“What are we going to do?”

  “I’ll do what I can, and you do what you can. That means get your heavily-invested crowd of uncles and aunts to back you and slow down any kind of action in the Senate, in case he announces before we can move.”

  “But what will you do?”

  Here Mai Lee grinned and showed all her ancient teeth—unnaturally preserved enamel that should have rotted out of her head one hundred and eighty years ago. Somehow that grin shined through all the make-up and the operations, showing her true, fantastic age. She leered at him, a skeleton clothed in flesh that hung on her bones like limp putty. “I’ll do what I do best. I’ll kill him.”

  After the connection cut off, Zimmerman was left to stew in his warm gurgling bath. He swam to the far side of his bath and looked out over the edge of the Stardrop Cliffs. Fluffy clouds scudded along far below him, brushing up against the great rock walls. Ten thousand feet down, air-swimmers wheeled over an endless stretch of white sand and black rocks. The sea pounded against the cliffs with huge waves churned up by the powerful gravity of Gopus overhead. It was a scene unchanged for millennia.

  But it would change for Hans Zimmerman. If this new usurper were allowed to take his place, he would no longer be allowed to enjoy his villa, nor the jungle house, nor his saber-reed plantation on Gopus. He wouldn’t be able to afford them without the tens of thousands of credits in graft he received weekly for his lax police services and general rubber-stamping of the Senate’s every bill. Roasted air-swimmers and even green hork-leaf wine, his favorite, would be things of the past.

  With a knot of cold fear in his belly that he had not known for almost a decade, Hans Zimmerman gulped down the last of his wine and swam back to his phone. He began tapping wet fingers on his contacts-list like a man possessed.

  Two

  Three shadows slid through the interstellar oceans at fantastic speeds. As silent as space itself, the Imperium seedships glided toward a bright, G-class star. They were bound for their Homeworld, the fifth planet in the system. Unfortunately, that planet had long ago been blasted to rubble. A dense asteroid belt now orbited in its place.

  A few million kilometers from disaster, the ancient navigational organics finally came online and discovered that communications were out with the Homeworld’s long dead traffic-control. After many millennia in the void the organics had grown slipshod in following procedures. Rather than engaging the emergency subroutines, a stored virtual model of the Homeworld was used to set the course. At a leisurely pace, the ships began thawing the crews.

  Unaware of their doom, the Parents twitched feebly within their icy chambers, slowly reanimating. On full automatic, all three seedships sailed into the asteroid belt, decelerating and maneuvering to orbit a planet that no longer existed.

  The youngest of the three Parents was the first to awaken. She knew immediately that something had gone wrong. The task force had passed the designated revival point, and now the ships were rapidly closing on the Homeworld unchallenged. She rose painfully out of her encasement, extended a pod for the first time after eons of cryo-sleep, and attempted to alert her sisters. Soon, more of her sensory organs began functioning and she was able to comprehend the data the ship was trying to feed her.

  Despair bubbled through the Parent. The entire task force was doomed. They were about to collide with a mammoth, rapidly spinning asteroid and none of the others were awake enough to avoid destruction. With great effort, she engaged the override and commanded the ship to evade, to ignore its navigational software and switch to auto-defense. Immediately, the vessel swerved and jerked, wrenching the young Parent’s delicate birth-chambers and half-thawed ovaries. Hideous agony ripped through her, but it was nothing compared to the pain she felt for the others as their ships sailed serenely onward.

  Twin white pinpoints blossomed upon the surface of the asteroid. Mountain peaks twirled by her ship and barreled away into the void. She was alone.

  Assuming she was in hostile territory, the Parent suppressed the ship’s energy emissions and reflections to avoid detection. She let the ship coast through the asteroid belt and on toward the inner planets without applying further thrust. Her swollen organs shuddered with relief as she dumped liberal doses of hormones into her bloodstream. Feeling less stressed she began analyzing the data from the passive sensors and played back stored records from the datapods.

  Within minutes she had a new objective. The fourth planet out from the home star had a hotter climate than the destroyed Homeworld, but was still inhabitable. It had been used by the Skaintz Imperium as a breeding ground for livestock in the past. Now however, the sensors reported that it was in the hands of unrecognized aliens. Judging by their space vehicles and radio emissions, these aliens seemed technologically advanced, and possibly were the minions of the hated ancient enemy: the Tulk.

  Incredibly, the Homeworld itself was gone. She could detect no sign in the modern universe that the Imperium had ever existed. It was possible that she was the only survivor, the last in the universe capable of bearing offspring, the final hope of her race. She thought of the Homeworld, once the center of a vast interstellar empire. Thousands of black starships, the gloaming skyreefs, the air-swimmers soaring over the cliffs of the Grand Abyss—all were gone.

  Watching and listening to the nearby aliens, she knew hate. Despite the calming effect of the hormones, she quivered with emotion. Here were the destroyers! Applying only the most minute and undetectable jets of thrust, she guided her ship toward the fourth planet. The key to the success of her mission would be absolute surprise combined with blinding speed of attack.

  Her mission was clear. The Imperium would be avenged.

  #

  On the surface of the fourth planet in the system, renamed Garm by the human colonists, a skald known as Garth huddled close to a tiny campfire that sputtered and popped, greedily eating the sparse fuel of spiny weeds he fed it. The weeds were all that grew on the sifting red sands.

  Garth squatted beside his fire in the depths of the region known as the Equatorial Desolation. In this region of the planet, the days were blazing hot, but the nights were bitterly cold. An hour went by and his fuel dwindled until he was forced to hunt for more scrub brush to burn. Shortly after midnight he spotted an unknown figure approaching along the highway.

  Garth was surprised. He had followed the perfectly straight ribbon of highway through the wastelands for days. He’d seen a few vehicles, but there had never been another person on foot. As the stranger drew near, Garth’s surprise was compounded when he realized the stranger was a fellow wandering skald.

  Garth hurried to place what wood he had managed to gather onto his fire. He added it all at once, rather than feeding it one stick at a time. The tiny flames flared up and brightened the scene.

  “Your rider is the great Fryx?” the stranger asked as he came into the firelight.

  “Yes,” said Garth. “Come and sit with me.”

  “I’m Zeke,” the stranger said.

  “I am known as Garth.”

  Zeke, a small skald with large ears and long fingers, sat beside him. “You are indeed blessed to carry one so exalted as Fryx.”

  Garth smiled slightly, trying to quell his pride. He added another twig to the campfire and in so doing moved slightly so that the red scarring that slashed across his face was more visible in the firelight. The stain was dramatic, and much more visible than scars most skalds bore. “The dictates tell us that it’s not proper for a skald to feel prideful.”

  “Ah!” Zeke exclaimed, beaming. “I see now the mark of a great rider. The way it encompasses your eyes with livid red is truly striking,” Zeke leaned forward so that he could better examine the red stain in the flickering light of the campfire. “Only the oldest and the largest of the riders leave such a blaze of glory upon mounting their skalds. Now I understand why my rider has driven me to find you. Surely, I have much to learn from the skald who bears Fryx.”

  “It was more good fortune than anything else that brought Fryx to me,” said Garth, trying to sound humble.

  “But tell me, communication must be easier for you than I, how does it go with Fryx?”

  “True connectivity with one’s rider always takes time. Today I started playing at sunset, and still I continue to play and listen, hours later in the depths of night.”

  Zeke nodded. “It goes much the same with my rider. Tell me, brother Garth, why did you come out here to this forgotten corner of this uninteresting planet?”

  “I seek what all skalds seek: truth through communion with my rider. I have wandered over much of this star system.”

  “You are young yet.”

  “Yes, I’m still serving my pilgrimage. I’ve visited many of the works of man and nature, and recently entered the Desolation seeking solitude. The Desolation at night allows the closest intimacy and communication with one’s rider.”

  “I beg your forgiveness for disturbing you,” said Zeke seriously.

  Garth waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.

  “So you follow the great crossing highway northward,” Zeke said, “while I follow it southward. I came here for no reason of pilgrimage, however. My rider drove me here with the express purpose of finding you and Fryx.”

  Garth stared into his fire for a moment, watching the tiny yellow tongues of light. He produced his skire. “Perhaps it’s time we let our riders have free rein with us.”

  Zeke nodded and solemnly produced his skire as well. Together, they began to play.

  Soon Garth was in complete harmony with his rider. His fingers danced over the reed instrument with fluttering bird-like motions. He heard only the warbling music and felt only the cold night air. The desert climate gave his skire an excellent clarity of tone. Each thin note seemed to last for an eternity.

  After a time there came a welcome scratching in his brain, indicating that Fryx was active and willing to commune. Garth opened his eyes long enough to glance over at Zeke. The man played his skire fervently; his fingers danced madly over the tiny holes and his cheeks puffed out. Sweat bathed them both despite the cool night breezes.

  Zeke stopped playing his skire and made a croaking sound, as if trying to speak.

  Garth looked at him in surprise.

  “We must. We must perform the dance. Our riders must communicate. Micyn wishes to commune with the great Fryx.”

  Garth felt a stab of pain in his skull. His jaw locked up, then loosened slowly. He groaned and whispered, “Fryx agrees to the communion.”

  Setting aside their skires, the two men rose up and clasped hands. Together they let go the reins of their minds and their riders took over. Their sandaled feet shuffled in the red sands.

  An unknowable time passed. Garth was so deep in communion that he didn’t notice the roadtrain until it was almost too late. In their trance state the two men had danced right out onto the highway. What finally impinged on Garth’s consciousness wasn’t the thunder of the roadtrain’s man-sized tires, or the glaring brilliance of its headlamps, or the vibrating ground that tingled his legs. What awakened him was the sense of it. The roadtrain had a presence, a malevolent spirit of its own. A spirit of combustion, rubber, steel and glass. A spirit of noise, speed, heat and grinding metal. It was a legendary behemoth with burning hydrogen in its belly and hot machine oil for blood.

  The roadtrain was making its run from Space City on the east coast of New Amazonia to the Slipape Counties on the northern tip of the continent. It had crested the mountains early this afternoon and the driver had spent all evening making good time on the endless stretch of flat desert.

  The headlights searched for Garth. Clear plastic lenses focused brilliant halogen suns and burnt purple stains into the back of his eyeballs. They stabbed through the crisp Desolation night like lasers cutting paper.

  Garth threw his arm up to defend his gaping pupils and drew in a ragged breath. The roadtrain wasn’t on him yet, but it was close, less than a kilometer off and coming very fast. Out here the only speed limits were in the guts of the driver and the number of squeeze-bottles of beer he had set between his legs along the way. He stepped back from Zeke, who was still lurching and shambling in an odd, inhuman fashion. He scrambled away and ran until he felt the reddish sand splash over his feet. He had taken to camping near the arrow-straight rolling carpet of tarmac because it retained heat better than the sand did. Traffic was a rare event this deep in the Desolation, and usually didn’t pose a problem.

  His intimacy with his rider broken, he suddenly felt the discomforts of his weary body. The desert night had stolen the heat from his bones. The void between the big shimmering stars overhead had leeched through the insulation of his heavy cloak and sucked the warmth from his thin sunburned body underneath. The nights in the Desolation were as cold and dark as the days were broiling hot and bright.

  His eyes could focus a bit now in the glare the gargantuan truck was putting out from its six headlights. He realized that Zeke was about to be pulverized by a stampede of thundering black tires. Snaking out his tongue to slide over cracked lips he took a step back toward him.

  NO! His rider shouted in their shared mind, a command that physically stopped the skald in his tracks. His leg muscles spasmed and went rigid.

  Then the roadtrain was on top of them, and he realized that his rider had been right. He hadn’t judged the speed of the oncoming monster of metal correctly. It moved too fast, and he would have been killed. As it bore down on him, the driver gave a single deafening blast on the horn, then for a moment the behemoth was right there, close enough to touch. Far, far up in the lofty cab sat the dim outline of the driver, and Garth thought he could feel the man’s curious eyes on him for a blurred fraction of a second. Then a powerful wall of air hit him and knocked him flat upon the sands. A hundred huge black tires thundered by, roaring as they greedily pulverized Zeke, grinding him into the tarmac and coating his corpse with black rubber and grease.

  Instantly the blinding apparition was gone, shrinking to a set of glowing red trailer lights in seconds.

  Garth grieved briefly over the rider Micyn and the skald Zeke. He performed what ceremony he could over the cooling mess on the highway.

  Troubled, Garth spent the rest of the night trying to regain communion with his rider, but it was no use. Only the threat of death seen through Garth’s eyes had gotten such an extreme emotion through loud and clear into Garth’s consciousness. The frightening encounter with the roadtrain had caused Fryx to withdraw again. He played his skire for a while anyway, hoping to coax Fryx out of his mood, but to no avail. His rider refused to respond, remaining an inert cool presence hugging the nerves at the base of his skull. After a time he gave up on his music—without his rider’s participation, there was no magic in it.

  Sighing, the skald wrapped himself tightly in his cloak and settled down on his bedroll. He wondered about the strangeness of the night and grieved for Micyn and Zeke. What had Micyn come so far to communicate to Fryx? He doubted that he would ever know. He recalled the instant of direct communication he had experienced. Fryx had actually spoken to him, commanding him to halt. Few skalds could boast of such a moment. If the night had not turned into such a horror, he might have felt exalted at the interference of his rider.

  Lying with his hands behind his head, Garth gazed at the heavens. Spread out above him were the nearby stars of the Listak Cluster. Gopus was below the horizon, but due to rise in the next hour or so. Hanging over the South Pole were the twin stars Thor and Loki, Thor a red giant that fed an endless stream of super-heated plasma to the vampirical white dwarf Loki. Down low on the eastern horizon, half-blocked by the Parched Spikes, was a liquid waver of stars that formed the constellation Taurus, seen at an oblique angle. Garth knew that Sol and Old Earth lay somewhere beyond, too dim for the naked eye to pick out.

  He stared up at the brilliant Desolation stars, seemingly closer and brighter than anywhere else on Garm. As he fell asleep, it occurred to him that the riders had been discussing something about the stars. He recalled the sensation of fear and dread, he had associated it with the roadtrain before, but now he wasn’t so sure. The two riders had been discussing a danger from the beyond Garm, of that much he was certain.

  #

  With a lurch, Fryx forced Garth’s body to sit straight up. His legs were wrapped in a dusty bedroll. Everywhere stretched the sands of the Desolation. The rising sun was a lurid red glow on the horizon and the heat of it was already in the moistureless air. Standing in an awkward, stiff-kneed fashion and clumsily fixing sun-goggles on Garth’s face, Fryx scanned the landscape through Garth’s bloodshot eyes.

  The nothingness of the Desolation met the optical organs, sending impulses down the optical nerves and into Fryx’s worm-like tangle of interrupting tendrils. A flat stretch of slightly reddish sand reached up to meet the horizon in all directions, fringed with the hazy images of barren mountains. Those mountains were the Parched Spikes, the wardens that kept this vast wasteland a prisoner. Beyond were the steamy jungles and the oceans of Garm.

  Gathering up Garth’s meager belongings, Fryx rammed a wad of salty meat into the skald’s mouth and added two mouthfuls of body-warm water from the tube-like waterskin that encircled his hips. Chewing mechanically, he set the body into a lurching march, heading back the way they had come. Fryx was in luck; the nearest settlement was only forty miles away.

  Long legs swung forward, striding fast, eating up the ground. Wide eyes stared ahead, almost unblinking in the blinding morning sun and the wind-whipped sand.

  Driving Garth’s body like an ailing power-walker until it all but collapsed, Fryx managed to hitch a ride up into the Parched Spikes, entering the section of the range that formed the southern border of the Desolation. Soon he reached the summit of the high passes among the sheer cliffs and precipitous spires of the Parched Spikes. Here, the man he was driving with stopped at what was apparently the sole service-station between the Desolation and New Amazonia to fill the car’s tanks with hydrogen.