“They’re breaking off,” Sosa said. “But we’re still going to pass one another. We’ll be within a hundred thousand kilometers soon, perfect beam range.”

  “Should I fire the neutrino, Captain?” Jort demanded in my ear.

  “No! Not until I give the order.”

  Sosa eyed me. “If we released a torpedo at least…”

  “No. It’s a test. Contact Rago.”

  She did so, and he came onto the line quickly. He looked stressed and irritated.

  “What are your friends up to now, Gorman? They’re turning tail—but they’re still in range. We have to fire now, or we’ll be risking a point-blank broadside from them. We’ll be so close some of our ships might be destroyed before we can return fire.”

  “I know, but we have to chance it. Our Tulk talked to theirs. I think this is their way of testing our resolve, our trustworthiness. If we don’t fire first—maybe we can still gain them as allies.”

  “Crazy aliens… All right. If they want to play chicken to the last moment, we’ll oblige them. It won’t be said that Duke Rago lost his nerve before a spiny lump of jelly did.”

  It was butt-clenching, but both fleets passed one another at high speeds without firing a shot. When we flew past and clear, it was with great relief.

  The Tulk had called our bluff, and we’d answered in kind. It didn’t look like it was going to be a match made in heaven, but possibly, just possibly, we could find a way to work together.

  For the next twenty long hours, the two distrustful fleets and their leaders slowly worked out a set of rules by which we could keep from destroying one another.

  It didn’t come easily to either side. The humans saw the Tulk as invaders, and the Tulk saw us as uppity beasts that didn’t know our place.

  We started off with a truce. Dernel did most of the talking—or producing hisses and rattling noises, as the case may be.

  After both fleets had separated and slowed to a less threatening cruising speed, we took up far orbits on the opposite sides of Gladius. That dismal world squatted in-between our two forces, and its defensive bases constantly pinged and tracked us. It was unnerving, but Sosa assured me we were out of the effective range of any ground-based missile launchers or beam batteries.

  After a full day and night, the negotiations came to a sudden conclusion. Dozing in my pilot’s chair, I was startled awake by a soft hand.

  “Morwyn? What is it?”

  “The Tulk fleet has separated into two forces. Half will stay here, at Gladius. The rest will be joined by troop ships. They’ll follow us.”

  “To where?”

  She smiled, and the expression was sweet. She brushed my hair from my sweaty face gently.

  “You did it, William. They’re coming with us. Neither the humans nor the Tulk trust the other enough to leave their planets unguarded, but they’ll both send half their fleets together against our true enemy.”

  I heaved a sigh, and I grunted as I climbed my way out of my chair. Without another word, I headed for my bunk. I’d been on duty for nearly thirty hours. I’d taken naps and meals in my command chair for all that time.

  Now, at last, I felt confident that I could rest.

  Soft footsteps padded along behind me. I didn’t look over my shoulder, but I smiled. Morwyn was following me to my cabin. When we arrived, I opened the door and let her inside.

  She was in a great mood—and soon, I was as well.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Rose was markedly sour toward me the following day as the fleet set out for Vindar. She must have noticed I’d spent another night with Morwyn.

  Sosa wasn’t happy either, mind you, but she’d long since given up on owning the captain. She wouldn’t meet my eye, but she didn’t give me any twists of her lip, or smoldering stares like Rose did.

  Deciding it was best to ignore them all, I cheerfully dug into breakfast with gusto. Trask came in to join us, and we began planning our course.

  “It’s already decided,” Trask told me. “Harkaman and Rago have made the arrangements. We’ll fly to Ceti first—”

  “Ceti!? That’s lightyears out of our way.”

  “Yes, yes—but it’s the best spot to pick up a boost toward our final destination.”

  I squinted at him. Usually, he was the one who thought I was nuts and stared at me distrustfully. Today, it was the other way around.

  “You’re going to try to get into the slip-gate? Is that it?”

  “Absolutely. That’s how we do it. What you’re about to witness is almost a sacred trade secret.”

  I snorted. “How so?”

  Stirring up some tank-grown eggs, he leaned forward and spoke in a hushed tone. I wasn’t sure who he thought he was keeping from overhearing us. Perhaps it was simply an old habit of his.

  “Have you ever wondered how the Sword Brothers manage to zip around the Fringe to whatever planet we wish?”

  “Uh… no. But now that you mention it…”

  He was right. It didn’t make sense. They were outlaws, and they didn’t possess large starships capable of using an FTL drive of their own. Likewise, they didn’t have slip-gates that would connect them instantly like a network, or an interstellar highway.

  How did they get from one distant planet to the next with startling speed and the element of surprise?

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “You know how we bribed that patrolman out at Sardez? The process is similar… but not quite the same.”

  “Right. It can’t be. Vindar doesn’t have a slip-gate connected to the main Conclave grid. They’re too far out. It took Morwyn and Dernel months to get to the Conclave.”

  “Exactly. We can’t afford to cruise along at sub-light speeds for months to find our way back to that lonely planet. We’ve got a better plan, fortunately.”

  I plied him for more information, but he clammed up. I could understand, in a way. The whole thing did sound like a trade-secret. Something that was pretty crucial to how the Sword Worlds did business.

  The answer came two days later. By that time, Morwyn and I were sharing a cabin openly. She was happier than I’d ever seen her to be, as she felt at long last she was leading an army back to save her homeworld. How could a girl be anything less than thrilled and grateful to the man who’d pulled off this miracle?

  Feeling that I’d earned all the attention, I basked in it. There was no effort made to rub the other girls’ faces in the whole thing—but I didn’t go out of my way to spare their feelings, either. They’d both been sour since Morwyn and her ailing father had arrived.

  The only individual who seemed to remain a quiet skeptic was Dernel himself. He wasn’t Dernel, of course, not really. The actual Dernel was a blithering madman on most days.

  Instead, I was forced to take meals being stared at by a strange alien parasite. Dernel’s bandages often hung in his face like loose locks of hair—but he did nothing to fix them. It was up to Morwyn to wrap and tuck away the stray ends.

  “What’s on your mind, Tulk?” I asked on the third day. I’d had about enough of his constant surveillance.

  Dernel reached under his bandages and tugged at something. I thought it was a large flake of peeling skin. I tried not to wince as he ripped it away and dropped it on the deck.

  “How are we getting to Vindar?” he asked me. “I mean, by what route?”

  I shrugged. “The Sword Brothers know the way. They’ve got a plan.”

  “Harkaman isn’t really a Sword Brother—he’s one of my kind. We came here by dimensional transmission. To fly to Vindar by conventional propulsion would take years.”

  “Dimensional transmission? Is that what you call it?” For a few moments, I recalled the strange structure I’d seen on a mountaintop outside the colonial capital on Baden. It had caused odd effects similar to dry-lightning. Even the air inside the field had felt different. It had been charged like the atmosphere before a dangerous storm.

  “My point is,” Dernel said patiently, “we don’t have time to fly there with nothing more than the engines under these decks. There must be a faster way.”

  “There is. The Sword-Brothers are raiders, remember. They seem to come and go around the Fringe of the Conclave with impunity. Now that I think about it, that fact seems odd. Someone must be helping them…”

  “But you don’t know who?”

  I shook my head. After another minute or two of unwelcome staring, Dernel stood up unsteadily and headed for the passages. He seemed determined.

  “I wouldn’t bother the pirates if I were you. The answers will become apparent soon.”

  He glanced back at me. “It’s not in my nature to leave important details to others.”

  He left then, and I decided to follow.

  We soon came upon an interesting scene. Baron Trask was talking to a patrol captain. When we walked into the comm center, the captain’s head, which floated in a disembodied state over the holoplate, turned to greet me. He frowned unhappily.

  “Trask, you told me that no one else was in on this.”

  Trask glanced at me. “This is no one. He’s merely my pilot, Gorman.”

  “What of the other? The bluish freak in the bandages?”

  “He’s of even less importance. He’s Gorman’s personal cabin-boy.”

  Dernel had opened his mouth as if to speak, but he closed it again with an audible snap.

  I smirked and said nothing. I crossed my arms and watched the proceedings.

  “This is most irregular. I’m considering withdrawing from this deal and reporting all of you.”

  Baron Trask nodded sagely. “A wise move. When the Conclave Tribunal sentences you for your countless offenses, they’ll no doubt take your abject confession into account.”

  “What? Is that a threat?”

  “Not at all. I’m simply admiring your sudden transformation into a man of honor and self-sacrifice.”

  “You’re the criminal here, Baron. Sometimes I think I was a fool to take your money the first time.”

  “But take it you did—many times.”

  The patrolman sighed. I could tell Trask had him over a barrel. If he didn’t make the arrangements, Trask could turn him in. On the other hand, he seemed reluctant to allow so large a formation of ships to use the slip-gates without authorization.

  “You’ve got too many ships. That’s the trouble. I’ll let ten through. No more.”

  Baron Trask nodded again. He stood up and tossed the patrolman a salute. “Very well then. You’ve made your choices. I’d bid you farewell.”

  “What’s this? You’re backing out?”

  “No!” Trask boomed, suddenly raging. He was like that: quick to anger and quick to cool down again—if you were lucky. “It’s you who’ve betrayed us. I’ll find another patrolman, another slip-gate—but you’ll have to find yourself another profession. My suggestion is this: run while you can. They need dishwashers on Tranquility, I understand. There’s also the Fringe colonies, like Baden. No one will inquire too deeply into a man who emigrates there and takes a job mining radioactives.”

  The patrolman looked rather sick. “You really are a pirate, aren’t you?”

  Trask chuckled. “I prefer to call myself an entrepreneur. Now, no more wasting time. Are you transporting my raiding fleet or not?”

  “That jump is so far… the power alone will cause a system spike. They’ll have to notice. There will be an investigation.”

  “That’s none of my affair.”

  The patrolman was staring downward, fixated, frowning. We soon realized he was talking to himself. “I’ll have to pass on some of the credit to the inspectors. It’s going to be messy. Very messy…”

  Almost as an afterthought, the patrolman switched off the transmission. The channel closed.

  Trask turned to us in triumph. He grinned and spread his hands. “You see? It can all work out. It’s a simple matter of proper motivation.”

  Dernel’s buried eyes slid around from one of us to the other. “That’s it? He didn’t even say he would cooperate.”

  “He will,” Trask assured him. “This is just his way of massaging his guilt. He can now claim that I forced him to take the money, you see? That means it really wasn’t his fault. For a patrolman, he’s quite a character.”

  “So that’s your plan?” Dernel demanded. “We’re going to use the Conclave slip-gates to get to Vindar?”

  “Not exactly. There is a gate at Vindar, but it’s been in disuse for many years. We’ll have to get them to power-up the line from the Conclave end.”

  “Is this truly possible?”

  Trask laughed at him. “Of course it is. You just heard the patrolman lamenting the energy requirements, but it can be done.” He squinted at both of us for a moment. We must have appeared to be skeptical. He twisted his lips into a sour expression and put his hand on his hips. “How do you two think the Sword Brothers have gotten to their final destinations for countless raids? We pop out of warp in any system we like, with no warning or resistance. It’s a shock every time. Does anyone seriously think we’re gifted celestial navigators? Seriously?”

  Dernel and I exchanged glances. We’d both been under exactly that impression—but neither of us wanted to admit it.

  Approximately a hundred hours later, we arrived at Vindar. Or rather, we arrived just outside the star system.

  “I hadn’t even known there was a slip-gate way out here,” Sosa said. “It’s kind of scary, being so far from home. I don’t recognize the star patterns.”

  “Look back,” Morwyn said. “Use our aft cameras.”

  Sosa did, and we all gasped. Morwyn smiled.

  “You see? That’s the Conclave. You can make out the glittering arc of it from this distance. They say that if you’re all the way out at the Chain, you can see the entire egg-shaped mass that you know as your home stars.”

  Sosa touched the controls again after we’d all had time to take in the magnificent sight of the Conclave from deep space. She switched to the forward cameras, and we were overawed again.

  “There, you can see the Chain clearly,” Morwyn said. “This is exciting to me, as I know now that we’ve really reached my homeworld. For us, the Chain is a series of links like a serpent.”

  Sosa seemed the most dazzled. “On my homeworld, you can see the Chain at night. It looks like this, but much smaller and fainter. When it’s easy to see, the mothers tell their children that’s where the bad people live—but no one believes them.”

  Morwyn laughs. “On Vindar, we’re forever in between the Chain and the Conclave. We tell our young we’re blessed not to be crammed between a hundred other worlds full of busy feet.”

  Everyone was smiling, and we took a few minutes just to admire the view. The Chain was indeed a silvery serpent of stars—a twisted thing with growths, whirls and spirals of brilliant jewels dusted by nebulae. The only difference was one of scale. On any of the Conclave planets, the Chain looked as large as a local moon or two. But here, halfway to the cluster, it looked much bigger and brighter. It dominated a quadrant of the sky.

  “The night sky on Vindar must be magnificent,” I said, feeling mesmerized by the sight.

  “It is,” Morwyn assured me. “You’ll see it from the ground soon enough.”

  Once we were done stargazing, we fell to the drudgery of navigation as more and more of Trask’s ships arrived. The fleet had taken not one but a dozen jumps to get here. Often, we’d had to travel across vast star systems to get to the next link. Sometimes, there had been no one present to challenge us, or to ask us to pay a fee.

  “Does the slip-gate system go all the way out to the Chain itself?” Rose asked in an innocent voice.

  “It does,” Morwyn answered, “but the gates have all been dead for years. The Conclave… I don’t know why, but they shut it down before I was born. This is the first use of these old systems in decades.”

  Her words caused my mind to spin. Did the Conclave know what had happened to the Chain? It would seem logical that they did… Knowing of the invasion, had they shut down the gates to keep the enemy from spreading? It was a disturbing thought, but it sounded like the bureaucrats from worlds like Prospero. Why bother dealing with the invasion? Just lock the cellar and hope the bad things stay down there forever. Our politicians were surely the worst in the history of humanity.

  Blinking away these thoughts, I moved to study all our incoming data from our long-range sensors. Soon, I was frowning with a new worry.

  “Morwyn?” I said. “Examine the data coming in from our sensors. Does Vindar look… normal to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She slid into a seat nearby and worked a console. A dozen screens and sub-screens chirped and glowed. She gasped and made a strangled sound in her throat.

  “Our satellites… they’re down. They’re all down. Even the orbital way-station… something has attacked us.”

  No one spoke as we studied the incoming information. It was true, and it was tragic.

  We were too late. Vindar had suffered an attack. Possibly, everyone on the planet was already dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  My crew was subdued and quiet as we approached Vindar at last. Morwyn looked like she might cry—but she held it back.

  “I’m seeing cities on fire,” Sosa said in a monotone. “The west coast of their largest continent… it doesn’t look good.”

  “Examine the eastern side,” Morwyn asked. “Turn your sensors there.”

  Trask suddenly stood up and cursed. “We’re too late! The whole place is trashed. The aliens have won… we should turn back toward home and see to our own defenses.”

  I looked at him in surprise. Jort came up from below and glanced at him in disgust. “Such naked fear coming from a Sword Brother? How is it your kind can win so many campaigns? A true warrior doesn’t turn tail and run when a battle is in sight. He rushes in to grab all the glory he can!”

  Trask turned him a sour glance. I knew the old pirate well. He was willing to fight, sure—but only when he was certain he was on the winning side. To be fair, you didn’t stay alive as long as he had in the role of a professional mercenary if you couldn’t tell the difference between a coming victory and an imminent defeat.