Chapter Nine

Baroness Nergal curled up on her couch with Fleet Vice Admiral Oliver Weinstein's head in her lap and popped another grape into his mouth.

"You do realize you're going to have to earn these grapes, don't you?" she purred as he swallowed.

"I don't think of it that way," he said with a chuckle.

"No? Then how do you think of it, pray tell?"

"The way I see it, I don't have to do anything. First my superior officer wines and dines me, spoiling me rotten and softening me up so she can have her wicked way with me. And second—"

"And second?" she prompted, poking his ribs as he paused with a grin.

"Why, second, she does have her way with me."

"You," she examined her remaining grapes with care, "are a despicable person of weak moral fiber." He nodded, and she shook her head in sorrow. "I, on the other hand, as a virtuous and upright person, am so shocked by the depths of your decadence that I think—" she paused as she finally found the perfect grape "—I'm going to shove this grape up your left nostril!"

Admiral Weinstein tried to whip upright and dodge, but Admiral Robbins was a clever tactician and tumbled him to the floor in a squirming, tickling heap. Her intended instrument of retribution pulped harmlessly against the tip of his nose, but things were progressing satisfactorily indeed when an urgent tone sounded.

Adrienne stopped dead, head rising in shock as the priority tone repeated, then vaulted to her feet. Weinstein sat up and started to speak, then froze as the tone sounded yet again. His confused expression vanished as the priority of the signal registered, and he rose to his knees.

Adrienne paused only to jerk a robe over her negligee, then answered the call with an impatient implant flick. Gerald Hatcher's hologram materialized before her, sitting in Mother's Command Alpha command chair, and his face was grim.

"Sorry to disturb you, Adrienne," his voice was flat, and her dread grew, "but we may have a serious problem." He drew a breath and met her eyes squarely. "Algys McNeal's Thegran sitrep is three hours overdue."

Robbins went white, and Hatcher continued in that same flat voice.

"We've double-checked with Urahan. They hypered out on schedule, and they should've reached Thegran five hours ago."

Adrienne nodded slowly, eyes huge. Many of the Fourth Empire's system governors had erected defenses in desperate efforts to quarantine their planets against the bio-weapon, but communications had been so chaotic as the Empire died that no one knew what any given governor might have cobbled up. The only way to find out was to go see, and if no one had yet encountered anything capable of standing up to a planetoid, there was always the possibility someone would. That was why all survey ships were required to report by hypercom within two hours of arrival in any unexplored system.

"It might be a hypercom failure," she suggested, but her own tone told her how little she believed it.

"Anything's possible," Hatcher said expressionlessly. The hypercom was massive and complex, but its basic technology had been refined for over six millennia. One might fail once in four or five centuries: certainly no more often. They both knew that, and they stared at one another in sick silence.

"Oh, Jesus, Ger," she whispered at last.

"I know."

"Was their hyper field unbalanced when they left Urahan?"

"I don't know." Frustration harshened Hatcher's voice. "They dropped off their passengers and hypered straight out, and none of the reconstruction people had any reason to run a trace on them. All we know is they hit the threshold and kicked over right on the tick."

"Oh, shit." The expletive was a prayer, and Adrienne raked fingers through her hair. "I simply can't believe they could've hit anything that could take Terra—not with Algys in command. It has to be a com failure!"

"You mean you hope it is," Hatcher said, then closed his eyes. "And so do I. But hoping won't change things if it's not." Adrienne nodded unhappily, and he drew a deep breath. "I'm mobilizing BatRon One for search and rescue with Herdan as Flag. Do you want it?"

"Of course I do!" Adrienne began unbelting her robe. Weinstein was already there, holding out her uniform, and she spared him a strained smile. "I'll be ready by the time my cutter gets here."

"Thank you," Hatcher said softly, and Adrienne swallowed.

"Will you—?" she began, and he nodded, face grimmer than ever.

"I'm leaving for the Palace now."

Fifteen Asgerd-class planetoids erupted from hyper-space ten light-minutes from the G4 star Thegran. They came out in battle formation, with shields up and enough weapons on-line to destroy an entire solar system. Every sensor was at max, seeking any threat and searching for any lifeboat's beacon.

But there was nothing to engage . . . and no beacons.

Adrienne Robbins sat on Emperor Herdan's command deck, staring into the display, and her eyes burned. Thegran II, once known as Triam, was a sphere of bare rock and lifeless dirt, surrounded by a fraying necklace of near-space satellites and derelicts as dead as Triam herself.

She fought her tears. She'd hoped so hard! But there was no sign of Imperial Terra . . . or of anything that could have destroyed her. And if a hyper ship failed to reach its destination it never emerged from hyper at all. She drew a deep breath and rubbed her stinging eyes once, angrily, before she looked at her white-faced communications officer.

"Calibrate the hypercom, Commander," she said in a voice leached of all emotion.

"I'm sorry, Colin," Gerald Hatcher said quietly. "God, I'm sorry."

Colin sat in his study, trying not to weep while Jiltanith pressed her face into his shoulder and her tears soaked his tunic, and Hatcher started to reach out to them, then stopped. His hand hung in midair for a moment while he stared down at it as if at an enemy, then dropped it back into his lap.

"I'd hoped Adrienne would find something. Or that they'd have returned themselves if it was a com failure, but—" He broke off, and his jaw tightened. "It's my fault. I should never have let them all go in one ship."

"No." Colin's frayed voice quivered despite his effort to hold it steady. He shook his head almost convulsively. "It . . . it was our idea, Ger. Ours." He closed his eyes and felt a tear trickle down his cheek.

"I should've argued. God, how could I be so stupid! Both of them, and Sandy and Tam—" Hatcher stopped, cursing himself as Colin's face clenched. Venting his self-hate could only hurt his friends, but he would never forgive himself. Never. Terra had seemed so powerful, so safe . . . and so he'd let not merely both heirs to the throne but the children of all of his closest friends sail aboard a single ship, never reflecting for a moment that even the mightiest starship might malfunction and die. Of course it was unlikely, but it was his job to expect the unlikely.

"Have you told the others?" Colin asked, and Hatcher shook his head.

"No. I— Well, you and 'Tanni needed to know first, and—"

"I understand." Colin cut him off softly, hugging Jiltanith as she wept. "It's not your fault, Ger. I don't want to hear that from you ever again." He held the admiral's eyes until Hatcher gave a tiny nod, then drew a deep, ragged breath.

" 'Tanni?" His voice was gentle, and Jiltanith raised her face. She stared at him in mute agony, and he remembered the final engagement at Zeta Trianguli as their ship shuddered and bucked under the pounding of Achuultani warheads and Tamman's Royal Birhat vaporized before their eyes. She'd wept then, too, wept for the friends dying about them, but her commands had come firm and steady through her tears, with all the invincible courage he loved so much. The courage that had broken at last.

He cupped her face between his palms, and her diamond tears wrenched at him, for he understood her too well. She'd been wounded too often in the endless battle against Anu. Her softness had withdrawn behind a fiery temper and a warrior's armor forged by a lifetime of warfare and lost friends. But it was still there, however hard she found showing it, and when she loved, she loved as she did everything else—with all she was.

"We have to go, 'Tanni." Fury sparked suddenly within her hurt, but he made himself meet it. "We have to," he repeated. "They're our friends."

She drew a quick, angry breath . . . then held it and closed her eyes. One hand rose to his cheek, and she nodded and pressed a kiss upon his wrist. Anguish still filled her eyes when she opened them once more, but there was understanding as well. The understanding that she had to go on, not simply because her friends needed her, but because if she didn't there was nothing left but a dark, bottomless gulf, waiting to suck her under forever.

"Aye," she whispered, and looked at Hatcher. "Forgive me, dear Gerald." She held out a trembling hand, and the admiral took it. "Well I know thy grief, sweet friend. 'Tis ill done to heap mine own upon it."

" 'Tanni, I—" Tears fogged Hatcher's voice, and she squeezed gently.

"Nay, Gerald. 'Tis no more fault o' thine than mine. And Colin hath the right. Our dearest friends do need our aid . . . e'en as we need theirs." She managed a soft, sad smile and stood. "Let us go to them."

A chair squeaked as the man in it finished the report and turned to look out his office window. The Imperium was in mourning, and even the most fiery malcontents were muted by the shock and sorrow of a race. Every flag of humankind flew at half-mast, but there was no sorrow in his heart. The heirs were gone, and the children of the imperial family's closest friends had gone with them. Grief and loss would weaken them, make them less vigilant, blunt their perceptions and reactions, and that was good.

He rose and walked to the window, hands folded behind him, looking down on the crowds below, then rested his eyes upon the spire of the Cenotaph. The names on the memorial were endless, and once he'd hated every one of them, for they named the people who'd toppled his patron. But he hated them no longer, for in toppling Anu they'd cleared his path to power, and his palms tingled as he waited to reach out and grasp it.

He pursed his lips, pondering his preparations. The gravitonic warhead was almost ready, and so was his plan for delivering it when the time was right. He'd been more worried about that than he'd cared to admit to Francine, but not anymore. It wouldn't be easy, but with his foreknowledge and the holos of the artist's sketches he could fabricate his duplicate in plenty of time. And, of course, it would never do to deliver it too soon, anyway. He needed Stepmother closer to operational, for it was essential to reduce delay to an absolute minimum if his coup was to succeed.

And it would succeed. He was like a spider, he thought, weaving his webs at the very heart of empire, unnoticed yet perfectly placed to observe and thwart every countermove even before it was launched. Just as he'd been placed to act on the opportunity Imperial Terra presented.

He smiled again—a thin, triumphant smile. With a little luck, the heirs' deaths might even drive a wedge between the imperial family and Dahak, for it was Dahak who'd designed Imperial Terra, supervised her construction, and suggested sending them out aboard her. With Cruz and his family dead, no one would ever know what had really happened, and the grieving parents would be more than human if some secret part of them didn't blame Dahak for their loss.

The time would come. Not this year, perhaps, but soon, and then Colin and Jiltanith MacIntyre would die, as well, in one deadly stroke which would decapitate the Imperium . . . and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. Nothing at all.

He smothered a soft laugh, savoring the victory to come and the exquisite irony which would make him Colin's legal successor. He, the Terra-born "degenerate" Kirinal and Anu had despised even while they groomed him as their tool, would achieve what Anu had only dreamed of: utter and complete dominion. And it would all be legal!

A soft sound warned him, and he turned, banishing his smile and replacing it with soft, sad sympathy as Horus walked into his office. The old man's shoulders slumped, and his eyes were haunted, but like his daughter and son-in-law, he was making himself go on. Making himself discharge his duties, never guessing how futile it all truly was.

"Sorry to bother you," Horus said, "but I wondered if you'd finished that report on the Calcutta bio-enhancement center?"

"Yes, I have." He crossed to his desk and handed over the datachip folio from the blotter.

"Thanks." Horus took it and started back to his office, then stopped and turned as a throat cleared itself behind him.

"I just . . . Well, I just wanted to say I'm sorry, Horus. If there's anything I can do—anything at all—please let me know."

"I will." Horus managed a sad smile of his own. "It helps just to know friends care," he said softly.

"I'm glad. Because we do care, Horus," Lawrence Jefferson said gently. "More, perhaps, than you'll ever know."