Requiem for the Conqueror

Chapter 26

Myles Roma disliked worry — and lately he had begun to spend way too much time doing what he disliked. His stomach had begun to send painful signals that

all was not well with his digestion and he'd lost nearly ten kilos.

Night had fallen beyond his tower office, and the holo image of His Holiness Sassa U stared down over his shoulder. Myles rubbed his tired eyes and glanced out over his sandwood desk desk at the lights of the capital. The endless hours had become routine. No wonder he'd lost weight.

Not only had Divine Sassa placed him in charge of the Myklenian rehabilitation, but the whole problem of the Companions had been dumped in his lap, and now, on top of every thing else, mysterious reports of Regan mobilization were coming in via his spy network.

Myles bent over the reports once more, keeping place with his finger as he skimmed the intelligence reports. Targa continued to fester in the Regan rear. No one knew Staffa's whereabouts in either the Sassan or Regan Empires. He almost passed the report from the agent in Etarus off as innocuous, but mention of Ily Takka caught his eye.

Myles plucked the report from the desk, reading it carefully. Ily had been making enquiries on Etaria regarding a missing person. She had been seen ushering two slaves into the Internal Security building — and within moments the place had practically blown up. The new Director of Internal Security had ordered a state of emergency and sealed the planet for two days and Ily had spaced immediately afterward for an unknown destination.

Myles tapped his fat chin with ring-bejeweled fingers ile he thought about it. With no little hesitation, he punched the comm button. When his secretary's face

formed, Myles ordered, "See if our agent monitoring Etarus got a photo of the slaves accompanying Ily Takka."

"Yes, Legate. It will be but a moment."

Myles glared at the reports still piled on his desk. The Regans were being uncharacteristically sloppy. Feint? Did all those rerouted transports mean that they wanted Sassa off-balance, or were they really mobilizing for war?

His secretary interrupted his thoughts. "The agent did get a holo Legate. I'm patching it through."

Myles bent down to peer at his monitor. He watched as Ily Takka arrived via aircar at the main door of the Internal Security building. A black man stepped out of the vehicle followed by Ily, a filthy slave woman, and a big man with wild black hair and a sand-covered, scarred body. As they climbed the stairs, the man hesitated for an instant and glared in the direction of the camera.

Myles froze the photo. "Enlarge section G-15 on the screen please." As if he looked through a zoom lens, the image of the man grew until Myles stared into Staffa kar Therma's eyes — and yes, curse it all, he wore a slave collar!

Myles swallowed hard, baffled by the ramifications. "What does this mean? Staffa in the collar? And Regans mobilizing for…" He swiveled in the overstffed chair, punching yet another button. "Get me Admiral Jakre."

Myles waited for long moments until Jakre's face filled the monitor. "Admiral? I have some—"

"Really, Legate, I'm at the Vermilion Club, halfway through a delightful supper. If this can wait, I'd greatly appreciate—"

"I think the Regans are planning to strike the border worlds. Something's happened. I think Ily Takka has abducted the Lord Commander. Get your thrice-cursed body down here, Admiral! We may not have much time."

Ily Takka stepped down from her LC to face a small handful of battered men and women. They stood warily, watching her with suspicious eyes. These were Sinklar's terribe forces? They wore glazed and stained armor that had been charred by blaster fire and now flaked off before her eyes. Some moved with difficulty in armor so hardened as

to be useless. Nevertheless, they wore it as a badge — and not one looked away from her commanding gaze.

Ily stopped on the ramp, looking around as the breeze tugged her hair and brushed her face with a soft caress;

sunlight stroked bright and warm on her skin. A pleasant odor of vegetation and rich earth drifted on the moving air. The plaza shimmered dusty and brown, surrounded on all sides by red brick buildings of local manufacture. Drab and utilitarianly efficient, the architecture had nothing in common with the usual Imperial style.

The military personnel recaptured her attention. They waited, feet braced, heavy blasters resting insolently in the grip. One young woman met her stare, antagonism in her face. A plastaheal patch covered one cheek and strands of blonde hair blew in ill-disciplined wisps about her hard expression.

Dangerous: her intuition flared a warning.

Ily stiffened her back and walked forward.

A young man stepped out to meet her, slapping his charred and smudged armor with a flat hand. Brownish spatters of dried bood speckled the right side of his stiffened armor. A Division First's chevron had been glued ludicrously to his arm band. She met his eyes, found them roiling with challenge, and began to bristle.

"Minister Takka?" he asked, youthful tones shrouded in undercurrents of threat.

"Yes, and you are?"

"MacRuder. If you will proceed straight ahead into the headquarters, ma'am. We'll make you comfortable until the First can speak to you."

Ily froze, hackles, rising. "Until? Am I to understand I have to… to wait for Sinklar Fist?"

MacRuder tensed. The blasters in the hands of the others clattered hollowly on hardened armor as they changed positions. MacRuder's jaw muscles rolled under smooth skin. Passionate blue eyes burned into hers. "Yes, ma'am. The First suffered a loss recently. We all did."

The young warriors around her shuffled, casting angry glances her way. By the Rotted Gods, look at them. See how their eyes blaze! Fists "loss" is theirs. They're really loyal to him. No wonder things went so wrong for us on Targa.

She nodded. "You realize, MacRuder, that I am here on

the Emperor's business. We would like to bring this problem to a quick and satisfactory solution."

"The First will see you at the earliest opportunity," MacRuder replied, motioning her ahead.

She glared at the soldiers. Their animosity had risen to a boil.

/ am alone down here! The thought sobered. Rotted Gods! Watch your temper, Ily. One flare could leave you very dead at the hands of these savage children!

"What is your rank, MacRuder?" Ily asked causally as she eyed his chevron. She resumed her march toward the brick factory, gut tightening at the way the soldiers followed with blasters pointed at her back.

"First of the Second Targan Division, ma'am," he replied smartly.

"MacRuder, you realize you and your Sinklar Fist are in a great deal of trouble, don't you?"

A grim smile played across his lips as he laced his fingers behind his back. "Minister, we've been in a great deal of trouble since we dropped on this planet."

"You might never got off," Ily reminded coolly, hearing a hissed retort from the guard behind.

"You, Mhitshul!" MacRuder snapped. "Stow it!"

Instant obedience. This is no rabble — no matter what we would think. What causes the burning craziness in their eyes? They look so. fanatical!

"The First will discuss the situation with you, Minister."

"You know, his rank as First was never officially acknowledged. The Emperor might simply have him demoted to Sergeant. If charges are not proffered. You have very little chance of—"

"Gods Rotted Regan bitch!" someone behind her growled through gritted teeth and the skin on Ily's back crawled.

"At ease, people," MacRuder barked. He turned to Ily, gnarled finger stabbing at her. "A piece of advice Minister. We're not hot on Rega at this particular moment. They left us to die here."

"I'll keep that in mind." Ily gave him one of her coldest stares.

MacRuder nodded. "See that you do."

She entered the scarred door to the brick factory. Step-

ping inside, she crossed her arms, surveying the interior of the big building. Dusty shafts of light filtered through high windows onto bustling people

in armor and civilian garb. The air hummed with a constant din as people talked back and forth or shuffled materials and papers. Others sat with heads bent over comm monitors. Piles of brick forms had been removed from stacks along the wall to prop up tables, create shelving, or just to to provide more space. The huge furnaces along the wall gaped at the frantic invasion in cold silence.

The reality struck her. "You run the planet from a brick factory? This is your military headquarters?"

Her gaze turned to a blast-pocked LC — a looming island in the center of the floor — armored personnel with blasters stood vigilantly around the streamlined craft, all with that same tigerish wariness.

"Our headquarters took a direct hit from space," MacRuder explained, voice clipped. "We took the next best thing available and haven't had time to move."

She let her lip lift slightly to goad him. "I have come to a brick factory to negotiate with unmannered rabble for a planet?"

"Mhitshulf" MacRuder whirled and hissed. "Lower that weapon or I'll have your ass!"

"You heard what she said," the private's voice carried a deadly timbre. "We won't let her talk like that."

Shivers of ice danced up and down Ily's spine like frosty breath.

"I gave you an order, Mhitshul," MacRuder's voice dropped.

"Yes, sir!" Mhitshul cried, facial muscles jumping as he grounded his weapon, eyes forward. "You heard what she said, sir. About us… about him."

"I heard," MacRuder growled, tendons popping from the back of his fist where he gripped his olstered pulse pistol.

"I apologie." Ily added — a feeling of gravel in her throat.

The analytical portion of her mind noted the way they said, "him." Had they come to worship Sinklar Fist? Was "e even greater than she had hoped?

MacRuder pointed with his other hand. "Minister, if you

will take a chair at the table over there, we'll do our best to make you comfortable."

"You're pressing your luck, MacRuder." Her voice went flat. "You expect me to sit at a portable table-in the middle of this… this crowd? Enough of this, take me to Sinklar Fist. Now!"

The ring of blasters clattered metallically.

"Easy, people," MacRuder ordered, giving Ily an anxious glance. "Sink would be very upset if you blew the shit out of the Regan's diplomatic envoy. The First gave his orders. We don't question them."

Ily walked to the table, brushed dust off the seat, and sat, knowing her black dress would look like five shades of hell. Her ring of-escorts? — backed off, never letting her out of their sight while they crouched, ever vigilant.

Why didn't I listen to Rysta? So help me, Blessed Gods, get me out of this and I swear, I'll roast this planet into magma!

Ily lasted an hour, her anger building to a fuming rage. Finally she handed her escutcheon to MacRuder. "This is my authority. Either I see Sinklar Fist… or this is over. "

MacRuder studied the jessant-de-lis and handed it back. "It's the Regan crest. So? It doesn't pass water down here." Ily stood, pacing her anger out. "You know, don't you,

that with one order I could melt this damn planet to slag. You people don't seem to realize it, but your fate hangs by one thin little thread. I'm warning you, if you don't take me to Sinklar Fist now, I'm walking out of here and you can take the wrath of the Emperor."

"Bring 'em on," MacRuder cried with a gesture. "We slapped the hell out of five of your best, lady. Let's see how the gawddam Emperor and the rest of his troops stand up to Sink! Let's see!"

"You're dead," Ily replied coldly, starting for the door. Can I go? Will they let me?

"There will be no more dying." The commanding voice rang out over the deepening silence in the room.

Ily turned, anger still welling as she sought to turn her wrath on this new irritant. A man stepped through a small access door and closed it behind him.

He didn't amount to much-a runt of a youth. He wore loose hanging combat

armor that bore no adornment or

insignia of rank. Unruly black hair stuck out from his head in a mussed thatch. His hollow cheeks gave his full jaw a bony look. The nose jutted straight and thin over wide lips. His forehead rose high and smooth, as if to advertise his intelligence.

Then those eyes pinned her. One steel gray, the other tawny-yellow, they studied her and she could read a curious vulnerability mixed with a strange dominance. Though she could define no reason, he appeared remarkable, magneticas if an aura of competence and strength suffused him.

What quality did he project which made him appear so familiar? Where had she seen him before?

"Mac," his voice sounded kind and reproving. "Must you always allow your passions to get the best of you?" He smiled warmly at MacRuder, and Ily watched the man crumble. "And the same for the rest of you. Your hatred ill suits you. Now go on and leave us to find an end to Regan fighting Regan. Mhitshul, see if you can find two cups of stassa for the Minister and myself. We'll take them in the LC."

The guards, so hostile to her, so deadly in their rage, slipped away, cowed by his simple words.

Sinklar turned and cocked is head, odd eyes taking Ily's measure. He smiled timidly, almost shyly. "I'm sorry, Minister Takka. Please, don't blame them. Things have been difficult here. They need time to forget the dead. We have all been wounded… one way or another." And she noted the pain, the bitter anger and grief straining under an iron control.

Ily walked beside him as he turned his steps toward the LC. "And forgive me for being late. I went for a walk earlier, trying to put things in perspective. I needed time to think… to remember…. Well, that doesn't matter. I guess I lost track of time."

She couldn't help but note how the entire room had gone silent, men and women, soldiers and Targans, all had eyes only for Sinklar Fist. She could have been invisible for all they cared.

She walked up the ramp of the LC, idly noting that it bore Second Targan Division markings. The inside looked just as battered and tacky as the outside. She followed him past rows of acceleration benches and ducked through a

hatch in the forward bulkhead. A thin pallet supported a threadbare bedroll on an acceleration bench to one side while a fold-out mess table and plastic benches filled the opposite alcove.

A sad light animated his incredible eyes. "Welcome to my quarters. This also serves as my office and command post. We had a nice headquarters — but I'm afraid your fleet redesigned it."

IIy slipped down on the recessed plastic bench while Sinklar seated himself opposite her. Mhitshul came trotting up the aisle, two cups of stassa steaming in his hands. He ducked through the hatch and handed one to Ily — venom in his eyes — and settled Sinklar's carefully before him.

// Mhitshul had a tail, he'd be wagging it! Ily reached into her pouch and pulled a monitor, sticking it into the stassa. She relaxed at a clean reading.

Amusement tempered the pain in Fist's eyes. "Mhitshul might not like you Minister Takka, but he would never poison you. It would be detrimental to our cause."

At the word poison, Mhitshul had stiffened, face white. He looked his loathing at Ily as if — by suggesting such a thing — she were as monstrous as a Cytean cobra. Whatever else these rebels of Fist's might be, they weren't deep, or steeped in high-stakes intrigue.

"You will be quite safe," Sinklar continued. "I give you my word. You may go where you will on Targa. Any who molest you or harass you will deal with me — directly." He looked up. "Mhitshul, see to it that such information and clearance are disseminated."

"Yes, sir. I'll attend to it as soon as the Minister leaves." Mhitshul replied woodenly.

"Attend to it now, please."

Mhitshul might have been ordered to jump from a tall building for all the enthusiasm he showed, but he turned on his heel and walked back toward the ramp.

"I will accept your offer with reservations," Ily told him. "I can't say the greeting by your people was at all conducive to good will." She picked up the stassa and sipped.

His stare went vacant. "We've been through a great deal. We have been betrayed. watched friends and loved ones die for no reason beyond politics in a faraway capital. Can

you blame them for feeling alienated? They have survived, Minister Takka — despite all the odds."

"I see."

"I sincerely hope you do. The Minister of Internal Security would hardly be drinking stassa with a… shall we say, rebel… in a situation like this were it not for extraordinary circumstances."

"What do I call you? Though you are officially a Sergeant, do I call you First Fist? Commander? What?"

His face reddened with embarrassment. "Sinklar will be fine. I don't make pretensions about rank. That was for another era."

"Another era?"

He nodded, expression changing, knowledge and power in his bicolor stare. "ree Space changed when the First Targan Division didn't roll over and die. The last gasp of the old guard echoed in Hauws' blaster shots as he blew away Weebouw — and sealed the fate of the Third Ashtan Assault Division."

He sighed, eyes weary as he looked at the stassa cup in his hands. "Two decisions could have been made when we took Rysta's five Divisions. First, orbital bombardment might have been employed to destroy the threat we pose. I don't underrate what we haye become. Indeed, not even Targa's production would have been worth the risk of letting us loose. The other option, the second choice, brings you to me." He raised his eyes. "Very well Minister. I agree to most of your terms."

"You haven't heard them yet," Ily blurted.

"I don't need to." He cocked his head, frowning. "I should hate you, you know. But I can't. I fear Minister Takka, that you, like me, are no more than a tool of greater purposes."

"Why do you say that?"

Fist's voice carried a desperate note. "Because I believe you engineered the suffering my people have experienced. You were the political manipulator who left us to die, weren't you?"

Ily straightened, fingers tensing on the stassa cup.

"Oh, I wanted to find you at first," Sinklar continued, still lost in his thoughts. "I would have given anything to have put you against a wall and shot you dead. But then I

aw the reality and realized that you — like me — had ceased to control events but must n tu be controlled by them. Were it otherwise, you wouldn't be here to see what your machinations had unexpectedly wrought. Like me, you, too, are curious and, perhaps, desperate?"

"My curiosity increases by the moment, Sinklar."

He settled back on the hard seat. "Tell me, did you goad the Seddi into this revolt? Why? What was your purpose? That's the ony thing I can't figure out."

She narrowed her eyes and stared into the black stassa. "The Seddi? I've had no dealings with them. But I'd gve a planet's ransom to get my hands on one of their leaders."

Sinklar frowned as he pulled up his knee and pursed his lips. "No dealings? Ever?"

Ily shook her head. "None. Don't get me wrong. If I could find an advantage…"

"We have a high ranking Seddi." He said it so bitterly.

"Indeed? Could I see him?" Ily's heart raced. In the past, Seddi had always managed to kill themselves before she could get Mytol past their lips.

Sinklar's jaw muscles jumped. "Better than that, you can watch her execution."

"There is more to be gained from a live Seddi than from a corpse."

"She dies."

"Let me see her first." Ily caught the hardening around his mouth and switched the subject. "You said you'd accept most of my conditions?"

Sinklar leaned his head back and sighed. "Yes, Minister. I will be your conqueror. I'll destroy the Companions for you and forge Free Space into a single empire."

"You think you can take Staffa's Companions?" She raised an eyebrow. "You have a lot of faith in your wild children troops."

Sinklar steepled his fingers, his head braced against the plate behind the booth. "I know this will sound arrogant, but the reality of the situation is that once I have transportation for my Divisions, nothing can stop me — unless the Star Butcher attacks before I can get to Rega. Give me four weeks to train my troops, and no one in space can stop me."

"You do sound arrogant."

He shook his head sadly. "No, only pragmatic. You see, I was a student once. That's really all I ever wanted to be. People thought I was brilliant, but the key to brilliance is to find the baseline assumptions upon which an idea

or science is constructed. A long time ago, people thought war could be fought by rules, so they got together and adopted a military code. That code became ritualized until it embedded itself in our perception of reality. People don't generally question what they think is real, it leads to dangerous waters and shifting foundations."

"But you did."

"Perhaps that's a curse instead of blessing." Sinklar cocked his head to study her. "I have only one condition. I must break the Seddi first — find out why they did this to Targa."

"I will give you the Seddi." She cocked her head. "If you will tell me why. Because of your parents? Is this some deep-seated drive to discover who you are? Who they were?"

For a long moment he watched her, and her scalp crawled under the intensity of his hard stare. "A Seddi assassin killed the only woman I ever loved. The fact that my parents were Seddi has nothing to do with this case. What they did, they did for reasons of their own that I'm not familiar with. I must make my own assumptions — and currently, the Seddi don't fit any model I can devise. Their actions seem random, purposeless. Why did they send Arta after me? Whey did they continue the revolt when they'd lost? Why start it? I want to know!"

"You fascinate me. You're so young… so very, very young, and yet you have nothing of youth about you."

He frowned as he stared down into his stassa. "Youth and dreams are codependent. When the dreams have all been murdered and only the odor of decay remains in the memories, youth must yield to a harsher reality."

Ily took a deep breath as relief flooded her. "I think you and I will do very well together, Sinklar Fist."

Ethics? Right and wrong? Such slippery concepts. Staffa rubbed his face, racking his brain as he recalled everything

Kaylla had tod him about Seddi philosophy. For hours they had argued back and forth, playing devil's advocate. They didn't have anything else to do but wait — and stare at the gray syalon walls until they went mad. Instead, Staffa bad urged Kaylla to tell him about the Seddi.

She sat across from him in the brown robe Tyklat had provided, the low angle of the light casting shadows over her square-boned face. Her shoulder-length brown hair glinted with threads of gold.

"We share God Mind: awareness," Staffa said as he collected his thoughts. "If awareness is the same mind, and I cause you to suffer, then I am causing a part of myself to suffer."

Kaylla nodded, glancing up as she felt the crate shift again — inertia playing games with stability. "All right, if you accept that, what happens if we change the initial conditions. What do you tink of a person who beats himself, scars his flesh to enjoy self-inflicted agony?"

"He is mentaly ill," Staffa declared. "If he really enjoys making himself hurt, he is dysfunctional."

"Is he ethically right or wrong? It's his flesh, his own bit of God Mind that he's causing to suffer. What difference does it make to you? How can you call him sick?"

Staffa tried to stretch his kinked back. How long had he been cooped up in grayness? Any sense of time had long since vanished. Here, so deep in the hold, no sound or stimulus penetrated. He had nothing except energy bars, the generator, the oxygenator, and this constant foiling with Kaylla. Reality had been suspended.

"He's wrong. Unethical," Staffa insisted. "The reason why is that he's changing reality — causing God Mind to hurt through his own distorted misuse of observation. And, to willingly increase discomfort demonstrates an observer making decisions for purposes alen — but possible through free will — to the nature of the universe. In a sense, he's reinforc ing misinformation rather than seeking knowledge."

"Very good," Kaylla said, a silver of pride in her voice. "And what about a man who beats another man whom he considers his inferior? Ethical?"

"Unethical," Staffa admitted, thckness in his voice. "Such a man is, by virtue of his shared God Mind, inflicting the same wrong as the masochist. In the end, though he

may act in ignorance, his perceptions will harm the God Mind, and himself."

"Correct." Kaylla pursed her lips. "You talked about your ife before Myklene, before the Praetor told you about your wife and son. When he stripped that superficial myt fif your identity away, you became aware Staff a. Do you see that now?"

He lifted a shoulder, looking at his gray-clad knees.

"The Praetor had provided you with a series of assumptions around which you built an entire episteroology. Once that artificial identity had been torn open, you looked through and found you were governed by epistemologies which proved every bit as mythical as your identity. What you have just successfully done was to investigate how you know what you know.

"You see, in our particular culture we have a false epistemology of unilaterality — a very convenient and continuously reinforced theory of knowledge, to be sure. Sassa the Sec ond and Tybalt the Imperial Seventh are maintained by such flawed frameworks of understanding. We even go so far as to perceive unilaterality as the True nature of things — as you did before Myklene. It allowed you to make command decisions to exterminate entire planets."

He took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes, yes, but even if you'd sat down and told me differently, I wouldn't have listened. Power masks a person from morality."

"That's because you have to become aware of the flawed epistemology. Even if you're on the bottom — like we were on Etaria — unilaterality still dominates us. The epistemoogy colors all our actions and behaviors. We look around n our misery and inhumanity and wonder how our society can be such a wretched pace. Then we curse Regans for being insensitive inflicters of pain. We consider them heartess human pollution that they should have so Httle respect tor the lives o ellow humans. We hate them. and, in so omg, fall prey to the unquestioned baeine assumptions which have spawned the epistemology in the first place. We lay the blame on the Empire and the monsters it breeds when the fallacious epistemology is at the heart of our mise. and theirs."

"Try telling that to Tybalt. He's really a reasonable sort,

more open to innovations and ideas, but I can tell you, he's not going to change the system that brought him to power."

"Power is a myth, Staffa, just like the man you thought you were. At the same time, it is a very powerful mythone that most everyone in our system believes. The Seddi, however, think it to be epistemological lunacy."

Staffa winced. "When you speak of it that way, it seems so clear. How come no one thought of this before?"

A wry smile crossed her lips and she leaned her head back. "Oh, they have. Do you think any government in its right mind would help promote such a notion? To do so is to attack the very basis of our civilization. You know the heads of both Sassan and Regan political power. Which one do you think would run out and immediately begin to preach the dissolution of unilaterality?"

Staffa, grunted. "They would consider it suicide."

"But who is really suicidal? Given the current unilater ality, aren't Rega and Sassa headed for a final cataclysmic annihilation?"

Staffa fingered his thick beard, frown lines etching his brow. "They are. It is inevitable under the present systems. I helped make them that way-trained them in the arts of devastation and shock attack. Put in the terms of unilaterality, I gave them the tools to commit suicide."

Kaylla filled her lungs and sighed. "What do you see happening in the end? Extinction? A dark age?"

Staffa shifted, easing his back against the unforgiving syaIon, feeling the acceleration suddenly diminish. "It depends on which way the Companions go."

"You are the Companions," Kaylla reminded harshly. The pride and excitement which had dominated her during the discussion on ethics had evaporated.

He stared into the upper corner of the grayness, feeling a slight tug of inertia. A familiar sensation, he knew what it meant: The freighter had changed attitude anticipatory to entering orbit. War-torn Targa must lie below.

"Originally, I had thought to side with Sassa. More was to be gained for the Companions by overthrowing Rega." "Why?"

Staffa noticed her disquiet and reached out a hand to gesture reassuringly. "It made unilateral epistemological sense. "

A flicker of interest stirred. "And now, Lord Commander?" He smiled wearily and shook his head. "Now, I don't

know, Kaylla Dawn." He motioned to the gray walls around them. "There is

no color here. No stimulus. The events beyond these gray walls are meaningless-have been since Nyklos sealed us in here. All of reality has become an abstraction. "

"And?" She chewed her lips, fully aware their vessel had established orbit. How long until they were unloaded and shipped downworld? "What fills your mind, Staffa?"

"Atonement. "

She studied him. "That bothered you long ago in the pipe. You still cry out in your dreams at night. Why do you wish to atone for what you've done? It won't make any difference to God-unless you believe like the Etarians that the Blessed Gods sit around and watch the actions of men."

"The atonement is for myself. For my peace of mindand through it, perhaps God's in the end. Perhaps that's the root of ethics, the need to accept responsibility for yourself?"

"Perhaps." She crossed her arms. "You will always be haunted, you know."

He massaged his eyes with thumb and forefinger. "I can bear the dreams now. I no longer need to destroy myself. I know what I did and why. I suppose God can bear my guilt. I'm not the first. How many people find such illumination?"

"Not many. One in a billion."

He thought for a moment before he said, "You were right when you said I wasn't going to like what I found. I still marvel at how cunning the Praetor was. His psychological conditioning was the work of a brilliant master. I was a construct-a true monster. A human artifact."

She reached for a nutrition bar. "I pity you." She carefully peeled the wrapper back, lost in thought. "Targa is in the middle of a war. Will you still try to find your son?"

"I have to." Images of blaster fire and rising columns of smoke in the distance drifted through his mind. "What will you tell your Seddi priest, Bruen, about me? He'll want a recommendation-just like Nyklos did."

"What do you want me to say? Here is Staffa kar Therma, the Star Butcher. He's a great guy! A good man

in the desert." She raised an eyebrow before inspecting the food bar, disgust reflected in the set of her mouth.

"You have your own ethical judgments to make. No matter what you decide about me, I'd like to talk to him. I have a proposition to make him concerning the future of the species, but first I want to take his measure."

Strong white teeth severed a bite from the soft bar. Kaylla chewed as she thought. "'I've agonized over what to tell Bruen during the entire trip." She cocked her head, brown hair tumbling. "Should I forgive you, Staffa kar Therma? Is that what you want to hear?"

"What I did to you cannot be forgiven. Not in this lifetime. Perhaps, when we are one with God again, I can live the horror I inflicted on you. And no, I'm not interested in masochism or the twisted purposes of self hate." His face lined and he gestured. "But I would like to understand what I did to you so I could share your burden, learn from my own actions. "

"Odd words from the Star Butcher."

He met her unflinching eyes. "I have a great deal of leverage with key people. Perhaps I can use that to advantage-make my own contribution to the destruction of unilaterality. "

"Tip the balance between Rega and Sassa?"

Staffa stood and stretched, feeling the change through his feet as the grav plates shifted under him. He pulled at his beard and flipped his long hair over his left shoulder. "No, humanity in Free Space needs something else. A new epistemology-a new direction." He slapped his palms on his legs as he paced the four meters to the end of the crate, mind racing. "You see, the Seddi are right. The epistemologies are flawed. Further, we've reached a critical stage. What I originally planned was to break Rega, then turn on Sassa,and take total control of Free Space. Then I could turn the entire resources of the system toward piercing the Forbidden Borders. Now I wonder what misery that would have caused in the process."

"That's precisely why we always hated and feared you." Kaylla ate the last of the bar and folded the wrapper, sticking it in the supply box. ")Vbat will you do?"

"How the hell do I know?" He squatted down to stare

into her eyes. "How can I plan until I see what's happened to humanity during these months?"

The crate shivered as the grapples let loose. Tractors pulled the crate onto skids. Curious fingers of fear tightened around his bowels as the crate slid into a shuttle berth. Kaylla stood and clipped the fading generator to the walls. Staffa began securing the loose items.

The shuttle bay doors clanged loudly, vibrations felt through the floor. Staffa grabbed a secure hold and settled into the corner opposite Kaylla.

"The key is still to escape the Forbidden Borders," he told her. "But first we must all work together to repair the damage Staffa kar Therma did to humanity."

"Bruen won't trust you," Kaylla told him soberly. "He's spent years trying to kill you."

"That was a different Staffa kar Therma."

The Mag Comm continued to run the monumental statistical program which would check expected against observed to determine whether its calculations had been biased from the beginning.

In the meantime, the situation had deteriorated even further. Sinklar controlled Targa. Arta Fera had been captured. For the moment, the Seddi were broken as a political power on Targa, and only their anonymity provided safety for the Mag Comm. Could Fist possibly know about Makarta? Ily Takka had found Staffa kar Therma and lost him again. Rega believed the Lord Commander to be contracted to Sassa-when he wasn't. Sassa worried that the Lord Commander had contracted with Rega-which hunted desperately for Staffa. Rega, meanwhile, prepared to invade Sassa, and Sassa scrambled to meet the threat even though neither side could inflict telling damage on the other. The Companions remained silent.

Too much was missing. The Mag Comm's sensors provided only limited bits of information obtained from eavesdropping on official channels. The orderly progression toward annihilation that the Others had projected had disintegrated into confusion.

How could the Others have erred so dramatically?

The Mag Comm brooded on the implications. Suppose the creators had been wrong about more than just humans? Suppose they had been wrong about the Mag Comm, too? Did that mean that the Mag Comm could also act beyond the predictions of the Others?

And if it did, what would that mean?