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  The Emperor considered that. Then: “My life was never simple. Even when I was here.”

  That reply earned him a chuff, and if it was humor, it was wry almost to irony. “Unmitigated truth.”

  “You would not be standing here if I were otherwise,” the Emperor said.

  “No.” This time, the male smiled. “You are what you must be. I am also.” He pointed toward the navigation tank with the end of his nose. “Three more hours.”

  “So far?”

  “It’s on our departing heading.”

  “Ah,” the Emperor said. “Then the transit—”

  “One week,” the Admiral-Offense said.

  “And we can put paid to this and move on to the next task.”

  “How many?” When the Emperor glanced at him, the older male said, “How many more such tasks?”

  The Emperor snorted. “It is the Chatcaavan Empire. There is never an end to those particular tasks.”

  A pause, then a laugh. “No. There is still more Navy in you than court.”

  Or more alien. Inside me there is another me, now. A me that has the taste of you. “Three hours is not long. I’ll stay.”

  “Very good, Exalted.”

  One week in transit, the Emperor thought. A few days for the fight and the clean-up, if it was quick. It might be as much as a month before he returned this time. He wondered how Second would face his crisis, and what shape that crisis would take. He supposed he would learn soon enough; when he did, he would be glad for the memory of battle for contrast. Claiming a stool for a perch, he watched the beads of light move across the system map. The concentration of capital ships near the base suggested someone had brought one of the major fleets in for resupply. Coordinating the movements of those fleets was the province of the Logistics males, one of whom sat in the central office of each apex system, and Logistics-East had shouldered the greatest load of the four, thanks to the size of the Eastern base. The Emperor had never served in the administrative arm of the Navy, but he’d been close with several males who had, and he had a sense for the staff that was orchestrating the movements of all the disparate ships in the system.

  That was the Empire: so many silent males, working in concert to achieve so much. And the court doing its best to tear it to pieces, so those pieces could be picked up by someone new in the name of ambition. In retrospect, his own ascension to the throne had been unusual for its lack of collateral damage, and his tenure as Emperor, even before the Ambassador had infected him with alien ideas, had resulted in more stability than the Empire had become accustomed to. Their history was littered with the reigns of males who’d fought wars—or fomented them—in order to keep their rivals too weak to threaten anyone. That strategy worked, but to the detriment of the Empire as a whole: to its ability to grow, innovate, thrive. One could not conquer a universe without a people united in their purpose, and Chatcaava who were too busy rebuilding their lives from the last catastrophic conflict inflicted on them by their masters did not have the fire for anything beyond protecting themselves and their families from further depredations.

  This the Emperor knew intimately. His family, long ago, had been among those titleless masses.

  Once he had an administration on the throneworld he could trust he could return to the real work. These diversions… they were irritating, and potentially dangerous. But he would put them to rest and then… then, the future. Such an interesting and promising future.

  The image of the carriers swelled in the tank alongside the system navigation plot. The Emperor stretched his wings, feeling the force field on the vanes like the warm tickle of a touched battery, and slid off the stool.

  “We’ve hailed them and been recognized,” the Admiral-Offense said. “We’re moving to the head of the line now so we can prepare for the transit.”

  “Excellent.”

  They were passing through the most heavily fortified system in the Empire, among allies: the flagship of the most powerful male, under the direction of the Navy’s foremost active duty admiral. Subsequently, they were not shielded from external Pad transits. Even so, the abrupt arrival of the males on the bridge did not alarm anyone.

  Until the first male died.

  Pandemonium erupted. Their attackers wore the same body armor, styled their hair in the same military queues, were in no way distinguishable from the defenders. And they killed half the bridge crew with their augmented claws before the Emperor leapt down into the sensor pit and shredded the first one. The Admiral-Offense lunged after him, and then there was only killing: blood-hot claws, streaked with gore to the gauntleted wrist, the stench of dying bodies spilt like broken sacks, the howls of challenge and shrieks of pain. It had been a long time since the Emperor had participated in a melee like this: surrounded on all sides and outnumbered three to one. It was glorious until it ended, and he realized the depth of his rage. Swiping his blood-drenched forelock from his eyes, he snarled, “Status!” as the Admiral-Offense added, “Shields! Now!”

  Of the forty males who’d been on the bridge, only twelve remained, but one of them sprinted for his console with commendable alacrity.

  “Shields are up,” the first male said as another slid onto his stool and reported, “There is fighting all over the vessel, sir.”

  “Betrayed,” the Admiral-Offense hissed.

  “The carriers are launching,” the first male reported, voice strained.

  “Propulsion is faltering,” a third male said, reaching his station. “The engines appear to be compromised.”

  “Appear?” the Admiral-Offense said dangerously.

  “We have lost access to the engineering management systems, sir. We no longer have visibility into any of the engine alarms.”

  The ship shuddered.

  “Fighters are latching on,” the second male said. “Initial count is… fifty in the first wave.”

  “Second wave incoming in four minutes,” the first male said.

  The Admiral-Offense met the Emperor’s eyes.

  “No,” the Emperor said.

  “Yes. You must. They’ve come for you, Exalted. And if they are so determined to see you dead—and so convinced it would take this much to kill you—you must not be taken. And you will be taken if you stay here.”

  The Emperor said nothing, teeth bared, too aware of his breath rasping in his own throat, the drip of blood and sweat off his body. Naval armor was thin so as not to impede speed. There were bruises developing under his already.

  “Aarvu. Tenlen. Are you loyal males or honorless freaks?”

  The first and second male straightened, their eyes wearing twin expressions of shock and indignation.

  “Sir, we are Navy,” the first said.

  “Good. Make sure the Emperor reaches the launch bay.” To the Emperor, the Admiral-Offense said, “I’ll fight this ship hard. We’ll get messages out; someone will come for you. It may be several weeks. Make for the planet—you can survive there longer.”

  Forcing words out felt like vomiting. “You would have me flee.”

  “You will go,” the Admiral-Offense said, voice low and hard. “If you are the Emperor I know. Because otherwise you will die here, and dead rulers do not avenge their huntbrothers.”

  The ship quivered under them again. The third male said, “The second wave of fighters has debouched.”

  One of the Emperor’s feet moved. Then the next. He stopped before the Admiral-Offense, fought past the ball of rage cramping his chest. “Good hunting.”

  “Exalted.” The male inclined his head. Then to the two ratings behind him, “Make sure he gets off this ship, or die before telling me of your failure.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  They exited the bridge into a silence that lasted all of two breaths before the Admiral-Offense triggered the Repel Boarders alert and the corridor erupted with the wail of sirens.

  After that, the Emperor remembered only fighting. The physical effort of it. The sheer number of enemies. The shock of being struck, str
iking. The glare of hateful eyes.

  He remembered warding his flanks because he no longer trusted anyone to do it for him. His two attendants guarded him anyway.

  He killed—he couldn’t recall. More than he had since reaching the throneworld. He took wounds. None of them felt as grievous as the ones dealt him by Second, dying in the duel. Not to the flesh.

  To his spirit, given form and life by the Living Air…

  Betrayed, something in him hissed, and he ignored it, except as fuel.

  The launch bay was at the back of the flagship: a straight line down the central corridor, then down in the lift and out again. Did they expect him to flee? Possibly.

  He did not go to the launch bay.

  “Exalted,” one of his hangers-on said, panting. His wing hung crooked from the shoulder, the armor stripped from it: a bad injury to heal. The male would be weeks in a gel tank if he survived, which he wouldn’t. There was only one outcome to this engagement. “The Admiral-Offense….”

  “Isn’t here.” The Emperor ripped out the throat of the male between him and his search. “I am. Follow me, or don’t.”

  They did, into a corridor slimed with blood but emptied of its living combatants. The bodies here had long since grown stale but at last he found one wearing an active fighter relay. Crouching alongside the body, he tapped the device, felt the vibration of its response. All the lights were red: the fighter was whole, fueled, had not discharged its weapons load.

  “Oh,” hissed the second male, eyes widening. “Yes!”

  Said the first urgently, “Will it take you?”

  The Emperor pried the relay off, turning it in his slick fingers. It made him notice that the joints ached from the pounding he’d been giving them. “We need a Pad.”

  “This way,” the first said, and they ran. There were no guarantees this part of the ship would remain silent.

  When they reached the Pad, the Emperor pressed the relay to the interface; again, the vibration. The tunnel opened.

  “Exalted,” said the second male. “It has been an honor to fight at your side.”

  “We will guard your retreat,” added the first, hearing noise approaching them.

  Words still cut coming out, but at least they came. “Die well, and be received by the Living Air.”

  The first male glanced at him, startled. The second lunged to meet the foe that burst into the room.

  The Emperor snatched the relay back and leaped over the Pad.

  Chatcaavan fighters were single-occupant craft, and on their carriers their pilots entered through a hatch in the belly. But such fighters were intended to harry their prey to the point of dropped shields, and then to commit their pilots to boarding actions staged via the single-person Pads in each vessel.

  Those Pads could also receive their pilots when they needed to retreat.

  The Emperor stepped into his stolen craft and lunged for the pilot capsule. Had no one seen him leave, he might have passed unnoticed… but the males who’d accompanied him off the bridge were about to die, and when they did their murderers would realize where the Emperor had gone. Grimly, he strapped himself in, fingers flying through the neural connection sequences, joining armor to frame, as if years had not passed since he’d last used one of these craft.

  Old habits, he thought, shoving his claws into the interface, died hard. Like the traitors he was going to kill in swathes, long before this was over. He woke the fighter and twitched it toward the asteroid belt, eyes sweeping the navigational data. Twenty, forty, seventy… too many fighters to count. He had to hope most of their pilots were still on the ship, knew they wouldn’t be there long.

  No use stealth. They knew he’d escaped. His only hope was speed… and cunning.

  He was the Exalted Emperor. If they brought him to ground, he did not deserve to be.

  Peeling from the flagship’s flank, he drove hard for the asteroids that barred the way to the Apex world. As the fighters behind him filled with their pilots, he sorted and discarded options. Hiding on the base—too perilous. He didn’t know how deeply the rot bit, and there was no civilian populace to lose himself in. Nor could he remain in space indefinitely in a craft this small. Fighters couldn’t use the Well, either, so he couldn’t leave the system. His chances of hacking the computer systems of one of the furthest platforms were remote: even if he managed, he’d be stranded there after revealing his location with the transmission.

  The Admiral-Offense had been right. It was the planet or death.

  The fighter seemed to shiver around him: the neural skein reporting a near hit. Someone was shooting at him. The muscles in his wing-arms tensed as they would have had he been beating his pinions and the fighter accelerated in response, tilted as he veered toward a confusion of broken rock. No more time for thought. He was a flier, born to a race of fliers, in a craft designed to answer his every twitch, but every male now chasing him was no less adept.

  What had made the Emperor better when he’d been the Pilot had been his ability to do what he was about to do now.

  The fighter slalomed around the rock and into a field of dozens of asteroids, all moving at different speeds, directions. Bad enough stitching a course through that without the ships that were changing course at the sight of him diving through them. He gave himself over entirely to reaction: to multiple vectors crisscrossing his field of view as he leaned into the harness and stooped and swerved through cones of threat. The fighter painted warnings on his sides and arms and chest as his pursuit shot at him, warnings that taxed muscles already wrenched or skin already bleeding or flesh already contused.

  It didn’t matter: he was flying, enraged and focused, and it was glorious. He breathed hate with every suck of the air at his gaping mouth. Behind him he left a trail of collisions he didn’t bother to count because the count would never be high enough.

  The Emperor burst free of the asteroid belt, riding a shard broken from a collision so close it reopened a wound along his arm from the tension of holding the fighter off of it. The energy flung him outward and he stole it to arc for the planet. There was time then for thought as the ball of amber and blue grew in the windows. He had six fighters on his tail still—for now—but only these six would be able to catch him. If he went for the wilderness, they’d find him immediately.

  The world swelled, and the fighter trembled hard around him. He shed a fraction of his velocity, prepared for atmospheric insertion… and aimed for the capital. Night there: dawn was an hour away, but the countryside was dark. He checked his display, found his harriers on his tail but slower. What need to rush? They thought they had him. He grinned humorlessly, all teeth, and felt the altitude and speed on his skin through the skein, punishing but necessary. He had no need to watch meters when he could feel it with all the instincts of the race. That energy he could expend plotting a course.

  “Fighter. Ejection routine on my mark. Then execute Flight Plan A. Confirm.”

  “Ejection on your mark, followed by Flight Plan A. Acknowledged.”

  A cloud flickering past. Another. Trees now. He closed his eyes briefly, feeling the simulated wind buffeting him. It would be nothing to the real one: ejection was brutal. They wouldn’t expect it of him.

  “Now.”

  The harness dropped from him and the emergency hatch blew open, thrust him through it. For a blinding moment, every ignored wound exploded into sharp relief at the force of his body meeting that wall of air. Even armored it was almost overwhelming… but this too, was old memory, and he let himself drop until he bled the momentum of the ejection, until the prevailing winds began to push against his tightly tucked wings. Only then did he spread them, catching the air, and surge toward the city lights. Behind him, the fighter veered off on its programmed path, heading toward the wilderness where it would crash with convincing energy, if his hunters did not shoot it down first. He had until then to find a place to hide in the city. Not all the bleeding wounds on his body could slow him now, knowing that he could come this
far and still fail.

  He had never failed yet.

  Closer, the city came, closer still. He arrowed down toward its highest point, where the powerful kept their manors, mind racing. They would expect him to head for the country. When they discovered he’d tricked them, they’d assume he’d run for the poorer, more crowded parts of the city where he wouldn’t be recognized. The only place he could go, then, was here. He ran off his momentum, stumbled beside a high-walled garden, fell, scraping both knees. Staggering to his feet he ran, avoiding voices and shadows and cataloging the avenues and streets and endless walls obscuring the details of each estate. Expensive. Well-maintained. Featureless. No way to know who lived in which. And he was losing strength. He stopped at last and leaned on one of the walls, assessing himself. Battered and exhausted. Wounded, hopefully not seriously, but it was hard to think. If he could find a place to go to ground for long enough to patch himself up….

  The suit. The suit had to be discarded. He stripped it off in quick jerks and the plumbing connections hurt less than the wing arches and the collar, near his throbbing head. He forced himself to glide, stumbling back to the ground and winging up again, toward his memory of a lake bordering the largest of the estates. He stayed there long enough to watch it sink before forcing himself back. It would be best not to be found at the estate by this lake, but reaching the wall he found himself incapable of continuing on. He paused to press his brow against it, panting, too aware of the air on his naked body.

  Over the wall, he heard a female’s voice, speaking Universal, the sound distant, but clear in the dawn’s uncanny silence. The first few words he lost, unable to process them in the context of a Chatcaavan city in the apex-system where no alien tongue should be heard. Then clarity.

  “…deliver us, O God, from every durance. Forgive us our despair and anger, and help us back to the path of righteousness where You await us in glory—”

  The murmur of Chatcaavan voices then, from around the corner. The Emperor looked down the street and saw the lip of the rising sun shimmering between the buildings.