eyed sentry noticed a change in the sea some way off the shore of the island. The surface heaved upward, boiling away from something just under the surface. He got the attention of the other sentry, then turned to wake Menon.
ssssMenon came awake at the first light touch on his shoulder.
ssss“Something breaking the surface,” reported the second sentry in a soft whisper. “Huge, flat top; a number of . . . legs of some sort. Stepping out onto the beach.” He paused for a moment, and Menon joined him at the edge of the hollow.
ssssThe sentry spoke again. “Hell’s teeth, it’s halfway up the island already, I’ve never seen anything move so fast!”
ssssMenon had already turned to the sleeping squad, and startled them awake with a prodigious bellow. “Scramble, scramble, scramble!” he yelled as he lifted the first of the men to come to his feet and pitched him over the edge of the hollow, where he rolled away into the darkness. The ‘scramble’ code was a scatter signal drilled again and again into the squad, and others quickly followed the first, finding their feet further down the slope and running in a dogleg pattern toward the stretch of swamp connecting them to the smaller island.
ssssThose who hadn’t cleared the hollow were suddenly pushed to the ground by a force they could not see. The strange craft that had come out of the sea now stood over the hollow, a many-legged contraption like one of the Descendant Pilars, with its rows of supports. Half the squad still remained, helplessly pinned, too slow in their response to the scatter signal.
ssssThen bright light blinded them, overlaid as it suddenly was on their night vision. Menon closed his eyes to shut out the glare, then opened them to make the thinnest slit between his eyelids. He saw a vast metal leg over the edge of the hollow, and realised it was a machine above them, a machine made by the Carnii invaders as some sort of guard for their base in the waters below. He tried to move his arm, and succeeded in raising his elbow a little, then dropped it again under the immense strain.
ssssSomething dropped from the shape overhead, and an orange light flared into being at one end of the hollow. Menon used all his strength to turn his head, and found himself staring at a monstrous shape built something like a man, many times bigger than himself. The surface of it moved unceasingly, a dull orange fire that whirled and eddied back and forth. It had recognisable arms and legs, but the head was a low, flattened dome barely higher than the shoulders, studded with projections that clicked and whirred and panned across the ground in front of it as if they were searching for something.
ssssSeveral of them locked onto Menon, as if they were looking at him intently. He made a desperate effort to get to his travelling bag, which lay halfway between him and Metris at the bottom of the hollow, and succeeded in reaching his hand out and touching it. The orange shape took one huge stride and stood on his bare arm, pinning it to the ground. A moment of pure agony surged through Menon as the skin burned off his arm, and then mercifully the pain ceased as the nerve endings were destroyed. Another orange shape flared into being at the other end of the hollow.
ssss“The rod,” he called desperately to Metris, “Menona’s rod in my bag!”
ssssMetris understood what he was saying. Menona had presented them with a short, thick rod from Flinch, the mining boss of the Earth people, just before they’d left to make their way to the Barrens. She’d been told by Reegas’ communication device to take a dooplehuel offshore and wait, one evening on dusk. The rod had come out of the sky and landed nearby, floating on the waves.
ssssMetris struggled to reach the bag, and succeeded in pulling it to him. As he freed the rod from it, the orange shape at the other end of the hollow stepped forward and went to put a foot on his chest. He rolled away, but the outlandish orange column landed on his shoulder, and pain blazed through his muscles as his leviathan hide jerkin burned away and his skin cooked under it.
ssss“Twist it,” yelled Menon. “Just grab each end and twist one end forward!”
ssssMetris pulled his damaged arm forward and took the other end of the rod. Grasping it firmly he twisted with a hand that was half under him.
ssssThere was a soft click and the orange shapes vanished. In their place were two cylinders, half as long as a man, with a bulge in the middle and covered in strange patterns and odd markings. There was a moment’s delay, and then the force holding them down also vanished, and the squad members that remained in the hollow struggled to their feet. The machine over them stood still and silent.
ssssMetris grabbed Menon’s bag and stuffed the rod back into it.
ssss“Run,” said Menon breathlessly. “Head for the boats. It’s our only chance.”
ssssFor Menon and Metris, their injuries were in a way fortunate. They were not losing blood, and they could still run. Menon clasped the continuous raw wound of his arm to his chest with the other arm and made the best speed he could down the slope. The smell of burned flesh made him feel sick. At the bottom of the slope they had to cross the swamp ooze again, and this was more difficult on the return journey. They’d already cut up the best places to cross on the outgoing journey.
ssssMenon was half way across the ooze when he heard a distant wet thump and the crash of scrub breaking as a powerful body bulldozed its way through the swamp. He knew what that meant.
ssss“Sar-durga!” he shouted. An adult, a land dwelling durga with fully developed legs, and a big one by the sound of it. He and his men had the worst luck in the whole of Hud, thought Menon desperately. It must have smelled their burns downwind. That’s all we are to a beast like that, he thought, meat for the taking.
ssssMenon and Metris struggled on, wading through the treacle-like ooze of the swamp, while the rest of the squad closed behind them in a protective line.
ssssThe sar-durga came at the men with a rush. Without sharpened poles or saplings to make them from, they had to rely on their short stabbing swords. Against the sar-durga’s armoured hide these had little effect. Rows of lethally sharp teeth closed on one of the swords and wrenched it away, the squad man quickly retreating behind the others. The beast hesitated, and when it opened its mouth again bright blood smeared one side of its mouth.
ssss“Cut itself on that one!” cheered one of the men, then the sar-durga lunged forward again, and the man lost his footing on the treacherous ooze and went down. The reptilian monster rolled over him, powerful legs churning the surface of the swamp as it lunged again, snapping at the others.
ssss“Keep it occupied,” yelled Metris, seeing at once that one of his men now had only two choices – to be smothered by the ooze or dismembered by that massive snapping head – if he didn’t do something at once. Grabbing a solid piece of driftwood from the waterline on the smaller island, and wincing as pain stabbed through his damaged shoulder, he struggled back toward the knot of men around the attacking beast.
ssss“Bait it,” he said to the man at the head of the circle, directly in front of the lunging head. This was a villager from Shellport, an old friend, who looked intently at him for a moment, and then nodded. The villager edged forward until he was ahead of the others, then drew back his sword, leaving himself open to the beast’s next attack. Sensing an opportunity, the sar-durga threw itself headlong at him, thrashing its tail in fury.
ssssMetris stepped in at the last moment, the driftwood blurring in a two-handed strike, and rammed it deep into the open mouth, where it came to rest between its jaws at the back. The sar-durga completed its lunge at the villager, knocking him down as its teeth gouged into the wood, but it could no longer get its jaws closed around him. Metris threw himself forward across its neck, and hauled himself aboard the beast, now backing up as it tried to dislodge the wooden bit from between its teeth. The villager scrambled back onto his feet and got out of the way.
ssssMetris found a long, thin ear slit just forward of his right knee, and timing his moment perfectly, he stabbed down through the sar-durga’s ear as it reared back, and then worked his blade down into its brain. Already dead but running on reflexes, the brutish killing machine churned forward several body lengths before it collapsed and lay still.
ssss“Get him out of the mud,” said Menon as the others rushed forward to help the man pushed down into the ooze. He was still struggling feebly, and once they had most of the muck off his face he came around, coughing and swearing in equal proportions.
ssss“Do you want your sword,” said Menon from his position on the small island, and the men looked sideways to where the sar-durga lay inert in the silvery-grey scrub.
ssss“Leave it there, maybe other sar-durga will see it and get the message,” said Metris, suddenly filled with a great tiredness. He was glad Menon was there, and he felt a surge of appreciation for his mentor’s help. Leading a squad had been a bit more than he’d bargained for today. When you were the leader the men were your responsibility, and you did whatever it took to keep them safe and make things work. Sometimes it took more than you felt you were able to give, but you gave all you had anyway.
ssssThe men were very quiet on the way back to the dooplehuel.
ssssMenon knew something of special significance had taken place. The squad had come together in a new way. Metris had been their leader before, and they would have assured you of that, but now they were all bound together at a deeper level. The trust among them was complete.

ssss“The report from Aqua Regis confirms it?” said Flinch, hunched over detailed graphics of the Barrens taken from space.
ssss“Affirmative,” said Saint George, re-running the sub-space log from Menona to make sure there was nothing he’d missed. “Clear description of a fusion power ring, and some sort of mass launcher we haven’t quite figured out yet.”
ssssIt was interesting, thought Flinch, that the Carnii still used such basic engineering concepts in their interaction with the material world. Some parts of their technology were astoundingly sophisticated – the life support technology that allowed them to hybridise between the cylinder state and the orange plasma state for instance – but they were not so advanced in other ways. It was as if they were wedded to the idea of overwhelming size and unlimited power and couldn’t see past it.
ssss“Why are the Carnii mining on Aqua Regis?” he wondered out loud. Rossun answered him from across the room.
ssss“Hang on a minute, might have something on that for you. The geo program is just finishing its analysis of the area.” A few moments later he was rushing the results to Flinch’s computer console.
ssssFlinch smiled to himself. It was good to have the old mining team working together again. He could even see Matsu, with Meeaniro beside him, working on computer models of how their captive Carnii maintained its cylinder state, over at the massive central processor in the corner of the room.
ssssHe looked out the window at the stark landscape of the Neptunian moon. Prometheus had been rebuilt bigger, and better, now the full weight of EarthGov, as well as the trading blocks, was behind it; but there were times he missed the old days, when life was simple and all the mining team had was themselves and one control centre, perched on the edge of an opencast mine.
ssss“Sunken caldera,” said Rossun, pointing to the magma upwelling that bent and seamed its way from deep in Aqua Regis to a chamber just under the Barrens.
ssssFlinch examined the 3D representation closely as it hovered in front of him.
ssss“Caldera, that’s a collapsed volcano, right?”
ssss“Yes,” said Rossun, “and they can be of considerable size. The jagged edges of the collapse are showing up here as the islands of the Barrens.”
ssss“That explains why the Carnii are mining here – mineral content will be high – but I thought Aqua Regis didn’t have tectonic plates?” queried Flinch.
ssss“It doesn’t,” answered Rossun. “We’re still working on that one. Part of the answer comes from a meteor impact way back in the planet’s past. It left the crust thinner, and weaker, at this point; but that couldn’t have created a volcanic ‘hot-spot’ like this one without something else to help the process along.”
ssss“So the meteor threw up the ring of islands we can see?” said George, who’d come over to have a look at the 3D representation.
ssss“No, that came much later – normal volcanic stuff,” said Rossun. “The meteor strike was a big one, and a long time ago. It would have blown half the surface of the planet into space – it happened at a time when the planet hadn’t cooled much.”
ssssHis remote beeped, and more data downloaded into the file before Flinch.
ssss“As you can see, it actually reduced the size of the planet by about eighteen percent.”
ssssThey watched as the computer simulation showed a bright streak of light come over the horizon and plunge into an Aqua Regis without any seas and with an atmosphere darkened by unbreathable gases. A shock wave travelled out around the planet from the impact, and the huge hole that had opened up closed again, spewing material into space.
ssss“The problem is,” said Rossun, “that so much material should have gathered into a moon for the planet, but Aqua Regis doesn’t have a moon.” His remote beeped again, and he downloaded more data to the file in front of Flinch. An analysis of the magma under the Barrens showed a high concentration of super-heavy elements.
ssss“That would explain it,” said Rossun, working his way through the data. “Meteor composition is often mineral rich. The impact from a meteor with such a high specific gravity would give the ejected material enough energy to reach escape velocity, so the new moon would escape from the pull of Aqua Regis altogether.
ssss“It also explains why there’s molten rock still present in the mantle this late in the planet’s history – enough fissionable material to melt rock down there; some sort of natural radioactivity.”
ssss“Not to mention why the Carnii would be interested in the site,” said Flinch. “It must be a mining bonanza under the Barrens.”
ssss“Still,” he said, turning away from the 3D representation, “why are the Carnii mining planets? I would have thought they were using power sources more advanced than ours, and since they don’t like living on planets, why don’t they sift what they want from the gas clouds released in a good, dense supernova?”
ssssNone of the others had any answers to his questions. It was only later, as he was discussing the matter with Cordez on the sub-space link, that he began to understand what was going on.
ssss“They’ve got their backs against a wall,” said Cordez bluntly. “Whatever they use to make those extravagant Fire Ships go, and cloak them in the stuff of suns, they’re running out of it.”
ssssHe paused for a moment and looked away. When he came back to Flinch over the sub-space monitor he was holding a list of items, and he looked almost cheerful.
ssss“Aqua Regis is the fifth confirmed Carnii mining site,” he said.
ssss“We’re hurting them. Hard to believe isn’t it, but we’re fighting them to a standstill. I think they might even be getting desperate, forced to scratch away at the surfaces of planets for the resources they need.” A broad smile slowly formed across his features.
ssss“We, on the other hand, have two things going for us.”
ssssFlinch raised his eyebrows.
ssss“On the one hand, we aren’t wasteful, we don’t do things more for show than effectiveness; and on the other hand, the Mersa system just got its third ramecium accelerator up and running this week.”
ssssFlinch could understand why Cordez was so happy. The Mersa people had asked what more they could do for the Alliance once mining started on their outer planets, and Cordez had given them the technology to build nuclear accelerators so they could produce ramecium for Earth. The depletion of his carefully prepared ramecium stockpiles would at last start to slow, and would eventually reverse. If this was going to be a war of attrition, Earth was not going to lose it.
ssss“What do you know about the American Civil War, Flinch?” asked Cordez jovially.
ssss“Ah, NorthAm block, ancient history, not really my field.”
ssss“The northern states won the civil war, and do you know why?”
ssss“More men in the field? Better weapons?” hazarded Flinch.
ssss“No. The north had more canning factories.”
ssssUnderstanding dawned on Flinch’s face. Cordez was saying Earth had better canning factories – they could produce as much ramecium as they required and send it anywhere it was needed. Being a planet-based people they had become very good at using nuclear accelerators to create the elusive super-heavy element powering their starships, because they’d had to. The Carnii might be more advanced in just about everything else, but this was Earth’s trump card.
ssss“You think there’s real hope for the Alliance, don’t you,” said Flinch, smiling broadly himself now.
ssss“Did you ever doubt it?” said Cordez, and ended the sub-space transmission.
ssssSaint George had a few things for Flinch to tidy up from the incident on Hud.
ssss“The Shellport committee handed in a request with their report. The squad leader who took his squad to the Barrens has severe damage to his right arm. Their medical woman has packed it with a native antibiotic – lacemoss I think they call it – but she says it’s not going to heal properly, and he’ll be crippled in that arm for the rest of his life. They’re asking us if there is something we can do to fix it.”
ssssFlinch thought for a moment. The original medical team sent to Aqua Regis was now back on Earth. The number of civilians hurt in the attack on Earth, plus the pilots and crews injured on the Javelins during the battles in the Solar System and above Ba’H’Rok, was stretching their medical resources to their limits. Limbs could be regrown, but it took time. The brains and nervous systems of the worst affected were in an induced stasis for months while their bodies regenerated, until they were habitable again.
ssss“The Shellport squad put themselves on the line for us,” said George gently.
ssss“Of course, it’s not that,” said Flinch, thinking of the amount of ramecium a ship would use to get to Aqua Regis, and the time the medical team would be out of action on Earth. He turned to George.
ssss“Tell them we can set up a unit at Shellport, but we’ll have to train them to run it while the squad leader’s arm regenerates, we just can’t spare the medical people at the moment.”
ssss“Will do,” said Saint George. “They seem to be handling what they’ve seen of our technology on Aqua Regis okay. I think they’ll be able to make this work too.
ssss“By the way, that little gadget of Matsu’s worked a treat. Apparently the squad were about to be annihilated by the Carnii when they turned it on – dropped the Carnii back into their inert cylinder states in an instant.”
ssssFlinch smiled. “The research teams are getting results all right, and Meeaniro has been a great help to Matsu with this stuff. The Carnii hybridisation techniques are enormously sophisticated, but we’re getting a handle on it.”
ssssGeorge nodded, then added a question. “What did Cordez say we’re going to do about the Carnii base in the Barrens?”
ssss“Nothing for the moment,” replied Flinch. “When we destroy that base the Carnii will be all over Aqua Regis within days, and Cordez wants to be ready for them.”
ssssGeorge thought about this for a moment. Then he nodded his approval.


ssssTWO

ssssSharmin looked down at the hot, dry world of Ba’H’Roth from the diamond film observation window. The H’Roth had always preferred such worlds, and she wondered idly how they’d survived in the almost complete absence of water. There were aquifers on the planet, deep down, but how they’d got by until their civilisation could access that water remained a mystery to her. Still, an alien race was going to have alien ways.
ssssSallyanne finished downloading something from the ship’s computers at a console in the corner, and hurried off the bridge toward the cargo bay.
ssssFlinch had wanted to be here with the research team too, but as on the last occasion he’d been bound to Prometheus by the urgency of his work. Both the Mars and Aster bases were again in full production, and Javelins were taking shape in the giant zerogee factories above Mars, and in the Aster docks, at ever increasing rates. The Carnii had been beaten back to the captured H’Dree home world of Ba’H’Rok, and now numbered less than 400 Fire Ships; though they also had, unfortunately, twenty flagships that had come from Carnii cells in the Core. Still, there was Carnii activity in a dozen binary systems and red giants – almost certainly Carnii shipyards – and Earth couldn’t afford to waste time while the enemy rebuilt their fleet.
ssssThe extraordinary battle for Earth in which Cordez, with help from the Alliance, had fought the Carnii armada to a standstill, had only bought them so much time.
ssssPrometheus was now more and more committed to research, and that was why Sharmin and her team were back here, preparing to enter the central database of the H’Roth archives. This now lay directly under the freighter as it orbited Ba’H’Roth, and deep within the Midian Plateau.
ssss“Everything we need is ready in the cargo bay,” said Andre, stepping onto the bridge of the freighter, “and the others are in the bay too. We’re ready when you are.”
ssss“The freighter’s in geosynchronous orbit,” reported Geelong. “Go digging for diamonds in the database.”
ssssSharmin smiled. Geelong’s sense of humour and enjoyment of his work made him a favourite among Cordez’ personal pilots, but it also covered an attention to detail that made him invaluable. A wide grin creased his dark, aboriginal face. Next to Geelong she would have the darkest skin on the ship, inherited from her Mediterranean background; or maybe it was Sallyanne, with a mix of Spanish and Indian from somewhere in the SouthAm block. Andre had a similar Mediterranean background to herself, while Jubilate showed a little buttercup colour from some Asian ancestry. Only Roberto could be taken as white-skinned – from the strange circumstances that led his Nordic parents to resettle in Africa late in the last century, despite suffering continuously from the African sun.
ssss“On my way,” Sharmin said, giving Geelong a mock salute and leaving him and his nav and comms officers in charge of the bridge. Down in the cargo bay the others were waiting patiently.
ssssSharmin addressed them quietly. “It will be the same procedure as last time, I expect. The sentinel program should have recognised the ship as we entered orbit, and it will be expecting us to ask for access from the cargo bay.” The others nodded, they had all been part of the previous expedition.
ssssSharmin hesitated, then spoke firmly into the emptiness of the cargo bay. “Sharmin D’Ahlio, commanding officer of Earth research team, requesting access to H’Roth archives.”
ssssThere was a small popping sound and a faint indication of static from somewhere behind her. She turned around.
ssss“Access to H’Roth archives granted,” said the voice she knew so well; an odd, breathy voice that was almost a rasping sound.
ssssHowever, things were different this time around. This time they did not find themselves surrounded by a grey, transitional mist, followed by the imposing vault of the archives, carved out of the rock deep under the surface. Instead, vague shapes came out of the walls of the cargo bay from all directions, and passed as mysteriously into opposite walls. Sharmin dodged sideways in alarm as one passed near her. The figures began to solidify, and they recognised the H’Roth forms Roberto had reconstructed from his earlier research in the archive.
ssssThe cargo bay darkened, and buildings formed where the walls used to be, until a centre of population formed around them, similar to the abandoned H’Roth towns on the planet below. The cargo bay brightened again, and a fierce sun beat down from the horizon. Sharmin guessed it was early morning in the simulation. The walls of the buildings were already shimmering in the heat, yet she felt cool and comfortable. Got to remind myself this is an optical illusion, she muttered.
ssssThe H’Roth as a group were quite imposing. The tall shapes strode by as fast as the best of the research team could run, the long legs taking enormous strides. It took longer to get used to the strange discontinuities when the H’Roth dropped down to interact with each other, or a data outlet. Sitting on their feet more than halved their height.
ssss“I knew the archive came to us!” said Andre triumphantly. Whether they had been somehow sent to the archive through the thick layers of rock over the Midian Plateau, or put into some sensory net to interact with the archive while remaining in the cargo bay, had been a hot topic of conversation after previous visits to the archive.
ssss“Yes, it seems so,” said Sharmin thoughtfully.
ssssThe H’Roth figures were clearly walking around the research team, and Sharmin assumed the archive was directing this scenario of life on the surface, set in times when the H’Roth still lived on the planet below. “However,” she continued, “we need to find a way to connect to the archive’s data base if we’re going to ask it the questions we have in mind.”
ssssRoberto took out a processor from his case, and scanned the pattern of bumps along the top of the building next to them.
ssss“It’s a language,” he said, as the results showed on the screen. “The translation codes must have come through with the last download from the archive. Hard to believe it says anything, looks more like an example of bad gravel rash. Apparently it says ‘entry point for primary data base’.”
ssssHe paused and pointed at a central arch on the building. “I think we’re supposed to go in there.”
ssssThe pattern of bumps overhead did look a lot like a bad attempt to communicate in Braille, Sharmin had to admit; and if Roberto was right they needed to enter through the recessed archway in the middle of the wall – but how to open the metallic-looking door at the back of it?
ssss“Just bowl on in,” said Andre, reading her thoughts. “We’re guests of the sentinel program. It will have prepared everything for us.”
ssssIndeed, the door split sideways from the centre as she approached it. Sharmin looked at the roll of shiny material now rolled up and pressed hard against both sides of the arch as she walked through. How did it do that?
ssssInside was a simple, square room, much smaller than the dimensions of the building on the outside. “Made for us, I see,” said Sharmin, and the low level of the consoles built into the walls, at a comfortable Human height, confirmed it.
ssssOnce the processors had made contact with the database, and they’d set up their recording equipment, they began to delve into their topics of interest. Some things about the sentinel program were very different this time round, and that was obvious immediately.
ssss“Hey, it’s not blocking off areas of inquiry this time,” said Sallyanne after a few minutes.
ssss“Godsdamn’t, it’s letting us into everything!” said Andre, who had been particularly frustrated when his previously research into the ancient centres of civilisation across the galaxy had been blocked by the sentinel program. They had all, in the past, found the archive to have an agenda of its own, and only parts of the database had been open to them.
ssss“It’s because we passed the tests at Maka’H’Rosh!” exclaimed Jubilate. “The archive thinks we are . . . worthy, I guess . . . of all the assistance it can give us.”
ssss“You have been chosen to succeed the H’Roth,” intoned the raspy voice of the sentinel program, and Sharmin remembered what the archive at Maka’H’Rosh had said when they completed the tasks it had set them.
ssss“You have exceeded H’Roth expectations,” it had said, in the same dry, breathy voice.
ssssSomehow, most likely by sub space communication, the other archives had been told to give them every assistance. The faces of the research team lit up, and they looked at each other eagerly; this was going to change everything. Sharmin urged them on, and they didn’t need to be told twice.
ssssThere was a breathless silence as the research team surged through the archive memory banks, sieving answers and building up pictures of what had been in the ancient past, what now was, and why things had developed across the galaxy the way they had. The hours flew by, and it was well past the midday break when Sharmin finally called off her team. Jubilate shook her head, and Sallyanne protested it was much too early. It had seemed to them all they’d sat down at the consoles only minutes before.
ssssNonetheless, Sharmin made them take a proper break. They grumbled, but could see the need to keep their minds fresh. As always, time for a break was also time to share what they’d discovered. There was much new data, but few conclusions as yet, until Andre stopped them all in their tracks.
ssss“What would a race develop into if they lived in deep space all the time?” he asked innocently.
ssss“Depends if they had artificial gravity,” said Roberto.
ssss“Assume they didn’t, or chose not to use it,” came the reply.
ssss“Giantism would set in,” said Sallyanne, remembering her species studies of Earth creatures. “Over time forms get bigger – the original horse was the size of a small dog – and the absence of gravity would only accelerate the process. Without muscles working continuously against the bones under gravity, they wouldn’t need to be so compact.”
ssssAndre smiled, and Sallyanne knew she was getting close to something Andre had discovered.
ssss“You may assume an intelligent civilisation with the technology to hybridise at will, and no ethical compunction not to.”
ssss“You’re talking about the Drua!” said Roberto triumphantly.
ssss“Maybe,” said Andre, “just want to see what you lot can come up with first.”
ssss“Show us, show us!” clamoured several voices.
ssss“Oh, all right,” said Andre, making a show of surrendering to their wishes. “Let me set up the 3D file I’ve recorded.”
ssssHe tapped in a few commands, then pushed the processor out in front of them. A long, sinuous form came to life in the air before them. It turned a blunt snout toward Andre, row upon row of dangerous-looking plates behind sharp eyes.
ssss“It’s . . . it’s a dragon,” said Sallyanne, not sure what to think.
ssss“Maybe, but it doesn’t have any legs,” said Andre. “No arms, no tentacles, no opposable thumbs, no opposable anything. It can’t hold a tool, so how does it build machinery, and how does it activate its technology?”
ssssThey were silent for a moment.
ssss“It looks like ‘The great Wurm of Hampstead heath’, said Andre jovially, and ducked as Jubilate went to clip him across the back of the head.
ssss“Ignore him,” she said, “he takes his historical adventure stories too seriously.”
ssss“M’Lady doth her noble knight dishonour,” said Andre reproachfully, and she slid behind him and put her arms around his neck. Sallyanne looked at Sharmin, who tilted her hands up fractionally. The message was clear, when was she going to do something about her own loneliness?
ssssSallyanne had been missing that level of closeness for some time. Sharmin had her research team, her surrogate family, but Sallyanne operated on a solo, freelance basis. As the two women had become closer, she’d complained about the lack of someone special in her life. All Sharmin could say was: well it’s up to you. Sallyanne made a mental note to make more social time to find the right person to fill that role, perhaps when they got back to Prometheus.
ssss“Is that a scale comparison with a Human figure?” said Roberto, pointing to a tiny figure under the Drua form. Andre nodded.
ssss“Hell’s teeth, the damn’t thing is huge!” finished Roberto.
ssss“Why is it so heavily armoured?” asked Jubilate, impressed at the lines of short spikes along its back and the closely packed covering plates that ended in sharp points.
ssss“A cultural message I would say,” responded Sallyanne promptly. “It’s surprising how the deepest unconscious attitudes are part of everyday life for an intelligent species, and are not consciously examined.
ssss“The Drua take a fundamentally defensive posture, the Carnii an attacking one. The body armour – whether it’s for show or the real thing these days – is an extension of the Drua defensive attitude. The excellence of the Drua shields is another example. This may also explain why the Drua feel an affinity with us. We could be the suppressed assertive side they have difficulty with.”
ssss“Do you think like this all the time?” asked Andre, finding the reasoning extremely convoluted. “Can’t two races just be friends?”
ssssSallyanne smiled. “Of course they can, Andre. It’s just that in most things in life there is also a little subconscious prodding going on, and it’s a wise person who takes that into consideration as well.”
ssss“Well, that explains why I’m not one of those wise people then,” said Andre, with a rueful grin. The others laughed.

ssssThe boardroom at Prometheus was completely quiet. Cordez cleared his throat and told Andre to proceed. The Regent had made a special point of being here to find out what the H’Roth archive had revealed this time around. Asura was back on Earth, answering questions from EarthGov on the state of Earth’s military readiness – political stuff, and he was glad he was out of it.
ssssAndre tapped a command into the processor in front of him, and A 3D representation of the galaxy sprang into existence in the middle of the long boardroom table.
ssss“The original Carnii sphere of influence – fairly stable when this side of the galaxy was divided up between the Carnii, the H’Roth, and the Drua – looked like this,” he said; and an orange blob took shape along one side of the Core, irregular in shape, with a number of bumps and hollows along its length.
ssss“This area was about an eighth of the central star systems, but still comprised countless suns and we suspect innumerable Carnii cells. Sallyanne will talk to you about those in a minute.
ssss“We’ve had to guess what the Carnii sphere of influence is now. We know it will be bigger, because the buffer the H’Roth maintained along their borders has been gone for more than 200 thousand years. On the other hand, we believe there was a collapse in the Carnii economy after the H’Roth disappeared – the stimulation of an empire on a war footing would have been removed.
ssss“The H’Roth archives have been able to add some more recent information about Carnii staging posts closer to our own area of the Spiral Arm, and we have made some assumptions based on the direction and distance the Carnii are likely to have come to invade the Spiral Arm. Their ships are extremely power-hungry, which despite their advanced technology would have limited their range.
ssss“All in all, our best guess is the Carnii now control an area approximately this size.”
ssssThe original orange blob remained, but a light vermillion edging now almost doubled the size of the area they controlled. There were apprehensive intakes of breath from more than a few of the Prometheus heads of department in the boardroom.
ssss“Of particular disappointment to us is the location of Mentuk, the original planet inhabited by the Caerbrindii. The archives give its position as here,” said Andre, and a blue dot lit up a short distance inside the vermillion area next to the Spiral Arm.
ssss“Mentuk has been inside Carnii-controlled space for some time now, and whatever archaeological findings, or ancient data bases, that may have been there have almost certainly been destroyed. This is behaviour we have noticed in the Carnii before, particularly when they copied then erased databases on the H’Dree home world of Ba’H’Rok. It’s probably standard practice for them to destroy a conquered world’s ability to maintain its civilisation. We’re still working on this, but it seems likely the Carnii have little interest in rocky planets like Earth, beyond reducing the inhabitants to a stone-age culture where they won’t be a threat.”
ssssThere were some anxious looks around the boardroom, but also some angry ones.
ssss“You mentioned the internal structure of the Carnii empire,” commented Cordez, driven by a need to know more about his enemy, and to find out its weaknesses.
ssss“Yes,” answered Andre. “Sallyanne has more about that. I’ve finished the presentation of my main points now, so I’ll turn things over to her.” He sat down, and Sallyanne moved up to the 3D picture of the galaxy in the middle of the long table.
ssss“Despite the size of the Carnii empire, we think they are unable to maintain a government for more than a set number of individuals, which we call a cell,” she began. “Something in their aggressive behaviour or their social networks leads to warfare, and the breakdown of order, beyond a certain size. We have numerous examples of principalities, tribes, and distinct geographic areas working together like this on Earth, but in time we were able to develop a central government without giving up a sense of local identity. It appears the Carnii have not been able to do that.”
ssssShe tapped a command into the processor controlling the image of the galaxy, and a small green area added itself to the side of the Carnii area of influence.
ssss“This part of the Spiral Arm, the home of the races in the Alliance, is the area where the Carnii hope to establish a new cell. It’s a large area compared to the cells inside the Core, because the star systems are much further spread out in the Spiral Arm. The new cell is around ten percent of the area of the existing Carnii empire, because of that spread out nature, but we think overall the Carnii empire currently consists of close to five hundred cells.”
ssssCordez lifted both eyebrows. Here they were, barely able to hold back the forces of one cell, and the Carnii had the resources of five hundred such cells to call on. But then, smiled the Regent grimly to himself, the arrogant slagspawn can’t work together, which just might save our skins.
ssss“The archives tell us that in the past, a force sent out to establish a new cell consisted of around a thousand Fire Ships, with a crew of 20-25 Carnii each, and twenty flagships, which had a crew of around 200, but also 4000 Carnii stored in the inert cylinder state, a total of around 108 thousand individuals.”
ssssAnd our experience confirms that, thought Cordez, thinking of the initial 1100 Fire Ships of the armada, and the 14 flagships.
ssss“A fully developed Carnii society has about 400 thousand individuals, and fields around 2000 Fire Ships and 50 flagships,” continued Sallyanne. “When numbers increase past this level – and we think that’s when the internal cohesion of the cell begins to break down – a smaller group is sent out to create a new cell in a new area of space.
ssss“As we’re all now aware, thanks to exceptional work by Meeaniro and Matsu Fujimi, the Carnii exist in two states, the active orange plasma state and the inert cylinder state. Matsu also tells me the Carnii share an internal world when in the cylinder state, a sort of cyberspace. Since we can assume they are connected by sub-space communication, the cylinders are likely to remain part of the cell collective wherever in their own cell they might be.”
ssssCordez steepled his hands together. He wasn’t sure if there was any advantage he could leverage from this new understanding of Carnii society. The conflict in the Spiral Arm seemed to remain the same – whoever could cobble together the greatest force in the shortest time would prevail over the other. Still, the research teams would find out more as they delved deeper into the ancient archives, and maybe something would give the Alliance the advantage.
ssssThere was of course no reference to the Drua in the presentation. Cordez respected their wish for secrecy, and he didn’t want to destabilise the situation by alerting the Carnii to the Drua presence. He had insisted Sharmin’s team be sworn to secrecy on all matters relating to them, and the small file he had been handed – now in his personal VHLock case – was something he would read later.
ssssSharmin had already told him she’d found little about the Drua in their research – it seemed they were as elusive in the archives as they were in person!
ssssSallyanne looked at the electronic tablet she held in her hand.
ssss“The only other thing we can add at this stage is that the Carnii cells do have a central city. We’re not sure if this is simply their seat of government, or a main production base, but apart from this they do not seem to congregate anywhere else in large numbers – apart from the formation of their armadas. The city is usually in the outer layers of a red giant, or one of the cooler stars.”
ssssSallyanne asked for questions, then returned to her seat.
ssssCordez sat up straighter. This was something he might be able to use. If you destroyed the head, you neutralised the body. That would be far preferable to fighting the Carnii back, step by step, until the resources of both of them were exhausted.
ssssHis mind turned back to what he had seen a few hours before, in a mammoth cavern directly beneath him. The Valkrethi were a huge, and as yet largely unknown, asset in the Alliance forces.

ssss“Pass the godsdamn’t thing!” yelled Jubilate, thundering past on Andre’s right. Sallyanne stood off from one of the Javelin pilots in front of the hoop, frantically signalling she was free to take a pass, but Andre was locked in a battle with Roberto, spinning this way and that as he tried to get a giant rubber ball past him. A whistle blew.
ssss“Foul by blue five, take the penalty red one!” bellowed a voice over the sound system.
ssss“That was not a foul!” protested Andre. “I slipped, and he threw himself at my elbow!”
ssss“Yeah, yeah, right,” came the same voice, now decidedly unsupportive.
ssssRoberto fired a long overhead pass to Cagill, who flicked it quickly on to Sallyanne. She scrabbled for it with her fingers, getting jostled by her opposite number, but clawed it down into a safe position. There was a moment’s silence while she lined up the shot, followed by pandemonium after she landed it. The whistle blower tried futilely to restore a measure of order.
ssss“Game over, 16-12 to red team,” he managed at last. The giant figures, dwarfing the small group of bystanders watching from the safety of caged stands, trudged off to where the Valkrethi would be stored in stand down mode. The bystanders began to discuss the game among themselves. In the overhead gallery a more serious discussion was going on.
ssss“Nearly two percent air loss in the space of that one game,” said Flinch, consulting with the mining engineer who had built the cavern and sealed the internal surface of it. “There’s just too much mass in the Valkrethi,” he concluded – “and too many fractures in the structure of the rock under Prometheus,” added the engineer, a short man with an extravagant hairdo that towered over his head.
ssss“How are the deep space life support systems coming along?” asked Flinch of John MacEwart, who had insisted on being given a role in the assessment of the giant Valkrethi.
ssss“All check out fine,” said MacEwart. “We’re ready to commit to a live test anytime you like.”
ssss“Easy for you to say, you’re not going out in one,” said Andre, who had climbed down from the servo hatch at the back of his mount and hurried over to see what Flinch thought of the Valkrethi abilities. “It’s not your life on the line if something goes wrong!” he concluded.
ssssFlinch smiled. He knew Andre would be the first to take his Valkrethi double into any situation he was asked to.
ssss“The Valkrethi are not yet second nature to their pilots,” said Saint George, who had taken the opportunity to come down and watch the Valkrethi get a workout. “That’s an abysmally low score for a game, particularly when they’re capable of being many times faster than a Human athlete.”
ssss“All right, all right!” said Flinch, laughing at the interest the Valkrethi had aroused. “I understand you’re all interested in what’s going on. You lot don’t get enough excitement in your lives!”
ssssHe grabbed the engineer and steered him in the direction of the atmospheric controls for the cavern.
ssss“I don’t expect to train the Valkrethi down here for much longer,” he said quietly, “but I need this place to hang together for a few more hours of games training.” The engineer grumbled about the difficulties he was having just to keep the cavern functional, but started to change the settings to make the rock lining a little more flexible, and hopefully more air tight.
ssssFlinch headed over to where the rest of the pilots were gathered around Neuman Cagill, who had insisted on giving up his role as chief of staff for the Javelins, to be the leader of the Valkrethi. He walked Cagill off to one side.
ssss“What do you think of the research team?” he asked. Cagill blew out a long breath as he considered his answer.
ssss“Damn’t, I have to admit they’ve got something over the Javelin pilots,” he answered at last. “I guess pilots have set routines, whereas the research team are more flexible; they’re certainly capable of doing the unexpected – proved it over and over. We’ve also got room for them. We’re training up twenty of our top pilots for a start, and that still leaves a few Valkrethi in storage.”
ssss“So you might be able to take them along as part of the Valkrethi forces now and then?” queried Flinch.
ssss“I don’t like it,” said Cagill. “You know as well as I do that we need a chain of command, and we need pilots drilled to obey that. One flashy dude could kill himself and dozens of others.”
ssss“You know the research team aren’t like that,” said Flinch gently. “I just need them to tag along from time to time, make recordings, take tests, make assessments, you know the sort of thing.”
ssss“Yeah, I know,” said Cagill, clearly unhappy with the decision. “Is it really that important?” he asked, looking Flinch squarely in the face.
ssss“I’m sorry, Neuman; I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t really necessary.”
ssssCagill nodded, and started to walk away. “Godsdamn’t, civilians on board!” he said, shaking his head.
ssssTwo days later it was time for the Valkrethi to stretch their space legs, and Cagill had decided if the research team were going to be part of the Valkrethi force, he wanted them to be fully involved in the training schedule. Sharmin pulled the others away from their work and escorted them down to the cavern, where the Valkrethi in use were stored in standby mode.
ssss“Mount up!” ordered Cagill, as soon as they arrived. The research team could see twenty Valkrethi already ahead of them in the cavern, stretching and flexing as the servo mechanisms bonded again with their Human pilots. The identification of the one with the other seemed to improve over time, and the Valkrethi were now beginning to look very lifelike – quite passable replicas of their pilots, only much, much bigger.
ssssSharmin climbed the slimline metal ladder extending from the back of the Valkrethi above her, once she’d identified herself by a handprint in the ID mechanism just above the heel.
ssssThe space inside the Valkrethi felt claustrophobic as the back closed seamlessly behind her. She had a moment of panic before the helmet adjusted to her head and the optics came on line. Now she could see through the Valkrethi’s eyes, and its vision was better than her own. A moment later the life support system began to circulate air through the helmet.
ssssShe went through the same stretching and flexing exercises as the others – an automatic warm up and servo motor bonding program built into the Valkrethi – and then strode across the cavern, the rest of her research team behind her. The giant machine felt a little lighter and more manoeuvrable than in the games session two days ago. There was no doubt her mount was learning; and so was she, something she was quick to admit.
ssss“Listen up, all of you,” began Cagill. “The mining engineers have fitted the cavern with a rapid fire ejection system, in case you have to get spaceborn while under attack. The ejection system’s like an airlock but it can have all of you out within one minute and clear of the moon’s gravity seconds after that. That means you have to hit the portal at around one a second, so you’ll have to concentrate!”
ssssThere were various noddings of giant heads, while others flicked up to look at the circle of light at the far end of the cavern. The movements were so lifelike, thought Sharmin in wonder. So Human. The faces of the Valkrethi were looking more like their pilots every day.
ssss“There is no door, repeat no door, in the portal. It is a ‘no go’ area for anyone without a spray suit system or higher-rated protection against a hostile environment. The air in the cavern is ionised as it approaches the portal, and is held back by a force field. The portal exits into a deep fissure well away from Prometheus, so it will be hard for hostiles to detect.
ssss“You run, you aim for the circle of light, you jump with arms outstretched, and the ejection system will pick you up and fling you away from the moon.
ssss“Any questions?”
ssssThere were none.
ssss“Good. Alpha Squadron follows Alpha leader, the research team follows their leader, and Delta Squadron follows me, in that order. Is that clear?”
ssssThere was much nodding of massive heads, and a few ‘affirmatives’ on the common sub space link.
ssss“Alpha Squadron, disembark!” snapped Cagill, and a squadron of ten Valkrethi lumbered across the cavern, gaining speed as they approached the circle of light. The first launched itself at the centre of the ring, and was picked up by the aligning force field and thrown forward as it approached the exit.
ssssOne at a time the others followed, and then it was Sharmin’s turn. Half way across the cavern gravitysum switched off – leaving only the moon’s weak gravity – and each of her steps became a bound. She faltered momentarily, and swore at herself for not anticipating that, then launched herself at the centre of the circle of light.
ssssThe ejection system picked her up and hurled her through the ring. The metal walls of the portal flashed by, then as she hit the vacuum of space the main ejection phase cut in, and it felt like she’d been slammed across the heels by a giant baseball bat. The air whooshed out of her lungs as she sagged back into the supporting servo bay, and she blacked out for a second. Then she was far above the moon and racing around the imposing flank of Neptune itself. She took several deep breaths to calm herself.
ssss“Activate homing pattern, repeat activate homing pattern!” snapped Cagill’s voice in her ear. She fumbled for the sensor pad under her finger tips, then remembered this was a verbal command.
ssss“Set homing pattern,” she said quickly into the helmet, and her Valkrethi immediately veered off to the left and began to decelerate. She began to see the others, twinkling in the weak light of the Sun, and came in beside the rest of her team.
ssss“Got lost did you?” said Roberto, a little less than sympathetically. She wondered whether getting her Valkrethi to kick his Valkrethi in the back of the knee would have any effect on him.
ssss“Cut the chatter,” said Cagill. “Team leaders report in.”
ssssWhen it was clear all the teams were present and correct, it was time to test one of the Valkrethi’s main functions – search and destroy.
ssss“Activate search function,” came Cagill’s voice over the common sub space link, and Sharmin moved her hand a fraction so two 180 degree profiles came up on the optics, one for each eye. To her right there was a smattering of traffic around Prometheus, each of the ships marked as green friendlies. To her left were three grey neutrals, far apart in a straight line. The neutrals consisted of two disused freighters and a recently decommissioned science station. The research team had been allocated the freighter at the far end of the line.
ssss“Independent action,” came Cagill’s crisp, clear instructions. “Go get ‘em, Valkrethi.”
ssssSharmin moved her hand a fraction the other way, and a long sinuous thread appeared in her optics between her and the far freighter. This was a mechanism similar to the H’Roth dipole shuttle, but much more advanced. Something ‘greased’ the coordinates between them – so MacEwart had said – and Sharmin’s Valkrethi began to slide toward the freighter with a negligible drain on her energy reserves. The acceleration increased exponentially, until in a flash she was half way there and decelerating sharply. She landed feet first on the freighter hull, and a dull clang reverberated up through her boots.
ssssHer optics showed the rest of her team approaching equally quickly. She reached down and punched a hole through the metal surface, grabbing the edge of the hole she’d made and tearing a panel off the hull. A blast of escaping air whistled about the massive form of the Valkrethi, to little effect, and a warning siren from the life support system started up somewhere in the ship.
ssssShe pulled herself feet first inside the freighter, and found she was in the main cargo bay. Gravitysum was still on, and she strode quickly toward the nose of the freighter. On instinct she headed for the door out of the cargo bay, then laughed. Apart from being too small for her now, it was also an unnecessary waste of time. Sharmin peeled back the walls and decks before her without slowing down, leaving arcing power conduits and grotesque metal shapes behind her. In a matter of seconds she had reached the bridge, and swept away the stardrive, navs and com consoles with one hand. The freighter shuddered and died, a lifeless hulk in the deeps of space. Weightlessness returned.
ssssThe floor jumped under her feet, and Sharmin remembered her team were also at work on the freighter. She turned and forced her way back through the carnage she had created.
ssssShe stopped short at the edge of the main cargo bay. It wasn’t there any more. Stars wheeled by as the half-ship turned end over end in space. Moving her hand fractionally she brought up the proximity sensors in her optics. There it was, the aft end of the ship, and something was systematically shredding it. As she watched the last of it disintegrated, and she could see three hulking forms in the midst of a cloud of expanding debris.
ssss“You won’t get invited over again if you wreck the place,” she said over the team circuit, the corners of her mouth turning up in a smile.
ssss“But we do play well with others!” boomed Andre, and the Valkrethi on the right raised a hand in greeting. She zoomed the optics in, and indeed a giant face closely resembling Andre was grinning back at her.
ssssA little later they stood in a close circle in the cavern under Prometheus, ready to go over their performance once the Valkrethi had stood down.
ssss“Always aim for the most vital spot,” Cagill was saying. “The bridge if you can find it – if the Fire Ships even have one – but always the largest, the most complex, the most heavily populated part of the ship you can find. Hubs before spars, bigger hubs before smaller hubs, flagships before Fire Ships, got it?”
ssssThere was a universal and vigorous response. All 24 of them were still pumped up after the ‘seek and destroy’ exercise.
ssss“Ignore anything shooting at you – your shields should take care of it – and the quicker you dig yourself into whatever you’re destroying, the quicker you’ll cease to be a target.”
ssssThere was a moment’s silence.
ssss“When are we going up against the Carnii?” asked one of the pilots in Cagill’s group.
ssss“We don’t know,” said Cagill. “Cordez won’t use us unless we can make a decisive difference. He thinks the less the Carnii know about us the better.
ssss“For now, train hard, get to know the systems, practise thinking on your feet – and become one with your Valkrethi.”
ssssThe exercise was over, and Sharmin lead her team back to the research labs. Every one of them felt the same ball of knotted tension in their gut, full of promise and bound by barely contained eagerness.
ssssThey wouldn’t feel entirely normal again until they’d gone into battle against the Carnii.


ssssTHREE

ssssKalken-ar-wuyr slipped along the encrypted cyberhighways of the Carnii inner world. She – an uncertain appellation and of no real biological accuracy – had sent a rudimentary form of herself to the vast city mind to report on Ba’H’Rok and the Carnii occupation of it. Several terabytes of data had been enough to support consciousness in this cyber form of herself, though it was little more than a dream state. Deep in her hybrid brain ‘she’ was aware of the shadow self as it sped along.
ssssAs always in the Carnii rest state, her cylinder had been slotted into a dense web of communication sensors at the heart of the flagship, and this provided her with optimum life support, regular maintenance, and a connection to the vast Carnii inner world.
ssssKalken had grown powerful on the energy supplies taken from the captive H’Dree world turning endlessly below the armada – and she made the mental equivalent of a derisive sneer at the weakness of being captive – and must soon divide off enough of herself, mixed with hereditary attributes selected by the city mind, to form a new individual.
ssssCreating a new individual was a moment of pride, for herself and for her clan, ar-wuyr, but also for the new Carnii cell the armada had created among the sparse stars of the middle band of the galaxy, so far from the energy-rich Core.
ssssAnger surged through her cyberself at the savage resistance they had encountered from the native species in the area, and Kalken sent out calming signals from her cylinder self to her shadow, returning it to its task of navigating the cyberhighway to the city mind. It sped under an arch inscribed with complex symbols, and was directed to dock at a periphery of the vast consciousness that shimmered before it.
ssssThe shadow self made a small mental bow, done with a certain amount of hesitation. Although one of the most important leaders of the armada, Kalken did not have the instantaneous communication with the other 500 cells of the Carnii empire that the city mind had, and could never know when a change of plan might lead to her own demotion, or even punishment for failing in her duties. Her shadow self felt the uncertainty of the situation and cringed lower in fear. Kalken elevated its mood settings and it adopted a more acceptable level of obeisance.
ssss“The - native - H’Dree - escaped - from - their - home - planet - and - you - did - nothing - about - it,” hissed the coiled form of a serpent-like creature as it confronted Kalken’s shadow self, each word unvarying in emphasis and intonation.
ssssThe first space-faring race the Carnii had encountered in the Core had died to the last individual resisting the invaders. The Carnii had respected that, and made this tall, coiled representation of that race an emblem for the city mind of each cell.
ssss“The - H’Dree - had - help,” replied the shadow self, adding layers of reasonableness and unconcern on a number of higher frequencies.
ssss“The - ‘help’ - they - had - was - more - inferior - native - races - like - themselves!” roared the city mind, incensed that the shadow mind saw no outrage in this.
ssss“That - weakened - us,” muttered the city mind, “and - tipped - the - balance - at - the - Dark - Ship - system.”
ssssKalken could see the city mind had slipped into one of its analysis modes. Surely this matter still troubled it, and she said nothing as it struggled with its thoughts. The Dark Ships made all the Carnii uneasy, silent metal hulls slipping through space unannounced, and manned by primitive creatures from cold, rocky planets; strange places, where the inhabitants lived in darkness for half of each planetary cycle.
ssssThe H’Roth ships had been beacons of light, the H’Dree cooling towers haloed their ships fiercely in a tail of fire, and the Carnii ships were a mammoth blaze of heat and light, but the Dark Ships were chillingly different. Kalken’s shadow self turned back to the deliberations of the city mind in alarm; it would not do for it to find her not paying attention.
ssss“They - are - crude - and - unrefined,” the city mind was saying, “without - the - slightest - enhancement - to - their - animal - beings.
ssss“Creatures - clinging - to - barren - rocky - planets,” it continued. “Living - so - close - to - the - absolute - zero - temperature - of - space. The - H’Roth - databases - we - have - captured - do - not - even - mention - them - and - that - data - was - complete - for - this - sector - only - a - fraction - of - the - last - galactic - regression - ago. Where - have - they - come - from? How - is - it - possible - they - stopped - us - at - the - Dark - Ship - home - system?”
ssssThe carrier wave that brought the voice of the city mind to Kalken’s sensors broke up in static, before re-establishing itself. Kalken shut down her sensors momentarily, rather than be witness to such uncertainty in the city mind.
ssss“The - establishment - of - city - defences - must - continue! Building - more - Fire - Ships - must - also - be - a - priority.
ssss“Keep - half - the - armada - at - the - H’Dree - home - planet. Disperse - the - remainder - among - the - shipyards. Return - at - the - same - time - in - the - next - cycle - to - discuss - ways - to - stop - the - production - of - Dark - Ships.”
ssssKalken’s shadow self bowed its acknowledgement, and relinquished its place at the dock to another cybercopy. The coiled serpent form vanished behind her.

ssssParapSanni waited until all the governors were present. The new Great Hall of the H’Dree people had the sharp ridges and cavernous bulges of its predecessor on Ba’H’Rok, but only in the way they were carved out of the interior of Rok’H’Rok, the moon orbiting the gas giant Orcreti. The exterior, meant to bring to mind the great ocean reefs where the H’Dree had evolved so long ago, would not be seen here. ParapSanni consoled himself with the thought that his was, after all, only a government-in-exile. One day they would build a traditional Great Hall on Ba’H’Rok, their rightful home world, once again.
ssssThe inside of the Great Hall could be seen through the partition of polished crystal at the end of ParapSanni’s private offices, and it was in the board room here that he had elected to hold the first full meeting of his planetary governors.
ssssK’Saar looked nervously at ParapSanni, who came round and guided him to a chair. The KSarth in their underground cities had proved themselves invaluable while the H’Dree were building the hidden cities on Seenirok, and were now helping to rebuild the cities of Earth. ParapSanni had made them a semi-autonomous people with their own governor, and would grant independence when they were ready.
ssssSarSanni was there, governor of Seenirok, and TegoParBrahmad, governor of Neerok, the water world. Neerok now produced well over half their resources from the mining of its rich ocean floors, and this made up for the loss of the industrial world H’Rok.
ssssThe Carnii had driven a moon into H’Rok, destroying it utterly. ParapSanni felt his need for vengeance stir against this race who had killed so many of his people. That need would sustain him though the long years until it was time for the Alliance to strike back.
ssssHis old friend OrLock from their Lyceum Brotherhood days was also there, now seated on his left. With the emergence of the Par’Sanni caste as the new force in H’Dree affairs, and the elevation of ParapSanni to Supreme among the Eight after the Carnii destroyed the Great Hall on Ba’H’Rok and the H’Dree government, the Lyceum Brothers had expanded greatly in numbers and influence. The Lyceum multi-pronged approach to problem solving was now so prevalent, across so many worlds, that the Lyceum Brothers had been granted representation on the board of planetary governors.
ssssThe changes had not been without cost, thought ParapSanni ruefully. At times it had felt like civil war was imminent, but his own openness to new things had often been enough to keep the new ways rolling forward, and the H’Dree empire had survived: greatly reduced and now largely dependent on Human leadership in the struggle against the Carnii, but survived it had.
ssssThe two governors from the small mining moon of Am’H’Rok and the barren world of Orok, now a base for the H’Dree deep space Navy, had been the first to arrive.
ssssPraktuParBrahmad, the Lyceum leader of the resistance on Ba’H’Rok until the evacuation of the last H’Dree from under the noses of the Carnii, had been given the governorship of Rok’H’Rok. He was the last to enter the room, trailing aides and comms technicians behind him as he dealt with the mountain of daily decisions that were needed for the running of H’Dree affairs in the new capital. He nodded to ParapSanni and sent his aides out of the room.
ssssThe governor of Orok reported first, noting in particular that supplies of ramecium from the Earth system were more than meeting the needs of the H’Dree deep space Navy.
ssss“Three nuclear accelerators are now functional in the Mersa system,” elaborated ParapSanni, “with others under construction. Regent Cordez assures me he still has substantial stockpiles of ramecium remaining from before the Carnii troubles, and our own efforts sifting the richer gas clouds of novas has increased production to nearly 40 per cent of our current consumption.
ssss“However, we will continue to be dependent on others in the Alliance until the struggle with the Carnii is over, if not for some time after that.”
ssssThere was a long silence. The proud days of independence, as the dominant force in the Spiral Arm, had gone; but even the most conservative of H’Dree could now see some benefits in what had replaced that independence – not least of which was their own survival.
ssssParapSanni nodded to Orlock, who stood to address the meeting.
ssss“We have replaced the motherships that were destroyed in the battle for Earth,” he began. There was a momentary hum of comments from the others. This was good news indeed. The motherships had been the only things the H’Dree had been able to field that had showed any effectiveness against the Fire Ships, even the Carnii flagships in sufficient numbers.
ssss“From there we tried to incorporate into our warships some of the Javelin technology from Earth – which Regent Cordez has made freely available to us – but we no longer have the industrial base to work from such sophisticated templates. With this option not available to us, we let our best Lyceum minds loose on the problem of improving our capabilities, and they’ve come up with an idea for the motherships.
ssss“Strengthening the power ring connecting the 108 containment chambers in each mothership, and the implementation of a plasma bridge from ship to ship, allows us to concentrate the power of a number of motherships in one spot. We call it the ‘ring of fire’ approach.”
ssssThere was a more animated hum of comments from the assembled H’Dree.
ssss“While this may be a liability against too many opponents, too cumbersome to wield and focus quickly, it might allow us to overcome a smaller number of Carnii flagships. The details have yet to be worked out, but in theory this could be operational in two more cycles of Rok’H’Rok around Orcreti.”
ssssParapSanni’s snub of a nose flattened into his large, bullet-nosed head momentarily, showing his appreciation of this innovative step forward in H’Dree capabilities.
ssssParapSanni took the reports of each of the other governors in turn. It was nearly all good news. The H’Dree empire – what was left of it – was stabilising. New ways had been found to meet changing needs, and the crippling shortages of the early days of the conflict had been overcome.
ssssThe only disquieting news came from a number of reports of more activity by Carnii drones. Whatever the H’Dree were doing, there was no doubt the Carnii were watching them closely. None of the governors wanted to talk about the possibility openly, but this brought back the threat of more attacks by the armada.
ssssParapSanni wished he could tell them about the Valkrethi. Cordez had sworn him to secrecy for the moment, and he could understand why. Cordez wanted to deliver a number of body blows to the Carnii in the Spiral Arm before they had a chance to change their tactics, and lessen the effectiveness of the Valkrethi. Silence was essential at this stage.
ssssStill, it was nice to know the Carnii might be in for a surprise the next time they tried to throw their weight around in Alliance space.

ssssCordez nodded to Neuman Cagill as he came into the boardroom at Prometheus. Reagis Vits was already present, involved in an animated discussion with Cordez, and Flinch was further down the long, oval table in front of a pile of display equipment. Matsu Fujimi and Meeaniro sat silently on Cordez’ other side.
ssssAyman Case followed the Air Marshall into the room. The squadron leader had continued to grow under Cagill’s tutelage, and had become head of Javelin forces when Cagill had taken over command of the Valkrethi. Behind him came Leana, now liaison person for the Hud personnel among the Javelin pilots.
ssssSharmin was the last person to enter the room, representing the research team within the Valkrethi. There was a moment’s silence as she sat down.
ssss“I don’t want you that deep in Carnii territory,” said Cordez to Reagis, sounding loud in the sudden silence. “It’s too dangerous. Besides, you haven’t finished checking out all the reports of Carnii mining activity yet.”
ssss“Well, after that then,” said Reagis stubbornly.
ssss“This idiot wants to go to Mentuk,” said Cordez with a laugh, seeing the faces looking his way.
ssss“You’re too valuable!” he said to Reagis, turning back to him. “Apart from which I like to keep old friends alive,” he said, smiling.
ssss“There could be something there, on Mentuk,” said Reagis, accepting Cordez’ decision, but not wanting to let the idea go. “One piece of information that makes all the difference.”
ssss“We’ve got too much else to do,” said Cordez briskly, and turned back to include everyone at the table in his conversation.
ssss“Thank you all for coming,” he began. “We’ve got some difficult decisions to make today, and a lot of people will pay a very high price if we get it wrong. Now listen up, people.
ssss“There have been sightings of Carnii drones in H’Dree space, and particularly round the shipyards producing motherships above Orok. H’Dree warships have destroyed three drones now, and lost one of their own in the process.
ssss“There are still the same 400 Fire Ships at Ba’H’Rok, and no sign of any more flagships; but we know of eight Carnii shipyards in the Spiral Arm and armada numbers won’t be staying at current levels. The last lot of flagships came from the Core, and could happen again at any time.
ssss“It seems to me we can’t wait around for the armada to build up its strength. We have to do something to stop it.
ssss“The Carnii don’t know about the Valkrethi yet, and they’ve probably already found a solution to Carlos Paula’s little shield-busting missiles. However, they know the motherships can do them some real damage. I’d be willing to bet they’ll strike at the shipyards above Orok next, and that’s something we don’t want to happen. The question is, what should we do, and when. Which course of action will cost the Carnii the most, and us the least?”
ssssThere was a long silence after Cordez’ little speech.
ssss“Knocking over their mining activities won’t do it,” said Flinch. “It might slow them down eventually, but it won’t stop the current run of Fire Ships being produced, or reduce the armada at Ba’H’Rok. The Carnii mining bases are pretty spread out, so by the time we knocked out one they’d be ready for us at the next.” To illustrate his point he brought up a 3D representation of the Spiral Arm with the Carnii mining bases that had been verified so far present as blinking orange lights.
ssss“Interesting,” said Cordez, leaning forward to see the display better.
ssss“However, the mining bases could be used as bait,” said Reagis quietly, looking up at the ceiling as he thought about the best way to do this.
ssss“That’s what I was thinking,” said Cordez. “Give them a chance to send Fire Ships against us while we’re destroying their mining activities, and then close the net and pick up the lot.”
ssss“The Fire Ship numbers are too high at Ba’H’Rok to win a decisive battle there,” said Cagill. “Even if the Valkrethi live up to expectations we’d take a lot of damage while we worked our way through close to 400 Fire Ships. Remember, strategy loses effectiveness when numbers get high.”
ssssCordez nodded. He was familiar with Cagill’s point.
ssss“So we’re thinking trap and eliminate smaller numbers of Fire Ships by threatening the Carnii mining bases and shipyards, then?” said Cordez.
ssssMost of those present nodded.
ssss“Anyone got any other ideas?” continued Cordez, waiting for the others to outline their objections – or eventually decide this was the best of the options.
ssss“We’ve still got a choice in the way we close the trap,” said Matsu, when no one offered anything else. “We can use the Valkrethi or we can try reversing the sub space pulse that brought the Carnii cylinder to Meeaniro’s lab when she was working on her own at Thistledown Abbey. That way we could send them some unpleasant surprises.”
ssssCordez had kept pace with his work in this area, but he had his reservations.
ssss“How ready are the Valkrethi,” he asked, directing the question to Cagill.
ssss“Almost finished their training,” said Cagill. “But there’s a big difference between the simulations I’ve managed to think up to give them some experience, and going up against Fire Ships.”
ssss“The research team?” asked Cordez, directing the question to Sharmin.
ssss“Keeping up in the training,” said Sharmin briefly, looking at Cagill. He nodded.
ssssCordez turned back toward Matsu. “I’ve been discussing the sub space pulse idea with Reagis,” said the Regent. “The idea of a missile ‘towed’ into the heart of a Fire Ship behind an instantaneous pulse is very attractive, but I have to agree with Reagis’ assessment. The Carnii will soon learn how it’s done and use the same trick against the Javelins, or even the Valkrethi. Until we know how to block the pulse, as well as send it in the first place, we should keep the idea at the research stage.”
ssssMatsu inclined his head. He was disappointed, but he could see the logic in Reagis’ assessment.
ssss“Which leaves us with the Valkrethi as the teeth in the trap, Neuman,” continued Cordez. “The Carnii will soon work out a solution to Carlos’ missiles, if they haven’t already, so the Valkrethi need to be there as back up.
ssss“When do you think they’ll be ready for such an operation?”
ssss“We’re near the end of the main sequence of exercises,” said Cagill, “so just tell me when you want to send them in and I’ll make sure we finish in time for whatever mission you’ve got in mind.”
ssssCordez nodded. “The Hud squadrons can be ready at short notice?” he asked Leana, who snapped a prompt ‘yessir’.
ssssCordez leaned back and clasped his fingers together, the two first fingers pressing against his nose on either side. The others were used to this as a sign of an impending decision.
ssss“Right then,” he said at last. “Reagis and Neuman, I want you back here this evening. We have a plan to flesh out, and a trap to set. The rest of you – thank you, and that’s it for now.”
ssssMost of them got up, ready to leave. Cordez motioned Reagis over, and the two of them headed for Cordez’ private office. There they would continue with Reagis’ reports on the Carnii mining bases.

ssss“Analysis - shows - the - Dark - Ships - use - a - superheavy - element - decay - path - to - power - space - flight,” intoned the city mind. Kalken made a mental nod to the coiled serpent symbol that served as a periphery of the vast consciousness. She had returned at the same time in the next cycle, as ordered, to discuss ways to stop the Dark Ships.
ssss“This - is - the - same - system - used - by - the - H’Dree - the - servants - of - the - H’Roth,” continued the city mind. “A - primitive - means - of - propulsion - it - is - all - the - H’Roth - entrusted - to - them.” The city mind was, apparently, giving some grudging respect to the H’Roth as an ancient adversary, planet dwellers though they were.
ssss“If - we - destroy - their - ability - to - produce - this - element - we - stop - their - warships,” said the city mind. “Particularly - the - Dark - Ships,” it added broodingly.
ssss“The - next - cycle - of - Fire - Ships - is - almost - ready - at - the - shipyards,” observed the city mind. “Provide - crews - for - them - and - have - them - gather - at - these - coordinates.”
ssssKalken verified and sent backup copies of the coordinates to her flagship by different paths along the cyberhighways. Losing or corrupting vital information would not be tolerated, and Kalken-ar-wuyr would take every step necessary to avoid being caste out of her clan, the ar-wuyr, a fate that sent most Carnii spiralling into despair, and eventually madness.
ssss“Drones - report - high - frequency - electromagnetic - emissions - consistent - with - the - nuclear - reassemblage - of - such - superheavy - elements - at - this - site,” said the city mind, passing on another set of coordinates not far from the first ones. Kalken noted it was an ice planet in yet another nest of planet dwellers. She was filled with disgust at the way these rock crawlers infested every planet in a system, once they evolved space flight. She caught her mind wandering, and brought herself back to the matter at hand. The city mind was addressing her once again.
ssss“You - will - lead - this - cleansing - of - the - ice - planet - yourself,” said the city mind. “You - will - leave - nothing - standing - at - the - mining - site - and - you - will - irradiate - the - area - so - nothing - can - live - there - for - the - next - thousand - revolutions - around - its - sun!”
ssssKalken was becoming worried. This sort of decision was unlike the city mind she knew. There were too many other objectives, more pressing, for this sort of wastefulness – and she was being taken off her duties leading the armada at Ba’H’Rok, when a subordinate would have been quite sufficient for a simple, straightforward operation of this nature.
ssss“Prepare - a - submission - to - the - Plenium - Council,” continued the city mind. “Make - a - case - for - releasing - the - Baccur - if - destroying - the - native - mining - sites - does - not - reduce - them - to - slave - races - of - the - Carnii - in - a - very - short - time.”
ssssKalken’s shadow self reacted to the mention of the Baccur with a spasm of pain that momentarily disconnected it from the coiled serpent periphery of the city mind. A dozen star systems away, transmitted instantaneously by sub space ripples, Kalken felt the shock in her shadow self on a level that reset many of her systems, and forced her to increase her energy levels to cope with the disruption.
ssssThe Baccur must not be released for any such reason! raged Kalken to herself. They had to remain prisoners in the cities that orbited their white dwarf sun. They were already strictly limited in numbers and only allowed to exist because of previous services rendered to the Carnii, and the chance they might in extreme need be of use again.
ssssAnd this was not such a time! The city mind was over-reaching itself – but who had authority over the ultimate authority? Perhaps the Plenium Council – the rare connection of all the city minds by sub space links – would deny the submission. Unfortunately, there was great interest among the established cells in the Core about the new cell in the outer regions, and the Plenium Council was likely to be swayed by pressure to see the new cell succeed. The situation did not look good.
ssssKalken began to fear for her cell, for her clan, and for her as yet unborn child.

ssssMeeaniro connected the last of the cold fusion cells in the correct order. This particular experiment had been set up on the lower decks of a Javelin destroyer, far from Prometheus where such things were normally conducted. Cordez had insisted it be done at a point in space that could not be traced back to any place of significance within the Alliance – if the experiment went horribly wrong.
ssssThe individual, the thing, the Carnii within the cylinder, was dying; they were sure of that. Matsu now had a very good idea of most of its systems, and the way it routed energy to different parts of itself as it was needed. The large, hybrid brain that took up most of the bulge in the middle of the cylinder was a surprisingly large consumer of energy. Meeaniro theorised the Carnii thought in a symbol language, something that took a lot of energy to maintain, but she had yet to prove this to be correct.
ssssWhatever the Carnii’s thinking processes were, it now had few energy reserves left to call upon, and seemed to have entered some sort of minimum life support state. The research team had tried to feed it energy to restore it to health, but the compassionate gesture had been used against them. The Carnii had gained access to the lab through the power lead and managed to destroy much of the lab equipment, all from within the Faraday cage. The research team could not afford another disaster like that, and had not attempted to increase the cylinder’s energy levels again.
ssssA decision had finally been made on what to do with the cylinder, and it was one that met several needs. The research team would send the cylinder on a sub space pulse from the Javelin to one of the Carnii shipyards. This would test the pulse theory, and it would negate any attempt by the cylinder to spy on them. It would also meet the preference of many of the team to avoid killing a sentient being in cold blood.
ssssFlinch had merely grunted when they’d mentioned this last part. He remembered the unsettling images of the Carnii attack on Earth, and was not sympathetic. One less Carnii was one less enemy he had to fight against, and he didn’t really care how their numbers were reduced. However he respected the researchers’ wishes, and let them solve their problems in their own way.
ssssThe cylinder had been kept inside the grided Faraday cage for the last month, effectively sealing it off from the research lab and the activity at Prometheus. Now it was time to send it home.
ssss“Power systems working perfectly,” reported Meeaniro. “Cage and backup systems still green for go.” Matsu adjusted the prototype for the sub space pulse generator and mentally went through each stage of the process one more time. This was a far more complex machine than the one Meeaniro had developed at Thistledown Abbey, but most of the extras were tracking and analysis systems. It still ran essentially as Meeaniro had theorised it would, and the previous nineteen-string theory of space-time had now been modified substantially by her work, greatly simplifying it.
ssss“How is our subject?” asked Matsu, conversationally.
ssssMeeaniro knew he was preparing himself to activate the send sequence.
ssss“No signs of activity, other than basic life support,” she replied.
ssss“Good,” said Matsu, and tapped in the ‘initiate’ command. The pulse responded instantly, somewhere outside space and time.
ssssThere was a disorienting moment when the cylinder seemed to be on the floor, travelling toward the far wall, and entering the cage again from the left, at the same time; followed by the sequence reversing, and the cylinder arriving back on the floor just as it vanished from in front of them.
ssss“I knew I shouldn’t have watched that,” said Matsu, shutting his eyes and then opening them smartly as the room began to spin. He sat down heavily. Several of the Mersa technicians in the room staggered on their feet.
ssss“The cylinder has arrived at the platform in the shipyard,” said Meeaniro, visualising the strange structure of spars and wheels as she spoke. The platforms around the rims of the wheels were an assembly line for Fire Ships. Matsu drew in a sharp breath as the tracking systems on the pulse generator recorded a spike that went off the scale.
ssss“What was that?” said Battrod over his Acomm armband, as some of his readings on the bridge flickered momentarily. Matsu barely had time to shout a warning before the Javelin was hit by an explosion of energy towed into them on the back of a sub space pulse from the shipyard. The Javelin was instantly flung away through space, with several decks breached and chunks of the hull missing.
ssss“Damn’t thing came right through the Drua shields!” cursed Battrod as he struggled to shut down systems and isolate damaged areas.
ssss“It followed the sub space pulse right back to us,” said Matsu over the Acomm system, stunned by the event, “and then, somehow, it found a way through the shields.”
ssss“So Cordez was right to isolate us in case the Carnii used sub space against us,” said Meeaniro, with a sharp nod of her head. She paused.
ssss“How much damage have our pulse systems sustained?” she asked one of her technicians. He set to work running diagnostics for the systems.
ssss“Auto-repair working on three decks, no loss of life,” came Battrod’s voice over the Acomm system, giving them all the overall picture.
ssss“Powering up comms and nav systems,” he continued.
ssssEverything except the sub space pulse generator and life support had been shut down to isolate the ship from any possible counter-attack., but now Battrod was intent on getting everything functional again, and getting them as far away from the shipyard as he possibly could.
ssss“We got good telemetry on the sub space pulse from the Carnii,” said Matsu excitedly. “With enough time I’m sure we can send in a pulse, and at the same time block the return.”
ssssMeeaniro smiled. It was good to see a Human getting enthusiastic about something. They were normally such a passive lot – well, compared to the Mersa, anyway. There wasn’t even a little bit of bouncing up and down when things got interesting!
ssss“Everything’s back on line,” said Battrod over the Acomm system.
ssss“Initiating stardrive . . . now.”
ssssThe Javelin seemed to stretch impossibly between the Carnii shipyard in the outer layers of its dwarf star and the cold, lifeless, planet that was its only companion, and was gone.


ssssFOUR

ssssEreth Lawson tapped the thin, metal scanmeter he held in his hand. Of course it made no difference to the electronic reading, relayed from outside, but his father had insisted he build all his equipment from parts when he was a child, and the possibility of a loose connection was firmly imbedded in his unconscious.
ssssThat was a long time ago, he thought, recalling his early years of discovery and experimentation. The hand that held the scanmeter now was wrinkled with age, and while his hair had been ‘re-seeded’ as they called it these days, he’d omitted the stimulants that would have generated his natural hair colour again. His short, even covering of coarse hair was pure white.
ssssYes, he’d come a long way. These days he was one of the most experienced nuclear accelerator technicians the SouthAm block had, and it had been his skill that had made this particular accelerator possible. It was carved out of a vast ice field on one of the outermost planets of the Alamos system, and he could feel the deep rumble under his feet as the accelerator worked tirelessly, assembling ramecium atoms in their strange sixteen-pointed configuration from the superheavy elements mined far beneath the smothering ice.
ssssThe ice field, full of crevasses, had been an ideal buffer against the threat of earthquakes, or even asteroids striking through the thin atmosphere. The whole complex was built on one solid platform that ‘floated’ deep in the ice, and the many crevasses around and under it would fold up and absorb the energy of any disaster that might occur. It had been a brilliant piece of offworld engineering.
ssssThe plain of ice outside the diamond polymer window sparkled prettily today – weak though the effect was – as it caught the light of the far distant sun of the Alamos system. Most of the time the surface was hidden behind the howling ice storms that buffeted the planet, or lost in a haze of constantly changing colours as methane, various halides, and water vapour took turns to outgas straight off the ice and then coalesce back as a rain of wafer-like crystals.
ssssEreth said something to his Mersa second-in-command, and they discussed the abnormally low temperature reading from the base of the platform. The fine weather was allowing a lot of heat to escape into space – if minus 120 degrees could be called heat – and was responsible for the low temperatures. They decided the problem would rectify itself shortly, when bad weather closed in again, and put the problem aside to concentrate on more important things.
ssssAnother Mersa came hurrying across to bring Ereth the latest reports on the accelerator’s performance. He read them with a certain amount of satisfaction. Replacing some of the massive electromagnets with superconducting connections to the ice field had reduced power consumption by almost five percent. Ramecium absorbed huge amounts of energy in its production, and any saving freed up power that could be used elsewhere.
ssssHe looked up and saw his team busy at their stations, with everything in the accelerator running as it should, and felt a glow of pride. The accelerators were staffed mainly by Mersa, with a smattering of Humans. The mixture of races also helped social integration within the Alliance. Cordez had said he wanted the bulk of the staff to be Mersa, but to maintain the Human element at a certain level. Then both sides would have the opportunity to get to know each other better.
ssssEreth looked up as a flash of light signalled a ramecium-driven ship of some sort coming out of stardrive far above the planet and decelerating quickly toward the accelerator complex. Every transmitter, computer and voice-activated outlet in the complex began to chatter at the same time.
ssss“Ayman Case of Prometheus Javelin two niner four to Alamos accelerator three, ‘Zeus’; code alpha red, evacuate immediately, repeat evacuate immediately.
ssss“Fire Ships congregating at the edge of the system, repeat Fire Ships imminent, evacuate immediately.”
ssssThere were more flashes of light, and more Javelins appeared overhead.
ssssHope they’re going to take on the Fire Ships, muttered Ereth, something of an agitator in his younger days and still ready for a confrontation at short notice. He hesitated for a moment at the possible loss of his technical equipment – much of which had been gifts, or brought back cherished memories – but an alpha evacuation meant just the clothes he stood up in. Mouthing words of regret, he galvanised his aged, eighty-something legs into action, and made a respectable dash after the others as they headed for the elevators.
ssss“Move, people, move,” said Ayman to himself, his body tensing for action as the Javelin squadron took up positions above the complex. The Zeus accelerator had no sub space messaging capability, and that was an oversight for which the Alliance would now pay dearly. The quickest way to warn the complex of the Fire Ships had been to send Javelins, and Ayman’s ship had spent fifteen hours in the grey nothingness of stardrive – but at least they’d beaten the Fire Ships to the system.
ssssIt had only been some fine detective work by Comms at Prometheus that had caught the early signs of Fire Ships on the move. The Carnii shipyards had all disgorged their latest constructions at precisely the same time, and when Comms tracked them all to a central point near the Alamos system it was clear the accelerators were under threat.
ssssAyman looked across at his navs officer, who caught the movement, looked up, and shook her head briskly. No sign of Fire Ships entering the system yet.
ssssBelow him the first of several ports in the top of the complex slid open. Only a small part of the giant complex was clear of the expanse of ice below him. Ayman breathed a sigh of relief – then every alarm on the bridge went off.
ssssFire Ships materialised above the complex, the long, ornately-carved forms immediately discharging deadly coronas of fire toward the Javelins. There had been no warning they were coming.
ssssAyman swore. This was a trick the Carnii had used when they left the Solar System after the battle for Earth. Somehow they could come out of a jump inside the gravitational field of a planet, without the tell-tale signs of space folding ahead of them.
ssssThe Javelins veered away, and then looped back to engage the Fire Ships individually. Ayman kept an eye on the ports at the top of the complex, and watched the first shuttle emerge into the weak light of the Alamos sun, then flee across the ice plain for the mountains on the horizon. That was where the gathering point was for emergency evacuations, where a small depot would normally supply power and food until help arrived. The depot had certainly not been built with the idea of an alien invasion in mind, he grimaced to himself, but it would have to do for now. The Javelins couldn’t take the staff from the accelerator on board in the middle of a hostile engagement.
ssssMore Fire Ships arrived, and Ayman began to realise his squadron was hopelessly outnumbered. It was clear the Carnii knew how important the accelerators were to the Alliance, and had sent an overwhelming force to destroy the Zeus complex. Still, thought Ayman, the Javelins had to buy time for the crew of the complex below to make it to safety, and he silently applauded as they closed now to rake the massive orange ships with salvos of their superdense slugs.
ssssAyman watched as dull red stains spread across the Fire Ship hulls. It was annoying, but he had expected that. The Carnii had recently developed a way to burn off the slugs as they entered the fiery shields of their ships, but it had been worth a try. Hoping for the best, he barked a quick command, and his weapons officer sent two of Carlos Paula’s shield-busting missiles curving in toward the nearest Fire Ship. A thin violet web built itself out from several of the Fire Ships and toward the incoming points of light. The missiles detonated before they were even half way to their target, and the Fire Ship shields remained unaffected. Ayman sat up in his seat. He ordered the same manoeuvre again, with the same result, then ordered a general attack by the Javelins.
ssssThe pattern was repeated again and again. The missiles never came close to their targets.
ssssThe Carnii had found a way to stop the shield-busters as well! Ayman dropped his head and gripped the armrests of his chair. What was he supposed to do now? The Javelins were still protected by the Drua shields, but they had no way to take the fight to the Fire Ships. It was a terribly frustrating situation.
ssssAs if realising the Javelins were no longer a threat, the Fire Ships turned their attention to the accelerator complex in the ice field below. As more shuttles rose from the ports at the top of the complex, bright fireballs began to drop toward them. The first ones hit the ice and earthed there in crimson flashes, leaving behind small lakes of melted water. Gouts of sublimated gases coalesced above them and rained back down as crystals. The lakes froze, leaving what looked like dimples in the ice from Ayman’s great height above the plain.
ssssThen several of the fireballs found the complex, and seared away the top levels. The greater pressure within blasted debris into the sky like a giant geyser.
ssssHeaven help those damn’t poor bastards if they’re not in the shuttles by now, prayed Ayman as he thought desperately of something we could do to keep the Fire Ships from destroying the accelerator complex completely. A shuttle rose out of the damaged ports and was struck by a fireball. It spun erratically until it stabilised again, but had clearly lost power. It drifted sideways and down, landing on the ice a short distance from the complex. Another shuttle made it clear of the complex, then saw the stranded shuttle and landed beside its comrade. The Fire Ships seemed too intent on the destruction of the complex to do anything about the desperate rescue operation as suited figures transferred hastily between the shuttles.
ssssAyman cheered quietly to himself. Then he snapped out a series of brisk commands. The only thing that might still work against the Fire Ships was to overload their shields. The Alliance had done it before, defending Earth, but on that occasion the H’Dree warships had been there to complete the process with their energy weapons. What would happen this time was an unknown.
ssssDown on the ice plain the last of the suited figures scrambled into the airlock of the rescuing shuttle, and Ereth started to pressurise it. He turned to the fresh-faced young technician who was nervously piloting the shuttle and yelled, “go, go, go!” They lifted off, a little erratically, and resumed their journey toward the mountains on the far side of the ice plain.
ssssAbove the planet Ayman lead his squadron in close formation past one of the Fire Ships, and the impact of superdense slugs built to a frighteningly fast crescendo. The Fire Ship’s shield dulled, then flickered out. A cheer went up from the officers on Ayman’s bridge, and Ayman smiled to himself. More slugs rammed into the structure of spars and hubs inside the ship, and it quickly blew apart in a great cascade of explosions. Seek and destroy mode, indeed, muttered Ayman, thankful for the improvement in the slugs that allowed them to home in on vital spots inside the Fire Ships and not just pass straight through.
ssssThe destruction of one of their own didn’t deter the other Fire Ships from raining down more fireballs on the accelerator complex. Ayman glanced at the scene below him. A shuttle took advantage of a moment’s respite to climb quickly from the shattered remains of the complex and veer sideways as a fireball nailed the spot it had occupied a second before.
ssssNow that’s one damn’t good pilot! thought Ayman appreciatively. The shuttle made two more sudden moves as it cleared the site, anticipating fireballs each time, and accelerated away toward safety. Ayman wondered about the pilot, who it seemed must have had combat experience. Usually the shuttle pilots were technicians who’d done little more than basic training, and had nothing more to do than ferry staff and materials up and down to supply ships.
ssssThe comms officer relayed a message to him from the shuttles.
ssss“Zeus command; all personnel clear,” came the message over the open channel.
ssssAyman felt relieved. His first priority had been the people who crewed the accelerator complex, and they were now safe. His next priority was to save the complex – though it seemed too late for that he decided, looking down on the ruined station below him. The precision-made nuclear accelerator would have collapsed long ago under the attack, though some of the parts might yet be salvaged. The mines around the planet that fed the accelerator were much deeper under the ice, and that would probably make them difficult for the Carnii to destroy. It was ironic that the ice fields that made mining so difficult were also the best defence the mines could have.
ssssAyman targeted another Fire Ship and his squadron moved in to rake it with broadsides once again. This time the other Fire Ships moved to defend the one that was threatened, and the arcs of fire built up until there were continuous flares around the attacking Javelins. Ayman began to get nervous about how much stress the Drua shields could take, and eased his ships back to a safer distance.
ssssIt was a standoff, but numbers were on the side of the Carnii. Ayman estimated there were over a hundred of them now, though none had entered the system for some time now. That was more than enough to keep his squadron busy, and still leave a sizeable remainder free to go about their destructive business.
ssssAs if in response to his thoughts, more than half the Fire Ships stood off, and began to make their way toward the twin peaks of Celimeesi, the highest mountain on the planet. The main Alliance mining centre had been built at the foot of it, coordinating the smaller mines and housing a permanent squad of maintenance engineers.
ssssAyman swore vigorously. The Carnii were not content to destroy the nuclear accelerator, they wanted to wipe every trace of the Alliance off the planet! He ordered another coordinated attack on a Fire Ship, and in the pandemonium of battle his navs officer was too busy to detect eight more Fire Ships come out of stardrive over the horizon, and head for the small depot in the mountains.
ssssBy now the shuttles from the complex had landed at their destination, and the accelerator staff were taking up residency in the cramped quarters at the depot.
ssss“Not good, not good. Very not good!” said Serostrina, Ereth’s second-in-command, as she picked up eight Fire Ships entering the thin atmosphere of the ice planet above the depot. Ereth left his position supervising the setting up of communications, and came to look at the feed from the dish on top of the building. His mind raced as he saw what Serostrina saw.
ssssFar above them, the Fire Ships seriously outnumbered the Javelins, and it was clear the Javelins would not have time to protect the refugees at the depot. The first fireball that hit them would breach the roof and expose them all to the poisonous atmosphere, not to mention temperatures that would freeze them solid in an instant. Should they take to the shuttles again? How long would the shuttles last if all the Alliance bases were wiped off the planet? What if the Carnii left a few Fire Ships around to pick up any stragglers like themselves?
ssss“The heat exchanger shaft,” said Serostrina, jumping up and heading for the maintenance room. Ereth followed, trying to get his head around the idea. The heat exchanger used the heat difference between the warmer layers of the mantle and the frozen surface to generate electricity. It did run down a shaft wide enough to allow them to enter, but it was a vertical descent, and how would they close off the shaft above them before the Fire Ships destroyed the depot?
ssss“There,” said Serostrina, pointing to a booster station on the schematics diagram. It wasn’t that far down the shaft, and it might be a place where they could seal themselves off from the annihilation the Fire Ships were about to unleash on the depot.
ssss“We’ll need to be suited up,” said Ereth, thinking of the cold in the shaft, as well as the unbreathable atmosphere. “Everyone, not just those who came across from the downed shuttle, and we’ll need to break all speed records on this one!”
ssssSerostrina nodded, and ran to organise the small group of Mersa and Humans who were still working to get the depot systems on line.
ssssEreth called one of the engineers over, and explained the plan to him.
ssss“That’s not much of a plan,” said the engineer in disbelief. “What do we seal the shaft with? How long will the suits last? How do we stop the air in the shaft from eventually killing us?”
ssss“Don’t know,” said Ereth. “Just grab everything you think we could possibly use.” He looked the young engineer straight in the eye.
ssss“I’m relying on you, Sebo; do you understand?”
ssssThe younger man looked back at him for a moment, then smiled a thin, crooked smile. “Yeah,” he said, nodded briskly once, and departed.
ssssSebastian reminded him of himself at that age, thought Ereth, so sure of himself on the inside, yet so frightened to put up new ideas in case they got shot down. This time Sebo needed to hold everything together or they’d all be statistics in this damn’t war. Ereth hurried toward the heat exchanger shaft, his vast experience throwing up and discarding ideas one after the other. Nothing would work, but maybe part of this one . . . and if he could adapt that one . . .
ssssThe thin sunlight was already receding from the mountains surrounding the depot. A brilliant flash registered on the outside cameras as a fireball earthed nearby, and Ereth realised they had less time than he’d hoped. A barrage of explosions followed, and most of the outside cameras went off line. Serostrina examined one of the remaining pictures, a strange montage of dirty whites cut by thin green lines and odd crystalline shapes.
ssssMore explosions followed, but more distantly, as if the bombardment had moved on to another location. For a moment Ereth felt an irrational hope that the Carnii had for some mad reason of their own decided to leave the depot alone.
ssss“Avalanche!” said Serostrina at last. Ereth saw what she meant at once. Somehow the barrage had loosened the ancient accumulation of frozen gases on the surrounding mountains, and it now lay over the depot. His eyes lit up. This would buy them more time!
ssss“Come on people,” he roared, a lion’s voice for an old man. “It’s life or death, don’t be standing around. Everyone in full suits in two minutes flat and we’re going underground. Now move!”
ssssThe booster station was at least a place where the shaft widened, though it was still difficult to move in the bulky surface suits with their faceplates. Ereth worked furiously on the panel set into the thick cable, and Sebo worked above him, as the others climbed down past them three at a time. At least in this section they had protruding metal rungs around half the shaft to guide them down.
ssss“That should close the isolation doors above the booster station,” said Ereth over a private channel as he checked his authorisation command a second time.
ssss“And this should collapse the shaft on top of the doors,” said Sebo, checking that the ring of heat cutters was firmly in place. He punched in a short code and handed the small box to Ereth.
ssss“Push the central button and the cutters melt down the retaining walls and put a solid plug of molten rock and metal over the door,” he continued. Ereth nodded. He tapped in the ‘go’ command for the doors to close and multiple leaves slid over one another to seal off the shaft. The two men joined the others, moving further down the heat exchanger shaft.
ssssAn immense detonation sounded from above them, and the rungs they were clinging to juddered against their hands. Ereth looked at Sebo, and they both picked up speed as they moved down the protruding rungs. Ereth stopped when he judged they were a safe distance below the door.
ssss“Brace yourselves,” he said over the open channel to those below him, and Mersa and Human alike took a firm grip on the rungs. Ereth pushed the button Sebo had indicated. A dull thump echoed above them, and the leaves of the door, folded over each other, began to glow red-hot.
ssssHold for me, muttered Ereth. Hold together you little composite marvels, and hold the plug up until it hardens.
ssssThe ruddy colour above them changed to a brilliant orange, then ever so slowly began to dull.
ssssThe door held.
ssssOne problem down, one to go, muttered Ereth. The Carnii could bomb the depot into a pile of molten slag and it wouldn’t matter now; but the cold, the lack of breathable air, the immense vertical depths below them, could kill them just as easily.
ssssIn the skies above the ice planet, Ayman Case watched as a second Fire Ship detonated from within. Some outrageous manoeuvres had split the Carnii forces just long enough for his squadron to mount another coordinated attack, but that was the last one they were likely to pull off. The Fire Ships had become very wary, and the overlapping arcs from up to a dozen of them at once produced a veritable firestorm he was not willing to test with the Javelins.
ssss“You’ll want to see this, squadron leader,” said his navs officer, putting pictures from the surface on the overhead screen. Ayman recognised the location immediately. The depot was a smoking ruin, no more than a handful of twisted supports poking up out of an island in the middle of a steaming lake.
ssssHis heart sank. Damn’t, when did that happen? He’d realised the Fire Ships meant to cleanse the planet of any trace of the Alliance when part of their forces split off and headed for the mining centre at the foot of Celimeesi, but he hadn’t thought the tiny emergency depot might be targeted as well.
ssssIt was a hard decision to make, but he couldn’t spare ships to check out the depot right now. He was outnumbered five to one, and the mining centre at Celimeesi was a higher priority. Besides, there wasn’t a remote chance the staff from the accelerator complex were still alive.
ssss“Entry points forming,” said his navs officer suddenly, and switched the picture feed to a point half way around the planet. In the front of the shot were a number of low buildings, most of them covered in strangely coloured ice and drifts of hardened snow. High in the atmosphere and descending were a scattering of bright orange shapes. Ayman realised he was watching Fire Ships descend on Celimeesi, the same ones that had split off from the forces opposing him here at the accelerator.
ssss“72 hostile vessels,” said his navs officer, “and 30 entry points forming above them.”
ssssAyman swore under his breath. That made it even worse. Another 30 Fire Ships would bring the total to more than a hundred, all converging on the Celimeesi centre, and he was blockaded here by the remaining fifty or so. Would he have to watch helplessly as the Alliance base was completely destroyed, and every one of the Mersa and Human population went to their deaths?
ssss“More starships emerging,” said the navs officer, monitoring the complex signals as the space-folding wave patterns ahead of the ships died away, and they emerged into normal space.
ssss“Those aren’t Fire Ships,” said Ayman in surprise, as a scattering of silver hulls blinked into existence high above the mining centre. Then he recognised what they were. The long, tubular shapes were modified Javelins. Cordez had sent the Valkrethi!
ssss“I think it’s time we gave these marauding thugs a taste of our indignation, people,” said Cagill on the open channel among the Javelins, and grinned happily to himself. Two squadrons of specially trained pilots and a research team of four – along for ‘observational’ purposes only – nodded firmly in response, despite the fact he could not see them. Half a dozen Ops ships, made up of comms, strategic command and backup, made ready.
ssss“Mount up!” came the familiar command, and 24 enormous figures in outlandishly long cargo bays stirred and began to stretch in the automated Valkrethi warm up routine.
ssssSharmin felt the usual moment of panic as the panels in the back of her mount slid closed behind her, and relaxed as air began to circulate inside her helmet. She moved her hand and brought up the optics, feeling a little confined as she lay staring at the cargo bay doors underneath her. Lastly she brought up the Valkrethi search function. It was of no use inside the cargo bay, but she wanted to lock onto one of the Fire Ships the instant she was free of the cargo bay.
ssss“Open the doors,” said Cagill on the pilots’ frequency, and Sharmin felt a sense of weightlessness as the bay doors swung away below her. It was amazing how life-like the Valkrethi were, feeling pressure on their skin, hearing sounds, sensing weightlessness. Then she was free, and in her optics she could see the edge of the atmosphere below her, alive with the restless orange dots of Fire Ships as they slowed to a stop over the Celimeesi mining centre. No sign of Ayman Case’s squadron, which made it all the easier. No friendlies to get in the way.
ssssTime to test all that theory on a live target, she muttered grimly, and moved her hand to open a pathway between herself and a Fire Ship directly below her. She wasn’t supposed to do this, she knew – she was just supposed to observe – but you couldn’t let your shipmates go into action alone. Besides, Roberto wouldn’t be able to stop himself, and she’d probably have to save him from himself, once again!
ssssSharmin’s Valkrethi began to slide toward the Fire Ship, picking up speed. It accelerated sharply to the mid point and then the acceleration reversed. In moments, it seemed, she was in the middle of the Fire Ship’s fiery orange shields. She felt something scratching at her, and then she was through.
ssssA little further over, Cagill entered the fiery hull of a Fire Ship at the same moment as Sharmin, wondering at the strange sticky sensation of the shields but pleased he didn’t feel the heat of them, which must be immense. He broke through, then looked around in awe as he saw what was inside the shields.
ssssThe Fire Ships were alive! All he’d seen in the past was the metallic hub and spar construction of Fire Ships when their shields had been destroyed, but this was different. The surrounding shields lit everything with a bright orange glow, and jagged beams of bright energy flickered from parts of the ship to the shields and back. Were they drawing power from the shields, or supplying it to keep them running, he wondered. Then he saw that the spars were moving, flexing like great masts in the ancient sailing ships he had studied – different colours running from end to end as the stresses within them changed. It was a fantasy world, something like a great city lit up at night. He had not expected this!
ssssThen his forward speed brought him directly over one of the major hubs, and he moved a hand over his controls slightly to open a new path onto it. The Valkrethi landed with knees bent, and Cagill realised that even the imposing size of the Valkrethi was lost on the broad, flat surface of the hub. This was going to be his first time inside a hostile warship, and he could hear his heart beating loudly in his ears. He reached down and punched both fists through the strange surface. He grabbed an edge and tore the hole wider. There was no sign of vented atmosphere, and he realised the Carnii worked in a vacuum. They did have an artificial gravity though, and he’d felt it pulling at him as soon as he landed on the hub.
ssss“The Valkrethi will learn as they go,” he muttered, lowering himself into whatever was below.
ssssHe fell into a maze of rooms too small for his Valkrethi mount, and tore out a space to move about in, then realised he wasn’t anywhere near a vital spot that might destroy the ship. Moving down through the hub, he smashed his way through more walls and floors, and lowered himself at last into a set of vast rooms containing row after row of what looked like large data banks. He started to move forward, then realised there were recesses in the walls, and in each recess a Carnii cylinder rested, surrounded by a web of glowing filaments.
ssss“Godsdamn’t!” breathed Cagill. He’d stumbled into a dormitory of some sort, maybe a repair station, maybe even a nursery – how would he know?
ssssSomething glowed briefly above one of the recesses, and then a circle of lights began to rotate in front of the contained cylinder.
ssss“That doesn’t look good,” muttered Cagill to himself, and strode hurriedly across the room toward a portal in the opposite wall. It was too small for the Valkrethi to fit through easily, but it seemed to lead to a more central area. There was a flash of light, and he turned to see one of the Carnii in its energy form, powerful orange legs striding toward him as a number of projections on the low dome of its ‘head’ clicked and whirred, following his movements. It was less than half the size of the Valkrethi, but there were hundreds of them in here.
ssssCagill didn’t want to wait around for the others to wake up. He backhanded the apparition across its shoulder, but his fist passed straight through it. When that didn’t work Cagill lifted one giant-sized leg and caught it squarely in the chest. This time he made a very solid connection, and the orange plasma shape disappeared abruptly. A misshapen cylinder lay on the floor, leaking what looked like synthetic, multicoloured oils.
ssssThe cylinder was also part of the plasma creature, realised Cagill with surprise. The head of the creature, with its many instruments, was one end of the cylinder shape.
ssssThere were now continuous bright flashes from all around him, and not wanting to be distracted from his mission to destroy the Fire Ship, Cagill hurriedly tore a hole through the wall next to the portal and stepped through. He found himself in a central power room.
ssssThis was more like it! The circular room soared up through row after row of balconies that ringed it all the way to a distant ceiling, but Cagill was more interested in the thick column standing at the centre of the room. A number of translucent cables rode up it, and he could see the surging plasma current contained within them.
ssssSomething bounced off the back of the Valkrethi, and then an energy blast blurred Cagill’s vision for a moment. He looked up, and saw dozens of orange Carnii on the balconies, with more pouring out of round portals onto the balconies every second. Cagill was fairly sure by now that he was in a central power station for the ship, so these must be some sort of Carnii engineers. They were already improvising weapons to use against him, and another blast scorched the floor next to him. There was no point in hanging around to see what they’d come up with next.
ssssHe took two giant strides to the power cables and grabbed one in each hand. The Carnii froze, and there was a sudden stillness in the chamber. Cagill grinned, and tore the power cables from the central column. The raw ends erupted chaotic matter at thousands of degrees temperature, and the walls of the chamber disintegrated wherever he pointed his new-found weapons. Balconies collapsed and pandemonium reigned as the Carnii jammed the portals trying to escape.
ssss“Not nice,” said Cagill into the growing roar of noise. “On my ship we have more discipline. On my ship we look after our shipmates.”
ssssThen he pointed the broken cables at the central column, and the other cables ruptured one by one. There was one last, fantastic explosion, and Cagill blacked out. He came to in the middle of an expanding circle of debris and dying flame. Nothing of any significance remained of the Fire Ship.
ssss“Delta leader, can you read me? Come in Delta leader,” sounded in Cagill’s ear. Ops was trying to contact him. He checked the Valkrethi diagnostics, then himself.
ssss“Cagill here,” he replied. “All systems go. Any of the Valkrethi down?”
ssss“None in Delta squadron,” said Ops, “One not responding in Alpha squadron. Research team all okay. Research team have two kills by the way.” The ops officer sounded amused.
ssssCagill growled under his breath. Damn’t civilians were supposed to stay out of harm’s way. Pilots could lose their lives trying to get civilians out of the messes they got themselves into.
ssssStill, two kills, eh? They were an unpredictable bunch, that was for sure.
ssss“Returning to the hunt,” he snapped crisply to Ops, and opened a pathway to another Fire Ship. A long, silver thread came up in his optics and connected him to his new target.
ssssWhile Cagill was getting a much needed rest, Sharmin was rampaging through the hub she’d dug into. She smashed her way from end to end of it, but found no central system to destroy. She climbed out onto the surface once again and kicked herself off, coasting along one of the flexing, colourful spars. She brought herself to a halt beside a much larger hub.
ssssIt took a moment to work her way through the surface, and then she was in a huge, open space that might have been a Carnii dormitory. The place was buzzing with orange shapes, and she fell back in front of them, as they all tried to attack her at once. The energy forms had no real heat to them – nothing like the plasma shields – but they still packed a punch, and enough of them could knock her off balance. She wasn’t sure they could overpower a Valkrethi once it was down, but she didn’t intend to find out. Unfortunately for her they were now attacking on all sides, and there seemed no immediate escape.
ssssThe wall to her left burst apart, and two of the orange shapes hurtled across the room, turning back into cylinders as they did so.
ssss“Need a hand, then?” said Roberto’s voice in her ear, and indeed the face on the giant Valkrethi opposite her, smiling impishly, was Roberto’s.
ssssSharmin wasn’t sure if she was pleased to see him or annoyed he might think she needed help.
ssss“This is my Fire ship,” she said primly, plucking a cylinder out of its nest and using it to bludgeon several of the Carnii out of the fight.
ssss“That’s what I thought when I arrived,” said Roberto, wading into a group of the orange figures and battering the majority of them down. “There wasn’t a sign saying it was occupied.
ssss“Anyway,” he cut in, as she went to speak again, “the main power centre for this ship should be straight ahead and down, how about we make a run for it together?”
ssssSharmin nodded, and they bulldozed their way through a wall of fiery, orange bodies, and dug their way down through the thick shielding that surrounded the power source.
ssss“Together,” said Roberto, as they dropped through into a circular room that soared up above them, a thick column at its centre. Sharmin grabbed his hand, and the Valkrethi bulldozed through the column as cables ruptured and the central supports gave way. Intense light overloaded the Valkrethi optics, and then they were whirled away in a maelstrom of destruction.
ssssSharmin stabilised her Valkrethi in space, and realised Roberto was still holding her hand.
ssss“That counts as half a kill each,” said Roberto, smiling.
ssssSharmin rolled her eyes, and then took the time to look around, and see how the fight was going.
ssssIt was going well. Over half the Fire Ships had now disappeared, presumably destroyed, and the rest were rapidly succumbing to the Valkrethi attack. Each of them quickly opened a pathway to a new target.
ssss“Good hunting,” said Roberto, and released her hand. They slid away from each other, Sharmin’s Valkrethi accelerating quickly toward the midpoint of its flight path, then swinging around for the deceleration toward the Fire Ship she’d selected.

ssss“Earth thanks you,” began Cordez. “Prometheus thanks you. Air Marshall Cagill thanks you, and I personally want to tell you what this victory means to me, to the Alliance, and to your families and your most cherished memories of Earth.”
ssssHis words rang out over the sub space connection to the 30 modified Javelins that had carried the Valkrethi to the Alamos system, their support ships, and Ayman case’s squadron.
ssss“We had less than an hour after squadron leader Case left for the Alamos system to decide to send out the Valkrethi in their first stand against the Fire Ships, and you had little more than an hour to get ready, and get underway.
ssss“You have faced the unknown bravely. You went out determined to fight for what you believed in. You went out in untested machines against a deadly enemy, and you discovered within you what it took to beat them. When you didn’t know what to do you found a way. When the way was barred you put your lives on the line, and built a way through, and still gave of your best.
ssss“Not one of you has been lost, and that was as much due to your belief in yourselves, and each other, as it was to the powers of the Valkrethi.”
ssssThere was a pause.
ssss“Squadron leader Case tells me the staff of the accelerator complex were lost when a group of Fire Ships destroyed the relief depot in the mountains. I will ask you now to take a moment’s silence in remembrance of them.”
ssssThis time there was a longer pause.
ssss“Do not blame yourselves,” he continued. “We all acted as quickly as we safely could. This is not the time to ask whether the outcome might have been better if something we did was different, and I forbid you to have such thoughts.” His voice was low, and chiding, but they did not mind. Every one of them would have followed Cordez into hell and back, but they would have followed him precisely because he would never have forbidden them their freedom, or their thoughts.
ssssWhat he was gently doing was asking them not to beat themselves up about the deaths.
ssssCordez wound up his speech, and signed off. Cagill took over.
ssss“The Fire Ship threat to the ramecium accelerators in the Alamos system is over, people, and it’s thanks to your efforts. Not one of the Carnii ships escaped, and the only damage we sustained was a communications malfunction in one of the Valkrethi – due we think to standing around for 200 thousand years, not to today’s activities.
ssss“Well done,” he said firmly. “Prepare for the trip home!”
ssssAs he signed off, Cagill got a comms message from Ayman Case.
ssss“Air Marshall, navs is picking up a signal from the heat exchanger shaft under the depot the Fire Ships destroyed. It’s some form of primitive electromagnetic pulse, apparently mechanical in origin. There’s no reply to comms messages across the spectrum. The engineers say we can expect some sort of pulse resonance from the energy produced by the exchanger, now it’s not being stored by the depot.”
ssssCagill nodded. He turned away from the screen, then came back.
ssss“Affirmed. I’m getting the same interpretation of the situation from my people here. I think we can carry on with the pre-flight routines and leave the system. Cagill out.”


ssssFIVE

ssssSebastian went over the schematics for the heat exchanger shaft again. There was another booster station a thousand metres lower down, and a set of isolation doors below that. If they wanted to make a breathable atmosphere out of the thin, poisonous gases of the planet it might be possible to close off the lower doors and build a set of gas scrubbers.
ssssHe pondered that for a moment, then shook his head. The suits they wore recycled their breath, recapturing the oxygen from the carbon dioxide they breathed out and removing the water vapour, and would last days before the accumulation of more complex gases made them a hazard to health.
ssssThat was not the problem. The problem was that the Alliance forces would be leaving the ice planet well before the suits’ oxygen ran out. Whether they left in defeat or victory wouldn’t matter to those in the exchanger shaft – they would still die a slow death if they were abandoned under the depot.
ssssSebastian he had no illusions about their future if they did nothing. The depot had been totally destroyed, so the Javelins above them would have already assumed they were dead.
ssssAt least they had plenty of lighting from the heat exchanger cable. He looked with pride at the lamps he had jury-rigged into the system. They’d also bought plenty of equipment with them, as Ereth had instructed, and assorted packs and boxes now hung vertically from the rungs they were tied to.
ssssSebastian looked down the shaft, and was almost overcome with the spinning sensation that followed. The rungs just faded away below him as the light from the lamps grew dimmer. More than what the accelerator staff saw it was what they thought that counted. To Human and Mersa alike the shaft was a bottomless well – the stuff of nightmares – even though they knew it eventually ended, deep in the mantle of the planet.
ssss“The electricity from the cable has started surging,” said Ereth over a private comms link from his position in the booster station beside Sebastian. He had several scanmeters attached to one of the junction boxes.
ssssSebastian dragged himself back to the work at hand, and nodded.
ssss“We could use the heat exchanger cable to generate a comms signal,” said Ereth thoughtfully. “Question is, how?”
ssssSebastian mentally kicked himself. The old engineer was way ahead of him. Getting a signal out of the shaft was their only real hope of getting rescued.
ssssSerostrina worked her way around the shaft and sidled into the booster station cavity. “There’s going to be a problem hanging off the rungs,” she said, once she’d switched to the comms link they were using. “Some of the Human females are getting tired already.”
ssssEreth popped his head out of the alcove where the junction boxes sat. He could see the sense in what Serostrina said. No one could stand on the thin rungs and just hang there in a vertical shaft forever, not forgetting the extra weight of the suits. The rungs had been installed to fit into the cogs of tractors that wound themselves up and down the shaft when maintenance was needed, but fortunately a Human, or Mersa, foot could find good purchase in them.
ssssTrust the women to pick up problems first, thought Ereth, from long years of dealing with engineering crews. The men would just hang on grimly until it was damn’t near too late for them. Men and women rose to extreme conditions in different ways. Though there were many exceptions, he noted thoughtfully.
ssss“Sebo,” he said quietly, “rig some sort of floor across the shaft will you? Then maybe some secondary tiers to fit everybody in, maybe even hammocks, something like that?”
ssssThe young engineer looked up from the electronic schematics tablet and nodded.
ssss“I’ll try to figure out a way to send a signal the Javelins will recognise,” said Ereth, the white of his short hair all that was visible of his head, inside his suit, as he bent over the boxes again.
ssssWhile Sebastian was solving one problem, he witnessed the beginnings of another.
ssssHe’d cut rungs from further down the shaft, and was cold welding them into a lattice that could support a floor, when he saw a flicker of light deep in the shaft. He mentioned it to Ereth as he carried on welding.
ssss“I was afraid of that,” said Ereth over the private comms link. “The data from the junction boxes suggests the cable isn’t discharging into the surrounding snowfields at the top of the shaft as normal. Since it isn’t being used by the depot, or stored, the power’s been building up until it earths somewhere in the heat exchanger shaft. That’s what has been causing the energy in the cable to surge.
ssss“The cable’s probably burned some of its insulation off lower down. My best guess is you saw an arc from the cable crossing the shaft to touch down at a point where the conductivity’s good. The problem is, the arcing’s going to get worse. It might be a good idea to get that floor finished as soon as you can.”
ssssSebastian made the circular ‘speed it up’ signal to the two Mersa working alongside him, and the little group redoubled their efforts.
ssssIt was not long before Ereth was proved right. Bright flashes began to issue from the depths of the shaft on a regular basis, accompanied by abrupt, harsh sounds as the flashes split the air around them.
ssssEreth disconnected the lamps from the junction boxes when the surges started to overcome the stabilising mechanisms. Those in the group who were working needed their suit lights, but the rest volunteered to stay largely in darkness to conserve the power reserves.
ssssSebastian had the floor supports in place and was cold welding the doors off the junction boxes – plus the lids off some of the equipment boxes and anything else he could find – into a patchwork floor covering, when there was an enormous electrical discharge in the shaft, and what sounded like an all-out starship battle directly below him.
ssssThe welders scrambled for the walls, and the rest of the group clung to the rungs. Immense flashes lit the shaft time after time, while the whole shaft screamed as the arcs ripped the air apart, and groaned as the surrounding rock reverberated from the assault.
ssss“Sounds worse than it is,” shouted Ereth over the comms link, “It’s the methane gases in the planet’s atmosphere that are building the fireballs around the arcing. We’re lucky the concentration isn’t any higher, or the whole shaft would go off like a bomb.
ssss“Sebo, set some heat cutters around the cable, we’re going to have to drop it down the shaft. It’s only lightly pinned to the walls, except where it goes through the booster stations. They’re a thousand metres apart, and that should give us a reasonable margin of safety.”
ssssSebastian hurried to carry out Ereth’s plan. The light show and unholy racket had diminished by the time he’d finished. He set the heat cutters to activate in one minute, and climbed quickly up the shaft. As he reached the makeshift platform the cutters flared, and the thick cable fell away into the depths below them.
ssssSebastian looked at Ereth, who shook his head sadly. He didn’t need to say anything. Their plan to set up a comms system using the energy in the cable as a carrier wave had evaporated as quickly as the cable had plummeted into the depths. They would have to think of something else.
ssss“Come up to the booster station when you’ve finished your welding,” said Ereth quietly, and Sebastian knew the survival of the group now depended on what they dreamed up between them, and what they could make out of the supplies they’d brought with them.
ssssEvery one of the group were relieved when the rough patchwork floor was finished. The fear of falling down the shaft had affected them all differently, and one or two had dipped into the small medical kit that came with each suit for a little something to reduce the anxiety it had caused.
ssssSome of them could now sit with their backs to the wall, with their legs spread out. Sebastian left his two Mersa co-workers trying to adapt some tough, synthetic-fibre sheeting into hammocks to sling against the walls. He climbed into the junction box alcove, nodded to Serostrina in the far corner, and tapped Ereth on the shoulder. The older man was pleased to put down the circuit board he was working on – his ideas for sending a message had so far come to nothing.
ssss“I can’t see how we can send a message to the Javelins without the sort of power the cable was carrying,” he began. He turned toward Serostrina. “Even coupling up all the suits, and whatever else we can find, it wouldn’t be enough to send a signal through the rock and ice above us.”
ssssSebastian silently agreed. It was odd the way it had turned out – the shaft that had been their salvation had now become their tomb. He began to cast his mind over the comms possibilities, looking at the equipment they had and the ways they might use it. It was imperative they attract the attention of the Javelins soon, while they were still on the edge of space somewhere far above them.
ssssAn hour later their prospects were not looking any better. Some of the group were working on ways to help them survive over the next few days, and some were taking the first rest shift. It was strange to see survival suits curled up uncomfortably in the simple hammocks now hanging against the wall on one side of the shaft.
ssss“We just don’t have the power!” exclaimed Serostrina as the three of them tried to brainstorm a solution.
ssss“Pretend that we do!” said Ereth obstinately, wedded to the idea the message they sent must be powered somehow.
ssss“Pretend that we don’t!” said Sebastian suddenly, his face lighting up in hope. “What generates a comms signal without a power input?”
ssss“Nothing?” said Ereth automatically, still not sure what Sebastian was talking about.
ssss“Well, the piezoelectric effect, for one,” said Sebastian, “but that’s not what I’m thinking of.”
ssss“You want to generate electricity from crystals in the rock? How will you get them under enough mechanical stress?” said Ereth.
ssss“Nothing like that,” said Sebastian. “Let me think!”
ssssEreth went quiet. It looked like his protégé was onto something, but what was it?
ssss“Remember the EuroRussian experiments with standing waves in different mixtures of gases at the Vladivostok research station?”
ssssEreth nodded. “Matsu Fujimi used to talk about it, a way of sending an emergency comms signal if the power went down.”
ssss“You’ve been to Prometheus?” said Sebastian in awe. Prometheus was the holy grail, the ultimate research station in the Alliance world.
ssss“No,” answered Ereth. “Matsu came to the SouthAm block when I was working on an accelerator in the Andes, and took an interest in my work. An amazingly retentive mind, that one. We keep in touch.”
ssssSebastian discovered a new-found respect for his boss – and mentor. Still, Ereth hadn’t seen the comms possibilities in the shaft yet, but Serostrina was looking at him with a growing comprehension.
ssss“That’s what we’ve got here!” exclaimed Sebastian. “A column of mixed gases. We’re standing on top of it!”
ssssUnderstanding dawned on Ereth’s weathered face. He twisted his mouth around in thought and looked up, as he examined the idea to see if it would work. Sebastian was surprised to see how mobile the old man’s face was.
ssss“Still,” said Ereth doubtfully, “the composition of gases has to be about right, and the length of the column has to be some ratio of the speed of the wave in the gases, as I recall. It’s a bit of a long shot.”
ssss“But worth a try!” said Sebastian. “The first problem is the tangle of cable we’ve left hanging from the booster station a thousand metres further down. That’s going to dampen the standing wave.”
ssssThey looked at each other. Someone was going to have to climb down there, cut the cable away, and close the isolation doors above the booster station far below them. A thousand metres straight down, and a thousand straight back up again. Time was critical, and they should get a team onto this straight away, while the rest of them tried to work out how to get the rest of the column of gases idea to work.
ssss“I don’t think it should be me,” said Ereth, his eyes twinkling. Sebastian laughed. Ereth didn’t let old age stop him from doing very many things, but he’d just admitted this was one of them.
ssss“This is a job for the Mersa!” said Serostrina enthusiastically. “We climb better than you, and we have a way of going down very fast, and we have all the technical skills to close the isolation doors. The ‘free fall’ game is something all Mersa play as children. We are smaller and quicker than you, and the atmosphere on Alamos is denser, like it would be in the shaft I think.
ssss“We have competitions. I was best in my village,” she finished proudly.
ssssEreth looked at Sebastian, then at the keen little Mersa. He tried not to smile.
ssss“Cut a trapdoor in one corner of your new floor, Sebo,” he said, “with easy access to the rungs, and find Serostrina enough heat cutters to take care of the cable.”
ssssSebastian called out to one of the Human engineers, who hurried to cut the trapdoor, opposite the alcove. Then he explained the heat cutters to Serostrina.
ssssLast of all Ereth spoke to the little Mersa. “Thank you for this,” he said quietly. “You’ll choose the Mersa who go down the shaft with you?”
ssssSerostrina nodded, then scurried out of the alcove and down the rungs to the patchwork floor.
ssss“Damn’t they’re fast when they want to be,” said Sebastian, watching her go.
ssssEreth smiled.
ssssSebastian suddenly changed tack. “How long have we been down here?” he asked.
ssss“A little over four hours,” said Ereth, checking his Acomm armband. If only the Acomm system would reach the Javelins, he thought wistfully, but it was only a short-range system and certainly wouldn’t work through the layer of rock above them.
ssss“Then we haven’t got long,” said Sebastian grimly. “Win or lose, the Javelins must be leaving the planet soon – five, ten hours?”
ssss“We’d be guessing,” said Ereth, “and anything could hold them back or speed up their departure.”
ssssSebastian sighed. “I wish we knew what was happening up there!” he groaned.
ssss“So do I,” said Ereth softly, “so do I. Now, let’s dig up the EuroRussian column data from the memory banks of the schematics tablet. It’s got every damn’t formula in close to 800 years of scientific research stuffed into it. The data we want should be there too.”
ssssThey got down to work.
ssssThe Mersa demolition party left the others and was soon far below the temporary home they’d made for themselves. The three Mersa switched off the linguist earpieces so they could communicate faster between themselves, and the flute-like scamperings of the Mersa language passed swiftly from helmet to helmet. Three beams of light sought out the rungs in the shaft as they descended swiftly, their intense concentration very evident.
ssss“450 mark,” said Serostrina, checking a pressure meter she’d strapped to her forearm. The Mersa were moving swiftly in a controlled fall, guiding their descent with a brief touch at every fourth or fifth rung and slowing themselves to a descent rate they felt they could manage.
ssss“500 mark,” reeled off Serostrina. If they maintained this speed they’d be at the booster station in a matter of minutes. There was still no sign of the fallen cable. The less of it they had to manhandle past the second booster station the better. Serostrina barked a short little Mersa laugh. Manhandle was a Human word she’d picked up; but they couldn’t manhandle it, they’d have to Mersahandle it. Human was a funny language.
ssssThe heat cutters in her waist pack began to move around in the near weightless conditions, and she concentrated on maintaining her balance, and keeping her semi-flying descent straight and true.
ssss“700 mark,” she said, and began to think about slowing herself at the end of the drop. It was all very well to use the planet’s gravity to their advantage, but that left a lot of kinetic energy to bleed off when they got to the end of the descent.
ssss“750 and starting to slow,” she warned the others. They overshot her a little, and then the small group was level once again. The strain was beginning to show on all their faces, as the gloves of the suits made more and more contact with the rungs, and bodies came out of the horizontal to an almost vertical position. Too much, too soon, and the feet of the suits would start to clip the rungs, at a time when they were still going far too fast.
ssss“850 mark,” reeled off Serostrina. There was still no sign of the booster station in the shaft below them.
ssss“950 and preparing to close,” said Serostrina, having reduced her speed to something she felt she could control safely. A few more rungs flipped by, and she grabbed the next one, releasing it as the strain came on her arm and grabbing the following one. In a few, short, sharp jolts she’d come to a complete stop.
ssssShe looked around. The others seemed to have made it okay too, one above her to her left and one slightly below her to her right. Then she looked down, and saw the shadow of the booster cavity, right where she expected it to be. Of the cable there was no sign.
ssssShe clambered down to the station, then saw the stretched and broken end of the cable where it was fixed to the top of the booster station cavity. It was clear its own weight and speed had been too much for it. Well, that was a blessing, it was one more problem she didn’t have to worry about. Fortunately the cable was intact in the shaft below, and they still had power at the station. The occasional point of light flared deeper in the shaft, followed by a dull boom, but nothing that threatened them here at the moment.
ssssThe Mersa took up residence in the little alcove, and Serostrina fed in the codes for the isolation doors. It took a minute to change one of the Acomm armbands to the same frequency as the booster station – so they could send a ‘go’ signal when they were safely above the doors – and then they retreated up the shaft.
ssssThey sent the go signal and the isolation doors closed smoothly, forming a tight seal. Serostrina nodded her satisfaction.
ssss“Let’s see what you’re made of,” she challenged the two Mersa with her, and all three started climbing fast, chortling as they did so at the strange Human expression..
ssssThough weighed down by the now unnecessary heat cutters, Serostrina kept up, pushing herself until the suit’s temperature and humidity systems were on full and barely doing their job. Here strength was required, and the Mersa weren’t much better than an athletic Human. Still, a certain amount of Mersa pride was at stake, and they kept up the gruelling pace.
ssss“750 to go,” encouraged Serostrina as the shaft drifted by on either side of them, reducing to a small black hole above where their lights faded out.
ssssAt the top of the shaft Ereth and Sebastian had worked out a plan to use the shaft as a giant column of signal-generating gases.
ssss“The figures for the size of the column and the speed of a pulse through it all look good,” said Sebastian, somewhat surprised, “but we still have the problem of how to generate a standing wave.”
ssss“We build it little by little,” said Ereth, assembling some interesting looking equipment by the wave generator at his feet. Sebastian sat down beside him in the alcove.
ssss“I figure we can put at most two percent of the energy needed into the wave each time it makes the trip up and down the shaft. Then there’s the loss of energy to friction. That will heat the shaft up marginally, but heat energy will drain away into the surrounding rock.”
ssssSebastian nodded. He raised one eyebrow, and Ereth caught his look.
ssss“Maybe 70 cycles, probably no more than 100, before we can release the energy as a comms squawk” said Ereth, in response to the unanswered question. “And we’ll have to mechanically supply some of the momentum with each cycle.”
ssssSebastian and his team fixed the pulse generator to the underneath of the floor, and the Mersa team arrived back at the top of the shaft. Once he had explained to them all what was going to happen, Ereth set the system running.
ssssIt took just under four seconds for the pulse to travel down the shaft, bounce off the isolation doors at the bottom and return to the top of the shaft. Each time it did they added more energy to the wave, some from the powerpaks they’d brought with them, and some they added mechanically from an oversize drum mechanism Ereth had set up.
ssss“Pulse at fifty percent of minimum,” said Ereth after a few minutes.
ssssThe pulse was now strong enough to give the patchwork floor a good shaking each time it reversed at the top of its cycle. When it got too uncomfortable, Ereth halved the length of the wave.
ssss“Standing by, training pulse being sent . . . now,” he told them, and immediately the frequency doubled, a pulse of half the size hitting the underneath of the floor every two seconds.
ssssHe repeated the process when the energy in the system was at eighty percent of the minimum required, and held it there as the energy level approached a hundred percent of minimum. The floor was reverberating to a good-sized thump every second now.
ssss“You build this thing strong, boy?” asked one of the older engineers, fixing Sebastian with a grin.
ssss“Built it stronger than a starship containment chamber,” said Sebastian proudly. “Damn’t thing can take anything you throw at it.”
ssssAmused faces replaced worried ones around the circle.
ssss“Running at 102 percent,” said Ereth. The busy figures around the drum generator sent several tired looks his way as they struggled to keep the output steady.
ssss“Have to make sure it works the first time,” said Ereth, noticing the strain on their faces. “You wouldn’t want to have to do this again, would you?”
ssssThe drumbeat of the pulse against the underneath of the floor grew steadily louder.
ssss“Getting ready to collapse the wave,” said Ereth, shifting his hand so he could send a counterpulse down the shaft to do this. “Coming up to 105 percent, on 105 percent, collapsing the wave . . . now!”
ssssThe beat of the pulse jumped to many times a second, then leaped off the scale in a continuous roar. Something hit the underneath of the floor and buckled it upward, throwing Human and Mersa alike off their feet. The gases in the shaft were forced to absorb the energy previously in the wave, and emitted it a moment later as a burst of energy in the ultra high radio spectrum. In the booster station alcove Serostrina ripped the headphones off her head as an audible squeal came through.
ssss“Comms squawk produced!” she shouted down to the others. There was the tortured rasp of metal giving way far below, as the lower isolation doors gave way, and everything went silent.
ssss“Everybody alright?” called Sebastian, as he turned one of the powerpaks to broad beam and lit up the chaotic scene. The power pak dimmed, then held, very little left in it after the drain of producing the standing wave.
ssssThere were moans of pain, and the more able personnel rushed to tend to those who’d come off worst. Sebastian found Ereth, and swore as he noticed the old man’s pale colour through his faceplate. He called up Ereth’s medical stats on the small screen below the name display on his suit. His pulse was weak, and unsteady, and his breathing was very shallow. “Damn’t!” swore Sebastian, as he realised that probably meant internal bleeding; and there was nothing they could for him while he was in a suit.
ssssThe Javelins were Ereth’s only hope now – and the only hope of a number of others, realised Sebastian as he looked around the shaft and realised the number of injuries. The only hope of them all, in the end, was that the Javelins were still above the planet, and had heard the comms signal.
ssss“I heard metal tear as the wave collapsed, what do you think it was?” asked Serostrina, coming to help Sebastian with Ereth.
ssss“The isolation doors at the other end of the shaft,” said Sebastian, “pretty certain of it. We can only hope the doors didn’t give way until the comms signal was strong enough to get through the rock over us, and be picked up by the Javelins.”
ssss“It sounded like a good, strong signal to me,” said Serostrina, monitoring Ereth’s medical stats while Sebastian leaned against the wall and used himself as a cushion to make Ereth more comfortable.
ssssThey turned off all the suit lights but one, and huddled in the darkness on the buckled floor.
ssss“All we can do now is wait, and keep our minds on better things,” said Sebastian philosophically.
ssssSerostrina smiled, and took his hand, and patted it in a very Human way.

ssssThe captain of Air Marshall Cagill’s command ship finished his pre-flight routines, and turned in his seat to give the Air Marshall the ready signal. The rest of the 30 Javelins had all confirmed flight status a few seconds later. Cagill paused. This had been such an incredible victory for the Alliance, but it rankled that they’d lost the accelerator staff, and that because they’d been too busy themselves to keep track of everything.
ssssHe sighed. Such were the fortunes of war.
ssssThe open channel for the Javelins burst into life above the comms officer’s console.
ssss“Case to Air Marshall, comms signal from depot, repeat, intelligent signal from depot.”
ssss
ssssAt first Cagill wondered what had possessed Ayman to omit the proper call sign, ‘Ayman Case of Javelin two niner four to command ship,’ but he sat up in his chair as the full meaning of the message sunk home. He slapped the open message command on his Acomm armband and his comms officer patched and snapped back his reply.
ssss“There’s nothing left of the depot,” he said sharply, not meaning to question his junior officer but trying to make sense of the situation.
ssss“Signal’s coming from under the depot, Sir,” said Ayman Case briskly.
ssss“Tunnel, natural cavern?” queried Cagill, still unsure how there could be a signal from the depot.
ssss“We think it’s the heat exchanger shaft,” said Case. “Request permission to return to the surface,” he added, though strictly it was the Air Marshall’s call.
ssss“Of course, Squadron Leader,” said Cagill, a smile growing on his face. He shook his head in wonderment. How in all the Stygian hells had the staff in the depot managed it?
ssssHis face fell. How many of them were still alive? He wanted to go down to the surface with Ayman’s ground party, but he knew his role was to remain here on the command ship. However the accelerator staff had survived, he mused, it was going to be an extraordinary story.
ssssHe roused himself from his reverie, and opened a sub space connection to Earth.
ssss“Some of the nuclear accelerator staff are still alive, maybe all of them,” he said, without preamble.
ssss“That is good news,” answered Cordez, feeling as he did that the loss of the people at the depot, Human and Mersa alike, was a bitter pill in an otherwise outstanding action against the Fire Ships. “Your last report described the depot as nothing but a puddle of slag, how did they survive?”
ssss“Heat exchanger shaft, apparently,” said Cagill. “Ground party are on their way to the site now. I’ll let you know as soon as more information comes in.”
ssss“Thank you, Neuman,” said Cordez, adding a personal note to the exchange. “I think we’ll all feel a lot better when we know how they are.”
ssss“Cagill out,” said the Air Marshall gently, sharing the feeling of the moment.
ssssThe rescue shuttle came in low over the bombed out remains of the accelerator complex, and Ayman could see it was already being reclaimed by the savage weather of the ice planet. The open top of the complex sported strangely coloured icefalls, and deep drifts of snow.
ssssThe shuttle landed on the flat field of ice around the depot, where the melted ice had frozen solid once again, then gingerly edged its way closer to the remains of the depot in the middle. The rescue party clambered over the uneven slag of what was left of the building, and set up sonic sounders. It wasn’t long before they’d worked out where the heat exchanger shaft had to be. The next step would be clearing away the slag and rubble covering it.
ssss“We’ve cut away the top end of the shaft,” said MacEnroy, the senior mining engineer among the Javelin crews, a little later on. “It looks fairly clean in the shaft itself, as if a limited amount of debris broke through the top of the shaft when the Fire Ships bombed the place.”
ssssHe put down a compound delaminator and scooped out handfuls of crumbling steel and slag, not easy in the bulky suits, before peering down into the blackness. It didn’t take long for the rescue team to widen the hole and follow the rungs down until they came to a plug of melted steel and rock that sealed off the rest of the shaft.
ssss“Ingenious,” muttered MacEnroy to himself. “Heat cutters on top of the isolation doors. It worked, too.
ssss“This will take time,” he reported to Ayman, who had insisted on joining the shuttle on its rescue mission to the depot.
ssss“Because you don’t want to drop bits of the plug on top of the accelerator staff?” finished Ayman for him. MacEnroy nodded.
ssss“We’ll go round it. That way we can control the amount of debris we drop on them at the break through, and it’ll be quicker too.”
ssssAyman raised an eyebrow, though it was hard to see in the bulky suits.
ssss“The rock around the sides is a lot softer than the isolation doors,” said MacEnroy, and began to give orders to those of the rescue team with more of the delaminators.
ssss“These will break the crystalline structure of the rock and reduce it to a soft gravel,” he said to Ayman. “Once we’ve tunnelled past the doors we’ll let them know we’ve arrived, then go into the shaft sideways. Very slowly!”
ssssAyman nodded.
ssssMacEnroy didn’t have to let the accelerator staff know the rescue team had arrived. The Mersa, with their keen hearing in the upper register, had already picked up faint noises from above them. “They’re here!” squeaked Serostrina, her voice going too high for the ears of the Humans in her excitement.
ssssOne of the engineers pressed a recorder to the wall, and it, too, picked up vibrations coming through the rock.
ssssSebastian cradled Ereth and motioned to Serostrina to read his medical stats. She shook her head.
ssss“Barely registering,” she said sadly.
ssssThey’d had enough sadness already that day. One of the Mersa had died, flung against the wall as the standing wave collapsed and sustaining too many head injuries.
ssssEreth moved weakly, and then seemed to collapse against Sebastian where he was supporting him. Sebastian looked up sharply, and Serostrina looked at the stats once more. The look on her face told him that Ereth had died at that precise moment.
ssss“Damn’t” he exploded. “If he could have held on just a little longer!”
ssssSerostrina placed both her hands over his. One of his friends among the miners came over and went to lift Ereth away and seat him against the wall, to free Sebastian, but Sebastian motioned him away.
ssssThe old man had given up his life trying to save the rest of them – at least he had that as a crowning achievement to a full life, thought Sebastian fiercely. Serostrina moved away to check on the injuries of the others in the shaft, and Sebastian was left with his own thoughts; thoughts of someone who had made a difference to a lot of people, in a long life.
ssssA tapping sound came from the wall on Sebastian’s left, and those near it moved back to allow the rescue team to break a way into the shaft. That left half of them sitting on the rough hammocks along the walls, and standing room only on the buckled floor.
ssssA small section of the wall collapsed, turning to crumbling debris as it did so. The shaft filled with a grating hum at the same time, and the more sensitive Mersa put their hands over their ears. Once the rescue team had verified the area in front of their workings was clear, they quickly reduced the rest of the rock wall to gravel, allowing easy access into the shaft.
ssss“Am I glad to see you folks!” said Ayman Case as he stepped into the shaft. He noticed the withdrawn moods of Human and Mersa alike, and stopped what he was about to say next. One of the engineers took him aside and told him they had lost the accelerator team supervisor, and one of the Mersa, and detailed the many injuries of the others.
ssssIt was a sombre party that entered the shuttle a little later, and Ayman knew celebrations for the survival of the accelerator staff, miraculous as it was, would be postponed for a while yet.
ssssLater that day Cagill relayed the news to Cordez.
ssss“There’s never a win without loss,” said Cordez distractedly, lost in thoughts about the inevitable attrition rates of war.
ssssCagill stayed silent. He was used to his boss’s absent-minded ruminations. But he understood what Cordez meant. Even if a cause was morally right, there was always going to be a high cost to carry it out.


ssssSIX

ssssThe Board of Regents’ meeting was delayed for over an hour by the inauguration of Emilie Castille as Regent for the Pacific trading block, replacing George Padoulus. The Pacific trading block was the smallest of the six trading blocks on Earth, but it was a proud little confederation and its media were not going to be short-changed.
ssssCordez had hoped the inauguration might be overshadowed by the extraordinary Alliance victory at the ice planet in the Alamos system, but it was not to be. He managed to get a brief respite from it all when Castille was recorded in a dozen different ways shaking hands with Victor Emens, the Board chairman.
ssssSince the Alliance victory at the ice planet there had been eight days of celebrations on Earth, celebrations unlike anything in living memory, and they were still going on. Reduced to subsistence farming by the Carnii invasion – ‘bombed back into the stone age’ had been a common media exaggeration – the population of Earth had been baying for revenge, and now they’d been given a taste of it.
ssssThere was a round of applause, and Cordez looked up. The inauguration of Emilie Castille was finally over, and at last the Board would be able to get back to business.
ssssThe NorthAm Regent Hoover Runciman had been ousted the previous year, before his term was up, and replaced by Dante McGorant – who had turned out to be a far more effective choice. Strictly speaking it had been Asura’s turn to stand down this year, after a very successful six-year term. However, the media did not want to see ‘King Manoba and Queen Asura’ diminished in any way, and when George Padoulus of the Pacific block had retired early for family and health reasons, supposedly, it was quickly confirmed Asura was to remain the Regent for the Asian trading block, and that gave her another year in office.
ssssThe media finally left, and the ornate state room in the NorthAm Regency centre was electronically sealed as usual, to maintain the confidentiality of Board meetings.
ssssAll the Regents were attending in person – an inauguration required it – and Emens quickly called upon Regent Cordez to give them the details of the action against the Fire Ships in the Alamos system.
ssssThere were very few questions as he took the Regents through the events at the ice planet, most of the Board simply dumbfounded by the details of the overwhelming victory the Valkrethi had given the Alliance. Then there was some discussion about how much the public should be told. In the end it was decided a statement would be issued referring to ‘sophisticated H’Roth artefacts’ that had been ‘instrumental in a substantial reduction of Carnii forces’ in the Spiral Arm.
ssss“We have to plan for the worst and hope for the best,” said Cordez, once the media statement was out of the way. “The Valkrethi have given us an edge, but the situation could change at any moment. We’re still rebuilding Earth and our defences are weak. We don’t know how the Carnii will respond now they’ve seen the Valkrethi at work, and we have to trust the archive information on the Carnii social structure is still correct today. It appears we’re fighting just the one autonomous cell of their society – as if that isn’t enough! – and we can only hope this remains the case.
ssss“The H’Dree have added another ten motherships to those they replaced after the battle for Earth. That gives them over thirty now, and they want to tackle the armada that circles Ba’H’Rok. Our intelligence says half the armada has gone to reinforce the Fire Ships protecting the Carnii shipyards, so the H’Dree are keen to take advantage of this.
ssss“I’ve managed to persuade ParapSanni that the shipyards are better targets, and he can see the logic in reducing the Carnii ability to make more warships. Unfortunately the Eight still want to do something to free their home planet – mainly a matter of pride I think.
ssss“We’ll just have to wait and see what their final decision is. I don’t want to commit the Valkrethi to a H’Dree attack on the armada at this stage – we’ve got far too many actions planned of our own – but we’ll send Javelins in support of the motherships, if that’s the choice they finally make.”
ssssThe Board meeting went on well into the night, underpinned by a new hope that the tides of war might at last have turned in favour of the Alliance.

ssssKalken-ar-wuyr downloaded reports from every Fire Ship in the armada, and set one of her subroutines to read them and let her higher functions know if anything needed to be attended to.
ssssThe command centre at the heart of the flagship was a perfect sphere, hundreds of Carnii in their active state hanging in zero gravity next to data stations around the curved walls, a blaze of orange that seemed to give the immense open space an inner skin of fire.
ssssIn the middle of the command centre five orange shapes hung together, wired into the matrix of functions that ran the huge flagship. Kalken had command of armaments and tactical, which gave her seniority. Of the 20 flagships that had come from the Core to help them at Ba’H’Rok, most had now returned to the Carnii cells they’d come from. Each cell was fiercely responsible for its own security; but deals could be struck – at a cost.
ssssIt had been a strategic call on the part of the city mind to bargain for additional forces to be sent from neighbouring cells, yet in the end the collection of rock dweller ships had evacuated the remaining H’Dree off their home planet before the additional Fire Ships and flagships had arrived. Those cells could now make a call on Kalken’s cell, at any time, for an equivalent force to be sent to them.
ssssThat would drastically drain the reserves of the fledgling colony, and might happen at a time they could least afford to have their forces sent away, muttered Kalken. It was madness!
ssssOnce again Kalken questioned the sanity of the city mind, and feared for herself and her soon to be born young one. Yet the Carnii had never faced defeat, and even the thought of it paralysed Kalken’s thought processes. Perhaps that was why the city mind was acting so strangely.
ssssThe flagship Kalken now commanded had been on its way to neighbouring cells to strengthen ties – a never ending job among the suspicious Carnii – when the rest of the colony’s flagships were destroyed at the battle for the Dark Ship world. Another flagship had since been built, but of the six that now hung above the H’Dree home world, four were due to return to their own cells at any time. More flagships were desperately needed to protect the new colony, but the construction and defences of the immense Carnii city inside the red giant sun, at the centre of their new territories, took precedence over everything else.
ssssAn urgent message came in from the city mind, and Kalken took it at her station. She was less able to concentrate on communications while she was hooked into the flagship’s functions, as she was now, but returning to the dormitory banks and entering her inert state was not an option at the moment either.
ssssIt was a command to send a shadow copy of herself to the city mind when she entered the inert cyber state. She noted the command in her time directory and returned to monitoring the functions of the flagship.
ssssA small part of her responsibilities included sub space monitoring of the armament levels of all the Fire Ships in the cell. The subroutine she used to do this recorded any drain in the Fire Ship reserves. When the expenditure reached a certain level Kalken planned for them to be renewed.
ssssThe subroutine called this to her attention now, and Kalken guessed at once it was due to the attack on the rock dweller machines on the ice planet. It appeared the attack was going according to plan.
ssssThen Kalken looked at the Fire Ship energy signatures, and found a number of them missing. Alarmed, she turned her attention to the action that was now underway, more than a dozen star systems away in the Spiral Arm. The Fire Ship signatures were blinking out of existence, one after the other, and the rate they were disappearing from her screens was increasing. It couldn’t be a defect in the flagship receivers, or a temporary ripple in the sub space systems. The screens were losing energy signatures too fast for that.
ssssThen Kalken made the dreadful connection – the rock dwellers had a new weapon! How they’d known the ramecium plant on the ice planet was going to be attacked puzzled Kalken. But more importantly she knew her colony’s precious Fire Ships were being destroyed, one after the other, as she watched.
ssssThe Dark Ships, thought Kalken savagely, it had to be them! The armada had failed to destroy the Dark Ship world, and now the Dark Ship savages had found some new way of fighting back against them.
ssssThen Kalken remembered the meeting with the city mind, and cold fear washed over her. All sub space communications were monitored by the city mind, and it would have noticed the loss of energy signatures from the warship net before Kalken’s subroutine brought it to Kalken’s attention.
ssssThe city mind was going to discuss ways to meet this new threat, and that could only mean releasing the Baccur!
ssssThe cell was struggling, she thought bitterly. With every new event of the last few time cycles, it found itself going backward. It was supposed to have been easy to establish themselves here; nothing but a few rock dweller civilisations in the area, nothing to give them any trouble. But it hadn’t turned out like that! And now the city mind was becoming more desperate, and more unstable. Once the Baccur were released, who would put them back on their prison world?
ssssKalken dreaded the end of her shift in the command centre, and the start of her time in cyberspace. Then she would have to visit the city mind – and discuss releasing the Baccur.

ssssJoe finished another call over the WISH system, and thought for a moment how far Canada had come since those first few days after the Carnii invasion of the Solar System, and the bombardment of Earth. The only communication then had been primitive cellphone technology, and the World Information Super Highway had been offline for private use, struggling to handle the minimal industrial demands placed upon it. More like a goat track than a highway, thought Joe with a grin.
ssssNow it was different. More than half Earth’s cities had been rebuilt. Sophisticated machinery was starting to appear again, and only last week the first fusion reactor had been commissioned for the public power grid. All the reactors that had survived the bombardment of Earth had originally been turned to military uses, but that was changing now.
ssssHe looked out the window at the biofuel dump across the road. It had become a habit to take everything remotely usable there for conversion – right down to what was left over from his packed lunch. They’d all done it, got behind the program to produce enough simple fuels to run the planet, and it had worked.
ssssHe looked up at a picture frame that took up much of the wall opposite his desk, and turned it on. The Rockies appeared, scattered trees now covered in fresh growth that waved gently in the mild breeze. Something, a deer perhaps, disappeared into dense undergrowth as the hovercam passed overhead. A sprinkling of wildflowers ran around the edge of the clearing in a boundary of living colour.
ssssThe short clip had been shot last Spring, and it did him good to see concrete evidence of Earth returning to normal. The horrifying devastation visited on the Rockies by the Carnii had been overcome by the regenerating force of nature. Joe remembered with a shudder too many grim pictures of the Rockies on fire from end to end.
ssssThe Javelins had now finished their work scrubbing the atmosphere clean of smoke from the fires, and that was a blessing. It was safe for children to go outside without air filters, and the constant clouds and unseasonal cold had finally dissipated.
ssssHe moved the sequence forward one clip, and a slim woman of medium height with tearaway hair, held down by a ribbon, walked into the shot from the left and smiled, then waved. How a woman of the same late middle age as himself could carry off a ribbon as a fashion statement was beyond Joe, but carry it off she did. Life had changed dramatically for him, he thought, since he’d been headhunted by CIC and asked to move to Toronto, now the seat of Canadian government and the industrial committee.
ssssWomen like a man in a position of power, reflected Joe. They find it sexy – and powerful he’d certainly become, rising rapidly in CIC as his ‘hands on’ and innovative approach to problems solved crisis after crisis. Still, Jean did seem to like him for himself, and thankfully wasn’t given to social climbing, with its tea parties and endless expensive dresses.
ssssHe’d pretty much given up the drink with the busy workload too, and Jean had helped him keep off it. She’d mentioned something about an alcoholic father and was reluctant to talk about it further, but he figured that was okay. The main thing was they were agreed on a very moderate intake of alcohol in their lives.
ssssAnother call came through on WISH, and Joe tapped on a comms band at the side of his desk to answer it.
ssss“That you, Joe?” boomed a familiar voice, and Joe found himself looking at the face of Jim Seatoun on the screen. His old engineering foreman was grinning from ear to ear about something.
ssss“You look disgustingly happy,” said Joe. “You won the lottery, you tinny old bastard?”
ssss“No, better’n that,” said Jim. “You remember the Smithson lathe, the one you set up for me and the boys when you went to work for CIC, making parts for the biofuel trucks?”
ssssJoe nodded.
ssss“We’ve won an award, most productive industrial team for the last three months, or something like that. We’re going to be on the satellite multivision station!”
ssss“Good on you, Jim,” said Joe softly. It had been men and women like Jim Seatoun who’d made the rapid re-building of Earth such a success.
ssss“You tell the boys I’m proud of them!” he said more loudly, and Jim looked even more deliriously happy, if that was possible.
ssss“When you comin’ back down here on the farm?” said Jim. “Nothin’ like a small town for a man like you. Join us country boys in a little fishin’, maybe some hiking. You like hiking, don’t you?”
ssss“That I do, Jim,” answered Joe firmly. “That I do.”
ssssHe made up his mind right then to take some holiday time and visit his home town, with some of that time spent in the Rockies.
ssssHe should take Jean, he thought idly, then reconsidered. No, that would be a declaration of intent, like taking a girlfriend to meet your parents. Then he laughed at himself. Why should that stuff matter when you were both in your fifties?
ssssA new realisation struck him, and he stopped, surprised at himself for a moment. He did want to take Jean back to see the place where he’d lived most of his life. And more than that, he did want to spend the rest of his life with her. Holy sunshine, that was going to change things between them . . .
ssss“Hey, Joe, you still there?” said his old foreman, banging on the receiver at his end. “Damn’t things broken, you’ve stopped moving, processor fried itself or something. Oh, there you are!”
ssss“Yeah, sorry Jim, just thinking about something,” said Joe hurriedly.
ssss“Look, I’ll take you up on that offer,” he continued. “I’ll be joining you and the boys in a few weeks time, be good to catch up, and see what you’ve been doing at the workshop without me.”
ssss“You got it!” roared Jim. “You gimme some dates as soon as you know.”
ssss“And Jim, ah, I’ll be bringing someone with me . . . I think,” he concluded.
ssss“You sly dog!” said Jim with relish. “You can stay with us. I’ll tell Shona, and she can give her the once over for you.”
ssssJoe groaned inwardly. He could only hope Jean would understand. She probably would, that was one of the best things about her.
ssssHe signed off and made a note to arrange some leave, then got back to the work on his desk. His work seemed a little easier now. Was that because he was going on holiday sometime soon, he wondered, or was it because his feelings for Jean had unexpectedly decided to make themselves clearer today.
ssssSome things can be thought about too much, he decided, and returned doggedly to the pile of submissions in front of him.

ssssSharmin stood and stretched. She’d been reading material from the H’Roth archive on Ba’H’Roth for most of the morning. She thought for a moment, then made a few brief notes on her pocket recorder.
ssssThe research team had been following individual lines of inquiry since they got back from the archive, but now it was time to bring those leads together and see what could be used to benefit the Alliance.
ssssLife on Prometheus was dull after the excitement she’d felt taking the Valkrethi out against the Fire Ships. The others in the research team were saying the same thing. Putting your life on the line and being tested like that was addictive – it was an addiction they’d all have to watch carefully.
ssss“You all are invited to a barn dance Saturdee night,” said a voice over the open comms system, in something of a mid-western accent. Sharmin smiled. That was probably Millie, the NorthAm girl who was secretary for MacEwart. She was always ready for a sociable get together, and it hadn’t been long before she’d been made ‘social events organiser’.
ssss“Melda at recyclables has a print and texture pattern for farm overalls, just bring an old one-piece worksuit along and she’ll put it through the machine for you. Ladies, you can have tassels and trimmings, there’s quite a selection of options.
ssss“You’ll probably need to wear something under the overalls,” she continued mischievously, “though a perfectly straight back at all times could see decorum preserved. Just remember not to lean forward, unless you want the guys on either side to take a much more enthusiastic interest in you!”
ssssShe broke off into peels of laughter.
ssssSharmin shook her head. Anyone else wouldn’t be able to get away with it, but the whole base seemed to accept Millie’s antics as a welcome relief from the long days and intense level of work at Prometheus.
ssss“So, make a note somewhere to come along this Saturday night,” continued Millie, “and don’t leave your overalls to the last minute, Melda’s busy enough without you all turning up at once. This is your sa-oh-oh-oh-shul sec-rah-tery over and out!”
ssssSharmin paused for a moment. She remembered her discussions with Sallyanne about the need for someone special in her life, and she hoped Sallyanne would take this opportunity to do something about it.
ssssFurther down the hall, behind the flimsy partitions that gave each of them a little work privacy in the large underground cavern at Prometheus, Sallyanne was thinking the same thing.
ssss“Preliminary investigations suggest the Drua have an archetypal memory, indicating extensive dream sequences. . .” said the report on her desk, sent by a psychologist in another department. She reached over and switched it off.
ssssBarn dance . . Saturday . . , she thought. But she was snowed under with work.
ssssThen some part of her rebelled. Damn’t, wasn’t Flinch always telling them to take some regular time out for themselves? He was right, too.
ssssShe made a decision – she’d go to the dance.
ssssHer mind threw up pictures of some of the Prometheus staff she’d rather fancied over recent months. Sometimes she couldn’t see the connection herself, but her body definitely tingled around some of the men, but not others. It was all rather strange, and sometimes confusing.
ssssOne of the starship technicians came to mind, a dark, lowering Lothario who seemed to be a hit with most of the women. Unfortunately he was also obsessed with his work, and talked mostly in grunts. A shiver built up in her spine and suddenly transferred itself to her hips before earthing in the chair. She gasped. He was definitely a bad choice, she would have to exercise some willpower there.
ssssSallyanne wrenched herself back to her work. “Work during the week, men on Saturday!” she repeated firmly several times. Er, man on Saturday, she corrected herself. She’d always found one of them was more than enough trouble in a woman’s life.
ssssThen she remembered Roberto. She’d promised herself – somewhere deep in space when she’d been sick of her own company – that she’d make a play for him when she got back to Prometheus. He was definitely a much more suitable choice. Not as exciting, but someone you could have a really good conversation with.
ssss“Work on weekdays!” she commanded herself again, and then sighed. It was going to be a long, long time until Saturday at this rate.
ssssBut then at last, to Sallyanne’s relief, Saturday did arrive.
ssssShe bumped into Andre and Jubilate as they entered the large lounge in front of the research team sleeping quarters. They joined forces and headed for the cafeteria, where they’d been told their ‘down home on the farm’ experience would begin. She laughed at Andre’s farmhand get up. Jubilate had added extra touches to his overalls and set his hair in a simple roughed-up style, complete with lifelike twigs and bits of grass, and Sallyanne would easily have taken him for a subsistence farmer from some backward place on Earth.
ssssThe inside of the ‘barn’ was about as realistic as you could get. The wooden supports intrigued a number of the Human guests who had never seen such a thing before. For the Mersa it was part of their culture of belonging to nature, and didn’t rate a second glance. The barn was actually part of the huge stores and parts cavern, but you got there through a long tunnel from a newly created entrance off the cafeteria. Stepping into the unknown added to the excitement, and sense of mystery.
ssssSharmin was already inside, talking to an older man Sallyanne didn’t know; then she noticed Roberto in a corner with a few of the Javelin pilots. Her heartbeat picked up and she rubbed her hands nervously. This was no good, she told herself, and made a conscious effort to calm down. The best thing she could do would be to get something to eat, and maybe a drink – just one, she warned herself – and settle in for a bit of a gossip with the girls. She’d see what talent there was among the men later, when she felt more relaxed.
ssssIt wasn’t long before the dancing started. It had been one of Millie’s first ideas as social secretary to start dance classes, and they’d been well attended. She hadn’t tried for anything too complicated, sticking mostly to the simpler couples’ dances, and preferring those that involved some form of touching. It got everybody mixing properly, and for the single women it was an opportunity to decide whether they liked the way they were being held or not. Millie knew from her own experience just how important this was.
ssssSallyanne sat out the first two dances, and then ventured onto the floor with one of the technicians that helped out in the research area. She knew she was making a safe choice – he was junior to her on the staff and she wasn’t interested in him emotionally. Sometimes you know too much psychological stuff about the way people interact, she chided herself.
ssssStill, that dance settled her down, and she moved on to Roberto when it was over, taking his glass out of his hand and setting it down on the table as she steered him firmly toward the floor. She smiled to herself at his bewildered look. She’d be sweet and accommodating later, but right now she felt more like a lioness, proud of her hunting skill.
ssssOnce he’d got used to the unexpected attention, Roberto seemed to think it wasn’t a bad idea either. He warmed to his role, and was soon finding her somewhere to sit and checking she had enough to eat and drink. For a while they chatted with others they knew, when they weren’t dancing, but when Roberto suggested they sit in a small alcove a little secluded from everyone else, Sallyanne agreed.
ssss“It’s such a busy life,” Roberto was saying. “You feel selfish if you take time out from what Prometheus needs for Earth to survive, but on the other hand you can’t drive yourself forever or you’ll start making mistakes.”
ssss“Yes,” said Sallyanne, “and if you do find yourself in a relationship you wonder how long it will last because you can’t plan any time together, and all you can do is grab moments when you can.”
ssss“My point exactly!” said Roberto, relieved Sallyanne understood his very male concern that a woman somehow needed a certain amount of her man’s time or she would drift away.
ssssA more predatory gleam appeared in his eye. If Sallyanne would countenance an on again, off again relationship, dictated by work and circumstances, he wouldn’t say no.
ssssShe would be a most rewarding addition to his life out here at Prometheus; and she did look particularly fine tonight, he thought – quite fetching when she put her mind to it.
ssssSallyanne smiled to herself as she watched him work out the details for himself. He wasn’t a complicated man and she’d deliberately set out to make things easy for him. Now he could see that the obstacles to a relationship had been removed from his path, Roberto was taking a decidedly other than professional interest in her. She didn’t miss the quick glance that ran down her dress and took in her waist and the round curve of her hips on the chair either. He was getting interested alright!
ssssThey were both rather reluctant to move when supper was announced, but had to admit they were a bit peckish after the dancing. Working round the outside of the large crowd, they made their way slowly to the spread at the other end of the ‘barn’, chatting as they went and fielding banter from friends.
ssssThe research team met up at one end of the long table. Andre and Jubilate were flushed from some energetic bouts of La Geordia, a classical dance of the last century that had brought them enthusiastic applause on the dance floor. Sharmin was still with the older man she’d met when she first arrived, and now she waved him off to an early night. Geelong had seen the research team and come to join them, dragging a shy comms technician along with him. His outgoing manner and her gentle silence couldn’t have been more of a contrast, but the way she clung tightly to his arm, and he in turn paid her every attention, showed some sort of chemistry was at work.
ssssSallyanne and Roberto were the last to arrive, and were given a royal welcome. Their sudden interest in each other, after working together for so long, wasn’t all that unexpected. It had, after all, always been something of a tradition to keep love affairs ‘in house’. Sharmin, though, still looked as if she was carrying her workload on her shoulders.
ssssHow vulnerable she is, thought Roberto, touched by the way his friend didn’t really seem to be enjoying the evening’s festivities. Oh, she’d explained many times that she was ‘married to the job’, but that didn’t seem right to Roberto. Other people found time for someone special. She’d also said it was important to her to do a job she could be proud of, and that meant giving it one hundred percent – but that seemed like a conscientiousness that was out of control.
ssssThen Flinch commandeered the sound system, and turned their attention upward. The ‘roof’ rolled back, and a thousand synthetic stars shone from the dome of the huge stores and parts cavern. Larger than life and looking much closer than on Earth, they drew gasps of admiration. Then Flinch made a circular ‘wind it up’ signal to someone behind him, and the real show started.
ssssFireworks sprang into the air from all sides. The show was false, of course, an electronic light and sound mix second to none, but you couldn’t tell it from the real thing. There were shouts of admiration, and applause after each wave of light and drumbeat of rolling thunder. The show seemed to go on for a long time; and then, suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
ssssWhen the last of the applause had died down, Jubilate was the first to speak.
ssss“Must be time to call it a night,” she said, feigning yawning and winking at Sallyanne. “Andre’s a real old tart. If I don’t get him home at a respectable time there’s always trouble. A drink or two and a bit of dancing and he’s anybody’s.”
ssssThe others roared with laughter. Sallyanne nudged Roberto.
ssss“Can’t say I can argue with that, Jubilate” she said, hoping it wasn’t too obvious she wanted to whisk Roberto off somewhere private herself.
ssssBut Roberto didn’t respond. She looked up, and saw him looking intently at Sharmin.
ssss“You really have to find someone for yourself,” he said suddenly, stepping over to stand face to face with her. “I know you better than anybody, and you can’t keep denying yourself a life like this.”
ssssSharmin looked flushed, and tried to turn her head away, but he lifted his hand and guided her head back to face him.
ssss“I think I’ll head back to my rooms,” she said at last, “it’s been quite a night.”
ssss“Oh, to hell with it,” said Roberto. “If you won’t find someone else you’ll just have to put up with me,” and he bent his head down to hers and kissed her firmly. The others stood stunned. Sallyanne looked furious. Jubilate turned to Andre and muttered, “what? when?” but he just shrugged his shoulders.
ssssSallyanne found her voice at last. “Oh great,” she stormed, “I light his fuse and you reap the rewards!” She stormed across the floor toward the entrance with murder written on her face.
ssssSharmin broke free of Roberto’s grasp. She was flushed and out of breath.
ssss“I thought you were my friend!’ she said, pushing him away from her.
ssss“I am,” he replied, “which is why I’m doing this,” and he drew her back to him, despite her protestations, and kissed her again.
ssssThis time Sharmin broke free and took a step back. “Give me some space,” she gasped, “give me some . . . time to think,” and she whirled around and headed for the servery, where she was sure she could find a way out, and back to her room.
ssss“You okay, brother?” said Andre, putting his hand on Roberto’s shoulder.
ssssRoberto looked sheepish. “Um, I just, well, I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”
ssss“Well, you sure made an impression!” said Jubilate, half amused and half worried for him.
ssssNow Roberto looked worried as well.
ssss“Oh, you didn’t make it worse,” said Jubilate. “Knowing old iron britches like I do, I think that might have been the only way to get through to her.”
ssssRoberto looked more reassured. Sharmin and Jubilate had been like mother and daughter since the research team had been formed, and particularly after Jubilate’s scare with the H’Roth mind-enhancing technology that had almost killed her. If anyone could read Sharmin it was Jubilate.
ssssOver by the entrance to the facsimile ‘barn’ Sallyanne was slowing down. It wasn’t that she didn’t wish her work colleagues well, it was just such effing and blinding bad timing. Her current hormonal state didn’t help either. Ah, whatever, she’d apologise to them all tomorrow. Right now she just wanted the evening to be over with.
ssss“May I?” said a voice at her elbow, and she turned with a start to see the dark Lothario who had always made her feel so . . . out of control.
ssssShe hesitated. It was something of a dilemma. She didn’t particularly want to dance with this man, as emotionally dangerous as he was for her, but she didn’t want to leave right now either, still feeling betrayed by a woman she’d always trusted. It wouldn’t look good to others either. Besides, did she really want to return to her bare, silent sleeping quarters?
ssss“Thank you, that would be nice,” she said, putting as much formality and distance into the words as she could. She certainly had no intention of leading him on. One dance, some more of that delicious pavlova-type desert at the supper table – and maybe a nightcap – and she’d turn in for a good night’s sleep.
ssssIt was getting late in the evening, and the slower dances had started. She found she was enjoying herself, despite her resistance to her partner, and she had to stop her head from drifting down onto his shoulder.
ssssGood thing it’s only one dance, she thought, bolstering her reserves of independence. Then the music ended with a dramatic one – one – two step, and he spun her round and caught her again. Before she could quite recover, his hand was behind her back and she was being dipped. He held her like that for ever it seemed, her overalls pulling down over the curves of her body.
ssssOh God, I hope I don’t pop out, she thought desperately, and then she was standing upright. She was quite dazed, and as he took her arm to lead her to the side of the floor she stumbled. A peculiar lethargy had settled over her legs, and she thought how embarrassing it would be if he had to carry her off the floor.
ssss“Can I get you anything, Miss Montoya?” he asked, and she was surprised to learn he knew her name. She certainly hadn’t offered it.
ssss“It’s Ms,” she said primly, “and I may call you?”
ssss“Wayfarer,” he replied evenly. “Eden Wayfarer.”
ssssHe guided her to a seat.
ssss“How did you know my name?” she asked, when they were settled.
ssss“I asked who you were on the day you first arrived at Prometheus,” he replied. “You have a most striking beauty, and, as I later discovered, you also have a keen intelligence. What man would not ask for your name?”
ssssSmooth bastard, said Sallyanne to herself, feeling very pleased all the same.
ssss“And I’m sure there have been many women come to Prometheus that you have asked for the names of,” she said sharply. She had better nip this in the bud right now.
ssss“No,” he replied simply. “None. I have been waiting to meet with you.”
ssssShe just stared, unable to believe him, but finding no guile in his clear eyes.
ssss“Many womans ask to talk to me,” he began, then stopped. “No, ‘women’ is it not? I am still learning the, er, mother language is it not?”
ssss“Univoc,” she replied. The pidgin EuroAsian language of the traders that had been reconstructed into the world language of the Post Milieu era, once Earth had joined the other races in the Spiral Arm.
ssss“Yes, Univoc,” he replied.
ssss“But I feel no connection to these women,” he resumed, “so I discourage their asking.”
ssssSo that was why he had a reputation for talking in grunts, she realised, and probably why he seemed obsessed with his work. He must come from somewhere quite backward, and everything here would be so new to him. The Human personnel used the linguist earpieces when they were working with the Mersa, but it was nice not to have to use them when they spoke to each other. She could see why he wanted to learn the language the others used.
ssssHe must have worked hard, or been naturally brilliant, to have made it to Prometheus, she thought in admiration.
ssssShe felt ashamed of her first assessment of him, and a flood of feelings for him welled up once the need to protect herself melted away. Why, he was like a big, cuddly puppy who needed looking after.
ssss“Perhaps it is time to go,” he said gently, looking carefully into her eyes.
ssss“Mmmm?” she replied, thinking perhaps he meant to escort her to the supper table once again.
ssss“In my village, when the girls look like you do, it is time to go. Er, to the, the, sleeping place,” he finished awkwardly.
ssssSallyanne blushed a deep red. She was an open book to him. She stood up as he did, and then found herself collapsing gently against him. Damn’t legs were playing up again. But she didn’t pull away. The feel of him against her was just too delicious.
ssss“Perhaps you’re right,” she said at last, discovering her voice had somehow developed a husky quality to it.
ssssShe wasn’t sure what he was right about, but it felt natural to let him take the lead. She’d been her own boss for too long, the great world authority on offworld civilisations, and it felt good to let someone else take the lead – no, it felt good to let Eden take the lead, she corrected herself.
ssssHe put his arm around her, and they walked toward the entrance to the good ol’ ‘barn’. They walked slowly, as if they had all the time in the world.


ssssSEVEN

ssssSallyanne barely had time to apologise for her outburst at the barn dance before the research team were isolated from the rest of Prometheus for more training in the Valkrethi. At least she’d had time to make peace with her friends, and was able to return to her new relationship with Eden Wayfarer with a clear conscience. In the beginning she worried about where the relationship was headed – with neither of them having any real spare time – but his attention to her never wavered, and slowly she began to relax and trust in his feelings for her.
ssssSharmin, on the other hand, couldn’t handle the conflict between her sense of loyalty to her work, and the stirring of new feelings she had for Roberto. She clamped down on her emotional state, and acted as if nothing had happened between them. Roberto found her denials intensely frustrating, and became more and more sullen. It came to a head at a weekly meeting of the research team.
ssss“Tell me why the roster’s been changed,” said Roberto angrily. “You and I have always done the inventories check together, it gives us a chance to look at new technologies and decide whether it’s time to replace any of our standard equipment.”
ssss“Jubilate and I can do just as good a job,” said Sharmin defensively. “It’s not important who does it.”
ssss“That’s not the point,” said Roberto, “ I want to know why I’m being demoted. Don’t you trust me to do the job properly?”
ssss“You have been hard on him lately,” said Andre, in support of Roberto, “and I can’t see that he’s done anything wrong.”
ssss“Oh, nothing wrong, huh,” she exploded. “Getting drunk and making a scene of himself in a public place is hardly nothing!”
ssss“I was not drunk!” said Roberto, raising his voice over hers. “I drank the barn punch most of the night, and that was non-alcoholic.
ssss“Besides,” he said, lowering his voice, “I did not make a spectacle of myself. I did the one thing in my life I can truly be proud of.”
ssssSharmin went to say something, and then her voice caught. She stood for a moment, halfway between tears and anger, then walked out of the room.
ssssJubilate came and put her hand on his shoulder.
ssss“I think this is one of those times when the truth doesn’t actually help, Robbie. Still, that was a very noble sentiment, and it says a lot about you.”
ssssSharmin stormed back in, beside herself for losing control of her emotions.
ssss“I run this department, and you’d all better get used to it!” she said angrily. “I say who does what, and when they do it. If you don’t want to do things my way, then Flinch can find you a job in another department!”
ssssJubilate rolled her eyes, and shook her head. Andre stepped forward, and took a deep breath.
ssss“No, you don’t run this department, Sharmin,” he said evenly. “We’ve always been a team and we like the way you lead us, but this time you’ve let your personal demands get in the way of the team, and that’s not good enough.
ssss“Don’t look at me like that,” he continued, meeting Sharmin’s gaze evenly. “I’m the old fart here, and that gives me the right to knock heads together.” He paused, then made his point.
ssss“Now both of you cool down, and show some restraint!
ssss“Roberto, let Jubilate do the inventories, okay?”
ssssRoberto nodded.
ssss“Sharmin, you get your house in order, and you do it now! That will mean talking to Roberto about what’s bothering you. Is that clear!”
ssssSharmin stood for a long time, clenching and unclenching her hands, trying to work out her priorities. At last she nodded.
ssss“Good,” said Andre, “now let’s get back to work. When the lunch break arrives I want everyone in the café, and I want us all talking civilly to each other, got it!”
ssssThey all nodded.
ssssNo one had anything else to add, and they slowly drifted off in different directions.
ssssJubilate looked at Andre with new eyes.
ssss“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said wonderingly, as they walked out of the room. “I thought you were an easy going guy from the top of your funny hairdo to the last toe on your broad, squat little feet.”
ssssIt was Andre’s turn to cuff her across the back of the head.
ssss“So did I,” he said quietly, “but I hope I never have to do it again. I’m going to be a nervous wreck for the rest of the day.”
ssss“There, there,” cooed Jubilate, “muffin buns knows how to make it all better.”
ssssAndre laughed out loud. She really was the best thing to ever happen to him.

ssssThe training schedule for the Valkrethi had been stepped up a notch. They were now pushing the limits of what the huge, sophisticated machines could do. That afternoon the research team assembled once more in the cavern under Prometheus, identified themselves at the heel of their giant look-alikes, and climbed the slim ladders to the rider’s position.
ssss“Listen up, people!” said Cagill over the open band, once the two squadrons of pilots and the four researchers had put their Valkrethi through the warm up routine.
ssss“We salvaged three Fire Ships from the action on the ice planet, and managed to get the shields on two of them working again. We know the Valkrethi can draw power from sources nearby and use it for themselves – some of you used that ability at the ice planet, to keep reserves of power above minimum levels and keep yourselves in the fight – but this time we’re going to use the full power of the Fire Ship shields against themselves.”
ssssThis made a lot of sense to Roberto. He’d studied fighting styles in his earlier years, and the maxim it was best to use your opponents’ strength against them had been drilled into him.
ssssThe Valkrethi generated a baseline of power from small internal reactors that would essentially last for ever, but they could also pull in power from sources nearby and use that to supplement their reserves. In the heat of battle their energy levels were often quickly depleted, and then they needed to cut right back, or pull out of the action for a while, to replenish those reserves.
ssssThe ability to draw in power from sources nearby was, apparently, what they were going to test today.
ssss“And we’ve got a little surprise for you,” said Cagill.
ssss“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you what it was – and one of the great lessons of warfare is to expect the unexpected – so we’ll leave it until you get out there and think you’re doing alright!”
ssssThis was sobering news. Cagill’s idea of surprises in the past had been downright frightening. A collective set of nervous systems changed from growing excitement to a mixture of growing excitement and nervousness.
ssss“The training grounds are at the limit of the Valkrethi range from Prometheus,” said Cagill. “When the ejection system has shot you clear of the moon’s gravity, set the homing pattern for these coordinates,” and he downloaded the coordinates to the others.
ssssRoberto activated his optics and pulled up the coordinates onto a visual of the Solar System. He found them just inside the orbit of Pluto; and that was, indeed, a long jump for the Valkrethi. The acceleration and deceleration in the middle of the jump was going to be hard on all of them.
ssss“Alpha Squadron follows Alpha leader, Delta Squadron follows me, and the research team follows their leader. Is that understood?”
ssssGiant heads nodded all around the cavern.
ssss“Alpha Squadron, disembark,” said Cagill briskly, and a squadron of ten Valkrethi lumbered across the cavern, gaining speed as they approached the portal of the ejection system. The first launched itself at the centre of the ring, and was picked up by the force field and flung through the tunnel into the vastness of space. The others followed rapidly.
ssssOnce they were clear of Prometheus the Valkrethi brought up the coordinates on their optics. For each of them a long sinuous thread snaked out across the optic screen, connecting them to the coordinates. Miniscule hand movements activated the transportation systems, and one by one the Valkrethi began to move, acceleration picking up exponentially until they blurred and were gone. As the acceleration approached the stage when the Humans blacked out, they increased the explosive breath techniques they’d been taught to keep blood flowing to their brains. There was a moment’s stomach-churning weightlessness when the drive shifted over, and suddenly they were slammed forward in their restraining servo-mech compartments as the equally vicious deceleration began.
ssssRoberto activated his homing system as his Valkrethi began to slow to normal speeds, and a blue positional dot blinked into life in his optics. He veered left to head toward it. A few moments later he saw other specks, barely visible in the pale, watery light from the far distant Sun, descending on the same position.
ssss“Count off!” came Cagill’s voice in his ear. The Valkrethi positional telemetry showed them where the others were, but counting off confirmed they’d all survived the jump without damage. The leaders reported a successful count off to Cagill, and he carried on with his briefing.
ssss“First part of this mission is to use the search systems to find the Fire Ships I’ve hidden out here. The second part is to draw power from the Fire Ship shields to replace what we’ve used in the jump. The two best performers get to take the Fire Ships apart.”
ssssRoberto got busy setting his search systems to find the blinking orange dots that meant a Fire Ship was within range.
ssssThere was nothing there. He reset the systems and got them to check themselves for errors. When that didn’t work he moved his Valkrethi away from the others, so he could check for objects hidden behind Pluto – coming up on his far right – or some of the larger comets in the Oort cloud much farther out of the Solar System.
ssssStill nothing. Cagill had lived up to his promise – this was a surprise all right. He was making this hard.
ssssRoberto began to tick off mentally what Cagill might have done to hide the Fire Ships. Then he stopped abruptly. One of his old fighting style teachers had been from a survival team that specialised in reconnaissance. What had he said? Yes, that was it – sometimes the best thing to do was hide in plain sight.
ssssSo what had Cagill done with the Fire Ships?
ssssHe’d turned off the shields, that’s what he’d done. Maybe they’d activate when one of the Javelins came within a certain distance. Or, he’d tampered with the Valkrethi systems so they wouldn’t read the Fire Ship energy signatures. That was more unlikely, considering how little Prometheus knew so far about how the Valkrethi systems actually worked.
ssssSo, there were two Fire Ships out there, but they wouldn’t be producing a signal on any of the usual electromagnetic spectrums, if they were producing a signal at all. And even their metal composition might have been disguised in some way. What he needed to do was form a two-pilot team to improve the sensitivity of the Valkrethi search systems, and allow them to triangulate in on their target.
ssssRoberto hesitated. Normally he’d form himself a team with Sharmin, but that probably wasn’t such a good idea at the moment. Then he saw two of the Valkrethi peel off from the main group and start a search pattern of their own. A quick check on the Valkrethi long-range sensors showed him they were Andre and Jubilate.
ssssDamn’t! The other research team members had formed a team for the same reasons, and that left Sharmin as the only one left to team up with. None of the Javelin pilots would understand what he was up to – they were strictly ‘by the book’ thinkers.
ssss“Request you join me in a two-pilot sweep of surrounding area,” he said, on a comms band limited to the two of them.
ssssA terse, “why?” came back.
ssssRoberto outlined his plan, and his reasons. There was a long silence.
ssssA short, “very well” finally came over the link, managing to convey that being on a damaged Javelin on a suicidal course with the Sun would be a preferably option.
ssssRoberto rolled his eyes in exasperation, and wondered if his Valkrethi rolled its eyes as well. Probably. He’d seen most of the Human facial features appear on the Valkrethi at some time. Still, Sharmin had agreed to help, he might as well be gentlemanly about it.
ssssThe two Valkrethi formed themselves into a sweep team and began to tease information out of the surrounding area. It was an interesting piece of detective work, and it didn’t take long to get results.
ssssTwo ‘comets’ that seemed, against chance, to have found a short-term orbital path past Pluto, showed a strange mix of characteristics. A mix that could be interpreted as an inner metal shell covered in a thin layer of rock-like material.
ssssClever, thought Roberto, and his estimation of Cagill went up a few notches.
ssss“Take one each?” he said to Sharmin, and received an affirmative, granted with a little more respect than he’d been used to lately.
ssssShe’s impressed, he thought with a smile. Despite herself, she’s impressed. Probably still hates me though. Then he turned his attention to the first of the false comets as it came round the curve of Pluto toward him.
ssssThe Fire Ship came to life as he approached it. The super-heated shields burned off the false exterior in seconds, and the familiar, and hated, fiery surface of the Carnii ships appeared. He got the Valkrethi to run scans of it, but there didn’t appear to be anything out of the normal. It was a standard Fire Ship shield over a spar and hub construction, exactly as he’d come to know them in the battle above the ice planet.
ssssHe dropped into the surging orange shields, and felt the familiar sticky sensation as they held the Valkrethi, and thousands of degrees of heat surged around him. He initiated Cagill’s new command to restore the Valkrethi’s energy levels, and watched the lower part of the optic screen as the Valkrethi reserve indicator speedily returned to its optimum levels.
ssssRoberto called in the discovery of the two Fire Ships, and the rest of the Valkrethi were soon hovering around the Carnii ships.
ssss“Well done,” said Cagill to the two researchers. “Good to see you were on your toes. I’ll have to get the research team to show the rest of us a few of their tricks when we get back to base.
ssss“Right,” he continued to the others, “I want each of you to charge up your Valkrethi from the shields, and then we’ll let our two research teamers here destroy their prizes.”
ssssThe Valkrethi moved to restore their energy reserves, and then it was time for Roberto to try a little something new that he’d been working on for a while.
ssssHe slid into the Fire Ship shield, and forced his way through the tension of it until he was inside, and just above the nearest hub. He wasn’t sure exactly how this was going to work – all of them were still finding out what the Valkrethi could and couldn’t do – but if he had it figured right . . .
ssssAn ‘acknowledged’ symbol came on, and a thin blue beam lanced out from the Valkrethi and lodged in the shields above it. The differential between them increased, and the Valkrethi became a conduit for the boiling skin of plasma above it. Roberto reached out one hand, and locked the earthing end of the link onto the hub below him. He closed the circuit, and searing plasma flashed between the Fire Ship shield and the hub. The hub withstood the onslaught for a moment, but then it seared apart. Roberto watched the Valkrethi shield integrity drop to half, and hastily broke the connection.
ssssIt was a pretty good party trick, but it took a lot out of the Valkrethi, that was clear. It should probably be kept as an emergency option only. The Valkrethi shields were different to the Drua shields built into the Javelins, and they had their limitations – but they hadn’t failed their riders yet. Roberto checked the optic screens again. He decided he’d learned all he was going to learn about the Valkrethi today.
ssss“Come on in, guys and gals,” he broadcast on the open channel, “the water’s fine.”
ssssThe remaining Valkrethi worked their way through the Fire Ship shields, and began shredding spars and hubs with an obvious enjoyment. Roberto set a course for Sharmin’s Valkrethi, and arrived there at the same time as she found the power system for the shields of her Fire Ship. She broke some of the critical connections and climbed back out of the hole she’d made in the side of the hub. The hub and spar construction looked so different without its shields. She looked around for the largest hub, at the centre of the Fire Ship, and headed there. In moments she had destroyed the reactor at its core. She was just clear of the Carnii ship when the power systems blew, and the structure collapsed in on itself. Roberto coasted to a stop beside her.
ssss“Nice job,” he said, by way of congratulations.
ssss“Yes, well, that was an inspired idea of yours to run a survey for Fire Ships powered down in the vicinity,” she admitted.
ssssSo, we’re talking again, thought Roberto cautiously. Not wanting to push his luck too far, he set the homing system to rejoin the other Valkrethi, and the two of them coasted back in companionable silence.
ssssCagill asked the pilots a lot of questions about the exercise, once they were safely back on Prometheus.
ssss“We’ve learned a lot from today, people, and we may change the engagement rules for the Valkrethi in future. Smaller groups, with more communication as things unfold, for example.
ssss“But that will have to wait.” He paused, waiting until he had everyone’s attention.
ssss“Cordez has outlined a series of attacks on Carnii shipyards, to cripple their ability to make Fire Ships,” he said briskly. The pilots moved restlessly. They were at last going to take the fight to the Carnii, and they liked the sound of that.
ssss“Before we attack the shipyards, he wants to reduce the Carnii defensive capacity a little further, so we’re going to set a trap for a whole lot of Fire Ships.” This had the pilots really interested.
ssss“We’re going to hide the Valkrethi on Aqua Regis, and then attack the mining site we’ve discovered there with Javelins and H’Dree warships. The Carnii will still be reeling from the destruction of their ships at the Alamos system, and they may be tempted to try for a decisive victory at Aqua Regis. Our tactical people think they may send the last of their flagships as well.”
ssssThere was a long silence after this. The Valkrethi hadn’t yet been tried against a flagship, and while they were impressive fighting machines they weren’t indestructible. Still, that was part of being a pilot in any battle. You took your life in your hands; and you always had to ask yourself, did you really believe in what you were doing.
ssss“We fly out in two days time,” continued Cagill. “Usual rules apply, everything we do is off limits to everyone else. Go about your business as usual, don’t try to explain why you won’t be here in a few day’s time, and no bedroom blabbing, got it?”
ssssThey all nodded. They knew why he had these rules. Cagill didn’t think the Carnii had an agent inside Prometheus, but he didn’t want to have his fighters’ concentration wrecked by well meant best wishes – or teary goodbyes.
ssssIn a few more minutes the group disbanded. The research team split at the exit, Andre and Jubilate taking the underground shuttle to the living quarters, while Sharmin and Roberto took the short passage back to the labs.
ssssThey fell into step after they’d exited the automatic airlock out of the cavern.
ssss“It’s time you talked to me, you know” said Roberto softly, looking at Sharmin enquiringly.
ssss“Don’t want to,” she said tersely.
ssss“Andre says you have to,” said Roberto, beginning to smile.
ssss“Oh yeah, I forgot, he runs the damn’t research team now,” said Sharmin in exasperation; then snorted a short laugh, seeing Roberto’s smile.
ssss“I deserve a reason why you’re pushing me away,” said Roberto gently.
ssss“It’s private business!” snapped Sharmin, and began to walk faster. She reached the autolock into the labs ahead of him, and he had to reach out and stop the door to go through at the same time as her.
ssss“Are you interested in someone else?” said Roberto quietly.
ssss“No!” said Sharmin. “Not in you, not in anyone else. Not now. Not ever. Got it?”
ssss“No, I don’t ‘got it’, don’t understand it, don’t want to leave it alone,” said Roberto doggedly.
ssssSharmin wheeled into her office, and Roberto followed.
ssssThey stood eying each other. She was fiercely determined he would leave with his questions unanswered. He was stubbornly determined he wouldn’t leave without knowing why she was pushing him away.
ssssThere was an electric tension lasting more than a minute.
ssssRoberto knew the other labs were empty, and everyone had gone to their quarters for the artificial Prometheus ‘night’. This was his only chance. He had to push her for an answer now, or face the prospect it may never be forthcoming.
ssssSharmin’s willpower collapsed first. She sat down in her chair, wiping her hand across her eyes. Roberto pulled a chair over and sat beside her. He took her hand, and held it firmly when she tried to pull it away.
ssss“How long have we shared everything, every confidence?” he asked, and she flicked her head away, refusing to look at him.
ssss“From the beginning,” he said, “from the time when the European Science Commission formed the first research team, and then through the biggest change, when you took over from Creedo Shard.”
ssss“Those were the days,” said Sharmin with a hesitant smile. “No responsibility, just pitting our minds against the greatest problems that ancient cultures left for us to unravel.”
ssss“Damn’t right,” said Roberto, “best times ever.”
ssss“Then the promotion to Prometheus. Remember how Cordez rigged it, got us stood down because we were ‘no longer needed’ and spirited us away for his own purposes.”
ssssSharmin had to laugh. “He sees things we don’t see, all right,” she agreed, “and he must have seen something special in us.”
ssss“He did,” said Roberto, “he certainly did. The same way I see something special in you now.”
ssssSharmin tensed, but Roberto continued quietly on. “I only want to know what’s wrong, Sharmin, as a matter of trust. There have been many things that have stayed in confidence between us, and this is just one more.” He paused, then continued.
ssss“Our friendship is too valuable to me to break that trust, you know that. Damn’t, relationships come and go these days – too easily it seems – but a good friendship remains.”
ssssThey might come and go easily for you, thought Sharmin defensively, I’ve not even thought about a relationship since those disastrous early years, and it’s even harder for me now.
ssss“It’s not that, Roberto,” she said. “It’s just that it’s something too painful to talk about.”
ssss“I’ve got all night,” said Roberto with a reassuring smile. “We can send out for something from the café later. I know! You can write this stuff down for me while I catch up on some zzzs.” And he wriggled down in the chair until his lanky frame spilled over at both ends. Actually he was feeling tired. Too much work lately, and the excitement of the Valkrethi this afternoon.
ssssSharmin smiled. She was almost convinced, until a wave of shame washed over her. Roberto saw her tense and took her other hand as well.
ssss“Come on, my girl, spit it out. No time like the now, eh?”
ssssHe sounded just like her father, who had always been so understanding. Not that she had ever told him about this, this would be too much to share with anybody.
ssssAnd so, haltingly, she began.
ssss“When I was in college, I worked hard, loved the idea of knowledge; but eventually I found out about boys.” She paused, not sure how to tell her story.
ssss"It was wonderful. Maybe I was different in some way, but having a boyfriend, having a lover, was just euphoric for me. Perhaps there’s something wrong in my brain,” she said, looking up guiltily.
ssssRoberto squeezed her hands, and shook his head encouragingly.
ssss“Maybe I was a bit naïve too. I know now I was too trusting. I’d been busy studying all my life, you know how it is.” She looked down at the floor. Roberto guessed that what she was about to say had left deep scars in her.
ssss“Next thing I knew I had a string of ex-boyfriends, and a reputation for being ‘easy’. Then my academic friends turned their backs on me.
ssss“The whole college seemed to take pleasure in running me down.” She paused. “Now I realise it was a case of envy, jealousy, cutting down the tall poppy. I had ‘straight A student turns slut’ appear on an obituary assignment we had to do in communications class. No one would own up to it.”
ssssShe squeezed Roberto’s hands. He thought it best to say nothing.
ssss“I switched colleges, made up some story for my parents. There was nothing else I could do. I was on medication for months.”
ssss“Okay, now I understand,” said Roberto gently. “If that was what being in a relationship did to you, you didn’t ever want to find yourself back there again.”
ssssShe nodded miserably.
ssss“And my kissing you at the barn dance brought it all back,” he concluded.
ssss“Not at first. At first I just wanted to kiss you back, put my arms around your neck, feel you against me,” she said, blushing furiously. “But that’s when I realised it was starting all over again, that I hadn’t changed a bit, and I remembered that relationships had to be avoided at all costs.”
ssss“At least you proved that for me,” she added bitterly. “My feelings can’t be trusted.”
ssssRoberto let out a very long breath. It was funny how the Human brain learned things. When it was working correctly it made connections with other information stored nearby, a chance to test information against new situations; but Sharmin had ‘learned’ that she was a hopeless case, that nothing would ever change for her. Those redeeming connections had not been made in her brain.
ssss“I think those feelings are normal,” he said gently. “You’re supposed to feel good like that. But it’s all got mixed up with other things in your mind.” He paused. “That’s okay, maybe we can look at some of that later, if you want. The main thing is I can live with it, now I know what it is, and we can go back to being a damn’t good research team!”
ssssSharmin smiled gratefully. Roberto put his hands on her shoulders and hugged her momentarily. She hugged him back, then drew away awkwardly.
ssssRoberto could see it was going to be a long, slow journey to bring her back to a more balanced sense of herself as a woman. But at least he knew what the problem was now.
ssssHe smiled. He was a patient man.

ssssThe first part of the plan to destroy the Carnii mining base on Aqua Regis turned out to be a very low-key affair. The modified Javelins with their Valkrethi cargoes cleared Prometheus and slipped into the grainy, grey nothingness of stardrive.
ssssA dooplehuel left the Shellport docks as dawn tinged the far horizon. It rounded the sea forest and headed due South on a freshening breeze. In a day’s time it would arrive at the far end of Spitzbergen – the gravel dump for Hudnee’s new houses at Shellport – and set up markers under the cliffs for the Valkrethi.
ssss“You believe any of this?” said Metris amiably to Menon, pulling the rib and hide sail in to trim the double-hulled craft. His shoulder still hurt where it had been burnt at the Barrens. Habna had assured him it was just scar tissue stretching, and it would come right soon.
ssss“Giants for all souls’ sake, giants made out of metal harder than our best fighting blades,” he continued. “There’s not enough metal in Shellport to make a copy of one man; there can’t be enough metal in the whole of Hud to make a giant, let alone dozens of them!”
ssssMenon smiled. It was preposterous, of course it was. But then everything about the pale strangers from another star was preposterous.
ssss“Maybe not so unbelievable,” he said, finally. “Hudnee’s shown us how to make houses out of what we find in the ground – shells, white clay and gravel. We’ve always used the world of the living, of trees, crops, and animals, but maybe there’s more out there than we’ve yet discovered. Who knows what’s buried in the ground.”
ssssMetris grunted. It was all a bit much for him. Still, the strangers’ medicine man had done something magical to Menon’s crippled arm and it was now good as new.
ssss“As long as we get to wipe out those damn’t monsters at the Barrens,” he said with feeling. He recalled huge, many-legged things coming out of the sea and climbing up the hill toward his squad; flashing lights under the water offshore; and giant cannon that shot great pellets into the night sky. It wasn’t natural!
ssss“I’m with you on that one,” said Menon, sighting down the navigation rod fixed to the prow in front of him, adjusting their heading with a sharp rap on the left side of the hull followed by two taps. Metris measured off the horizon into quarters, then again into arax, and steered the dooplehuel two arax to the left.
ssssThey opened woven grass parcels when the sun was overhead, and made a midday meal. As they got closer to their destination Menon ran out a line behind the dooplehuel, and soon pulled in a long, sleek prophet o’ the sea for their evening meal.
ssssSpitzbergen slid past on their left, and then the line of cliffs ended and the noxious swamps of the eastern wasteland began. Menon signalled a landing, and Metris dropped the sail as they ran in to the shore.
ssssThey soon had the dooplehuel beached and the sail stowed away.
ssss“This is it, then?” said Metris, indicating the jagged slash in the rock of the cliff.
ssssMenon nodded. There was little in Hud unknown to him after his years of wandering, and when Hudnee had asked him if there were any caves within a day or two’s travel of the Barrens, this one had immediately come to mind.
ssssThey unloaded torches and trudged toward the entrance. The wound grass and resin torches would mark the presence of the cave for the giants – ‘Vaalgrathi’ was the closest the people of Hud could get to the unusual name – and there’d be some left over for inside the cave. Maybe the giants didn’t need light, thought Menon, maybe they could see in the dark. There was so much they didn’t know about them.
ssssThe entrance of the cave opened in to a sizeable cavern, with a floor of sand and gravel built up by the sea. It would have housed most of the Shellport population, and Menon hoped the two dozen giants could fit into it as easily.
ssss“We mark the entrance, make camp, get an early night, and light the torches at the start of the third watch?” said Metris, running through what they had to do in his mind.
ssss“You’ve got it,” said Menon, unloading torches by the entrance and dancing back as he disturbed a sea whip which had been resting under a log. He pinned it with his boot and cut off its head.
ssss“Damn’t things are a menace,” he said in disgust. The Sea People lost one or two of their own each year to the poisonous sea snakes, usually children who didn’t yet know the warning signs. Once roused the sea whips were very fast indeed.
ssssThe prophet o’ the sea was one of the best eating fishes to be had around Shellport, and the two men waited with anticipation as it bubbled in its own fat on the embers of the fire. When it cooled they split it open on a large rock. Their evening meal did not disappoint them.
ssssWhen dusk fell they turned in, Menon setting his internal clock to wake him at the end of the second watch.
ssssThe modified Javelins came out of stardrive well out in the Aqua Regis system and on the opposite side of the planet to the mining base. From there they coasted on silent running to the edge of the atmosphere above Aqua Regis. Fortunately the Carnii hadn’t put up satellites, or erected a long-range monitoring system, and clearly didn’t want to draw attention to itself.
ssssThat suits us fine, thought Cagill, as his Valkrethi ran through its warm up routine. From here they would use the homing system to descend through the atmosphere and head south for the rendezvous site on the Hud mainland. The descent through the atmosphere would heat the Valkrethi to several thousand degrees, but the technicians at Prometheus had assured him the hardy giants could handle it.
ssssA short time later a scattering of giant metal and composite shapes left the Javelins and fell toward the endless seas of Aqua Regis. Bright sunshine played off the waters below, and then the heat haze of atmospheric buffeting began to form a fireball around them.
ssss“Arms up, people,” said Cagill over the open system, “stabilise in the starfish pattern.”
ssssRoberto was enjoying this. He could actually feel the wind on his Valkrethi ‘skin’, and thought this must be as good as skydiving himself. He’d seen that done back on Earth. Normally he’d think it far too risky for someone normally desk-bound like him to take up, but this was exhilarating.
ssssThe heat haze of their descent built up until it obscured the magnificent view of endless ocean beneath them, and then Cagill was telling them to set a homing course for coordinates on the land mass to the south. The Valkrethi changed direction, and began a shallow glide that would take them to their destination. They passed through a narrow band of twilight, and entered the night of this world.
ssssRoberto looked around him at the others, using the optics built into his Valkrethi. He was in the middle of a cluster of bright, multi-coloured stars. They had all assumed a streamlined hands-outstretched position, and appeared to be angling through the air like a shoal of fish, moving as one to keep the shoal together.
ssss“Watch for my mark,” said Cagill, and a blinking light appeared in the Valkrethi optics, overlaying the coast of Hud ahead.
ssss“Converting excess speed on my mark . . . now,” he continued, and the Valkrethi began to use the dipole system to store energy as they slowed. Composite skins dulled as heat drained away from them, and then the Valkrethi were almost there, coming in low over the water. Roberto switched the optics to deep infrared, and saw the coastline coming up rapidly. Two flares of green showed where the infrared was picking up Menon’s resin torches.
ssssThe Valkrethi slowed to a halt at the spot Cagill had targeted. The dipole technology released them, and 24 giant figures dropped onto the beach, flexing their legs to take the impact. Two tiny ebony figures with green face markings came out to meet them.
ssssCagill sent a short acknowledgement to the modified Javelins overhead, who would now retrace their steps and leave the system. They would soon join the main Alliance force for the attack on the mining site.
ssssSeeing Menon and Metris, Cagill took a step forward, a giant foot kicking up driftwood and raking the two figures with sand. They darted back toward the cave mouth behind them.
ssssRealising his mistake, Cagill dismounted from his Valkrethi. Menon and Metris looked at each other in wonder as a tall, pale stranger climbed down the ladder that had suddenly appeared at the back of his giant mount, and walked toward them. They could see him more clearly as he came into the flickering torch light. Cagill patted his right ear, to ask them if they had linguist earpieces. Menon understood, and tapped his ear in return. Reegis and Salan had left several of them with Habna.
ssssCagill introduced himself.
ssss“Reegis says the Shellport militia have done him proud,” he said, once Menon and Metris had returned the greeting. “He’s been following the situation on Aqua Regis as Menona relays it every day. Congratulations to both of you for training them so hard!”
ssssMenon and Metris smiled hesitantly. The shock of seeing the giant figures was wearing off, now that they were motionless, and now they’d seen how Cagill climbed out of one.
ssss“We’ll introduce you to everybody later, but first I’d like to get the Valkrethi under cover. If you’d lead the way?”
ssssMenon nodded, and Metris hurried ahead to light the torches in the cavern. The torches weren’t needed – the Valkrethi could see in any conditions – but they created a cheerful atmosphere for the pilots and the research team once they’d stowed their mounts at the back of the cavern.
ssss“You, ah, have enough food?” questioned Metris, caught between the demands of hospitality and the clear inability of himself and Menon to feed so many.
ssss“It’s not a problem,” said Cagill with a smile. “We’ve just come out of our sleep cycle, and we’ve had a good breakfast. The attack on the Carnii mining site – the place you call the Barrens? – will start at midday tomorrow. For now we just want to rest up and pass the time by not thinking about it!”
ssssMenon smiled. It was the old soldiers’ dilemma. The day before a battle a soldier should be sleeping, but that was impossible. So they passed the time with any distraction they could find – as long as they didn’t have to stop and think about the next day!
ssssIn the end Menon got a fire going near the entrance to the cavern, after Cagill said it would be okay, and the apprehensive little group sat around and told stories about different planets, about different lives, and about their families, in the manner of soldiers before a big battle everywhere.


ssssEIGHT

ssss“I want to see the battle for the Barrens!” said Hudnee doggedly.
ssssIt was the first day of a forty-day quadroon, and he, Dreesa, Habna and Battrick should have been discussing the governance of Shellport, but the meeting had degenerated into a domestic squabble between Hudnee and Dreesa. Habna seemed amused, and Battrick was pleased they’d moved away from the boring details of administration for a while.
ssssDreesa sighed. With Kanuk gone to train for war with the pale strangers, and the two girls enjoying the last of their childhood at Shellport with friends – and hardly ever home – she was more protective of her time with her husband than ever.
ssssStill, he was determined to go, she could see that. It was one of those male things. What would men have to talk about in the evenings if they hadn’t been there at the great turning points in the life of Hud? She looked at Habna, who shrugged. What could you do, sometimes the men were more stubborn than the male Ibek on the coastal cliffs, fighting for the right to mate until they collapsed from exhaustion.
ssss“We need you here,” she tried, one last time. “The villages are prospering now, and without the Descendants of the Prophet to make rules for them, you’re the only one the people will listen to when they squabble about land, and about old grievances.”
ssss“Yes, well, that’s another thing I need a break from,” grumbled Hudnee, tired of the interminable travelling all over Hud to sort out everyone’s problems.
ssssStill, that was not the main point, and Hudnee knew it. He was feeling his age, and a fresh smattering of scars from the civil war with the Descendants had only added to his aches and pains. He wanted to be a young man again, and be part of the action – even if it was just for one last time.
ssss“I won’t be in any danger,” he growled, “you know that. There’ll be others going with me, and we’ll be watching the battle from a distance. What could go wrong?”
ssssThat was another thing, thought Dreesa, when you got them in a group they’d sneak off any way they could to be with their mates.
ssssShe sighed again. Not that they were any different to the women, she had to admit. Damn this getting older – it made her so reasonable! What she really wanted to do was get mad at him, mad because she wasn’t enough for him, wasn’t a sufficient reason for him to stay at home. But that was just pride, she knew that.
ssss“We have to go right now, today,” said Hudnee. “Menon and Metris set sail for Spitzbergen at dawn, and if we’re going to make it to the Barrens before midday tomorrow we have to leave now!”
ssssDreesa looked at Habna, who made a tiny nodding motion with her head.
ssssDreesa gave up the fight. Let him go with his friends and get away from Shellport for a while. It might even be nice to have a bit of peace and quiet around the place for a change. The women left on their own could get some real work done – and there’d be plenty of social time too, she thought with a smile. Then she frowned.
ssss“Since you won’t listen to reason,” she said, looking pointedly at Hudnee, “you might as well go and have your damn holiday!” The lesson was clear – and you’ll owe me big time when you come back.
ssssHudnee looked surprised, and Dreesa realised she’d given in too easily. Then he leapt up and hastened out of Habna’s front room, to return moments later.
ssss“Well, nigglenaggle, are you coming or not?” Battrick grinned at the insult, then hurried out of the room as well.
ssss“What about the rest of the meeting?” said Dreesa in exasperation.
ssssHabna smiled. “You knew they weren’t going to stick around once you gave in. Come on, girl, you’ve got to think through your decisions when you’re dealing with husbands.”
ssssDreesa snorted. She was right of course. It was something you learned as you got older. It was something that really stretched a woman’s mind, and it was also a titillating game of social binding – one that she had to admit she enjoyed. She looked forward to the time the two girls were off her hands, and she could spend more time with Hudnee, and more time helping to run the village.
ssss“Everything ready?” said Hudnee as he and Battrick hurried toward the docks.
ssss“Absolutely,” replied Battrick. “Three dooplehuel fully provisioned and crews ready at a moment’s notice. I had to cut the numbers down – it wouldn’t have left enough fishing boats to feed the village!”
ssssHudnee grinned. All those who’d been in the militia would have wanted to come, he was sure of that. The presence of the Carnii base on the planet was a reminder of what they’d been fighting for. Freedom from the restrictive Descendant rule, and now from the Carnii complete disregard for other races.
ssssThe Dooplehuel left the loading docks at Shellport moments later, each one carrying the maximum complement of five villagers, four at the ends of the two hulls and one stretched out on the light pole and hide deck. They coasted on the river current until they were clear of the sea forest, then turned south. Not content with the steady coastal breeze filling the sail, they added a paddler at the front and back of each hull for more speed, and rotated the fifth villager as the others tired.
ssssThe three dooplehuel made good time, and were close to Menon’s cave, where the Valkrethi would soon land, by the time the sun set. Relying during the night on the stars above them, the twin hulls angled away from the shore in the darkness, steered by the most proficient navigators as the others slept. They didn’t see the cliffs of Spitzbergen slide past on their port side, or the swamps of the eastern wastelands begin. At midnacht they started to angle in toward the shore again, and when dawn arrived they found themselves still well out to sea, with the islands of the Barrens on the horizon.
ssss“Perfect,” said Hudnee, as he stood, balancing carefully in the front of one of the narrow hulls, and surveying their position. “Now we just have to find Blood river and come in behind the Teeth. We’ll have an excellent view from there.”
ssss“Not long to Blood river,” said the navigator behind him. “I can see the Pillar and the Scouse starting to line up. When they do, we head for the shore and follow it down until we hit the Blood.”
ssssHudnee nodded. He was looking forward to the coming battle, they all were.

ssssThe main force of Javelins came out of stardrive just short of midday, well off from the planet but directly over the Barrens. Every Hud pilot on Prometheus had volunteered for this mission immediately it was announced, keen to rid Hud of the Carnii presence – whatever the cost.
ssssHud pilots now sat in the control chairs of more than half the 320 Javelins Prometheus could field, and it was they, plus the Human pilots of the modified Javelins that carried the Valkrethi, that now looked down on a ring of islands at the edge of a large, flat continent, so far below them.
ssss“Remember not to get excited, people, and rush the job,” said Ayman Case, now Commodore Case and mission leader in Cagill’s absence. “Our job is to draw out the destruction of the mining base, and draw in as many of the damn’t Fire Ships as we can.”
ssssHe knew there’d be an orchestrated nodding of heads in the war machines arrayed around him. These were experienced guys and gals, hardened now to the gruelling demands of war. They would live and die depending on each other, and sticking to the plan. Any ideas of personal glory had been stripped from them long ago.
ssss“Sensors on the Sea Anemone are plotting the Barrens now,” he continued, “expect data in a few minutes.”
ssssThe sensor array on the Sea Anemone – a modified Javelin containing surveillance equipment – had already extended to its full width. The strange, ungainly blob with its ‘feeding mouth’ fully open below it did look for all the world like a sea anemone filtering sea water for scraps of food.
ssssThe comms console on the bridge of Ayman’s Javelin lit up, and the comms officer transferred the data to the main overhead display. Graphics showed the Barrens as a circle of islands, coloured in a matt brown, surrounding a shallow sea in a matt grey. Inside the shallow sea, closer to the jagged, upright islands called by the people of Hud the Teeth, a massive round shape had been outlined in red, with short, stubby arms roughly aligned with the compass directions outlined in orange. In the centre of the mining base a smaller circle, raised up from the other and finishing just below sea level, acted as a cap on the whole affair.
ssss“The mass launcher,” said Ayman, shining a pointer onto the cap, knowing his words and this view of the bridge would be relayed to the other ships. “We want to hit that early on, in case they try to use it as a weapon against the Javelins. The fusion ring is probably around the outside of the cap. The size of the thing matches that reported by the villagers who saw the mass launcher at work.”
ssssThe details of the attack unfolded. The Javelins would chip away at the mining base, irritating the Carnii rather than doing any real damage, and at the same time trying to avoid damage to the Barrens. It might not be an important part of Hud, but if they could avoid damaging the environment of the planet they would.
ssssWhen the attack had drawn as many Fire Ships to the area as possible, the Valkrethi would close the trap. At least, that was how it was supposed to work. Ayman initiated the first wave of the engagement.
ssssThe first missiles, simple impact explosives that were intended to rupture the skin of the mining base and let the sea in, didn’t even get half way to their target.
ssssThey left the Javelins and entered the atmosphere, stubby wings guiding them toward their targets on internal targeting systems. In response the mining base came alive, the fusion reactor gearing up as Menon and Metris had seen it do on their surveillance of the Barrens. Looping bars of light, deep in the water, doubled and redoubled their speed, until they formed a continuous ring round the inner raised cap. As the missiles from the Javelins approached, a plasma dome sprang up over the mining site, ripples dancing through the orange fire of the dome as it burst up out of the water, then settled back on itself and steadied.
ssssOne by one the first missiles vaporised themselves against it, and dozens of points of lights quickly followed, until all the missiles had been destroyed.
ssss“Mass launcher powering up,” said Ayman Cases’s comms officer, relaying information from the Sea Anemone.
ssss“Sham’ass!” grunted Ayman, suddenly realising that what he’d feared most was about to happen. He tapped in an over-ride command on the comms band in front of him, and spoke to every ship in the fleet.
ssss“Clear the area over the mining base, repeat, clear the area! Evasive action! Form a perimeter outside the immediate area,” and he fed the Javelins a holding pattern that kept the circle of sky above the Barrens clear of ships.
ssssAs he finished speaking, the first of a string of dark pods erupted through the plasma shield and raced out through the atmosphere and on into space. It passed between a Javelin and the Sea Anemone, but others quickly followed. The ships scattered, but then one of the pods clipped a Javelin, tearing away part of one side. It spun under the impact, then stabilised.
ssss“Decks four and five isolated, damage reports still coming in but we seem to have power and steerage,” came a welcome message from the Javelin moments later. It limped on, clearing the area.
ssssOne of the last Javelins to move received a direct hit, and the rest of the fleet could only watch in agonised silence as it broke in two, the mangled wreckage turning over and beginning the long descent into the atmosphere. As had been proved before, the Drua shields were proof against any kind of missile or energy attack, but couldn’t deflect a large inertial mass.
ssssThen the last of the Javelins were clear of the area. Ayman stopped for a moment to consider the sudden losses to the fleet.
ssssHe realised grimly that what had happened did further the overall plan – not that he would have chosen it that way. The Javelins had stirred up the mining base, and taken some losses. The weaker they looked to the Carnii, the more Fire Ships would be committed to what they would hopefully see as a massive retaliatory strike for the loss of ships at the ice planet in the Alamos system. All he had to do now was keep making attempts to attack the base, until Carnii reinforcements arrived.

ssssHudnee and the three dooplehuel from Shellport had entered the Blood river mid-morning. The tongue of rust-red water issuing from its mouth was easy to spot – water laden with tannin from the peat swamps inland – and they’d turned up into it, furling the sails and working their way along the slower sidewaters of the Blood, paddling the dooplehuel. Then it had been time to cut across to the Barrens.
ssssThe portage of the dooplehuel had been a grimy business, the short distance between the Blood and clear water at the back of the Teeth measured not in distance but in the number of times the hulls got stuck in a tangle of grey saltbush and had to be cut free, or the number of times one of the crew slipped in the greasy mud and went full length in the swamp. It wasn’t helped by the sudden appearance of swamp flies. They were beautiful to look at – bright blues and striped reds having something to do with the toxic material of the swamp – but they pumped anaesthetic into their bites and filled their stomachs until blood ran down the backs and legs of the crews unnoticed. In the end the villagers coated themselves liberally with the ooze, and it did seem to help.
ssssThe arrival of the dooplehuel at the edge of the Barrens was greeted with relief. The crews splashed into the salt water and scrubbed themselves down. Hudnee would have liked Menon’s knowledge of medicine plants to help the others, but in the end one of the crew found a plant she recognised that reduced swelling, and they all chewed on the bark she stripped off it until the worst of the itching and swelling had abated.
ssssHudnee looked across at the landward face of the Teeth. That was where they needed to be; in, he estimated quickly, less than half the second watch – if they were to see the attack on the mining base begin. He rounded up the others and they paddled furtively across the water, beaching the dooplehuel at the back of one of the more prominent islands of the Teeth. They didn’t bother to hide the water craft – the Carnii would soon be too busy on the other side of the Teeth to worry about the insignificant threat they posed – and climbed to the top of the island.
ssssTheir position was perfect, hidden from the direction of the mining base by a narrow ridge, but sheltered in a grassy hollow from the wind. Though they took turns peering down into the wide, flat waters of the inner Barrens, they soon discovered there was nothing yet to see. In the end Hudnee set two sentries, and ordered the rest of them to make themselves some lunch.
ssssHe was considering the possibilities of making a small, smokeless fire from the desiccated grasses of the Barrens for one of Habna’s mixed teas, when there was a sharp crack from the inner sea of the Barrens behind him, and the sentries slid down into the hollow, motioning frantically in the direction they’d just left. Hudnee scrambled to the top of the slope, and stared in wonder at the huge orange dome that now covered most of the near side of the inland sea.
ssssOne of the sentries pointed upward, and they all watched in wonder as tiny objects fell toward the dome from far above. Despite their keen vision, none of them could understand what they were. The first one produced a puff of brilliant white against the orange dome, and then others did the same. Hudnee wondered what that meant. The display looked pretty to him, as the sacred colour white kept appearing on the immense orange surface of the dome. He couldn’t understand it; how could the whole area of the dome be exactly the same colour?
ssssThe puffs of white died away, and then the top of the dome erupted as long, dark shapes sped into the air – a group of three, a pause, and then another group of three. Hudnee wondered how anything could move so fast. He looked up once again. The ships of the Human strangers were up there, somewhere. So far above him he couldn’t see any trace of them.
ssssHe shivered. The villagers were dealing with things frighteningly far beyond their understanding.
ssssThe young people though, the trainees they’d sent to help in the war, they would be getting used to things like this. They were already used to travelling between planets. It made Hudnee proud. Proud and worried at the same time. Would the old ways of Hud disappear under an avalanche of new things? Would the people of Hud become just mindless copies of the pale ones?
ssssProbably not, he decided. Habna would be dead against anything like that, and Habna was a force to be reckoned with.
ssssSomewhat reassured, Hudnee turned back to the dome, just in time to see it hit by something too fast for him to see, as hundreds of red stains spread over it by some sort of magic. At the same time waterspouts erupted from the sea all around the dome. The noise was like nothing he had ever heard before – a sound like the tearing of nets as the impact dents in the dome closed over again, and the deep thump of waterspouts was followed by a sound like the rattling of shells as the water fell back and hit the surface of the sea.
ssssWhatever that was, he was sure it had come from the pale ones’ ships, somewhere above the layer of air that Menona said cloaked the planet. That was where the Hud trainees were. Except they’d all finished their training and were pilots now, so Menona said.
ssssHow did they breath up there, he wondered? How cold was it in the ships at night, so far from the planet, or how hot, so close to the sun. It didn’t bear thinking about.
ssssThe dome didn’t appear damaged at all. It had ceased firing the long, dark pods, but seemed otherwise unchanged. Hudnee sank back into the hollow, and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt like he needed a little rest. Most of the others stayed glued to the top of the slope, waiting for the next stage in the extraordinary show.

ssssAyman hadn’t expected the barrage of superdense slugs to have any effect on the dome. The waterspouts had been impressive, but hadn’t changed anything either. It was frustrating really. If he called on the Valkrethi they could bring down the protective shield in a moment, but then the trap would be sprung, and there would be nothing in it.
ssssThere was no sign of Fire Ships in the Aqua Regis system yet, but that was to be expected. A distress call would have gone out by sub space as soon as the Javelins appeared, but it would be many hours before the closest Fire Ships could respond.
ssssThe Javelins had a few smaller fusion missiles Ayman could use for a more spectacular light and sound show, but they wouldn’t have any effect on the mining base. Bigger ones would do too much damage to the Barrens generally, and still not damage the dome. Apart from which there were Hud villagers down there. The Sea Anemone had picked up life signs on one of the islands, and Prometheus had sent word the day before that some of the Shellport villagers had sailed to the Barrens to see the action.
ssssAyman shared Cagill’s frustration with civilians. They were another point of vulnerability, and forced him to spread his defences thinner than he would otherwise. Still, these were no doubt part of the militia that had won the civil war against the local religious group – who were they? the Descendants of something – and they had the same reflexes that made the Hud pilots so valuable. Perhaps he could incorporate them into his plans in some way.
ssssAn idea began to form in Ayman’s mind. He had a number of strategies prepared for the next phase of the attack on the mining site, and one of them appealed to him more than the others. Incorporating the Shellport villagers would just need a little tweaking here and there . . .
ssss“Case here,” he broadcast over the open channel. “Shuttle crews prepare for landing at the Barrens. Hud pilots willing to be part of the landing force, report to the shuttles. Details of the landing will be downloaded to the shuttles shortly. Case out.”
ssssThat would stir them up, he mused. Every Hud pilot would immediately hand over to his number two, and prepare to go down to the Barrens. The one or two trainees who hadn’t made it as pilots and were now training as comms or navs officers would be just as keen. Hell’s teeth, he thought, if it was my planet I’d want to be down there too.
ssssThe shuttles descended into the atmosphere on long, shallow glide paths that took them well away from the mining base. The Javelins prepared a full salvo of low-yield fusion missiles and waited for Ayman Case’s command to fire them. When the shuttles were at their maximum distance from the Barrens, he told them to do so.
ssssBright fire engulfed the top of the dome, and a shock wave sent a blast of hot air over the villagers on the Teeth. Hudnee slid back into the hollow behind the ridge, rubbing his eyes. It was a while before the spots in front of them cleared. He looked around and found the others had deserted the top of the ridge as well.
ssss“What in the name of the Prophet was that?” queried Battrick, awe in his voice.
ssss“Looked like the birth of a sun to me,” said a villager on Hudnee’s right. “If they keep this up the whole planet’s going to catch on fire!”
ssssThere was another massive explosion from behind them, and another blast of hot air shot over the ridge, some of it curling uncomfortably down into the hollow.
ssssThe villagers were looking worried, and Hudnee decided he’d better put some sense into the situation.
ssss“Menona has been talking to the pale strangers, and she said this would happen,” he reassured them. “The Humans and the Carnii are powerful peoples, and you can see the white fire is trying to destroy the orange fire. Menona told the Humans we’d be here, and they promised not to do anything to destroy us, or the Barrens. They made that very clear.”
ssssThe villagers looked relieved. Hudnee thought to himself it might still be a good idea to retreat back to the Blood river – this was all getting a bit too much for him, personally.
ssss“What’s that?” said Battrick, looking back over the swamp toward Hud. Another villager pointed, and then they could all see it. A strange white shape, like a small flying house, was coming in over the swamp toward the Teeth. Another blast lit up the Barrens, and the strange shape dropped, and then lifted again, as the shock wave hit it. They could see it was going to land by the dooplehuel, cutting off their line of retreat.
ssssHudnee’s hand dropped to the short sword he carried. He regretted not bringing his metal fighting rod.
ssssHe knew he’d feel more comfortable with that if there was going to be a confrontation.
ssss“Battrick, take your crew and go left; Leran, take yours and go right. The rest of us, let’s go see what this thing wants.”
ssssHudnee led the way down the hill, hoping fervently this was some machinery of the Humans or their allies. He knew that he and the villagers stood no chance against anything the Carnii sent. More gigantic explosions echoed round the island from the Barrens, though the villagers were now relatively sheltered, with the island between them and the dome.
ssssThey were half way down the slope when the side of the strange shape opened, and a number of people of Hud stepped out onto the dry, brown grasses of the island. Hudnee felt a huge sense of relief. None of them were going to die today, it seemed. At least not right now.
ssssThe new arrivals saw Hudnee first, then Battrick and his crew approaching from the left.
ssss“Well, oil me innards!” boomed a voice. “Is that you, Da?”
ssssOil his what? thought Hudnee, hurrying down to meet them. Then he recognised Battrod, Battrick’s son, and stopped in surprise. He couldn’t get over the changes in him. How long had he been away from Hud – a year, maybe more?
ssssBattrod had filled out, but was still lean by Hud standards. He’d grown taller than average, which seemed to compensate for his slighter build in some way. But the authority in his voice now! He’d gone away as a youth lacking confidence, one who seemed to have no real future on Hud, and come back with the unmistakeable presence of a leader.
ssssHudnee watched as Battrod spoke quickly to those around him, who listened attentively and went off to the tasks he’d assigned them, then strode towards his father. Battrick was still able to embrace his son and lift him clean off the ground, to Battrod’s great delight.
ssssIt was a heart-warming reunion, and one of Hudnee’s crew found a younger brother who’d left as a Hud trainee too. Once the new arrivals had done some strange things to the flying house they’d arrived in – Hudnee thought of it as feeding and watering the strange thing – the mixed company of 21 men and women of Hud sat on the grass while Battrod explained what his team were doing there. He waited for another of the prodigious explosions from the inner barrens to die away, and kneeled to talk to them.
ssss“You know that scouts from Shellport have led the Valkrethi to the caves at Spitzbergen,” he began.
ssss“That was Menon and Metris,” interjected Battrick.
ssss“Ah, Menon would be in the thick of it, I’m sure,” said Battrod with a smile.
ssss“The Humans are up there,” he continued, pointing skyward, “as I’m sure you’ve figured out from the attack on the mining base in the Barrens. The problem is the Fire Ships, the Carnii – our enemy – will take nearly half a day to get to Hud from their usual haunts. We have to make them think this is a major, prolonged, attack, and convince them to send many Fire Ships, maybe even flagships,” – here Hudnee and the others looked blank at the foreign word, and Battrod hurried on – “so that the Valkrethi can inflict huge losses on them. Are you with me so far?”
ssssThe crews of the dooplehuel nodded their heads vigorously.
ssss“What we want to do now,” said Battrod, “is attack the mining base where it’s under the water.
ssss“You can see that the attacks from above are being stopped by the orange shield, but the shield doesn’t go down into the water. We should be able to place explosives against the outside of the mining base near the sea bed, and let the sea in. Shuttles have also landed on other islands, so we’ll be attacking from several sides at once.”
ssss“What’s an ex-po-sav?” asked the older brother of one of the new arrivals.
ssss“Small packages, like this,” said Battrod, pulling one out of a box behind him. “Small packages that will make white fire, something like the white fire that you’ve seen attacking the dome already.”
ssss“No one can swim that far, carrying those things,” said Hudnee, “and certainly not all the way to the mining base, underwater!”
ssssBattrod laughed.
ssss“We’ve brought machines to help us do that,” he explained. “We can get to the mining base, set the explosives, and return here, I can guarantee you that. Whether the Carnii will be waiting for us or not I don’t know.”
ssssThat was sobering news.
ssss“Menon left one of the Carnii-stoppers with us,” said Hudnee. “The rod thing you twist?”
ssssBattrod looked up, startled. “I’ve heard about that. Matsu only ever made one. The pressure of work at Prometheus is enormous, and his team were soon diverted back to working on the sub space pulses and improving the Javelins.”
ssss“The sub what?” said Hudnee, looking perplexed.
ssss“Never mind that right now,” said Battrod. “The thing is you’ve got one of the rods, and it might save us all if the Carnii turn up. Don’t know if it’ll work under water though.”
ssssFrom there the company divided into teams, the Prometheus crew teaching the Hud squads how to wear the head gear, ride the mechanical torpedo units, and work the re-breathers that took oxygen out of the water.
ssssIt was late afternoon when they slipped into the water, three to each of the torpedo units. Hudnee was nervous, but he took slow, deep breaths as he’d been told.
ssssHe was surprised when the re-breather worked perfectly. He took a firmer grip of the handholds on the torpedo as its speed increased and the water pressure threatened to drag him off. One of the villagers rode next to him, and one of the Prometheus crew was piloting it from the other side.
ssssThere was little to see on their journey. The water in the Barrens was devoid of life, and was rather murky. The bottom under them had been visible at the start, a descending plain of sludge with an occasional decaying bush or half-buried log. They kept the island on their left until they’d passed into the inner sea, then struck out for the mining base.
ssssHudnee knew when they passed under the edge of the shield, close to the mining site. Flickers of orange light reflected down through the water, and he felt strangely exposed, as if the Carnii might be watching for them. Finally, the pilot rapped on the torpedo, and he knew the outside wall of the mining base wasn’t far ahead.
ssssThe crews spread out along the wall in the murk of the Barrens sea. The sea floor was somewhere way below them, and Hudnee looked nervously around as he fixed packages to the wall. Battrod had some sort of device that would set the explosives off, and they’d all be back on the island when he did that.
ssssThe pilot on his torpedo unit beckoned him back onto the machine, and he swam clumsily over the short distance to reach it. When the other villager also arrived, the unit turned and headed back the way it had come, closely followed by the others. Hudnee began to relax. Perhaps the mining base didn’t have any sort of underwater defences at all.
ssssIt looked like that was the case all the way across the inland sea, until they turned between the islands of the Teeth to head back for their starting point. Then the pilot rapped on the casing of the torpedo unit again to get their attention. He stuck his head over the front of the torpedo to look down at them, pointing at his instruments, then pointing back toward the mining base. Hudnee got the message at once – something was following them. The unit veered sharply right, and picked up speed. Hudnee saw the other units vanish in the gloom. They were splitting up to confuse whatever was behind them.
ssssThe direction they were headed in now must be . . . Hudnee tried to visualise where they’d been, the return, and the sharp movement to the right. They must be headed straight for the island the dooplehuel were on! As if to confirm his theory, the sea bottom came into view, the water becoming rapidly shallower. Hudnee twisted, trying to reach behind him for his body pack, with the rod in it, but the water pressure threatened to rip him off the torpedo, and he turned back to take a firmer grip.
ssssThe unit grounded moments later, and the men emerged onto the shore, ripping the head gear off and looking back at the narrow strait between their island and the next one. One of the torpedo units had grounded opposite, closely followed by a many-legged contraption that Hudnee recognised from Menon’s description. The pilot had scrambled up the slope and was now disappearing behind a rocky outcrop. The Carnii machine towered over the two villagers who remained, pinned to the ground by some sort of force field. The Prometheus pilot ran for the shuttle, moving in tremendous bounds as his system went into overdrive. He was back within seconds, holding a long tube with various handles and smaller, solid tubes attached. Hudnee grabbed him, and pushed him toward the torpedo unit.
ssssShow me!” he demanded, and the pilot restarted the unit and showed him how to open the throttle on the control panel. Pitching wildly, Hudnee drove the machine at its maximum speed along the surface toward the opposite shore. The last torpedo unit had now surfaced next to the shuttle, and Battrod joined the others with another of the long tubes.
ssssTogether, they took aim at the Carnii war machine, and two solid impacts from solid slugs slammed the machine forward. It steadied itself, and a large cylinder dropped from it, turning instantly into one of the tall, orange plasma shapes.
ssssMore slugs ripped through the arms and legs of it, but nothing hit the cylinder running up the middle of it.
ssssIt strode forward, and crushed the life out of one of the villagers. The two pilots switched their attack to the legs of the machine, and shot out several of them in quick succession. The orange shape paused, but the machine righted itself, still able to keep its balance. There was a flash of light from the Carnii machine, and the ground under the two pilots with the tubes exploded skyward, throwing them off their feet.
ssssThe humanoid shape, its plasma body crackling with heat as it walked forward, made for the other villager.
ssssHudnee drove the torpedo unit up the beach and rolled off, coming to his feet and continuing at a run. He knew the rod only worked if it was close to the Carnii, but how close was that? The orange shape lifted a foot to crush the neck of the second villager, and Hudnee figured now was the time to find out if he was close enough. He twisted the ends, and the Carnii abruptly vanished, replaced by a long cylinder lying on the ground. It was covered in lines of markings, and swelled to a thicker middle. The war machine above it ground to a halt, and Hudnee guessed at least one more Carnii had been inside, controlling it.
ssssBattrick looked up from the ground at Hudnee, and got shakily to his feet.
ssss“I owe you one,” he said, unsteadily.
ssssHudnee grinned, and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’d have done the same for me,” he said, happy to see his old friend still alive.
ssssThey turned to the crushed corpse on the ground, and their faces darkened with anger.
ssss“We have to do something about these sea scum,” said Battrick.
ssss“Oh, we will,” said Hudnee. “We are, and we will, and we won’t stop until we’re completely free of them.”
ssssThey ferried more of the packages over to the inert war machine. Battrod set the charges and saved the last one for the cylinder. He attached it to the cylinder and heaved it inside the machine. Once they were back at the shuttle he gathered the 20 remaining members of the company around him.
ssss“This one is for someone who died today doing good work today,” he said, and tapped in the activation code. The charges at the mining base, and the ones around the war machine, detonated at the same time.
ssssThe Carnii machine simply disappeared, a white bubble forming instantly around it before it imploded on itself. A grey powder on the slope behind the beach was all that was left of it.
ssssMoments later they heard a dull rumble as the charges on the walls of the mining base formed the same sudden creations of smoke and fire, displacing fountains of water, and ripped holes in the walls.
ssssThe sea rushed into the Carnii mining base. The orange shield above it flickered, then held.
ssssHudnee was disappointed to see that little had changed when he looked down on the inner sea of the Barrens, a short climb later.
ssss“They’ve sealed off the flooded areas,” said Battrod. “I expected that. The main thing is we keep the attack going forward, and convince them to send Fire Ships to save the base.”
ssssHudnee nodded resignedly. They climbed back down to the shore, and decided to bury what was left of the villager where he lay.
ssssThe memorial service was short, and heartfelt. It could have been any one of them that had died that day defending their way of life, and their right to freedom on Hud, and they saluted the sacrifice the villager had made.
ssss“Bravery is what happens when ordinary people do what has to be done, in the cause of something bigger than themselves,” said Hudnee, when he was asked to speak, and the service was over.
ssssSomething blinked on Battrod’s Acomm armband, and he took a call from the Javelins above.
ssss“It’s working,” he said to Hudnee, a fierce joy coming to his eyes. “Twenty Fire Ships have arrived off the planet. That’ll be just the first contingent. Pray for many more, my friend, and the chance to destroy them all.”
ssssHudnee felt the same exultation stir in his heart. The plan was working.


ssssNINE

ssssAyman Case thought again about the situation at the Barrens, and wondered what his next step would be. Three shuttles had been sent in, and three shuttles had come back – but there had been losses. One of the shuttles had sent in its torpedo unit only to be stopped by some sort of Carnii war machine. The torpedo crew had abandoned the unit when it was damaged, and managed to make it safely back to shore. A fierce firefight had erupted but the Carnii machine had been unstoppable, and the shuttle had barely escaped with its crew.
ssssThe second shuttle had sent in one torpedo unit initially, and that unit had disappeared. The shuttle had seen no sign of the Carnii war machines. Whether the unit had managed to plant its explosives was unknown. The pilot in charge of the shuttle had decided against sending the activation code. There was always the chance the torpedo crew were still alive and somewhere near the detonation zone – but hope for the torpedo crew was now fading fast. The second shuttle had returned with the others, and the area where the torpedo unit had been lost was being closely monitored. If there were any signs of life an extraction team would be sent in immediately.
ssssThe last shuttle, which he’d sent to collaborate with the Shellport villagers, had been the most successful. They’d been able to field all three units the shuttle had carried, and their explosives had torn holes across a wide section of the mining base. Still, he thought soberly, success came at the cost of a life.
ssssOn the plus side, there were now twenty Fire Ships entering the system, and with any luck there would be more coming. The Fire Ships he could keep busy until they’d all arrived, and the trap could be sprung, but how to keep up the pressure on the mining base? He dispatched 80 of his available Javelins to meet the Fire Ships while they were still on the outskirts of the system, and returned to the most important question of all – what to do about the mining base below him?
ssssHe found it hard struggling with such a broad question, and left his chair to pace up and down the tactics room behind the bridge.
ssssAyman ran through the scenarios he had on hand for this situation, suggestions from his best tactical brains, but they all seemed so . . . ordinary. If he wasn’t careful the attack on the mining base would start to look like a diversion, meant to bring the Fire Ships to the system, and that might suggest a trap to the Carnii.
ssssIf they were able think like that, murmured Ayman to himself. But he had to assume all intelligent life would think along similar lines, so they must have tactical skills something like his own. The problem was they had already shown an emotional side to their thinking – arrogance, independence and lack of concern for others – that might easily over-ride rational decisions. Who knew what they might do.
ssssThen he stopped pacing, frozen in place for a moment as he thought of something unrelated. That was it! He’d thought of a weak point in the mining base defences, something he might be able to exploit.
ssssThe mining base had fired the mass launcher through the shield, so the shield had to be neutral at that time. The pods would have been destroyed against the inside of the shield otherwise, the same way the superdense slugs were reduced to red stains across the outside. If he could get the mining base to fire the mass launcher again, he’d be able to use that moment to his advantage!
ssssBut before he did that, there was one other thing he wanted to do . . .
ssssAyman opened a comms link to the three shuttles that had recently returned from the Barrens. They were still being refitted for their next task, and the crews were being debriefed. Ayman asked to speak to Battrod and Hudnee’s team as soon as they were finished.
ssssHe would ask them to go back and look for the lost torpedo team. It was ultimately their choice whether to do so, but knowing the people of Hud he didn’t think they’d pass up a chance to help some of their own – if the torpedo team were still alive.
ssssAyman set his plans, and it wasn’t long before a squadron of Javelins left the designated ‘safe area’ above the dome and crossed the area above the mining site. Not directly overhead, but enough, Ayman was sure, to trigger the interest of the Carnii. The crews had disembarked and the ships rigged to run on remote, and they were the bait to get the Carnii to fire the mass launcher again.
ssssThe next pass was a little closer to the trajectory of the pods as they left the mass launcher, and this time the Javelins were more spread out. Even though there were no crews on the ships, Ayman didn’t want to lose any more of the sophisticated pieces of hardware than was necessary. And, he wasn’t sure how much the Carnii could vary the angle of the launcher.
ssssOn the next pass three pods in quick succession left the Barrens and passed through the Javelin formation, hitting one near its tail and damaging the stardrive engines. Ayman cursed his luck, but at least the navs team now had an exact fix on the spot the pods left the shield. With any luck the Javelin might yet be repaired enough to limp home.
ssssEverything hung on the third pass by the Javelins. Ayman ordered them in from a different direction, but on a track that took them over the same spot as last time. Another sequence of three pods erupted from the top of the shield, this time passing between two Javelins in the middle of the formation. At the same moment as the pods emerged from the shield, the Javelins in the safe area above the mining base struck.
ssssThe combined energy weapons of close to a hundred Javelins hit the top of the shield. Despite some diffusion from their passage through the atmosphere, dozens of megawatts of pure disruptive power, riding laser beams, punched through the neutralised spot on the shield. A plume of black smoke burst from the top of the dome, and the dome itself flickered and dulled; before the plume was abruptly cut off, and the shield stabilised.
ssssAyman hadn’t expected to destroy the mining base in one strike – in fact that would take away incentive for the Carnii to mount a rescue mission – but it was obvious the Javelins had done a lot of damage inside the shield.
ssssAs if in response to this latest move by the Alliance fleet, his navs officer reported in with another 32 Fire Ships coming out of stardrive at the edge of the Aqua Regis system. No doubt they would soon join the firefight between the Javelins and Fire Ships that was already underway.
ssssYes! thought Ayman exultantly. It was still a lot less than the 380 Fire Ships the Alliance estimated the Carnii still had in the Spiral Arm, but the numbers at Aqua Regis were building nicely in the right direction.
ssssAyman switched to long-range visuals to see what was happening further out in the system, and watched as 80 Javelins fought a Carnii force now numbering 52 Fire Ships. With Hud pilots controlling them the Javelins were much more manoeuvrable than anything the Carnii had, but with the shields of both sides equally able to block the attacks of the other, it was – apart from rare losses – a stalemate.
ssssIt wasn’t yet time to call in the Valkrethi, but things were starting to work out the way the Alliance wanted them to.
ssssThe shuttle carrying Battrod and Hudnee’s combined team had left for the Barrens as soon as the strike against the mining base shield was over. They’d decided to make an attempt to find the lost torpedo team, alive or dead. The shuttle landed at the base of the island called the Pillar, where the torpedo team had entered the inner sea. When they disembarked onto the beach, there was nothing to say the others had ever been there, but they felt they had to make the effort to find them.
ssssBattrod and Hudnee assembled the teams on the sea shore. Dusk was almost upon them, and there was little wind. The rippled water of the inland sea stretched out to the abrupt orange wall of the dome.
ssss“We may be looking for bodies,” said Battrod quietly, “so be prepared for that. We’ve got activation codes for the explosives they were carrying, so we can finish the job if they managed to put them in place.”
ssssThere were nods around the group at this statement. It seemed right to finish what the others had started.
ssss“The operations boss thinks we should go in without torpedo units. We’d be less likely to be detected, but we’d also be slower on our way back if we ran into trouble.”
ssssThe others nodded again. Cagill would always be the big boss as far as the armed forces were concerned – while Cordez was next to God – but Ayman Case was turning out okay when it came to operations control. If he thought leaving the torpedo units behind was a good idea it probably was.
ssss“Same as before, pilots turn all comms off unless lives are in danger and there’s no other way,” said Battrod. “We don’t want to alert the mining base to our presence.
ssss“We’ll tie ourselves together in the same teams as we had before. Some of us have experience using the side fins, but most of us don’t. If you’re one of those that don’t, just do what you can to help and let the others tow you in. Remember, long, slow beats with your legs, don’t cramp up on us.”
ssssEvery one of them were carrying the long tubes with the short, solid cylinders attached. They were good under the water or above, firing a brace of tiny torpedos below the surface and a magazine of superdense slugs above it. The Shellport villagers had been taken through a brief course on how to use them while on the Javelins, but still treated the strange weapons with a good deal of nervousness.
ssssThe water in the shallow sea was almost warm. Hudnee did his best to help his team with the swim in, but found himself mostly towed along behind the others. The re-breather worked perfectly, but the long tube-weapon was uncomfortable across his back. It took the teams longer to reach the shield this time, but at last they swam under it, and then the vertical wall of the mining base loomed out of the murk ahead of them.
ssssBattrod signalled to one team to go left along the wall, while he took his team right. Hudnee and the others waited where they were, keeping a close lookout for any signs of the Carnii war machines. Battrod returned first, indicating something of interest to their right. When the other team returned, the group set off in that direction, and soon arrived at an indentation in the wall.
ssssIt was an entrance or an exit of some sort, but it was hard to tell which. Did it take in water to cool the fusion ring when it was operating, or was it an exit point for the war machines? The teams spread out, and examined the large recess and its surroundings carefully. One of the villagers pointed excitedly at a particular spot, and Hudnee swam over.
ssssIt was one of the explosives packages, stuffed behind a mechanism that ran along the top of the door. So, thought Hudnee, the second team had made it this far.
ssssBattrod’s team produced more of the packages from their body packs, primed the detonators, and fixed them all the way along the top of the door. When all three teams had backed off into the murk, Battrod sent the activation codes for the explosives. The shock wave swept toward them as a boiling wave of white bubbles. Hudnee was tossed around by the surge, and clung to his tube-weapon to stop it sliding off his back.
ssssWhen they’d gathered together again to examine the effect of the explosives, they found the top of the door peeled back, making an entrance way. Oddly, the sea wasn’t pouring in through the hole.
ssssThey quickly discovered they were looking at some sort of underwater dock. Battrod shone a light into the gloom, but nothing reflected back. Whatever body of water was on the other side of the wall, it was big.
ssssThere was some agitated sign language among the teams. Battrick wasn’t in favour of anyone going in through the hole to look around, but they still hadn’t found any sign of the torpedo team. Luckily, so far, there hadn’t been any sign of the Carnii either. Most of the teams were already looking nervously into the surrounding gloom for the lumbering war machines, and the decision needed to be made quickly.
ssssIn the end Battrod sent two of the Hud pilots through the opening, arguing they were more used to the underwater technology than the villagers, and motioned for the others to wait where they were.
ssssIt was a long wait. Those on the outside of the wall were about to send in another team to search for the first when a strange clattering built up, transmitted through the wall. It took them a while to understand what it was, until one of the Hud pilots kicked himself up until he was level with the top of the mining base.
ssssHe broke comms silence immediately.
ssss“War machine coming!” he shouted, and the rest of them recognised the sound as the clatter of its many legs on the roof of the mining base as it hurried toward their position.
ssss“Check underwater firing option,” snapped Battrod, and the others made sure they had the twin torpedos in the shorter, solid tubes enabled. He motioned them up to join him, and they formed a ragged line at the top of the wall. It was nerve-wracking to hear the Carnii war machine coming, but not see it.
ssssAt last a dark shape materialised out of the gloom, headed straight for them. The response was instantaneous, and a web of white lines shot out from the tube weapons toward the mechanical contraption. For a moment there was the continuous glare of exploding charges, and then the view was obscured as the shock wave engulfed the machine.
ssssWhen the view had cleared, the war machine was still coming on. It had clearly been damaged – parts of the structure were bent or missing – but not damaged enough to stop it. Hud pilots and villagers alike scattered, most diving out of sight down the wall before heading off into the murk.
ssssOne figure, however, headed straight for it. Battrod pulled the last of his explosive charges from his body pack and primed the detonator as his side fins powered him toward the war machine. At the last minute he swept alongside it, twisted his body, and fixed the charge underneath it. He’d just cleared the end of the structure when he tapped in the activation code, and the many-legged machine was again obscured by an enormous underwater blast. This time when the view cleared it was lying on its side, its many legs still rotating feebly, like a giant beetle upended and unable to right itself.
ssssBattrod came to a few moments later, sprawled on top of the mining base. That had been a little too close for comfort, he thought wryly. He swam awkwardly back past the disabled machine in the direction of the others, favouring his right knee, which wasn’t working properly at all.
ssssThe others had heard the second explosion, and now cautiously regrouped close to the entrance they’d blown open. At the same time as Battrod appeared over the top of the wall and drifted awkwardly down to them, the two Hud pilots who’d gone in through the opening dragged a third figure back through it. One of them had fixed his re-breather to the limp form, and was now buddy breathing with the other. An urgent gesture toward the shore by one of the pilots sent them all back toward the shuttle.
ssssIt was a very relieved team that took off fins and re-breathers as the shuttle lifted off from the base of the Pillar. When they’d put on dry clothing, their attention turned to the unconscious form on the floor of the shuttle. He’d been given some blood sugars and painkillers straight through the skin of his neck, and was coming round.
ssss“This is one of the second torpedo team, all right,” said Battrod, closing a bad cut over one eye with a temporary skin solution.
ssss“Is he up to telling us what happened?” said one of the two pilots who’d brought him in.
ssss“Maybe later,” said Battrod. “Where did you two find him?”
ssss“Well,” said the pilot, “there isn’t much to tell really. We surfaced inside a loading dock of some sort. We were still a long way under the surface of the sea, so the dock must have been under a fair bit of internal pressure.
ssss“The place seemed deserted – though there were stacks of goods along a loading dock on one side, strange things I couldn’t really describe to you – and we hauled ourselves out of the water to take a look around. There was a corridor leading into the dock area, huge thing, ten times the height of us, and we heard something coming along it; then a couple of those orange Carnii forms showed up. I jumped back into the water, but Hedras here saw one of our guys laid out on a ledge set back in the wall, and he managed to get him into the water somehow. The shock of it seemed to bring him around a bit, so we fitted one of the re-breathers on him and shared the other one.
ssss“The rest of the story you know.”
ssssThe rescued pilot was too dazed to tell them much on the rest of the trip back to the Javelins, but they spoke to him again when he’d been stabilised in the medical bay on one of the ships. He wasn’t able to add much. The door into the mining base had opened when the torpedo team were laying the explosive charges, and they’d been swept into the base on the strong current that had been generated. He’d hit his head and couldn’t remember anything else, nor did he know what had happened to the other two in his team.
ssssAyman was pleased to get this much information. It left two members of the second torpedo team unaccounted for – and one dead from the third team he reminded himself – but it could have been worse.
ssssAs he was thinking about the lost crew members, his navs officer reported in, his voice breaking with excitement.
ssss“More Fire Ships about to come out of stardrive, Sir! Still getting a grip on the number of energy signatures – but there’s something else. There are flagships coming as well! No idea how many yet, but the stardrive readouts are just too massive to be anything else. We’ll let you know as soon as we can confirm. Navs out.”
ssssAyman sat down in his chair on the bridge. He sat down very slowly indeed. That would do it, he thought, grimly satisfied. That would make up enough of a Carnii force to justify calling in the Valkrethi.
ssssCagill got the call just after night fell. The Valkrethi riders had finished a light supper some time before, and more driftwood had been brought in to continue a very sociable evening exchanging news with Menon and Metris. Menon was quite disappointed, he’d been enjoying it immensely.
ssssCagill called the riders together as soon as he got the call from Ayman. There was little he needed to say to them This was what they’d trained for. They’d already gone up against a Carnii force almost as big as this one, and destroyed it down to the last ship.
ssss“Don’t get overconfident,” he told them, “and don’t take anything for granted. Stay cautious, and don’t take on the flagships until I give the word. They’re going to be a team effort, and I want you to remember that!”
ssssHe looked suspiciously at the research team, but they looked innocently back and nodded in agreement.
ssss“Mount up, and if you know how, say a prayer for all of us.”
ssssCagill didn’t know if those prayers would be answered or not, but he knew how the prayer of a believer focused the mind and cut out the chatter of the ego. People in that state of mind tended to survive.
ssssThe Valkrethi stood on the beach outside the cave, under the brilliant stars of the early Hud night. Menon and Metris stood in the cave mouth with firelight dancing past them onto the beach, and looked up at the huge forms, each looking so much like the rider who nestled inside it. Menon shook his head in wonderment.
ssssThe riders brought up the optic shields and opened a connection between themselves and the Fire Ships further out in the system, appearing as blinking red dots. They could all see the imposing energy signatures of the six Carnii flagships – that must be every one of the giant flagships they’ve got left, thought Cagill wonderingly. The riders tried to block the flagships out of their thoughts while they concentrated on more immediate tasks.
ssssIt would take all the power they had to escape from the planet’s gravity well, and make it as far as the Fire Ships, even with the power stored in the dipole systems and the energy efficiency of the Valkrethi. They would have to immerse themselves in the Fire Ship shields and restore their energy levels, as soon as they’d completed the jump.
ssssThe first handful of Valkrethi lifted off the beach, gently at first, and then more quickly. Others followed. Menon and Metris strained to see the dark shapes against the night sky, and then the Valkrethi were lit up as they passed out of the shadow of Aqua Regis and into the bright light of the planet’s sun.
ssssThe giant figures accelerated more sharply now, their riders beginning the vigorous breathing they used to avoid passing out in the middle of such elongated jumps, when the acceleration was at its most intense. Then they were slammed the other way in their restraints, and the Valkrethi started decelerating.
ssssSharmin chose a Fire Ship on the edge of the firefight, and slid in past an attacking Javelin to lodge in the shimmering orange shields. She watched the exhilarating display as vast arcs of plasma energy sliced away from her, toward the Javelin, and it twisted under them to rake the bottom of the Fire Ship with a broadside of superdense slugs. Then the Javelin twisted away, its navs officer recognising a Valkrethi
ssssThe energy readings of her Valkrethi passed the halfway mark, and then Sharmin turned her head as another figure dropped into the Fire Ship shield, and then another. They were still some distance apart, but she increased the magnification of her optics until she could see the others clearly. One of them turned its head side on to her, and she recognised one of Cagill’s pilots. The other lifted its hand in greeting across the sea of flame between them, and she recognised Roberto.
ssssShe felt her stomach lurch, and told herself to stop reacting to his presence. She knew that if she didn’t keep a tight lid on her feelings, she’d slide toward a place that was, for her, a place of shame and betrayal.
ssssBefore she could dwell on this any further her energy levels were back to normal. Sharmin worked her way through the Fire Ship shields and dropped onto a hub directly below her. She opened a short sideways link to a larger hub ahead of her, and landed on its surface moments later. She punched both fists down through the viscous self-repairing material, and wriggled into the interior, discovering she’d entered a storage bay of some sort. Taking her orientation from her point of entry, she dug down toward the middle of the hub. It didn’t take long before she found one of the plasma power plants that ran the Carnii ships.
ssssFor a moment Sharmin wondered whether the two Valkrethi above her had finished restoring their energy levels, then decided they’d be okay. She looked up at the now familiar central column as it towered above her, the surrounding balconies already filling with the orange shapes of Carnii in their active phase.
ssssTime to take this ship out of the fight, she thought determinedly, and ripped the pulsing plasma cables off the central tower. The power plant filled with incandescent material that vaporised everything it touched. There was a moment of bright light, followed by her optics overloading, and then she was somewhere in space again. She found herself at the centre of an expanding ring of debris, mute testimony to the destruction of the Fire Ship.
ssssAhead of her one of the flagships was beset by a squadron of Javelins. Using their extraordinary reflexes to advantage, the Hud pilots were able to keep their ships away from the thick ropes of plasma that snaked out from the flagship, several at a time, toward them. It was clear however that the Javelins had no answer to the size and power of the massive Carnii warship.
ssssSharmin looked around for other Valkrethi forming up nearby. Cagill had been adamant that the flagships must only be attacked when there was a full team of Valkrethi to do so.
ssssA pulsing blue point formed in her optics, denoting an assembly point. She formed a link to the coordinates, not far from the beleaguered flagship, and arrived at the same time as several other Valkrethi. Cagill was one of them.
ssss“This is unknown territory, people,” he said, after they’d all linked into an open circuit. “I don’t want the Valkrethi hit by the flagship plasma weapons, so choose your line of attack carefully, and go in pairs. Once you’re inside the flagship, it won’t be possible to maintain open comms links unless they’re line of site. If one of you goes down, the other gets him or her out of there, got it?”
ssssThey all grunted an assent.
ssssSharmin teamed up with one of the pilots, as did the others in the research team. She nodded her approval. Rather than just being observers, the research team had now been accepted as part of the fighting formation. They were brothers and sisters in arms with the pilots, and that felt good to her.
ssssShe suddenly realised it wasn’t just her acceptance as part of the fighting unit that made her feel better. She realised how angry she really was. Angry at the students who had mocked and embarrassed her when she was young, angry at the world of academia which had given her security but shut her off from life, and just, well, angry at everything.
ssssShe tightened the Valkrethi’s massive fists at its sides. For some cantankerous reason or another – fuelled by the anger within her – she was looking forward to the attack on the Carnii flagship.
ssssThe Valkrethi formation began to break up, each pair looking for a way in under angry red coils as the flagship lashed out at anything that moved. A wave of Javelins swarmed around the front of the flagship, and Sharmin nodded to the pilot she was paired with, sending his optics an arrival point along the side of the vast ship. He gave the thumbs up sign, and they looped out from their present position, as if in a bypass, only to loop round at the last minute, and disappear between massive mountings on the side of the flagship.
ssssSharmin moved her orientation through ninety degrees, and the side of the flagship became a level floor under her. The two Valkrethi knelt on the metal deck in a long alleyway between the two mountings. Reaching down, Sharmin plunged both fists into the deck beneath her, and came to an abrupt halt. It was like running into a brick wall.
ssssIt was clear that for the flagships, the Carnii had replaced the lighter hub and spar construction of the Fire Ships with heavy duty structural integrity. The pilot motioned for her to stand back, and placed his hands a shoulder width apart on the deck. A current ran from one hand to the other, stripping away the metal like an acid bath. He pushed his hands further into the deck, and increased the current.
ssssSharmin watched in fascination. The riders were learning things about the Valkrethi all the time, but she’d never seen this before.
ssssWhen he finally broke through the decking, they could both see it was more than a hand width thick – and that was a Valkrethi hand width at that! Sharmin wondered if this level of over-engineering continued throughout the flagship. She realised that the flagships were meant to be invincible, totally unstoppable, and the shock it would be to the Carnii if the Valkrethi could destroy one.
ssssThe pilot opened a comms link. “That’s completely emptied my reserves. The internal power plant has started to replenish them, but it’s going to take time. If you want to enter the ship you’ll have to take the lead.”
ssssSharmin nodded, to signify that she understood.
ssssThen she decided they should go for it. If any of the other pairs had got this far, they’d probably be in the same situation, and someone had to try to disable a flagship. She pointed down the hole the pilot had made, and he nodded his agreement. Forcing back one of the sides a little further, Sharmin worked her way down through the deck, and dropped into whatever awaited her below.
ssssThe two of them crouched in darkness. Sharmin changed her optics to infrared, and looked around at what seemed to be a storage room on a mammoth scale. She checked for atmosphere, and found none. There hadn’t been any on the Fire Ships either, and it was clear that if the Carnii did use a carbon-oxygen exchange system, they did it by binding the oxygen directly to a transfer molecule and dumping it in the bloodstream. Lungs were too inefficient. Then Sharmin shook her head at the idea of oxygen. It was likely they used the more powerful silicon-sulphur combination, but she also doubted they would have any use for a bloodstream – too vulnerable, too weak a link in their hybrid systems.
ssssChecking that the pilot was right behind her, Sharmin moved to a lavishly carved archway on her right. If she’d been expecting some sort of symmetry in the door she was clearly mistaken. Like the ornate fashioning of the Fire Ships, the archway looked like it had been built by an artist under the influence of something clearly mind-altering. The two of them passed silently into a long corridor, and had to crouch as the ceiling height stepped down half way along.
ssssA closed door to their left caught Sharmin’s attention. It looked like a doorway leading to somewhere important, and there was a lot of electronic hardware around it that could be a security lock. She turned back toward the pilot, pointed to the door, and nodded. He moved aside. Stepping back against the opposite wall Sharmin lifted one giant Valkrethi foot and rammed it through the door, her shoulders providing leverage against the wall behind.
ssssThe door was instantly outlined in circular bars of light. These doubled in speed, and she was sure she’d set off an electronic tripwire of some sort. There were no audible alarms, but the Carnii would be there soon enough.
ssssReaching in through the hole she’d made, she tore a big section out of the door, and then ripped the door out of the wall. She dropped it to the floor as she stepped inside, and the pilot followed her. They looked around in amazement.
ssssThere was no way of telling what shape the room was. It was outlined in a soft blackness with a lifelike representation of stars in all directions. Some of the more prominent stars were connected to others by webs of lines, and Sharmin wondered if it was a navigational map of the galaxy. The pilot nudged her, and she looked upward. In the centre of the room a handful of Carnii in their orange, humanoid state hung motionless. Next to them were small orange spheres of various sizes. The largest of the spheres had taken on rudimentary humanoid shapes as well.
ssss“Godsdamn’t, it’s a nursery!” said Sharmin on the open channel, then wished she hadn’t. One of the Carnii ‘mothers’ stirred, and turned away from the orange sphere it was cradling in its rough-shaped hands.
ssssCan’t hear me banging down the door, but it picks up a stray comms signal nearby, muttered Sharmin, irritated with herself, backing slowly toward the door. The pilot followed. Another of the Carnii turned in their direction, and they fled.
ssssThe corridor ended in a large bay, with enormous doors opening – if her sense of direction was working right – to the outside of the ship. As the two of them burst into the loading dock, the opposite doors opened, and a flood of orange Carnii poured through them. They carried a number of large, grey machines which they rapidly deployed, several Carnii to each one, and pointed them in the direction of the Valkrethi.
ssssSharmin didn’t like the look of that. The pilot pointed agitatedly behind him, and it was clear there were Carnii in that direction as well. Hurrying toward the inward wall of the loading dock, Sharmin prepared to dig her way through to another part of the flagship. As she ripped a hole in the wall, one of the grey machines fired, and the blast slammed her forward. Then the other machines opened up, and she was hit by several blasts at once. The force of it knocked her through the wall and into a dark chamber beyond.
ssssFor a moment she blanked out. When she came around, her optics were offline. She went to lift herself up, and found only her head and one arm could move. Great, she thought, as she struggled to rise. Blind and crippled inside an alien flagship, with likely a thousand or more Carnii on board. This will not go well.
ssssShe heard the sound of something being hit with a sickening thump, back in the loading bay, and then some horrendous crunching noises.
ssssIt sounds like the pilot is getting his as well, she muttered to herself resignedly.
ssssIf it had to end this way, she couldn’t think of anything better to be doing than defending the Alliance from arrogant pigs like these.
ssssExcept maybe taking advantage of Roberto when he was drunk and would forget what he’d done in the morning, she thought with a smile. She wished she’d taken a chance with him now. Now, when it didn’t matter, and she’d never know what they would have been like together.
ssssShe was distracted as a number of small lights flickered briefly along the bottom of her optic shield. A moment later it came back online. What was it doing? She watched in growing amazement as the Valkrethi repaired itself. System after system came back to life. Strength returned to her limbs, and she sat up. Some systems were sidelined, too damaged to repair quickly, while others ran low-grade equivalents to replace them.
ssssShe’d known the Valkrethi were sophisticated, powerful machines, but now she realised they were far more adaptable, more fluid, than she’d ever thought possible. She stood up, and realised she’d just risen, phoenix-like, from her own ashes. Two quick steps took her back into the loading bay, where she found the last of the Carnii in full retreat. The pilot turned and smiled at her.
ssss“They got off some lucky shots at you. I jumped over their heads and came down behind their machines – good thing there’s lots of room in here – and broke some heads.” A number of bent and broken cylinders lay at his feet. Sharmin smiled.
ssssTogether they ran through the loading bay and down the corridor on the other side.
ssssSharmin stopped a little further on, and ripped a hole in the wall, choosing a direction she thought would take them deeper into the flagship. She began digging her way forward. For a while she struck hard going, and passed through a series of smaller spaces, crammed with goods, but then she emerged into a shaft that dropped away out of sight below her. All around the walls were smaller versions of the plasma cables she’d seen in the reactor rooms on the Fire Ships.
ssssYes! Now they were getting somewhere.
ssssShe widened the hole she’d made so the pilot could join her. He looked down the shaft and stepped back a little from the edge. Sharmin was about to rip the plasma cables off the walls when she hesitated. These were small fry really, they needed to find a major power plant if they wanted to do some real damage.
ssss“What say we track these back to their source?” she queried.
ssss“Makes sense to me,” he answered. “Is that up or down?” It was a good question.
ssss“Down takes us deeper into the flagship,” said Sharmin. Then thought to add, “how are your energy reserves now, anyway?”
ssssThey were good. Not a hundred percent but good enough.
ssss“Down it is, then,” said the pilot resignedly, and carefully swung himself out over the edge. They descended rapidly, hand over hand, until the shaft made a right turn and stopped at a door. The cables ran on through the wall beside the door.
ssssSharmin looked at the pilot. He shrugged. She lifted one giant leg and buckled the door inward. It was surprisingly strong. She grabbed an overhead beam to brace herself, and kicked the door harder. It ripped out of the wall and vanished into the maelstrom beyond it. Incandescent plasma roared past the door and licked in toward them. Sharmin noticed the temperature reading for the Valkrethi as it rocketed upward, and pulled the pilot back from the rapidly growing hole where the door used to be.
ssss“It’s the goddamn’t core, straight into the fusion reactor. It’s hotter than a sun in there!”
ssssHe nodded. “How do we destroy it? Or better yet, can we use it to destroy the flagship?”
ssss“We can’t destroy it,” she said, urgently. “It’s too failsafe; it would just run itself down. We have to feed it, and remove the damping mechanisms, try and get a runaway reaction.
ssss“I know! The electromagnets. It must have a containment field of some sort.”
ssssThey worked their way round the outside of the reactor, looking for a control room. The reactor grumbled, managing to contain the breach in its walls but increasingly unstable, and close to shutting itself down.
ssssThey found the control room moments later. The pilot dealt with the dozen Carnii in the room while Sharmin ripped the strange covering panels from the wall, covered in hieroglyphics and glowing five-pointed controls.
ssssIt was solid state. Damn’t, nothing looked familiar. She went for the most complex part of the board, where dozens of channels converged. They had to be the safety controls for the reactor.
ssssSharmin ripped an edge off a panel she’d discarded and used it to short out different groups of conduits at one time. Nothing was working for her. Then she thought she heard the electromagnetic hum of the reactor increase in pitch. She punched the metal bar down onto the conduits, shorting them out permanently. Spinning toward the reactor wall, she booted another hole in it. Beckoning to the pilot she dragged one of the consoles in the room across to the hole and forced it through. It was sucked into the core, and the pitch of the reactor increased.
ssssYes! She’d done it. As the core got larger, it would generate more of the electromagnetic field, and suck in more of its surroundings. The pull on the Valkrethi – though they were largely composite – was already noticeable in her movements. Desperately the pilot and herself worked to feed the beast. They smashed the hole wider, and threw everything available in the room through it. The rest of the consoles followed. Then they started peeling off the walls, and feeding that to the core.
ssssSuddenly there was a new sound, a deeper roar that was growing steadily louder as they listened. Sharmin worked her way along the wall to the hole, gouging out handholds as she fought against the rapidly growing hunger of the core for all things metal. She looked through the hole on an angle from a distance. A sheet of alloy peeled off the inside of the core and disappeared into the furnace.
ssssIt was working! The reactor was starting to eat the ship from the inside out. She clawed her way back to the pilot, and motioned frantically over the ever-increasing roar from the reactor. They held onto each other as they moved in a direction away from the core. They found a long corridor, and sprinted up it.
ssssSharmin took the next left, which she thought would lead them to the surface of the flagship. They battered down a large door and found themselves in another of the loading bays. Mercifully this one was already open to space, and they activated the dipole systems immediately. The two Valkrethi swung out of the bay and found themselves back in the melee of Javelins and Fire Ships. Sharmin turned to look back at the flagship, and it ignited into a miniature sun. The shock wave spun her away, and she remembered thinking how lucky she was to be alive, before both fleets were scattered helplessly across space by the blast.


ssssTEN

ssssCordez saw the security faceplate on his sub space system light up, and noted with interest that it was Cagill’s call sign. The Valkrethi had left Aqua Regis just before sunrise, Earth time, and it was now mid-morning. Cordez wanted to know how the engagement with the Fire Ships had gone.
ssssHe tapped in his acknowledgement of the call, and nodded his greetings as Cagill’s face came up on the comms screen.
ssss“82 Fire Ships destroyed, and two flagships down,” said Cagill, without preamble, “with another flagship extensively damaged. That’s the good news.
ssss“However, there have also been a number of worrying developments.”
ssssCordez nodded encouragingly.
ssss“Two of the Valkrethi were destroyed. It now appears every one of them has a failsafe system for the pilots, some sort of inner shield plus stasis system. We dug the pilots out of the remains of the damaged Valkrethi and revived them.”
ssss“What could destroy a Valkrethi?” asked Cordez.
ssss“Only the flagships,” said Cagill. “Some of the Valkrethi took big hits from combinations of the Fire Ship arcs, but they survived – and that taught us something else we’d never suspected. We now know the Valkrethi can regenerate themselves, and they can regenerate themselves from quite extensive damage.”
ssssCordez’ eyes widened. This was good news indeed.
ssss“The flagships are the real threat. The plasma strings they wield would probably destroy a Valkrethi, but they’re too slow to do much damage. The problem starts once the Valkrethi get past the defences and board the damn’t things. The flagships are carrying some extremely potent weapons on board ship, and the Carnii are quick to use them against anything that gets through the outer skin.
ssssCordez looked up at Cagill. “Which suggests they’re used to being boarded,” he said suspiciously.
ssss“What could be powerful enough to dig its way into a flagship – apart from the Valkrethi?”
ssss“I was thinking the same thing,” said Cagill. “Perhaps it’s a defensive measure left over from conflicts millennia ago.”
ssss“Perhaps,” said Cordez. “Still, it’s interesting. Who upset the Carnii that much, even if it was so long ago?”
ssssCagill shrugged. “The other thing that worries me is that they’re learning. Once they figured out it was a trap – that the Valkrethi were waiting for them at Aqua Regis – and the first flagship was destroyed, they turned tail and ran. We didn’t get a chance to destroy them all like we did at the ice planet.
ssssThe last of our kills were from Valkrethi who boarded Fire Ships before they entered stardrive, and then dismembered them. We had to collect Valkrethi half way to the next star system!”
ssssCordez had to laugh at the picture Cagill painted. Still, he was right. Their enemy was learning, and that wasn’t good. The Alliance had relied on the arrogance and sense of superiority of the Carnii as their undoing for too long now. The war for control of the Spiral Arm was going to get a lot tougher, he could see that. Sham’ass, ‘control of the Spiral Arm’ wasn’t the right way to talk about this war. The Alliance would throw the Carnii out of the Spiral Arm and make sure they never came back. There was no negotiating with these slagspawn!
ssssCagill was saying something. Cordez turned his mind back to the discussion at hand.
ssss“Once the Carnii fleet had left the Aqua Regis system, we sent in every torpedo team we could field to finish off the mining base. The teams came across a few more of the many-legged Carnii war machines, but they were no match for us in numbers. After that we didn’t encounter much resistance at all.”
ssssCagill took a report from an aide, and Cordez waited patiently while he read it.
ssss“We’ve now shut down the mining base shields and landed on the mass launcher in numbers,” he continued, reading from the report. “We’re currently searching the base. It’s early days yet, but it looks like we’ll get some handy stockpiles of super heavy elements out of this. Also, judging by numbers so far, we expect to collect two or three hundred cylinders – Carnii in the inert state.
ssss“What are we going to do with so many prisoners of war?”
ssss“Matsu can figure out something,” said Cordez. “He can modify that rod weapon he made, the one that turns them into the inert state and keeps them there. We just need to adapt it to a building the size of a warehouse. We could have thousands of these things before the war is over.”
ssssCagill stood in silence. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.
ssss“And the other thing we have to do is get science teams in there as soon as possible. The mining base is a treasure trove of Carnii technology. I don’t think there’ll be much we can use – their approach to life is too different to ours, and too energy wasteful to link to our systems – but it might help us understand the weaknesses of the warships we’re up against.”

ssssSharmin was the hero of the hour. The Javelin pilot she’d partnered up with, Shavez, had given her all the credit.
ssss“She over-rides the safeties on the reactor – don’t know how she damn’t well did it – and stays there feeding the thing as it goes critical, until it starts to feed on itself! Most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen.”
ssss“Well, it was luck, really . . ,” said Sharmin, remembering her attempts to short out the safety circuits on the strange looking motherboard.
ssss“Once is luck, maybe even twice,” said Chavez, “but that whole action, from breaching the hull – okay, okay, I had a hand in that – ,” as Sharmin protested, “to the last minute exit through the loading bay, had the hand of a master on it.
ssss“Er, is the word ‘mistress’?” he added uncertainly.
ssssThe room roared with laughter.
ssss“It was just luck the loading bay was open,” said Sharmin feebly. “we took far too many risks . . .”
ssssBut the excited throng had already turned away from her to discuss the role of others in the dramatic actions of the preceding day.
ssss“Methinks she doth protest too much,” said a voice at her elbow. She turned, knowing it was Roberto. Even drained as she was, with the effects of too much adrenaline working their way out of her system, her heart beat a little faster.
ssss“What’s the use of being a head of department if no one will listen to you,” she said, with a wan smile.
ssssRoberto’s smile in return was warm, and sincere. She felt immediately comforted by his smile.
ssss“But you did take too many risks,” he said. “Interesting, isn’t it? Why do you think that was?”
ssss“I don’t know,” she faltered. “It just seemed important that we, you know, show them, show the Carnii, we could do it.”
ssss“Or the momentum would be lost,” he said softly, “and it would become a barrier for us, a mental belief that we couldn’t take the giant flagships down.”
ssssShe nodded, pleased he understood.
ssss“But we would have found a way,” he said, kindly. “For each setback, a way forward. That’s how Cordez thinks, you know.”
ssss“Really,” she said, brightening. “How do you know . . .”
ssss“Not important,” he said, then relented. “I’ve been friendly with one of Cagill’s aides lately, and he’s been talking about Cordez.”
ssss“Look,” he continued, “what’s important here is that your actions on the flagship were an example of how you think, in black and white. In good and bad. Extreme actions or none at all.
ssss“You learned that from your past – I know – but you’ve got to understand there is a middle way.”
ssssSharmin looked uncertain.
ssss“Like taking a chance on us,” he continued.
ssss“But I’m ten years older than you!” she protested, and he smiled at her efforts to put him off.
ssss“You’re eight years older, and for two months of each year you’ll only be seven years older. Besides, there’s a lot more than age involved. You’re in just as good a shape as any women my age, and that’s what counts. Remember, age is as age does. And most importantly, there’s something about you I really want in my life; and believe me, that doesn’t happen very often.”
ssssShe didn’t look any more convinced, and he steered her gently away from the others and out into the long corridor that led through the living areas.
ssss“We take our time,” he continued, “so that people get used to seeing us together. That’s normal. No one is going to say things behind your back about that.”
ssssShe nodded slowly. He steered them into the back of the dining area, and went to prepare something that would help them wind down, help them sleep, after a very busy day.
ssss“On the other hand, if you start running around with a load of different men, you will draw attention to yourself,” he added.
ssssSharmin looked shocked. “It wasn’t like that, there was only ever one at a time, and I tried to make the relationships work!”
ssss“Good,” he said quietly. “I’m pleased to hear it. If you take an interest in someone else while you’re with me, I’ll paddle your backside good and hard!”
ssssHe said it with a smile, but there was an edge of steel in his voice.
ssssSharmin looked at him anxiously, and realised he meant it. She was both thrilled and apprehensive that he should take their relationship so seriously.
ssss“No, no. Nothing like that,” she said miserably.
ssssHe put down the cups he was filling and came over to her, putting his arms around her.
ssss“Hey, it’s all right, just making some things clear between us. I do trust you, remember that, and I have always believed in you.”
ssssHis arms were infinitely reassuring.
ssss“And there’s that last thing,” he said mischievously. She looked up.
ssss“The way you enjoy the touch of your man so much.”
ssssShe blushed furiously, and tried to wriggle out of his arms, but he held her firm.
ssss“From my experience that’s quite common, so start thinking of yourself as normal. And, if you did happen to be a bit more of a woman than most, I would consider myself doubly blessed.
ssss“It’s not a bad thing, you know, to love someone with all your heart.”
ssssShe subsided, not sure what to think.
ssss“Now drink this,” he said, turning back toward the bench to pick up one of the cups he’d prepared, “and after that get a good night’s sleep.”
ssssShe accepted the cup, and smiled her thanks.
ssssHe leaned down and whispered in her ear.
ssss“One more thing,” he said. “You get tonight off because you’ve had a tiring day, but I’ll be coming for you one of these evenings, and it won’t be long. Be ready.”
ssssThen he took his cup, smiled, and disappeared down the corridor.
ssssSharmin realised she was trembling.

ssss“He’s gone where?” said Cordez, looking up at his admin assistant.
ssss“The form doesn’t say,” said the poor girl, obviously flustered. “He must have filled out an annual holidays return for the next two months at some stage. He’s got months of leave owing to him, you know.
ssss“Someone must have signed off on it, or it wouldn’t have been okayed and filed,” she said defensively.
ssss“Look at the signature of authorisation,” said Cordez. “Ever seen it before?”
ssssShe looked at the bottom of the page. No, she hadn’t seen it before.
ssssCordez smiled to himself.
ssss“This is what will have happened,” he said decisively. “Reagis will have lifted this form when you weren’t looking, weeks ago, and filled it out so the two months starts the day he thinks I’ll first notice he’s missing.” He looked at the starting date on the form. “Except I’m two days earlier than he figured, so he’s underestimated me.”
ssssThat felt good. He smiled to himself again.
ssss“The authorisation signature will be bogus, of course, but that won’t matter because he’ll have distracted you and filed it himself. It’s just a little detail to remind me he’s the best there is.”
ssss“I don’t remember him coming into my office,” said the admin assistant, getting more and more confused.
ssssCordez chuckled. “That’s the whole point, of course you don’t remember him. He’ll have made sure of that.” He looked her in the eye.
ssss“Reagis Vits doesn’t exist, he’s not on any payroll, and he certainly doesn’t have ‘annual holidays’. This was his little way of reminding me he’s a free agent.”
ssssThe girl was now completely out of her depth, and was standing there with her mouth open.
ssssCordez spoke again, thinking out loud. “When I told him he couldn’t go to Mentuk, he just put it off until he figured it was more important than whatever I assigned him to do.”
ssssWhat had Reagis said to him? ‘There could be something there, one piece of information that makes all the difference.’ Well maybe he was right.
ssssStill, he worried about his old friend. Who knows what trouble he might stir up on the ancient planet where the Caerbrindii first arose; and it didn’t help that it was deep in what was now Carnii territory.
ssssCordez shook his head. He didn’t so much lead this band of talented, if volatile, personalities, as nudge them in directions more useful to the Alliance. Well, most of the time, anyway. Sometimes, though, you just had to let them get on with their own plans.
ssssHe called in his secretary, then told her what he wanted. “Clairinda, bring this one up to speed will you, and after that explain, once again, why it’s so important we have non-disclosure agreements.”
ssssClairinda raised her eyebrows. It wasn’t often Cordez criticised her work.
ssss“She doesn’t know who Reagis Vits is,” he said, looking up at her raised eyebrows, a silent request for clarification.
ssssClairinda pressed her lips together. She nodded curtly, and marched the girl out of Cordez’ office.

ssssReagis yawned and stretched. The Lucky Streak hummed quietly to itself, hidden under the photon deflection shield fitted by the Mars miners. She was running silent, and deep in Carnii territory. It was good to be back in the old girl.
ssssMentuk lay dead ahead. The only other planet in the system was a large gas giant far from its sun, and Reagis had finally slipped past it after more than a week of careful navigation through the Spiral Arm. The Mentuk system was at the edge of the Core, and Reagis had left the scattered suns of the Spiral Arm for the more densely packed stars of the Core during the last two days of his travels. So far he had escaped notice by the Carnii, and now he planned the final leg of his trip, the descent onto the fabled site of the first intelligent life in the galaxy, Mentuk.
ssss“Planets a damn’t wasteland,” he muttered to himself, gathering increasingly detailed pictures from the Lucky Streak’s passive sensors.
ssssMountain ranges ran across the surface in continuous chains. The only sea was a shallow affair, and looked stagnant to Reagis. In fact there were no major life sign readings from any part of the planet.
ssssThe cities were a different matter. They weren’t inhabited, but they’d been maintained.
ssssWhat was this, he wondered; some sort of reserve, a whole planet given over in memory of the ancestors, the first ones?
ssssHe would have to make a decision soon. Was it safe to go down to the surface or not.
ssssThe cities were coming up in more detail now, and he didn’t like the look of them. They were ringed with electronic arrays, and there were small mobile units down there – electronic hounds most likely.
ssssHe thought about the situation as the Lucky Streak prepared to make its first bypass of the planet. The cities were small, and far apart, and there was still no sign of permanent habitation. What he needed was a point to aim for, something that might lead him to the information he needed.
ssssWhen the Lucky Streak was abreast of the planet, Reagis took a closer look at the main screen. An oblong structure had come into view below him, a solitary building on a high plateau in one of the mountain chains. The answer couldn’t be that simple, could it?
ssssIt was a data base – concentrations of rare metals used for storage banks confirmed it – but its energy reading was zero. It looked well maintained, like the rest of the buildings on the planet, but was it operative? He looked at the underground tracings and noticed with interest the caverns and passageways that ran under the plateau. Some of them ran right under the data base. He stored the information for later use.
ssssThe Lucky Streak swept past Mentuk and continued on an elliptical path that would bring it back past the planet in a few hours. Reagis decided he’d start with the data base. It didn’t appear to be active but it might lead him to another data base, or it might show him a way into one of the cities. He started his preparations.
ssssOn his next pass of the planet, something resembling a meteorite detached from the Lucky Streak and fell away into the darkness on the night side of the planet. The Lucky Streak continued on a course that would take it out round the gas giant, and bring it back past Mentuk in a few days. Reagis hoped to have discovered something worthwhile by then.
ssssThe meteorite flamed across the sky, shedding bits of itself and losing speed to the increasingly dense atmosphere. Reagis couldn’t see anything through the heat haze, but he relied on his instruments and was content to be flying blind. He curved around the planet and emerged on the day side. The data base came into view ahead of him.
ssssOne side of the mountain range that housed the data base fell away into a chasm that would have rivalled the Grand Canyon on Earth. The meteorite burned brightly as it passed over the data base, then disappeared from view into the wilderness of the canyon. Reagis jettisoned the last of the fire-resistant shielding around the glider and pulled up sharply as the floor of the canyon came into view. Banking into a turn that scraped along a wall of peaks within the canyon, he converted the last of the glider’s supersonic speed into a gentle climb that brought him out on the flanks of the mountain range below the data base. The glider bounced twice on a dry slope and came to a creaking, hissing stop.
ssssReagis had plenty to do while the outside of the craft cooled to a more ambient temperature. This side of the mountain range was a wilderness, bounded further away by more ranges, and devoid of cities or any signs of habitation. Not that it appeared anyone lived on the planet, but it was important to be far away from prying electronic eyes as well.
ssssThe glider would be left on standby. He could call it to himself if he needed to, but that would be a very large statement of his existence, and he wanted to avoid that statement if at all possible. He set the colour of the glider to adjust to its surroundings, through the days and nights that would follow, and then repaired the scuffs on the slope he’d made while landing. After that he assembled his field equipment.
ssssFully kitted he weighed almost half as much again, and would be glad when he could set up a camp near the data base and dump most of it. Ever cautious in new terrain, Reagis set the ID codes for the glider, locked it, and turned his attention to the climb up onto the plateau. It was dry country, with tangled bluey-green bushes looking like they were made of discarded whips. Still, there were clumps of something like dry grasses, interspersed with low, round mats of a type of succulent plant.. Some of these had been browsed, and that meant there was some sort of food chain.
ssssWhen Reagis came across round, nervous little creatures eating the grasses, he noted that fact carefully. Where there was prey, there would be predators. When they disappeared down holes and behind rocks the minute they say him, all his internal alarm bells went off. Whatever the predator was around here, it was something they were terrified of.
ssssHis right hand slipped down to the wide belt packed with instruments at his waist, and he activated his personal shields. Some of the round little creatures, watching him from a safe distance, keened a shrill note of pain and edged further away. The first level of his defences was working well; a combination of sonic and electrostatic fields that would deter most animals from approaching him too closely.
ssssIt was late in the day when Reagis scrambled up the last incline to the edge of the plateau. He came upon more of the little creatures, browsing the grasses around the last of the bluey-green bushes on the mountainside. They bolted at his approach.
ssssIt was then he noticed the long, sinuous shape that had been stalking them. It made a half-hearted run at one of its prey as they ran for cover, blurring as it covered the distance faster than the eye could follow. Then it halted, realising Reagis had been the source of alarm. It made a fast whistle-whack sound, like a whip being cracked in the distance. When it didn’t approach any closer, Reagis continued on his way, but it wasn’t long before he saw others of the same kind converging on his position.
ssssDamn’t! A hunting group followed different laws to a single predator. A pack didn’t mind if one or two of them got hurt bringing down game for the rest. Reagis snorted to himself. He’d always found pack behaviour had a perverse similarity to mob psychology in Humans.
ssssHe knew this was going to get nasty. He stopped and turned, studying the group more closely.
ssssThe predators were lizards, of a sort, but the limb joints were much better articulated, lifting them well clear of the ground. Scaly hide was hidden along their backs by thin, long hair, and tufts of it marked long, thick tails in random patterns. Reagis guessed that they weren’t cold-blooded. A truly gruesome set of teeth, like something out of the ocean depths, set off a snake-like head. Their bodies were as long as he was tall, and they came above his knee when they straightened their limbs for running.
ssssThe pack kept pace with him, strings of them on either side as he set off across the bare landscape of the plateau toward the data base, a rectangular shape ahead of him in the last of the evening sun. The lizard pack emitted high-pitched squeals as they got closer, backing off again as they came in contact with the sonic field.
ssssIt wasn’t going to last, Reagis knew that. They were psyching themselves up, preparing to go past the pain and attack him in one concerted rush.
ssssHe flicked an energy weapon into his hand, and lined it up on one of the larger of the brutes. When he squeezed the pressure point on the handgrip the lizard creature dropped without a sound, while the others flinched and gave ground at the flash of the discharge. Then they resolutely came on.
ssssReagis cursed loudly. He couldn’t kill all of them, and they weren’t put off by the deaths of others. When he lined up on another of the lizards it dodged sideways, and when he followed it with the energy weapon it moved so fast it became a blur as it took advantage of a fold in the ground to hide from him. He tried to line up on others in the pack, but they reacted in the same way.
ssssThey was fast. They’d learned what the weapon could do, and they’d even figured out it did that when he pointed it at them.
ssssAnother one made a short rush at him, ignoring the sonic discomfort and the stabbing sensation, like pin pricks, from the electrostatic shield. He fired from the hip, wasting several shots until he disabled one of its legs, and then killed it with a clean body shot.
ssssGoddamn’t these beasts had one Stygian hells of a high pain threshold!
ssssThe data base wasn’t that far now, but the pack was surging and retreating, typical pack behaviour before the final rush. Reagis knew his last line of defence, the force field, would probably see him survive, but that would take most of the energy out of the power pack that drove both his high-tech instruments and defences, and he’d yet to examine the data base, or return to the glider.
ssssAnother of the beasts made a short rush, closer now, and ran up against his force field.
ssssIt died with no face left. Reagis looked away. The effects of the energy discharge were never pleasant. A smell of fried chicken assailed his nostrils, and Reagis almost laughed, it was so incongruous.
ssssAhead of him the ground folded, and he saw the entrance to a narrow defile in the fractured plain. Judging the data base still too far away to be of much use as a defensive position, Reagis trotted down the slope into a sandy basin, and passed between crumbling walls of sandstone. He figured he could find somewhere suitable to make a stand further in.
ssssThe narrow passageway ended in a natural amphitheatre, surrounded on all sides by a roughly circular sandstone escarpment. One of his instruments beeped, and Reagis looked at it curiously. According to the readout, he was under some sort of surveillance. Perhaps it was an old security system from the data base, but the data base hadn’t registered any sort of electrical activity from orbit.
ssssThe first of the lizard creatures crept cautiously into the narrow entrance, then stopped, and began the high-pitched squealing again. More of them backed up behind it. Reagis’ eyes narrowed.
ssssThey’re frightened of something, he thought, and realised the amphitheatre could be the den of some larger, more aggressive creature than the lizards. He flattened himself against the sandstone, and flicked his eyes between the lizard creatures at the entrance and the surrounding walls. There was some sort of opening, set further up the escarpment on his right. This did not have a good feel about it.
ssssOne of Reagis’ instruments beeped again, and he carefully slid it out of its pouch, not taking his eyes off his attackers. Something nearby was powering up. He swore sharply. This was going from bad to worse.
ssssReagis ran his eye around the sandstone walls once again. He wasn’t going to be climbing them in a hurry, not without some basic mountaineering equipment. He turned his attention back to the pack at the entrance. He might have no choice . . .
ssssThe instrument beeped again, and Reagis watched the readout go up by a factor of ten. A shield jumped into place across the entrance to the amphitheatre, and the lizard creatures began wailing, scrambling over each other in their attempts to get away. Reagis could feel the tingle of the charge in the shield from where he was; the lizards must have been damn’t near cooked in it.
ssssHe looked up through a haze over the top of the amphitheatre, now catching the last of the setting sun. Nothing was going to get in through the entrance, or over the top. Someone had a nice little set up here, well protected indeed. The question was, who.
ssssWhen that ‘someone’ didn’t appear in the next few minutes, Reagis made his way cautiously to the opening in the sandstone escarpment that he’d noticed earlier.
ssssIt was a natural tunnel in the sandstone, protected by an overhanging ledge and well up off the ground. Reagis could just reach the lip if he stood on his toes. Sighing resignedly, he took off most of his equipment and flung it up into the tunnel. Then he stood a good distance from the tunnel mouth and waited, his energy weapon once again fitted snugly into his hand. Nothing happened. Nothing came to investigate the strange new items that had entered its domain.
ssssWhen he was sure his actions hadn’t aroused any curiosity – in alien or beast – Reagis put the weapon away and stepped back a little further. Getting a good run up he jumped, took the lip of the tunnel on his hands, knees bent, and vaulted to a standing position. The energy weapon re-appeared in his hand the instant he touched the floor of the tunnel.
ssssHe looked around. It was a tunnel, nothing more. An old waterway worn in the sandstone by a stream, millennia ago. There were no signs of intelligent adaption, no markings, nothing on or in the side walls. Reagis shrugged, and picked up his equipment. When he was kitted up again, he took out an optics headset and put it on. Switching to infrared he started down the tunnel, his flexible soles making no sound on the rock floor and the special weave of his equipment equally silent. At least, he thought, he appeared to be heading in the direction of the data base.
ssssThe walls of the tunnel passed by with monotonous regularity. Neither climbing or descending, the tunnel occasionally narrowed until he had to squeeze through, and once it opened out into a gorge, with the stars of early night above. Reagis surmised the layer of sandstone on top of the plateau was not deep, and underpinned by a harder layer, one of the more permanent materials of the mountain range.
ssssHe chose a spot where the tunnel entered a complex knot of passages to make his camp for the night. There was water, trickling along the floor of one of the passageways, and that would be fine once he’d purified it. He also wanted to keep the tunnel at his back, which would help him make sense of the tangle of passages in the morning. Not that he’d know it was morning this far underground.
ssssAs he drifted off to sleep, on a sandy bed scooped out to fit under him, with a body pack as a pillow, he decided he must be close to the data base by now. He’d have to look for a way up to the surface soon, but that could wait until morning. That was the last thing he remembered before he nodded off.
ssssThe soft beeping of his proximity alarm brought Reagis instantly awake.
ssssHe took in at once that less than an hour had passed since he’d fallen asleep, and whatever had set off the alarm was on the other side of the knot of passages, coming his way.
ssssA few moments later a soft, yellow light preceded an undulating mountain of flesh around the corner of the nearest passageway, and across to Reagis’ campsite. The floating light source stopped directly over the place he’d rested, and the amorphous mass that followed wheezed to a halt. Of Reagis there was no sign.
ssssThe visitor lifted a long fleshy protuberance from among its many folds, not unlike an arm, and poked around among Reagis’ equipment. Every movement seemed to bring on a fresh bout of wheezing. When it came upon the proximity sensor, lying on the sand, it held an instrument of its own above it for some time, then snorted, and settled down to wait.
ssssRealising the situation was at a standoff, Reagis moved slowly out of one of the side passages, his hands out in front of him, empty, with the fingers splayed open. He walked toward the bulky shape and stopped, waiting.
ssssThere was a full minute’s silence, with the two life forms regarding each other intently. As if making up its mind, the visitor turned – the light source whipping around to be in front of it once again – and made its way back the way it had come. When Reagis did not follow, it stopped, and pointed along the passageway ahead of it with what appeared to be its arm.
ssssReagis considered this, then quickly stowed his equipment and readied himself to travel again. The strange creature moved off, the same undulating method carrying it along at a moderate walking pace. Reagis fell in behind it, and switched his optics headset to normal vision. However he left the proximity sensor on, unable to hear if anything else might be approaching them over the laboured breathing of his rather large companion.
ssssIts body was more or less grey, flecked here and there with patches of light green. It must have been unaccustomed to much exercise, and its skin was soon coated with a thin slime, the smell of which was completely alien to Reagis, and somewhat unpleasant.
ssssIt was not long before Reagis began to think the creature in front of him had, most unusually, eyes in the back of its head. Riding atop the constantly changing mass of it was a more pronounced part that could perhaps be called a head. This was circled by a brown band that seemed to be the site for its sense organs. A pair of eyes regarded Reagis imperturbably as its body trundled relentlessly forward, though since it had brown pupils in the middle of brown irises, surrounded by brown skin, it was hard to tell what he was looking at.
ssssIf it was looking at him, he thought abruptly, then how could it see where it was going? The answer to his question came later, as they turned off the main path into a machined gallery that climbed steadily upward. He could now see a matching pair of eyes looking forward.
ssssAt the top of the incline they exited into a large storeroom – at least that was what Reagis thought it must be. There were piles of similar items everywhere, and a wall of electronics ran along one side. The roof overhead was sturdily made, with massive reinforcing piers running the length of the storeroom. Reagis guessed they were directly under the data base.
ssssHis companion produced one of the fleshy protuberances from within its many folds, and pointed to a pile of material in one corner, before searching for something with at least three of the rope-like arms that Reagis could see, amid the debris scattered on a low elevation along one wall. Reagis approached the material in the corner cautiously, scanning the area with his sensors and prodding it with an oddly shaped metal rod he found on the floor. Much of the soft material had stains on it, which Reagis guessed bemusedly came from the skin of his host.
ssssIn the end he decided the material in the corner was meant to be a place where he could sit down. It appeared his large, amorphous companion was trying to make him comfortable.
ssssHe looked at the electronics along the wall, but the setup was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It looked like a compilation of parts from many different civilisations – and different ages – considering how chunky some of them were and how streamlined and small other bits appeared.
ssss‘The Collector,’ as he’d decided to call it – because it had collected himself hadn’t it, and the storeroom was certainly a hoarder’s paradise – came back from the bench with something resembling a skull cap. It had evidently been trying to find something that would fit on Reagis’ head. Reagis took the headpiece and looked at the attached neural network. That, he was pretty sure, was a reasonable attempt at a linguist earpiece – except it wasn’t an earpiece and he wouldn’t hear any spoken words through it. Earth technology had abandoned this sort of reading the mind directly, because the results varied so much from person to person. A conversation within a group quickly deteriorated into misunderstanding. Still, if there was going to be just The Collector and himself, it might possibly work quite well.
ssssIt wasn’t as if he had a choice. He’d left his own linguist earpieces and the processor to drive them on the Lucky Streak. It had been partly a decision based on the weight he’d have to carry in, and the unlikeliness of finding a life form that could use them. It was certainly true there was no evidence of an ear that would take an earpiece on The Collector, or even confirmation it ‘heard’ at all.
ssssResignedly, he fitted the skull cap to his head. This sort of system always needed fine tuning, which was always pleasant, but he was too curious about The Collector to stop now. More importantly, The Collector had local knowledge. If there was a way into the data base above them, this undulating mound of flesh would know where it was.


ssssELEVEN

ssssThe Baccur ambassador stepped out of the heavily-armoured shuttle that had brought him to Kalken’s flagship. The shuttle alone, bristling with armaments, was capable of starting a small war. The ambassador looked around the docking bay with disdain. The immense size and power of a Carnii flagship did not impress him.
ssssThe ambassador was surrounded by a million points of muted light, points that shifted and stretched as he moved. His personal shield could withstand anything short of a nuclear attack.
ssssAn honour guard of orange Carnii formed up, and moved smartly with him to the bridge. He walked onto the bridge and snorted his displeasure, his bearing showing his contempt for this inferior fighting ship. His ultimate weapon, and he knew it, was the sub space coordinator that gave his exact location at all times. If he was harmed in any way, the Baccur warship that lay astern of Kalken’s flagship would empty its entire armoury into the last spot he had occupied.
ssssKalken welcomed the ambassador onto the bridge. She’d had to deal with the Baccur before, but that didn’t make it any less unpleasant. This one was definitely male, the array of spines behind the head taller, and darker purple, than for the females. The poisonous spines of the female, though, did a lot more damage.
ssssThe ambassador dropped onto his long front limbs. This was an aggressive fighting stance, his weight able to be taken on any of his four limbs, the other three all capable of dismembering anything close enough to touch. With his shorter rear limbs and sloping back, the ambassador looked like any number of tree dwellers on planets the Carnii had over-run, but that would be a foolish assumption to make. The Baccur were deadly, the only species to fight the Carnii to a standstill – and only beaten, in the end, by sheer force of numbers.
ssssWhy do we tolerate even a limited population of these killers, thought Kalken. Then – for a moment – realised the answer. They were so much like the Carnii. Their attitude to everything was so, so . . . extreme. They were loathed and secretly admired at the same time. To destroy them utterly would be like killing family.
ssssThen the insight was gone. To the Carnii such thoughts had no survival or strategic value, and so they were immediately discarded. There was no area of study remotely like psychology among the Carnii.
ssssThe city mind had decreed that Kalken go to the Plenium Council of all city minds with a request to use the Baccur as weapons against the rock dwellers, the planet scum with their increasingly dangerous dark ships. The Plenium Council had at first refused the request, but when the rock dwellers had unleashed a new weapon against the Fire Ships that had decimated them, then begun to destroy flagships, the council had agreed.
ssssNow it had fallen to Kalken, as she knew it would, to get the Baccur to pledge allegiance to Kalken’s cell in its fight against the rock dwellers, and to help the cell cement its hold on the area of space it now claimed as its own.
ssssIn principle it was the simplest of transactions. If the Baccur warships did not cooperate fully, the vast Carnii space stations in their home system would kill every living thing on the Baccur prison planet. If the Baccur were needed again, new stock could be bred from cell tissues frozen for that purpose, and the results could be indoctrinated with the same science and culture that made the Baccur what they were.
ssssNothing with the Baccur, however, was easy. At any sign of such ‘pressure’, the ambassador would fly into paroxysms of rage. Negotiating a workable deal would take many such visits – and all to deliver an unreliable ally. Kalken mentally shook her head, how had things come to this. Still, better get on with it; procrastinating was a sin in the eyes of the Carnii.

ssssThe Prometheus heads and an assortment of interested staff sat around the long, oval table in the boardroom, at the top of the admin block in Prometheus. The overhead dome was displaying scenery from the Amazonian jungle, one of Cordez’ favourite backdrops, in honour of his presence.
ssssA precision 3D animator had been set up on the table, and a 3D display of the Spiral Arm filled the air above it. Every one of those around the table looked on with interest.
ssss“We’re refining our understanding of the sub space traffic in our sector all the time,” said Matsu, tapping commands into the central processor.
ssss“But the problem until recently has been having only one site where we can detect ripples in the strings of space, here at Prometheus. This is an example of what we get from that sort of information.”
ssssA tangle of short lines filled the space between the stars, like so many partial threads of cotton wool. Each line was a message segment, and it was impossible to find a continuous communication track.
ssss“Now we’ve set up more sites – receivers on Alamos, Rok’H’Rok and Neerok – it’s a lot clearer, but we still lose track of individual messages if they’re near gravitational fields of anything larger than a small moon, like this.”
ssssThe four receiver sites showed up as blue dots, and the tangle of segments through the Spiral Arm became a mass of overlapping lines, individual messages blinking in and out of existence between star systems or out to starships in transit. There were concentrations of lines near certain star systems – they all knew that Prometheus was the cause of one of them – but exactly where the concentrations of sub space messages began and ended couldn’t be determined.
ssss“Then I thought of trying something new,” said Matsu, tapping in another quick command. “Something that would allow us to track sub space messages through gravitational fields. Meeaniro finally convinced me there was something not quite right with our version of string theory, so I tried a few applications of her interdimensional field theory.”
ssssAll eyes turned to the diminutive Mersa, who wriggled uncomfortably in her seat. Matsu tapped in some more commands, then seemed to be having some difficulties, swore, realised where he was, apologised, finished his corrections, and finally said with a flourish, “and that’s what we get!”
ssssAll the lines joined up, the points of origin now abundantly clear.
ssss“This is the sub space traffic for the last four days,” said Matsu, as layer after layer of lines built up, joining points of origin with points of destination. Many of them finished somewhere in space, presumably at a starship in transit, and this built up a background crosshatch to the rest of the picture. But some places solidified to become central hubs for sub space traffic. Prometheus was one, the Carnii armada around Ba’H’Rok was another. Minor concentrations – towns to the other’s cities – showed up around Alamos and each of the H’Dree colonies, who now used the sub space technology regularly. Equally present were the known sites of the Carnii shipyards.
ssssBut there was one megasite, a torrent of sub space traffic that connected to each of the Carnii sites and then off in a hundred well-beaten paths to sites in the Core.
ssss“What in the name of all the gods is that?” breathed Flinch, craning forward and stopping himself from reaching in and poking the nexus point in the 3D animation with his finger.
ssss“The Carnii central city,” said Cordez, equally on the edge of his seat. “It has to be. It’s what Sharmin discovered at the H’Roth archive. One city per cell she said. It’s the only place they congregate in large numbers, apart from the flagship crews. What did she say . . . could be for admin purposes, could be for government, could be a production centre; ultimate purpose unknown.”
ssssHe paused. “But it’s always in something like a red giant, one of the cooler stars.”
ssss“Almost,” said Matsu. “That nexus is inside Antares, a red supergiant, in the Scorpius constellation. It has a mass 17.2 times that of our own sun, but a radius 800 times larger.”
ssssBut that must give it a very low density,” said Carlos Paula, reaching for a digipad.
ssss“Less than one twenty millionth that of our sun,” said Matsu, “which means Antares is very near the end of its life. Surface temperature, though, is still 3500 degrees Kelvin.”
ssss“And the Carnii have built a city inside it?” said Ursul Vangretti, in awe.
ssss“Inside the surface layers, I’d say,” continued Matsu. “It’s not that it’s so much hotter further in, but the turbulence is going to be fierce. I’d want to build in the surface layers.”
ssss“Am I missing something here?” said Sallyanne in frustration. “I know I’m not a ‘hard science’ person, and I get it that the Carnii use plasma technology at thousands of degrees, but they couldn’t exist continuously as cylinders at that sort of temperature, could they?”
ssss“Possibly,” said Matsu, “but that’s not the problem. Energy processes get too unstable at high temperatures. And that means they’ll want their city to be ‘air conditioned’ to more moderate temperatures.”
ssss“Then where does the coolness come from?” persevered Sallyanne.
ssss"Heat can be shifted around,” cut in John MacEwart, more used to dealing with scientific principles in common language. “It’s what allows us to take the heat out of refrigeration units and transfer it to the air outside. The Carnii will do the same thing. They’ll create a heat barrier round their city, then pump some of the heat to the outside. So, they’ll drop the temperature inside the city by a few thousand degrees, and heat up the adjacent material of the sun by a few thousand degrees.
ssss“Actually,” he said, getting excited, “that’s going to promote solar activity on the surface above the city. If we look for areas of greater turbulence and intensified solar flares on the surface of Antares, we’ll be able to locate the city more easily.”
ssss“Good point,” said Cordez. “Flinch, I want that system mapped in detail, and I want it done from long-range. No point in tipping them off that we know where they are. Think you can do it?”
ssss“What else is in the Antares system?” replied Flinch, taking a closer look at a schematic taken from the 3D image.
ssss“Antares B,” said Matsu. “A companion star. Hot blue sun in a close to 900 year orbit around Antares. No planets. The companion star has sucked in any material wanting to form planets around the supergiant.”
ssss“We’ll see what we can do,” said Flinch.
ssssCordez nodded.
ssssThere was an air of excitement in the boardroom, a strange exhilaration that affected everybody. At last, it seemed, they had everything they needed – a name for their enemy, a place where they lived, and an understanding of what the Carnii wartime capabilities were. Destroying them suddenly looked feasible.
ssssSallyanne had brought Eden Wayfarer along to the meeting. A starship technician wouldn’t normally be part of a Prometheus planning session, but there were so few opportunities for them to be together lately she’d grabbed this chance for them both to attend.
ssssIt was either live each day not really seeing enough of each other, or moving into the same sleeping quarters, and she wasn’t ready for that. Oh, everything was going fine, in fact more than fine, but she’d been on her own for so long she wasn’t ready to plan her day around someone else in her life.
ssssEden seemed to understand. He was working hard to fit into the huge research complex himself, and didn’t really have time to set up house with Sallyanne. He slid his hand down her leg under the table, and she shivered despite herself. He smiled, enjoying his power over her, and she smiled back. He was good all right. Good at, well, everything; but she still didn’t know if what she felt for him was just infatuation, or the genuine pleasure of meeting a similar mind.
ssssHe was handsome enough, that was for sure, and his command of Univoc had become almost indistinguishable from her own. Sallyanne felt a proprietary glow as Ursul Vangretti snatched a sidelong glance at Eden, probably wondering where Sallyanne had found him.
ssssShe thought for a moment how great it was that Sharmin and Roberto also seemed to have reached an understanding. Roberto wasn’t present, but Sharmin had already contributed to topics earlier in the meeting.
ssssThe chatter of technical details about the red giant seemed to have slowed down, and Sallyanne was brought back to the meeting by the sound of Cordez’ commanding voice.
ssss“Well done, people. That’s a real breakthrough,” said Cordez, stopping to share the moment, the sense of achievement, with them all. Then he moved on to the next subject.
ssssEvery person in that room knew they had no idea how to destroy a city within a star, even a relatively cool star, but they also knew they were going to find out how to do it.

ssssReagis adjusted the neural network on his head. Some of the points weren’t making good contact with his scalp, so he wrapped a piece of his clothing turban-like around it. The tail from the neural net snaked across the floor, and into the bank of electronics along the wall. The Collector moved some of the dials – it seemed to have extremely fine motor control of its boneless ‘arms’ – and Reagis felt the neural net come alive.
ssssHe sighed, knowing from experience what was coming. The worst of it would be the uncomfortable feeling as the meaning of his words was scrambled by the net. He tried to relax. With an effort he stopped the flow of thoughts in his mind, and felt the parasympathetic nerve centres in his body begin to wind down. Tension released itself as a shiver between his heart and stomach.
ssssThe neural net began to whisper things to him, and ghostly images formed in front of his eyes. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, and focused them on the far end of The Collector’s storeroom. He knew it would be best if he tried to dissociate himself from what was going on.
ssssWords and images began to ‘find’ each other in the murk of his verbal and visual memories. The process began to speed up. Reagis risked a glance at The Collector, and wasn’t surprised to find it jerking spasmodically as it clasped a much larger neural net like a cape around what he had taken to be its head. The process evidently wasn’t pleasant for it, either.
ssssReagis felt a spasm of pain, and focused on the far end of the storeroom once again.
ssssThe images were a blur now, and the whispering voices were talking at a speed he couldn’t follow. He hung on doggedly, looking at his armband once to see that almost an hour had passed. When the process became too much he closed his eyes, and his consciousness retreated to a meditation point he had built into his mind years before. He could maintain a sense of normalcy while his consciousness resided there – and conserve his energy – until the rest of him was capable of action once again.
ssssHe didn’t know how long he stayed in that isolated place.
ssssThe room was suddenly quiet, as if a crowd of people had fallen silent. There was still a multicoloured pattern, something like a sunset, hanging before his eyelids, but at least it wasn’t moving, wasn’t thinking of changing into something else. He cautiously opened his eyes.
ssssThe Collector was stretching itself, bit by bit – at least that’s what it looked like, some sort of attempt to ‘get the kinks out’. Reagis gingerly poked at the neural net on his head. It appeared to have finished with him. He unwound his thermal one-piece and lifted the net off his head. His mouth was dry.
ssss“I hope it worked, after all that effort,” he said thickly. The words buzzed, as if there were echoes in the storeroom and another voice was talking.
ssssThe Collector surveyed him gravely. “I think so,” it said at last.
ssssReagis smiled. He didn’t know where The Collector took in food, but it was clear its mechanism for producing sound was an entirely different system. It seemed to boom its ‘voice’ straight out from a resonating cavity directly under the sensory terminal. Reagis’ brain then translated the meaning, in a newly-trained part of his unconscious mind, and fed the result to the area that normally recognised input from his ears.
ssssThe process seemed to be working.
ssss“Are there others like you on this planet?” asked Reagis, intrigued because his sensors had not reported any significant life forms on the surface, and no active technology outside the cities.
ssss“I don’t know,” said The Collector slowly. “We are a solitary people. I haven’t seen another of my race in, mmm, a hundreds or more years.”
ssssReagis was a little startled by this revelation.
ssss“Perhaps you could tell me more about your people,” he began, hesitantly. “If you don’t mind discussing them with me.”
ssssThe Collector seemed, somehow, surprised.
ssss“What is worth talking about? We like the cool places, the places under the ground. We live alone, each of us with a lot of distance from our neighbours.”
ssssThe Collector became almost conspiratorial.
ssss“The Caerbrindii say that they were the first. Or they did say that when they were here. But they weren’t the first. We were here before them – and now we’re here after them.
ssss“These days, no one comes to the old cities but those horrible orange things, and thank the Spirit of the Living Ground that’s hardly ever.”
ssssReagis figured The Collector and its type must be extremely long lived, and they must have a tremendous oral tradition of stories handed down over thousands of years. He also realised they didn’t know the Caerbrindii had developed into three new species.
ssssHe asked The Collector where it got its understanding of machines from.
ssss“The Caerbrindii used us as memory banks, and as calculators – of a sort – in the early days. I think they changed us in some way, perhaps enhanced our abilities. I know our memories of using technology start at the same time as our memories of the Caerbrindii.
ssssReagis nodded, then wondered if moving his head had any meaning for The Collector.
ssss“I understand,” he added, then moved on to other questions. “If you live alone for so much of your life, how do your people reproduce themselves?”
ssssThe Collector seemed surprised. It hesitated, and various ripples rolled through the rotund mound of flesh, ending as some of the many arms lifted and dropped, not unlike a human shrug.
ssss“The same way all life does,” it said, uncertainly.
ssssReagis explained the two forms of the Human species, and the process of combining cell DNA leading to variation in reproduction.
ssssThe Collector was silent for a very long time.
ssss“So many,” it said at last. “So many of you. And always together. Mmm. Doesn’t it drive you insane?”
ssssReagis was about to say yes, it often felt that way in relationships, when he realised The Collector wasn’t asking about a simple thing like social happiness.
ssss“We developed in a different way to your people,” he said. “The universe is a big place, and there is room for many experiments in different types of awareness.”
ssssHe wasn’t sure the Collector understood him. It would pay to be more literal, he thought, to make his explanations more concrete.
ssss“There are not, mmm, more of your people in the mountains?” said The Collector, and the patches of light green on its body deepened in colour. Reagis took this to be an alarm signal.
ssss“No, no one else,” he hastily reassured it. “I came to this planet alone.” Then a thought struck him. Cordez had talked about the translators, the Orion, who made clear the wishes of the Drua. This speech pattern, these pauses and the musical note that accompanied them, were typical of the Orion.
ssss“You are not related to the people called Orion?” he hazarded.
ssssThe Collector appeared, in the same way as before, to be somehow surprised. “Orion is just a story,” it said. “A story of the old times. There has been nothing to support this story in, mmm, many thousands of years on this planet.”
ssssHowever, it seemed willing to continue, and Reagis settled back to listen.
ssss“Some of us, the Old Ones who were here when the Caerbrindii came to awareness on this planet, eventually went out among the stars with them. Then war and division broke out among the Caerbrindii, and the Old Ones who were with them wanted to start a new life, on a new planet among the stars. News came to us that they had learned how to live on the surface of a hot, dry planet, with few of the underground spaces we Old Ones cherish. They had chosen a new name for themselves, called themselves after the stars where they had settled.
ssss“Then we heard nothing more about them. It has been, mmmm, seventeen birthings since our race memory records any news of the Orion.”
ssssReagis found this fascinating. It was very likely the Orion had developed from creatures like The Collector. He remembered his original question, asking how The Collector and his like reproduced themselves.
ssss“What is involved in a birthing?” he asked. “And how many of this planet’s years do you normally count between birthings?”
ssssThe Collector considered this.
ssss“We do not need to share this . . . DNA . . . for variation in our offspring. Perhaps our DNA is more . . . flexible. Each of us deposits hundreds of tiny life pods – mmm, your word ‘egg’ is not right – in secret underground places, and our young develop there. They instinctively band together for protection, and they are very fast when they are newly hatched, very dangerous.” The Collector’s ample bulk waved left and right for a moment.
ssss“Not like us Old Ones,” it said, and Reagis wondered if it was laughing.
ssss“Communication is instinctive in the first days, passed on by touching together sensitive plates on their heads, and what one learns, all learn. There are still losses among them due to accidents and, mmm, predators, and then further losses when the time comes to fight among themselves for territory. Those that survive become Old Ones, with a large territory of their own.”
ssssReagis was intrigued. This was a different type of development from anything he’d come across on the many planets he had visited.
ssss“And how long does it take from the birthing to becoming an Old One?” he prompted.
ssssThe Collector seemed to be thinking.
ssss“A good figure is about 320 of the years of this planet,” he decided. Reagis translated that to close to 400 Earth years.
ssss“But an Old One is not able to start a birthing process until about 900 years,” added The Collector. A minimum of a thousand years between generations, thought Reagis, and that meant at least 17,000 years since The Collectors on Mentuk had heard news of the Orion.
ssss“How did you come to collect so much technology,” said Reagis, waving his hand toward the bank of electronics along the wall beside him. The Collector did not seem, to him, to have the means of building such things itself.
ssssThe Collector subsided into a lower, wider mound on the floor. Either it was getting tired or changing its body shape helped its thinking processes.
ssss“Old Ones live underground, and the softer, flatter land where the old cities were built has always been a good place for weather to wear away tunnels. Old Ones often choose sites like this, under the old buildings of the Caerbrindii.
ssss“The buildings are protected, by electronic alarms, and by, mmm, sentinels, like small, fast machines. But the Old Ones have all the time in the world. There is always a way.”
ssssYes, thought Reagis, he’d picked up the mobile units from space, and he would bet they were electronic hounds of some sort. The data base, however, had showed no signs of any such protection.
ssss“Did this equipment come from inside the data base, the building above?” he asked directly.
ssss“Perhaps, perhaps not,” said The Collector evasively, and Reagis was puzzled by its sudden reluctance to share information. If The Collector understand what he wanted to do, and why it was so important, it might be more helpful.
ssssReagis explained his mission. He stressed the need to stop the Carnii coming to the Caerbrindii planet, or any planet, and explained the Carnii simply as the ‘horrible orange things’ The Collector had already encountered. The secrets of the Caerbrindii – the information in the database above – could decide who would triumph in this war across so many worlds.
ssssThe Collector was silent for a long time.
ssss“I need access to the database, so I can help my people fight the Carnii” pleaded Reagis, when the silence had gone on a bit too long.
ssss“That is not the problem,” said The Collector. “The problem is one of, mmmm, time. To build a dwelling place like this, a rakrath, a storeroom as you call it, takes hundreds of years. It is the task of an Old One to prepare a safe place for the time of birthing. Everything here . . ,” It paused and both pairs of eyes swivelled about the room, “was taken from the building above, bit by bit, so its absence would not be noticed.
ssss“If you bring the orange monsters to the data base I may lose this place, and have to start preparing for the birthing all over again.”
ssssReagis understood. He was asking too much of The Collector.
ssss“Still, Old Ones have died in the past because of these ‘Carnii’ you talk about, and it seems right the Carnii should be punished,” continued his large, fleshy companion, hoisting itself up into a new position, the light green patches on its hide becoming noticeably paler.
ssss“Perhaps the risk that comes with helping you is worth it.”
ssssReagis reassured The Collector that he would move as swiftly and silently as the reptilian predators he had seen on the mountain slopes, when he was inside the database. The Carnii, he stated firmly, would have little chance of detecting his presence. The Collector seemed to find this funny. Its sensory terminal bobbed up and down, and when it spoke it wheezed out the words.
ssss“You seem not the right shape to move like the vermyk, the killers that roam the mountainside, mmm, but I have the meaning of what you are saying.”
ssssAnd so a plan was formed. The Collector would seal off its dwelling place and hope it wasn’t discovered, should Reagis trigger an alarm and bring the Carnii to the data base. It would then move through the cave system until it arrived at a safe place much further down the mountainside, following an underground stream that began on the plateau. Before it went, it would show Reagis a way into the data base.
ssssThe preparations took several days, but at last The Collector was ready. Reagis followed its undulating bulk as they squeezed through minor passages and made several circular detours.
ssss“Nothing track us back to the rakrath I think,” it wheezed at last, and entered a large underground cavern with a lake in the middle. There was an odd smell of machinery in the air. The exercise had brought out a good sweat on The Collector, and Reagis had to take several steps to one side before he noticed the smell of machinery over the alien smell of his new ally.
ssss“Data base needs constant temperature,” said The Collector. “This is dumping ground for, mmm, you say, water vapour reducing?”
ssss“Dehumidifier,” said Reagis, supplying the word for The Collector. It made sense. Cool air taken into the data base from here would be at a constant temperature, regardless of the weather above, and excess moisture would be dumped back into the lake in the middle of the cavern.
ssss“This way,” said The Collector, and set off round the lake towards an artificial-looking wall on their left. As they approached, it became clear this was a maintenance area for the data base above. The Collector stopped by a panel in the wall and produced a box-like tool of some sort.
ssssReagis was surprised. Did it have the equivalent of a tool belt somewhere under its many folds of flesh?
ssssThe Collector unlocked the panel, and placed it to one side with some of its rubbery arms.
ssss“In there,” it indicated with another arm, “is the platform, mmm, lift? The way up into the floors above. Your species is, mmmm, agile enough to climb up inside the structure. The controls for the doors at the top can be over-ridden. If you push them apart with your hands the alarm system will not register an unauthorised entry.”
ssssThe Collector used the control system at the bottom of the lift to show Reagis how to over-ride the one at the top. Then Reagis was ready to enter the data base.
ssss“Thank you, my friend,” he said, not sure if there was a way he could show his deep appreciation to this Old One.
ssss“It is a gift, do not count it as a cost,” said The Collector. It lifted one arm, with the back of the delicate paddle-like hand at the end toward its companion. Reagis in turn pressed the back of his hand against The Collector’s.
ssss“Balance is restored,” said The Collector enigmatically. “The Carnii came to our planet to destroy, and now you have come to help. The Spirit of the Living Ground go with you.” It dropped its arm, then turned and headed back around the lake, its imposing bulk undulating over the rocky floor.
ssssReagis turned back to the panel. He lifted his field equipment through the hole and stepped through after it. He lifted the panel into place, and it sealed itself behind him. He donned a set of optics, turned on the infrared, and looked up.
ssssThe Collector had a lot of faith in his climbing ability, he thought with a wry grin. There was one thick cable hanging down the middle of the shaft, and narrow guiding rails on two walls – nothing he could easily ascend. Still, better get on with it.
ssssIt was an exhausted Reagis who finally made it to the top platform some time later, sitting on the floor and stretching out his legs to control the cramps that had started near the top of his climb. That has to be at least three storeys high, he muttered, to no one in particular.
ssssThe next step was the over-ride on the doors. At least that worked perfectly, just as The Collector had shown him. He forced the doors far enough apart to throw his equipment through, then squeezed through himself. He let the doors close behind him, and looked about.
ssssThe data base was more straightlined and boxlike than he’d expected. The H’Roth archive had been heavily worked in an abstract art form, but this was more like Earth in the 21st century – before the Pluraformist architectural revolution was made possible by huge advances in building techniques. The data technology in the rows of memory banks, though, was many centuries ahead of Earth at that time.
ssssReagis tried to work out when the data base had been constructed. The H’Roth archive had been built about 300 thousand years before the H’Roth disappeared, and it seemed reasonable the Caerbrindii must have preceded that by at least half a million years. So, the data base was at least a million years old then.
ssssReagis made his way toward a terminal ahead of him. He was counting on the data base being heavily alarmed against approaches from the outside, but on the inside only protected against instrument failure or fire. He walked over a floor reminiscent of an early terracotta mosaic. The air smelled clean, and a gentle breeze brushed by him, moving from right to left.
ssssHe set himself up at the terminal, a straightforward affair built for a creature much taller than himself. Fortunately there were stacks of hexagonal shelving along the wall behind him, and he built a platform in the shelves at head height, where he could handily access the data system through the back of the terminal.
ssssReagis let his code cracker software do most of the work. He fed images of the internal circuitry into the software, and watched as it figured out which terminals must be responsible for which functions. Finally, it stopped, two small bridges on the central circuit board illuminated.
ssssRight then, said Reagis to himself. Place the data input here, and the silencer here. He did so, and waited quietly for signs the security systems had recognised his handiwork. No alarms went off, nothing changed in the cavernous vaults of the data base.
ssssI’m in! he thought, triumphantly, and opened up a research line into the memory vaults. Now to learn the language, he thought, and began to scroll through the first file he came to, while the translation program built up its repertoire. It took less time than he expected, and it was not long before he had to decide where to start searching the Caerbrindii records for information that might be useful to the Alliance.
ssssIf there’s anything like that around, it’ll be in the political section, he muttered, as he wrestled with the index system, or there may be something in Caerbrindii biology.
ssssHe looked around. The data base looked quiet enough. He was now halfway through the waking part of the cycle he’d adopted since he’d gone underground and been taken in by The Collector. That gave him another six or seven hours to go before he’d need to sleep. He stretched. This is going to be very interesting, he murmured, and turned back to work the terminal again.
ssssAbove him, perfectly camouflaged against the high ceiling of the data base vaults, a single lens watched him at work. Reagis had been wrong in one of his basic assumptions. The interior of the data base was, in fact, closely monitored.
ssssRecognising an ‘unauthorised use of terminal’ situation, the alarm system sent a silent message to the nearest of the abandoned Caerbrindii cities, and it lit up on the surveillance board of the Carnii monitoring systems there. A squad of light, fast, electronic hounds rolled out of the security base, and began the long trip to the data base in the mountains.
ssssReagis would have much less time to search through the Caerbrindii memory banks than he’d anticipated.


ssssTWELVE

ssssThistledown Abbey had been replaced by the most modern of buildings – the most modern on Alamos, at least. Abbess Domine was still head of operations at the research site, but the number of labs had grown by a factor of eight, and the staff in her care by a factor of twelve.
ssssShe stared at the huge electronic noticeboard that dominated one wall of the community room where the different departments met to discuss their progress. It was headed Lukerina Project, and the number of scientific investigations currently underway filled the whole wall with headings like ‘areas of investigation’, ‘research hypotheses’, and ‘progress to date’.
ssssShe shook her head. It had been a long time since she’d really understood how each piece of the puzzle fitted together, even with five assistant heads now to help her. Still, she was the figurehead, the confidante, the old hand, and all these busy insects seemed perfectly happy to give of their best, as long as they knew the little queen quoya of the insect nest was still in charge.
ssssThe Abbess marked six cycles of supplication to the forgiving god on the cuff of her habit. She would do them later, in penance for the arrogance of thinking herself the queen of the busy nest all about her.
ssssStill, they’d had some outstanding successes – Prometheus had come to rely on them for help in quite a number of areas – and the best of the Mersa scientists didn’t now have to leave Alamos to be at the forefront of research for the war effort against the Carnii.
ssssIt had been no small decision to turn over their outermost planets to the Alliance for mining, and lately as bases for the huge nuclear accelerators that made ramecium for the Alliance starships. Then of course the Carnii had destroyed the accelerator on the outermost ice planet, but been beaten off with heavy losses by the extraordinary weapons the H’Roth had left the Humans, the Valkrethi. Many Mersa had died on the ice planet, and it had brought home to Alamos the meaning of their commitment to the Alliance, and in some strange way deepened it.
ssssAbbess Domine was roused from her reverie as the door at the end of the community room slid open, and a smiling Matsu Fujimi, with Meeaniro at his side, swept into the room, trailing diminutive Mersa assistants and fellow researchers like leaves in the wake of a dust devil.
ssss“Abbess!” exclaimed Matsu, his face beaming as he recognised her. In his many trips to the Lukerina Project they had spoken at length, and he had eventually come to understand the basis for her beliefs. He now considered her something of a mentor in personal and spiritual matters.
ssss“We’ve done it,” he continued, waving a pile of printouts as he advanced down the long table toward her. “Longest goddamn’t set of calculations I’ve ever had the misfortune to work through.
ssss“Oh, sorry, your holiness,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye, apologising for his irreverence.
ssss“I’m sure you’re not,” she replied with a smile. “Beside, you work it out with your god, don’t bother me about it!”
ssss“Touché,” he smiled. The awkward and overly sensitive scientific genius had finally, it seemed, found something of himself in his relationship with the wise old Mersa woman running Thistledown, even though she came barely to his shoulder and was covered in pale brown fur.
ssss“Meeaniro came through again,” he confided, causing his fellow researcher to go a noticeable pink underneath her fur. The Abbess smiled. Even when she had been a raw novice, Meeaniro had been one of the few Mersa able to generate a noticeable blush.
ssss“I don’t know how she does it. We find ourselves stumped for days, and suddenly she sees a pattern. I sure as comets trail ice don’t see it until she explains it to me.
ssss“On the other hand she can be decidedly unobservant about more mundane things,” he added, looking innocently up toward the ceiling.
ssssThe Mersa assistants tittered and nudged Meeaniro.
ssss“Enough,” said the Abbess in a businesslike way, not wanting to put Meeaniro through more teasing. “You have something to show me?”
ssssMatsu sat down, and the others followed. He grew very serious.
ssss“I don’t enjoy finding ways of killing Carnii, much as it seems necessary,” he said, sharing with the Abbess her concern for all forms of life, “but we have at last found a way of towing thermonuclear missiles into Fire Ships, or flagships, in fact placing them wherever we want, through sub space pulses.
ssss“Technically we can’t send anything through sub space – it doesn’t have the same physical dimensions as our 3D space – but we can send a faster than light pulse generated by ramecium decay energy, and guide it to any point in space by a sub space beam. We can tow small objects behind the pulse, as Meeaniro did when she first brought the cylinder to Thistledown, and that includes missiles. It’s not instantaneous – the objects still have to travel through normal space – but it’s at faster than light speeds.
ssss“The problem has long been whether the Carnii can track the pulse back to us, and reverse the process. A Fire Ship could send something back toward a Javelin before it was itself destroyed, thus ensuring a self-destruction sequence for whoever fired a pulse first. However, I think we’ve found a way to block sub space pulses the Carnii send back at us.”
ssssStill, he didn’t seem overly pleased at his success.
ssss“The problem,” he continued, “is that the Carnii will eventually discover how to block the sub space pulses as well, particularly once they see how we do it.”
ssssHe paused.
ssss“Despite all the hard work, I think we’ve only bought the Alliance a very small window of opportunity. We’ve got maybe one strike that will work, before the Carnii figure out how to stop that particular trick in future attacks.
ssss“It’s going to be hard to decide when to use it.”
ssssAbbess Domine was silent for a long time. The moral questions such a strike capability posed tested her spiritual convictions sorely. It was only that she trusted the maturity and wholeness of the senior people within the Alliance that allowed her to be a part of the Lukerina Project.
ssss“Thank you for reporting to me first,” she said formally. “I will check with the High Council, but I should soon be able to give you clearance to contact Regent Cordez with details of your work.” Privately she wondered what First Councillors Fallostrina and Mordiselli would make of this as well.
ssssMatsu nodded. It was the breakthrough he and Meeaniro had been desperate for, but it opened up as many new questions as it did possibilities.
ssssFortunately, he could hand all those on to Cordez.

ssssThe lookout at the Shellport docks was the first to see the scattered collection of sails as they rounded the seaward limit of the sea forest and entered the main channel of the Kapuas river. It wasn’t long before he could count four dooplehuel in the convoy.
ssssIt had to be Hudnee and Battrick. They’d gone out with three dooplehuel and fifteen villagers. The other dooplehuel probably carried Menon and Metris.
ssssThe lookout sounded the alarm, and set off to report personally to Habna. The four craft had a steady following wind as they sailed up the lower reaches of the Kapuas, and they’d tied up at the docks before he returned with her.
ssss“I thought you were a dead man,” said Hudnee to Battrick, as they stepped onto the dock. He was reliving yet again the moment when the Carnii war machine had rampaged over the torpedo team after they’d beached on the island across from the shuttle.
ssssBattrick nodded, and bowed his head for a moment.
ssss“I was,” he said, matter of factly, “until you twisted that rod and stopped those burning orange scum in their tracks.”
ssssThey both looked up as Dreesa and Menona pushed their way through the crowd that had gathered to greet the new arrivals. Dreesa pulled back one hand and drove a hard right into Hudnee’s face, glancing her fist off his right cheek. It hurt her hand like crazy, but she knew better than to try a roundhouse slap, which would have been easily stopped by the veteran campaigner.
ssss“You treacherous, double-crossing, swamp scum,” she yelled into his face. “You promised me you’d only watch the attack at The Barrens, that you’d stay safely on one of the islands. You were ‘too old to chance your arm in anything like that’, eh? What about ‘I won’t be in any danger?’ or ‘what could go wrong?’ ”
ssssShe pulled her arm back for another punch, but Hudnee hastily backed up, so she folded her arms in front of her, and stamped angrily on the boards of the dock instead.
ssssDamn’t women remember everything a man says, thought Hudnee in desperation. It’s not fair!
ssssHe stepped warily forward, saying, “things just happened, Dreesa – you know how it is – I didn’t have a chance to stop and think about it,” but she raised her fists again.
ssssThen he saw the tears in her eyes and understood.
ssssShe’d thought his fighting days were over. She’d thought she would never again have to wait for him, enduring uncertain days and agonising nights, hoping he hadn’t been badly hurt – or worse.
ssssHe took her in his arms, smothering her struggles, until she clung desperately to him while he murmured endearments in her ears. The others on the dock didn’t know whether to good-humouredly voice their encouragement, or leave the two of them to their private moment. In the end people drifted off onto the walkways, and headed back to their duties.
ssssDreesa pushed Hudnee away, and he took her hand, looking contritely down at the dock. The two girls ran up to greet their father with squeals of delight, and he lead his family back to their wooden house among the giant trees of the sea forest.
ssssThe story of the Alliance attack on the mining base at The Barrens became a legend over the following days and quadroons of the Hud year. Those in the militia already knew of the miracles performed by the Human medical team, and some had even seen the strange shape that had fallen out of the sky to bring the medical team to the militia on the march to Roum. But the attack on The Barrens had been a display of concentrated sound and fire that had been beyond their comprehension.
ssssIt was also the topic under discussion at the meeting on the first day of the following quadroon, when Hudnee, Dreesa, Habna, Menon, Menona and Battrick were once again gathered at Habna’s to discuss the running of Shellport.
ssssHabna was more steamed up than Hudnee could remember seeing her for some time.
ssss“I’ve had to speak to several of the villagers about setting up shrines to the pale ones in their houses,” she said emphatically. “For the sake of all we hold dear, what is the matter with them!”
ssssShe subsided, clearly making an effort to control herself.
ssss“The Humans are people, just like us. They feel and they think. They are not the powers that run the universe! Slave-like devotion to anything, spiritual or not, just throws away personal power for nothing. There is no growth in that!”
ssss“We all know that, Habna,” said Menon reassuringly. “It was you that taught me how people will be people, and often foolish with it. That’s when we have to show them a better way, and hope they’ll come round to it when they’re ready.”
ssssHabna snorted. “I know that, it’s just so . . . hard. I was there at the birth of most of these people. They’re like my own, and it hurts me to see them making foolish choices.”
ssssEveryone present nodded. There didn’t seem to be much more any of them could say. Habna knew what she needed to do, she was just having trouble adjusting to the situation.
ssss“Prometheus wants more pilots for the Alliance Javelins,” broke in Menona, in her role as keeper of the sub space radio Reegis had left behind. “Despite the fact the war effort now revolves around the Valkrethi, Flinch tells me Cordez is already anticipating further changes, changes that are likely to bring the Javelins back into the front line.”
ssssThey were all silent for a while, thinking about the Valkrethi. Menon and Metris had described the immense alloy and composite giants that had landed at Spitzbergen, and how the pale strangers climbed up, and rode inside them. It was more than the villagers could really understand.
ssss“We’ll have to send word much further afield if we want more trainees,” said Menon. Habna had set a limit on the number of villagers who could volunteer from any one area, so those available to hunt, fish and forage for each community did not drop below a reasonable level.
ssssAs the scouts travelled further afield each time to recruit volunteers, it was taking longer to explain the situation to villagers for whom the pale strangers were little more than rumours.
ssss“Metris and I could start out in a day or two,” said Menon. “Dooplehuel catches at Shellport have been good lately, and some of the land animals are coming back in increasing numbers. Menona tells me we’re ahead on seaweed quotas, and the trial tuber plantings in the sandhills are doing well.”
ssssMenona sighed. She didn’t relish the thought of losing Menon for several quadroons while he took the request for pilots to the villages inland. At least she was unlikely to be in Dreesa’s position, and find out her man had been caught up in fierce fighting once again. Dreesa reached across and squeezed her hand.
ssss“Where is Metris?” said Battrick, looking at Menon.
ssss“Down at Spitzbergen, overseeing another load of gravel,” came the reply. Along with the trial plantings of tubers in the sandhills had come decisions by some of the villagers to build Hudnee’s houses of rock, his urdra mix as he’d named it, along the beaches, closer to the tuber plantings.
ssssHabna nodded her head, as she often did when she was thinking.
ssssTheir society was changing, she realised. They were becoming more settled in one place, and more dependent on the land. Would the old ways of dependence on the sea, building houses among the giant trees of the sea forest, one day no longer be needed? She would have to think about this – consider carefully whether it was a good thing or not – and whether it really mattered in the overall growth of awareness among the people of Hud.

ssssSharmin was engrossed in the tantalising material Roberto was presenting to the research team. They’d been so busy with essential work for the war effort that he’d had to confine his interest in the Drua to what little spare time he had. Still, he’d slowly pieced together more information about this elusive offshoot of the Caerbrindii, working from the data they’d downloaded at the main H’Roth archive.
ssssFortunately, Sharmin still felt comfortable working with Roberto, but when she met him outside work hours, or away from the supporting environment of her office, her heart raced and her legs turned to jelly.
ssss“There’s no evidence of a Drua home planet,” said Roberto. “Or anything that might be an admin base, a mining site, or a hidden city. Still, they frequent the area of sparse stars and unimaginable distances at the edges of the galaxy. Who knows what’s out there.
ssss“There’s mounting evidence they use wormholes to travel extreme distances around the outside of the galaxy. This would be the most sophisticated technology we’ve ever come across in an alien race.”
ssssThe research team were silent for a moment. If this were true it would open up incalculable possibilities.
ssss“I thought Grisham’s Proof showed the energy to set up a wormhole, if we ever had the technology, was greater than the energy used by the ramecium drive to cover the same distance,” said Andre.
ssss“Yes, definitely,” replied Roberto, “but the Drua may have found a more efficient way of doing things. No one’s factored in a sub space framework supporting a wormhole in normal space, for instance.”
ssssAndre subsided, still not impressed with the possibility of wormhole travel.
ssssRoberto activated a 3D animator on the large, central table. He brought up an image of a long, dragon-like figure they were all familiar with. It moved restlessly within the field of the animator. For a moment it seemed to turn its head, so that dark eyes within a halo of sharp plates looked questioningly at them.
ssssRoberto had taken over investigations into the shape, anatomy and function of the Drua form as his own personal area of interest, in the same way he’d previously researched similar areas for the H’Roth. He was fast becoming their resident expert on the anatomy of alien form and biological function.
ssss“The original Drua had limbs, I’m fairly certain of that. The build up to a technological society has to involve something to manipulate the environment with. However, I’ve now unearthed a number of images, and several graphic representations, that show them without limbs. Since the Drua, like the Carnii, embraced the concept of a hybrid form, they could have changed their DNA so limbs didn’t form at birth.
ssss“The big surprise is that closer inspection shows the limbs have been surgically removed. Apart from the many questions as to why they might do that, the big question is, how do they manipulate their environment?” He paused, to let them digest this.
ssss“In the places where we would expect their limbs to be, we find mechanical inserts. This is nothing more than a small alloy plate and a raised metal dome on the outside, but I’m imagining an insert, flush with the exterior skin, that’s connected to the nerve endings that used to manipulate the limb. To understand anything more we have to take a leap of faith.
ssss“I think the dome sends messages to any machine you want to activate in your environment.
ssss“Imagine you have a couple of these inserts in your chest, as well as retaining your arms and legs. Er, ladies, you can imagine the same, a little lower down.”
ssssSharmin and Jubilate grinned at his discomfort. For Sharmin, it did her good to see him as only Human. She’d been building him up too much in her mind lately.
ssss“So, you have a fork full of breakfast in one hand, and a cup in the other, and you want to clean up the preparation area. Part of your mind sends signals through your inserts to the servo-mechanisms in the preparation area to clean up while you finish your meal. You don’t just switch some sort of ‘on’ button, you actually send continuous signals to the servo-mechanisms – as if your ‘hands’ were present and active there – while you enjoy your breakfast.
ssss“This suggests the Drua mind has evolved to be much more capable of multi-tasking than we are. The inability of the Drua to communicate in simple declarative sentences supports this idea also. Their thought processes appear vague and hard to understand to us – especially in their use of language – because they’re doing ten things at once.”
ssssThe research team found this fascinating, but Roberto now had little more to add. Investigations into Drua starships had drawn a blank, as had investigations into the Drua social structure.
ssssWhen the meeting was over, Roberto followed Sharmin back to her office. Once they were both inside he tapped the door panel and the door slid shut. Sharmin overlooked the breach of protocol – in her office she would normally decide what the settings of the office were – and looked up enquiringly.
ssss“Madam looks tired,” he began sympathetically. “It would appear Madam needs to have some time away from the demands of work. Would Madam care to be squired to The Orchid Room for dinner?”
ssss“Have you been taking lessons from Andre?” she said with a smile. “Him and his knights and ladies. It usually gets him a clip across the back of the head from Jubilate. I’d question your approach if I were you.”
ssss“Ah,” said Roberto, pretending to be crestfallen, “to be compared to such a lesser being.”
ssssSharmin had to work hard to suppress a smile.
ssss“Don’t let Andre hear you say that,” she said sternly.
ssssShe considered his proposal. The Orchid Room was Prometheus’ attempt to provide a more sophisticated eating establishment, and she had to say it was nice. The thought of going there with Roberto didn’t bother her – it was a public place – but what if he wanted to move on to somewhere else, where they could be alone. And he would want to be alone with her, she thought. There was no doubt in her mind about that.
ssssHer heart began to race all over again. Don’t think about it, she told herself desperately. One thing at a time, just deal with what’s in front of you, damn’t!
ssssOnce she’d calmed down a little, she accepted his invitation with a brief smile; and then cut the conversation short, pleading an inundation of work. He suggested a time for them to meet, and left her office with an ornate Elizabethan flourish. Once he’d left the office she dropped her head into her arms.
ssssWouldn’t it be easier just to stay away from men for the rest of her life? But then part of her refused to keep hiding from something for the rest of her born days. It was a coward’s way out. Besides, there was always the possibility of some sort of internal change in her – it was just the discomfort of that change that stopped most people from making the attempt.
ssssRoberto was prompt. It was 1800 hours exactly when the door to her rooms recognised Roberto as the caller, and announced him. It was very fortunate she was a head of department and had a set of rooms to herself, she thought anxiously. She’d tried on everything she owned in a frantic attempt to appear formal yet casual, demure yet sexy, and fashionable without being ostentatious. It was an impossible task!
ssss“Men should never be early,” he said with a smile, when she opened the door. “Being late would have given you more time to get ready, and probably been preferred, but then I would be accused of not really being interested. It’s not easy being male, is it?”
sssshe had to agree with him on that one.
ssssThey took their time as they made their way to The Orchid Room. There were wonders all about them, but familiarity with Prometheus had dulled their senses to such things. On the way to the large skydome next to The Orchid Room, they passed a fierce game of raquette in one of the underground caverns. Gravitysum had been shut down in this area, and the teams were capable of reaching the top of the cavern in one prodigious leap, and could be airborne for long periods of time in normal play.
ssssA long observation window in the passageway showed Sharmin and Roberto the two teams locked in a desperate bid for control of the unpredictable shuttle, which weaved this way and that as its centre of gravity shifted randomly under the influence of the micromotors inside it.
ssss“Isn’t that Jubilate?” said Sharmin, as a platinum blond mane shot past the window in hot pursuit of the shuttle.
ssss“I think so,” said Roberto with a smile. “Andre must be in there somewhere too. We could take that up, you and I. It would be a good break from research. Get the blood flowing, clear out the brain.”
ssssSharmin nodded. His unspoken message was clear. We could do these things if we were a happy and successful couple, like Andre and Jubilate. Suddenly that seemed a daunting task, even impossible, all over again.
ssssA chill descended on their conversation, but Roberto ignored it. He chatted happily as they made their way to the skydome. The mood lifted as they looked out at the vast curvature of Neptune, covering half the evening sky above them. A moon rose over Neptune’s horizon. It shone softly in the reflected light from the far-distant Sun.
ssssRoberto took Sharmin’s hand, and they gazed in wonder at the sight. The moon had to be Triton, the only moon of any real mass orbiting Neptune, and a similar size to the Moon of Earth. Sharmin thought appreciatively it was probably that – how much like the Moon Triton was – that made the moment magic. Prometheus had been built on Neptune’s second moon, Proteus, a tiny speck of rock by comparison, and the next largest, Nereid, had been completely consumed by mining more than 50 years before.
ssssKnowing all these scientific facts didn’t deaden the moment - it was still a beautiful image hanging in space. Sharmin squeezed Roberto’s hand.
ssssRoberto smiled. He wasn’t a ladies man, but he knew enough to let the beauty of the evening work on Sharmin for him. They spent a little more time taking in the vast blue bulk of Neptune beneath them, the small red disc of the Sun so far away, and the pale ghost of Triton on the far horizon, before they made their way to The Orchid Room.
ssssThe sumptuous entrance to the establishment housed a collection of offworld life forms that had been discovered in the Solar System over the last century, as exploration teams had spread out into more and more hostile environments.
ssssThey were looking at strange sulphur crystals that were in many senses alive; a form of lichen discovered on the moons of Jupiter; tubeworms from volcanic vents in the seas under the frozen surface of one of the outer moons; and complex geodes from their own Triton that had too much of an organised structure to be inorganic. The geodes has so far defied all attempts to bring them back to ‘life’.
ssssWith their appetites sharpened by the roundabout walk to the restaurant, they turned into The Orchid Room ready to appreciate what it had to offer. They were seated immediately, and began an enjoyable game of selecting dishes from the menu card.
ssssDinner was perfect. The service was unobtrusive, and the music – recorded
ssssunfortunately but crystal clear all the same – set a soft background atmosphere.
ssssAt first they ate largely in silence, content enough with the feeling of being together. Then little flutterings of electricity began to build between them.
ssss“I’ve wanted to put my arms around you for a long time,” said Roberto quietly, half way through dessert.
ssssSharmin looked down intently at her food.
ssss“I just wanted you to know that,” he continued softly.
ssss“Before I kissed you at the barn dance I said if you wouldn’t go out and find someone for yourself, you’d just have to put up with me.”
ssssShe nodded awkwardly.
ssss“I did once hope you’d find someone – you’d been such a good friend I really wanted you to be happy – but now I want you for myself. Totally.”
ssssShe nodded again.
ssss“This isn’t out of a sense of pity,” he said in a rush. “I want you for you. I Just thought I should make that clear.”
ssss“Understood,” she said quietly. “Don’t worry, I haven’t once doubted your enthusiasm for the idea. It’s just . . . my enthusiasm I’m worried about.”
ssss“You’re not sure you’re interested?” he said, a piece of exotic pie with a name neither of them could pronounce half way to his mouth.
ssss“It’s not that,” she said, blushing. She was already thinking about him each day; thinking about holding him, then imagining slipping her hands under the material of his top – leaving her in no doubt about her reaction to him.
ssss“I just think it’ll all go wrong again.”
ssss“Then we’ll have to make it go right this time, won’t we,” he said firmly, his commitment to making this happen clear in his voice.
ssssShe almost believed him.
ssssThey both had rooms in the large, central accommodation block, and the walk back was very pleasant. It was late in the evening, and they found themselves nodding to acquaintances out on social calls of their own. It was easy to find things to talk about, and scatterings of conversation were interspersed with comfortable silences. Work was a fun topic, when you were both up to speed on it. They talked about couples they knew, acknowledging their happiness and commitment to making things work – carefully avoiding any mention of what might be required of them if they were to enjoy the same results.
ssssSharmin noticed that Roberto had steered them into the sleeping quarters through the entrance off the admin area, a rather circuitous route. They would pass her rooms on the way to his.
ssss“I’m not going to ask you to come back to my room tonight,” said Roberto, stopping outside her door.
ssssHer heart leaped with relief. Some sort of decision had to be made at some stage, but at least she wouldn’t have to make it tonight.
ssssShe tapped the door panel and turned back to him, expecting a goodnight kiss. The door opened behind her, and Roberto walked her backward into the living room before she knew what he was doing.
ssss“No,” he said roguishly, “I thought you might be more comfortable here, in surroundings you know.
ssss“Lights, half,” he said, and the room controls dimmed the light.
ssss“Make that 40 percent.” he said, and the lights dimmed further.
ssss“Did I tell you how beautiful you are – when you stop frowning,” he said, covering her face in kisses.
ssss“No, ah, do I,” she said, trying to get a word in between his kisses.
ssssRoberto started to unzip the back of her dress, and she froze.
ssssThis was it. A crossroads. A decision that could change her life, if she let it. The warmth of him pressing against her warred with the fear that rose unbidden in the depths of her mind.
ssssShe had to make this a conscious choice, she thought desperately; she couldn’t let the desire and fear she felt in equal parts make the decision for her. She forced herself to think. Did she want to be frightened all her life? Wasn’t she worth more than that? Godsdamn’t, she was worth more than that.
ssssAs a woman, she had a right to Roberto, and she would claim that right.
ssss“Hey, stud,” she whispered in his ear.
ssss“What?” said Roberto, lost at the turn of events.
ssss“I think I’m over it,” she replied.
ssss“Over what,” he said cautiously. “Over me? We haven’t done anything to be over yet, have we?” he finished nervously.
ssss“No, silly,” she said, rolling her eyes up. “I think I’m over being frightened about the past, frightened about the future, frightened about every damn’t thing!”
ssssHe’d never heard her swear, but she did at least seem to be swearing for the right reasons.
ssss“Well, good for you!” he exclaimed, delighted at her breakthrough. He hugged her once again, then stepped back.
ssss“I’m so pleased,” he said. “Pleased for you that is. I mean, you could have anybody you wanted, well, now you’ve got over this thing.
ssss“I mean, you don’t just have to go out with me,” he ended lamely, no longer looking happy.
ssss“You are the worst salesman of their own wares I have ever seen!” she said with a laugh. “Let me dial in some drinks, and change out of this dress. We need something to wash down all that rich food. After that we could get sit on the couch and talk . . . or not,” she said impishly, and brushed past him.
ssssRoberto sat in the lounge, thinking the evening had gone better than he’d expected – until she came out of the bedroom in a simple nightdress that showed her off to perfection.
ssssAfter that he didn’t have time to do much thinking at all.


ssssTHIRTEEN

ssssFlinch stood in the boardroom at the top of the Prometheus admin building and watched the first wave of Javelins depart. The long, modified bodies of the starships contained Valkrethi, and the first wave of the attack would clear the way for specialist sabotage squadrons to go in and reduce another Carnii shipyard to twisted metal and molten slag.
ssssHe always stood here, by himself, when Prometheus went to war. Even when the command to send out their forces came straight from Cordez he had to decide, for himself, whether he agreed. He felt the weight of Prometheus – and its people of many races, and its many and varied operations – sit heavily on his shoulders tonight.
ssssFlinch had set the overhead dome to show the night sky, so he could, as always, see the ships and wish them luck as they left Prometheus. Next they would pick up speed until they were clear of Neptune, and could start the ramecium decay process in the massive containment chambers in their bellies, and hurl themselves across space as it folded like a paper star chart around them.
ssssMost of this new generation of pilots called him Commodore, the navy rank just below Cagill’s rank of Air Marshall, though he’d never been given the commission and wasn’t part of the navy. The staff at Prometheus mostly called him Chairman, or Sir. It was only the old guard who now called him Flinch. He missed the name, a reminder of happier days with less responsibilities.
ssssThe sabotage squadrons left Prometheus for the interstellar flight lanes beyond Neptune, where they, too, could hurl themselves across vast spaces to the Carnii shipyard that was their next target. Row upon row of them rose from the exit ports below the horizon of Proteus, the Promethean moon, and vanished in the distance as they climbed above Neptune. Flinch had more than 50 squadrons at his disposal now, over 500 Javelins. Cordez was of the opinion they were going to need every one of them.
ssssWhat was the wily Regent up to? wondered Flinch. He normally included Flinch in his plans, but lately he’d been keeping some things to himself. Were things so bad he felt he couldn’t burden others with the facts? Whatever it was, it was clear Cordez saw something on the horizon that would everything. It was uncanny how he could do that. It was almost as if he could see into the future.
ssssFlinch’s mind wandered to one of the more pressing problems that lay ahead for Prometheus. The next group of elite pilots had almost completed training for Valkrethi of their own, and the original group of 24 Valkrethi had lost two of their number while boarding Carnii flagships. Prometheus would soon have to collect more Valkrethi from Orouth. The problem was that the remote nature of the planet had preserved its secrets very well in the past. Every trip there showed their hand to their enemy. How was he going to handle the mission when the time came?
ssssHe mentally wished the Javelins good luck, one last time, and left the boardroom for his office. He would check in with Cagill toward the end of the day, to see how the mission was going.
ssssThe modified Javelins came out of the grey, grainy nothingness of stardrive into a quaternary system. A white dwarf orbited at a great distance from the frenzied dance of three much larger suns. A red giant and blue sun in a stable configuration had captured a smaller yellow sun that was now circling closer and closer while its outer layers were stripped off by first one, then the other, of the pair at the centre. It wouldn’t last much longer, a few thousand years at most.
ssssThe Javelins drifted to a stop just outside the interlocking orbits of the three inner suns. The Valkrethi were bathed in a red and blue glare, with the remains of the yellow sun just starting to show through the edge of the red giant.
ssssThe shipyard stayed close to the yellow sun, using the stream of fusing hydrogen that was being ripped off it by its neighbours to provide the power it needed. Cagill could see it now, in a magnified view on his ship’s main screen. The long spar and hub construction sported a number of wheels where the Fire Ships were constructed on a Carnii version of an assembly line. A denser burst of thermonuclear gases obscured the picture, but Cagill had seen all he needed to see.
ssss“Target identified,” he broadcast on the open channel. “Valkrethi assemble at position being sent . . . now, Cagill out.”
ssssThe alloy and composite giants dropped out of the bellies of the modified Javelins. Cagill brought up his optic shields, and opened a thin grey line on the optics from the green dot of his position to the blue dot at the assembly point. He began to slide toward the new position, and the shift was soon completed.
ssssThe shipyard lay dead ahead, deep within the column of fire that currently snaked across from the yellow sun to its blue companion. A scattering of Fire Ships provided a protective screen, circling the tail of fusing gases.
ssss“You know the drill, people,” he said, when they’d all gathered. “Stay alert, stay alive, destroy Fire Ships.” He paused momentarily, counting them down to a starting mark.
ssss“Choose your targets. Good hunting.”
ssssCagill opened a dipole thread between himself and one of the Fire Ships, and his Valkrethi began to slide toward the new position, accelerating rapidly. As he decelerated through the last half of the transition, he noted some interesting changes in the Fire Ship he was approaching.
ssssIt was smaller, and more three-dimensional. The original Fire Ships had been flat, ornately constructed warships, but this one was different. Cagill worked his way cautiously through the Fire Ship’s plasma shields, noting the spike in temperature on the skin of his Valkrethi, and looked around as he floated freely inside the shields.
ssssThere were fewer hubs, and they were bigger, much bigger. That was telling. It looked like the Carnii had made some effort to adapt to the appearance of the Valkrethi, and that wasn’t going to be good for him or his pilots. He dropped down toward the nearest hub.
ssssThe top of the hub tore away under the force of his Valkrethi’s attack. There was no sign of an internal atmosphere, as usual, and he carried on enlarging the hole he was making. He dropped down into a large space that hadn’t been there last time he breached one of the Fire Ship hubs. He’d just hit the floor and switched to infrared when a weapons blast slammed him back against the nearest wall. He had a momentary vision of the grey machines Sharmin had described from her experience on the flagship, each one surrounded by orange Carnii, when multiple blasts punched him through the wall. He vaguely remembered taking more hits, and spinning away through the hole he’d made in the top of the hub, before he lost consciousness.
ssssCagill came around some time later, finding himself held by the particle stickiness on the inside of the plasma shields, with his Valkrethi beginning to overheat. The systems in his mount had been busy repairing themselves, and most were now returning to normal functioning. He hastily removed himself from the plasma shields, and tried to make sense of this new turn of events. It was looking like the defensive arsenal on the flagships had been adapted to these new Fire Ships, and that wasn’t good.
ssssHe turned back to the plasma shield and worked his way through it to the outside, then called off the attack on the Fire Ships. He wasn’t ready to quit yet though, and he gave the Valkrethi a new assembly point.
ssssOne of the Valkrethi didn’t arrive with the others. Cagill waited a moment longer, but when it still didn’t arrive he decided to move on. He had to hope it was just taking a while to regenerate itself from damage.
ssssA brief discussion soon established that less than half the Fire Ships were of the new type. That was a blessing. Cagill decided to destroy the newer types first – they were the more dangerous.
ssss“We attack in sets of four,” he told the others. “Sharmin and Shavez found working in pairs was effective against the flagships, and there were other success stories among the pairs at that time too.
ssss“We go in, leapfrogging past each other. If the lead Valkrethi takes a hit the next in line takes out the weapons system doing the damage. That way none of us should get hit with too much damage at once.
ssss“Keep one comms channel for each team, keep each other in sight, and keep talking to each other. If you’ve all taken multiple hits get out of the Fire Ship and leave it for a fresh team. Got it?”
ssssThere was a chorus of assents.
ssss“Let’s take them down! Good luck,” finished Cagill, and the Valkrethi dispersed, setting up the new teams of four as they did so.
ssssCagill took one of the top pilots as his second, and added two of the more methodical thinkers among the pilots to complete the team. He called up his optic shield and looked for the Fire Ship that spat him out after coming close to killing him. Based on its last heading and the difference in shape he’d observed, he was pretty sure it was the one at the top of his optics screen. He felt his heart begin to speed up.
ssss“Let’s go do it,” he told his team, and he passed on the coordinates of his new target. The Valkrethi began the translocation process, drifting at first, and then accelerating rapidly. A few minutes later they punched through the plasma shields of the Fire Ship. Cagill skipped across the top of the nearest hub, ripping a number of sizeable holes as he went. Several bright discharges punched holes in the hull around his handiwork. It appeared the weapons systems were on the alert, then.
ssss“We’ve got them rattled,” he said on the comms channel allocated to his team.
ssss“I say we go in two by two,” said the top pilot he’d taken as his offsider. “Two from the top and two from the side, so we meet in the middle.”
ssss“I bet they’ve set up firing lines in those big spaces just inside the hull,” he added. “Once we get past those, we should be back in the normal warren of smaller rooms – and not far from the fusion reactors at the centre of the hub.”
ssssCagill nodded. “The lead keeps moving and takes the hits, while the other targets the weapons systems, then straight to the centre of the hub for both teams, rupture the central column, and we’re gone. Agreed?”
ssssThe other three nodded in turn.
ssssCagill sent the other pair down the side of the hub. He motioned the remaining Valkrethi to fall in beside him, and they floated quietly over the top of the hub. When he figured the other pair were in position, he flicked his hand in the ‘go’ signal.
ssssHis partner dropped down and punched a hole in the top of the hub, pulling himself through. He hit the floor, bounced to his feet and began running for the wall that appeared before him. Several discharges slammed into the wall next to him, and one hit him in the back.
ssssCagill took a second to gauge where the bright plasma discharges were coming from, and then dropped through the hull right on top of the grey machines that were pumping out rounds at his partner. He swatted the machines aside, and used one of the Carnii cylinders to bludgeon the others into an inert state. His partner pulled himself out of the wall. He looked a little scorched, but none the worse for wear. Cagill pointed down, and they began to dig themselves toward the centre of the hub.
ssssThe other Valkrethi beat them to the fusion reactor at the centre of the hub. As Cagill and his partner burst through into the circular room that soared up through row after row of balconies, two giant figures were already advancing on the thick column that stood in the centre of it. Plasma surged through the translucent cables that ringed the column, and the Valkrethi were heading for these. They tore the power cables from the column, and chaotic matter at thousands of degrees erupted into the chamber.
ssssAll four Valkrethi barely had time to scramble back to the outside of the hub before the fusion reactor detonated, leaving a gaping hole in the Fire Ship’s construction of spars and hubs. As they reached the plasma shields another hub, pierced by one of the spars, flared as well, and the shields failed.
ssssAs soon as they were clear of the disintegrating vessel, Cagill pulled up another Fire Ship on his optics, and fed the coordinates to his team. They began to slide in a new direction, just as a gigantic explosion reduced a Fire Ship on their left to an expanding circle of debris and superheated gases.
ssssAs they landed on their new target, Cagill opened a channel to his command Javelin and downloaded an overview of the situation.
ssssA little over a quarter of the Fire Ships had so far been destroyed.
ssssA good start, he thought; and it showed the teams were getting the hang of the new tactics. Once they’d wrapped this part of the operation up, the sabotage squadrons would be able to get on with their work at the shipyard itself.
ssssHe called in his partner’s operational status. The Valkrethi energy levels were almost completely restored, which was a good result after the hammering he’d received from the Carnii weapons on the Fire Ship. The other two Valkrethi were showing as ready to go also.
ssss“Focus,” said Cagill over his team’s open channel. “We need to be fresh for every one of these damn’t things. When boarding a Fire Ship becomes routine, we’re in trouble.”
ssssThree hearty, “yes, Sir!” replies snapped back. As a united force they descended onto the nearest hub.
ssssThe rest of the operation went almost as well, and one by one the Fire Ships ceased to function.
ssss“It’s starting to cost us,” said Cagill later, over the sub space connection to Cordez. “Sure, it took time for us to work out how to meet the changes in the new Fire Ships, so we should be better prepared when we meet them again, but that’s another three Valkrethi lost – and one pilot we couldn’t resuscitate,” he added grimly. That’s five Valkrethi of the original 24 gone now, and we can’t afford a war of attrition.”
ssss“I know, Neuman, I know,” said Cordez sympathetically. “There’s what, 160 Valkrethi left on Orouth? That’s a great asset for us, but it’s not an inexhaustible supply.
ssss“It shows us we don’t have forever to wind up this showdown with the Carnii,” he continued, “and now we’ve got the location of the Carnii city, we’ve got to decide when we take the battle to their front door.”
ssssHe seemed to realise he wasn’t talking to himself, and focused on Cagill again.
ssss“Leave that with me, Neuman,” he said, “and pass on my congratulations to the Valkrethi pilots. We’ve knocked out most of the shipyards now, so the Carnii should be hurting. I doubt they can muster enough Fire Ships to be much of a threat to the Javelins when we attack the city, and we have you to thank for that.”
ssssCagill accepted the commendation for himself and the Valkrethi pilots.
ssss“Accelerate the Javelin program for the Hud trainees,” said Cordez, as an afterthought. “There’s a large contingent of them mustering at Shellport, and they’ll be arriving at Prometheus soon.”
ssssCagill acknowledged.
ssss"Until next time,” said Cordez with a nod, and ended the transmission.

ssssReagis sat on the platform behind the terminal at the data base, and tried to concentrate on the screen in front of him. It had been three hours now and his position on the roughly-constructed platform wasn’t all that comfortable.
ssssHe sighed. He was going to have to take a break.
ssssThe last days of the Caerbrindii were particularly interesting. In an effort to keep the three rapidly diverging species together, numerous solemnly sworn treaties had been signed – and for the most part kept. That was something he was learning about the Caerbrindii, and, it seemed, the Drua, H’Roth and Carnii. They were extremely legalistic, and they did honour the agreements they made. Perhaps the alternative had been mutual annihilation on so many occasions that the honouring of treaties was almost inbred in them.
ssssNow, thought Reagis, how could the Alliance use that to their benefit?
ssssSomething made the skin on Reagis’ back crawl. Survival in a thousand hostile situations had given him a sixth sense that rarely proved wrong. Had he heard something so faint it was only at the subconscious level?
ssssHe dropped to the floor and landed like a cat. Shouldering his field kit he looked for an out of the way place to use as a base. He scaled a cable against a pillar further along, and was moving across the surrounding data storage cabinets to a lower, better hidden, maintenance area, when he froze. It took his brain a moment to register what he’d heard. Mechanical tracks perhaps. No, not that, but soundproof tread of some sort. It was only the fact that the treads were cornering at speed that he could hear them.
ssssHe eased himself flat on the top of the storage cabinets, just in time to see several AHUs arrive at the terminal he’d just left. He’d never seen this type of Autonomous Hunter Unit before, but the idea was much the same in every culture, for every civilisation. They didn’t even look that different from the ones he’d seen on other planets. They had two functions – move fast and kill on sight – and that pretty much defined how they were built.
ssssThe first of the deadly machines blasted the platform Reagis had been sitting on, and that seemed odd to Reagis at first – there was nothing there to shoot at. Then he realised they were hunting by infrared. The platform showed up as a target to them because his body had warmed it.
ssssReagis touched a small, square panel on his field jacket, and it set itself to the surrounding temperature. He flicked the hood over his face and pushed the optics and rebreather into place. They weren’t going to find him by infrared.
ssssThe other two AHUs started to scout the surrounding area.
ssssSecuring the position, thought Reagis to himself. It was standard military procedure.
ssssThen the first one raised its sensor turret and looked straight at him.
ssssIt can’t do that, screamed a part of Reagis’ mind. He was hugging the top of the data cabinets and shouldn’t have been detectable from the floor. The other two AHUs fanned out and went left and right. How had they found him?
ssssThe damn’t terminals were being monitored after all! swore Reagis to himself. It had to be that. He moved his head slowly, searching the shadows above him for signs of a monitor unit.
ssssThere! That was one. He reached into his field kit and set up a small search and destroy unit on top of the data cabinets, aiming it at the monitor unit. He knew the AHUs had to be getting closer, and he dived for the recessed area over the maintenance station as he triggered the device.
ssssThe search and destroy unit shot out the monitor unit it had been aimed at, then quickly located and destroyed two more, further away. The AHUs opened fire on Reagis’ position – as last seen by the monitor unit – obliterating the search and destroy unit and tearing half the top off the data cabinets where he’d been.
ssssReagis breathed a sigh of relief as silence descended. The AHUs obviously didn’t know where he was any more – and that meant the search and destroy unit had found all the monitor units in this area.
ssssOn the other hand, the AHUs weren’t above planting cameras on high points themselves.
ssssAs if they’d read his mind, the first machine put up a telescoping arm to fix a camera high on a supporting column behind the terminal.
ssssReagis continued loading up on armaments from his field kit, and gadgets he thought might be useful – keeping his noise level to an absolute minimum. When the telescoping arm of the AHU had fixed the camera to the column, and was withdrawing, he sighted along one of his laser scopes and fried the camera’s circuits. Then he rolled in one swift motion to the edge of the data cabinets and looked down on the AHU. Its sensory turret was still turning toward him when he hit it with three superdense slugs. It groaned, and sat down awkwardly while the remains of the turret collapsed gently forward and rolled across the floor.
ssssReagis hit the floor running and made for the doors at the far end of the corridor. The other two AHUs had gone left and right of the terminal, so they should be somewhere in the maze behind him.
ssssThe plan seemed to be working, until he saw movement through the glass doors ahead of him. It had to be more damn’t AHUs!
ssssTurning right he disappeared behind a row of data cabinets, scanning the surroundings for possibilities as he ran. There! Some sort of major ventilating shaft connected this floor with the one above it. It was a way out. He changed direction, and accelerated toward his new target.
ssssHe was half way there when he changed his mind. If he let the AHUs drive him out of the data base now, he might never get back in. He’d had almost three hours to trawl through the Caerbrindii records before the AHUs had arrived. If he managed to neutralise these units, he might get another three hours – probably less – before reinforcements, and that would mean some pretty heavy duty enforcement units, showed up. But a few hours was better than nothing at all.
ssssSo, how many AHUs had been on the other side of those glass doors? The one thing he desperately needed to know now was the size of the force pitted against him.
ssssHe was formulating a plan as he ran, and it centred on making the machines believe he had used the shaft to climb up to the next level. He grabbed a large box that did who knows what and snipped it off the cables that wired it into the system. Arriving at the shaft he slapped a contact explosive to the maintenance door in front of it, and counted off as he dived behind a row of data cabinets. At three it vaporised the door and most of the surrounding area. Dragging the box quickly through the gaping hole, he slung an automatic piton up the shaft. At the top of its arc it opened and punched itself through the nearest flat surface. Reagis attached the box to the other end of the cable and hit the climb sequence. The box winched itself up the shaft as Reagis scrambled back out of the hole and used another terminal to vault himself onto the top of the data cabinets nearby.
ssssNow, he would wait.
ssssDrawn by the noise of the explosion, and the clanking of the box as it was winched up the shaft, four of the AHUs rolled down the central aisle toward the ventilator shaft.
ssssReagis cursed silently. There had to be at least as many again making their way to the floor above to intercept him there. The one thing you could count on with artificial intelligence was the predictability of its thinking. They would have split their forces evenly to contain a threat that had only two exit points.
ssssThey also had no concept of ambush.
ssssReagis waited until they’d split up and surrounded the ventilator shaft. Then he lobbed an electronic version of a flash grenade overhead. Meant to overload the AHUs optics in both visual and infrared, it would give him precious seconds to act. He punched three neat holes in the back of the nearest AHUs sensor turret and rolled back onto the data cabinets, before the grenade went off. The AHUs were turning toward him when they were blinded, and Reagis rolled back to the edge of the aisle to take out another one. Now, it was going to get tricky.
ssssHe threw an empty magazine case over the central aisle and into the maze of cabinets that lay beyond. One of the AHUs swerved round a nearby pillar and edged down a narrow lane between the cabinets.
ssssThanks for that, said Reagis silently, to whatever powers ruled the universe. He waiting quietly as he heard the sound of a treads moving further into the maze after the magazine case. He didn’t believe in luck – you made your own luck – but he wasn’t above taking advantage of a situation that had suddenly moved decidedly in his favour. Now for the AHU left below him.
ssssHe didn’t know exactly where it was, but he hadn’t heard it move yet. He quickly orientated the visuals in his mind to the scene in front of the ventilator shaft. He’d hit targets here, and here. The one closest to the maze on the other side of the aisle should, logically, have gone after the magazine, which left this AHU, here, as his next victim.
ssssFixing the scene in his mind he rolled back over the top of the data cabinet and fired his first shot before his body had come to rest. It went low and pierced the main body of the AHU under the sensor turret. This seemed to disorient the machine, and Reagis put the next two straight through the column holding up its sensor station. Its head collapsed forward and rested on its body.
ssssOne to go, thought Reagis, and took the opportunity to edge quietly over onto another data cabinet, further away. He’d just settled down when he heard the whispering treads of the far AHU as it returned.
ssssThis one wasn’t taking any chances. It opened up with heavy armament as soon as it entered the central aisle, and several cabinets, including the one Reagis had been on, were torn open from top to bottom.
ssssInteresting, thought Reagis, it still isn’t sure whether I’m above it on the cabinets, or somewhere on the floor. Part of him regretted the loss of the data cabinets, and hoped they didn’t contain information about the Caerbrindii that he needed. Then he shut that out of his mind, and focused on the last AHU.
ssssIt came upright, balancing on its treads. That made it more mobile, and it moved in short bursts of speed as it circled the front of the ventilator shaft once again, then took up a position behind a supporting pillar further up the aisle. Reagis heard a soft pinging noise, coming from everywhere at once, and realised the AHU was employing a type of sophisticated sonar. Realising it would have his location any second, he dropped down off the data cabinet onto the floor. The position he’d occupied was suddenly blown to pieces behind him.
ssssHe searched quickly through his field kit, and pulled out a small, electronic box. He set it to locate and distort sound frequencies. The box hummed, then the faceplate turned red as it locked on to the AHU sonar.
ssssWhatever image the AHU now read, it would be an aisle or two over from where Reagis actually was.
ssssThen he looked for a good place to confront the machine. A central column flanked a terminal further down the central aisle, giving the AHU a picture of three exits into the maze of data cabinets, side by side. That would be perfect.
ssssReagis moved further back into the maze, and worked his way toward the column. After a while he heard the whispering tread of the AHU, matching his progress as it danced from cover to cover on the far side of the central aisle. Then he was ready. As he stepped up behind the terminal, his image appeared to the AHU to step out into the aisle on his left.
ssssIt accelerated out of hiding, opening up on the displaced image showing on its sonar system.
ssssReagis stepped another image out on the right side of the terminal, giving it evidence on its sonar systems that he was in two places at once. Undeterred, the AHU deployed a back-up system, and fired an energy beam at the second image. Reagis was pretty sure the AHU wouldn’t have a third back-up system. Multiple redundancy added to complexity, weight, and risk of failure in the field.
ssssThe AHU actually managed to look surprised as he stepped out from behind the pillar and put three superdense slugs into much the same hole in the middle of its sensor turret. It sagged onto the floor, and its weapons juddered to a halt.
ssssHe didn’t have time to feel relieved. If he was to capitalise on his success, he would need to bottle up the other AHUs on the floor above. The data base didn’t appear to have lifts, so they’d be coming down the stairs – once they realised the ventilator shaft was a decoy, and the AHUs on the floor below weren’t responding to comms signals.
ssssThere were two sets of stairs, close together in the centre of one long wall of the building. Reagis positioned his contact mines on the landings half way down each, and set up his fields of fire to cover anything moving at the top of the stairs or coming down.
ssssThat should hold them for a while, he thought, with some satisfaction. Still, time was short. He hurried back to the terminal next to the ruined ventilator shaft and set up his over-ride system at the back of it. It wasn’t long before he was once again on the trail of the Caerbrindii, in the early years of the rapidly diverging Drua, H’Roth and Carnii.
ssssTheir obsession with treaties was certainly intriguing. A whole legalistic industry had developed over the centuries in a desperate attempt to keep the three new species from annihilating one another. Most of these agreements appeared to be still in force; at least, they’d never been officially annulled or terminated. In most cases it appeared they’d simply been overtaken by new developments that rendered the old ones obsolete.
ssssReagis was sure there was something he could use here, but where. He plunged on, further into the labyrinth of point and counterpoint between the three warring nations, in the early days on Mentuk.
ssssA burst of gunfire chittered from the stairs, followed by the hiss of AHU energy weapons.
ssssPart of Reagis’ mind visualised the exchange. The AHUs were at the top of the stars, and his autos had put a shot across their bows. They’d tried to pick off the auto units in turn, but they were well hidden in the corners of the stairway surrounds.
ssssAnother firefight erupted from the stairs, heavier armaments thumping and hissing. Reagis made an effort to ignore it, pushing on into the legal system, with all its fascinating twists and turns.
ssssHe reduced the parameters for the search, limiting it to treaties between Carnii and Drua only.
ssssHe was beginning to get some idea of what he was looking for. The period just after the three races spread out among the stars was a particularly fertile one. There were many ‘rules of war’ that governed local actions, and stopped a victory by one side opening an engagement along a wider front, or starting a long-running feud.
ssssThe heated exchange from the stairs ended in an explosion that sounded like a string of almost simultaneous explosions. Reagis smiled to himself. That would have stopped the AHUs in their tracks.
ssssThey’d ventured as far as the landings on the stairs, and run into the contact mines. He’d programmed the mines to work together, and the first AHU onto the landing would have been peppered with jumping and clinging death as soon as it triggered the first one. More usefully to Reagis, both landings would have now collapsed onto the floor below. He didn’t think the AHUs were capable of crossing a gap that wide.
ssssStill, Reagis didn’t want to take any chances. He set the data base to download all the treaties from the early spacefaring period, limited to Drua and Carnii only, and took the download time to sort through his field pack for those items that remained useful. He’d be going out much lighter than he came in, and his speed back to the glider was of paramount importance now.
ssssHe finished re-packing and waited impatiently for the last of the treaties to download. He’d just stored the files away when he heard something crash through the landing on the stairs, hit the floor, and careen into one of the support pillars by the stairs.
ssssThere was only one thing that could be, much as he’d thought it extremely unlikely. Godsdamn’t AHUs were throwing themselves off the stairs in their urgency to get at him.
ssssMust be a direct command from the Carnii central base, he reasoned, as he grabbed his field kit and headed for the shaft that lead down to the dehumidifier in the cavern under the data base. From the sounds behind him, at least two of the AHUs had survived their leap off the stairs, and were closing fast.
ssssA panel in the wall ahead of him opened.
ssss“In here!” said The Collector, waving several rubbery arms urgently. Reagis piled into the opening, and his strange ally touched something to the panel behind them, sealing it shut.
ssssThe Collector undulated down a slope that lead away from the data base, and Reagis followed. This was another of the many tunnels in the plateau, side entrances and overhanging galleries splitting of at every turn.
ssssFaint squealings issued from cracks in the walls, and Reagis was aware of something moving inside the rock, travelling on a path parallel to their own. He moved up, closer to the mound of flesh in front of him.
ssss“What is that?” he asked cautiously, pointing to the side of the tunnel.
ssss“Those are my young,” said The Collector. “I called them. It is, mmm, difficult process. Dangerous for me also. If they think I cannot control them, they will, mm, destroy me for control of my territory.”
ssssReagis was silent. He remembered The Collector telling him how deadly its young were.
ssss“You didn’t say you’d already been through a birthing,” said Reagis quietly.
ssss“A precaution,” came the reply. “Your type might kill them all, and take my territory for yourselves. I remember how many of you there are.”
ssssAh, thought Reagis, a cultural misunderstanding. Unavoidable, really, in any meeting between such different species.
ssss“But the situation has changed,” it continued. “A large force of machines is heading for the data base.” The Collector halted, Reagis almost running into its bulbous flank.
ssss“In the end, you and your kind are the only ones, mmm, with a chance against the orange devils, the monsters that have already harmed so many of my people. If I want my kind to prosper, I have to help you.”
ssssReagis was about to voice his thanks, when a dull boom echoed down the tunnel.
ssss“Damn’t!’ exploded Reagis. “The AHUs have found us.”
ssssThe Collector made some strange squealing sounds, similar to those occasionally heard from the walls of the tunnel. There was a chorus of replies. Then the tunnel filled with reptilian creatures no higher than Reagis’ knee, and he had to exert maximum control to stay still. The creatures pressed in, all around him. Beady eyes flickered momentarily at him, and scaled lips curled over carnivorous teeth in distaste, before they turned back to The Collector. Reagis noticed the one huge claw at the end of the forelimbs, and the short, powerful hind limbs. His strange ally hadn’t exaggerated how deadly its offspring were.
ssssThe Collector made the same strange noises again, louder, and the creatures disappeared up the tunnel toward the data base. There was a burst of firing, and the wet sound of dismembered flesh hitting the walls, then the firing grew more ragged. Reagis winced at the sound of metal giving way, and then there was a clattering as the bodies of the AHUs were upended. There were more gnawing sounds, but when the AHUs didn’t move again, the reptilian creatures returned to The Collector.
ssss“We must hurry,” said Reagis’ strange companion. “The machines of the orange monsters will not be far away.”
ssssThe young of The Collector disappeared into the walls as quickly as they’d come, and Reagis turned his attention back to his companion. The Collector was travelling much faster downhill than he’d seen it move before, and he was soon forced into a jog to keep up.
ssssAt this rate they would be at the point where the tunnels exited into the lowlands in an hour or two – but from there, Reagis knew, he still had quite a scramble around the side of the mountain to make his way back to the glider.
ssssIn his heart of hearts he was more excited about the treaties he had downloaded from the ancient Caerbrindii data base than his training would let him admit, but it was early days yet. He still had to make it back into orbit around the planet, then make his way through Carnii-inhabited space, until finally he could make a run for home.
ssssIt was turning into a long trip. Didn’t they always.


ssssFOURTEEN

ssssFlinch tapped the panel on the 3D animator, and brought up the Carnii city in the outer atmosphere of the red supergiant, Antares. The Prometheus departmental heads crowded in to get a better look at the image floating above the table. There were gasps, and sharp intakes of breath. One or two groans ended the almost universal expressions of dismay.
ssssIt was huge. It was one vast superstructure built like a soundshell, with the back of the protective shell toward the heart of the supergiant sun. The immense arms that ringed the soundshell were clearly defensive stations, armoured and laden with weaponry. But above all, the number of Fire Ships on patrol far exceeded those the Alliance had thought were left to the Carnii cell.
ssssFortunately, only two flagships were visible. There was another one somewhere – intel was sure about that – and possibly one other, one that had been badly damaged in the action at Aqua Regis by the Valkrethi. There was no sign of it around the huge city at the moment.
ssss“Excellent work, Flinch,” said Cordez, always present at Prometheus when he knew this sort of revelation was on the agenda. Flinch felt like demurring at the Regent’s praise, but it would have done no good to protest that it was all done by those working for him. Cordez was in the habit of congratulating whoever was in charge, and he expected his heartfelt thanks to work its way down the command structure to every single person who’d ever worked on the project. Flinch would fulfil that duty over the coming days.
ssss“It was one hellish job getting clean copy of the city inside the sun,” said Flinch briefly. “We were lucky to get a few days when sunspot activity all but ceased.”
ssssCordez motioned with his hand, and Flinch turned the animator off.
ssss“You’ll all get a chance to look at the details of the Carnii city over the coming days,” he said, “and put forward ideas how we might destroy it, but right now we’ve got a more immediate problem.”
ssssThose around the table settled back into their seats, and refocused their attention.
ssss“The H’Dree want to clear away the armada from around their home planet. They’ve been more than patient while we put paid to the shipyards, and we have to admit we’ve got the shipyards under control now.
ssss“The H’Dree haven’t been idle in that time, either. When we last had a meeting here they’d built up a fleet of 30 of the giant motherships – quite an achievement while relocating a third of their population, and only possible with the help of the KSarth, and the riches on the seabed of Neerok.”
ssssHe didn’t mention his own generosity, with his carefully hoarded supplies of ramecium.
ssss“They can now field 38 motherships, and that should be more than enough to deal with the armada around Ba’H’Rok, especially with the few remaining flagships in the armada now stationed at Antares, to protect the Carnii city.”
ssss“What about the rest of their deep space navy?” asked Ursul Vangretti, head of communications.
ssssBeside her Cantoselli nodded her agreement. “H’Dree had less than 100 warships after the battle for Earth, yes?” she added.
ssss“That’s about right,” said Cordez, “and they haven’t improved on that. I think the warships have been mostly a presence among their colonies to bolster morale, but their real hopes have been with the motherships – and with the Javelins, increasingly so as they’ve come to trust us.”
ssssAnd we’ve got ParapSanni to thank for most of that, thought Flinch to himself. The H’Dree are changing their ways, and thank God for that. They’re becoming right good neighbours.
ssss“Our part in the operation,” continued Cordez, “would be to provide Javelins in a supporting role. We’ll also send a quad of Valkrethi as back up, but I don’t expect the H’Dree to have too much trouble with this one.”
ssssThere were numerous nods around the table. Cordez’ analysis of the situation made sense.
ssssFlinch wondered if ParapSanni would shift his government back to Ba’H’Rok from the mineral moon Rok’H’Rok around the gas giant Orcreti, once the armada was defeated.
ssssHe thought about it for a moment. Having just seen the size and power of the Carnii city at Antares, he wouldn’t assume anything for a while yet.

ssssKalken hung in the middle of the command centre of the flagship, as befitting her seniority. Hundreds of Carnii were at work around the curved walls, making a scattered coating of orange fire. Kalken had come to the command centre from her duties receiving the Baccur delegation. This had been another difficult meeting – and one of too many meetings it seemed to her. She was very, very pleased to say that part of her day was now over.
ssssShe was particularly glad to see the back of the Baccur ambassador. He had, as always, been impossible to deal with.
ssssHis ‘non-negotiable’ condition for this latest meeting had been an honour guard of five fully-armed Baccur warships. In order to keep some semblance of control over him, the flagships at the Baccur prison planet had been doubled, the powerful flagships coming from Carnii cells nearby. Sometimes she wished the Baccur would give the Carnii an excuse to destroy the prison planet, and the last of this most aggravating of breeds.
ssssPart of her annoyance was caused by the state of emergency that now prevailed in her Carnii cell. The rock dwellers had destroyed much of the cell’s ability to make more Fire Ships, and the state of emergency had postponed her long-anticipated reproduction of herself. She now had well in excess of the resource credits required to start a new life, and she had carefully cloned her brain matrix and stored it as the template on which the new life would first be seeded. When would she have an offspring of her own to favour? she mused enviously, an offspring to hasten up the chain of command in such a prominent flagship as this.
ssssKalken found herself forced to reset her internal chemistries, which had been unacceptably disturbed by her envious thoughts.
ssssStill, and after only four visits – something of a diplomatic record – the Baccur had pledged their allegiance to Kalken’s cell in the fight against the rock dwellers, the presumptuous planet scum with their ever more dangerous Dark Ships. With the Baccur now in play, she thought, with some satisfaction, the tide had already turned against the upstart enemies of her cell.
ssssShe watched the departing warships on an external feed connected to her internal optics. The Baccur ships did have a certain clean line to them, she had to admit that. They were something of a contrast to the ornately fashioned Carnii Fire Ships, or the long, boxlike flagships.
ssssThree streamlined arches separated the bridge and engine room of each ship, making them more open space than enclosed living area. They looked like they were going somewhere, looked like they had a purpose; and they did. And that purpose was death, death to anyone or anything that stood in the way of the grand Baccur schemes for domination of the galaxy – and the destruction of every life-form but their own.
ssssNot like the Carnii, thought Kalken proudly. Born to rule the galaxy by virtue of their innate superiority. When the first races had come to awareness on the first planets, it had been the Carnii who had been born leaders of all. Why, any just-born Carnii knew that, it was so obvious.
ssssHer plasma field became a darker orange as her emotional state changed, and then brightened again. Everyone knew – except for these rock dwellers with their accursed Dark Ships! They didn’t know that the Carnii were born, by the galaxy and for the galaxy, to lead all others; such was the natural order of things. It was certain proof of the rock dweller’s insanity that they had not been born with an instinctive knowledge of this great truth.
ssssKalken turned back to her work with a vengeance. It was clearer now than it had ever been, the rock dwellers must be destroyed!

ssssFlinch held the Valkrethi back until the last moment. Twenty squadrons of Javelins had already left, timed to arrive at Ba’H’Rok at the same time as the H’Dree deep space Navy, and Flinch didn’t want the long, modified Javelins that carried the Valkrethi getting caught up in the first chaotic clash of Alliance forces and Carnii Fire Ships.
ssssA moment later the modified Javelins were gone, blinking out of existence as the ramecium decay sequence hurled them across space faster than the eye could follow. Even with spacedrive, it would be more than 24 hours before they blinked back into existence in the Ba’H’Rok system.
ssssThe time in stardrive passed swiftly. The Valkrethi pilots went over tactics they might use at the planet, and rehearsed manoeuvres they would need if they were thrown into the thick of the battle. Cagill had insisted on leading the Valkrethi, even if there were only a handful of them in action at Ba’H’Rok. He wouldn’t put any of his pilots into danger without being prepared to share that danger himself.
ssssThe first sub space pictures of the armada, formed up in a commanding position above the H’Dree home planet, were already coming in as the modified Valkrethi closed on their target. There was no sign of the Carnii flagships, as expected, and then Cagill could see the first wave of H’Dree warships as they entered the system, coming out of stardrive in dozens of points of light. They formed a defensive front line, and then the motherships began to arrive, each gigantic sphere ablaze with the many cooling towers that studded its lower half.
ssssCagill was pleased to see the Javelins arrive next, wave after wave blinking into existence in an impressive display of long-distance coordination. The Fire Ships recognised the threat from the Alliance forces, and began to form up in the overlapping groups of four that had worked so well for them in the past. Their preparations were limited by the fact they had been reduced to little more than 200 by the loss of nearly every ship they’d sent to the ice planet in the Alamos system.
ssssUnfortunately, thought Cordez, this was only a handful compared to the swarms that patrolled the Carnii city at Antares. Still, the objective today was to free Ba’H’Rok, and destroy the armada that encircled it. Then the Alliance would be able to give the H’Dree back their home planet.
ssssThere were still occasional comms signals coming from the surface, monitored by hidden receiving stations the Lyceum brothers had left behind when the population had been evacuated from Ba’H’Rok. Presumably there were still pockets of H’Dree who had not, somehow, been located in the preparations for the evacuation, and still survived somewhere on the surface of the planet.
ssssThen it was the turn of the modified Javelins carrying the Valkrethi to come out of stardrive, and the grey, grainy nothingness of the last 22 hours was replaced by the bright Ba’H’Rok sun. A confusion of warships twisted and turned over the planet below as they contested who had the right to control it.
ssssCagill linked into the comms channel between the H’Dree and Human command ships, and got a better idea of the situation.
ssssThe shields of both Javelin and Fire Ship had reduced the initial skirmish to a bloodless draw, while the unprotected H’Dree warships stayed close behind the Javelins, adding their energy weapons to any sign of weakness in the Fire Ships. But all that was about to change.
ssssAs he watched, the motherships waded into the fray.
ssssProtected by the smaller Alliance warships from too much enemy attention, the motherships moved to engage the Fire Ships, great energy lances of the deepest blue fastening onto the fiery orange hulls. The writhing blue lances savaged the Fire Ships with the force of matter moving at the energy of near light speeds. The hulls of the Fire Ships paled, and then disintegrated in a burst of light. Time and again, the motherships turned from expanding rings of debris to lock their coiling lances onto new targets.
ssssCagill had his squadron of Valkrethi ready to enter the fray at any sign of difficulty for the Alliance ships, but in the end he wasn’t able to give the giant steeds a chance to exercise themselves. The Alliance were all over the Carnii forces, and Cagill could only watch as the tide turned inexorably in favour of the darting Javelins, giant motherships, and steady H’Dree warships.
ssssThen the Fire Ship formation broke. Showing more confusion than orderly manoeuvre, they fell back in a disorganised retreat. The motherships pursued them, reaching out with snaking ropes of deep blue fire, and latching onto a dozen more before the Fire Ships escaped into stardrive.
ssssOne last sequence of brilliant white explosions scorched the sky above Ba’H’Rok, and then the remaining Fire Ships were gone.
ssssCagill could hear the cheering on the command ships, and he understood it. This was an extraordinarily moving moment for the Alliance.
ssssThe Carnii armada, close to a thousand ships strong, had stunned the inhabitants of the Spiral Arm when it had claimed Ba’H’Rok at the start of this war. It had been a long, long time since then – and the Alliance had suffered much – but the years of war and hardship finally seemed worth it. They’d done it, they’d thrown the Carnii out of the Ba’H’Rok system they’d claimed in the beginning. The primary Carnii objective, the possession that had stamped their control on the Spiral Arm, was now denied them.
ssssCagill found himself joining in the clapping.

ssssCordez and Asura were soon sharing in the celebrations at the SouthAm headquarters in Brazil. All Earth was celebrating, it seemed, and ParapSanni had told him the sense of achievement was as strong across the H’Dree worlds. He was sure it would be the same for the other planets in the Alliance.
ssssThe news the armada had been driven from Ba’H’Rok had arrived in the middle of a rare week of relaxation for Manoba and Asura. Most of it they’d spent at his hideaway in the hills, coming in to work only when they had to.
ssssNow they stood in the middle of his office at the small SouthAm centre, surrounded by ecstatic staff and well-wishers. Cordez realised this would go on for hours, and he made their apologies as unobtrusively as he could while guiding Asura through the throng. A small vertical lift craft took them back to the quiet, forested surrounds of his country home.
ssssBack in his country retreat a warm, delightful evening together had just begun – with a sunset to match – when he was notified that a ‘First Alert’ message had arrived at his office. He had it relayed to his current location, and read it at the terminal in his small home office. He sat silently for a moment, then alerted the pilot to get his private lift craft ready once again.
ssssIt was a grim Manoba who broke the news to Asura.
ssss“Navs intel has placed six completely unknown space craft three to four hours from Ba’H’Rok. From their line of flight it seems likely they’ve come from Antares.
ssss“It’s too much of a coincidence that they left the Carnii city shortly after the Alliance arrived at Ba’H’Rok. It is possible they could be coming to surrender all claims to a Carnii cell in the Spiral Arm, but I very much doubt that. Judging from the strange energy readings we’re getting off the incoming ships, they’re either a new type of flagship, or they’re a Carnii ally.
ssss“I don’t think a sudden change in the type of Carnii warship, at least of this magnitude, is likely. If we discard that, we’re left with an option I’ve been worried about for some time – a Carnii alliance with another race.
ssss“The reason it worries me, dear one,” he said softly, “is that they’ve left it until the situation is turning against them, so they’re forming an alliance of last resort.”
ssssHe took both her hands.
ssss“What sort of race would disturb the Carnii so much they’d only form an alliance with them in their time of greatest need?”
ssssA chill descended on the room. Asura completely trusted her husband’s instincts on matters such as these – and if what he said was true, the Alliance was about to face exceedingly dark times once again.
ssssShe attempted a smile, but had to start again. She was better on the second try.
ssss“Look how much you’ve achieved, in such a short time,” she said. “Look at the many hurdles like this you’ve already overcome.”
ssssIt was Manoba’s turn to force a smile. He stepped forward and held her close, soaking up the energy – and belief that all things were possible – that he knew he would need over the coming days, and months.

ssssCagill had already been told about the strange new ships when Cordez put a call through on the sub space system.
ssss“So we don’t know what we’re up against,” said Cagill dryly, “but its probably got superior weaponry. We don’t know what they want, except it’s probably to destroy us. And there’s only six of them, which is what they think it’ll take to beat close to 400 Alliance ships, including 38 motherships and a squadron of Valkrethi.”
ssss“Something like that,” said Cordez lightly, appreciating the humour. He knew Cagill would already be preparing the Alliance forces for anything that might be thrown at it.
ssss“No heroics,” said Cordez, looking straight into the lens, and seeing Cagill stand straighter at the other end of the connection. “If it turns out badly, I want the Javelins out of there. I’ve already told ParapSanni the same thing about the H’Dree warships and the motherships, and he agrees with me.”
ssssCagill nodded.
ssss“We’ve set up limited forces around Ba’H’Rok itself,” he said. “The rest are scattered around the system. If there are only six of these starships, we don’t want to be getting in each other’s way when we’re trying to engage them. Those further out can be at Ba’H’Rok in minutes.”
ssssCordez agreed. It was essential they find out what they were up against before they committed the bulk of their forces.
ssssHe sent his best wishes for success, and signed off. The most helpful thing he could do now was let Cagill get on with his job. There were less than two and a half hours until the unknown starships arrived at Ba’H’Rok, and Cagill would want the Alliance forces at their highest level of readiness.

ssssThe Baccur ambassador stood at the central station on his battleship. The bridge, starting at a sharp point and splitting into the three arches that connected it to the engine room some distance behind, was one large, open space. The ambassador’s command station stood on a raised plinth, many times his own height above the expansive floor, and he could see others of his kind busy at their stations around the walls of the cavernous command centre. Sturdy hind limbs stomped along the walls, long arms flicking from controls to metered readings. More senior members of the Baccur showed one or two silver streaks in the long, grey hair that covered their bodies.
ssssIt had been fortunate indeed that the enemies of the Carnii cell had decided to attack the armada when he had barely begun his journey from the Carnii city to his home planet. It was equally advantageous that he had finally condescended to sign a treaty with the Carnii at his last meeting with them, and here was a chance to put it into effect almost straight away. He’d volunteered himself and his honour guard of warships immediately.
ssssThe Baccur ships came out of stardrive on the edge of the Ba’H’Rok system. It only took moments for them to recognise that the rock dweller ships were scattered throughout the system.
ssssThe ambassador grunted his approval. Sound tactics. So, the rock dwellers weren’t stupid, and that was good. His forces need to be constantly honed by conflict, and there was no benefit in an easy victory.
ssssThe energy readings from the rock dweller ships in the system had been analysed, and were now fed through to the ambassador. He grunted a derisory response. They were relying on shields. The Carnii were the same, and so were practically every race the Baccur had ever encountered.
ssss“Cowards all of them!” thundered the ambassador, and one or two of his officers looked up from their work – but it was not a command directed at them, and they hastened back to what they had been doing.
ssssThe Baccur fought without shields, and relied solely on the power of their weapons. Hrith, the god of war, would decide who would live, and who would die, on the battlefield this day. Any attempt to forestall the inevitable was foolishness. He coughed a Baccur expression that was almost good humoured, and gave the order to attack.
ssssThe six Baccur warships formed up as the points of a star, and selected individual targets. The arches behind the warships contained the weapons systems, and the three snouts behind the bridge of each warship began to power up.

ssss“What in the name of all hells are those things?” said Cagill, as the Baccur warships began their attack run towards the Alliance forces above the H’Dree home planet.
ssss“I don’t think it really matters what they are,” said Ayman Case offhandedly, on the channel between them. “It’s more important what they can do.”
ssssHe said something to one of his officers.
ssss“First wave of Javelins moving to intercept,” he reported to Cagill
ssssCagill almost smiled to himself. His junior officer was starting to turn out the gritty one-liners that seemed to come with the right to command.
ssss“Eight of the motherships plus warship cover are forming up as a fall back position,” said Cagill, “but the first engagement is yours. Good luck.”
ssssAyman signed off. He was sending squadrons of his best Hud pilots and the latest version of the Javelins up against an unknown enemy. He hoped he wasn’t sending them to their deaths.
ssssHe’d given his pilots a free hand with their tactics, and already the first line was drifting apart and picking their targets from among the six long, arched ships approaching the planet.
ssssThe strange new ships fired first, their three weapons ports firing almost simultaneously and hitting their targets in an almost continuous pulses. All along the line Javelin shields overloaded and failed. The pilots rerouted more energy to the shields, but nothing they did was able to maintain them.
ssssRealising the hopelessness of their situation, the Javelins turned desperately to flee, but many were caught in the next wave of pulsing fire, and several were destroyed outright.
ssssA second line of Javelins had followed them in, and were now close enough to fire salvos of superdense slugs, and coordinate corrosive beams at close quarters.
ssssA scattering of small fragments were smashed off the long, connecting arches of the enemy ships by the slugs – and then the surfaces of the arches smoothed over as if the attack had never been. The energy weapons seared layers off the strange ships in smoky clouds of debris, and when the Javelins had passed by, the surfaces were already like new again.
ssss“Get the Javelins out of there,” said Ayman tersely to his comms officer, and the remaining Javelins spun quickly out of the fight. Then he turned back to the sub space link.
ssss“Damn’t things have one Stygian hells of a hull, and they can repair themselves as fast as we put dents in them!” he snapped down the line to Cagill.
ssss“They can’t keep doing that for ever,” said Cagill, “they’ve got to run out of material to repair themselves with eventually.”
ssss“At what cost to us!” exploded Ayman Case, also on the line.
ssssCagill let the outburst pass. It was a time for older heads with more experience, and Ayman would understand that one day.
ssss“What worries me more,” he continued, “is the way they’re overloading the Drua shields. If we can’t keep these new pulse weapons out, we’ve got no defences other than the speed of the Hud pilots.”
ssssAyman snorted, more frustrated there was nothing the Javelins seemed able to do against this new enemy than anything else.
ssss“Prometheus asks for recognition,” came the formal call sign through the sub space system.
ssss“Granted,” said Cagill, and was put through to Flinch. He listened with interest as Flinch relayed what the research team had discovered in the five hours of frantic searching since they’d learned that unknown starships were approaching Ba’H’Rok.
ssss“They have to be Baccur,” said Flinch. “Sharmin says she thought the Baccur were just a legend, a story about a race imprisoned on their planet by the Carnii, during their expansion through the Core. The H’Roth archives mention them briefly, but don’t give the topic much weight. More usefully, we’ve been working on translating Carnii sub space messages over recent months, and lately they’ve been talking about a new ally. The way they describe them is the same way the archives describe them, a mixture of loathing and fear.”
ssssHe paused for a moment.
ssss“If you ask me, they’ve rounded up the worst dregs of their prisons, and turned them lose on us!”
ssss“It sounds like you’re close to the mark,” responded Cagill. “Have you passed this on to Cordez?”
ssss“He told me to take it straight to you,” came the reply from Prometheus.
ssssCagill asked if there was anything else to add, but that was as much as the research team had managed to unearth so far. Flinch signed off.
ssss“Motherships coming in,” reported Ayman abruptly, and Cagill turned to the main screen in his own ship.
ssssEight miniature suns were sailing majestically past Ba’H’Rok to engage the arched ships in their own ponderous way. The cooling towers on the lower half blazed as they charged the internal accelerator rings. The deep blue lances that had overpowered the shields of dozens of Fire Ships were being made ready.
ssssThe H’Dree warships around them ran at the strange ships with their energy weapons blazing, but the Baccur ships healed the minor breaches in the outer layers of their hulls within moments. The Baccur ignored the H’Dree warships, and picked up speed toward the motherships. Well before the motherships were within range to deploy their energy lances, the Baccur opened fire.
ssssCagill could see chunk after chunk cut out of the leading motherships, and only their great size saved them from complete destruction. They came on, as craters appeared on their smooth uppermost surfaces as if by magic. On their lower halves cooling towers shattered and disintegrated as they were hit by Baccur fire, but the Lyceum-planned motherships had multiple redundancies built into them and continued forward.
ssssAt last the motherships were within attacking range, and the first deep blue lance snapped out and fastened onto one of the three-arched Baccur warships.
ssssIt was obscured by the cloud of debris that was scorched off its hull. It twisted and turned, seeking some way to escape. One of the arches was soon burnt completely through, and the whole ship turned into a grey and pitted hulk. The mothership withdrew the energy lance to recharge the accelerator ring at its core, and the inert Baccur ship drifted away.
ssssCagill slammed a fist into the other palm. Yes! The Baccur weren’t invincible.
ssssBefore more motherships could bring their energy lances into play, the remaining Baccur loosed something new; a long, heavy missile that detached itself from a hollow in the side of each arch. Once free of the arches the missiles picked up speed, smashing through the mothership hulls and disappearing into the centre of them.
ssssThere was a brief puff of luminous gases into the vacuum of space, and then nothing. It was a while before Cagill realised what had happened. The motherships had been destroyed from the inside out, leaving only a hollow shell – the reinforced hull – around twisted wreckage.
ssss“Eight motherships destroyed, unbelievable,” said Case slowly.
ssssA sub space call came through from Cordez. Cagill took it immediately.
ssss“That’s enough,” said Cordez abruptly. “We’ve got good telemetry on the Baccur ships, get the rest of the Alliance forces out of there.”
ssss“We can take them,” said Case heatedly, still part of the sub space comms circuit. “There are so few of them, and the H’Dree mothership destroyed one. I say we try a massed attack!”
ssss“So do I, Ayman,” said Cordez, much to the Javelin commander’s surprise, “but not now, and not here. The final showdown is coming, but we don’t want to lose ships at the rate of ten to one to make our point against a few Baccur warships. In fact, it’s to our advantage to let them think we’re easy meat.
ssss"Bigger picture, Ayman, always take the bigger picture into account.”
ssssAyman was silent for a moment, taking this in. Then his loyalty to Cordez won out over his inner conflict, and he stopped needing to prove the Javelins were the better fighting ship.
ssss“Understood,” he said quietly. “We’ll move out of the Ba’H’Rok system at once.”
ssssAyman gave the order for an orderly retreat.
ssssCagill retreated into his thoughts. He remembered Cordez talking about some sort of showdown with the Carnii previously, and here it was again. The Regent wanted the Alliance forces kept intact for that engagement, or so it seemed. Cagill wondered what his boss had in mind, but he knew it would do no good to ask – at least not at this early stage. Still, Cordez had said the Alliance would take the battle ‘to their front door’, and that could only mean an attack on the Carnii city.
ssssA chill stole over him. It seemed an impossibility, certainly so since the city sat in the outer layers of the Antares red giant sun. Still, if it was necessary, they would all put themselves on the line to get it done.
ssss“You don’t want to test the Valkrethi against the Baccur?” asked Cagill, once his mind was back in the moment.
ssss“No, not right now,” said Cordez. “This war has been about adapting to changing situations, and I don’t want to give the Carnii or Baccur forces a chance to learn too much about the Valkrethi. When they adapted the flagship internal weapons to the Fire Ships it was bad enough. No, we have to strike once, winner takes all, when the odds are in our favour.”
ssssHe paused.
ssss“One role of the dice, gentlemen, that’s our only chance.”
ssssThe others listened in silence. There was nothing they could think of to say.
ssss“But before we do that, we need two things, and both depend on time. We need time to get more information, about . . . all sorts of things . . . and time to call in a few favours from friends.
ssss“Now, get yourselves away from Ba’H’Rok and back into more friendly territory!”
ssssThey both snapped salutes, and continued the withdrawal from the H’Dree home world.

ssssWhen he’d finished talking to the key leaders of the Alliance at Ba’H’Rok, and H’Dree and Human forces alike were well clear of the system, Cordez went to a small drawer in his office. It was protected by several different security systems, but he doubted anyone would want to steal the contents.
ssssHe took out a small, metal cube, and laid it on his desk.
ssssWas he ready for this? he asked himself, and mentally reviewed everything that had been leading him to make this decision.
ssssYes, he was ready.
ssssHe took a firm hold of the cube, and twisted the two halves through 90 degrees.
ssssThe Drua had said, nearly two years ago now, that they weren’t able to help the Alliance any further. They’d said it would arouse the suspicions of the Carnii about their existence, and that helping the Alliance was too great a drain on their resources, working at such great distances across the galaxy.
ssssNonetheless, he had the beginnings of a plan to destroy the Carnii in the Spiral Arm, and he would need Drua help to make it happen. Perhaps a success like that might shift the balance of power, and improve the fortunes of the fringe-dwelling Drua. He thought deeply about his half-formed plan, little more than a cluster of ideas really, until the shadows began to lengthen, and then he left his office at the SouthAm centre for home.
ssssIt was late evening when the air in Cordez’ living room began to shimmer, and a round, grey, watery-looking ball formed in front of him.
ssssCordez was a little surprised. He was expecting to be contacted at the SouthAm headquarters. He’d brought the cube with him from work, wanting to keep it with him once he’d activated it, and the Drua had tracked him down to his home.
ssssThe shimmering ball slowly cleared, leaving a waist-high hole in reality that looked out on a desert scene.
ssss“Subthree?” queried Cordez.
ssss“Mmmm, Subdirector,” said the largish rock in the middle of the scene, the wind moving the leathery fronds that appeared to grow haphazardly from it, and sometimes scattering desert sand against it.
ssssCagill was about to nod, then changed his message of understanding to a verbal one.
ssss“Are you able to translate for Drua and Human as Subthree used to?” he continued.
ssss“Mmmm, I see,” said Subdirector enigmatically. “I am also Subthree. I am, perhaps, Subdirector-who-used-to-be-Subthree.”
ssss“Ah, promotion,” said Cordez. Subthree did not answer, and its leathery fronds twitched agitatedly.
ssss“All Orion are equal,” it said at last. “There is no promotion.”
ssssCordez let it pass.
ssss“I know it is difficult for Drua to help us, but a final conflict with Carnii is coming. Drua help may make all the difference. Can you talk to Drua for us?”
ssssSubdirector was silent for a long time. Cordez hoped it was communicating his request to the reclusive Drua.
ssss“There is much, mmm, risk involved,” began Subdirector hesitantly. “Even keeping this means of contact is dangerous. Drua left the choice with us.”
ssssClearly they had kept the technology alive, and hidden away somewhere on their planet, thought Cordez to himself. He felt a cold shiver at the thought even the means to contact the Drua might have been lost.
ssss“Contact with Drua is even more dangerous,” it continued. “Carnii are expanding out from the Core, closer to fringes where Drua live. Drua must, mmmm, remain hidden.”
ssssSubdirector paused for a long time, and Cordez saw another Orion edging slowly into the picture from the side, leaving a furrow in the sand. There was much animated waving of their leathery appendages. Subdirector composed itself, its fronds returning to hang more normally by its sides.
ssss“Drua saved us from extinction, and we feel bound to help others fight the same tyranny,” it said. “Tell us what you want to say, and we will, mmm, convey it to Drua.”
ssssCordez was deeply relieved at this promising start, but it transpired that the communication process would still take a number of days, and the time of the return message could not be known in advance.
ssssCordez told his Orion ally what he knew of the recent developments in the Spiral Arm, and outlined his plans for the destruction of the Carnii city in the red supergiant, Antares.
ssssWhen he had finished, the picture of a desert in the middle of his living room slowly dissolved.
ssssIt was, at least, something to feel hopeful about.


ssssFIFTEEN

ssssJoe parked the overlander in the vehicle space at the front of Jim Seatoun’s house. The overlander was a vertical lift craft on loan from CIC, the Canadian Industrial Committee, and he and Jean had been able to sightsee all the way from Toronto to Joe’s home town under the Rockies. It had dropped into the vehicle space at the front of his friend’s house with all the precision of the now restored world-wide navs system.
ssssShona took Jean’s coat and hung it in the hall, apologising for the unseasonal summer weather.
ssss“Oh, it was just a few storm clouds hanging round the Rockies,” said Jean with a smile, already liking the bustling, practical woman who’d met them at the door. “There were very few clouds over the plains.”
ssss“Not often we get a sprinkling of snow, though!” said Jim Seatoun, coming up from the cellar at the end of the hall with something akin to a large ham under one arm.
ssss“Must be the last of the wintry weather brought on by the firestorms,” said Joe. “The ramjets might have cleared the smoke particles out of the air, but the planet’s got to warm up again.”
ssss“Hey,” he continued, addressing Jim, “is that the big buck you got last season?”
ssss“Right you are,” said Jim with a pleased grin. “I always said I could pickle anything in that vat downstairs. I thought we’d try one of the hindquarters tonight – been hanging for six months now.”
ssss“I hope you don’t mind being experimented on, dear,” said Shona anxiously. “These men and their mad schemes. I’ll make sure you get just one thin slice, and you can put it aside if you don’t like it, okay?”
ssssJean almost laughed. Shona must mother everyone she came in contact with.
ssss“Where would we be without them,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes, taking Joe’s arm and giving it a rather sensuous rub. “We’d have nothing to complain about.”
ssssOnce the two women had agreed on the ultimate authority of womanhood, they began to relax and enjoy each other’s company. Shona had prepared most of the food for the evening meal in advance, and steered Jean into the front room, where she had some light refreshments laid out.
ssssThere she prompted Jean about the wonders of the new capital Toronto – one of the least-damaged of Canada’s cities, and the first to be rebuilt.
ssssJoe turned down a beer and chatted away to Jim as his friend cut wafer-thin slices off the pickled hindquarter.
ssss“Is that a hovercraft you’ve got out front?” he said. Most vehicles still went on or over the roads, though the return to the skies was underway.
ssss“Yep, reliable beast too,” said Jim. “Bits of it made all round the world and assembled here. Every last piece relayed by sea, can you believe it? Mixture of sail, solar and biodeez. Primitive as all hells, but it’s working!”
ssssJoe chuckled. He’d worked on that project, like so many others, and it had been getting officials to work outside their old ‘instant and latest’ ways of thinking that had been the hardest thing to achieve. No-one on Earth had needed to work from basic concepts for nearly five centuries.
ssss“Different to what you arrived in,” said Jim enviously. “Never thought we’d see aircraft like that again so soon!”
ssss“Just on loan,” said Joe self-consciously. “Comes with the job, that’s all.” He never understood why people made a fuss about these things that seemed to confer ‘status’.
ssss“I think it was left intact after the groundship bombing,” he continued. “We won’t see new ones like that for a few years yet.”
ssssHe turned the conversation to the multivision interview the boys at the garage had given when they were judged ‘most productive team making biotruck parts’ some months before. Jim enthusiastically told him in great detail how the interview had gone – though he’d heard the story before – and after a while they lapsed into a companionable silence while Jim laid out slices of meat on a plate.
ssss“Hard to think we might have to go through that again,” said Jim abruptly, and Joe knew he was thinking of the Baccur, the new threat to their continued existence. If half of what they’d been hearing was true, the situation might be worse than rebuilding Earth one more time – Earth itself, or at least a Human presence on it, might be finished for good.
ssss“Pays not to think about it,” said Joe, patting his friend on the arm. “Have faith in Cordez, and in those who believe in him,” he added.
ssss“And who does Cordez have faith in?” said Jim dourly.
ssss“Not sure, Jim, not sure. Some say he’s a praying man, but I don’t know. He routinely pulls off long shots; more than you’d think humanly possible, I can tell you that.”
ssssBy the time the thin slices were arranged on the plate, there was a tacit understanding between the two men not to talk about the Baccur threat again that evening. When he’d cleaned up the mess from carving the hindquarter, Jim lead Joe outside to discuss the merits and disadvantages of his new hovercraft. It would have to be a fast discussion, since the afternoon light was already fading.
ssssThe conversation was just as lively in the front room.
ssss“What do you do again, dear?” said Shona, urging Jean to refill her plate, or her glass, from the side table. Jean reached over for a bit more of the lemonade, which tasted like it had just been made, right there in the kitchen.
ssssShe was sure Shona wasn’t much older than herself, but she looked older, and she acted like she’d seen more of life. Jean thought about it for a minute, and decided Shona had seen more of life than she had. Two kids and belonging to a small town didn’t give you much of a chance to run away from things.
ssssJean realised she’d had more choice living in the city, and more choice in her work, and she’d used that to make herself a lot more comfortable than most. Still, despite her greater sophistication, hers didn’t seem to be much more of a life.
ssssShe realised Shona had fixed her with an enquiring look. What had the question been?
ssssOh, yes. “I guess ‘management consultant’ could mean anything,” she said, with a smile.
ssss“I had a chain of fashion stores when the armada arrived off Earth, and the stores the groundships didn’t destroy went out of business when everyone’s spare cash went into just surviving.
ssss“Last year and the one before were pretty much taken up with large chain stores starting up again, with government help, but this year there’s been more small businesses giving it a go. That’s where I come in. I help people avoid the mistakes managers usually make in the first few years.
ssss“It might sound boring, but I love working with people taking risks, putting everything on the line. I think what drives them is wanting to know whether they’ve got what it takes or not, and they certainly find that out. They usually find out a lot more about themselves in the process, too. Working with people like that is what gets me excited.”
ssssShe realised she’d taken over the conversation with her little speech.
ssss“That sounds wonderful,” said Shona, a little bit in awe. “I think it’s great that you’re passing on your skills. It’s what bringing up the next generation, and being on the committees that make this town run, is all about too.”
ssssIf I ever miss having children, thought Jean, it will be every time we visit Jim and Shona; and she hoped there would be many more visits over the years to come. She was beginning to regret having her hair redone before they came. She wasn’t an overly showy dresser, but a city hairstyle was out of place here. It might set her apart from these good people, and she was rapidly discovering she didn’t want that.
ssssHer thoughts veered off toward the future. She didn’t know what Joe had in mind, or if it included her, but their time in Toronto would be over one day. She could do worse than live in a small town next to the Rockies with Joe, and with friends like these.
ssss“You don’t think,” began Shona hesitantly. “You don’t think Joe’s a bit . . . basic for you, do you?”
ssssShe coloured slightly as she said it, and Jean realised she was protecting her friend, and her husband’s workmate. Jean felt a rush of warmth toward Shona for her loyalty to those she loved.
ssss“You mean, do I find him a bit ‘rough and ready’,” she said, with a mischievous look in her eyes.
ssssShona nodded.
ssss“That’s what endears me to him,” said Jean. He’s a man, I mean, like a real one. He doesn’t think about something for ages, and then give me a long list of reasons why he can’t do it. He knows who he is, so he just says ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and he means it.
ssss“It’s the same when he gets me alone, it’s either all on or he’s not interested, and deep down that’s enormously reassuring. I mean, I can get his attention if I work at it, but it’s not the same as when it’s his idea.”
ssssJean hesitated.
ssss“You find the same thing with Jim, don’t you?”
ssssShona coloured even more. She nodded.
ssss“Well then, in the end – when you get past the childhood dreams – that’s what underpins everything else; doesn’t it?”
ssssShona nodded again, briskly. She got up. “I’ll go and see what these men are up to,” she said, with a smile, and left the room.
ssssJean knew she’d passed the test.
ssss“This is really good, Jim,” she said as they sat around the dinner table later that evening. She helped herself to another thin slice of the pickled meat.
ssss“You’re not just saying that?” said Jim, thinking a sophisticated woman living in Toronto must be used to the finest restaurants.
ssssJean laughed. “You’ve got the wrong idea about the attractions of cities, they’re just stopping places for a while, strange holidays from the realities of life. You’ve got it just as good here – no, you’ve got it better.”
ssss“Yes, er, I know,” said Jim defensively.
ssss“You just weren’t sure how I’d fit in out here, were you,” she said, gently, favouring him with a smile.
ssss“I guess not,” said Jim, looking a bit sheepish.
ssss“And what I don’t know about life in a small town I could learn,” she said firmly, taking Joe’s arm possessively for a moment.
ssss“You won’t believe this,” she continued brightly, picking up her fork and attacking the food once again, “but I’ve even been camping. Though I was ten at the time, and we were flown in to the Endeavour track in the Rockies. My parents stayed in a lodge while a girlfriend and I were allowed to stay outside for one night in a tent. I swear my mother checked on us every hour.
ssss“Does that count?” she said innocently, and the others collapsed with laughter.
ssssJoe hadn’t seen this side of Jean before. Away from the competitive atmosphere of the city, she was able to poke fun at herself with the best of them. He wondered nervously whether she was serious about the advantages of country life – could he persuade her to share his life if it meant leaving Toronto to be with him?
ssss“Do you know it took me almost a year to get Joe’s last name out of him?” said Jean to Shona in a loud stage whisper. “It was always ‘everyone calls me Joe’, and ‘we’ve got no use for last names around here’. I was beginning to think he had a shady past or something.”
ssss“The Lightfoots have a proud history in these parts,” said Jim dismissively. “Everyone knows that except Joe here.”
ssss“It’s a Native American name,” said Joe, looking down at his plate. “I got hell for it at school. It was just after the ‘cultural wars’, the big political stoush fifty years ago, yet another outbreak of ‘separate development’, so it seemed kind of best to lose the last name.
ssss“One of the Native American attaches at the embassy – an important male chief as far as I can make out – fell for a lady French professor at a language school in Quebec, over a hundred years ago. It was an odd match, but they lasted the distance and started quite a dynasty, and I’m part of the result.”
ssss“There you go then,” said Jean, without really thinking it through. “There’s already a pattern in your family.”
ssssJoe looked confused. Shona leaned over and touched his hand.
ssss“She means it could happen again, dear, between you and her.”
ssssThis time it was Jean who coloured up. Joe took a while to respond, and then he said, “oh, well I suppose, brains and brawn could be a winning combination.”
ssssJean turned on him heatedly. “There you go again, you’re every bit as capable as me, or anyone else, you just hide it behind that country boy image of yours.”
ssssJim nodded to Shona. “Yep, she’s good for Joe all right, must love him a lot to be this angry at him over nothing.”
ssssShona ruffled his hair and smiled at him. “Sometimes you still amaze me, you old backwoods boy.”
ssssJean sat stunned, sensing the truth in Jim’s words but not knowing what to say. Joe picked at his food, vaguely aware he was out of his depth.
ssssThere was a brief silence, and then dinner resumed, a little awkwardly. The flow of conversation slowly built up again, and then they began kicking around plans for the following day.
ssssJoe suddenly realised that sometime during these few days off he was going to ask Jean if she would come back here with him when their time in Toronto was over, and she would probably say yes.
ssssHe almost hated to ask, even knowing the answer.
ssssIt didn’t matter that the answer was likely to be yes, because there was no point in them making any plans until the combined Carnii and Baccur threat had been dealt with, once and for all.

ssssReagis noticed the tunnel was picking up a little seepage from the walls, and it wasn’t long before there was a trickle of water along the floor, and that had broadened into a small stream. He adjusted the acoustic receivers in his headset, devices that had been taking the sounds he and The Collector made as they moved along the pitch black tunnel and fashioning a view of his surroundings out of them. The Collector seemed to be quite capable of navigating by touch and hearing. The floating globe it had used when Reagis first met it didn’t function too far from its power source in The Collector’s lair.
ssssThe track took the left-hand side of the tunnel, and by the time the stream began to level out, in preparation for its exit into a valley well below the broad plateau of the Caerbrindii data base, it was a sizeable river.
ssss“It will be dark outside by now,” wheezed The Collector, covered in the thin slime Reagis had noted whenever it exerted itself. They’d made good time, but it was clear The Collector was at the limits of its endurance. Its strangled breathing had now reached such an intensity Reagis began to worry about it collapsing.
ssss“I think we’re clear of anything the Carnii might have sent after us,” said Reagis, checking a monitor from his field pack. The download from the glider showed a number of machines had arrived at the data base, but they’d stayed close by. An acoustic pickup told him there was nothing moving anywhere behind them in the tunnels. The Carnii machines must have found the destroyed AHUs by now, but it looked like they weren’t going to attempt to follow Reagis and The Collector down the tunnels.
ssssWhich suited Reagis fine.
ssssThe Collector seemed to have faith in Reagis’ instruments too, and it began to slow down, it’s breathing slowly returning to what was, for it, a more normal rate.
ssssReagis looked up and saw stars overhead, and realised they’d just left the tunnel system. The track ended in a sandy beach beside the river. He adjusted his headset back to infrared from its acoustic mode.
ssss“There is an entrance to another, mmm, cave system further along the valley,” said The Collector. “I will be safe there. If you climb out of the valley, on the other side of the river, the ridge will take you back to the mountain slopes below the plateau. Your, mmm, vehicle is there, yes?”
ssssReagis nodded. He knew The Collector had now come to understand a head nod as a non-verbal signal. He wasn’t sure how good The Collector’s field directions were, but his own sense of the layout of the land also told him that climbing the ridge on the other side of the river was the direction he needed to go.
ssssHe was shifting some rations from his field kit to his outside pockets, so he could eat as he climbed, when he heard the fast, whistle-whack cry of the lizard-like predators he’d encountered on his way to the data base. Scattered pairs of eyes observed him intently from across the river, the very direction he would have to go.
ssss“Vermyk,” said The Collector flatly. “They will not let you pass.”
ssssReagis nodded. He knew from experience how fast the creatures were – and how prepared they were to let some of their number die so the others could bring down their prey.
ssss“You will have to take my young with you,” said The Collector, matter of factly, and made the high-pitched calling squeals that Reagis had noted before. The dull grey of the sandy beach filled with a tide of moving darkness. Reagis stood absolutely still, not flinching when something brushed heavily against him, and a clawed foot settled on one of his boots.
ssss“You’ll have to, mmm, smell like me,” said The Collector, making its way through its young toward Reagis. “Rub some of the waste from my skin onto your clothing.”
ssssReagis scooped up the thin slime from its body – now drying in the early night-time cool outside the tunnel – and spread it over his body. He took his field pack off and treated that the same way. In a few minutes he was saturated with the stuff. No point in holding back, he figured, rubbing it into his hair – his life might depend on it.
ssss“Kneel,” said The Collector, and Reagis knelt. The Collector began something that could almost have been a song. It was a long, steady, chant in the same sort of words he’d heard it use with its young. The creatures around him stirred restlessly, and then they began to climb over each other, trying to get closer to Reagis. He realised what was coming and braced himself against the ground as a mass of squirming, climbing bodies smothered him. He was pushed from side to side, and feet and snouts raked down his sides. They seem to have sheathed the large single claw he’d seen earlier, and weren’t exposing the fearsome teeth he’d seen in the snake-like heads.
ssssThe ceremony, whatever it was, was eventually over. Reagis stood and flexed his muscles. He found, to his relief, he’d been afflicted with nothing more than a few bruises.
ssss“They will follow you wherever you go,” said The Collector, “and protect you. The bonding should last one or two days. When you want to send them back to me, repeat the sending chant a few times.”
ssssReagis recorded the short sending chant for when he’d need to use it. He certainly hoped the bonding would last long enough to get him safely back to the glider. He wouldn’t have a chance if this tide of teeth and claw turned on him.
ssss“You and your people are the inheritors of Mentuk now,” he said, grateful for all The Collector had done for him. “If we can bring down the Carnii, it will be yours once again.”
ssssWhen The Collector said nothing, he turned and scrambled up the slope behind him. A rustling of leathery feet sounded from all around him. When he was above the spot where the river issued from the hillside, beginning its journey down the valley, he turned and angled across the slope toward the ridge The Collector had mentioned.
ssssA chorus of whistle-whack cries sounded excitedly from the side of the river below him, and the vermyk predators waiting there bounded up the slope in their eagerness to get at him.
ssssReagis held his nerve and continued steadily on his course. The long, reptilian predators were just below him now, and some of them had moved out in front of him, attempting to cut him off.
ssssShadows rose up around the closest vermyk, and it died screaming, ending its life in a bloody gurgle as something latched onto its throat. The others hesitated, then two more went down in quick succession. The rest turned to flee, but it was already too late. Fast as the vermyk were, mere blurs in their terror, The Collector’s young had spread out through the rocks and grasses, and rose up in every direction they turned.
ssssReagis continued on his way as the wet sounds of tearing flesh and grinding of bones rose up behind him. When he didn’t stop, a low keening started up, and eventually, reluctantly, his primordial bodyguard fell in around him once again.
ssssIt didn’t take Reagis long to reach the shoulder of the ridge, not far from where the plateau started. He’d not had the chance to really stretch out for some time on this trip, and he took full advantage of it now, climbing quickly. The rolling wave of his bodyguard seemed to keep up without any problems. He found it odd that one of these merciless terrors would eventually turn into the slow, wheezing mound of flesh that was The Collector, but who was he to judge what worked for another species?
ssssThere was only one more incident on the way, and Reagis barely caught sight of it out of the corner of his right eye. A huge, bear-like shape rose up on its back legs, bellowing as smaller black shapes climbed it like it was a tree, and hung off it where they had latched on.
ssssThe massive shape dropped to the ground and hastened on its way at an impressive speed for something so large. The sounds of it crashing through the undergrowth continued for some time, and Reagis was relieved to think it had probably got away from his merciless bodyguard.
ssssReagis was surprised to find The Collector’s young registered only as dark shapes on his infrared optics. It seemed they were the ultimate in cold-blooded killer, and Reagis wondered where they stored the energy released as their muscles powered them along. Then he realised his mistake. Human muscles lost 75% of the energy from burning blood sugars to heat, but the muscles of his bodyguards did not.
ssssThe efficiency of the chemical conversion in their systems was staggering; and their value to scientific research at Prometheus would be enormous. Still, he ruefully admitted, he had little chance of getting one of them into the glider with him – at least with him getting out of the glider at the other end still alive.
ssssWhen he arrived at the landing site, he found the glider hadn’t been touched, and a quick scan of the area showed no traps or scanners. Reagis was pretty sure the Carnii machines hadn’t been there.
ssssHe powered up the glider and loaded his field kit aboard. The long, lean shape was all sophisticated machinery and weight-saving improvements on the inside, with one long, central cocoon for Reagis in the middle of it all. Finally there was one last task for Reagis to do, and he knew it wouldn’t take long.
sssseady to enter the glider, he played the sending chant to The Collector’s young. There was no reaction from the motionless black shapes spread out around the glider. He played it again, and got the same result. Reagis shrugged, he’d thought The Collector’s young would return to it as soon as they were freed from their obligations to him.
ssssHe wondered whether they were aware that The Collector’s bonding of them to him would wear off soon – and thought he would then be a tasty meal. Was he being too hard on them, biased against them by their extraordinary efficiency as killing machines? Was it, instead, curiosity that was keeping them here? Right now there was no way he could find out, and he pushed such thoughts from his mind.
ssssHe slid into the glider, and it sealed after him.
ssssCloaked in the dead of the Mentuk night, the black tide on the hillside watched impassively as the long, lean shape rose above the scattered trees, and was lost in the darkness.

ssssCordez could hear the frustration in Flinch’s voice, and that frustration was equally evident in his words.
ssss“What do you want us to do? Is the Alliance just going to keep falling back before the Baccur warships? We learned a lot from the encounter at Ba’H’Roth, even though we had to give up the planet.
ssss“Hell’s teeth, we haven’t even tried the Valkrethi against them yet!”
ssssLike any good leader, Cordez let a member of his team say his or her piece. Flinch would be ready to move on to the bigger picture, and look at more realistic solutions to the problems he saw, once he’d let out his feelings about the things he didn’t like.
ssss“Do we have anything more on how the Baccur warships repair themselves?” said Cordez a few moments later, when Flinch had finished what he wanted to say.
ssssThere was an uneasy pause.
ssss“No, not really,” said Flinch at last. He knew that understanding the Baccur warships was central to Cordez’ strategy, because he’d shown such interest in them, and he didn’t want to let Cordez down.
ssss“It’s all right, Flinch,” said Cordez, understanding his reticence. “Your team at Prometheus is the best there is, and they’re doing the best they can.
ssss“I wish I could tell you more about the direction we’re headed, but partly I’m bound by promises I’ve made, and partly I’m trying to make sense of a dozen options that just aren’t making sense to me yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve got something more definite.”
ssssFlinch nodded.
ssssThere was one thing Cordez had been able to share with Flinch, since he was one of the handful of people who knew about the existence of the Drua.
ssss“Nothing back from the Drua yet,” he said. “No response to my request for help; and that’s the thing that’s worrying me the most right now. In one way or another, the Drua are pivotal to what we do next, and it’s been nearly three weeks since I contacted them with that cube you had.”
ssssFlinch nodded again.
ssss“What’s the situation with the Baccur fleet now?” enquired Cordez.
ssss“Over a hundred Baccur warships have now built up at Ba’H’Rok,” said Flinch, “though there’s been no sign of the Fire Ships returning.”
ssss“I’ll bet you whatever you like the Carnii forces are guarding the Carnii city at Antares,” broke in Cordez. “That’s their last real place of power now, and I think they’ll concentrate their forces there.”
ssss“Individual Baccur warships have also been seen in a number of Alliance systems,” continued Flinch. “They haven’t done any damage, and it seems as if they’re more interested in gathering information at this stage.”
ssssCordez laughed caustically. “I don’t think there’s any love lost between the Baccur and the Carnii,” he said grimly. “The Carnii only turned to the Baccur for help when they became desperate, and we don’t know what sort of a deal that entailed.
ssss“The Baccur won’t trust the Carnii in the slightest. They’ll want to do their own intelligence gathering, and they’ll be scouting out our systems and our defences. I think we can expect a major Baccur offensive sometime soon. Aimed directly at us or the H’Dree, or possibly making an example of one of the H’Dree colonies – even KSarth or Alamos.
ssss“That’s why time is so precious right now, and we still haven’t heard from the damn’t Drua!” exploded Cordez.
ssssFlinch was surprised. It was rare to see Cordez lose his even-handed approach to things.
ssssThey wound up their discussion of Alliance strategies with nothing really resolved. Frustrating as it was, they would continue to fall back in front of the increasing presence of Baccur warships, and they would wait for the Baccur to set the time and place for the next engagement.
ssssWhat that gained them was time, but it didn’t give them forever. Fortunately for Cordez, the two critical events he’d been waiting so impatiently for now turned up in rapid succession.

ssssIt was another late evening when the air in Cordez’ living room began to shimmer, and a round, grey, watery-looking ball formed in front of him. He wished Asura had been there to see it; she’d often talked about her interest in the Orion, and the way they communicated with Flinch and himself.
ssssThe shimmering ball slowly cleared, leaving a picture of a desert scene, with a large rock in the foreground.
ssss“Welcome, Subdirector,” said Cordez, hazarding a guess that the rock was indeed his old ally Subthree, now promoted to new status. For one of the few times in his life, Cordez felt nervous. It was a feeling he was not used to, and he didn’t like the way it drained away his strength, and made his palms moist.
ssss“We have been talking to Drua,” began the Orion representative. “Many points have needed, mm, clarification. Process has taken much time.”
ssssThat, I know! thought Cordez brusquely to himself, feeling a little frustration bubbling to the surface, and quickly controlling himself again.
ssss“Unfortunately Drua cannot help you,” said Subdirector. “This is painful for us to say, mmmm, and I think to Drua also, but Drua must not bring down upon themselves their own destruction.”
ssssCordez had been expecting this. It had always been possible the Drua might throw their weight behind a last desperate attempt to win freedom for all the races in the Spiral Arm, but the chances were high they would simply go down fighting alongside the Alliance.
ssssCordez had activated an alarm as soon as the grey ball had begun to form in his living room, and Sharmin’s tired face now appeared on the screen he’d set up on the table. He didn’t know when she’d last slept, or when any of her team had.
ssssReagis Vits had brought the Carnii-Drua treaties to Cordez personally, arriving unannounced at his SouthAm headquarters, and was now recovering from his ordeal in Cordez’ guest rooms. Cordez had recognised their importance, and sent the data files to Prometheus immediately. Sharmin and her team had been trying to put the treaties in order of significance, and likely usefulness to the Alliance, ever since, working on the project day and night.
ssss“What have you got?” he said to Sharmin, turning his head from Subdirector to do so.
ssss“Most of the treaties are redundancies,” she said, “each one relying on previous agreements or stipulating that the same conditions need to apply. We didn’t think you’d want to go round in circles like that, so we concentrated on stand-alone situations that we thought the Alliance might be able to use.
ssss“We’ve been working on a list – in order of most likely usefulness – and all I can suggest at this stage is I send you the top twenty treaties. The only problem with the ones we’ve selected is that the more significant treaties were established earlier in the history of the two races, so most of those at the top of the list are quite ancient.”
ssss“I think that’s going to be a plus;” said Cordez, very pleased with what the research team had done, “as long as no later treaties have null and voided any of the earlier ones.”
ssss“No, definitely not,” said Sharmin. “We were very particular about that. The whole of our operations room is covered in timelines and flow charts, with retroactive loops that invalidated more than half the treaties.”
ssss“I can’t say how much this might mean to all of us,” said Cordez, touched by the way the research team had run themselves into the ground to get him this information.
ssss“It’s what we’re here for,” said Sharmin, with a tired smile. Another figure joined her on the screen in front of Cordez, a tall male figure that he remembered seeing at Prometheus once or twice. Roberto, wasn’t it?
ssss“She’s a princess, the best we could ever hope for,” said Roberto, and put his arm around her shoulders before squeezing her gently. The gesture reminded Cordez of himself and Asura, when they were in their private quarters. He smiled; they seemed a very happy couple.
ssss“Next time I’m out at Prometheus I’ll thank the research team in person,” said the Regent, and ended the transmission. He turned back toward Subdirector.
ssss“I’m sending you some information that will change the mind of the Drua,” he said, and relayed Sharmin’s data files onward.
ssssSubdirector said nothing, and then another Orion sidled into the picture. There was much animated waving of the fernlike fronds that adorned their bodies.
ssss“One last message to the Drua people,” said Cordez reassuringly. “Ancient treaties that the Carnii must abide by. On the strength of your trust in me, take them to the Drua.”
ssssAt the mention of ancient treaties, the two Orion did seem to hesitate. Cordez could only hope they’d take a chance and do as he asked.
ssss“What you require of us poses great risk to Orion,” said Subdirector. “This is difficult for us. We have to balance destruction of our race with fate of many other races. Carnii, mmm, suspect our messages to Drua already.”
ssssSubdirector paused, and Cordez felt his heart stop.
ssss“We will send message on,” said Subdirector, “but Drua must reply to you. Danger is too great for us.”
ssssCordez assured them this would be perfectly acceptable to him.
ssss“For the good of the many,” said Subdirector, and the grey ball slowly faded from Cordez’ living room.
ssssAs Cordez thought about what he’d asked the Orion to do, it made him feel sick at heart. Could he risk the destruction of a peaceful race like the Orion to increase the chances of Earth and the Alliance? He wasn’t sure that what he’d just done had been entirely ethical, even though the Orion had chosen to do as he asked in full knowledge of the possible consequences.
ssssCordez stood up and began to pace the room. He knew the activity was a good way to clear his head. After a while he drew one, long, deep breath.
ssssWhatever the ethics of the situation, the die was now cast. All he could do was be as ready as he could, to field whatever the situation threw at him next.
ssssHe could feel it in his bones. They were entering the end game


ssssSIXTEEN

ssss“So, we’re going back to Orouth,” said Sharmin, standing at attention in Flinch’s office, “and we’re going to bring the remaining Valkrethi back to Prometheus.”
ssss“Exactly,” said Flinch. “Cagill’s already been told to prepare his group of experienced Valkrethi pilots, and the reserves have been told they’re going too. There’s barely enough personnel with experience of the Valkrethi to ferry the 162 of them remaining at Maka’H’Rosh to the freighters.
ssss“I thought I’d tell you in person, since you’re non-military personnel, and under my command more than Air Marshall Cagill’s.”
ssssSharmin nodded.
ssss“Matsu Fujimi, and his assistant Meeaniro, will be seconded to your team for the trip. Cordez doesn’t want to draw attention to the mission – so you’ll be going in fast and light as you did the first time round – but he doesn’t want to leave you undefended either. The remaining Valkrethi will be in storage on the way back, so you won’t be able to count on them if there’s trouble, and they don’t have stardrive capability to run escort duty anyway. Matsu will be your ‘insurance’, do you understand?”
ssssSharmin nodded vigorously. She’d followed Matsu’s work on sub space pulses with interest, and was fully aware of how the technology could be used to tow missiles inside other ships – even though that work was supposed to be confidential.
ssss“The task force will be carrying sub space generators and missiles, do you understand what I’m saying?” continued Flinch.
ssss“I am fully conversant with his work,” replied Sharmin crisply. She was on the verge of snapping a salute, but thought it might be a bit over the top. She liked playing soldiers, it had an order and simplicity about it that appealed to her researcher’s brain.
ssss“Good,” said Flinch. “I don’t want to have to bumble my way through an explanation when the topic is far more your field than mine.
ssss“You’ve got 24 hours to get yourself and your research team organised. You’ll be taking the Orouth Freighter once again, but the lower decks will need to be cleared, so some of the Valkrethi can be stored there on the way back.
ssss“Understood?”
ssssThis time it was okay to snap a crisp salute. She barked a quick ‘yessir’, and wheeled to march out the door once Flinch gave her the ‘dismissed’ command.
ssssFlinch was left a little bemused at the even-more-military-than-the-military approach of the civilian contingent.
ssssA convoy of eight bulky freighters left Prometheus at the close of the following day, and was four days into the long stardrive flight to Orouth when Cagill’s navs officer relayed the news Cagill had least wanted to hear.
ssss“We’re being tracked,” said the navs officer. “Probably have been for some time, but the sub space pulses are strengthening, so they’re getting closer to us.”
ssssThe navs officer paused, and confirmed a reading on his console.
ssss“At least one vessel matching speed with us. It’s impossible to tell how close it is while we’re in stardrive, or whether it’s ahead of us or behind.”
ssssIt wouldn’t be just one, Cagill knew that with a sinking feeling of certainty. A Baccur warship would be tracking them, but it would be one of a group of ships.
ssssHe wouldn’t send a sub space message to Cordez. That might tip off the Baccur that they’d been spotted, but more importantly he already had his orders if this was to happen. He was to press on regardless, and improvise as the situation demanded.
ssssCagill reviewed his plans to bring the Valkrethi back from Orouth, running them through his mind. The freighters were two days out from their destination, and Cordez had ordered the Valkrethi be brought back to Prometheus – presumably for the attack on the Carnii city.
ssssThe freighters had been fitted with Drua shields, but the shields didn’t work against Baccur warships. With the warships already on their tail, they’d soon be sitting ducks against superior armaments, and the ability of the Baccur to regenerate their ships.
ssssThe only chance the freighters had lay with Matsu and his sub space missiles, but how to deploy them in a way that would catch the Baccur unawares? It was a problematic situation, and Cagill could only hope some sort of answer would come to him in the next few days.
ssssThe freighters came out of stardrive as close to the planet as they dared. The Carnii had shown they could come out of stardrive within the gravitational field of a planet – though this wasn’t within the capabilities of the Alliance starships – and the Baccur would doubtless be capable of the same.
ssssCagill was very much aware that the sudden appearance of Baccur warships between the freighters and the planet would reduce the chances of success for the mission to almost zero, and had prepared the freighters for this.
ssssAs soon as the convoy came out of stardrive it closed on the upper levels of the atmosphere, and sank into the boiling grey and white shapes of the massive thunderclouds. Sharmin was confined to her quarters for the descent, as were all the Valkrethi pilots for safety reasons. Cagill, though, was seeing what the research team had encountered on their first journey into the turbulent atmosphere of Orouth.
ssssThe endless columns of thunderclouds rose up around the convoy. The freighters were illuminated sporadically by flashes of purple light, coming from ozone as it was born in the stratosphere under the intense solar radiation of Orouth’s sun. Ice crystals lashed the freighters, and then they were plunging into the howling interior of the thunderclouds.
ssssCagill smiled grimly. It wasn’t all that bad – at least they hadn’t yet been attacked by Baccur. However the freighters were designed for space, and the best the convoy could hope for was a controlled fall through the violent storms of the upper atmosphere, and a survivable crash on the planet. They’d entered the planet’s atmosphere over the southern rainforest, and if – a very big if – they could control their descent well enough, they should emerge into the bright sunshine of the desert before they ran out of height.
ssssThe members of the convoy were connected through their navs systems by a continuous ring of sub space pulses. It was the only thing that kept them connected, and flying roughly in formation. All other forms of communications were disrupted by the immense electrical discharges all around them.
ssssCagill winced as a huge electrical bolt earthed against the side of his freighter, and the lighting dropped to an impenetrable gloom, before slowly brightening again. The peal of thunder that followed was like a physical blow to his ears, even inside the thickness of the hull.
ssssEight green dots showed on the navs officer’s screen, and a web of sub space connections painted a rose of gold lines between each one and the rest. One of the eight moved more uncertainly than the rest, and the navs officer watched it anxiously.
ssss“That shuttle pilot is a brave one,” said the freighter captain, stopping beside the navs officer.
ssss“Best we’ve got,” said the navs officer.
ssssThe freighter shook, despite its considerable size and inertial stabilisers, and the captain grabbed the back of the navs officer’s seat for support.
ssssCagill smiled. The captain was making a good show of nonchalance in the circumstances, and that was good for morale; but there was no way the Air Marshall was getting out of his chair.
ssssHe thought about the shuttle pilot for a moment, and then about the missing freighter captain, who was still somewhere in the most extreme levels of Orouth’s atmosphere, far above them. If his plan didn’t work, those two could well be the first to die. The rest of the convoy wouldn’t be far behind them.
ssssCagill’s freighter had set up one of its shuttles with sub space messaging capability, and deployed it as soon as the convoy entered the atmosphere. When the sub space pulses began to circulate among seven of the freighters and the shuttle, the Baccur would have to assume the eight freighters they saw disappear into the extreme weather over Orouth were now descending to the surface of the planet. Only key personnel in the convoy knew the eighth freighter was currently making its way across the upper layers of the stratosphere, rigged for silent running and giving Matsu Fujimi, and everyone else on board, one Stygian hells of a ride.
ssssAs the freighters fell through the thunderclouds, Cagill could see more of the extraordinary light show that the research team had reported from their visit to Orouth. The white glow that had been growing around the freighter became tinged with gold, then a rosy hue, before it was shot with violet streaks.
ssssThey weren’t that far from the thermoincline now. Cagill asked the navs officer to put their course on the overhead screen, against a large-scale map of the surface, and overlay it with the day’s weather patterns.
ssssThe unnaturally straight line where the rainforest, and the storms, ended showed dead ahead of them. Their projected course looked like it would take them over the boundary and into the desert, and Cagill breathed a huge sigh of relief. His plan was working – so far.
ssssInside the lone freighter, Matsu and Meeaniro were struggling in appalling conditions. The ship was repeatedly slammed from side to side by the ferocity of the storms, as it staggered through the upper atmosphere, and the internal lighting wasn’t exactly reliable as huge electrical surges swept over the hull.
ssssThe missiles were ready to go, but the two of them had to keep track of the sub space pulses circling round the main body of freighters, and constantly update their own coordinates for the missile lock-on functions.
ssss“Convoy approaching the divide between the rainforest and the desert,” relayed the navs officer of Matsu’s freighter. “We’re coming about to lift above the storm clouds. Hang on!”
ssssIn the convoy, Cagill was rehearsing the plan with the freighter pilots one last time. The freighters were going to ‘crash’ into the desert – more in appearance than reality, he hoped fervently – and crews were standing by to spew debris from the loading bays, and start false fires around the stardrive engine bays.
ssssThere was one last shudder as the freighters lifted themselves free of the dense clouds of the thermoincline, and the desert rushed up to greet them. Making one last attempt to lift themselves still further, the ships of the convoy strained to hold themselves clear of the fissured, gravel plain below them, and make it into the soft dunes that appeared ahead.
ssssCagill braced himself; and his freighter struck hard and rebounded, rearing up like a bellyflopping whale. Half flung from his seat, he hung on grimly as the ship lifted free and struck again. The hull groaned, and Cagill winced. There was only so much in the way of repairs they could do out here.
ssssMoments later the convoy came to rest, scattered over a wide area. Debris spewed from loading bays, as if by magic, and flames licked around a number of the engine bays as columns of smoke rose into the sky.
ssss“Come on, you big, dumb, Baccur slagspawn, take the bait,” growled Cagill to himself. “Just hold off up there and enjoy your victory, while Matsu does his magic.”
ssss“Six unidentified ships entering the atmosphere to the east of us,” reported his navs officer, “and coming our way.”
ssssAll they could do now was sit, helplessly, and wait. It was a bad situation to be in. Cagill realised he’d never been so tense, or so helpless.
ssssIn the lone freighter, Matsu was faced with a nerve-wracking decision. If the freighter left the cover of the storm clouds too soon, the Baccur warships wouldn’t be below them, with their attention on the ‘disaster’ so carefully stage managed in the desert for them. If they left the cover of the clouds too late, the warships might have already destroyed the freighters lying helpless on the sands.
ssssIn the end, the decision was taken out of his hand. The towering thundercloud that had been their hiding place disintegrated, in a dozen lurid violet explosions, and spat them out onto the edge of space. Knowing they would now show up on the Baccur instruments, the pilot drove the freighter swiftly forward, until they came to the edge of the storm clouds above the rainforest. The scene that opened up before them showed the Baccur warships already circling above the downed freighters, and preparing to destroy them.
ssssMatsu scanned the warship positions and flung the coordinates into the missile systems, frantically tapping in the firing code. There was an agonising moment when nothing seemed to happen, and then dozens of sub space pulses leaped into existence, making strange, refracted light trails as they connected the freighters to the warships.
ssssThe warships didn’t have time to move. Something danced along the distorted paths of light, the mesmerising twinkle of death-bringers, and the warships imploded. They went somewhere, but it was impossible to say where. A blast of super-heated gases made the scene shimmer, like a mirage in the desert below, and then all traces of the warships were gone.
ssssThe sky above the desert sands was clear.

ssssCordez watched a watery, grey ball grow in his living room. It could be the last time he ever saw such a thing, he thought, or it could be the beginning of a much closer relationship with the reclusive Drua. At least Asura was with him this time, and she would be able to see the Orion race for herself, and not second-hand from his descriptions of them.
ssss“This one is trustworthy?” began Subdirector abruptly, and Cordez assumed it meant Asura.
ssss“I can give you every assurance of her trustworthiness,” said Cordez.
ssssSubdirector considered this.
ssss“The two of you have been inseparable for the past, mm, three of your days. We had to take the risk and contact you.”
ssss“I understand,” said Cordez. He and Asura had been grabbing a few days of rest from their exhausting round of duties, and that had forced the Orion to contact him while Asura was present.
ssssAsura squeezed his hand, and sat fascinated by the desert scene before her, and the strange ‘living rock’ that was somehow communicating with them.
ssss“Time is, mmm, very short,” said Subdirector. “Drua ask you to act without delay.”
ssssThis was promising. The Drua seemed to be taking the treaties he’d sent them seriously.
ssss“Carnii have located Orion planet. Drua have declared Orion planet a Drua protectorate, and used Carnii-Drua treaty as basis for this. Drua request Alliance send force to back declaration, and to show by presence other races also have knowledge of treaties.”
ssssCordez’ heart sank, as he realised it was he who had brought the Carnii to the Orion planet. He’d contacted the Orion so he could talk to the Drua, and the Carnii must have followed the sub space messages to them.
ssssHe didn’t even have to think about his response.
ssssThe Alliance would send warships; of course it would. He’d have to get the okay from the governments involved, but he’d send the ships now, anticipating a favourable response.
ssssIt might be a hopeless gesture – what could hundreds of Javelins, H’Dree warships and even a smattering of Valkrethi – do against a sizeable force of the powerful Baccur warships, but the only hope of the Alliance lay with the Drua, and with the treaties. It would do whatever it could to help.
ssss“Political situation is, mmmm, complicated,” said Subdirector.
ssss“Drua have invoked treaty clauses as basis for neutrality of Orion planet, but this in turn depends on much wider treaty clauses.”
ssssSubdirector paused, as if it were taking a deep breath, though whether it metabolised oxygen or not was an unknown.
ssss“If Carnii cell outside Core can be completely destroyed, Carnii may honour treaty restoring previous boundaries of Carnii, within the Core, for one thousand revolutions of Caerbrindii sun.”
ssssCordez had to repeat Subdirector’s words to himself several times before they really made sense. In the end he figured it out.
ssssThe three races the Caerbrindii had spawned, the Carnii, H’Roth and Drua, must have grown tired of border conflicts that flared up into debilitating wars, and ratified a ‘contest of strength’ clause. If there was friction along a border, then a period of peace would be instated if the race attempting to expand its territory could be decisively thrown back to its previous boundaries. After the allotted time, they were presumably free to try again.
ssssCordez had no idea how long a thousand revolutions of the Caerbrindii sun was – Reagis had just come back from Mentuk, he would know – but whatever it was, it would buy the Alliance a time of peace, and even better it brought them time to prepare for the next Carnii onslaught.
ssssCordez felt confident the rapidly evolving members of the Alliance would be equal to that battle.
ssssOne last matter remained to be unravelled, and Cordez followed the lines of cause and effect to their logical conclusion. These were Carnii-Drua treaties, and didn’t cover the Alliance. For the Drua to invoke this clause, and make it work – assuming the Carnii could be thrown back to the Core – it would be necessary for the Drua to take over the Spiral Arm as their own. Then they’d have a border with the Carnii, and a good reason to invoke the relevant treaties.
ssssIt turned out that Subdirector was about to get to this point.
ssss“Drua say, with apologies, is necessary for them to declare Alliance areas Drua protectorate. Then treaties may be, mm, applied against Carnii.
ssss“Is this acceptable to Human, to H’Dree, and to all others in the Spiral Arm?”
ssssCordez barely hesitated. He was about to send Alliance forces to the Orion planet, and get permission later, and the same urgency propelled him to act in the same way on this point.
ssss“Alliance areas may be declared a Drua protectorate. This is acceptable to the Alliance. Formal agreement will follow as soon as possible.”
ssssHe paused.
ssss“If Orion will disclose coordinates of their planet, the Alliance will send forces immediately.” He followed this statement by activating the security recorders for the room. However such information arrived, he wanted to have a good copy of it.
ssssSubdirector waved its fronds, initiating something, and the picture faded out to leave a flickering white ball in front of Cordez and Asura. A few moments later, some previously recorded material took its place. Cordez assumed the sub space feed from the Orion planet had been relayed to a Drua information bank.
ssssThe picture cleared to show a desert plain from a great height. This then receded until a brown and orange planet hung in space, not far from a feeble yellow sun. The system whirled away until it was part of a sparsely populated scattering of stars, tiny points on the very edge of the galaxy.
ssssThere were no further developments, and the watery ball simply faded from Cordez’ living room.
ssssCordez took a deep breath.
ssss“That’s probably the best outcome we could have hoped for,” he said at last, “but it’s all coming down to some very tricky last minute timing. Damn’t, there’s so much to do!”
ssssAsura could see what the last few weeks had already taken out her husband, and she wished she was able to shift more of the load to her own shoulders.
ssss“Leave EarthGov to me,” she said with a smile, putting her arms around his chest. “You start gathering the Alliance forces you’ll need.”
ssssHe hugged her arms against him, grateful she was there. He patted her cheek, then stood up, freeing himself from her embrace. He took the security recording and went to his home office next door. Asura could hear his voice as he opened a sub space link with Prometheus.
ssss“Good to hear your voice, Flinch. Data file coming in with location of the Orion planet on it, but it’s a visual recording and we’ll need to check it against our star charts to get exact coordinates.
ssss“Yes, the Drua are coming in with us, as best as I can understand what the Orion are saying. No word of this to anyone until I can think of a way to prepare everyone for what’s coming.
ssss“We have to send an Alliance force to the Orion planet. When are the Valkrethi expected back from Orouth?
ssss“Yes, we’re going up against the Carnii city – it’s them or us – and I’ve no idea what help we’ll get from the Drua as yet; but if we win, the Alliance should be left alone for a long, long time.
ssss“I know, it’s complicated; I’ll get back to you soon.
ssss“Thanks, means a lot to me.”
ssssCordez made a few more calls and came back into the room.
ssss“Your transport to EarthGov headquarters in Geneva is already on its way. I’ll get my SouthAm carrier to lift me into orbit as soon as I’m ready. I think I need to be out at Prometheus for this one.”
ssssHe smiled. “We were lucky to get these three days together, weren’t we?”
ssssShe smiled back, and he put his arms about her.
ssss“When are we getting out of this business,” he said quietly, as he held her fiercely against him.
ssssHer muffled voice came from his collar, and he lessened his grip on her.
ssss“When it’s all over,” she repeated, not wanting him to make promises he couldn’t keep. She kissed him gently and then broke the embrace to go and pack what she’d need for the trip to Geneva. Cordez returned to his office to initiate the gathering of the Alliance forces, before he left for Prometheus.

ssssAir Marshall Cagill surveyed the scene in the desert from the bridge of his freighter, which had miraculously landed more or less upright. He found himself in the middle of the convoy, looking out at seven towering ships, each six or seven stories high even on their sides, scattered on the sands in various upended positions. It was a most incongruous sight in the soft, rolling dunes of a desert. The shuttle that had been sent from Cagill’s freighter to make up the appearance of eight freighters on the way down had landed – much more gracefully – just in front of him.
ssssCagill had just finished a conversation with Matsu, somewhere on the edge of space far above, delivering his heartfelt thanks. The researchers in the eighth freighter, and their sub space missile technology, had come through for them all. It didn’t bear thinking about what would have happened if they hadn’t.
ssssThe problems the convoy now faced fell into two broad categories. The Valkrethi had to be found and stowed on the freighters, and the freighters had to get themselves back into space.
ssssThey weren’t going to be able to make the jump off the planet using the small auxiliary systems used to navigate when they were in orbit, they were going to have to use the stardrive. That would normally fry every circuit in every piece of electronics on the ground as far as the horizon. Fortunately, there was nothing as complicated as electronics on Orouth.
ssssThe stardrive wasn’t that good for living things either, if they were right under it. He’d have to contact the desert people, the Pellukech. They were an unknown, a race he’d only read about in his briefing papers. Perhaps he would get Sharmin to do it, since she was known to them. She’d have to convince them to move out of the area, even if it was only temporarily.
ssssLast of all the structural integrity of the freighters would need careful checking, and there’d be some sections of the hulls that would need repairing. The freighters had been through a lot more in the last few hours than they’d ever been designed to withstand.
ssssHe set up an open channel with the captains of the other freighters, and they began to work through the problems one by one.
ssssWhile he was doing that, Sharmin led the first team as it made its way by shuttle to the archive behind the Lizard’s Head. The warlike Olongetti were conspicuously absent from the plateau housing the archive, but she doubted things would stay that way for long. The underground transport system worked as smoothly as before, and it was not long before the team found themselves in the vast, cathedral-like space that was Maka’H’Rosh. She and her research colleagues moved quickly toward the giant figures at the other end of the huge hall, while the newcomers with them struggled to keep up, looking at the wonders around them and making awed comments.
ssssThey all followed her up the gantry ladders to the mezzanine floor, and Sharmin showed the newcomers the work station that told them, in diagrams and pictures, how to activate the giant figures.
ssss“Jubilate. Andre,” she said. “Get this lot down onto the floor and ID’d into a Valkrethi each.
ssss“Roberto, you and I have to figure out a way to get the Valkrethi across the desert to the convoy. The freighters will be exiting straight up through the atmosphere, so we’ll need to take the Valkrethi to them.”
ssssJubilate nodded and ushered her group down the gantries to their waiting steeds. Roberto ran the program on the work station again, looking for the controls for the exit point they’d used last time. Opening the giant portal to the outside world for the Valkrethi had been difficult enough, and old rock falls on the camouflaged exterior had jammed it shut behind them.
ssss“You mentioned cave systems,” said Sharmin thoughtfully.
ssss“I did?” said Roberto, his mind more than half on the diagrams he was watching.
ssssShe dug him in the ribs, to get his mind on the cave system question, and he put out a hand to keep her at arms length while he finished his work. They both smiled. Roberto was pleased with Sharmin’s growing boisterousness – in their relationship and in life generally – and took every opportunity to tell her how much he enjoyed the change in her.
ssss“Back in the archive under the plateau,” she said, “on the first trip. You remember.”
ssss“Oh, the fresh air,” said Roberto. “The air smelled fresh in the archive because it had a passive air supply system. Warmed air inside the plateau rises into a cave system further up the mountain, drawing in cooler air from further down. A natural chimney effect.”
ssss“Yes, yes, of course,” said Sharmin impatiently. “But that might be the way out. Do you think the Valkrethi could fit in those cave systems?”
ssss“Whe-ew,” whistled Roberto, finishing his run through the work station diagrams without finding anything new they could use. “I don’t know about that. The Valkrethi are awfully big.”
ssss“Maybe,” said Sharmin, “but we’re going to give it a try. Excavating the jammed portal looks like it might take a lot longer.”
ssssIn the end, the cave systems did prove the more successful option. Sharmin and Roberto took temporary ID routines and climbed ladders into two of the standing Valkrethi. They ran them through their warm up routines, and didn’t find any glitches showing up from standing around for 200 thousand years.
ssssThey used their mounts to enlarge the natural vents that entered the vaulted space along the back wall of the cavern, and discovered an interconnecting system of huge spaces, similar to the one in which the Valkrethi were stored.
ssss“It looks like there was a cave here in the first place, and the H’Roth just enlarged it for the Valkrethi,” said Roberto, examining the wall next to the rough archway he’d made. The surface was beautifully machined, but it was clear the huge hall of the Valkrethi had started life as one of a chain of caverns in the mountainside.
ssss“Get the others over here,” said Sharmin, on the comms band between them, “and we’ll see if there’s a way out. I can see something leading into the next cavern after this one.”
ssssWhen they finally came to the end of the interconnected caverns, it was a relatively easy matter to reach the surface. Roberto enlarged an old water channel that led out onto the mountain slopes, digging through the side the cavern where the rock was soft and crumbly. Sharmin confessed herself satisfied with their way out of the caverns. She looked down the wooded sides of the mountain to the sharp definition where the desert began.
ssss“We can walk the Valkrethi to here,” she said, “then fly them back to the convoy on the other side of the desert. It’ll be quicker to go orbital. I hope the new pilots can handle a trip to the edge of space.
ssss“I think we can call our little reconnoitre a success,” she added to Roberto, who was standing beside her. “Everyone out of the caves?”
ssssRoberto nodded his massive Valkrethi head.
ssss“Then we’d better get this first batch back to the freighters. Let’s run through the orbital flight sequence for the new pilots,” she said.
ssssHer team made two trips to Maka’H’Rosh that morning, and another team joined them in the afternoon. Work on repairing the freighters was soaking up most of the freighter personnel, but the two teams worked tirelessly on, until almost a hundred Valkrethi stood about the freighters, waiting for their transport home to be made ready for their trip to the Solar System.
ssssThe Pellukech in the area were eventually located, and told it was unsafe to remain in the area. Fortunately they took this on trust from Sharmin and Roberto. Word of the strange beings who rode great ships in the sky – and commanded their own personal karrich – had spread throughout the tribes after the research team’s first visit to the planet.
ssssThe legend of the karrich riders received an unintentional boost on the last day. The paramount Pellukech chief, the hakkim for the area, came to see the convoy. He was bringing news that he had contacted all his people, and they were now on their way to new areas much further away.
ssssIt would have taken him a great deal of courage to approach such mythical beasts – which they were to him – as the convoy of stranded freighters, and Sharmin was impressed by his bravery. She watched from Cagill’s bridge as the party of tall, thin tribesmen, in long robes, dismounted from the reptilian camels they’d ridden to the site.
ssssAt the same time another fifteen Valkrethi landed some distance from the convoy, and started their walk in to join the ranks of others, arrayed in the dunes behind the freighters. Sharmin saw the hakkim draw back from the sight, and some of his attendants retreated a dozen or more steps. She smiled. It was all a bit much for them.
ssssA shadow fell on the Valkrethi walking in, and Sharmin looked up to see a karrich soar past some distance overhead. Whether the recently arrived Valkrethi had landed too close to its ‘nest’, if it had one, or for some other reason, it was not pleased.
ssssDrawing back great sheets of leathery wings it plummeted toward the Valkrethi, and managed to strike one that was off balance, in mid-step, and sit it on its backside. There was a round of ragged cheers and catcalls on the open channel. The Valkrethi, nothing hurt but its pride, scrambled up and trotted forward to take its position in the formation once again.
ssssNot content with this, the karrich laboured back into the air, and banked around for another run at them. Andre was bringing this group of Valkrethi in, and he saw the winged creature start its second pass. He stepped out to one side, and waited while the karrich lined up on this new, more solitary target.
ssssDropping to his knees, he let the karrich swoop overhead, its talons clicking at thin air as it screeched its extreme displeasure. He remained kneeling, and the karrich wheeled abruptly right and dropped straight on him, making no mistake of its prey this time.
ssssAndre’s powerful Valkrethi arm shot out and grabbed it by the neck, as he sat it bodily on the sand. Its teeth clacked busily together, while it tried to swallow, and as Andre forced it down it assumed a crouching position, with wings spread, much like a frightened chicken. Andre lifted his hand away, and the karrich’s head bobbed even lower in trepidation. He reached out and stroked its long, scaly head. It froze in position, and he stepped to one side, in the manner of a tourist posing for an opportunity photo.
ssssThe open channel erupted in cheers, and the hakkim and his men began waving their arms and jabbering furiously in their high-pitched Pelluchian tongue. Sharmin smiled. An extraordinary story had just been born, and the living legend of the strangers from beyond the stars had expanded once again.
ssssThe last of the Valkrethi were brought over later that day, and Maka’H’Rosh was then closed off once again at the spot where Sharmin and Roberto had forced a way out of the caverns under the mountain. With all the Valkrethi now present, the task of storing them in the freighters began. Only one of the freighters had needed extensive repairs, and all had now passed stringent pre-flight checks.
ssssThe takeoff from the planet was perfectly orchestrated. The eight freighters rose from the desert in perfect unison at the start of the following day. The convoy was soon in orbit around Orouth, leaving nothing behind except a few karrich disoriented by the supersonic booms, and a small herd of reptilian camels stampeding across gravel plains to the east.
ssss“Time to go home,” said Cagill, giving the navs officer a countdown for a simultaneous entry by all eight freighters into the grey nothingness of stardrive.
ssss‘Home’ was Prometheus now. It had become home during the years of training and the shared experience of having their backs to the wall in battle. Perhaps Earth would become home once again when this was all over, but a perpetual state of war readiness had changed things for them all.

ssssFlinch had had some hard decisions to make, but the warships were ready to go now. There were so many unknowns in the plans to take Alliance forces to the Orion planet, but he’d done his best.
ssssHe was toying with the idea of going with them. It was decidedly improper protocol of course. He was theoretically too ‘valuable’ to be risked at the front line, but a leader who’d lost touch with his troops could also be a danger to the whole war effort.
ssssHe cleared the idea with Cordez – who surprisingly made little objection – and told Cagill he was going to have a passenger on the trip to the Orion planet.
ssssThe Alliance forces had had to wait two extra days before the contingent of Valkrethi had arrived back from Orouth, with Flinch chaffing at the delay it had caused. Then he’d been able to release the 22 experienced Valkrethi pilots left from the original 24 to join the ships going to the Orion planet. Over a hundred Javelins accompanied the 22 modified ships that carried the Valkrethi. The H’Dree were providing only 50 of their warships, but a generous half of their remaining 30 motherships. Whatever they found at the Orion planet, it would have to do.
ssssThe journey to the fringes of the galaxy was going to take a long time, even longer than it did to travel half way across the Spiral Arm to Orouth, and the Alliance forces left as soon as the returning pilots had their Valkrethi aboard.
ssssFlinch joined Cagill on the bridge of his modified Javelin. Cagill had promoted Ayman Case to overall Alliance commander, and concentrated on leading the Valkrethi. It had always suited him to be where the action was.
ssssFlinch began to prioritise the work he would be able to do during the long ten days to the Orion planet. He barely had the list clear in his head, and was about to put it in his electronic notebook, when Cagill’s navs officer yelped in a very undisciplined way – and frantically started to call up and question the information on almost every readout of the console in front of him.
ssss“Ramecium decay efficiency now passing 150 percent,” he said worriedly, repeating another diagnostic process as if he couldn’t believe the results. “Stardrive entering theoretical quantum breakdown phase.”
ssss“Over-ride,” said Cagill, but the look on the navs officer’s face told him that he’d already tried that and it wasn’t working.
ssss“Main screen,” ordered Cagill, and they were looking out on a very different sort of stardrive effect than they were used to. The grey nothingness of stardrive had been replaced by shimmering bands of light, delicate hues that chased each other across the screen.
ssssCagill opened a link to his chief engineer, and found the engineer looking at the same image on the engine room screen.
ssss“Quantum breakdown effects,” said the chief engineer in awe. The breakdown of the normal quantum processes into impossibly small steps had been theorised, but never seen. No ship had ever gone that fast.
ssss“Engine efficiency passing 200 percent,” said the navs officer. Cagill turned back to his link to the engine room.
ssss“When does the hull’s structural integrity start to break down under these conditions?” asked Cagill.
ssss“Well, theoretically, much earlier than this,” said the chief engineer, looking very worried indeed.
ssssFlinch started to relax. He turned to Cagill and gave him a reassuring smile. Then he told him what he was thinking.
ssssDrua, it had to be – they could at least have warned him what they were going to do!
ssss“Engine efficiency stabilising at 210 percent,” said the navs officer.
ssssFlinch did a quick calculation. The efficiency of the stardrive engines had a logarithmic, not linear, effect in the inertial world. An increase to 210 percent was . . . over 100 times faster than their normal travelling speed. That would reduce the ten days to . . . a little over two hours.
ssssHe sat stunned by the figures in front of him. It was hard to fathom technology that would be capable of such a feat.
ssssHe put through a stand down order for the crews – letting the Drua run the ship – and told them to stop worrying about what was happening and enjoy the ride. After that, he and Cagill started to plan the emergence of Alliance forces into the skies over the Orion homeland.


ssssSEVENTEEN

ssssCordez wished he could have taken Reagis with him, or Cagill, or Asura, or Flinch and some of the Prometheus heads – even one or two of the Regents he’d come to trust. But the Drua had been explicit; he was to bring himself alone. He’d protested that one man couldn’t run a starship, and they’d said he could take one more, as a combination pilot and navs officer. He’d chosen Geelong.
ssssCagill and Flinch were already on their way to the Orion planet, so Cordez couldn’t have called on them anyway, but it would have been nice to have the choice. He didn’t think the limitations on numbers were a matter of security, just the isolation the Drua preferred – as if two minds in the same room were already a crowd for them.
ssssThe Drua had made contact this time in quite a different way. Rather than using the Orion as interpreters, and a visual system, there’d been a voice speaking to him out of thin air. He’d been alone in his home office, and he’d been a bit disconcerted by the animated voice that had darted from point to point about him, as if an invisible monkey with the power of speech had been jumping and climbing on supports he could not see.
ssssCordez had understood why the Drua had not wanted to use the Orion as translators. The Carnii now had the coordinates of their planet, and there was an increasing likelihood the Orion would soon be ringed by Carnii forces. That still left him the question, who was the fidgety little fellow he’d spoken to, and what did it look like?
ssssGeelong informed him they’d passed the orbits of the outer planets, and the Javelin was about to leave the Solar System. Cordez flicked his eyes upward.
ssssHe liked to keep the grey nothingness of stardrive on the overhead screen. There were barely detectible eddies in the nothingness, and he found the flickering shapes that formed there helped his thinking processes. He blinked, as if there might be something wrong with his eyes, and then stood up in disbelief as the overhead screen came alive, and shimmering bands of light chased each other across the screen in ever evolving shades of colour.
ssssGeelong swore, and ran diagnostics on the navs systems. When that didn’t show anything untoward he asked the ship’s central intelligence to suggest reasons for the change.
ssssThe CI came back with an answer immediately. “Quantum breakdown effects,” it said, speaking in a warm, rich voice that was just a little too regular to be Human. “Supporting evidence: engine efficiency now approaching 200 percent, sub space communications no longer operative, wavelength shift theoretically postulated as quantum physics breaking down at extreme speeds greater than light.”
ssss“Godsdamn’t!” said Geelong, checking what the CI was saying. “The engines are running way, way above their maximum. We must be travelling at . . .” His voice trailed off as he saw the readout.
ssss“We shouldn’t be alive,” he said, at last.
ssssCordez sat back in his chair. He figured it had to be Drua, and he guessed it was a way for the sophisticated fringe dwellers to speed things up when time was of the essence. There was probably a Carnii force on its way to the Orion planet right now – if not a Baccur force as well, he reflected darkly.
ssssWhen he’d reassured Geelong that they were, probably, going to live through this, he tried to get some idea of how long it would be before they arrived at their Drua destination. He managed to figure out what the increase in their speed was – close to 100 times the usual speed of a Javelin – but it was almost a day later when the ship re-entered normal space, and relinquished whatever control the Drua had superimposed on their stardrive engines.
ssssGeelong joined Cordez in front of the large overhead screen, as soon as the multicoloured hues indicating their enormous speed began to break up on the screen. The quantum effects were replaced by a black, empty screen.
ssss“Are you sure it’s working?” said Cordez, looking at the flat, colourless screen.
ssssGeelong ran some tests. “Everything checks out,” he said eventually. “There’s even a background reading of around three degrees Kelvin – residual energy from the big bang.”
ssssCordez froze as he realised what that meant. “Throw the rear view on the screen,” he said softly.
ssssThe screen was instantly full of stars. The thickest part of the galaxy, visible as The Milky Way from Earth, had vanished – receded into immeasurable distance – and there could be no doubt they were outside the known galaxy.
ssss“How far have we come,” breathed Geelong, unable to take it in all at once.
ssss“A very, very long way,” said Cordez softly, “and we’d better hope the Drua intend to send us back the same way they brought us here.”
ssss“We’re moving,” said Geelong, as the stars began to wheel to one side. He rushed back to the navs console, and tried to get a reference system established using the stars on his left as a starting point.
ssss“Localised movement only, maybe one-tenth the speed of light, heading for . . . here,” he said, and threw the coordinates up on the overhead screen, magnifying them as he went.
ssss“Can you believe that,” said Cordez, as a massive structure grew until it filled the centre of the screen.
ssss“I thought the Drua were solitary creatures,” said Geelong, and Cordez nodded slowly.
ssss“So that’s all . . ,” began Geelong, “. . .for one being,” finished Cordez.
ssssThey looked at each other.
ssss“Remember how big they are,” said Cordez, recalling Andre’s diagrams with a tiny stick figure underneath showing the dragon-like creature to Human scale.
ssss“Even so,” said Geelong.
ssssThe vast structure spread across the screen as the Javelin approached it. Geelong cut back the magnification several times, but at last the alien colossus filled the screen, and there was no doubt they were right alongside it.
ssss"We’re being scanned,” said Geelong. He paused. “That’s odd, the frequency is similar to thought waves. Super Alpha, around 300 cycles a second.”
ssssCordez winced. “Whatever it is, it’s not doing my head any good. Can you feel it?”
ssssGeelong looked up. Suddenly, he was transformed, mesmerised, lost in a dream world that made its own, particular, sense to him.
ssssCordez’ own painful reveries started to pass, and eventually he looked across at Geelong, and called his name. The pilot was lost, deep in his own thoughts. On the third or fourth summons, he started to respond.
ssss“It’s leaving us,” he said, with a sense of longing that made Cordez’ heart ache. “It’s going back to the dreamtime.”
ssssCordez got him to describe what he was talking about.
ssss“The place we came from,” said the pilot haltingly. “The place we go to.” He waved his hands, as if words alone could not communicate what he was trying to say. “The patterns that create the world, the place where first thought arises.”
ssssCordez realised Geelong was talking about something that was to him transcendent – some sort of mysticism.
ssss“The dreamtime is still strong in Australia,” said the pilot, finally, “for those who choose that path. The immense spaces, the lost horizons, the timelessness; it’s still there. We can still access it.”
ssssCordez nodded. He thought he understood what Geelong was trying to say, more or less.
ssssHis own experience had been more personal, more a sense of loss, of missing his mentor Ebert – long dead – and a haunting suggestion Asura might have vanished out of the world as he knew it, taking all the warmth of the world with her.
ssssIt was almost as if they had been scanned by a very powerful mind, possibly one augmented by technology, but one that had scanned them down to their most basic thoughts and being.
ssssAn enormous docking bay opened before the Javelin, and they were drawn inside. When the bay closed again, they were in complete darkness. Their instruments showed the bay had a breathable atmosphere, but they exited the Javelin in life support suits anyway. To start with they kept the suit’s lights off, and moved gingerly through the darkness.
ssssAs their eyes adjusted they could see tiny points of light, eerie fireflies that darted and looped in the gloom. One of them fluttered nearer, and then flew straight into Geelong’s glove, and out the other side. He pulled his hand away in surprise; the fireflies were nothing more than an image, an electronic presence in the blackness.
ssss“We’re not supposed to see our way by them, are we?” said Geelong, with his deadpan sense of humour.
ssss“No,” said Cordez, “but I think we’re supposed to go this way.”
ssssHe pointed toward a pair of lines that had just then appeared on the floor, creating a lane that skirted round the Javelin and disappeared into the gloom. The lines were easy enough to follow, but he turned on his suit’s lights anyway.
ssssGeelong shrugged, a gesture largely lost in his life support suit, and followed Cordez across the floor. His boots hit almost silently, suggesting a composite, or even living, material.
ssssThe walk into the gloom dragged on. To Cordez it was almost like walking across a vast stage into the wings, except for the complete absence of echoes.
ssss“Is the atmosphere for us, or does our Drua friend breath like we do?” said Geelong at last, to break the silence.
ssss“Unlikely,” said Cordez. “That they breath like us that is. It’s too inefficient. Only the H’Roth stayed reasonably true to their original DNA, the other two races took whatever enhanced their abilities and used it.”
ssssGeelong was silent at that. It jarred with his inner sense of the natural connectedness of things.
ssssThe two of them came to a cubicle set in a wall.
ssss“Airlock,” said Cordez. “The ship won’t be flooded with an atmosphere just for us. We’ll be shepherded to where they want us to go – sorry, where he or she wants us to go – a section at a time, then the atmosphere will be recycled, or moved ahead for us to use again.
ssss“The Drua have already told us how hard it is for them to do little miracles to save our backsides, so I guess they don’t have inexhaustible resources.”
ssssGeelong nodded. This trip was already the most bizarre of the Drua-related adventures he’d been on. It was getting to be a bit much really, and he was glad Cordez was in charge.
ssssThe other side of the airlock turned out to be a bubble with a flat floor. When they were safely through the airlock they felt the bubble begin to move.
ssss“Must be a big ship,” said Cordez. “Corridors don’t do it for the Drua.”
ssssThe bubble stopped at another one of the airlocks, and on the other side of this one was the almost legendary creature they had come to see.
ssssIt was floating in front of a set of 3D animations that blinked in and out of existence as they were required, re-sizing themselves and amalgamating at breath-taking speed. Behind them continuous bands of marching images flashed across a luminous wall as fast as the Human eye could follow.
ssssThe images on the wall faded away. The 3D animations slowed, and hung motionless in space. The enormous dragon shape turned its head and surveyed Cordez and Geelong with unblinking eyes; soft pools of eyes, without pupils, looking into them as if the Drua were scrutinising their souls.
ssssThe two men were standing on something like a mezzanine floor, a giant shelf along one side of the cavernous space, and Cordez walked out to the edge of it. From there he could look directly into the enormous face of the Drua, surrounded as it was by defensive plates ending in lethal spikes. The vast body undulated away to his left.
ssssHis contemplation of the giant creature before him was broken by the sound of nails clipping along the floor. He turned to see a part-Lemur, part-Cappuchin life form making its way along the mezzanine toward him. It was followed by a handful of others, large and small, and Cordez guessed they were a family group. The oldest male, taller than the others and sporting patches of white in the mane about its face, came on ahead of the rest.
ssss“Welcome to my master’s house,” it chittered, in a clipped, high-pitched voice.
ssssCordez bowed, in a very formal, SouthAm manner. “Tell your master we are pleased, and very much excited, to be here; and we are very grateful for everything the Drua have done for us.”
ssss“My master can understand what you are thinking,” said the hybrid creation. “I am here only to voice my master’s thoughts.”
ssssSo it was the Drua that had scanned them in the loading bay, thought Cordez. It had a very powerful mind, artificially enhanced or not.
ssss“To answer your questions,” continued the creature, “my master created us to act as translators for this meeting. We are of the same genetic lineage as yourselves, though deliberately not as advanced, and my master thought that might be comforting. We are a family group to meet each other’s social needs. Unnecessary cruelty breaks essential ethical laws, yes?”
ssssCordez replied that yes, it most certainly did. He found it a little disconcerting that he had only to wonder idly about these creatures, and the Drua had answered his unspoken thoughts.
ssss“We are not, how to say, conscious, in any way you would recognise,” it continued. “To create souls is morally fraught, to say the least – do you not agree?”
ssssCordez was amused. Since Humanity had never had the capacity to create souls, it was not a question he had ever considered. Apparently, it was a very real dilemma for the Drua. He suspected, however, that what they did was more a matter of adapting the existing.
ssssWhen he did not immediately answer the question, the creature hurried on. “The atmosphere in this chamber is quite breathable for you, and your present appearance is disconcerting to myself and my family. Would it be possible for you to remove your life support equipment?”
ssssCordez looked at Geelong, who nodded his agreement. They clambered out of their suits, and tentatively sniffed at the air about them. A smile broke out on Geelong’s features. “Spring in the mountains, if I’m not mistaken.”
ssss“Drua is glad you approve,” said the larger male. The other creatures in the small group did not seem to share in the burden of translating the Drua’s thoughts, and were more concerned with grooming each other, or similarly instinctive activities. The one Cordez now thought of exclusively as ‘the translator’ took the hand of one of the smallest ones, and led it over to Cordez.
ssssIt sniffed at his clothing, and pulled back its nose in distaste. Cordez smiled, and after its initial reaction it scampered up his outstretched arm and settled on his shoulder, leaning against the side of his head. Warm, soft fingers began to scratch gently at a tiny scrap of wax in his outer ear.
ssss"Why do Drua live alone?” said Cordez, wanting to understand some of the many mysteries surrounding the Drua.
ssss“Drua do not live alone,” said the translator, evidently puzzled by the question.
ssss“There are more Drua in this place?” said Cordez, now equally puzzled.
ssss“Ah, not so,” said the translator, as the Drua understood the question at last. “Drua are one in heart, one in mind, one in thought. Though vast distances separate them, Drua are never alone.”
ssssAs if to demonstrate the point, the huge dragon head in front of them turned back to one of the animations that hung in front of it, watching as it spun and jumped, shapes and colours flitting across its surface. The Drua was evidently communicating with one of its own, somewhere in the vastness of space.
ssssAt the same time, Cordez held his hands to his temples, dislodging his little passenger, and began to shake his head at the discomfort he felt.
ssss“You are well?” enquired the translator, very much concerned for its guest.
ssssWhen Cordez described the hundreds of tiny needles inside his head, and the sensation of falling that accompanied it, the Drua turned back to look at him.
ssss“Extraordinary,” said the translator, coming closer and looking into Cordez’ eyes. It studied something there for a moment, and Cordez felt gentle fingers probe inside his mind.
ssss“You have something like Drua mind, just the beginning of it. Drua share thoughts and feelings across the galaxy. You have something similar . . . a connection to events happening elsewhere, a little foreknowledge perhaps.”
ssssCordez straightened up with a look of wonder on his face, the odd sensation disappearing as the animation in front of the Drua became once again still.
ssssIt made sense. It all, suddenly, completely, made absolute sense.
ssssHe’d been too lucky, too often, in his life, and he’d always wondered why. He was plugged in to the greatest information web in the Solar System, and in the Alliance; a nexus of information and political binding that kept him up to date, in depth, everywhere at once. But that didn’t explain his extraordinary hit rate, his ‘informed guesses’ that were nearly always right on the button.
ssssIt had bugged him, had not seemed reasonable to him, even though he knew how good he was, how hard he worked.
ssssAnd here was the truth of the matter. He was a ‘Curacanto’ a spirit doctor as his ancestor’s ancestors had sometimes been, with knowledge of things it was impossible to know.
ssssHe felt relieved. At least it was an explanation of sorts.
ssssNow that the Drua understood the discomfort he felt when it conversed with its fellows, it shut down the animations in front of it. The translator explained it could shut itself out of the Drua mindweb if it concentrated on something else strongly enough. It enquired whether, if Cordez felt he had recovered enough, he would be willing to continue the conversation?
ssssCordez was only too eager to ask more questions, and recommenced with his observation that the Drua seemed technologically well ahead of the Carnii and the H’Roth.
ssssThe Drua agreed. “Pursuit of philosophical thought opens ways into nature of the universe,” explained the monkey-like translator, sitting on its haunches between the two men, and coming up to Geelong’s waist. The smallest member of its family, which Cordez had dislodged off his shoulder, had now taken up a position in Geelong’s arms, where it was nodding off as he rocked it gently.
ssss“However, Drua have no need of social closeness or political organisation, and thus do not breed for emotional and industrial needs. Drua have accelerated creation of new individuals – in response to Carnii colonisation outside the Core and rapid growth of Alliance in the Spiral Arm – but members still only number thousands, where previously there were hundreds.
ssss“Resources take time to accumulate, and process of creation is slow.
ssss“Despite more advanced technology, one individual needs to be far superior to overcome many others, in times of conflict,” it finished.
ssssCordez was intrigued to learn that the Drua had accelerated the creation of new individuals. From what the research team had discovered in the archives, the Drua were now so hybridised, and shot through with advanced technologies, that a natural birth was probably impossible for them.
ssssEssentially the Drua were trying to tell him that in a knock down, drag ‘em out fight, the Drua wouldn’t be able to field large numbers.
ssss“Drua have a number of protectorates,” continued the translator. “Most have volunteered to help in whatever way they can. Some have technologies that may be of use, but few would survive for long against Carnii or Baccur.”
ssssCordez was quite moved that the protectorates should offer to help, particularly against forces so superior to them. He agreed that the Drua should only accept help from those who stood a chance in a battle against the Carnii city, and the forces that would be defending it.
ssssThen the discussion became a little more technical.
ssss“Baccur have ways to overcome Javelin shields,” said Cordez, “and Baccur warships regenerate faster than Alliance forces can destroy them.
ssss“Carnii shields have adapted to every weapon we have turned on them. Valkrethi can still destroy Carnii ships, but we’ve lost five Valkrethi so far, and there are only so many of them.”
ssssThe translator smiled, an odd grimace that suggested the Drua behind it was attempting an unfamiliar Human expression. “We have been thinking about that, and we have some answers. How quickly can you modify your Javelins?”
ssss“Depends,” said Cordez. “What did you have in mind?”
ssssThe discussion on how they might work together to improve their chances began in earnest.

ssssThe modified Javelins carrying the Valkrethi came out of stardrive on the edge of a nondescript system about a feeble yellow sun. The H’Dree warships and the main contingent of Javelins had already arrived, and were establishing advance positions within the system. The motherships would take a little longer to arrive.
ssssThe Orion planet was the only one in the habitable zone around its sun, and two gas giants much further out completed the short list of planets. Several smaller planetary bodies orbiting inside the habitable zone were soon confirmed as asteroids captured by the yellow sun, whose orbits would decay over the coming millennia until they eventually collided with it.
ssssCagill called up the Orion planet on the overhead screens, as soon as the modified Javelins arrived. A small brown and orange ball filled the centre of the screen. From this distance it looked every bit a desert world, devoid of life, with no indication that water was present anywhere on it.
ssss“We have to give this place a name,” said Cagill, looking at the first detailed maps of the planet as they were delivered to him by his navs officer. “How about Desolata?”
ssssFlinch laughed. “I don’t think the Orion have a name for their planet,” he said, “which does seem odd, but they got the sector right – they’re smack in the middle of the Orion constellation as we would see it from Earth.
ssss“How about Refugia,” he offered. “A place where the Drua thought their charges would be safe from the Carnii.”
ssss“Aah,” murmured Cagill, “I see what you mean. A sanctuary. We’ll call it Sanctus then.”
ssssFlinch murmured his agreement.
ssssCagill made a forward-flicking motion with his left hand, and his tactical officer took them closer to the planet, leaving the rest of the Valkrethi-carrying Javelins to set up a base further out.
ssss“Look at that,” said Cagill, pointing to a low, flat building the navs officer had magnified and put on the overhead screen. Flinch watched as the ship’s sensors probed the building, and the area around and under it. Pipelines began to show up, emerging from deep underground and running away from the site, just under the surface, into the nearby mountains.
ssss“That’s how the Orion survive,” said Cagill. “Water from aquifers. The Drua must have set this up for them when they brought them here.”
ssss“I haven’t seen any other evidence of technology,” said Flinch, “so their needs must be minimal. In fact, I recall Subthree saying they didn’t like technology; it made them uneasy.”
ssssCagill grunted. He was looking at a readout from his comms officer.
ssss“I think we got company,” he said flatly. “Fifty or so exit signals starting to build up this side of the gas giants.”
ssssFlinch had been expecting this. The Drua would have made a point of getting the Alliance forces to Sanctus first, but he knew the Carnii and Baccur warships wouldn’t be far behind.
ssss“I think we can say that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’,” he said grimly.
ssssCagill nodded. The two leaders – one of the research projects at Prometheus and the other of its military forces – had developed a healthy respect for each other over their time together, and discovered a similar interest in language and its use. Something said succinctly was appreciated by them both.
ssssA sizeable force of Baccur warships emerged into normal space not far from the Orion planet, followed by a small contingent of Fire Ships.
ssss“The Carnii are making sure they’re not the first into action,” said Flinch drily.
ssssCagill was busy broadcasting a previously prepared declaration of Orion neutrality under the Carnii-Drua treaties governing Drua protectorates. The Prometheus language team had used the same old, formal language that the Carnii had used when they’d first entered the Spiral Arm, and claimed the binary system – HK42 on Human star charts – from the H’Dree.
ssssThe threatening warships slowed, and held their positions. It seemed they might respect the Alliance claims under the treaties.
ssssThere was a brief incoming comms burst, and the comms officer brought Cagill a simple message that acknowledged the right of the Orion to exist as a Drua-sanctioned planetary system..
ssss“Hard to believe that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’,” said Cagill.
ssss“Touché,” said Flinch appreciatively.
ssssAnother message chattered across the comms officer’s console. At Cagill’s instigation it was translated so those on the bridge could understand it, then broadcast so all could hear it.
ssss“Disclose coordinates of Drua base,” it commanded imperiously.
ssssSo, thought Flinch, we’re worth talking to now are we? Last time we were beneath contempt for you to notice. Learnt a little respect have we?
ssss“Coordinates of Drua bases are unknown to us,” replied Cagill, his words translated and sent back to the Carnii ships. “Disclosure is also not required under Carnii-Drua treaties.”
ssss“You are irrelevant under Carnii-Drua treaties,” came the cold reply. “Disclose coordinates of all Drua locations or you will die.”
ssss“Well, I was hoping for a more positive outcome,” muttered Cagill under his breath to Flinch.
ssssWhether things went well or not, they were committed to defending the Sanctus system. They were also buying time for Cordez to find a way to deal with the Carnii city inside Antares.
ssssCagill took a deep breath. They weren’t going to be backing down.
ssss“If Carnii choose today to die, we will accept the challenge,” he said, and lifted his hand, thumb and fingers together, making an ‘O’ signal. His comms officer sent an ‘independent action imminent’ signal to every vessel in the Alliance fleet.
ssssThe Baccur warships split into two forces, one peeling off and making for the main body of Javelins and H’Dree warships, out by the gas giants where they guarded the motherships. A smaller force headed for the Valkrethi-carrying Javelins near Sanctus.
ssss“Godsdamn’t slagspawn!” roared Cagill to Flinch, incensed at the turn of events. “Take over here while I launch my Valkrethi,” and he disappeared at a run in the direction of the large, central bay that dominated the ship.
ssssThe modified Javelins nearby were already launching their Valkrethi. The Baccur warships fired energy blasts among them as they finished the task and scattered, damaging some of the Javelins and destroying one that was too slow. The long, arched ships pursued the Javelins as the smaller Valkrethi slid away into the vastness of space. There was confusion as the Hud pilots twisted and turned the Javelins at breathtaking speed while the Baccur tried to get a clean shot at them, and then the Valkrethi returned, having now locked on to the enemy warships.
ssssThe Baccur were caught unawares by the tactic. The giant figures were small next to the enemy starships, but they worked their way round the hulls of the Baccur ships, looking for weak spots. They did some serious damage, ripping sections of the hull away and breaking into the long arches that joined the bridge and the engine room – but the Baccur ships repaired themselves as fast as their hulls were breached.
ssssOne of the Valkrethi tore loose enough of the hull to get access to one of the long, heavy missiles the Baccur ships carried in their arches, and reached in to destroy it. The thermonuclear device detonated, and warship and Valkrethi vanished together in a blinding explosion.
ssssCagill called three of the Valkrethi to him, and together they locked on to the Carnii Fire Ships that were sitting at a safe distance from the action. They slid away into the coldness of space, closing in on their new targets.
ssssBehind them, taking advantage of the Baccur confusion as the Valkrethi attacked, the modified Javelins began to slam salvos of superdense slugs into the enemy warships. One of them, hit by concentrated fire from a dozen Javelins, finally lost its power to regenerate. A number of Valkrethi swarmed over it, dismantling it into sections that slowly drifted away into space.
ssssThe main Baccur force now arrived at the gas giants, where the Valkrethi and H’Dree fleet surrounded the motherships, and the conflict spread to a second front.
ssssThe long, arched warships sought to get a clean shot at the motherships with their heavy missiles, and Javelin and H’Dree warship alike worked desperately to stop them, picking off the missiles with energy beams before they could do any damage. Only the fact they were outnumbered six to one stopped the Baccur from destroying the motherships as they had done at the confrontation above Ba’H’Rok.
ssssThe speed of the Hud pilots prevented the Baccur from effectively utilising their shield-penetrating weapons and greater firepower. Still, the Alliance began to lose ships as the desperate struggle continued. A mothership moved to the front of the fray, and caught a Baccur warship in its bright, blue, plasma beam. The warship tried to repair itself, at first appearing to succeed, but then it melted away under the fury of the mothership attack. Another warship had just been caught in the bright, blue stream of plasma, when two of the heavy Baccur missiles drove deep within it and detonated, destroying the mothership from the inside out.
ssssCagill knew his forces substantially outnumbered the Baccur, but he also knew that was not enough to give them a victory. Something else was going to be needed. His team of Valkrethi now closed in on the small contingent of Fire Ships, stationed well away from the areas of engagement. If he could make these ones break and run, he thought the Baccur might break off their attack as well.
ssssThe Valkrethi slid into the plasma shields of the nearest Fire Ship, and worked themselves through it. They dropped onto one of the hubs, landing with their knees flexed. Cagill sent two of his team to attack the underneath of the hub, while he and the remaining Valkrethi prepared to go in through the side.
ssssThe Carnii would know where they’d landed, and they’d be expecting the Valkrethi to attack using the same tactics as previously – two from the top and two from the side. Cagill, however, believed in the element of surprise, so he’d changed the attack pattern. He gave the other pair of Valkrethi time to get into position, then he and his number two ripped open the side of the hub and found themselves in the middle of a war zone.
ssssThe Carnii had been busy. More heavy weapons must have been installed throughout the Fire Ship hubs, and these opened up on the Valkrethi as soon as the hull was breached.
ssssCagill was punched straight back out of the hub, while his number two was driven sideways, landing in a crossfire that drove him to his knees. Cagill assessed his Valkrethi for damage, and then checked his energy levels, discovering nothing serious in either department. Realising what had happened to the other Valkrethi he punched his way back into the hub, and dragged him out of the line of fire. They retreated to a safe distance, where they could recover, and plan a more effective attack.
ssssA quick comms check revealed the other two Valkrethi were having as little success trying to breach the lower levels of the hub. Cagill thought for a moment. It was time to try a little something he’d held in reserve for some time. He signalled his number two.
ssss“We’re going to use the Valkrethi as armour-piercing missiles. What sort of shock do you think the internal damping systems can take?”
ssssThe other Valkrethi shrugged its massive shoulders as it drifted in space, recovering more quickly now from the battering it had taken. “Quite a lot, I’d say;” said the pilot. “But how much is too much? I don’t know the answer to that one.”
ssssCagill outlined his plan. It was fraught with unknowns, but it was the only real option they had. His number two nodded his Valkrethi’s imposing head.
ssssThey turned and left the Fire Ship, working their way through the plasma shields and putting a good distance between themselves and their target. Then they turned back to look at it.
ssssRaising their optic shields they opened a long sinuous thread between their current position in space, and a similar position a little further away on the other side of the Fire Ship. If they did this right they’d be at maximum speed when they hit the hubs inside the plasma shields.
ssssCagill gave his number two the finger and thumb ‘O’ signal, and they both activated their Valkrethi displacement systems. Moving slowly at first they began to pick up speed, and then the Fire Ship’s shields were flashing toward them. There was a moment when it felt like they were punching through something with the consistency of molasses, before Cagill felt a sudden, massive, physical shock.
ssssWhen he came round, he’d lost track of his Valkrethi partner. Somehow he’d hit one of the larger hubs on the far side of the Fire Ship. It had always been a matter of chance whether he’d hit anything significant, with the large open spaces among the spars and hubs of the Fire Ships, but luck had been on his side. He turned his head to look back into the long, jagged tunnel he’d made deep into the hub. Pushing back the metal walls around him, he made himself enough room so that he could stand up.
ssssA quick check revealed his energy levels were on the right side of halfway; but he’d taken a lot of damage, and his Valkrethi body was taking a long time to heal.
ssssSomething hit him a glancing blow on the leg, and blasted out a space in the debris below him. He looked up. Damn’t Carnii were firing down the hole he’d made in their ship. He stepped sideways out of the line of fire, and his damaged leg folded under him. Before he realised it, he had crashed through a wall, and into a main corridor.
ssssThe main corridors radiated out from the reactors at the centre of the hubs, so he must be getting close. Problem was, should he go left or right? He chose left, and dragged himself determinedly in that direction.
ssssWhen he arrived at a thick bulkhead, his spirits lifted. Only a major energy source would need something this robust to contain it. He stood up, shakily. He was getting shot up faster than his Valkrethi was able to repair itself!
ssssHe made another entrance beside the bulkhead, figuring the walls around the reactor column would be a little less strengthened than the bulkhead itself. He staggered forward into a large, open space, and straightened up in front of a tall metal trunk carrying glowing plasma conduits into the heights above him.
ssssYes! This was the place he needed to be.
ssssThere was a scattering of Carnii along the galleries ringing the inside of the giant beehive structure. They reacted immediately, clearing the chamber as if by magic.
ssssTaking us seriously now, are we boys? muttered Cagill tiredly. He knew he only had moments before the Carnii hauled in one of their grey fighting machines and trained it on him once again. He lurched forward and ripped all the plasma conduits off the nearest side of the central column. It seemed to take ages as he sprayed the stuff of suns around the chamber – knowing he was too close, and too weak to withstand the blast – before the reactor itself blew out, and the hub followed, and then the Fire Ship along with it.
ssssIt was a long, long time before he came around again, and he was at first too emotionally exhausted to grapple with the fact he was, somehow, still alive. He lapsed back into unconsciousness, not sure if he would ever see the other Valkrethi again.
ssssTwo days later, he was well enough to be brought up to date on the events that had followed his destruction of the Fire Ship, and almost, the destruction of himself.
ssssFlinch got Cagill’s version of events first, knowing the value of debriefing a combatant of his or her experiences.
ssss“Quite a story,” said Flinch at last, the admiration evident in his voice. Then his tone changed.
ssss“You only just made it out alive yourself. We’d given up hope of finding you when one of the last searches picked up a speck heading toward the centre of the system. You’d have fallen into the Orion sun eventually!
ssss“There was nothing left of your Valkrethi, just the absolute basics of the shield around the pilot and the servo mechanisms. It must have taken everything your Valkrethi had to protect you from the blast; you were no more than a tiny cocoon floating in space when we picked you up.”
ssssCagill’s eyes showed his surprise. It was hard for him to believe he was still alive after that.
ssss“The rest of your team followed your example, and fired themselves into the Fire Ships like giant, armour-piercing shells. Once they’d destroyed another of the ships the remaining ones left the system. The Baccur stuck it out for a bit longer, but then they must have been called off by the Carnii – who probably don’t trust the Baccur to do what they’re told without direct supervision.”
ssss“As my enemies are divided, so my strength multiplies,” said Cagill.
ssssFlinch raised an eyebrow.
ssss“Oh, just something Cordez said once,” explained Cagill. Then he fixed Flinch with a look that said plainly he wanted a truthful answer to his next question.
ssss“How did we go against the Baccur?” he asked, in a firm, even tone.
ssss“Not so good,” said Flinch sombrely. “If you want to talk losses we only managed to destroy five of the Baccur warships – and of course your team of Valkrethi took out two of the Fire Ships.
ssss“Our own losses were much higher. The motherships were getting hammered toward the end, and we lost nine of them, over half of what we had. The H’Dree warships threw themselves at the Baccur warships to protect the motherships, so we lost more than half of them as well.”
ssssHe paused. The Prometheus losses were more difficult to talk about.
ssss“The Valkrethi are quite slow moving at the beginning and end of their dipole shifts through space, and the Baccur learned to target them at those times. You took 22 Valkrethi to the Orion planet, and that number’s been reduced to 14 now. Only nine returned at first, but others reported in over the following hours, as they regenerated themselves. Two of the pilots survived the destruction of their mounts, protected by the personal shields.”
ssssThat was the hardest piece of news for Cagill to bear. He’d trained that group of Valkrethi pilots himself, and now another six of them had been killed in action.
ssss“The tremendous speed of the Hud pilots protected the Javelins to some extent, but there were still losses due to the uncertainties you find in a dogfight. We lost 26 of them, out of the 108 we took with us.”
ssssCagill let the numbers sink in. They’d lost over a third of the Alliance force, in return for five Baccur warships and two Fire Ships, and that was less than ten percent of the enemy force.
ssssThey’d also not given away anything about the Drua, and the Carnii had accepted Orion neutrality under the old treaties; but the cost to the Alliance had been so high.
ssssEven worse, the losses among their forces didn’t look encouraging for the assault on the Carnii city.
ssssBut then, he told himself, trying to bolster a feeling of hope: the Alliance preparations weren’t finished yet.


ssssEIGHTEEN

ssssThe boardroom at Prometheus was packed. Every departmental head was accompanied by their most accomplished thinkers, Human and Mersa, and the immense interest in Cordez’ meeting with the Drua had many more watching from other centres around Prometheus, relayed from the boardroom.
ssssRepresentatives of EarthGov had insisted on being present, though the Regents had been content to gather at Victor Emens headquarters in Krakov to watch proceedings from there. A nervous Battrod was present in the boardroom, representing the people of Hud, and Cordez had arranged for subspace feeds to H’Dree and KSarth planets.
ssssIt had all the trappings of an election-year wingding, sighed Cordez, but the stakes were infinitely higher than in the charades of human politics.
ssss“The changes the Drua have suggested for our Javelins are at the limits of our technology,” he said, once the opening ceremonies were out of the way. “In fact two of the necessary components are beyond our ability to make – a type of black hole radiation that creates an intense localised gravitational field, and a Kerlian radiation environment that reduces the attraction between atoms to zero. The Drua have agreed to provide us with factories that will make the components, and then we just have to bolt them into place.
ssss“Even this is not without its problems. The Drua use a nanotechnology way ahead of ours, and since we can’t be sure of the effect their nanobes will have in our environment, we’ll need to isolate the factories from our technology.
ssss“Once we’ve got things underway we’ll be offloading resources in a midway safe area, and the factories will access the materials in our downtime. The manufactured components will be scrubbed for worker bytes at the factory, and again by us at an isolated station on the way here.
ssss“The Drua will monitor the factories and deal with any problems they find there.”
ssssHe paused, and almost smiled. His departmental heads were being so constrained. They must have a thousand questions about the new technology, but they wanted to see what revelations he still had for them. They would be calming themselves with the knowledge they’d get the details as soon as the meeting was over.
ssss“That’s all good news, but the rest is more of a mixed bag.
ssss“We don’t know how long improving the Javelins will take, or how long we’ve got before the Carnii, and their new dogs of war the Baccur, launch a major attack on us and disrupt the process.
ssss“I’ve also offered to upgrade the H’Dree warships, since their heavy industry isn’t yet up to the task. Changing the motherships over may prove impossible in the short time we have.”
ssssHe checked his notes, and changed to a different topic.
ssss“The Drua will be present at the attack on the Carnii city – they wouldn’t give me more specific details than that – but they won’t help us protect Alliance planetary systems; something about another treaty null and voiding the one we want to use to get the Carnii to retreat to their original boundaries.
ssss“We’ll also be getting some help from Drua protectorates against the Carnii city. This will probably be more in spirit than in real fighting power, but it’s great to think other races will also risk their lives in this cause. They see the need to go up against races that are self-obsessed, and a danger to others, as we do.
ssss“The changes in the Javelins will make them completely new ships to fly. One of the greatest changes will be in the tactics the Javelins will have to employ against enemy ships. This will mean a real change in thinking for Battrod and the Hud pilots under him.”
ssssHe paused to look directly at Battrod, who acknowledged him with a nod.
ssss“Since the Baccur weaponry cuts straight through the Drua shields, were going to jettison the shields to make room for the new technology that’s going into the Javelins. We also think we can neutralise the Fire Ship shields, but there’s nothing definite on that as yet. Whatever we do, it’s clear future battles will be fought offensively, on speed, tactics and weaponry; and not defensively, relying mainly on shields.
ssss“The death toll will be greater, on both sides; but at least the war will be over more quickly, instead of the slow losses by attrition that we have now. We think it will even the odds in our favour too. The battle at Ba’H’Rok went against us in a ratio of nine ships to one, and we have to do better than that.”
ssssCordez paused, and turned to look around the room, including everyone in his level gaze.
ssss“The main thing, though, is that we have to make every minute count. I know this is nothing new for any of you, but we’re coming down to the last days here. Everything depends on what happens in the next few weeks, and I’m counting on you.”
ssssHe smiled. “No pressure, people.”
ssssThere was a long silence.
ssss“We could put 30 hours in each day,” said John MacEwart, head of armaments, his face deadpan. “Get a lot more done that way.”
ssssThere were some exasperated chuckles.
ssss“Someone explain the maths to him,” said Flinch, smiling along with the others.
ssssIt was good to release some of the tension in the room, but it didn’t change the fact that this would be the most important period of their lives. Everyone in the Alliance was depending on them.

ssssMacEwart, Carlos Paula, and a team of hull designers met Cordez later in the day. It was difficult to get time with the man at the centre of the Alliance war effort, but what they were suggesting was so outrageous Cordez had seen them straight away.
ssss“Initially we were thinking of some sort of warship that could take the Fire Ships on at their own game – one that could survive the thermonuclear gases of binary stars and the outer layers of suns,” said Carlos.
ssss“But that wasn’t practical, not in the timeframe we’ve got, or in sufficient numbers of ships to make any difference,” continued one of the research assistants with him.
ssss“However,” said John MacEwart, drawing out the word to give it its maximum emphasis, “we could build just one of these ships in time for the attack on the Carnii city.”
ssssCordez looked at the lumpy, doughnut shaped blueprint in front of him. If the Prometheus hull designers said it would work, he’d have to believe them. It was supposed to be an inside out fusion reactor, keeping the contents at an acceptable temperature while intense electromagnetic shields surrounding the torus kept the plasma mayhem of the Antares sun out.
ssss“We can adjust the electromagnetic fields to suck plasma in from one side and spit it out the other,” said the other research assistant, “but it wouldn’t be capable of stardrive, and probably no more than twenty percent of the speed of light against the resistance of the red giant’s surface layers.”
ssss“We’re lucky Antares is so diffuse,” she continued, “or we wouldn’t even get that.”
ssss“Since the ship would have to be launched into Antares some distance from the Carnii city,” said Carlos, “it would probably take as much as a week to make its way to the city itself.
ssss“We’re fortunate the plasma inside the sun will provide all the energy the ship will need.”
ssss“It would be a cow of a thing to fly,” said MacEwart with feeling, “even with the best computers we’ve got. The power in the electromagnetic shields would be way too high to be finely adjusted for flying the ship. Someone would have to be on their toes for a week flying in, and we don’t know how much longer after that, depending on how the battle for the city goes.”
ssss“But what’s the point of it?” said Cordez, at last.
ssssMacEwart’s eyes lit up.
ssss“It could take out the city cooling system, from inside the sun.”
ssssCordez’ eyes narrowed. He should have thought of that. He must be losing his grip. Taking out the city’s cooling system could be an ace card in an otherwise patchy hand.
ssssWho could he send to fly this suicide machine into a red supergiant star, all on its own, to attack a supercity from behind?
ssssHe thought of Reagis, and then discarded him as a pilot. He wasn’t a hundred percent right yet from his self-imposed mission to Mentuk, and it was taking him longer to get back into shape after each mission – both physically and mentally. Cordez shook his head. Reagis was wearing himself out in service to the Alliance.
ssssThere were others who could go, and they were almost as good. They didn’t have the experience, or the flair, that the master had; but they would go if he asked them, and they’d do a good job.
ssssMacEwart saw Cordez pondering these things, and guessed the nature of his thoughts.
ssss“Reagis has already volunteered,” he said.
ssss“It was him who gave us the idea,” said Carlos Paula. “Came to us one day and asked if we had anything that would fly through a sun. We’d shelved the torus idea, but we dragged it out to show him. He gave us some ideas on how to make it work better, and then told us to give it a high priority.
ssss“This is the result.”
ssssCordez was silent. He didn’t want to send his old friend on this mission, but if Reagis was determined to go he knew he had little chance of talking him out of it.
ssssHe hung his head for a moment.
ssss“Build me this ship,” he said at last, and left the room.
ssssWhen he found Reagis, the stealth operative was working out. His opponents were shadowy figures created by the program he’d set up in the gym computer. Cordez watched as Reagis worked his way through a series of computer-generated attacks with impeccable defences. He never seemed to tire, and he never seemed to sweat.
ssssCordez was pretty sure Reagis’ skin had been modified so it didn’t sweat – sweat made your hands slippery and got in your eyes – but his tirelessness was more likely due to an extraordinary life of disciplined activity.
ssssReagis finished the series of responses, and came over to join him.
ssss“It’s not the same as live combat,” he said, doing something with a thin, flexible band covering his chest.
ssss“Heat sink,” he said as he adjusted the band, in response to Cordez’ unspoken question. “Otherwise I’d burn up.”
ssssHe listened quietly as Cordez explained that he didn’t have to go on this last mission. Cordez would find someone suitable to pilot the torus across Antares.
ssss“How do you know the things you know?” said Reagis, abruptly.
ssssCordez was surprised at the change of subject.
ssss“You often make decisions that turn out to be the right calls, but I know you don’t really have the information to back it up.”
ssssCordez thought about the things the Drua had recently revealed to him. Reagis didn’t give him the time to decide whether he’d share that information or not.
ssss“You know what I’m talking about; I can see it,” he said. “So you’ll believe me when I say that every mission I went on, I always knew I’d come back.”
ssssHe paused, and took a deep breath.
ssss“And that’s how I know I won’t be coming back this time.”
ssss“Why go then?” exploded Cordez. “If you know?”
ssss“Because it would be worse if I didn’t go,” said Reagis, flatly. “I don’t know what it means, and maybe I wouldn’t die if I stayed here at Prometheus, but it feels . . . wrong . . . of me to use my knowledge of the outcome to change it.
ssss“Maybe something’s trying to tell me I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t go, maybe it’s a lot worse than that. I don’t know.”
ssssHis voice hardened. “But I’ve made the choice, and I’m sticking to it.”
ssssCordez was silent for a long time, wrestling with his feelings. In the end his respect for the man, and what he had achieved for the Alliance, overcame his sadness at the loss of an old friend.
ssssHe clasped Reagis’ hand, and then put his other arm around Reagis’ shoulder and pulled him shoulder to shoulder for a moment. Reagis allowed him the familiarity.
ssssNot another word passed between them.
ssssCordez turned and left.

ssssWhen the Baccur warships made their attack on Rok’H’Rok, it was sudden, it was well organised, and it was mercilessly executed.
ssssWith the bulk of the H’Dree deep space Navy now quartered at Orok, and half the standing force over Rok’H’Rok delegated to a series of routine ‘show the flag’ patrols around the remaining H’Dree colonies, the H’Dree government on the mineral moon was helpless before the Baccur force.
ssssParapSanni watched the slaughter above the moon impassively, only the thin slits of his eyes showing his extreme displeasure. PraktuParBrahmad, the governor of Rok’H’Rok, had asked for the H’Dree warships to be released from their impossible task some time before, and ParapSanni had agreed, but the Baccur warships had hunted them down all the same. Very few had made it into the safety of stardrive.
ssssThe 3D animation in front of him, detailing the moon and the forces above it, showed 21 Baccur warships in formation above the planet, with complete control of the cratered, desolate surface. The remaining H’Dree forces at Orok had already been alerted to the situation by sub space radio, but they were half a day away at their maximum speed.
ssssParapSanni’s second, ConosSanni, had been leading the defence of Rok’H’Rok, and ParapSanni didn’t know if his was one of the H’Dree ships that had made it into stardrive. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. This moon was now the seat of the H’Dree government, and the centre of the H’Dree Empire. They would defend it!
ssssThe Baccur warships broke formation and spread out across the surface of the moon, searching for signs of H’Dree habitation. A number congregated over the prominent mountain range on the side facing the gas giant Orcreti. ParapSanni gripped the edges of the table more tightly; the Baccur had found the main spaceport, even though it had been well hidden at the bottom of a deep crater in the mountains.
ssssHe switched one of the wall screens to images of the spaceport. An orderly evacuation was already underway, and shuttles laden with H’Dree were pulling out of the hangar area and onto the maglev system that ringed the moon deep underground. An enormous explosion had already destroyed the shelf of rock in front of the main door, and buckled the massive structure inward. Air began to escape from the hangar, and the remaining H’Dree began to run for the shuttles, in the strange, giant leaps of H’Dree when their reserves of adrenaline kicked in.
ssssParapSanni switched back to the 3D animation, and saw Baccur warships descending on the crater in the mountains. On the wall screen he saw the main door of the spaceport blown across the hanger, and the last of the escaping H’Dree waver and fall as the air supply bled into the vacuum of the outside crater. Others rushed across with rescue gear, and bundled the fallen on board the last of the shuttles. Fortunately the shuttles were pressurised, and had their own air supply. The maglev system worked best with the shuttles travelling in a vacuum.
ssssAnother enormous explosion took place on the surface, closer to ParapSanni and the Great Hall this time. The tremor passed under his feet, and the bedrock behind the sealed coating of the wall rang with an eerie moan. The Great Hall had been reinforced against any imaginable attack, and ParapSanni hoped the Par’Lock engineers were right about that. He gave orders for all personnel not directly engaged in defensive actions to make their way to him in the Great Hall.
ssssPraktuParBrahmad appeared on one of the wall screens, his right hand upraised beside his head, in a formal sign of the H’Dree that might roughly be translated as a request to be allowed to ‘teach respect’ to a mischief maker. ParapSanni raised his right hand in acknowledgement, and switched one of the wall screens to one of the feeds still working outside the spaceport. He focused it on the mouth of the crater, far above the spaceport.
ssssDoors rolled back into the surrounding cliffs, and he could see the flashes of powerful plasma cannons releasing a hail of writhing, superhot plasma. The projectiles hit the descending Baccur warships, knocking them off course, and clinging to them until the plasma eventually cooled and bled off into space. ParapSanni had learned the lessons of the first armada attack on Ba’H’Rok, and remembered the effectiveness of the plasma cannons then.
ssssOne warship was an early casualty. Blinded by concentrated fire it tried to climb out of a bombing run into the crater and scraped across the surrounding peaks, finally taking too much damage on the jagged rock and blowing itself apart. ParapSanni felt a little better. Another warship dropped out of the fight; damaged by the plasma cannons, it seemed, beyond repair. Then the tide turned again, in favour of the Baccur warships – as ParapSanni had always known it would. Their powerful weapons picked out the plasma cannons, one by one, and destroyed them.
ssssParapSanni looked out on the Great Hall from the partition of polished crystal at the end of his private offices. It was slowly filling with H’Dree; those involved in the machinery of government at first, the ones from the mining sites more slowly. Some would find a hiding place on the furtherest reaches of the mineral moon, weighing the chances of being discovered against the risk of drawing attention to themselves in a mad dash to a safer location.
ssssThere was nothing ParapSanni could do now except wait out the Baccur attack. That was something the H’Dree knew how to do – they would endure.
ssssA sub space link beside the table lit up with a call. ParapSanni clipped a linguist earpiece into place beside his large, bullet-shaped head. It could be one of his governors, or it could be Cordez.
ssss“Greetings, Supreme among the Eight,” said Cordez.
ssssParapSanni acknowledged the call and sat down, in the strange, ungainly way of the H’Dree. He needed to feel part of the Alliance right now, and the call had come at the right time to ease his mind.
ssss“We’ve got a force of Javelins about three hours out from Rok’H’Rok, heading your way,” said Cordez, getting straight to ways he could help. “They’re carrying new, untested weapons, so this’ll be a great opportunity to try them out on the Baccur. Some of them are carrying sub space missiles as well, but our scientists here think the Baccur will have already developed shields against sub space attacks.”
ssssParapSanni voiced his thanks. It was a great encouragement to him to know that help was on the way. He turned back to one of the wall screens in front of him, to see the largest of the mining sites being destroyed. At least the Baccur hadn’t yet found the underground maglev system that connected the admin centre, the Great Hall, the living areas, and the second spaceport on the other side of the moon.
ssss“I’d like to try a little psychology on the Baccur warships,” continued Cordez, “assuming they think like we do. The Javelins have been instructed to fly an intercept course onto the route we expect the warships to take on their way back to the Carnii city. The Javelins are also making a lot of sub space noise, which we think will make the Baccur believe the force is much larger than it really is.
ssss“My hope is this will unsettle them, and they’ll leave Rok’H’Rok earlier than they’d planned.”
ssssIf that was the case, ParapSanni would be most appreciative indeed!
ssssAnother massive explosion showed the warships were still testing the surface of the moon for weaknesses that would lead them to the H’Dree centres inside.
ssssCordez signed off, and ParapSanni mulled over what he’d heard. The H’Dree warships, and a scattering of motherships, wouldn’t arrive until almost night time on Rok’H’Rok. When they did arrive they would have the advantage of numbers, but very little else. Cordez’ Javelins should arrive before then, but if his intercept course strategy worked, the Baccur might be leaving much sooner than that.
ssssOn the wall screens in front of him, the main spaceport had been reduced to rubble at the bottom of a gaping hole in the mountains, and TegoParBrahmad had already sealed it off from the maglev system. The mining centres had also been comprehensively destroyed, and it was only a matter of time before the deeper installations on the moon were under attack.
ssssAll the H’Dree could do was endure.

ssss“Stardrive signatures coming from Rok’H’Rok,” said the navs officer, “and now leaving the system.”
ssssAyman Case felt a surge of adrenaline. It looked like the plan to force the Baccur off Rok’H’Rok was working. They’d lost a few ships at the last encounter with the Alliance, and that had taught them not to take the Alliance forces lightly.
ssssThe two groups of starships were now on an intercept path, but if the Baccur stayed in stardrive when they met, the Javelins wouldn’t be able to touch them.
ssssAyman was more inclined to think they’d accept the challenge and drop into normal space – when the two forces finally met.
ssssHe knew the Hud pilots would be apprehensive about the coming engagement. They’d learned to pilot the Javelins with the safety net of the Drua shields ever present; but now the shields had been removed, sacrificed for the much greater power of the new weapons they now carried.
ssssThe shields were of little use against the Baccur warships, but they’d been a psychological boost. It had been a hard decision for Ayman to make, but in reality the pilots had a better chance of survival without the shields. They’d fly better knowing their ability to manoeuvre the Javelins was the only thing that stood between them and a Baccur weapons blast.
ssssA little over an hour later the Javelins dropped out of the grey, grainy nothingness of stardrive, challenging the Baccur to do the same.
ssssAyman found himself too restless to sit in his chair on the bridge of his Javelin, and walked around the various stations, waiting for information as it came to hand.
ssss“Entry points forming,” said the navs officer to his left. Case turned on the spot, and was back in his chair in seconds.
ssss“Prepare to engage; repeat, prepare to engage!” he ordered tersely over the open channel. The Javelins swooped away on all sides, like the birds of prey they were, giving themselves room to attack unencumbered by others around them.
ssssThe Baccur warships materialised, all 21 of them, and the Hud pilots fell on them with a savage joy.
ssssCase watched as the first engagements of the conflict unfolded. The Javelins were faster, and the Baccur warships were hit again and again, chunks smashed off the arches and holes appearing in the more imposing forward and aft sections. But the damage repaired itself, and in turn the warships doggedly tracked the Javelins, every so often striking one or the other with their more powerful weaponry. Two Javelins retired damaged from the fight, and then one blew up right in front of Case, detonating into a soundless ball of fire.
ssssAyman called the Javelins off. They were lacking teamwork, that much was becoming clear. Multiple hits at the same time might just overwhelm the warships, but that sort of team approach would have to wait for another day. Some of the Drua alterations had been tested in the conflict, but there were still more changes in the Javelins to come. Perhaps then they would fare better. It was a dangerous business, testing the new systems against the Baccur warships.
ssssHe ordered a strike by sub space missiles, and watched closely as nearly fifty sub space pulses leaped into existence, connecting the Javelins to the warships with strange, refracted light trails. Something danced along the paths of light, and then missiles exploded half way to the warships.
ssssAyman felt his heart sink. He’d been told it was unlikely the sub space missiles would work a second time, but it was a disappointing experience to see it for himself, all the same.
ssssHe readied himself to give the order to leave the area – run like a dog with his tail between his legs, was what it felt like – and consoled himself with the thought they’d forced the Baccur off Rok’H’Rok, and that kept the H’Dree government still functional.
ssssThere’ll be another time, he growled sharply to himself, and gave the ‘return to base’ command.
ssssThe Javelins turned away from the fight, and winked out of existence in one long, rapid sequence, leaving the field to the Baccur.

ssssThe research team were gathered at one of the main relaxation centres in the Prometheus complex. They were all officially ‘off duty’, but that didn’t stop them discussing work – if it was interesting enough.
ssss“Well, where’s the evidence they died out?” said Roberto, waving something in a glass that was an odd shade of blue, and steamed gently. “Bones, they had bones you know. Even after 200 thousand years there’d still be forensic evidence.”
ssss“Cremation,” said Jubilate, a little uncertainly.
ssss“All at the same time?” said Roberto, then paused. “Mmm, possible I suppose, they did all disappear at once. Still going to leave X tonnes of calcium laced with trace elements somewhere, and we’ve found nothing.”
ssss“Your theory the H’Roth just up and left on a 180 thousand light year journey is a damn’t sight less plausible,” said Andre. “Even with stardrive, that’s going to take . . . er,” he began. “A little over 150 years,” finished Jubilate for him.
ssss“Stop showing off,” said Andre, and lifted her legs off the cushions beside him, so he could spank her bottom. There was a brief tussle and she removed his glass and set it out of his reach.
ssss“You’ve had enough,” she said, firmly.
ssssAndre subsided, muttering about the hardships and unfairness of married life. When he wasn’t looking Jubilate flicked a small can out of her pocket and sprayed a little detox into his drink, before handing it back to him. Within a minute or two he was complaining about his head clearing – and looking suspiciously around him at the research team, who were all trying to contain their laughter.
ssss“Run it by us again,” said Sharmin, looking questioningly at Roberto.
ssss“Well, it’s their positional system,” said Roberto, “the one that allows the H’Roth to give the coordinates of planets, and points in space, navigational stuff like that.
ssss“The system makes sense – all simple polar coordinates – but every so often in their records there’s an extra number at the end of a coordinate, one that initially seemed to me to be completely random. After seeing it repeated enough times, I’ve come to believe it’s a marker for another galaxy.”
ssssA number of eyebrows were suddenly raised.
ssss“If the markers are meant to list other galaxies by distance from our galaxy, the one they travelled to is the Large Magellanic Cloud. It’s the second closest galaxy to us, so that makes sense if you’re planning such an extraordinary jump across space.”
ssss“But far enough away from this galaxy, where the Carnii had spread throughout the Core and were putting increasing pressure on the H’Roth borders,” finished Sharmin.
ssssThe others nodded thoughtfully.
ssss“There were these stories too, dawn-of-time myths I thought at first, about a ‘paradise’ in a place not of the H’Roth world. Nothing the archives talked directly about, but stories that became part of the H’Roth culture, and were still being mentioned in the archives right up to the time they disappeared.
ssss“Maybe the ‘not of the H’Roth world’ phrase was another way of saying their destination was in another galaxy, maybe they didn’t mention their plans directly because they thought the Carnii might find out what they were up to. Anyway, I think they’d been travelling to the Large Magellanic Cloud for centuries, maybe millennia, before they went there as a whole civilisation.”
ssss“If any of this is true,” said Andre doubtfully.
ssss“Let’s hope they had more luck in the Large Magellanic Cloud,” said Sharmin. “I did like the fact they were the only one of the three races to keep to their original DNA, and not hybridise with anything and everything, like the other two.”
ssss“I hope they didn’t find another bunch of self-obsessed, destructive slagspawn when they got to their destination,” said Andre, to nods of agreement.
ssssA new voice joined the conversation.
ssss“If you’re right, Roberto, why didn’t they ever come back?” said Sallyanne, who’d come over with Eden to join the group.
ssss“Resources,” said Sharmin, “It could have taken them a hundred thousand years to build up the resources to jump a whole civilisation to another galaxy. Since then they may not have built up their reserves to the point they can afford to come back in any force. Still, don’t forget the drones. The Carnii and the Drua have them. There could be H’Roth drones watching us right now, even as we speak.”
ssssThis was met by a combination of splutterings from some of them, who had drinks to their mouths at the time, and nervous laughter from others.
ssss“Wherever they’ve gone, they did relocate us to Earth so we could break the cycle of conflict in the Spiral Arm,” finished Sharmin, “and we haven’t finished that little job for them yet.”
ssssThere was silence at this.
ssss“Are we going to be in the front line for the assault on the Carnii city?” said Andre quietly.
ssss“No idea,” said Sharmin. “Technically we’re not military, and they could try to keep us behind the lines.”
ssss“After all we’ve done,” said Jubilate heatedly. “Sometimes we’ve solved problems for them in the field where the military types couldn’t!”
ssssThere were nods of agreement.
ssss“Still,” said Andre, “if we do go in as part of the attacking forces, I say we go in together. If I’m going to buy it in the front line then I want Jubilate with me.”
ssssJubilate took his hand. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said softly.
ssssRoberto looked at Sharmin. She was fighting to hold back tears.
ssss“Of course,” he said, taking her hand as well.
ssss“I’ve always wanted to join you all and fly a Valkrethi,” said Sallyanne, the disappointment evident in her voice.
ssss“Well, I can’t go, and I’ve no intention of learning how to fly one of the damn’t things, so you’re staying here with me!” said Eden – which was perhaps the most forceful statement any of them had heard from the quiet engineer.
ssss“I think I’ve been told,” said Sallyanne, behind her hand, in a stage whisper. She didn’t look displeased that Eden had taken a stand in their relationship.
ssssIn another part of the room, Kanuk, Leana and Battrod had assembled with their squadron leaders. These three were still very young, by Earth standards, to be Javelin pilots, and commanders of Delta and Tetrarch formations. Fortunately they were also old enough in the ways of command to know when they could relax discipline with their flight crews, like now, and show them a little appreciation.
ssss“Including the last group of trainees, there’s almost a thousand of us here at Prometheus,” Battrod was saying to the others, “and that’s left an increasing shortage of young people to do the work on Hud. It’s not too bad – spread over most of the villages it’s only two or three per village – but a lot of us from Shellport took up the challenge. I guess we were at the centre of things, and we could see what this battle for freedom, for Hud and for all peoples, was really about.
ssss“When I talk to Hudnee and Habna, and sometimes Menon, they tell us to hurry up and get these problems sorted out, and come home.”
ssssThere was a ripple of laughter at the way it seemed so simple to the folk back on Hud, and so difficult here, where the pilots could see what they were up against.
ssss“What are these new weapons they’re building into the Javelins?” said the pilot on Battrod’s right.
ssss“No idea,” said Battrod. “I just know they’ll be better, more powerful, and able to do more damage. What we need to worry about is getting enough time in the Javelins to get used to them. Our lives depend on knowing our ships, and there won’t be time to think about what we’re doing once we get out there.”
ssss“Is there really a giant Carnii city inside a star?” said another. The Hud pilots knew as much as anyone else in Prometheus about what was happening, but they didn’t have the science background to understand it. Things that were everyday to others sometimes seemed an impossibility to them.
ssss“Don’t worry,” said Kanuk, not wanting to get too far into that discussion, “we’ll be fighting out in space, not in the sun itself. On top of that the Javelins will be getting a reflective coating to deal with the heat – and it’s not a very hot sun anyway.”
ssss“The main thing we have to remember,” said Battrod, taking over the discussion, “is that there will be others in the Antares system helping us. Most of us have been up against the Fire Ships, or seen the Carnii flagships in action, and we’ve all seen pictures of the Baccur warships by now.
ssss“Cagill’s not expecting to see anything new from our enemies during the attack on the Carnii city, but we will have allies helping us, and we’ll have to be careful to identify them, particularly since we don’t yet know what their ships will look like.
ssss“I know it’s common sense, but I’ll say it anyway. Fire only on ships you recognise as hostile, don’t fire on something just because it’s new to you. Got it?”
ssssThere was a chorus of assents.
ssssThe noise level at one end of the long room dropped for a moment, and then resumed again. Cordez, Flinch, and a couple of the departmental heads took seats in a secluded corner. Cordez took orders from the others and made his way to the long, open counter. Flinch finished a conversation he was having with John MacEwart, and left the corner to make a tour of the room.
ssssHe called people by name where he knew them, and took time to meet new people when he didn’t. There were thousands of individuals at Prometheus now, but it was impressive the number he knew something about. He approached the Hud pilots, and every one of them leaped to their feet, snapping a rigid salute. He controlled his impulse to smile at their enthusiasm, and motioned them back into their seats.
ssssIt was some time later when he finally made his way back to his starting corner, but the Hud pilots had been left in no doubt how important they were to the battle against Carnii oppression, and how important they were to Flinch personally. That message, like so many Flinch – and Cordez on a more interplanetary scale – were sending out these days, would work its way down to every one of the Hud pilots.
ssssWhen the Alliance went to war, everyone involved knew how important they were, and knew they were part of a team.


ssssNINETEEN

ssssKalken’s command flagship sat squarely in front of the great Carnii city, both of them inside the swollen, red star Kalken knew as Bajen, or homestar. As the command flagship it was busy coordinating every movement of every Carnii ship within the Antares system. Bathed in the fires of the red supergiant, its cooling systems worked steadily to keep its hull temperature down to a level that was still enough to melt most metals.
ssssKalken-ar-wuyr was on duty in the middle of the great sphere of the command centre, as befitting her now ultimate status within the Carnii cell. She had finally cloned her child – with random DNA changes so it would have its own personality of course – and brought the Baccur into the fight against the rock dwellers and their detested dark ships. With the credit from these achievements she now had a level of status unsurpassed anywhere in the Carnii cell, and had been appointed to ultimate authority in matters of defence of the Carnii city.
ssssHundreds of Carnii in their active form were at work around the curved walls of the great sphere, scattered shapes of orange flame, bringing her every wish to fruition. The extensive factories in the lower levels of the city were all at full production, turning out Fire Ships as fast as they could. Two shipyards – including one that had been extensively damaged by Javelin strikes but had now largely repaired itself – were the only other sources of warships for the Carnii defences. Kalken’s plasma field became a darker, angrier orange as she thought of the fourteen shipyards the city mind had ordered to be built when the cell first came to the Spiral Arm, such a short time ago. The rock dwellers had found ways to destroy so much . . . it was unbearable!
ssssShe hastily corrected her internal chemistries, until her plasma field brightened again. She had motivation enough to protect the great city the Carnii had created, and destroy the rock dwellers. She need not store more hatred and loathing of all who would oppose the Carnii way of life.
ssssThe city mind had bargained with other cells for more flagships to defend the city, but the city mind had little to bargain with. It’s own cadre of flagships had been reduced to two, and they were too precious be promised at some time in the future when neighbouring cells might need help in their turn. For every flagship that was sent to them, the cell would have to promise 50 Fire Ships at some time in the future, on top of those already promised from the battle at Ba’H’Rok, and that would impose an almost intolerable burden. Even if the city mind was willing to accept it, others weren’t prepared to accept the risk.
ssssMost of the neighbouring cells had calculated that the city would lose almost half of its total forces, even with a sizeable Baccur contingent fighting for it, in a confrontation with the rock-dwelling peoples. That would leave them with too few Fire Ships to be able to promise much of anything in the future.
ssssHowever, Kalken’s privileged position allowed her access to the city mind’s active files, and she knew that fourteen flagships would be added to their forces; not because of what the cell could promise in return, but to keep a major military presence where the Baccur defending the city could see it.
ssssThe city mind had, temporarily at least, seemed to recover from its increasingly irrational behaviour once these flagships had been promised. It seemed to think these promises were an ‘act of faith’ in the viability of the new Carnii cell in the Spiral Arm – but Kalken knew the flagships were only there to keep the Baccur forces under control if the defence of the city took an unexpected turn.
ssssShe, herself, was already wrestling with the unthinkable. Would she have to overrule the city mind if its decisions in the heat of battle clearly put the future of the Carnii cell at risk? Not only the future of the Carnii cell, but also the future of Kalken’s recently born infant.
ssssRelinquishing control of the vast flagship to her second in command, Kalken headed for her dormitory berth. Once there she hastily sent her shadow self along encrypted cyberhighways to one of the coiled, serpent form peripherals in the Carnii city. The city mind now kept her shadow self constantly with it when she was off duty, a measure of its increasing instability.
ssss“The-armada-has-been-recalled-from-the-H’Dree-home-world?” hissed the city mind from the peripheral terminal, in an urgent monotone. Kalken made a small mental bow of acquiescence.
ssss“The-Baccur-fleet-and-the-accompanying-flagships-have-arrived?”
ssssKalken tensed. The city mind was making more of these disquietening time lapse errors every day. The main Baccur fleet had barely left the Core – and the city mind was fully aware of the fact – so the warships could not possibly have arrived yet.
ssss“Soon, oh flux of all things,” she said softly, adding overtones of reason and inevitability. At least now, with its decreased sensitivity to detail, the city mind seemed no longer able to detect when she was manipulating its emotional state.
ssssApparently satisfied, it moved on to another topic.
ssss“The-destruction-of-Rok’H’Rok-is-complete?” hissed the periphery.
ssssThis attitude always troubled Kalken. An enemy was an enemy, and destruction of an enemy was a joy; but she rated enemies by their danger to the cell, because that was good strategy. The city mind, though, was violently against anything that reminded it of the H’Roth or their servants the H’Dree, whether they were the greatest current threat to the Carnii or not.
ssss“Nothing remains of the H’Dree mining camps, or their spaceports,” she answered diplomatically.
ssssReports from Rok’H’Rok had, in fact, contained the suspicion that most of the H’Dree capability continued, deep underground, and brought the news that a large fleet of dark ships had driven the Baccur off prematurely.
ssssThe city mind was silent for a while, busy no doubt with some pressing matter from its subroutines. Kalken found the same worrying thoughts arising that had bedevilled her since the Baccur had agreed to fight for the Carnii. How would they keep the Baccur under control once they let them off their prison planet? Fourteen guardian flagships would normally be enough to quell anything from unruly behaviour in a neighbouring cell to a rebellious confederation of many star systems – but the Baccur fleet was another matter.
ssssThe city mind stirred, and Kalken hastened to assume a humble pose before it. The defences of the Carnii city were almost complete, and it was largely this she had hoped to discuss with the vast, sprawling, hybrid intelligence before her. The relevant discussions began a moment later, and Kalken put her troubling thoughts of the future, and the unstable city mind, to one side.

ssssIt was hard to believe the bulky doughnut shape floating above Prometheus was a starship. Boxy additions at opposite sides of the ring were stardrive units that would, theoretically, get the inside-out electromagnet to Antares, where they would be jettisoned. After that it was destined for a slow, one-way ride to the Carnii city through the outer layers of the Antares sun.
ssssCordez had insisted on being there when the ground-breaking torus ship was ready for its maiden voyage, and he stared in wonder at the shape of it from the observation deck of his private liner.
ssssThe engineering shuttles around the bulky craft were now pulling away from it. All systems had been checked out, twice, and it was as ready as it would ever be.
ssss“What are you going to call her?” said Cordez, to the figure beside him.
ssss“No names, for this one,” said Reagis. “She’s a one-way trip, same as me. She doesn’t get a name.”
ssssCordez shrugged. “Your choice,” he commented amiably. He figured Reagis was probably right about not coming back – but he thought too highly of the man to waste his last few days with him in some sort of emotional, self-pitying state of mind.
ssss“We front up at Antares,” he continued, “you try and find a back door, and we keep them occupied until you do the business, is that right?”
ssssReagis smiled at the offhand reference to their plan.
ssss“Good luck,” said Cordez casually. “You’ve got four days, and then we hit the city with everything we’ve got.”
ssssReagis nodded. He walked down to the shuttle bay, once again running through the sequences he’d need to pilot the outlandish craft. He’d drilled and drilled himself in them, but the bulky ship was the most complex thing he’d ever flown. The shortage of time hadn’t allowed the engineers much of a chance to automate anything on board it.
ssssWithout looking back at the familiar base he’d come to know so well – containing as it did the few people he’d grown close to in his life there – Reagis guided the torus out beyond Prometheus, and entered the nothingness of stardrive.
ssssHe came out of stardrive in the outermost layers of Antares, where the emerging energy signature of the ship would pass unnoticed. Uppermost in his mind was the hope the gravity distortions of the diffuse star wouldn’t displace his ship by too much. A quick check showed Reagis he’d come out of stardrive a little deeper inside Antares than he’d expected. Another check showed him that the electromagnetic shields, superbly engineered at Prometheus, were working perfectly as they kept the thermonuclear plasma of the sun at bay.
ssssHe switched the navs system to a view outside the ship. Just metres from the curved hull a wall of corrosive plasma surged angrily against the invisible electromagnetic shields that stopped it vaporising the ship in seconds. Even with the screen toned down for the human eye, he could see white hot explosions among the boiling reds and oranges of the Antares atmosphere. Something stirred in the distant murk, and a roiling shock wave slammed into the ship, tossing it around.
ssssDeciding that it was probably better that he got underway, Reagis stepped sideways to the console that ran the propulsion system. Adjusting the shields so they took on their role as thrusters, he set a course that would in time run him a little shallower in the atmosphere, and then begin the long journey inside the curve of the Antares sun towards the Carnii city.
ssssThe buffeting from the atmosphere was constant, and it soon became apparent that the endless corrections to the ship’s course were going to take their toll on him. While his reflexes made micro-adjustments to the ship’s direction, time and time again, his mind ran free above the semi-automatic work of his hands, and set about devising some way he could set an auto pilot, so he could get some sleep.
ssssThe solution, when it came, was a typical Reagis one.
ssssA little trial and error showed the ship was only stable in an edge-on position to the never-ending storms of the Antarean atmosphere, where it sliced through the boiling thermonuclear gases with minimum resistance. Rigging the shields to deliver whatever thrust they could in a position at right angles to their intended function, Reagis slept until the speed of the ship dropped below an acceptable level. When the alarm sounded he went back to manual control, turned the ship head on, and brought her up to full speed again.
ssssNapping in quarter hour segments, he planned, as best he could, for the seven days he expected it would take him to reach the Carnii city.

ssss“I’d like to go with them,” said Flinch wistfully, watching as Battrod’s tetrarch of 120 Javelins followed Leana’s and Kanuk’s tetrarchs into stardrive, vanishing in an orderly ripple of coordinated flashes of light.
ssss“And don’t tell me I’m too important to be risked at the front line,” he continued, as Cordez turned toward him to say something.
ssssCordez smiled.
ssss“Yes,” he conceded, “it does seem a bit late in the day for that. If we fail at Antares there’ll be no forces left to defend Earth with, and if we succeed we’ll have made ourselves redundant.
ssss“Still want you in the chain of command, though. Still want you kept safe,” he continued. “There’s a lot of unexpected things going to happen before this is all over. We’re going to be needed here. Both of us.”
ssssFlinch grunted.
ssssThe last of the Javelins vanished from the skies over Prometheus, and the longer-bodied Valkrethi carriers lined up for their turn.
ssss“H’Dree left yet?” said Flinch, too concerned with the exodus of Earth’s military forces from Prometheus to keep up with what was happening elsewhere.
ssssCordez nodded. “Orok is further away from Antares than we are, but they should arrive off the Carnii city at the same time as our forces.”
ssss“Will it be enough?” said Flinch, the uncertainty of the whole business showing in his voice.
ssss“What, 654 Javelins, 176 Valkrethi, 86 H’Dree warships and 22 H’Dree motherships, plus the Drua ships – God knows what they’ll be like – and whatever the Drua protectorates can field?” said Cordez. “I guess it’s too bad if it’s not.
ssss“Warfare is an inexact science, and feeling like you haven’t done enough is standard fare; don’t beat yourself up about it.”
ssssFlinch grunted again. Cordez’ words were reassuring, but the precariousness of the Alliance position hadn’t changed.
ssssThe first of the Alliance forces came out of stardrive well out in the Antares system – and straight into a vicious crossfire from a scattering of Baccur warships. Ayman Case bit back a swear word and scrambled his forces into evasive manoeuvres. Every one of the Javelins now had a well-trained Hud pilot in command, and they reacted at blinding speed as they threw the ships out of the way of the blasts from the enemy warships.
ssssSpreading out so rapidly had blunted the Baccur offensive, but Ayman knew the surprise attack had mauled his first line of Javelins badly. All around him individual dogfights had now developed, with the combatants fairly evenly matched, but the ability of the Baccur warships to regenerate themselves was already driving the outcome of the skirmish in their favour.
ssssHow had they known where the Alliance forces would come out of stardrive? worried Ayman. The Alliance didn’t have that technology. Perhaps it was because there were no planets in the system, and the hot, blue companion sun Antares B was on the other side of the red supergiant Antares. Did the absence of planets make it easier for the Carnii to detect such things?
ssssAyman shook his head. The forces opposing them were still far ahead of the Alliance in key areas. They would just have to work around it, have to adapt! He decided to concede the first victory to the Baccur, and ordered his forces to pull back to a point outside the Antares system. Additional sub space messages to the Alliance ships still in transit gave them the new gathering point as well.
ssssA few hours later the Alliance commanders were gathered on the bridge of Ayman Case’s command Javelin. After the disheartening news that the surprise attack had lost them 17 Javelins, for three Baccur warships destroyed, they were determined to do better in the next engagement. When that came they’d fight the battle on their own terms, and turn those numbers in the opposite direction.
ssssCagill was in no hurry to take the battle straight to the Carnii city. He was one of the few people who knew Reagis had entered the Antares sun four days ago. Whatever they did here, in their attack on the Carnii and Baccur forces, they had to give Reagis a chance to accomplish his mission – and he wouldn’t make it to the Carnii city for another three days.
ssssCordez, present on screen via a sub space feed, added his weight to the idea of testing the defences of the Carnii city gradually. “There’s too much we don’t yet know. Send in small contingents to test their response, and bring them back at the first sign of trouble. Then we study the results.
ssss“Learn as we go, people!”
ssssAldSanni was present as head of the H’Dree forces, and he offered the motherships as a focus for the Baccur warships while the Javelins and H’Dree warships caught them unawares; bait for a trap as it were. Cagill declined the offer for the moment, but said he would keep it in mind. It was heartening to see the H’Dree so committed to the fight against the Carnii.
ssss“Any word from the Drua?” said Battrod, present with Leana and Kanuk as tetrarch leaders. All of the Alliance commanders were intrigued by the elusive Drua, and the question of what ships they might bring to the attack on the Carnii city.
ssssAs if in answer to this question a ball of grey, milky light appeared to one side of the group, growing in size until it filled one corner of the bridge.
ssssOrion, thought Cagill, bound to be; but he noted this was a much bigger sphere than usual. He wondered what the Drua might have in mind for their Orion charges this time.
ssssThe sphere glowed brightly, the surface hardening to a metallic sheen. Then it just vanished, leaving scorch marks on the floor, and the square, lumpy form of one of the Orion was left behind.
ssss“Subdirector?” said Cordez, from the screen, and the squat, rocky shape reorientated itself to the sound of his voice. At last it seemed to recognise him on the screen. Probably never seen this sort of technology before, thought Cagill.
ssss“I am, indeed, Subdirector,” said the Orion, waving its frond-like appendages agitatedly as it took in the enclosed, metal environment it found itself in.
ssss“Member of Drua protectorate, and Alliance friend, you are very welcome at this meeting,” said Cordez warmly.
ssssSubdirector seemed to relax. It’s leathery appendages dropped into a more subdued position.
ssss“Drua ask if I may, mmm, remain as observer,” it finally said.
ssssCordez assured the Orion representative that it would be welcome to stay. Cagill observed Subdirector with interest. In person its skin was more like the bark of a tree, more like something living. In the previous images within the grey sphere, he’d thought it might be some sort of living rock.
ssss“Will Drua be joining us?” said Cordez, returning to the question Battrod had voiced earlier.
ssss“Drua, and Drua protectorates, are already here,” replied Subdirector, its voice a little warmer in person than in the long, slow monotone it had projected from the sphere on previous occasions.
ssssAyman raised an eyebrow. There had been nothing reported near the Alliance ships on any of the sensors his Javelin had.
ssssCordez diplomatically asked where the Drua were.
ssss“Nearby,” said Subdirector placidly, “but you cannot see them yet.”
ssssAyman motioned to his long-range sensors officer, who conducted a brief but careful search. He turned, and shook his head. Whatever the technology was, it was good.
ssss“What sort of defences does the city appear to have?” said Cordez, turning back to the Alliance commanders.
ssssCagill consulted his screen. “Their front line consists of over 200 Baccur warships, spread through the Antares system as a forward screen. Closer to the sun itself there’s a mixed bag of around 120 Baccur warships, and a variable number of Fire Ships. The Fire Ships seem to be present by rotation, with around 150 present in the defensive line at any one time and 300 docked at the city or patrolling around it. What else they’ve got patrolling the city we don’t know. Nor do we know the capability of the weapons platforms that ring the fringes of the city.
ssssCordez thought this through. “They’ll keep numbers up at the forward positions while things are going in their favour. When they’re hard pressed they’ll fall back to the surface of the sun, where our sensor systems will be overloaded with the heat and the coronal discharges, and the city’s weapons platforms can do the damage. That’s going to be the most difficult time for us.”
ssssThere was a unanimous nodding of heads.
ssssI wish Reagis was here, thought Cordez, he’s better at this sort of strategy thinking than me, but he’s needed elsewhere. He felt a pang of loss for a moment, and wondered how Reagis was faring. Then he shook his head free of such thoughts. They were here to plan one of the most massive assaults on an enemy position in the history of space flight on Earth, maybe even in the long history of the H’Dree empire.
ssssThe commanders got back to planning the following day’s assault on the line of Baccur warships drawn up within the Antares system.
ssssSo, this is day two, thought Cagill, looking round at the assembled commanders on the following morning.
ssss“You all know what you have to do, make sure everyone down to individual pilots in your chain of command knows what to do as well,” he began. “We enter the Antares system as soon as you confirm readiness, and then it will be down to the individual decisions we make on the day.
ssss“You know what you’re fighting for, and the universe has a way of blessing anything that is a just cause. Make your last-minute preparations, and stand ready.
ssss“Dismissed!”
ssssKanuk took a shuttle back to his tetrarch of 120 Javelins. He felt so old these days, at least he did when he compared himself to his first days on Prometheus – only what, three years ago? But he could also feel his nervous system tingling in anticipation of the battle to come.
ssssHe, and all the Hud pilots, had been superbly trained. They were the best, and the enemy they were going up against was, in its own way, their equivalent. It was going to be the greatest test of their mettle they would ever encounter.
ssssIn his mind he started to run through the speech he would give to the men and women of Hud who served in his tetrarch. It was a pivotal moment in this war for all of them – he could feel it.
ssssThe Alliance forces that swept into the Antares system later that day were tight little knots of 30 ships. They watched each other’s backs, and if the Baccur ships got too close they were fiercely targeted by outlying shields of Alliance ships until they were driven off. Apart from that, their main strategy was to engage one of the Baccur warships, in force, when it had little cover from those around it.
ssssWhen that happened, the Javelins at the centre of each group turned as one to hit the isolated warship with their new, more powerful blast weapons. Into the holes created by the onslaught the H’Dree warships poured their energy weapons, stopping the damage from repairing itself. Then a dozen Valkrethi dropped into the fight, diving into the gaps in the Baccur hulls and tearing the ships apart from the inside.
ssssAs they engaged the Baccur, the new strategy began to prove its effectiveness. The Alliance lost ships in the process, but one after another Baccur warships were reduced to drifting hulks across the battlefield.
ssssElsewhere in the confusion of war groups of motherships formed deadly islands upon which the Baccur foundered. Protected by solid walls of Javelins which carefully targeted the lethal Baccur missiles in mid-flight, they sent out shimmering blue lances to cut apart any Baccur warships foolish enough to get within range.
ssssBoth of the new approaches were successful, and proved themselves time and again. Alliance ships were lost in the process, but when Cagill called his forces off later in the morning, the Alliance was ahead in the deadly game of counting losses.
ssssIt was a promising start.
ssssThe afternoon sorties proved to be more interesting.
ssssKanuk looked out from the bridge of his Javelin at the ships of his tetrarch, spread out in orderly rows around him. Such precision would only last until the attack was joined – then mayhem, as always, would prevail.
ssssThis time, he wanted to get deeper into the Antares system, closer to the Carnii city; pushing harder at the defending forces – hoping to get them rattled, to cut into their confidence.
ssssIgnoring the first line of warships, Kanuk led his pilots straight into the depths of the Baccur position. The second tetrarch would peel off and engage the forward line, and the third tetrarch would deal with the Fire Ships that would turn up from the city, soon enough, to support the Baccur.
ssssHis tetrarch, though, was going to push the main Baccur force hard.
ssssLines of incoming fire began to show up on the overhead screens. The ships themselves were lost in the vastness of space, only able to be pinpointed as the starting point, and sometimes the ending point, of the flashes of light that increasingly ripped across the battlefield.
ssssKanuk closed down his visuals. This was going to be an instruments only fight, an interpretation of events from screens that showed a mass of moving dots – some enemies, some friends – and the slow fading of those that had been knocked out of the battle.
ssssHis main screen showed him those enemy warships in close proximity to his ship. One of these now turned toward him, and his sensors picked up a tiny pulse of electromagnetics that preceded a concentrated blast. Without even thinking, Kanuk flicked his Javelin over and down, the enemy blast cutting through the position he had just left. His senses were already singing, boosted by adrenaline in his blood stream at many times the normal level, and the sudden release of sophisticated neurotransmitters in his brain. He checked his time meter. He was about quarter of the way into his current accelerated cycle, and then he would have to pull out of the fighting and let his system reset itself.
ssssHe saw an opportunity as a foolhardy Baccur warship drove home its attack against one of the Javelins in a neighbouring group, becoming isolated from its fellows in the process. The central Javelins in his group turned as one and concentrated their fire on the warship, ripping pieces from the long arches that connected the bridge at the front and the engine room at the rear. The H’Dree joined in, and then the Valkrethi arrived. The warship broke into pieces, and Kanuk’s group of 30 Javelins peeled off and headed deeper into the fray.
ssssA wave of warships confronted them, seeking revenge for the destruction of one of their own. Two of the lead Javelins came under intense fire. The Alliance group fought back, but the Baccur were not to be driven off. The overhead screen on Kanuk’s bridge came to life as one of the hard pressed Javelins called for help.
ssssKanuk could see and hear the chaos on the other Javelin’s bridge. There was an intense flash of light, and half the bridge disappeared. Kanuk watched, frozen, as bodies tumbled into space. A moment later the Javelin disintegrated, and the picture was lost.
ssssDespite the best efforts of the group, the other Javelin shared the same fate, exploding in a flash of fire. Incensed, the Javelins reduced one of the Baccur warships to a lifeless hulk, and started on another. Finding the cost too high, the warships drew off, and Kanuk was at last able to lead his group of Javelins into the very centre of the Baccur flotilla, the rest of his tetrarch close behind.
ssssThe fighting was even more intense here, and in the confusion Kanuk struggled to find an enemy target for his inner core of ships. Then he led them toward a warship that had strayed too close. As he did so, the recognition symbol for the warship vanished from his screen. Puzzled, he turned the group and led it toward another position, to take some of the intense pressure off the Javelins there. Again, one of the enemy recognition symbols ahead of him disappeared from the screen, and then another.
ssssSwitching quickly to a smaller proximity screen, he restricted it to his immediate area, and set it to visual.
ssssAn extraordinarily long, gnarled ship, made it seemed of disjoint pieces that didn’t fit anywhere together, burst forth from a group of suddenly appearing concentric rings. It hit two of the Baccur warships with something like a pale violet pulse, destroying them completely, then vanished into a similar group of rings. Behind it another of the long, misshapen vessels appeared, and Kanuk realised the ships, whatever they were, had arrived in force.
ssssHe pulled his group of Javelins around to take advantage of the confusion among the Baccur. The enemy forces had lost their focus, and the Hud pilots soon dispatched another warship. On the larger screen of the overall engagement, Kanuk could see enemy symbols fading from the screen all over the battlefield – the Hud pilots were definitely making the most of the situation, helped by the mysteriously appearing and disappearing newcomers.
ssssTrying to find another target, Kanuk watched in amazement as a great slab of a ship sailed by. Barely more than an odd-shaped cube, it seemed to welcome the attention of the Baccur warships. As each blast struck home, a layer of shielding peeled off where it had been hit. Again and again, more thin layers of the ship were ripped from the hull.
ssssKanuk had to grin at the cheekiness of the idea – the ship was one solid heat shield, and it must be good for hundreds of hits. He guessed by the time the heat shields were exhausted it was either victorious against its enemies, or it made sure it was well away from the battlefield.
ssssKanuk could see a shadowy opening in the back of the ship, and now, as it continued to sail serenely forward, it laid mines in its wake. Drawn by some sort of homing system, they veered toward the surrounding Baccur warships, drawing together in one spot on each hull, before they detonated and ripped holes in the enemy warships.
ssssSeizing the opportunity the mines offered, Kanuk lead his group of Javelins in behind the new arrivals, and pounced on the warships as they regenerated from the damage caused by the mines. An exhilaration filled Kanuk – the tide of battle was turning in favour of the Alliance.
ssssA solid phalanx of Fire Ships lay dead ahead of Kanuk’s group of Javelins. Realising the squat ships were impervious to their fire, they were targeting the mines with dense patterns of plasma arcs. Very few mines were now getting through, and more Baccur warships were arriving to block the Alliance advance. As the forward momentum of the attack began to stall, Kanuk noticed a long skein of large, grey bubbles drift past him and down onto Fire Ship and warship alike. Plasma arcs and weapons blasts destroyed dozens of them, but the numbers around the enemy craft continued to increase. The one in front of Kanuk finally disappeared under a sea of bubbles – and then there was an almost imperceptible implosion. When the bubbles drifted apart, joining the attack on other craft, they left behind the crushed and mangled body of a warship.
ssssMore accumulations of bubbles reached a critical mass around other enemy ships, and equally suddenly imploded, moving on to leave shattered vessels in their wake. Another of the long, misshapen craft appeared behind Kanuk, took out a Fire Ship ahead of him with a pale violet pulse, and disappeared again.
ssssThe defence of the Antares system quickly turned into a route. The Alliance, with their new allies spread through their forces, quickly crushed all resistance in the outer part of the system. From there they followed a retreating force of Fire Ships and warships toward the red, bloated body of the Antares sun.
ssssAt the head of the advancing forces, Kanuk led his tetrarch against the fierce rearguard action put up by the retreating warships. He didn’t think for a moment of stopping and consolidating the gains they had already made. If the Alliance gave them time to regroup the Carnii might yet find a way to turn the situation, and regain the upper hand. All the pressure the Alliance could muster would have to be applied for as long as it took to defeat the city.
ssssThe endless, scattered sea of warships, attacking and defending alike, now descended on the outermost layers of the Antares sun. More Fire Ships poured out of the ruddy murk of the outer layers, where they had been on patrol around the city itself. Against them the Alliance ships laboured under the intense heat of the red supergiant. The Fire Ships, though, were in their element. A sudden flare from the sun cut the effectiveness of Kanuk’s sensors and weapons systems. Yet still the Alliance pressed home their advantage, and drew closer to the Carnii city, invisible in the outer layers of the Antares sun.
ssssKanuk’s group of Javelins cut through a force of Fire Ships, and were then engaged by an equally determined group of Baccur ships. The fight dragged on, no quarter given or expected.
ssssOne of the squat cube ships sailed into the middle of the conflagration, drawing Baccur fire off Kanuk’s group of Javelins, before laying trails of mines which veered toward the enemy vessels. One of the long ships appeared overhead and took out a Baccur warship in the melee to Kanuk’s right. The grey bubbles had had a marked effect on the engagement when they’d first arrived, but now retreated from the front line; they did not have, it seemed, any defence against the heat and flares of the Antares sun.
ssssA line of Carnii flagships emerged from the Antares sun, and Kanuk’s jaw tightened. The Alliance had hoped all but one or two of the Carnii flagships had been destroyed, but now there approached a dozen or more of them – courtesy of other Carnii cells no doubt. The flagships made it just that bit harder to finish what they’d come here to do. Snakes of orange fire coiled out from the flagships, and tried to latch onto the Alliance Javelins. It took every bit of their speed and agility to stay clear of the ropes of fire.
ssssA river of compressed plasma surged past on Kanuk’s left, striking a number of Javelins further along the line, and knocking them out of the action. More of the plasma bolts struck along the front line, destroying Alliance ships. Kanuk realised what was happening – the Carnii city had joined the fray. It was able to use the plasma all around it, compressing it into dense bolts which it was now firing at the Alliance forces.
ssssThis close to the sun, and the city, the balance of power had swung back in favour of the Carnii city. As Kanuk opened the tetrarch-wide channel to get his people out of there, Cagill’s voice came in over the same system.
ssss“Air Marshall Cagill speaking,” he began, the strong voice of the Air Marshall unmistakable. “Disengage. Repeat, disengage, and fall back.”
ssssHe paused. “Then take up containment positions, out of range of the city’s plasma cannons.
ssss“And well done, all of you.”
ssssThe transmission ended.
ssssWhen the new frontline had been established, Cordez called a tactical meeting on Ayman Case’s command Javelin. He was present, with Flinch, via a sub space link.
ssss“There were close to a hundred of the new long ships initially,” said Ayman, passing on his navs officer’s stats at Cagill’s request. “Probably one Drua to each ship.”
ssssCordez nodded. It was hard to imagine more than one of the long, solitary, dragon-like shapes to each ship, regardless of how big the ship was.
ssss“They made a real dent in the Baccur warships,” continued Ayman. “Didn’t seem to bother with the Fire Ships. Unfortunately, the Baccur also seemed to know exactly how to deal with them.
ssss“Even though they were only visible for seconds at a time, the Baccur had destroyed around half of the Drua ships by the end of the day.”
ssss“Old enemies I would think,” said Cordez.
ssssThere was a moment’s silence. It was clear the Drua had paid a heavy price to help the Alliance.
ssss“What were those rings they came out of?” said Cagill.
ssss“Spatial displacement vectors,” said Flinch. “What you or I would call wormholes. The research teams here at Prometheus went nuts over them. They are theoretically possible, but require an almost infinite amount of energy. The Drua must have found a way to lower the potentiality of space – thin it out somehow – so they could hide outside of normal space for extended periods of time without draining their energy reserves.”
ssss“Nice trick if you know how to do it,” said Cagill in wonderment.
ssss“What about the other ships?” said Kanuk. “Where did they come from?”
ssss“Drua protectorates,” came the reply from Ayman, who’d had the benefit of Subdirector’s presence on his bridge. “The boxy, squat ships are from a small cluster of suns in what we call the Centaur constellation. Surprisingly they don’t have stardrive, and I’m guessing the Drua brought them here, and cloaked them, until they made that mind-blowing entrance when Kanuk’s tetrarch fought its way through to the centre of the Baccur forces.”
ssssThat stopped the conversation once again. They all remembered that turning point in the battle. When it looked like it was going to be a bloody confrontation right down to the last ship, taking forever, they were delivered into a winning position by the sudden appearance of the Drua ships and their allies.
ssss“Most of the Centaur ships made it through the day,” said AldSanni. “H’Dree forces report tracking them back to the outer parts of the Antares system when the flagships emerged from the sun – just before the city began to use its plasma pulse weapons.”
ssss“Wise move,” said Cordez with a smile. “We weren’t that far behind them.”
ssss“I don’t think we can count on the Centaur for much more than what they’ve already done,” said Ayman. “There’s little left of their heat shields, or much in the way of mines to deploy, I would think.
ssss“We’ve tracked them making their way out of the Antares system since then – very slowly I might add without stardrive – and I imagine the Drua will transport them to their home planet when this is all over.”
ssssThere was a moment’s thoughtful silence.
ssss“And the grey bubbles?” said Kanuk.
ssss"That’s not so clear,” said Ayman. “Even with Subdirector filling us in it took a long time to find out where they came from.
ssss“They’re from so far out on the edge of the galaxy we couldn’t really place them in any of the constellations we know. Their language is pretty much beyond us – all sensory statements, dozens of words for finely differing grades of basic emotions – but they call themselves after a colour, Magenta.
ssss“Each of those bubbles contains the life force of one of them, as best as I can make out, and from the number of bubbles that the Fire Ships in particular destroyed, they died in their thousands here today.”
ssssThere was no comment that could follow that statement, and the bridge was silent for a long time.
ssssEventually Cordez said quietly, “and they destroyed a great number of Carnii and Baccur vessels. We must always remember them for that.”
ssss“The bubbles are more fragile then the Centaur ships,” continued Ayman, “or any of the Alliance ships for that matter. They certainly can’t operate close to the Antares sun, so I don’t know if they can help us when it comes to the final push for the Carnii city – or if they’d want to, following the losses they’ve already sustained.”
ssssMention of the Carnii city dampened the thoughts of all of them. They’d cut the number of enemy ships in half, but with the flagships and the city pulse weapons remaining, any attack on the city itself would still be close to suicide.
ssss“Let’s cross our bridges one at a time,” said Cordez diplomatically, and brought the meeting to a close. His words were ambiguous. The others knew he always had back-up plans of some sort, but they were plans in process, and he kept them to himself. For now they’d just have to believe in his leadership, and believe in themselves to hammer home each link of the battle plan.
ssssCagill though, was strangely wistful. Day three, he murmured to himself. Tomorrow would be day three. Heaven help them if Reagis couldn’t provide them with a miracle soon.
ssssWhether he did, or didn’t, continued Cagill, it was going to be a long day.

ssssReagis was in the middle of a catnap. Of all Human nervous systems, his was perhaps the most flexible; but he was being stretched to his limits and beyond. He came out of a troubled sleep as the ship’s alarm told him, yet again, that the speed of his inside-out torus ship had fallen below the speed he needed to get to the Carnii city in time.
ssssFifteen minutes was never enough time to develop REM sleep, and a whole backlog of agitated images kept trying to stamp themselves on the back of his eyeballs. If he stopped concentrating for even a moment, he was back in one of the unholy conflicts he’d endured in his long career; or even worse, devilish characters would prance and gibber at the edges of his vision, poking and prodding at the delicate instrumentation of the bridge and driving him to distraction.
ssssStill, according to his calculations he should be almost there.
ssssTrying to ‘see’ through the murk of the red supergiant with his sensors was a hit and miss affair, but several times he’d caught a solid echo from something ahead of him. He tried the sensors again, and this time a massive shape was outlined briefly on the screen, until the image was lost to interference.
ssssAlmost there then. He sighed, and followed that with a deep breath to brace himself against what was to come. It was time for the final showdown.
ssssThe ruddy murk of the Antares star cleared, and the sheer wall of the back end of the Carnii city loomed over him, stretching impossibly into the distance in every direction. A little to his right vast, square bays projected from the smooth wall, and he knew he’d found the heat exchangers.
ssssAn alarm sounded briskly, and one of his screens shifted to show a Fire Ship patrol approaching along the wall below him. Reagis eased back into the murk, confident it would keep him out of the Fire Ship sensor range. His job was going to be difficult enough without Carnii patrols. How was he going to deal with this little problem?
ssssOn the other side of the city the Alliance was in the process of pushing the enemy warships back to the surface of the star; and the last line of defence. The flagships, and the Fire Ships on patrol in front of the city, were about to pour out of the star and into the battle. The patrol rising from below Reagis, and another at extreme range on his right, were suddenly recalled, and turned away to join the ships moving out of the star to attack the Alliance.
ssssCautiously, Reagis eased back toward the vast soundshell structure that protected the back of the city from the fires of the Antares sun. When it was clear the Fire Ships weren’t coming back, he armed a spread of thermonuclear missiles and sent them on their way toward the vast, square heat exchangers ahead of him.
ssssBrief white points flared in the ruddy murk of the atmosphere of the star, and a scattering of holes appeared in the covering over the exchangers.
ssssIt wasn’t enough. Reagis could see he wasn’t getting through to the vast bays of machinery that must lie beneath. He guided the torus closer, and could see another wall of metal somewhere beneath the outer cover. This was getting him nowhere – he needed to find a vital point and disable it.
ssssThen he saw it, a raised dome over something that looked like it might be a shaft running down into the heart of the exchanger. He fired another set of missiles, and some of them got through the holes he’d already made, ripping apart the layer of metal beneath and demolishing the top of the shaft.
ssssThat was where he needed to target his remaining missiles, but the turbulent atmosphere of the star was playing havoc with the missile guidance systems, and the shear forces in the thermonuclear gases were strong enough to displace them on the trip to their targets. No, he’d have to be much closer; and that meant he’d be too close to his own missiles when they detonated.
ssssReagis desperately tried to think of another way to drop his remaining missiles down the shaft in the heat exchanger. Then he saw Fire Ships converging on his position from every direction. They’d figured out what he was up to when the first salvo of missiles had hit the heat exchangers, and now they were just as desperate to stop him as he was to succeed.
ssssReagis shrugged. He’d always known he wasn’t coming back from this one, and now he guided his ship into a position directly over the shaft. Setting his missiles to detonate on impact, he ran the torus down into the opening below him. Surprisingly, the ship just fitted into the shaft, and Reagis had time to pat the instrument panel in front of him, saying, “well done, girl,” before the ship slammed into a multiple junction where the shaft split in several directions.
ssssThe heat exchanger tore apart from the inside out.
ssssReagis had accomplished his mission, and it was only a matter of time before the Alliance ships on the other side of the Carnii city knew he had accomplished it too.


ssssTWENTY

ssssThe bridge on Ayman’s command Javelin went deathly quiet.
ssssAyman didn’t bother to repeat himself.
ssss“Look at this,” he said, flicking an array of energy readings onto a 3D representation in front of him.
ssssScans of the Carnii city had showed an undifferentiated but substantial mass sitting in the outer layers of the Antares sun, at a temperature considerably below its surroundings. The particle radiation pouring out of the star distorted most readings, but the results were clear enough. Flinch had been lucky with his earlier long-range data, showing the city in much more detail. It had been taken in a rare moment of calm on the sun’s surface.
ssssBut now, as they watched a speeded up process on the thermal imager, the wavering blob that showed the Carnii city was disappearing before their eyes.
ssss“What’s damn’t happening?” snapped Cagill, present on the bridge with the rest of the Alliance commanders, planning the coming day’s tactics.
ssssThe long-range sensors officer finished another set of scans, and nodded firmly at Ayman, confirming what she’d told him a minute before.
ssss“The city’s heating up,” said Ayman. “It’s been noticeable for nearly an hour. Imperceptible at first, but accelerating now.
ssss“I think they’ve got a problem on their hands.”
ssssCagill’s heart leaped. Reagis Vits, it had to be! The man had got through, and he’d damaged the city’s heat exchangers. Godsdamn’t, the Alliance might just have a chance.
ssssAyman quickly opened sub space links to Cordez and Prometheus. Cordez’ bleary appearance, and the darkness outside his small home office, told Ayman it was night time in the SouthAm block, but Cordez was waking up fast. Flinch appeared to be in the middle of his normal working day.
ssssAyman explained the situation.
ssss“The Carnii city may have stardrive capabilities,” said Flinch promptly. “We’re working through the information the research team downloaded from the archive on Ba’H’Roth, and that’s one thing we’ve learned.”
ssss“Then that could be a problem,” said Ayman. “Subdirector has been passing on more details from the Drua about the treaties we can use to force the Carnii back to the Core for a thousand year interregnum. As far as the treaties go the city is equivalent to the cell. If the city escapes, we haven’t defeated the cell.”
ssss“It’s worse than that,” said Flinch. “According to the material Reagis brought back from Mentuk, even a flagship is considered a seed ship, and could start the cycle all over again.”
ssss“So what you’re saying,” said Cordez slowly, “is that we have to win this war convincingly. If we leave even one flagship still functional, it’s only a draw as far as the Carnii are concerned.”
ssssThere was silence on the bridge of Ayman’s Javelin. It was becoming clear the war wasn’t going to be over soon, and it wasn’t going to be over easily. They would have to hunt down and destroy everything bigger than a Fire Ship, and they’d have to go through the remaining Carnii and Baccur forces to do it.
ssss“Stand off from the sun, and wait for the Carnii to make the first move,” said Cordez. “We have to consider the fact the city might have been badly damaged in the attack on the heat exchanger, and it might yet blow up with the force of a small sun. When I get back to you – soon – set up a loop with SouthAm and Prometheus. Keep it open permanently from now on.”
ssssHe closed the connection. Asura brought in a tray from the adjoining room, and offered him a steaming cup of a calming tea. He’d asked her to leave the Summer Palace and stay with him until this was all over, one way or another.
ssssHe took the cup gratefully. He’d expected the losses on both sides would be heavy, but now it was shaping up to be a victory only if one side damn’t well exterminated the other.
ssssHis hand started to shake, and Asura took the cup from him, and put it back on the tray. Then she wrapped herself around him.
ssss“So many are going to die,” he said, his voice breaking. “Theirs as well as ours. So many have already gone. Reagis is already gone.” His body shook, and Asura held him and waited for the uncertainty of it, and the grief, to pass.
ssssShe trusted in him. She believed he would come through this, and with her belief in him the pain inside slowly subsided.
ssssWhen Ayman received a sub space hail and re-opened the links to the Solar System a little later, Cordez was surrounded by his aides, and ready to see this thing through to the end. Asura sat serenely at his side.

ssssKalken floated in the middle of her command sphere, already well past her energy limits on a shift that looked like it would never end. The command flagship was at maximum readiness, and dealing with the tactical load of the battles that raged out there in the Antares system. This, and the problems following the attack on the sunward side of the city, were pushing them all beyond their limits.
ssssAutomated repair teams were trying to rebuild the heat exchangers, but it was clear the city would reach critical temperatures well before they’d accomplished anything useful.
ssssIf the city had had stardrive capability it would have been a simple matter to shift it into a more comfortable temperature zone in orbit round the sun. Unfortunately the stardrive units would have taken vital time and resources away from the city’s defences and the production of Fire Ships, so they’d been left.
ssss“Rock dwelling slime!” exploded Kalken. How often the Carnii had found they’d underestimated them, how cleverly they’d chipped away at the Carnii cell, forcing errors, setting them back. How had it come to this?
ssssThe city mind sent another of its garbled messages, and Kalken knew the time she dreaded so much was near. While the city mind had control of its own autodestruct sequences, it could destroy itself, the command flagship, and most of their remaining forces – and it might in its madness do just that, simply to strike a passing blow at the forces that assailed them.
ssssKalken couldn’t allow that to happen. She sent a coded message to one of her higher-ranking officers, the one who’d birthed her and whose DNA she most closely shared; one she’d always trusted to have the same approach to tactics and strategy as herself. The officer hesitated, and Kalken felt her frayed nerves grow close to breaking point. She loaded another dose of neurotransmitters into her system to adjust her emotional state, but it had little effect. She knew she was doing damage to the sensitive biocore in her hybrid self, but it was just too important she keep functioning a while longer.
ssssThe officer finally sent a message to the city, containing the subroutine Kalken had anguished over for so long. She thought of the subroutine as a ‘disorganiser’, and had come across the idea in the historic Annals of War from the early millennia, when the Carnii had first spread out across the Core of the galaxy. Then, they’d met many devious adversaries, and they’d had to be inventive to survive.
ssssThe disorganiser sped along encrypted superhighways to the city mind, and passed into it’s working matrix as a simple information-gathering slave function. Once there, however, it wrote exponentially increasing copies of itself, and each one hunted down one of the city mind’s simplest functions and tied it up in endless loops chasing unknowable data.
ssssKalken could only hope the overall effect would be swift enough to stop the city mind before it could take some insane action against the enemy forces in the Antares system – or stop the disorganiser as it attacked from within. If it became aware of the disorganiser in time.
ssssA directive sending the command flagship out against the enemy forces came back from the city, and Kalken ignored it. A torrent of further commands, many incoherent, followed, all heavily loaded with command overtones. These were harder to ignore, but Kalken steeled herself against the conditioning present in all Carnii to obey the city mind, and waited for the disorganiser to do its work.
ssssThen there was silence. At last a machine code requesting a basic status check came through from the city. Kalken waited. A solid wall of data followed, and continued without end, but all of it was from elementary subroutines. Kalken wasn’t sure whether anything of the city mind now remained, but if there was, it was at an instinctive level.
ssssShe felt a moment’s sadness. The city mind at its best had been an example to all Carnii, a superbeing that had engendered in them an almost automatic need to humble themselves before it. Perhaps all aware beings needed something like that in their lives, she thought absently.
ssssShe made herself concentrate on the present moment. There was now only one viable option open to her, and that was to help the city make it’s way free of the star before it overheated. That was going to take every resource the cell had left.
ssssKalken set to work, and the stabilisers for the massive city were the first to begin the massive task of dragging it out of the plasma soup of the star and into the Antares system. Taking advantage of the break in the fighting, the flagships set up energy links with the city and added their motive power to its own.
ssssOnce these systems were underway, Kalken re-routed the command structure, dumping the less important functions the city had performed and delegating the rest to officers in her command sphere.
ssssNow barely able to function, she drifted to her dormitory and fell unconscious, as medical systems took over the running of her cylinder, and began to repair the battered hybrid life within.

ssssCagill had asked Subdirector if the strange Magenta, with their numerous silver spheres, might be able to help the Javelins capture one of the Baccur warships, and bring it back to the Alliance lines. Once he had explained why Cordez wanted this, the Drua agreed to let the Magenta try.
ssssIt took two sorties into the line of warships in front of the city, at a cost of two Alliance ships and a number of Magenta destroyed and several Baccur, before Cagill had what he wanted. He set up an opportunity for Cordez to talk to the Baccur crew.
ssssCordez had wanted the Baccur warship for one reason only. He wanted to work a deal with them.
ssss“Your defeat is inevitable,” he began. “Once the city is destroyed by the Antares sun, and no longer able to protect the Carnii and Baccur forces, your warships will die along with the Fire Ships and the flagships.”
ssssThere was no response from the Baccur, who stood silently at the back of the loading bay. They were separated from a holographic image of Cordez by a shimmering force field. The males were more thickset then the females, with the spines crowding around the back of their necks – evolved to protect against a killing bite from behind – much longer, and a deeper purple.
ssssThe research team on Prometheus had found the Baccur language in the H’Roth archive files. The trouble was they might have a version of the language more than 200 thousand years old. The archive at Orouth had shown them the H’Roth archives were connected by sub space, and kept up to date with what was happening around them, but had the archives updated the Baccur language file over recent times?
ssssPerhaps, thought Cordez, there was no reply because he just didn’t have the attention of the Baccur yet.
ssss“If you surrender to us now, we will free you when this conflict is over. If you want to return to your home world and attempt to liberate it from Carnii domination, then we would allow that.”
ssssA close reading of the central treaties had shown that the survival of Carnii servants or allies didn’t affect the binding of the Carnii to the Core.
ssssThe largest of the Baccur stirred restlessly, and Cordez noticed the raised scars under the heavy pelt on its shoulders. Some sort of physical contest was more than likely part of promotion to higher status, and to more encompassing leadership. He could see this one was a fighter from way back.
ssssThe large male turned and charged the force field, hitting it with a resounding thump, and a bright flash as the force field shorted across the dent the attack had made. The Baccur picked itself up from where it had landed, its pelt smoking down one side, and charged again. This time it stopped short of the force field, and brought the heels of its palms together in a series of explosive claps, sounding impressively like metal hitting metal.
ssss“That boy is one strong piece of work,” said Flinch, grudgingly, on the sub space link.
ssssCordez nodded. “Posturing behaviour. It’s establishing its right to speak for the group, and challenging me to speak for the Alliance.”
ssssFlinch was surprised, yet again, at the instinctive understanding of leadership Cordez had.
ssss“Put tensors in the hologram,” said Cordez. “I want it to feel my presence, take me as real. Wind them up real tight, I may have to go head to head with it yet to get this sorted.”
ssssAyman issued a string of commands, relaying them to the engineering section. The hologram thickened up, and more detail came into focus. Cordez shifted a foot forward, and it struck the deck with a satisfying thud. He circled a ‘move forward’ gesture, and the engineers stepped him through the force field. Now he was on his own.
ssssThe Baccur hissed, but stood their ground, as Cordez stepped effortlessly through the force field that had defeated their leader moments ago.
ssssThese are not animals, Cordez reminded himself. They have a sophisticated technology, and won’t be cowed by techno tricks. He brought the heels of his palms together in an explosive crack, in the way he’d seen the Baccur do it, and noted with disappointment the effect wasn’t quite as impressive.
ssssThe big Baccur must have been emboldened by this as well. It stormed forward, stopping just short of Cordez, massive fists pounding the deck.
ssss“We deal,” said Cordez. “You submit now, we free you later.”
ssssThe Baccur hit him with a blurring backhand punch, driving the hologram back into the force field, where it bounced off and hit the floor. The rest of the Baccur group stamped on the floor in approval.
ssssRight, thought Cordez, struggling to his feet. We fight first, we talk later.
ssssIt was a good thing his hologram didn’t feel any pain. He made a rolling gesture with one finger, meaning ‘maximise it’, and Ayman’s curt “working on it” sounded in his ear. His hologram noticeably darkened, and began to hiss softly.
ssssGetting close to overload, thought Cordez. I’d better get this over and done with.
ssssHe stormed forward, picking up the Baccur and slamming it to the deck. He could hear bones cracking and hoped he hadn’t overdone it, but the Baccur came back at him a moment later, pinning both of his arms in a bear hug from the side. It swiped its head across his shoulder, and the spines along the back of its neck tore open his throat. There was no blood, and the hologram quickly healed itself. The Baccur stepped back, puzzled that its opponent wasn’t now bleeding to death on the floor.
ssssWrestling, thought Cordez. What the Baccur do is what we call wrestling, and he searched frantically through his mind for what he knew about the sport.
ssssThe Baccur lifted its front leg as it threw itself forward again, and Cordez slipped sideways, catching it under the raised leg and tying it up in a wrestling hold as its momentum carried it down and onto the deck. The Baccur struggled, but couldn’t free itself from the hologram’s greater strength. Cordez had the upper hand, but he needed to finish the fight.
ssssI wish Reagis was here to deal with this, he thought grimly, then remembered an old trick from his early days in the slums of the SouthAm block. I wonder if this works on Baccur, he thought idly, then freed an arm to slam his elbow into the Baccur’s ribs a hands width to the left of where the solar plexus would be on a Human.
ssssThe Baccur’s eyes glazed over, and it went limp.
ssssWell, what do you know, thought Cordez. Pressure points. It could be he’d hit the right spot, or maybe he’d hit something else, and just been lucky. He stood up, and the group of Baccur at the back of the loading bay prostrated themselves on the floor.
ssssGood, thought Cordez with satisfaction, I think I’ve got their attention now.
ssssWhen he was out of the hologram and back on the screen in Ayman’s Javelin, he was given more news by Ayman and the others.
ssss“The city’s rising out of the sun,” said Cagill, without preamble, “and sensors are saying it’s going to be fully functional when it’s clear.”
ssss“No sign of stardrive,” said Flinch, “not from the readings we’re getting. I think if it had stardrive it would have used it by now.”
ssssCordez agreed. This was both good and bad news. The city wasn’t able to escape from them into stardrive, but it still had its ability to defend itself, and the Alliance had no way to counter the massive plasma pulses the city threw at them.
ssssThen Cordez had an idea. He had the hologram set up as before, and passed through the force field once again.
ssss“If it pleases your sense of honour,” he said to the Baccur leader, now standing stiffly to attention on the other side of the force field, “there is one thing you can do for us, in return for your freedom.”
ssssThe Baccur shifted its position. Cordez could only hope he was right in thinking the Baccur would not want to be obligated to the Alliance.
ssssHe explained that the Carnii city was, somehow, making its way out of the Antares sun, and then he explained what he wanted the Baccur to do. This time there was no mistaking the Baccur’s approval. It dropped its long front limbs to the floor, and its upper lip curled back in a satisfied grimace over triangular fangs that looked quite capable of cutting through bone and ripping out vital organs.
ssssIt appeared the Baccur loved the idea of betrayal.

ssss“Am I dead?” asked Reagis incredulously, unable to believe he was, somehow, once again conscious.
ssss“Yes and no,” said one of the figures in front of him. “Let’s just say you’re becoming a bit less dead as we work on you.”
ssssThe figure was joined by others, all rather blurry but, as Reagis strained to make them out, apparently Human.
ssss“Who are you?” asked Reagis.
ssss“Caerbrindii,” said the closest figure, adjusting something on the end of what Reagis thought of as his bed. He began to feel cold, and realised he’d not felt anything in his body up to that point.
ssss“But you are Human,” said Reagis.
ssss“Does shape mean so much to you?” said the figure, bending over him. “Shape was what set the three races at each others’ throats aeons ago.”
ssssReagis figured it must mean the Carnii, the H’Roth, and the Drua.
ssss“Shape is somewhat . . . optional to us,” it continued. “We take these shapes only to provide a reference point for you.”
ssssIt did something else, and Reagis realised he could now feel his heartbeat. Godsdamn’t, they actually were, bit by bit, bringing him back to life.
ssssThe figure paused, and looked down at him.
ssss“How do you think we broke the constraints of cultural dissonance?” it said, and Reagis realised an amorphous shape would greatly reduce the sense of difference the three races must have felt about each other.
ssss“But it was too late,” said Reagis, feeling his eyes sharpen as the figure in front of him did something to his optic nerve. He paused. They were, indeed, quite Human.
ssss“You had already evolved into three separate races, hadn’t you?”
ssssThere were amused murmurs from some of the others.
ssss“My dear – rather extraordinary – Human,” said the figure working at the end of the bed, “we didn’t become the three races, we spawned them.”
ssss“We had reached a state of perfection that didn’t allow for further growth,” said another, by way of explanation, “and that could only lead to decay. We returned to our times of conflict, so growth could begin again.”
ssssReagis must have looked puzzled.
ssss“We are neither the Caerbrindii nor not the Caerbrindii,” said the helpful one, shrugging.
ssss“You are Buddhist?” said Reagis, struggling to grasp what was being said, and feeling the last statement best fitted a Buddhist thought system. The room wheeled around him as they did something to his sense of balance that made him giddy.
ssssThere was a chorus of low chuckles from around the room.
ssss“I like this one,” said a figure at the back, a gentle warmth evident in its voice.
ssss“Why did you give Cordez the ability to see the future?” said Reagis, guessing the Caerbrindii were responsible for that, “and why did you give me knowledge of all things dangerous, enough to keep me alive for so long?”
ssss“I’m surprised,” said a figure to one side. “I didn’t think either of them would be able to work it out.”
ssssAnother one, somewhat older Reagis thought – though it was more of an impression than anything definite – turned to him and answered his question.
ssss“You seemed like a people without a teacher to guide them, and we thought we might . . . make some small changes, to help you,” said the figure.
ssss“You are followers of Christ?” said Reagis, still rather dazed, and a little more uncertain with this question.
ssssThis invoked more general merriment throughout the room.
ssss“He’s seen too much already,” said the older voice. “We have imperatives; we should keep to them.”
ssssThere was a brief pause while they considered this.
ssss“Put him to sleep,” said an infinitely gentle voice, and Reagis felt his eyelids closing.
ssss“Wait!” he said desperately. There was so much he wanted to know.
ssssThen there was nothingness.

ssssThe Carnii city could now be seen, free of the Antares sun. It was surrounded by flagships, adding their power to the task of towing it out of the seething thermonuclear reactions below it. The plasma pulse weapons bristled menacingly from its many weapons platforms.
ssssAyman swore for a full minute, and Cagill appreciated the sentiment. It was extraordinary that Reagis had got through and damaged the heat exchangers, but a real blow to the Alliance that the city had managed to avoid being torched by the sun. Equally, it was a miracle the city didn’t have stardrive, but a curse on the Alliance that the battle to come looked like a bitter conflict down to the last ship.
ssssAll fourteen of the flagships could now clearly be seen, the last tendrils of the diffuse sun wrapped around the energy chains that linked them to the giant city. Cagill considered making an immediate attack on the flagships, while they were still busy towing the city, but the city’s plasma pulse weapons made that an unwise course of action.
ssssCordez was conferring with Ayman’s strategy team, and he turned from them to face the Alliance commanders, assembled once again on the bridge of Ayman’s Javelin. All eyes followed him as he looked out of the sub space screen at them.
ssss“The city now has a considerable momentum, and it will take the Carnii as long to slow it down as it did to gain that momentum in the first place. If we hold off until the city is well clear of the sun, we might be able to attack the damaged heat exchangers. If all goes well we’d be hitting the city structure where it’s already weakened.”
ssssThere was general agreement with the plan. Cagill looked over at the screen showing the deployment of the Carnii and Baccur forces, and watched the flagships disperse to cover the city on all sides as soon as they’d freed themselves from the towing manoeuvre.
ssss“Looks like we’ll have to go with the original plan,” said Cordez ruefully. “We target the flagships, splitting our forces into large formations to take on each one, and we avoid the city as best we can.
ssss“Any questions?”
ssssThere were none. Cordez didn’t know if he could rely on the word of the Baccur leader he’d bested in the docking bay or not. He didn’t want to give his pilots false hope of a change of allegiance within the enemy ranks, so he told them nothing.
ssssThe Alliance had let the captured warship go, and Ayman’s navs officer had last tracked it on a trajectory to rejoin its fellows, via a wide arc around the far side of the sun. He could only hope its disappearance, and sudden reappearance, wouldn’t trigger any awkward questions from the Carnii.
ssssWith any luck the Baccur would have the opportunity to take his message to the other warships, and they would give it just as enthusiastic a reception as the Baccur leader had in the loading bay.
ssssThe Alliance forces were soon circling around the imposing bulk of the Carnii city, looking like toy ships tracking across its immense surface. Surging back and forth across each other, generating complex patterns, they made difficult targets for the city’s plasma pulse weapons. As the first angry red bolts of plasma began to range among the Alliance ships, they separated into individual swarms, condensing above each of the giant flagships.
ssssCordez held his breath, and hoped his plan would work before the coming attack on the flagships. With the pulse weapons still active the losses among his forces would be high, far too high, and he was acutely aware of that.
ssssThe Alliance ships began their attacking run, and the forces defending the flagships came forward to meet them. The Baccur warships circled out from the other defenders, moving to take the Alliance ships in the flank, but then seemed to hesitate. Looking as though they were giving ground before the Alliance forces they turned, and retreated toward the safety of the Carnii city.
ssssBy the time the Carnii began to question what was happening, it was too late. The warships sent forth a storm of heavy missiles, the same ones they’d used to such devastating effect against the H’Dree motherships, and the city was soon surrounded by their sparkling trails. Then another ripple of missiles sped toward the city, and a third.
ssssThe pulse weapons frantically opened fire on the Baccur warships, but it was too late. The great city was now at the heart of concentric spheres of death, each closing at increasing speed and unstoppable in its intent.
ssssCordez couldn’t bear to watch the destruction, hoping against hope it would be enough to destroy the immense city, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. The innermost ring of missiles hit the city, and didn’t penetrate the hull as easily as they had the motherships. The brilliant lights of thermonuclear explosions blossomed all over the immense surface of the city. Craters appeared in the hull as if by magic. The navs officer zoomed in on one of them, and Cordez could see the edges of individual decks where the outer layers had been stripped away. The city was shedding clouds of debris from the craters, like some great beast bleeding from surface wounds.
ssssThe second wave of missiles targeted the craters as already weakened areas, and slammed deep inside the city. Cordez didn’t see them explode, but he knew they were destroying the city from the inside out, the same way they’d destroyed the motherships.
ssssThe flagships, with their attendant Fire Ships, had at last realised something was terribly wrong, and were turning on the Baccur. The last wave of missiles hit the city, striking to the very heart of the immense structure. There was one vivid flash, as if the first missile to detonate had set off the others, and then all signs of life in the great city ceased. The pulse weapons stopped firing, and the immense structure began to drift randomly, a cooling, motionless hulk in space.
ssssThe Baccur warships fled the scene, with the flagships in pursuit of them, and Cordez knew it was time for him to keep his part of the bargain.
ssssHe sent out commands on the open channel, and every H’Dree and Human ship the Alliance had fell on the flagships, tearing chunks from them on every side. The flagships were forced to stop their pursuit of the Baccur, and defend themselves from the Alliance attack.
ssssIn the outer layers of the sun, one flagship watched the new developments with growing dismay. Seeing the inevitable end, the command flagship slipped deeper into the sun, and made its silent way to a point on the other side of the red super giant, where it had a chance of entering stardrive undetected.
ssssAs the remaining flagships reeled from the ferocious onslaught, Drua and Magenta alike descended on the circling Fire Ships, creating havoc among them, leaving graveyards of dead ships in their wake.
ssssThe Alliance needed only to destroy the city and the flagships to enforce the treaties, and the Fire Ships must have known this, but they fought on, driven most likely by a desire to cover the escape of at least some of the flagships.
ssssIn the heart of the action the Javelins finally pulled back from the flagships, and a party of Valkrethi descended on each one, dropping into the rents and chasms created by the fierce attack, and bypassing the weapons the Carnii kept in the outer layers of the great ships. The Valkrethi fought their way determinedly to the massive reactors at the core of the flagships, and destroyed them. The flagships went out, one by one, drifting silently in space, and the Alliance sensed victory. Then one of the flagships blew apart from within, killing the Valkrethi on board, and the last flagship was shredded by a swarm of Valkrethi incensed at the loss of their own.
ssssThen the flagship threat was over.
ssssIn the midst of mopping up operations, as the last of the Fire Ships were being systematically annihilated, Cordez already knew there was a flagship missing. Congratulatory messages were starting to come in to his SouthAm headquarters from major centres on Earth, where dignitaries were following the proceedings on sub space links. He cut them off abruptly.
ssssIt only needed one flagship to reseed the territory the Carnii claimed in the Spiral Arm. Just one. And once the last remaining flagship was in the undetectable nothingness of stardrive, it would be able to play cat and mouse with them forever. Building up new shipyards, gathering resources in out of the way places, until eventually the situation was just as bad as it had been before.
ssssLeaving the final phases of the battle to play themselves out, he put through a priority call for his commanders to reconvene on the bridge of Ayman’s Javelin as soon as possible.
ssssHe was discussing the situation with Flinch, Ayman and Cagill, as Kanuk, AldSanni and the remaining Alliance commanders arrived in quick succession. They quickly grasped the importance of the missing flagship. The treaties between the Drua and the Carnii couldn’t be used to force the Carnii back to the Core until the last flagship was destroyed. The thought the flagship might escape, and rebuild the Carnii presence in the Spiral Arm, was a bitter pill to them all.
ssss“Spreading Alliance forces throughout known space, trying to pick up an entry or exit stardrive signature, would exhaust us economically,” said Cordez. “We can’t maintain our forces at their present strength indefinitely.”
ssss“Can we track the flagship in sub space?” said Flinch, having discussed the problem quickly with Matsu at Prometheus.
ssss“Possibly,” said Cordez, “but the flagship only needs to keep moving. It will always take us days to assemble a sizeable force and get it to the flagship’s last known location. I think it’s more likely it will hide out on the edges of space and rebuild its forces where we can’t detect its presence.”
ssssThe problem seemed insurmountable. They had come so far, and now to be foiled by the vastness of space, and the elusiveness of one enemy ship!
ssss“I take it your problem is finding out where the last flagship is,” said Reagis’ voice conversationally, emerging out of thin air on Ayman’s bridge.
ssssThere was a stunned silence, and then Cagill said, “Reagis, man, is that you?”
ssss“What, you don’t recognise me?” said the voice jovially.
ssss“Actually, we can’t see you,” said Cagill carefully.
ssss“Really?” said Reagis, sounding genuinely puzzled. “I can see you, all of you. Nice to see you again, by the way.”
ssss“Reagis, we don’t know it’s you,” said Cordez from the sub space screen. “It could be someone, or something, impersonating you.”
ssss“Oh, right,” said Reagis. “It’s this being dead thing I suppose.
ssss“Ah, not literally,” he said hastily, when he saw the expressions on their faces.
ssss“Look, can we put my existence or non-existence aside for the moment? It’s rather hard to explain. What you want is the coordinates of the remaining flagship, right?
ssss“Well, it’s in stardrive, but the coordinates of its exit point will be at BetaC4, 32.6 light years at 23.8/16.1 degrees. Got that?”
ssssThere were confused looks around the room. No one had ever predicted an exit point from an enemy ship in stardrive before.
ssssAyman glanced at the others. Opinion was clearly divided on the validity of the information they were getting. It didn’t help that Reagis had been generally thought of as dead, especially after the torus failed to surface out of the sun after his attack on the Carnii city.
ssssHowever, one of them was more optimistic.
ssss“Let’s do it,” said Cordez, convinced by the inflections in the voice of their invisible guest. He knew Reagis better than anyone, and if it felt to him like it was Reagis in the room, then it probably was him. “We’ll know how good this information is within a couple of days, and we can afford that much time.
ssss“How will we contact you when we get to these coordinates, and want further information?” he continued.
ssss“I’m coming with you,” said Reagis. “Or ahead of you I think. Look, I don’t know how it’s going to be done, but I’ll be there by the time you get there, okay?”
ssss“Okay,” said Cordez, his voice a lot steadier than he felt. Part of him was still stunned by Reagis’ apparent resurrection, part of him dared not hope his old friend was still alive. Alive somehow, somewhere, though not apparently here, with a physical presence to match if his voice was any indication.
ssssThe hastily assembled pursuit fleet was soon in transit to the coordinates Reagis had given them. It was almost upon the coordinates Reagis had given them when Reagis’ voice appeared, once again, in its eerie, disembodied form upon the bridge of Ayman’s Javelin.
ssssAyman had to resist the reaction to jump out of his skin when he heard Reagis’ voice alongside him.
ssss“Come out of stardrive short of the flagship,” said Reagis quietly, “and get Cordez on sub space. There’s something I have to discuss with him.”
ssssAyman opened the sub space link, and tied in the Alliance commanders so they could hear as well.
ssss“Good to hear your voice again, Reagis,” said Cordez. “Would be even better to see you.”
ssss“Yes, well, sorry about that,” said Reagis. “The Caerbrindii say it’s a lot easier this way at the moment, rather than sending me to you physically. I’m not, er, all here yet.”
ssssCordez’ eyebrows went up several notches at the mention of the Caerbrindii, but he said nothing.
ssss“The Caerbrindii, who are . . . well . . . it’s hard to explain . . . here with me, want to deal with the flagship themselves.
ssss“There’s one Carnii they want to honour, want to leave as a legend in the Carnii culture. They want to leave a pointer to a different way of looking at things, in the hope it will bring change. This Carnii they want to honour killed off the central intelligence that ran the Carnii city, rather than have it make some senseless decisions that would have led to destruction just for the sake of it. The Caerbrindii think, on the basis of that, there’s hope for the Carnii yet.
ssss“I have to go and set the story in motion, set up the basis for the myth, so to speak. The final moments of the flagship will be broadcast to the cells in the Core, and I have to put on a show for them.”
ssssCordez nodded. He didn’t really understand what Reagis was about to do, but he understood that sometimes evil was capable of change.
ssss“You want us to wait here until you return,” he said, more a statement of understanding than a question.
ssssThis time it was Reagis’ turn to nod. Realising Cordez couldn’t see him nodding, he said “yes,” and vanished from Ayman’s bridge.
sssseveral light years away, he materialised in front of Kalken and her commanders, at the heart of the flagship’s command sphere. For this, the Caerbrindii had given him a body, and a pale cloud of breathable air. He was surrounded by a faint blue tinge, in the middle of the orange glow of so many Carnii at work around the sides of the command sphere.
ssssKalken recognised him as a rock dweller at once. She’d seen the scans of their cities, their dead bodies floating in space after her forces had cut their ships open.
ssssOnce she’d thought of them as insignificant scum on the gravity-bound wasteland of planets, but they’d proved her wrong about that. Now, they’d defeated an entire Carnii cell. She also had no idea how this rock dweller had appeared on her flagship. No proximity alarms had sounded, no ships had been detected nearby – but here it was anyway.
ssssReagis held his arms straight out from his sides, and raised his hands slowly, palms out, in the Carnii gesture to honour a fallen enemy. One of Kalken’s commanders moved to fire a plasma pulse at the small figure in front of them, and she commanded him to let it say its piece.
ssssFor the first time she realised how different she was to her commanders. They would fight to the death, because that was all they knew. She would fight when it was needed; yet learn, and change, when that was the better choice. It struck her forcibly how un-Carnii like she had become.
ssssFor a moment she was aware of the significance of each move she made; every detail of this encounter was being sent to the cells in the Core. The death of a flagship was always a story to be recorded for future generations of Carnii, and she was glad of that. And it was going to be the death of a flagship, she realised; it was going to be her flagship this time. Whatever force could send this rock dweller into their midst could destroy her flagship, whatever she tried to do about it. She was surprised at how calm she felt
ssssShe also felt tired, as if the unrelenting hostility of the Carnii way of life was, for the first time, a burden to her. She brought her hands together to honour a great victory, knowing it was the victory of her enemy.
ssssReagis accepted the salute, and nodded to himself. It was finished.
ssssHe moved his arms, pointing to one of the great control banks around the command sphere, then another, then a third. The failsafe guards around the massive reactors at the heart of the flagship withdrew, and the great, controlled firestorms in the reactors wound up toward critical in one tumultuous surge. Kalken looked at the energy spike, and knew the flagship had nothing that could stop that sort of overload. She turned and saluted Reagis again, making sure the Carnii in the Core knew she bowed before his better way, and then the flagship disappeared in an enormous ball of white-hot fire.
ssssThe pursuit fleet picked up the detonation on their long-range scanners, and wondered what had happened. Then Reagis appeared on Ayman’s bridge, in his full physical form this time. Something seemed to let go of him, as if it had supported him through the last few days, and he slumped to the floor.
ssssAyman leaped from his chair and called the ship’s medics. They were soon able to confirm that Reagis was more exhausted than anything else.

ssssCordez ushered Asura into the waiting vertical lift craft, and closed the door against the tumultuous crowds and the endless chanting of well-wishers.
ssssThey’d done their duty as the two most powerful Regents of the trading blocks, as the media-dubbed ‘king and queen’ of Earth, and the architects of the Alliance of planets that had saved them all. They’d done it for more than the maximum legally allowed Regents’ term of six years, and in the last six months they’d been the focus that had allowed the people of Earth an outpouring of jubilation, a catharsis that would help them put the past behind them. They’d helped them let go of a war footing, and return to a time of peace.
ssssIt was enough. No one could ask any more of them.
ssss“What do you think it will take?” said Asura.
ssss“To disappear?” said Manoba. “Some cosmetic surgery, a sex change, and major pigment augmentation!”
ssssAsura laughed. “No, seriously,” she continued, “where can we go to start a normal life?”
ssssThere was a long silence as they thought about the possibilities. The vertical lift craft hummed quietly as it spirited them away to Cordez’ retreat in the hills.
ssssManoba, though, started to think about other things. He’d done his best to make the known part of the Spiral Arm a safer and fairer place, but he’d left ends unravelled. There were some 180 Baccur warships on the warpath in the Core, and that could come back to create new problems for them all. The Drua needed to be formally included in the Alliance, greatly expanding its area outside the Spiral Arm, and proper cultural and trading exchanges begun. And the Alliance should really help the economies of the Centaur and Magenta peoples recover, after their contribution to the war effort. Opportunities lost at times like these were often never regained.
ssssIt was going to be hard to let go of the reins of power, but let go he must. For Asura, for himself, and to allow new leaders to emerge in the Alliance.
ssssHe wondered if Reagis would want to step down from active duty as well. The medics would release him in a day or two, and Cordez had offered him his mountain hideaway as a place where he could fully recover, as he’d done so many times before.
ssssMaybe they’d start a veterans club, collecting together all the people who’d been key to the Alliance success in the Second Phase of the Caerbrindii wars, as Sallyanne had named their recent history. Would ParapSanni be interested in a veterans club, he wondered. The H’Dree were longer lived than Humans; how old was ParapSanni, in Human terms? He was fairly sure Fallostrina and Mordiselli would be starters.
ssssThere were so many others.
ssssAsura laid her head on his shoulder. He started guiltily. She always did that when she knew he’d wandered off into his thoughts.
ssssHe brought his mind firmly back to the here and now. They had some serious planning to do for what would be a wonderful life together – and he knew in his heart that with her as his other half it would, indeed, be a wonderful life.
ssssShe squeezed his arm, and that helped him let go of the unfinished Alliance business. It was someone else’s problem now.