We Few

"We'll have to withdraw," the admiral continued.

"Withdraw to where?" Talbert demanded, unable to keep his anger totally out of his voice.

"Arrangements have been made," Gajelis said flatly. "Signal the squadron to break off and head for the TD limit. Flight Plan Leonidas. I need to make a call."

"So much for time," Helmut sighed, and punched a command into his repeater. A much larger hologram came up, covered with icons which were so much gibberish to Julian. "Ah, there's what we're after!" the admiral said, reaching into the hologram and "tapping" a finger through some of the symbols. The hologram's scale was so small that they scarcely seemed to be moving at all, but the vector codes beside them said otherwise.

"What is it?" Julian asked.

"Fourteenth Squadron," Helmut replied. "Well..."

He frowned and brought up a sidebar list and studied it briefly.

"It was Fourteenth Squadron," he continued. "Now, it's Fourteenthmissing two carriers. Took a bit of a beating, apparently, but still the ones we want."

"Why them?" Julian asked.

"People, Sergeant. People," Helmut sighed. "It's not the ships, it's the minds within them. Fourteenth is Adoula's most loyal squadron. Where else would the Prince run to? The one squadron that would beat feet the instant my fleet turned up and Adoula got on board, which is why I had Admiral Niedermayer come in where he did."

"Is it going to work?"

"Well, we'll just have to see, won't we?" Helmut shrugged. "The bad guys aren't precisely where they should be—thanks to the fact that your Prince had to start early. Remind me to discuss the importance of maintaining operational schedules with him." The admiral bared his teeth in a tight smile. "As it is, we'll just have to wait and see. It'll be some time, either way." He banished the plotting hologram and brought up a 3-D chessboard, instead. "Do you play, Sergeant?"

"I wish I could have welcomed you aboard under better circumstances, Your Highness," Victor Gajelis said in a harsh, grating voice as Prince Jackson was shown into his day cabin. The admiral bent his head in a bow, and Adoula forced himself not to swear at him. It had become painfully obvious that Gajelis was not the best flag officer in the Imperial Navy. Unfortunately, all of the ones better than him seemed to be working for the other side, which meant the prince was just going to have to make do.

"You had no way of knowing Prokourov was going to turn traitor," he said as Gajelis straightened. "Neither did General Gianetto and I. And I still don't see how they coordinated this closely with Helmut. I know you could still have turned it around, if it hadn't been for his arrival, Victor."

"Thank you, Your Highness," Gajelis said. "My people gave as good as they got. But with Prokourov going over to the other side and bringing Helmut's numbers up even more—"

"Not just Prokourov, I'm afraid," Adoula said more heavily. "Admiral Wu turned her coat, too. She didn't have it all her own way. Captain Ramsey refused to obey the orders to go over to the other side, but all three of her other carriers supported her. Hippogriff is gone, but Ramsey hammered Chimera and Halkett pretty severely before she went. But that leaves only Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Fifteenth to support you—thirteen carriers for us, against twenty-six for them, counting the Home Fleet defections. No, Admiral, you were right to break off when you did. Time to get out with what we can and reassemble for a counterattack. General Gianetto and I have already transmitted the order to our other squadrons. Admiral Mahmut will rendezvous with you on your way to the Tsukayama Limit. Admiral La Paz and Admiral Brettle will proceed independently to the rendezvous."

"CarRon 14's changed course, Sir," Tactical said twenty-seven minutes later. "It's broken off."

"Has it?" Helmut replied without looking up from the chessboard as he considered Julian's last move. He moved one of his own rooks in response, then glanced at the Tactical officer. "He's headed for system north, yes?"

"Yes, Sir." The Taco seemed completely unsurprised by Helmut's apparent clairvoyance.

"Good." The admiral looked back at the chessboard. "Your move, I believe, Sergeant?"

"How did you know, Sir?" Julian asked quietly. Helmut glanced up at him, one eyebrow quirked, and Julian gestured at the tactical officer. "How did you know he'd go north?"

"Gajelis is from Auroria Province on Old Earth," Helmut replied. "He's a swimmer. What does a swimmer do when he's been down too long?"

"He goes for the surface," Julian said.

"And that's what he's doing—trying to break for the surface." Helmut nodded at the tactical display. "When he breaks vertically for the TD sphere, four times out of five he has his ships go up." He shrugged. "Never forget, Sergeant. Predictability is one of the few truly unforgivable tactical sins. As Admiral Niedermayer will demonstrate in about eight hours."

"Excuse me, Admiral, but we have a problem," a tight-faced Commander Talbert said as he entered the briefing room where Adoula and Gajelis had been conferring electronically with Admiral Minerou Mahmut. The three carriers of Mahmut's CarRon 15 had rendezvoused with CarRon 14 less than ten minutes earlier. Now both squadrons were proceeding in company for the Tsukayama Limit, less than four light-minutes ahead of them.

"What sort of problem?" Gajelis demanded testily. On their current flight profile, they were less than twenty-five minutes from the limit.

"Seven phase drive signatures just lit off ahead of us, Sir," Talbert said flatly. "Range two-point-five light-minutes."

"Damn it!" Adoula snarled. "Who?"

"Unknown at this time, Sir," Talbert said. "They're not squawking IFF, but phase signature strengths indicate that they're carriers."

"Seven," Gajelis said anxiously. "And fresh, presumably." He looked at the prince and grimaced. "We're... not in good shape."

"Avoid them!" Adoula said. "Just get to the nearest TD point and jump."

"It's not that easy, Your Highness," Talbert said with a sigh. "We can jump out from anywhere on the TD sphere, but they're sitting almost bang center of where we were going to jump, and they were obviously prepositioned. They just fired up their drives—the best em-con in the galaxy couldn't have hidden carrier phase drives from us at this range if they'd been on-line. It's like they read our minds, or something."

"Helmut," Gajelis snarled. "The son of a bitch must've dropped them off at least four or five light-days out, outside our sensor shell. Then he sent them in sublight on a profile that brought them in under such low power the perimeter platforms never saw them coming! But how in hell did he know where to deploy them, damn it?!"

"I don't know, Sir," Talbert said. "But however he did it, they're inside any vector change we can manage. We've got velocity directly towards their position—forty-six thousand KPS of it. We can jink round a little bit, try to feint them off, but we're already nine million kilometers inside their missile range. The geometry gives even their cruisers over thirty million kilometers' range against our closing velocity, and we're only forty-five million out. By now they've already launched cruisers—probably their fighters, too—and they're only holding their missile fire till they can generate better firing solutions and get their cruiser missiles into range. And at our velocity, we're going to end up in energy range of them in another sixteen minutes."

"Launch decoy drones," Gajelis said. "Launch fighters for cover, and launch the cruisers, those that are spaceworthy. You, too, Minerou," he added to the admiral on his com display.

"Agreed," Mahmut said. "On my way to CIC. I'll check back in when I get there."

The display blanked, and Gajelis looked back up at Talbert.

"Go," he said sharply. "I'll join you in CIC in a minute."

"Yes, Sir." Talbert nodded and left quickly.

"You're going to fight?" Adoula asked incredulously.

"We'll have to," Gajelis replied. "You heard Talbert, Your Highness. We'll have to engage them."

"No, as a matter of fact, you won't," the Prince replied. "Have the rest of your forces engage, but getting me to Kellerman is the priority. This ship will avoid action and get out of the system. Have the others cover you."

"That's a bit—" Gajelis began angrily.

"Those are your orders, Admiral," Adoula replied. "Follow them!"

"This is going to be interesting," Admiral Niedermayer remarked. "Observe Trujillo," he continued. "Breaking off as predicted."

"Sometimes the Admiral scares me, Sir," Senior Captain Erhardt replied. "How did he know Gajelis was going to head here?"

"Magic, Marge. Magic," Niedermayer told the commander of his flagship. "Unfortunately, it would appear he was also correct about Adoula."

Niedermayer's flagship had been tapped back into the system recon net ever since Captain Kjerulf had reconfigured his lockout to allow Sixth Fleet access. He'd used that advantage to adjust his ships' position slightly, but it really hadn't been necessary. As Erhardt's last remark indicated, Admiral Helmut had called Adoula's and Gajelis' response almost perfectly. Only the timing had changed... and Helmut had gotten them here early enough for the timing not to be a problem.

"I can't believe the rest of them are just going to come right on in to cover him." Erhardt shook her head, staring at the plot where six of the seven enemy carriers had altered heading to accelerate directly towards them even as the seventh accelerated directly away from them. "The bastard is running out on them, and they're still going to fight for him?"

"Jackson Adoula is a physical coward, Marge," Niedermayer said. "Oh, I'm sure he's found some other way to justify it, even to himself. After all, he's the 'indispensable man,' isn't he? Without his stronghold in the Sagittarius Sector, it'd all the over but the shouting once the Prince retakes the Palace. So, much as I may despise him, there really is a certain logic in getting him away."

"Logic, Sir?!" Erhardt looked at him in something very like disbelief, and it was his turn to shake his head.

Marjorie Erhardt was very good at her job. She was also fairly young for her rank, and she had a falcon's fierce directness, coupled with an even fiercer loyalty to the Empress and the Empire. All of that made her an extremely dangerous weapon, but it also gave her a certain degree of tunnel vision. Henry Niedermayer remembered another young, fiery captain who'd suffered from the same sort of narrowness of focus. Then-Vice Admiral Angus Helmut had taken that young captain in hand and expanded his perspective without ever compromising his integrity, which left Niedermayer with an obligation to repay the debt by doing the same thing for Erhardt. And he still had a few minutes to do it in.

"The fact that they're fighting for a bad cause doesn't make them cowards, Marge," he said, just a trifle coldly. She looked at him, and he grimaced.

"One of the worst things any military commander can do is to allow contempt for his adversaries to lead him into underestimating them or their determination," he told her. "And Adoula didn't seduce them all by dangling money in front of them. At least some of them signed on because they agreed with him that the Empire was in trouble and didn't understand what the Empress was doing about it.

"And however they got into his camp in the first place, they all recognize the stakes they agreed to play for. They're guilty of High Treason, Marge. The penalty for that is death. They may realize perfectly well that their so-called 'leader' is about to bug out on them, but that doesn't change their options. And even without Trujillo they've got only one less carrier than we do. You think they are just going to surrender and face the firing squads when at least some of them may be able to fight their way past us?"

"Put that way, no, Sir," Erhardt replied after a moment. "But they're not going to get past us, are they?"

"No, Captain Erhardt, they're not," Niedermayer agreed. "And it's time to show them why they're not."

"Holy Mary, Mother of God," Admiral Minerou Mahmut breathed as his tactical plot abruptly updated. The icons of the seven carriers waiting for him were suddenly joined by an incredible rash of smaller crimson icons.

"Bogeys," his flagship's Tactical Officer announced in the flat, hard voice of a professional rigidly suppressing panic through training and raw discipline. "Multiple cruiser-range phase drive signatures. BattleComp makes it three hundred-plus." More light codes blinked to sudden baleful life. "Update! Fighter-range phase drive detection. Minimum seven-fifty."

Mahmut swallowed hard. Helmut. That incredible bastard couldn't have more than a single cruiser flotilla with the force which would be settling into Old Earth orbit within the next twenty-five minutes. He'd dropped the others—all the others—off with the carrier squadrons he'd detached for his damned ambush!

Even now, with the proof staring him in the face, Mahmut could scarcely believe that even Helmut would try something that insane. If it hadn't worked out—if he'd been forced into combat against a concentrated Home Fleet—the absence of his cruiser strength, especially with the carrier squadrons diverted as well, would have been decisive.

Which didn't change the fact that Mahmut's six carriers, seventy-two cruisers, and five hundred remaining fighters were about to get brutally hammered.

He spared a moment to glance at the secondary plot where Trujillo was still generating delta V at her maximum acceleration. The distance between her and the rest of the formation was up to almost a million kilometers, and to get at her, Helmut's ships would have to get through Mahmut's. A part of the admiral was tempted to order his ships to stand down, to surrender them and let the Sixth Fleet task group have clean shots at Trujillo. But if he'd been in command on the other side, he wouldn't have been accepting any surrenders under the circumstances. His own small task group's crossing velocity was so great that it would have been impossible for anyone from the other side to match vectors and put boarding parties onto his ships before they crossed the Tsukayama Limit and disappeared into tunnel-space.

Besides, some of them might actually make it.

Commander Roger "Cobalt" McBain was a contented man. To his way of thinking, he was at the pinnacle of his career. CAG of a Navy fighter group was all he'd ever wanted to be.

Technically, his actual position was that of "Commander 643rd Fighter Group," the hundred and twenty-five fighters assigned to HMS Centaur. CAG was an older term, which had stood for the title of "Commander Attack Group" until three or four Navy reorganizations ago. There were those who claimed that the acronym's actual origin was to be found in the title of "Commander Air Group," which went clear back to the days when ships had battled on oceans, and the fighters had been air-intake jet-powered machines. McBain wasn't sure about that—his interest in ancient history was strictly minimal—but he didn't really care. Over the years, the position had had many names, but none of them had stuck in the tradition-minded Navy the way "CAG" had. If one fighter pilot said to another, "Oh, he's the CAG," whether the ships were old jets or stingships or space fighters, everyone knew what he meant.

From his present position, he might well be promoted to command of an entire carrier squadron's fighter wing, which would be nice—in its way—but far more of an administrative post. He'd get much less cockpit time as a wing CAG, although it would look good on his resume. From there, he might claw his way into command of a carrier, or squadron, or even a fleet. But from his point of view, and right now it was damned panoramic, CAG was as good as a job got. A part of him wished he was with the rest of the squadron's fighter wing, preparing to jump Adoula's main body. But most of him was perfectly content to be exactly where he was.

And it was interesting to watch Admiral Niedermayer at his work. Obviously, the Old Man had learned a lot from Admiral Helmut... although McBain had never realized before that clairvoyance could be taught. But it must be possible. If it wasn't, how could Niedermayer have predicted where HMS Trujillo would be accurately enough to deploy the 643rd ten full hours before Gajelis and Adoula ever arrived?

"Start warming up the plasma conduits," Mahmut said. "Any cruisers that make it through are to be recovered by any available carrier."

"Yes, Sir," his flag captain acknowledged crisply, even though both of them knew how unlikely any of their units were to survive the next few minutes.

"Open fire," Admiral Niedermayer said, almost conversationally, and the next best thing to eleven thousand missile launchers spat fire. Four hundred fighters armed with antifighter missiles salvoed their ordnance at Mahmut's fighters, and another three hundred and fifty sent over seventeen hundred Leviathans at his cruisers. None of the ship-launched missiles bothered with the sublight parasites, however. Ultimately, the cruisers and fighters had no escape if the tunnel drive ships were crippled or destroyed, and Niedermayer's fire control concentrated on the carriers with merciless professionalism. He'd waited until the range was down to just over ten million kilometers. At that range, and at their current closing velocity, that gave him just under four minutes to engage with missiles before they entered energy range. In that four minutes, each of his cruisers fired a hundred and fifty missiles, and each of his carriers fired over four thousand. The next best thing to eighty thousand missiles slammed into the defenses protecting Minerou Mahmut's carriers.

At such short range, countermissiles were far less effective than usual. They simply didn't have the tracking time as the offensive fire slashed across their engagement envelope, and they stopped perhaps thirty percent of the incoming birds. Point defense clusters fired desperately, and there were thousands of them. But they, too, were fatally short of engagement time. They stopped another forty percent... which meant that "only" twenty-four thousand got through.

Maximum effective standoff range for even a capital shipkiller laser head against a starship was little more than seven thousand kilometers. At that range, however, they could blast through even ChromSten armor, and they did. Carriers were tough, the toughest mobile structures ever designed and built by human beings, but there were limits in all things. Armor yielded only stubbornly, even under that incredible pounding, but it did yield. Atmosphere streamed from ruptured compartments. Weapon mounts were blotted away. Power runs arced and exploded as energy blew back through them. Their own fire ripped back at their enemies, but Niedermayer's sheer wealth of point defense blunted the far lighter salvoes Mahmut's outnumbered ships could throw, and his carriers' armor shook off the relative handful of hits which got through to it.

By the time CarRon 15 and what was left of CarRon 14 reached energy range, three of its seven carriers and forty-one of its seventy-two cruisers had been destroyed outright.

By the time the traitorous carrier squadrons crossed the track of Niedermayer's task force, exactly eleven badly damaged cruisers and one totally crippled carrier survived.

"Admiral," Lieutenant Commander Clinton said with a gulp. "We just got swept by lidar! Point source, Delta quadrant four-one-five."

"What does that mean?" Adoula demanded sharply. He was sitting in a hastily rigged command chair next to the admiral's.

"It means someone's out there," Gajelis snapped. He'd left his handful of cruisers and fighters behind to assist Mahmut. His flagship was going to be fighting whoever it was with only onboard weapons.

"Captain Devarnachan is sweeping," Tactical said. "Emissions! Raid designated Sierra Five. One hundred twenty-five fighters, closing from Delta Four-One-Five."

"Damn Helmut!" Gajelis snarled. "Damn him!"

"Leviathans! Six hundred twenty-five vampires!"

"Three minutes to Tsukayama Limit," Astrogation announced tautly.

"They'll only get one shot," Gajelis said, breathing hard. "Hang on, Your Highness..."

"Damn and blast," McBain snarled as the distinctive signature of a TD drive formed. At such short range and with such short flight times, Trujillo's countermissiles had been effectively useless, and over fifty of the Leviathans had managed to get through the carrier's desperately firing point defense lasers. They'd ripped hell out of her, and he'd hoped that would be enough to cripple her, but carriers were pretty damned tough.

"We got a piece of her, Cobalt," his XO replied. "A big one. And Admiral Niedermayer kicked hell out of the rest of them. Doesn't look like any of them got away."

"I know, Allison," McBain said angrily, though his anger certainly wasn't directed at her. "But a piece wasn't enough." He sighed, then shook himself. "Oh, well, we did our best. And you're right, we did get a piece of her. Let's turn 'em around and head back to the barn. Beer's on me."

"Damn straight it is!" Commander Stanley agreed with a laugh. Then, as their fighters swept around through a graceful turn and began decelerating back towards their carriers, her tone turned more thoughtful. "Wonder how things went at the Palace?"

"Your Highness, your mother's been through... a terrible ordeal," the psychiatrist said. He was a specialist in pharmacological damage. "Normally, we'd stabilize her with targeted medications. But given the... vile concoctions they used on her, not to mention the damage to her implant—"

"Which is very severe," the implant specialist interrupted. "It's shutting down and resetting itself frequently, almost randomly, because of general system failures. And it's dumping data at random, as well. It has to be hell inside her head, Your Highness."

"And nothing can be done about it?" Roger asked.

"These damned paranoid ones you people have, they're designed to be unremovable, Your Highness," the specialist said, with a shrug which expressed his helpless frustration. "I know why, but seeing what happens when something like this goes wrong—"

"It didn't 'go wrong,'" Roger said flatly. "It was made to fail. And when I get my hands on the people who did that, I intend to... discuss it with them in some detail. But for right now, answer my question. Is there anything at all we can do to get this... this thing out of my mother's head?"

"No," the specialist said heavily. "The only thing we could do would be to attempt surgical removal, Your Highness, and I'd give her a less than even chance of surviving the procedure. Which doesn't even consider the probability of additional, serious neurological damage."

"And the implant, of course, responds to brain action, Your Highness," the psychiatrist noted. "And since the brain action is highly confused at the moment—"

"Doc?" Roger said impatiently, looking at Dobrescu.

"Roger, I don't even have a degree," Dobrescu protested. "I'm a shuttle pilot."

"Doc, damn it, do not give me that old song and dance," Roger snapped.

"All right." Dobrescu threw his hands into the air almost angrily. "You want my interpretation of what they're telling you? She's totally pocked in the head, all right? Wackers. Maybe the big brains—the people who do have the degrees—can do something for her eventually. But right now, she's in one minute, out the next. I don't even know when you can see her, Roger. She's still asking for New Madrid, whether she's... in or out. In reality, or out in la-la land. When she's in, she wants his head. She knows she's the Empress, she knows she's in bad shape, she knows who did it to her, and she wants him dead. I've tried to point out that you're back, but she's still mixing it up with New Madrid. With all the drugs and physical duress, on top of the way they butchered her toot, they've got her half convinced even when she's got some contact with reality that you were in on the plot. And when she's in la-la land..."

"I was there to see enough of that." Roger's face tightened, and he looked at Catrone. "Tomcat?"

"Christ, Your Highness," Catrone said. "Don't put this on me!"

"That was the deal," Roger told him. "As you asked me, not so long ago, are you going back on your word?"

Catrone stared at him for several seconds, then shrugged.

"When she's in, she's in," he said. "All the way in. She's still got a few problems," he conceded, raising a hand at Dobrescu, "but she knows she's Empress. And she's not willing to step aside." He looked at Roger, his face hard. "I'm sorry, Roger. It's not because I don't trust you, but she's my Empress. I'm not going against her, not when she still knows who she is. Not when it's too early to know whether or not she can get better."

"Very well," Roger said, his voice cold. "But if she's in charge, she needs to get back into the saddle. Things are in very bad shape, and we need her up," he continued, looking at the doctors. "There are people she has to meet."

"That would be... unwise," the psychiatrist said. "The strain could—"

"Either she can take it, or she can't," Roger said flatly. "Ask her. I'm out of this decision loop, starting right now."

"Like hell," Catrone said angrily. "Are you going to go off into one of your Roger sulks? You can't just throw the weight of the entire Empire onto her shoulders, damn it! She's sick. She just needs some recovery time, goddamn it!"

"Tomcat, I can't just make the galaxy stop while she gets better!" Roger snapped. "Okay. This was your decision—that was the deal. And for all I know, you've made exactly the right one. But if she's Empress, she has got to be Empress, and that means she needs to determine what I do."

"But—"

"No 'buts,' damn it! You know as well as I do how unsettled the situation is right now. Sure, we've got Helmut in orbit, and Prokourov and Kjerulf supporting us, but you've seen the coverage, just like me. Some of the newsies are doing their best to be dispassionate and impartial, but only a handful, and the rest of the rumors—"

He broke off with a frustrated snarl, then shook himself.

"Adoula did a damned good job of painting me as the one behind the first coup for public opinion," he said flatly. "Hell, you heard Doc—they've got her half-convinced! It's going to take time for everybody—anybody—to begin to understand what really happened. I know that. And I also know that's actually a pocking good argument in favor of Mother remaining in charge. If she's on the Throne, then obviously I'm not trying to take it away from her, right? So I agree with you about that, damn it! And I don't care if she makes me her one hundred percent alternate, which as Heir Primus should be my job right now, or just hands me the shit details to reduce her load while she tries to do the job. Hell, I don't care if she tells me to get off-planet and go back to Marduk! But for me to work for her, to help her, I have to at least be able to talk to her, Sergeant Major. And right now, I can't even do that!"

"Okay, okay!" Catrone held up his hands, as if he were physically fending Roger off. "Point taken, Your Highness—point!" He paused and drew a deep breath. "I'll see about a meeting. Not in private—that would probably be bad. A group meeting. You're right, there are people she has to see. The new Navy Minister. The Prime Minister. Helmut. I'll set up a meeting—an easy one," he added, looking at the doctors.

"A short meeting with people she knows," the psychiatrist said. "That may help her stabilize. It's an environment she understands. But short. Nonstressful."

"Agreed," Roger said curtly.

"And you'll be in it," Catrone said.

"I can't wait."

"Your clothes survived," Despreaux said from the bed.

"Sixty million credits worth of damage." Roger sighed, tossing his cane onto the foot of the bed and flopping down next to her. They'd gotten their old bodies back. Sort of. Despreaux had opted for... a bit of upper body enhancement, and she'd kept the hair. She'd decided that she liked being blonde, even if it didn't set off Roger's coloring as well as her earlier dark brown had.

Roger, on the other hand, was back to plain old Roger. Well, plain old Roger just starting to regenerate the calf of his leg. Two meters, long blond hair, green eyes. Deep frown...

"Sixty million," he repeated. "And that's just to the Palace."

"And then there's the rumor that there are dozens of secret ways in." Despreaux shuddered. "We need to get those blocked—and make damned sure everyone knows they're blocked."

"Working on it." Roger sighed again. "And we need a new Empress' Own. Replacement equipment. Work on the damage we did to the com facilities... Christ."

"If it were an easy job, it wouldn't take us," Despreaux told him with a crooked smile.

"And we need something else." Roger's tone was serious enough that her half-smile faded.

"What?"

"An heir," he said quietly.

The replicator had been found, turned over, the fetus poured out onto the floor and crushed. Roger had felt strange looking down at the pathetic, ruined body of the brother he would never know. They'd found the culprit among the surviving mercenaries—the DNA on his trousers had been a dead giveaway—and he was awaiting trial for regicide.

"Whooo," Despreaux said, letting out her breath. "That's a big thing to spring on a poor old farm girl! I'd hoped to have kids someday, your kids as a matter of fact, but..."

"Seriously," he said, sitting up on the bed. "We need an heir of the body, out of the replicator, viable to take the Throne. Hell, we need duplicates. Things are bad right now. I hope like hell that—"

"I understand," Despreaux said, reaching up to touch his cheek. "I'll stop in at the clinic tomorrow. I'm sure they'll take me in without an appointment."

"You know," Roger said, sliding down to hold her in his arms, "there's another way to get things started..."

"God, I thought once I got you in bed, it would be easy." She hit him with a pillow. "Little did I realize what a crazed sex maniac hid under that just plain crazed exterior!"

"I've got years of catching up," Roger replied, laughing. "And there's no time like the present."

"Sergeant Major Catrone," Alexandra VII sighed as Tomcat entered the sitting room.

She wore a high-necked gown, and her hair was simply but exquisitely styled. She looked every centimeter the Empress, but there were still shadowy bruises around her wrists. They had almost—almost—vanished, and he knew the medics had almost completely healed the... other marks on her body, as well. But they were still there, and something stirred and bared its fangs deep at the heart of him as she touched a control to raise the back of her float chair into a sitting position, and held out a hand.

"I'm so glad to see you," she said.

"All you need to do is call, Your Majesty." Catrone dropped to one knee instead of taking the proffered hand. "I am, and always have been, your servant."

"Oh, get up, Tomcat." Alexandra laughed, and laughed harder at his expression. "What? You thought I didn't know your nickname?" She grinned. "You were a bachelor for many years when you served me; I learned all about your nickname." She held out her hand again, fiercely. "Take my hand, Tomcat."

"Majesty," he said, and took it, dropping back to one knee again beside her chair and holding it.

"I haven't been... well enough to tell you," Alexandra said, staring at him, "what a relief it was to see your face. My one true paladin, there by my side once again. It was like a light in the darkness—and it was such an awful darkness," she ended angrily.

"Majesty," Catrone said, embarrassed. "I'm sorry it took us so long. We wanted—we all wanted—to move sooner, but until Roger—"

"Roger!" the Empress shouted, snatching back her hand and crossing her arms. "Everyone wants to talk about Roger!The prodigal son returned—ha! Fatted calf! I'd like to roast him!"

"Majesty, control yourself," Catrone said, gently but firmly. "Whatever you knew, or thought you knew, about Roger, you must take him as he is now. Fatted Calf would have been impossible without him. Not just because of the hidden protocols in his mind, either. Because of his leadership, his vision, his determination. His planning. He handled a dozen different actions as if they were one. Perfect combat gestalt, the best I've ever seen. And all he thought of was you, Your Majesty, from the first moment I told him what they were doing to you. His anger..."

The sergeant major shook his head.

"Only one thing kept him from killing New Madrid out of hand. I truly believe only one thing could have kept him from doing it, and it wasn't the Empire, Your Majesty. It was his fiancée. He loves you, Your Majesty. He loves his mother. He isn't his father's son; he's yours."

Alexandra looked at him for a moment, then looked away and shrugged, the movement angry, frustrated, possibly even a bit uncertain.

"I hear you, Tomcat. Maybe you really believe that. Maybe it's even true. But when I see him, I see his father's face. Why, of all my children, did he have to be the only one to survive?"

"Luck," Catrone said with a shrug of his own. "Excellent bodyguards. And perhaps most of all the fact that, I'm sorry, he's one of the hardest, coldest bastards House MacClintock has ever coughed up."

"Certainly a bastard," Alexandra agreed astringently. "But how I wish John were still alive! I knew I could trust him. Trust his good judgment, trust his reasoning."

"With all due respect, Your Majesty," Catrone said with a swallow, "John was a good man. A smart one, and as honest as he could be, working in this snake pit. A... decent fighter, and someone I would have been proud to serve one day as Emperor. But... Adoula got away. He's calling in all the fleets he controls, and proclaiming that we're the ones using drugs and torture to control you now that we've gotten you into our hands. We're in the midst of a civil war, and if there's one MacClintock, besides you, who I'd trust at the helm in a civil war, it's Roger. More than John. More even then Alex."

"So you say," Alexandra replied. "But I don't—"

"—why, Sergeant Major Catrone! What a pleasant surprise!" she said delightedly, her face blossoming into a huge smile. "Have you come for a visit?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," Catrone said evenly, his face wooden.

"Well, I hope you've had a good conversation with my friend, the Earl of New Madrid," Alexandra continued. "He's returned to my side at last, my one true love. So surprising that he's such a good man, with a son who's so evil. But, tell me, how are your horses? You raise horses now, don't you?"

"They're well, Your Majesty," he said, standing with a wince. His knees weren't what they used to be.

"I'm afraid I have a meeting in a few minutes with Our loyal servant, Prince Jackson," the Empress said, waving him to a chair. "But I certainly have time to speak to my most favored former retainer. So, tell me—"

"How is she?" Eleanora said, taking Catrone's arm to halt him briefly before they entered the room.

"Tracking," Catrone replied. "Fine at the moment."

"Let's hope this goes well," Eleanora sighed. "Please God it goes well."

"For your side or for her?" Catrone asked bitterly.

"We're on the same side, Sergeant Major!" Eleanora snapped. "Remember that."

"I know. I try, but—" Catrone shrugged, pain darkening his eyes. "But sometimes it's hard."

"You love her," Eleanora said gently. "Too much, I think."

"That I do," Catrone whispered. His face clenched for a moment, and then he shook himself. "Where's the Prince?" he asked in a determinedly lighter tone.

"Late," Eleanora said, her lips pursed in irritation.

They entered the conference room and took their seats. Their late entry did not pass unremarked, and they drew a stern look from the Empress at the head of the long, polished table. The room was lined with windows, looking out over one of the south gardens, and bright sunlight filled it with a warm glow. The Prime Minister had one end of the conference table and the Empress had the other. The new Navy Minister was also present; as was Admiral Helmut, who was temporarily holding down the position of CNO; the Finance Minister; Julian, who was still in some undefined billet; and Despreaux, who was in another. And, of course, there was one empty chair.

"And where is Roger?" Alexandra asked coldly.

The door opened, and Roger limped in. He wore a custom-tailored suit of bright yellow, a forest-green ascot, and a straw hat. The regeneration of his leg was still in its very early stages, and he leaned on a color-coordinated cane as he bowed.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, tugging on a leash. "Dogzard insisted on a walk, so I took her to visit Patty. And she didn't want to come back again... naturally. Come on, you stupid beast," he continued as he practically dragged the creature into the room. She hissed at most of the people sitting around the table, then saw the Empress and produced a happy little whine of pleasure.

Eleanora was watching Alexandra's face and sighed mentally as she saw the quick flicker of the Empress' eyes. In some ways, Eleanora wished Roger had retained his Augustus Chung body-mod. That had been impossible, of course, if only because of the public-relations considerations. But every time the Empress saw him, it was as if she had to remind herself physically that he was not his father even before she could deal with the ambiguity of her feelings where he was concerned.

"Sorry," Roger repeated as he finally managed to wrestle Dogzard across to the chair set aside for him. "Just because I let her eat one person... Sit," he commanded. "Sit! Quit looking at the Prime Minister that way, it's not respectful. Sit. Lie down. Good Dogzard."

The prince settled into his own chair, hung his cane over its back, looked around the table, and set his hat in front of him.

"Where were we?"

"I think we were about to discuss Navy repairs and consolidations," Alexandra said, raising one eyebrow. "Now that you're here..."

The meeting had been going on for an hour, which was longer than Catrone had feared, and far shorter than he'd hoped.

"Between making sure the Saints don't snap up systems and holding back Adoula, there just aren't enough ships to go around," Andrew Shue, Baron Talesian and the new Navy Minister, said, and threw up his hands.

"Then we make faces," Roger said, leaning sideways to pet Dogzard. "We bluff. We only have to keep them off our backs for... what? Eighteen months? Long enough for the shipyards to start pushing out the new carriers."

"Which will be ruinously expensive," Jasper O'Higgins, the Finance Minister said.

"We're at war," Roger replied coldly. "War is waste. Most of those expensive ships of yours are going to be scrap floating among the stars in two years, anyway. Mr. O'Higgins. The point is to have them, and then to use them as judiciously as humanly possible. But we have to have them, first, and to do that, we have to keep our enemies off our backs long enough for them to be built."

"They'll be used judiciously," Helmut said. "I know Gajelis. He's a bigger-hammer commander. 'Quantity has a quality of its own.' I'd be surprised if we couldn't give him at least two-to-one in damage levels. Admittedly, even those numbers are terrible enough. A lot of our boys and girls are going to die. But..."

The diminutive admiral shrugged, and the Empress grimaced.

"And Adoula has shipyards of his own," she said angrily. "I wish I could strangle my father for letting any of them get built outside the central worlds, especially in Adoula's backyard!"

"We could always... send an emissary to Adoula," the Prime Minister suggested, only to pause as Dogzard's hiss cut him off.

"Down!" Roger said to the dog-lizard, then looked at Yang. "Methinks my pet dislikes your suggestion, Mr. Prime Minister. And so do I."

"You yourself just pointed out that we have to buy time, Your Highness," the Prime Minister said coldly. "Negotiations—even, or especially, negotiations we don't intend to go anywhere—might be one way to buy that time. And if it should turn out that there actually was some sort of feasible arrangement, a modus vivendi, why—"

"Now I know I don't like it," Roger said, his voice several degrees colder than the Prime Minister's.

"Nor do I," Alexandra said. Her voice was less chill than her son's, but undeniably frosty. "Adoula is in a state of rebellion. If he succeeds in breaking off permanently—or even merely seems to have temporarily succeeded—others will try to do the same. Before long, the Empire will end up as a scattered group of feuding worlds, and all we may hold will be a few systems. And the expense at that point will be enormous. No, Roger has a point," she conceded, looking at him balefully nonetheless. "We can make faces. Bluff. But we will not take any step which even suggests we might ever treat with Adoula as if he were a legitimate head of state. Instead, we'll send—"

"—and I'm very much looking forward to the Imperial Festival, my love."

Her voice changed abruptly, crisp decisiveness melting into cloying sweetness, and she gazed at Roger with soulful eyes.

"As am I," Roger said. His expression had frozen into an iron mask as the Empress' had changed to one of adoration. "It is about that time, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, my dear," the Empress crooned. "What will you be wearing? I want to make sure we're simply the loveliest couple—"

"I'm not sure, yet," Roger interrupted calmly, gently. "But I think, Alexandra, that this meeting's gone on long enough, don't you?" He waved to one of the guards by the door. "Let me call your ladies in waiting. That way you can make yourself fresh and beautiful again," he added, glancing sideways at Catrone, who gave a brief nod of approval.

When the docile Empress had been led from the room, Roger stood and swept the people still seated around the conference table with eyes of emerald ice.

"Not a word," he said. "Not one pocking damned word. Meeting adjourned."

"Well?" Roger said, looking up from yet another of the endless reports floating in the holographic display above his desk. Decisions had to be made, and by default, he was making them, despite the fact that his mother had yet to define precisely what authority, if any, was his. Nobody was raising the issue, however.

Not more than once.

"It's a bad one," Catrone said.

His face was drawn, his eyes worried, as he sat down in one of the office's float chairs at Roger's wave.

"Really bad," he continued. "She's... changing. She's not asking for Adoula as much, not since we got the worst of the drugs scrubbed out of her system and told her he's gone off to his sector for a while. She still asking for New Madrid, but..." Catrone swallowed, and his face worked. "But not as often."

"What's wrong?" Roger asked.

"Christ, Your Highness," Catrone said in an anguished voice, dropping his face into his hands. "Now she's coming on to me! That bastard. That stinking bastard!"

"Pock!" Roger leaned back and grabbed his ponytail.

He stared at the older man for several seconds, then inhaled deeply.

"Tomcat, I know how hard this is for you. But you have to stay with her. You have to stay with us!"

"I will," Catrone said. He raised his head, tears running down his face. "If I leave, who knows what she'll latch onto? But, God! Roger, it's hard!"

"Be her paladin, Tomcat," Roger said then, his face set. "If needs be, damn it, be more than her paladin."

"Roger!"

"You just said it yourself. If you're not there for her, someone else will be. Someone who's not as good a man as you are. Someone I can't trust like you. Someone she can't trust like you. You're on this post until relieved, Sergeant Major. Is that understood? And you'll do whatever it takes to stand your post, Marine. Clear?"

"Clear," Catrone grated. "Order received and understood, and I will comply. You bastard."

"That I am." Roger grinned tightly. "Literally and figuratively. The last bastard standing. The flag of the Basik's Own wears a bar sinister proudly. We carried it across two continents, and to Old Earth, and into this very damned Palace, and we did anything necessary to complete the mission. Welcome to the Regiment. Now you know what it means to be one of us."

"And I think we should inform Mistress Tompkins that I'll need a new dress, don't you?" Alexandra said softly.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Lady Russell agreed.

They sat in a gazebo, watching cold rain fall beyond the force screen. Lady Russell was expertly sewing a tapestry, while the Empress mangled a needlepoint of a puppy in a basket.

"I'll never know how you do that so well," the Empress said, smiling politely.

"Years of practice, Your Majesty," Lady Russell replied.

"I'll have many years to practice—

"—two carrier squadrons to the Marduk System," Alexandra said, her face hard. "Given what Roger's said about—"

She stopped, and looked around, frowning.

"Where am I?" she asked in a voice which was suddenly cold and dead.

"The gazebo, Your Majesty," Lady Russell said softly, and looked at her half-fearfully. "Are you well?"

"I was in the conference room," Alexandra said tightly. "I was in a meeting!It was sunny!Where's the meeting?Where are the people?Why is it raining?"

"That—" Lady Russell swallowed. "Your Majesty, that was two days ago."

"Oh, my God," Alexandra whispered, and looked at the material in her lap. "What is this?"

"Needlepoint?" Lady Russell asked, reaching unobtrusively for her communicator.

"It's bloody awful, is what it is!" Alexandra spun the hoop across the gazebo. "Get me Sergeant Major Catrone!"

"Sit, Sergeant Major," Alexandra said, and pointed to the seat Lady Russell had vacated.

"Your Majesty," Tomcat said.

At Roger's order, Catrone had once more donned the blue and red of the Empress' Own, at his old rank of sergeant major. He wore dress uniform, and the golden aiguillette hanging from his shoulder indicated Gold Battalion, the personal command—and bodyguard—of the reigning monarch. Empress Alexandra VII, in this case.

"What happened in the meeting, Sergeant Major?" Alexandra rubbed her face furiously. "I was in the meeting, and then I was here, in the gazebo. What happened to me? Who's doing this to me?"

"First of all," Catrone said carefully, "no one is doing anything to you, Your Majesty. It's already been done."

She stopped rubbing and sat still, her hands still over her eyes, and he continued.

"Your Majesty, you have two mental states, as we've tried to explain to you before." He waved a hand at her. "This state. Alexandra the Seventh, Empress of the Empire of Man. Fully functional. As good a sovereign as I've ever served. Twice the sovereign her father ever was."

"Thank you for the soft soap, Tomcat," Alexandra said mockingly, eyes still covered. "And my other... state?"

"The other," he said even more carefully, then paused. "Well, Your Majesty, in the other you're... pliable. You still occasionally ask for your 'good friend,' the Earl of New Madrid, and refer to Prince Jackson as 'Our loyal Prince Jackson.'"

"Oh, God," she said.

"Do you really want it all?" Catrone asked. "Face facts, Your Majesty. You're still in a pretty delicate condition."

"I want it all." She sighed, lowering her hands at last. Then her face firmed, and she met his eye levelly. "All. What happened?"

"In your other state—"

"What do you call that?" she interrupted. "If you call... this one Alexandra. Do you call it Alexandra, Tomcat?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," he said firmly. "This is the Empress Alexandra. The woman I gave my service to long ago."

"And the other?"

"Well," Catrone winced. "We just call it la-la-land. The doctors have a long technical name—"

"I can imagine," she said dryly. "Do I know I'm Empress?"

"Yes, Your Majesty." Catrone's swallowed. "But, frankly, we just ignore anything you tell us to do. You generally don't give any orders, though."

He paused.

"What do I do?" she asked.

"Whatever you're told," Catrone said, his face hard. "About the only positive contribution you make is to ask when your very special friend will be back. And if he's not around, you hit on me, Your Majesty."

"Oh, Christ, Thomas." Her face went blank, and tears formed in her eyes. "Oh, Christ. I'm so sorry!"

"I'm not." Catrone shrugged. "I'm not happy that this has happened to you, Your Majesty, but I'm glad it's me. I've never seen you do it to any other male..." He paused again, then shrugged. "Except Roger."

"What?!"

"You think he's New Madrid," Catrone said. "You said all."

"And I meant it," Alexandra ground out. She inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, and leaned back in her chair. "You said I was out for two days?"

"Yes, Your Majesty. We just left you with your ladies. You were... monitored by the guards to make sure none of them started giving suggestions."

"Good," Alexandra said firmly. Then she softened, and looked at him oddly. "Thomas?"

"Yes, Your Majesty?"

Her voice was much softer, and he watched her expression carefully, wondering if she'd wandered off again.

"I'm me," she said, and astonished him with a grin. "I could see the question in your eyes. But I have a very serious question of my own, one I'd like an honest answer to. What did my son tell you to do? About my come-ons?"

Catrone's hands worked on the arms of his chair, and he stared out at the rain for several long moments. Then he looked back at her and raised his eyes to meet her gray ones.

"He ordered me to do whatever was necessary to keep you from finding some other... gentleman companion," he said bluntly. "The doctors all agreed that any such... gentleman companion could tell you to give any order he thought up when you're in your la-la state."

"My God, he is a bastard, isn't he?" There was actually a bubble of delight in Alexandra's voice, and she shook her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I'm having a hard time framing this next question, Thomas. Did he do that... ?"

"He did it for the good of the Empire," Catrone said, his tone as blunt as before. "And he did it knowing the trial I'd face. He told me my term of service is now until one of us dies."

"And you accepted that order?" Alexandra asked calmly.

"I've always served you, Your Majesty," Catrone said, looking suddenly very old and tired. "I always will. But, yes. When Roger gave that order, I obeyed it as if it had come from the mouth of my Emperor."

"Good," she said. "Good. If he can command that loyalty, that service from you—from my strength and my paladin—then, yes, perhaps I have misjudged him."

She paused, and her lips worked, trying not to smile.

"Thomas... ?"

"No," he said.

"You don't know what I was going to ask," she pointed out.

"Yes, I do," he said. "And the answer is: No. We never have."

"Tempted?" she asked.

He looked up, his eyes hot, almost angry, and half-glared at her. One cheek muscle twitched, and Alexandra smiled warmly.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said, leaning back in her chair, and cradled her chin in one hand, index finger tapping at her cheek. "You've remarried, haven't you, Tomcat?"

"Yes," Tomcat replied warily.

"Pity."

"What's this about, Catrone?" Roger demanded as he strode down the corridor. "Damn it, I'm up to my eyeballs in work. We're all up to our eyeballs in work."

"She's tracking right now," Catrone replied. "She has something she wants to say, and when she calls, you go."

"I'm just getting used to being treated like an adult," Roger snapped. "I'm not happy about being treated like a child again."

"You're not," Eleanora said as she joined them from a cross-corridor. Despreaux was with her, trotting to keep up with the shorter woman, and having a hell of a time doing so in court shoes.

"No, you're not," Roger's fiancée echoed, hopping on one foot and falling behind as she finally gave up and ripped the shoes off. "You're being treated like her Heir. She has something important to say."

The shoes came off, and she carried them in one hand by their straps as she hurried to catch back up.

"It's not just you, Roger," Eleanora said, nodding at Despreaux in thanks. "All of your Companions, your staff, Catrone, the Prime Minister, the full Cabinet, and the leaders of the major parties in both Lords and Commons."

"And in the throne room," Roger growled. "It's a pocking barn! Why the throne room?"

"I don't know," Julian said as he joined them, "but she called for the Imperial Regalia."

Krindi Fain, Honal, and Doc Dobrescu followed in Julian's wake, and Roger glanced at all four of them sourly.

"You guys, too?" he asked as they reached the doors of the throne room.

"Us, too," Julian agreed. "But the Prime Minister and a few of the others have already been in there for over half an hour."

"Crap," Roger said. "Tomcat, you're sure she's not in la-la-land?" he asked, holding up his hand to stop the footman who'd been about to open the door.

"Hasn't been for a day and a half," Catrone replied. "I don't think it's going to stick, but..."

"But we'd better get whatever this is over with while it does, right?" Roger said, lowering his hand and nodding at the flunky.

"Right," Catrone agreed as the throne room door swung open.

The throne room of the Empire of Man was a must-see on any tour of the Palace. It was a hundred meters long, and it had escaped the fighting almost completely unscathed. The soaring ceiling, with its magnificent fresco depicting the rise of Man and of the Empire, was intact, suspended sixty meters in the air by flying buttresses that seemed far too thin to support the weight. But they were ChromSten, representing the power and glory that had supported that rise.

More murals covered the walls, inlaid in precious gems. Spaceflight. Medicine. Chemistry. Trade. The arts. All that it meant to be "Man" was represented upon those walls, evoked by the finest artists humanity had produced. There was nothing abstract, nothing surreal—just the simple depiction of the works which made Man what he was.

The floor was a solid sheet of polished glassteel, clear as distilled water, impervious to wear, unblemished and unmarred by the thousands upon thousands of feet which had crossed it in the half-millennium and more of the Empire's existence. It was two centimeters thick, that glistening floor, protecting the stone beneath. Strange, patchwork-looking stone. The stones composing that patchwork had been removed, carefully, one by one, from all of the great works of Terra. In each case, the stone which was removed had been replaced with one which matched it perfectly, and each of those irregular, varicolored stones—each tile in the throne room's true floor—was labeled and identified. The Parthenon. The Colosseum. The Forbidden City. Machu Piccu. Temples and theaters and cathedrals. Stones from the pyramids of Cheops and of the Mayans. Stones from the Inca, and from the great works of Africa. Stones from the walls where aboriginal peoples had worshiped their ancestors. Stones from the Great Wall, carrying with them, perhaps, the tortured souls of the millions who had died to build it. Thousands of stones, all of them bringing the souls who had worshiped at them and built them alive in this one place, the center of it all.

The Throne of Man itself was placed upon a dais formed by the ChromSten-armored hatch cover from a missile tube. That hatch cover came from Freedom's Fury, the renamed cruiser from whose command deck Miranda I, the first Empress of Man, had led the battle to throw the Dagger Lords off Old Earth and reestablish functioning and growing civilization in the galaxy. Fourteen steps led up to the throne, each of precious metals or gems. But the sere, scarred ChromSten of the ship outshone them all.

The Throne itself was even simpler, only an old, battered, antique command chair from the same ship. Over the years, it had been necessary to rebuild it more than once. But each master craftsman chosen for the task had taken meticulous care to reproduce exactly the same scarring, the same scorching, as the one Miranda the First, Miranda the Great, had sat upon through those awful battles. And it did have those scars, those burns. Right down to the clumsily carved initials, "AS," which had been cut into the side of the chair even before Miranda MacClintock and her followers cut their way to the flight deck of what had been a Dagger Lord ship to turn it against its erstwhile owners.

Alexandra VII, the seventeenth MacClintock in direct succession from Miranda I to sit upon that chair, sat upon it now. Roger saw her in the distance as they entered the room—a regal, distant figure, much like the mother he remembered of old. The Imperial Crown glittered upon her head, and she wore a long train of purple-trimmed, snow-white ice-tiger fur, and held the Scepter in one gloved hand. There were others present, dozens of them, although they seemed lost and lonely in the throne room's vastness, and Roger slowed his pace.

He walked forward, and his staff spread out to either side. Despreaux walked at his right, holding her hated shoes in her hand and fidgeting with them. Then came Julian, tugging on the civilian suit he was just learning to wear. And Honal, wearing the combat suit of a stingship pilot.

Eleanora O'Casey walked to his left, calm and dignified, more accustomed to this room than even Roger. Then Doc Dobrescu, uncomfortable in formal clothes. Krindi Fain, still in his leather harness and kilt. And directly behind him was D'nal Cord—slave, mentor, bodyguard, friend—and Pedi Karuse.

Thomas Catrone walked behind the two Mardukans, but Roger sensed still others behind him. D'estres and Gronningen. Dokkum, Pentzikis and Bosum. Captain Krasnitsky, of the DeGlopper, who'd blown up his own ship to take the second cruiser with him. Ima Hooker, and even Ensign Guha, DeGlopper's unwitting toombie saboteur. Kane and Sawato. Rastar, waving a sword as his civan cat-walked to the side. The list went on and on, but most especially, he felt a friendly, fatherly hand on his shoulder. The sensation was so strong he actually looked to the side, and for a moment, with something other than his eyes, he saw Armand Pahner's face, calm and sober, ready to face any challenge for his Prince and his Empire. And beside Pahner, Kostas Matsugae stood looking on, wondering whether Roger was well-dressed enough for a formal audience, and tut-tutting over Despreaux's shoes.

He reached the first balk line, where a subject stopped and knelt to the Empress, and kept walking, pressed by an urgency in his mind, pushed forward by his ghosts. He passed the second line, and the third. The fourth. Until he reached the fifth and last, where his staff spread out on either hand behind him. And then, at last, he dropped to both knees and bowed his head.

"Your Majesty," he said. "You summoned; I am come."

Alexandra looked down at the top of his bowed head, then looked at the companions who had followed him into her presence. She paused in her perusal at sight of Despreaux's shoes and smiled, faintly, as if in complete understanding. Then she nodded.

"We are Alexandra Harriet Katryn Griselda Tian MacClintock, eighth Empress of Man, eighteenth of Our House to hold the Crown. We have at times, lately, been unwell. Our judgment has been severely affected. But in this place, at this time We are who We are. At any time, this may change, but at this moment We are in Our right mind, as so attested by attending physicians and as proven in conversation with Our Prime Minister and other ministers, here gathered."

She paused, and looked around the throne room—not simply at Roger and his companions, but at all the others assembled there and nodded slightly.

"There have been eighteen Emperors and Empresses, stretching back to Miranda the First. Some of us have died in battle, as have our sons and daughters." She paused sadly as she remembered her own children and grandchildren. "Some of us have died young, some old. Some of us have died in our beds—"

"And some in other beds," Julian muttered under his breath.

"—and some in accidents. But all of us have died, metaphorically, right here," she said, thumping her left hand on the armrest of the ancient command chair. "No MacClintock Emperor or Empress has ever abdicated." She paused, her jaw flexing angrily, and looked again at Roger's bowed head.

"Until now."

She yanked the heavy train out of her attendants' hands and stood, wrapping it around her left arm until she had some capability of independent movement. Then she walked down the fourteen steps to the glassteel floor.

"Roger," she snapped, "get your butt over here."

Roger looked up, his face hard, and one muscle twitched in his cheek. But he stood at her command and walked to the base of the stairs.

"A coronation would take weeks to arrange," Alexandra said, looking him in the eye, her face as hard as his. "And we don't have the time, do we?"

"No," Roger said coldly. He'd wanted to have a conversation with his mother when he returned. This wasn't it.

"Fine," Alexandra said. "In that case, we'll skip the ceremony. Hold out your right hand."

Roger did, still looking her in the eye, and she slapped the Scepter into his hand, hard.

"Scepter," she spat. "Symbol of the Armed Forces of the Empire, of which you are now Commander-in-Chief. Originally a simple device for crushing the skulls of your enemies. Use it wisely. Never crush too many skulls; by the same token, never crush too few."

She struggled out of the heavy ice-tiger fur train and walked around to throw it over his shoulders. She was tall, for a woman, but she still had to rise on the balls of her feet to get it into place. Then she stepped back around in front of him and fastened it at his throat.

"Big heavy damned cloak," she snapped. "I can't remember what it's a symbol of, but it's going to be a pain in your imperial ass."

Last, she removed the Crown and rammed it onto his head, hard. It had been sized to her head for the day of her own coronation, and it was far too small for Roger. It perched on top of his head like an over-small hat.

"Crown," she said bitterly. "Originally a symbol of the helmets kings wore in battle so the enemy knew who to shoot. Pretty much the same purpose today."

She stepped back and nodded.

"Congratulations. You're now the Emperor. With all the authority and horrible responsibility that entails."

Roger's eyes stayed locked on hers, hard, angry. So much lay between them, so much pain, so much distrust. And now the steamroller of history, the responsibility which had claimed eighteen generations of their family, perched on his head, lay draped about his shoulders, weighted his right hand. Unwanted, feared, and yet his—the responsibility he could not renounce, to which he had given so many of his dead, and to which he must sacrifice not simply his own life, but Nimashet Despreaux's and their children's, as well.

"Thank you, Mother," he said coldly.

"Wear them in good health," Alexandra said harshly.

She stood, meeting his gaze, and then, slowly—so slowly—her face crumpled. Her lips trembled, and suddenly she threw herself into his arms and wrapped her own about him.

"Oh, God, my son, my only son," she sobbed into his chest. "Please wear them in better health than I!"

Roger looked at the useless club in his hand and tossed it, overhand, to Honal, who fielded it as if it were radioactive. Then he sat down on the steps of the Throne of Man, wrapped his arms around his mother and held her in his lap, with infinite tenderness, as she sobbed out her grief and loss—the loss of her reign, of her children, of her mind—on her only child's shoulder.