“Cronus,” he said.

  “Shut your yap. Don’t conjure with his name.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Lugo. “Conjure? That’s magic. I’m aboard a spaceship.”

  “Different perceptions, you idiot,” someone said. “Don’t get caught up in semantics.”

  “Why are you calling me an idiot?”

  The ghostly human form rushed toward the vast bulk. He entered a field, and some of the horror of the void departed. Then, he realized that he was rushing down onto Cronus. Ugh. This was a vile place. But he couldn’t help himself, sucked down into the planet, if indeed this was a planet and not something entirely different.

  He floated through giant, pulsating corridors. The walls pulsated because Cronus was a living thing, perhaps even a biological entity, at least, after a fashion.

  “What am I doing here?” Lugo wailed. “I want to go back.”

  “Quit your crying,” the being, a Sister of Enoy he now realized, told him. “I need your help, and it’s galling that I have to come to you for it.”

  “I have no idea what you’re—”

  The tug became a terrible, irresistible pull, yanking him through smaller and smaller corridors. Finally, he squeezed through a tiny opening into a pulsating cell. A flame creature flickered there. She used flame hands to manipulate a panel.

  “Kree?” he asked.

  The flame turned around. She had two hot coals for eyes.

  “You’re a Sister of Enoy.”

  “How perceptive of you, Lugo.”

  “How do you know my name? Oh, right, this is a dream.”

  “Are you truly that dense? Of course, this isn’t a dream. I’ve drawn you here through my Phantasm Inducer. You’re the only one in the human crew the inducer could sense and influence. I have to warn Hawkins. Maybe he can warn the Commander Zeta he spoke about before. That means Hawkins has to warn Enoy.”

  “Warn them about what?” asked the ghostly image of Lugo.

  “The one I will not name has recaptured the Dandelion of Enoy. Oh. This is going to take too long. The dark one is even now attempting to use the null-splitter. I adjusted it earlier, but he might torture me enough so I’ll tell him how to fix it. With the null-splitter—”

  “Cronus will enter reality,” Lugo said, understanding.

  The flame looked around the cell in horror. Then, she shot him an accusing glance. “Don’t say his name,” she hissed. “It could draw him to us.”

  “How?”

  “That doesn’t matter. Just trust me, it can.”

  “I want some facts.”

  “Fine! He can hear his name, especially as we’re communicating through the Phantasm Inducer.”

  “That’s the machine you’re manipulating?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. The Sisters of Enoy are not telepathic in the sense you’re thinking. But we can use devices to duplicate the strange art.”

  “I see...”

  “Don’t become smug. We know more about the process than you can imagine.”

  “How did Cronus capture your ship?”

  “Don’t say his name,” she pleaded. “You have to repeat my message to Hawkins. The dark one could come through into reality. That will be a disaster for everyone, maybe even for the AIs as well.”

  “That’s a good thing, then,” Lugo said.

  “Do you really think so?”

  At that point, Kree’s flame weakened, and the light grew dim in the cell.

  “No, no,” she wailed. “It’s too soon. You stupid fool, by naming him, you’ve drawn him here. Fly, Lugo, fly. Get back to your body and warn Hawkins. You must go at once before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late,” grim-voiced Cronus said.

  At that point, Lugo’s ghostly form turned and fled, racing through pulsating corridors, seeking to leave the planet-sized body. He veered one way, another—

  “Worm, I can see you.”

  Lugo cried out in terror, flying faster yet. He exited the great esophagus, popping out of the planet-sized creature. He raced upward, zooming for the edge of the reality field. A force raced after him. Lugo looked back and seemed to see a giant ghostly tentacle reaching for him.

  “No!” Lugo howled, using everything he’d learned in the service of the Kames. The giant ghostly tentacle grabbed at him, but he beat it to the edge of the reality field.

  “You can’t get away from me that easily, worm.”

  Lugo wasn’t listening. He raced through the void, attempting to pierce the veil from this side—

  He started to go through because his body called to his dreaming, questing, unconscious mind.

  “Don’t say a word about me, worm, and you might live.”

  Lugo gave the intellect of Cronus the finger. Then, he zoomed out of the void, back into time and space, and toward his sleeping body, knowing he had to talk to Hawkins right away.

  -12-

  With a faint cry, Lugo shot upright on his cot in his chamber aboard the Nathan Graham. He was soaked with sweat. So were his blanket and sheets. Disorientation struck. He didn’t know where he was. He had been, had been…

  He didn’t know where he’d been. That disturbed him. The creepy feeling caused his spine to tingle. It was dark in here, pitch black, and something about that unnerved him.

  “Lights,” he said.

  Lights came on in his room. He exhaled with relief. The room was a mess, with crumpled clothes and shoes lying everywhere. Still, the lights made it all better. He didn’t like the dark, not after, not after…

  He couldn’t remember.

  Lugo rose with a groan and shuffled to the restroom. Why was he so sore? It felt as if he’d been weightlifting tons, running for kilometers. He paused, cocking his head. Wasn’t he supposed to tell someone something? Hadn’t he just been having a nightmare? Why couldn’t he remember it?

  He thought about that for a second and shrugged, kept walking and reached the sink. He turned on the tap and cupped his hands under the cold water. He lowered his face and bathed his face with water. That brought a little more wakefulness.

  He straightened and looked in the mirror. He had dark circles around his eyes and his skin sagged as if he was an old man. That was weird. What had caused such an unsightly transformation? Could the nightmare really have been that bad?

  Instinctively, he knew it had been. He was forgetting for a reason. He looked at himself again. This was crap, man. He used to be the fittest person he knew. Ever since he’d learned about his empathic abilities—

  Lugo shivered as he stopped thinking about it. Well, he tried and failed. He had felt so alone since the start of this voyage. Coming out of the void, he’d hoped to be mentally reunited with the Kames. That hadn’t happened. His mind was empty, on its own, and he did not like that.

  He almost shivered again, but he used to be a tough guy, a real fighter. He remembered some of his old upbringing. He recalled that people used to shrink back when he entered a room. It was just like Kree shrinking back from—

  “Cronus,” he whispered, as understanding hit home.

  Saying the word seemed to kick apart a wall in his mind. The dream came rushing back into his consciousness. Only, it hadn’t been a dream, but reality. He had seen those things, talked to Kree and fled Cronus.

  Lugo did look into his eyes again in the mirror. They were wide with shock and understanding.

  “Damn,” he whispered.

  Cronus was back, had killed Zeno, captured Kree of the Flame and the Dandelion and was trying to use a null-splitter to break into reality. He had to warn Hawkins. He had to do it right away, even if that meant Cronus coming through on his threat to hurt him badly.

  Lugo whirled around, heading to the closet for some clothes. He had to tell Hawkins on the double before it was too late to stop the monster.

  -13-

  Back in the void, Cronus seethed, uncertain of the correct course of action.

  He’d grown tired of using the humanoid simulacrum in the Dandelion. Luckily, he had checked up on the Sister of Enoy. She’d actually drawn a thought entity to her from time and space.

  He’d almost caught the little nuisance, but the thought entity had broken out of the void presumably—

  “Ah,” Cronus said.

  It meant using the simulacrum again, but he could do it easier on his real bulk.

  He moved through his pulsating corridors as the slimy green humanoid. It was suited in size to Kree’s energy being. He chuckled as he approached her cell, knowing that this unnerved the Sister of Enoy.

  He caused a portion of the cell wall to disappear.

  Kree of the Flame backed against the other side, watching him as she trembled. No. That was just her flame being flickering.

  “Hello, Kree,” he said in his deep voice.

  “Cronus,” she whispered.

  “You’ve been a bad girl.”

  The top portion of her flame nodded.

  “You know what I do to bad Sisters of Enoy?”

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “Ah. Look at you. Attempting to maintain your courage. I like that, Kree. I like that because it is so much more fun breaking an entity that puts up a struggle. That shows she cares. Breaking someone like you is fun.”

  “Please,” she whispered.

  He took a step, and stopped, looking up as if thinking about something. The simulacrum did not have eyes, just that obscene mouth Kree hated.

  “It looks as if you don’t want to play,” he said. “Is that true?”

  “I can tell you what you want to know.”

  He nodded.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How the null-splitter operates,” he said.

  “Ah… Zeno was the technician—”

  “I like that, your clever evasion,” Cronus said, interrupting. “It shows spirit. Let’s forget about the null-splitter for now. I’m not as interested in that, at the moment, as in knowing how a thought entity can pass through the void into time and space.”

  “You do?” Kree said.

  “Yes, I’m going to chase down Lugo. Care to save yourself some pain?”

  “I do. But I can’t tell you what you want to know.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Won’t,” she said.

  “Honesty. I like that, too. So—” He turned to go. His greater self could see Kree wilt with relief. That was perfect. He whirled back around, and lines of green power left his outstretched hands.

  Kree started screaming, and the girth of her organized being shrank considerably. Finally, the Sister of Enoy began babbling, telling him how to cross through the void in thought. It was harder than he’d realized. How had such a little worm like Lugo managed it?

  He hadn’t meant that as a real question, and was therefore surprised as Kree explained about the mechanism she and Zeno had built over the thousands of years.

  With a wave of his slimy hand, his power thrust Kree aside. He walked to the Phantasm Inducer. This little thing had allowed her to talk to those aboard the Nathan Graham the first time.

  Cronus didn’t like his prisoners doing anything without his approval, but she had brought about this wonderful turn of events. He would forgive her transgression.

  He also understood a little more about the genius of the Sisters of Enoy. That made Kree more dangerous than he realized. It also made her made more useful. She was broken—

  He would let her live a little longer.

  Ripping the Phantasm Inducer from the wall, the simulacrum carried it under one arm. The final wall of the cell reappeared after he tromped off. He would use the inducer to help his intellect break through and hopefully stop Lugo before the man activated Hawkins too soon.

  The simulacrum walked faster. Cronus wondered if he was already too late.

  -14-

  Jon was in a situational room with Gloria. They were on either side of a large map table. The map held a two-dimensional representation of the red dwarf system. Under every object—asteroid, AI cybership, siege-ship, Main 54, buoy and sensor—was a negative or positive number. Negative was below the dwarf-star-system plane and positive above. The red dwarf star did not have a number, as it was at zero.

  Jon and Gloria both watched a tiny black object on the map, the representation of the insertion craft that held the Centurion, Walleye and Bast Banbeck. The object inched toward Main 54. The great AI seemed oblivious to the black-colored vessel. The Main was busy devouring more metallic asteroids, growing itself.

  “Imagine planet-sized ships like that throughout the galaxy,” Gloria said quietly.

  “I have,” Jon said. “It gives me nightmares.”

  Gloria nodded. “Masses of AI ships growing, ever growing. It’s such a daunting process, especially compared to the Confederation.”

  Jon shrugged.

  One of her eyebrows lifted. “Do you really believe that you can defeat such a fantastically huge empire of death machines?”

  “I don’t worry about that part,” Jon said. “What else are we going to do? It’s fight or die. I accept that, so I fight.”

  “It feels so hopeless, though.”

  “It’s not.”

  “I wish I had your optimism.”

  Me too, Jon silently told himself. What else did his wife expect him to say? He was the Supreme Commander. If he didn’t feel as if humanity, as if Life had a chance, he should quit and step aside for the person who did believe. Since he was here, and since he did not intend to step aside, he was going to believe winning was possible. Ex-Premier Frank Benz had wanted him to flee. No. Fleeing was only a temporary solution.

  Jon shook his head. Defeatist thoughts weren’t going to help him.

  The insertion team could go in Main 54 and grab Sacerdotes. Afterward…maybe they could destroy the Main on their way out of the system. Maybe all the Nathan Graham’s Vestal missiles striking at five percent light-speed would begin a chain reaction of destruction in the Main. Jon would like to watch the Main die.

  He scanned the table map—

  The hatch to the large chamber slid up. A marine looked in. “Lugo Malagate would like a word with you, sir. He says it’s desperately urgent.”

  “Send him in,” Jon said.

  The marine hesitated.

  “Trouble?” asked Gloria.

  “Maybe,” the marine said. “The man looks frantic.”

  Jon’s hand dropped to his sidearm. He’d taken to holstering it, keeping it with him everywhere. “Let him in. I’ll be security in here for now.”

  “Yes, sir,” the marine said, disappearing from view.

  A moment later, Lugo staggered into the chamber. He wore boots, pants and a leather jacket. He’d forgotten to put on a shirt. His hair was in disarray and black-circled eyes made him look crazed. He was lean and muscular.

  “Lugo?” asked Jon.

  Gloria watched the Kames rep closely. She clearly didn’t trust the man.

  Lugo panted as he staggered nearer, licking his lips as if he really had gone over the edge. “Trouble, sir,” Lugo said. “I-I…”

  “Spit it out,” Jon said. “You said it was important. Well, what’s so damn important that you come here like this?”

  Lugo swallowed as if he had a lump in his throat. “Do you remember asking me once if I could feel Cronus?”

  “Do you sense him now?” Gloria asked sharply.

  “Uh-huh,” Lugo said. “He’s out there.” The Kames rep waved his right hand in a vague manner.

  “Cronus has entered the red dwarf system?” Jon asked, frowning.

  “No,” Lugo said, as if he was having trouble forming words. “H-He’s out there, in the void—across a reality rip from us.” He licked his lips and then brushed them with his right forearm. “Cronus is killing the Sisters of Enoy, or has killed them. He’s capturing the Dandelion or has captured it.”

  “You feel all this?” Jon asked, frowning even more.

  “I wouldn’t be saying these things unless I felt them strongly,” Lugo said. “I had a dream about this. I forgot the dream when I first woke up, but remembered it soon enough.”

  “You’re sure the dream was reality?” Gloria asked.

  Lugo stared at her as if he couldn’t understand the question.

  “You believe the dream is true?” Jon asked.

  “Yes!” Lugo shouted.

  “Don’t get excited,” Jon said. “So, Cronus is out there. What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “You don’t get it,” Lugo said, panting now. “Cronus is trying to use…use…” He groaned, clutching his head.

  Jon and Gloria traded glances. She gave her husband a significant look. He turned back to Lugo, and headed toward the man.

  “No, Jon,” Gloria said. “Don’t do that.”

  Jon stopped and looked back at her again.

  “There’s something dreadfully wrong with him,” Gloria said.

  Lugo moaned, clutching his head so hard that it looked as if he was trying to squeeze his brains out, or keep them in, maybe.

  “He…” Lugo panted. “He wants to use the null-splitter.”

  “Oh,” Gloria said. “Do you mean Cronus hasn’t found a way out of the void before this?”

  “I’m no expert,” Lugo whispered, “but yeah, that’s the feeling I got from him.” Still squeezing his head, the man stared at them. “Cronus desperately wants out of the void. He wants to kill you, Hawkins.”

  Jon nodded, and he glanced back at the map on the table. He twisted around and put his palms on the map. Cronus was on the other side of reality, trying to get over here. The Sisters had followed the Nathan Graham then. The Sisters must not have trusted him, or hadn’t trusted humanity.

  Jon chewed on the inside of his right cheek, thinking of ramifications concerning the mission.

  “Did you hear me?” Lugo shouted.

  “Jon!” Gloria warned.

  Jon whirled around. Lugo no longer clutched his head. The rep was charging him, and there was madness in his eyes.

  “Hawkins!” Lugo roared. “I’m going to incapacitate you and rape your wife while you watch. Then, I’m going to—”