“What?” Dax asked, perplexed by her words.

  “You were going to say that you think of me as your enemy,” Mu said.

  Renewed fear stabbed Dax. He had a terrible and sudden suspicion. “Are you reading my thoughts?”

  “Not exactly reading,” Mu said, “but that’s close enough.”

  Claustrophobia constricted his thinking. If they could read his thoughts…know exactly what he was thinking the moment he did so… It was time for contrition.

  “Great One,” Dax said, stepping closer and bowing at the waist before Venna. “I wish to reiterate that I appreciate your reassembling me. I want you to know that you will not regret this.”

  Venna didn’t respond but looked away as if bored.

  “If I’ve angered you—” Dax said.

  Mu raised a hand, stilling his speech. “It’s not so much that you’ve angered her, as your wishes will have little relevance in the coming days. You will do exactly as instructed.”

  “Of course,” Dax said, perplexed even more, “I’ll be happy to oblige. Secretly, in his heart, he raged, finding her arrogance unbearable. You’ll be the first to find a blaster in your face as I blow it apart.

  “What was that?” Mu asked mockingly.

  “What?” Dax said, his face showing contrition.

  “About a blaster shooting me in the face,” Mu said.

  Dax was appalled, his stomach clenching as he realized they were both staring at a computer screen on the table before them.

  Can the screen decipher what I’m thinking?

  “It’s not deciphering anything,” Mu said. “The screen shows us the words you’re secretly thinking. Yes, in fact, we are precisely reading your thoughts word for word.”

  Dax’s mouth opened.

  Once again, Mu smirked at him. “We have internally wired your brain so that your neural synapse impulses related to thoughts are projected onto this screen.”

  “How is that possible?” Dax asked, sickened.

  “In the same way as this is possible.” Mu picked up a small control unit and pressed a button. “Dance for us, Senior Dax.”

  A tingling sensation occurred at the base of Dax’s neck. Then he began to cavort, leap and twirl before them like a dancing fool.

  “Breakdance for us,” Mu said.

  Dax did exactly that, even though he’d never heard of the dance form before this. He twirled on his back with his legs in the air and twisted about. This was horrifying, as Dax believed that he sullied his dignity breakdancing before them like this.

  “Enough,” Venna said in a harsh voice.

  “You may stop.” Mu pressed the control device again.

  There was another tingling sensation at the base of Dax’s neck. The impulse to obey her vanished.

  Dax climbed to his feet, trembling. That had been degrading, among other things.

  “Oh, yes,” Mu said. “It was a great indignity. It’s funny, though, don’t you think?”

  You bitch, Dax thought to himself.

  “Naughty, naughty,” Mu said, shaking an index finger at him. “That isn’t the way to think of your dominatrix or gain our trust.”

  “My what?” he said.

  “I came up with the term ‘dominatrix’,” Mu said. “Do you like it?”

  “I don’t understand it,” Dax said.

  “I will explain the concept in a bit more detail. We’ve rewired certain processes in your brain. We’ve even given you a few…you may think of them as modifications.”

  “You mean interior Builder devices like you possess,” Dax said.

  “That is another term for them.”

  Dax felt his scalp. There was a former hairline fracture. A bio substance seemed to have resealed the incision.

  “You opened my skull?” Dax asked in horror.

  “I didn’t do it personally,” Mu said. “But specialists of ours have, yes.”

  “Enough,” Venna said, sounding irritated.

  Mu inclined her head to Venna before regarding him again. “You should know that we’ve been traveling, Senior Dax. I mean this saucer ship in particular. We have been using, well, can I show him, Great One?”

  Venna made a flickering motion with her gnarly, tree-bark fingers.

  Mu made several complicated gestures in the air. A holographic star map appeared before Dax. It showed red lines connecting one star system to another, a web of them.

  “These are hidden Builder pathways,” Mu said.

  “Don’t brag,” Venna said.

  Once more, Mu inclined her head to Venna.

  It seems she has to obey the hag.

  Both women stared at the screen and looked up sharply at Dax.

  “I’m sorry, Great One,” Dax said, understanding they had read the ugly thought. “I’m unused to hiding my thoughts, to not thinking. This is horrifying. My inner being is exposed to them.

  “That is true,” Mu said. “You would do well to remember that. Whatever you think, whatever you’re planning, I’ll know it here.” Mu tapped the screen. “If it isn’t me, someone else will be monitoring the screen so we’ll know what you’re thinking, sometimes before you think it.”

  Dax felt abject fear radiating in him. His cyber organ must have secreted calming agents, but it only partly helped. How can I escape these monsters?

  “You’re never going to escape,” Mu said. “You’re here to serve Spacer Third Fleet until the end of your days.”

  Venna cleared her throat.

  “What I mean to say,” Mu said quickly, “is you are here to serve the Great One. She is at the moment using the Spacer Third Fleet in her grander design.”

  Venna nodded.

  That conflict of interest will be my wedge, Dax thought.

  “You have no wedge,” Mu said. “But go on, think your thoughts. Let us know your intentions. It is most illuminating.”

  Two plus two equals four. Four plus five equals nine. Dax began mathematical computations in his head in order—that I won’t give away my thoughts.

  “But you’re giving them away, anyway.” Mu made a depreciative gesture. “It doesn’t matter what you do, but go ahead and do it. In the meantime, observe the holo-map.”

  Dax did.

  “Do you see the lanes between star systems?” Mu said.

  “They’re hyper-spatial tubes,” Venna said.

  “Thank you, Great One,” Mu said. “Do you see where the hyper-spatial tubes, the lanes in a way, connect the star systems?”

  Dax studied the holo-map and the indicated hyper-spatial tube route. Mu had highlighted it in red. The destination shocked him, as he recognized the star system. “The route leads to Leviathan’s Seventh Assault Fleet.”

  “Exactly,” Mu said. “One more jump will bring us there.”

  That struck him as incredible, and as an opportunity. “The Seventh Assault Fleet has fifty maulers.”

  “So you’ve told us in your sleep,” Mu said.

  Maulers were massive attack vessels of Leviathan. The Seventh Assault Fleet had painfully sent its maulers to this jumping off point. The star system was five hundred light years from Earth. But with the hidden Spacer hyper-spatial tube route—

  “Do you desire the Seventh Assault Fleet to attack Earth?” Dax asked.

  “No,” Mu said. “That isn’t the present plan.”

  “You don’t need to explain our strategy to him,” Venna said.

  “Forgive me, Great One,” Mu said.

  Once again, Venna fluttered her fingers as if with indifference.

  What can they be thinking? Dax wondered. The Seventh Assault Fleet will attack who Great Leviathan tells them and no other. They’re mad to go there.

  “You’re wrong about that,” Mu said.

  How can she possibly think otherwise?

  “You will most certainly find out,” Mu said.

  One hundred and sixty-two plus ninety-one, minus three hundred and ten equals… Dax computed math equations in his head as he asked, “Who do you want the Seventh Assault Fleet to attack?”

  Mu glanced at Venna.

  Venna barely nodded.

  “We’ll start with the paltry force Star Watch has sent to the debris-filled Paran System, including Maddox and his pesky spaceship, Victory.”

  Dax blinked with incomprehension. “I thought Maddox was immune to direct attacks.”

  “Your easily frightened grand strategists believed that,” Venna said. “I have far greater abilities than they, as I am a di-far like Maddox, but with even greater powers that I reclaimed from Ector.”

  Dax had heard that name. Oh. “You mean the planet originally holding the Phantasma Synth Crystals?”

  Neither woman replied.

  “I don’t understand,” Dax said. “You said one more jump brings us to the Seventh Assault Fleet. How many saucer ships did you bring with you?”

  “Three,” Mu said.

  “You don’t need to tell him,” Venna said. “In fact, I’m getting weary of your boasts.”

  Mu sat silently, perhaps in fear.

  “Never mind,” Venna said. “I didn’t say that to discourage you. Continue if you must.”

  Mu nodded before regarding Dax again. “We’re going there to speak with War Master Vane of the Seventh Assault Fleet.”

  Dax wrestled with himself. This was suicide. If he died in the next few hours…that wouldn’t help him. “Ladies, War Master Vane is Leviathan’s Space Force’s most aggressive commander. This is suicide.”

  “You’ve already told us,” Mu said.

  “I have? I don’t remember…” Oh. They must have extracted that during the operation when they inserted the modifications into me.

  “That’s very astute of you,” Mu said.

  Dax shuddered, hating yet again how Mu could read his thoughts. He restarted the mathematical equations, running through more and more complicated calculations, hoping to—I have to stop thinking.

  “But you are thinking,” Mu said. “You can’t stop. Isn’t that funny?”

  Dax began more difficult algebraic equations, hoping they would prove enough. He swallowed a lump, saying, “I don’t understand your plan. War Master Vane will never listen to you. He won’t be able to as the pickets will destroy the saucer ships and us in them when we first appear.”

  Venna chuckled.

  “Oh, I think Vane will listen,” Mu said. “The most interesting thing is that you’re going to be instrumental in this.”

  “How can you hope to convince Vane to come aboard the saucer ship? Dax asked. “He—”

  “On the contrary,” Mu said, interrupting. “We will go to his flagship.”

  “What?” Dax said. If I can make it there, I can escape there.

  “You may try to escape,” Mu said, “but I think you’ll find circumstances different from what you expect.”

  I don’t understand. Why is she telling me any of this?

  “So you’ll be ready,” Mu said, “so you’ll understand, and so you can tell us if there are any things we need to look out for.”

  Dax shuddered. He didn’t want to die, not to the pickets. “Do you know the call sign so the picket ships won’t obliterate the saucer ships the moment we appear in the star system?”

  “Yes,” Mu said. “But tell it to us again,”

  Dax did.

  “That is correct,” Venna said. “Your procedures worked,” she told Mu.

  Mu inclined her head.

  “One more jump. Let us make it.” Venna inhaled. “We’re about to change the course of the Orion Spiral Arm. We are about to change the course of everything.” Venna seemed to swell up like a striking cobra. “The masters of Ector will reshape the galaxy. This time, this time…” Abruptly, Venna closed her mouth and looked accusingly at Mu and Dax.

  What was that about? Dax thought.

  Neither Mu nor Venna replied, although his thoughts must have appeared on the computer screen before them.

  Dax bent his head, working harder than ever on mathematical complexities so he would no longer think about his ideas.

  -41-

  The three saucer ships entered the Zakym System, 500 light years from Earth. The three saucers approached a mass formation of fifty Imperial Leviathan Maulers and their picket ships.

  Each mauler was oval-shaped, measuring thirteen kilometers in diameter. Each was massive, the tonnage approximately 171.9 billion tons. This single assault fleet could potentially annihilate the entirety of Star Watch, as it had greater tonnage than all the warships of Star Watch combined.

  Even though Dax’s thoughts were in flux and his brain partly rewired, he remembered that there were six separate Leviathan invasion fleets in position to attack the Commonwealth. The Seventh Assault Fleet was the biggest, twice the size of the next biggest.

  Dax thought it madness that these Spacers believed they could control War Master Vane of Seventh Assault Fleet. It was lunacy to think that he, Dax, had any pull with Vane. For one thing, before the War Master began the invasion assault, he would need direct orders from Great Leviathan to begin. There was no way any of them could forge those.

  The three saucer ships approached the Seventh Assault Fleet as picket ships converged on them.

  Dax received a message to come to the bridge at once. He hurried down the corridors, longing for a blaster and for the cyborg trooper to join him. Both might help him escape this horrid captivity.

  If A equals nineteen and B is… Dax started a new set of algebraic equations to shield his thoughts.

  When Dax walked onto the bridge, he was stunned to see the cyborg trooper waiting for him. The trooper stood like a statue. He had some flesh but was mostly metal, graphite and sheath-protected muscles and tendons. When a trooper moved, he seemed more like a giant insect. This one wore a regulation Leviathan sidearm.

  Dax almost laughed with disbelief. He merely needed to give the signal, and the trooper could kill every Spacer on the circular bridge. Then Dax spied Mu and Venna.

  “Go ahead,” Mu said, “give the signal and see what happens.”

  “That’s my base imagination at work,” Dax said. “I don’t know why I would think anything so foolish.”

  “I know why,” Mu said. “You still have the vain hope of leaving our glorious service.”

  “Enough,” Venna said. “We have more important business at hand. Mocking him does nothing. Activate the cyber for service. Time and the pickets are pressing.”

  “Come here, Senior Dax,” Mu said, clicking a button on a handheld device.

  Abruptly, Dax stiffened and then marched to her in a robotic fashion. Dax still was able to think his own thoughts, but he couldn’t move his mouth or limbs because he thought to do so. He could not do anything by his volition but only through hers.

  “Don’t worry,” Mu said with derision, “I’ll feed you the needed words. Now, face the main screen. It is time to talk to War Master Vane.”

  Soon, the relatively puny saucer ships stopped before five picket ships, dwarfed by the vast maulers behind them. The assault fleet was assembled around a blue gas giant, one looking much like Neptune in the Solar System.

  A lean cyber appeared on the main screen. There was something haughty and frightening about him and his shiny red pupils. He wore a black uniform with silver embalms on thin shoulder boards.

  “This is War Master Vane,” he said. “Who dares to approach my fleet and ask to address me?”

  Dax found himself speaking to the War Master. He did not think the words. Instead, out of the corner of his eye, Dax saw Mu whispering into the hand unit. He then spoke her words. How did Mu know the correct phraseology and methods of speech, though? This was terrifying.

  Dax wanted to weep. He wanted to—he began working through mathematical equations, ones more difficult than ever. He strove to concentrate on the math problems, only half-listening and half-aware of what took place before him even as he spoke for the Spacers.

  Despite his concentration, Dax heard Vane say, “Your primary saucer ship may approach the flagship. It can then enter the hangar bay.”

  “Yes, War Master Vane,” Dax said. “Thank you, we shall proceed at once.”

  A second later, the main screen went blank.

  Mu must have pressed a switch.

  Dax almost collapsed, realizing that once again he could say and do what he wanted, probably within certain limits, though.

  “You are correct about the last idea,” Mu said.

  The main screen reactivated. It showed the primary saucer ship passing picket ships and heading into the formation of fifty maulers. The saucer ship seemed like a shuttle compared to them.

  Soon, the saucer ship headed for the great flagship, HSL Behemoth. A hatch rose on the hull. The saucer ship entered through the hatch into the great hangar bay. There were hundreds of fighters lined up in rows on the decks and others hanging from the ceiling like resting bats.

  The saucer ship floated toward and landed in a great cradle on the deck.

  “Now we will go to it,” Venna said.

  Mu waited with Dax beside her.

  “It will be just the three of us,” Venna said. “Are you ready, Senior Dax, for the meeting?”

  “I’m eager to do your will,” Dax said. He strove to hide the idea that he was going to escape their hideous service on the Behemoth and pay them back for all his indignities.

  Venna chuckled nastily.

  Hopelessness filled Dax as he strove to disregard it.

  Mu had an index finger hovering over a switch on her hand device. “Let’s go, Dax. You can keep your identity a little longer.”

  Venna inhaled. “This is a monumental moment. Let us proceed and make galactic history.”

  -42-

  The three of them exited the saucer ship and walked down ladder-like stairs to the deck of the huge hangar bay.

  There, on the deck, a battalion of cyborg troopers waited.

  “This way,” the group leader said.

  The cyborgs didn’t frisk them; instead, they fell in step, escorting them.

  They moved through the corridors of the gargantuan attack vessel. It was larger than most cities on any planet. Cyborgs filled it, cyborgs that would attack, destroy, and dominate. The mauler and its personnel were the coercive arm of Leviathan. The humans of the Commonwealth were soon going to learn a hard and bitter lesson.