“Which means I’m right about fleeing,” I said. “On all accounts, we must reach and close the portal.”

  “By the Great Maker,” Venturi whispered. The Lokhar straightened, and he began to issue terse orders. I kept the link open, to listen in, and the admiral did not close it from the other side, so I watched the progress of the battle.

  Our three main lasers concentrated on the second wave of approaching moth-ships. Then a second swarm of tiger fighters appeared. The melee turned bloody as hell, with charred and tumbling fighters breaking apart from the slicing graviton beams. Then an enemy vessel exploded. I don’t mean it burst apart in slow motion. This time, the moth-ship disappeared in a titanic flash that radiated its blast outward in a perfect sphere. Two hundred tiger fighters simply vaporized within it. Another two Karg warships also took direct hits. That left two more, which the lasers finished in short order.

  From farther away wore moth-ships came, though, several hundred more in an unbeatable mass.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I told Venturi. “It’s time to scram.”

  I don’t think the tiger heard me. He was too busy rattling off orders and listening to officers’ reports.

  I felt a bump, though. N7 and Ella swayed at their stations. We must have engaged the main engines. It seemed the Supreme Lord Admiral had some sense after all.

  Thirty seconds later, Venturi roared in anguish. He shot to his feet, and he spoke in a low voice. I don’t know what he said, but soon we felt another bump.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted at Venturi. “What’s the plan?” I looked at the enemy on the main screen. I think we’d slowed down.

  The Lokhar slumped back into his command chair. Then he straightened, and there was fire his yellow eyes. “It is time to fight,” he told me.

  “There are too many Kargs for us to defeat.”

  “I must do my duty,” Venturi rumbled.

  Another look at the main screen showed me Dreadnought Glory by itself, badly wounded, with a ruptured hull along its spine. Vapors billowed out of it into hyperspace. It must not have accelerated with us. Maybe it couldn’t.

  “We cannot desert Glory,” Venturi told me. “The Kargs damaged the outer engines. But given time, we can repair the ship.”

  I studied the main screen. Hundreds of Karg moths-ships accelerated toward the stricken dreadnought. Those hundreds represented a much greater mass than our flotilla. If less than twenty moths had done that to one dreadnought…

  “Admiral Venturi, you must listen carefully. The Lokhars cannot win this head-to-head fight.”

  The tiger glared at me, and he expanded his mighty chest. “You do not know the Lokhars. We never abandon our own.”

  I knew that wasn’t true. I’d seen Lokhars flee before. Heck, I’d seen it in the strategy session chamber. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to remind him of that. I had to use reason—no. That likely wouldn’t work either. There was only one way to appeal to Venturi.

  “I would ask you a personal question, Admiral,” I said.

  “Is this another of your insults?”

  “I am a savage and a barbarian. You’ve told me so more than once. But even I know where my ultimate duty lies.”

  “What are you implying?” Venturi asked.

  “We have one goal: to close the portal. If we do, our universe survives and the Lokhars live. If we fail, we all perish. You can save life, Admiral Venturi, but only if you reach the portal planet.”

  “No!” he said. “I can do that only if I can reach the Forerunner artifact in the portal planet. For that, I need Glory’s legionaries.”

  “Yes, you must reach the artifact, and that will take us humans. Do you suppose I foresaw this battle?” I shook my head. “That would be absurd to think so. Then what caused me to insist that all the humans remain aboard Indomitable? Why, the Creator must have moved my tongue.”

  Venturi glared at me with red-rimmed eyes.

  “We have what we need to win, Admiral. If we all perish here, though, it’s over. You must allow Glory the privilege of holding the Kargs at bay while we make our escape into hyperspace.”

  “I have two more dreadnoughts to hurl into the fray. Orange Tamika will survive.”

  “You could be right,” I said. “Yet let us consider the odds. Forget that a fraction of their strength already did this to us. If you lose the coming battle, all is lost for our universe. If you lose Defiant in the fight, it makes our odds of battling down into the portal planet even less than before. If you lose Indomitable and Defiant survives, you have lost the humans the oracle said you needed for success. No, Prince Venturi, you have one duty. That is to reach the portal planet and land us on it. Make our deaths in hyperspace worth something by defeating the Kargs for good.”

  “Do you realize how many Kargs will be at the planet if there are already three such Karg snowflakes out here?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. But it didn’t matter now. “Do you truly believe in the Creator?” I asked.

  “How dare you ask me that?”

  “I am asking. Do you?”

  “Yes!” he roared, pounding the arm of his chair.

  “Then know that He chose you for this mission for a reason. That reason wasn’t to die uselessly. Maybe only you out of all the Lokhars have the sense of duty strong enough to leave Glory to her fate. We have our own to meet. And we can’t win everything here, but we can if we win at the portal planet.”

  “I despise you, Commander Creed. I hate and loathe you to the depth of your being.”

  “That seems to be the way of things,” I said. “I tell the truth too often, and no one really likes to hear it. Well, what’s it going to be, Admiral?”

  The big Lokhar bowed his head. I didn’t envy him. It was one thing to know what to do. It was quite another to leave your friends behind to face certain death. This would weigh on his Lokhar soul for the rest of his life.

  Admiral Venturi stood up, and he quietly issued what must have been the hardest commands of his life.

  Shortly, I felt a bump again. We watched the main screen, as the moth-ships converged upon Glory. Beams began to rage as we fled from the fight. We had a greater destiny than to die today. Before the stricken dreadnought perished, it faded from sight and then from the range of our short-ranged radars.

  There was no such thing as long-ranged radars in hyperspace. The flotilla now had two dreadnoughts instead of three. We had a little less than seven million tiger legionaries and one third fewer tanks, fighters and attack-craft. We also knew that the Kargs would have overwhelming numbers at the planet.

  The success of our mission seemed even more hopeless than before.

  -21-

  I began watching battle video like a Big Ten football coach. Sometimes, N7 joined me. Sometimes, Ella and Rollo sat down. We took notes, compared them and talked late into the night.

  It would have been good to capture a Karg. It would have been better to get hold of their weaponry. Maybe if we could have captured several moth-ships, and they turned out to be regular vessels with crews, we could have slain the Kargs. Then we could have used the moth-ships as scouts.

  All we had were these videos of a losing space battle. So let’s see, from that and from previous data we could figure they had more ships, more troopers, better weapons and already held onto the property. What did we have? We had stout hearts and determination, oh yeah.

  The days passed. We avoided Karg vessels. Each of them headed for the weak spot into our space-time continuum. Did that mean they had a way to break into our universe without the portal planet? If that was true, even if we closed the portal, there were going to be a ton of Kargs in our space-time continuum. I didn’t like to dwell on that, though. One problem at a time was my dogma.

  After one lengthy session of note comparing, and after Rollo had left, Ella turned her chair around, draping her arms over the back. We were in my makeshift office and had watched the battle for the thirteenth time.

  I’d called thirteen my lucky number since grade school. I guess I’d already been contrary then. I recall one of my teachers telling the class to pick a number between one and one hundred. I chose thirteen. The teacher stopped the contest right then. He told us he’d met his wife at table thirteen in college: his lucky number. Anyway, I’d won the right to pen a letter to the President about something the class had done a project on. I can’t remember what the letter was about, since I never wrote it. I’d won the contest but disliked the idea of writing a letter. I’d been eleven at the time, interested in eleven-year-old things like hide and seek, riding my bike and playing sandlot football.

  My luck has always been a mixed bag.

  In any case, Ella let her arms hang down over the back of the chair. I noticed she wore a silver ring on her middle finger. It lacked a gem, being a simple band.

  “I think we have learned all we can from the video,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe we’re missing something obvious.”

  “Do the Lokhars know more about the Kargs they aren’t telling us?” Ella asked.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” I said, “the Lokhars aren’t talking to me much anymore.”

  “I will have to ask Ulmoc.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Oh,” Ella said. “I shouldn’t have said that. Ulmoc is the birth name of the Esteemed One.”

  “Are birth names sacred or something?” I asked.

  “Very much so,” Ella said. “A foe can use it to cast evil magic against you if they know your birth name.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Some things aren’t making sense here. First, the Esteemed One has learned to trust you enough to give you that kind of info?”

  “He has.”

  “Secondly, Lokhars believe in magic?”

  “Why should that surprise you?” Ella asked. “They believe in the Creator.”

  “You still don’t?”

  Ella cocked her head. “Why would you think I’ve changed my mind?”

  “Ah…all the time you’re spending with Ulmoc,” I said.

  “I am a scientist. I study where and when I must to achieve my goal. The Esteemed One holds an artifact.”

  “Have you seen it yet?”

  Ella shook her head.

  “Anyway,” I said. “Magic is quite another thing than belief in the Creator.”

  “I profoundly disagree,” Ella said. “Both are rank superstitions.”

  “I don’t get it. How can you fool the Esteemed One with an attitude like that?”

  “I am a scientist. I do what I must.”

  I grinned. “Tell me, Ella, where did you learn to playact like an acolyte? That’s not something that just happens.”

  She drew her arms up to grab the top of the chair. While biting her lower lip, a far-off look drifted into her eyes. “I grew up in Siberia,” she said.

  “I remember you telling me.”

  “My father was Russian Orthodox.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know what that meant.

  “I thought you were an amateur historian,” she said.

  “One, I don’t know everything. Two, what does Russian Orthodox have to do with anything?”

  “Russia became the home of the Eastern Orthodox Church,” Ella said. “The Byzantine Greeks sent missionaries to the Slavic tribes long ago. The Orthodox Christians also warred against the Monophysite Christians in the Middle East. The Copts in Egypt belonged to what the others thought of as a heretical sect.”

  “So?” I asked.

  “When the Muslims came into Egypt, the Coptic Christians liked them better than the Orthodox priests who tried to tell them how to worship. Coptic hatred toward the Orthodox helped the Muslims overrun the land.” Ella shrugged. “In any case, when the Turks finally stormed Constantinople, the Russian tsar and his priests believed that Moscow had become the third Rome. The second one used to be Constantinople.”

  “I know about that,” I said. “The Byzantine Empire was often called the East Roman Empire.”

  “To answer your original question,” Ella said. “I grew up learning Orthodox rites. Once I went to school in Moscow, I learned about the Coptic Christians, the Catholics and Protestants. It was simply another point showing me the foolishness of belief in God.”

  “I don’t see why,” I said.

  “If God is real, why would He allow all these differences?”

  I shrugged. “Not being God, I don’t have any idea. But I do know that people are different. Why not different churches for different folks? Some people like doing their services one way, others another.”

  “I do not accept your theory,” Ella said. “People believe in magic, God and other superstitions. The same is true for the Lokhars. I fooled my father for many years, and he knew me much better than Ulmoc does. It is easy to playact again in the name of science. Soon, now, I will see the Forerunner artifact.”

  My thoughts had already drifted from her preoccupation. I wanted to figure out how to defeat the Kargs on the portal planet.

  “It’s really crazy we’re not coordinating better with the Lokhars,” I said. “We’re probably only going to have one shot to do this. We need to get it down to a science.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  I dimmed the lights, and I turned on the machine. Ella left, and I resumed watching the battle, trying to find an angle, trying to figure out the Kargs by how they’d fought the dreadnoughts.

  I awoke to the sound of graviton rays. I’d fallen asleep on the cot I’d installed. I’d also looped the video some time ago so I didn’t have to restart it. As I raised my head, I saw a moth-ship’s eyes glow like a lava pit and then the beams burned outward. The Kargs—

  Before I could finish my thought, N7 entered. “It is urgent, Commander. Admiral Venturi demands an immediate conference with you.”

  “Pipe it in right here,” I said.

  “No. He wants a face-to-face meeting.”

  That brought my head up. “You’re kidding, right? Venturi swore an oath that he’d never—”

  “In my estimation, the admiral is terrified. Something has happened to change everything.”

  I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear my head. I needed some coffee. “When and where does he want to meet?” I asked.

  “He will come to our quarters with a three-man escort. He asks you do the same.”

  “Done,” I said. “Do you have any idea what this is about?”

  “I do not, Commander. He is waiting outside our corridors. He desires an immediate conference.”

  “Right. Now where’s some coffee?”

  “I will bring some,” N7 said.

  “Don’t bring that scalding stuff you drink. I need regular coffee.”

  N7 nodded brusquely. “You must hurry, Commander. The admiral is urgent.”

  I didn’t like this insistence. What did it portend? Nothing good, I bet. “Okay. Let’s go, and get me the coffee.”

  Ten minutes later, I sat at the same long table as before. I had N7, Ella and Rollo with me. A haunted Admiral Venturi entered the room. Doctor Sant had joined him, together with two extremely tough-looking tiger guards. They wore orange chevrons on their collars and bronze biceps bands, showing that these had thicker arms than the others did.

  I sipped from a cup, black coffee that put dirt on my tongue. I still felt foggy, but with an unnatural alertness.

  “I’m glad we can talk, Admiral,” I said, rising to my feet.

  Venturi stopped short. His eyes were red, and if ever the tiger looked hangdog, this was the moment. The normally crisp uniform was rumpled, the military cap sat at an awkward angle and he seemed dazed and confused.

  “Commander Creed…” he gestured helplessly. “I have broken my solemn oath to meet with you here. I am foreworn and useless now. But what I have just seen and heard…” He shook his head. “We are doomed. We are all doomed, everything. The end has come.”

  “You mean the Kargs?” I asked, with urgency in my voice. “Have they found us?”

  “It is much worse than that,” he said. The tiger lurched and almost stumbled to his chair, collapsing into it.

  I sat. I’d never seen any of them like this. What had happened?

  Venturi produced a glass chip. “The Kargs are the Great Enemy. It is unbelievable. The ancient writ spoke of this time, but I never realized until Abaddon spoke to us that it was so. How could any of us have known?”

  I waited. He was obviously stricken to the core. He’d have to tell this at his own speed. All the same, I’d wish he’d hurry up for once.

  The raspy tongue appeared, and Venturi aimed his red-rimmed eyes at me. “I must play the message. Perhaps you’ll understand then. Perhaps you can…” The Supreme Lord Admiral shoved the glass chip into a slot. He pressed a button, and a holoimage appeared. “The Kargs sent us a message,” Venturi whispered. “This is it.”

  “Did they beam it directly to you?” I asked.

  “The message was broad-beamed,” he said. “I do not think they yet know our precise location. It does not matter, though.”

  “Hello, Lokhars,” a gravelly voice said.

  The holoimage was fuzzy like bad analog TV reception. There was the outline of a possible head within the grainy fuzz. Those might have been shoulders and possibly red glowing eyes. For a second, I thought I could see. Then the image distorted again.

  “We captured your dreadnought, the one you laughably call Glory,” the Karg said. “Some fought, as useless as the pitiful gesture proved. Let us show you their fate.”

  The fuzzy distortion quit. I saw a Lokhar strapped down onto something. A knife appeared held in a metallic tentacle, and it committed unspeakable atrocities that made the tiger captive rave. Blood and gore, and torn organs tossed onto the floor—it was a wretched and ugly sight.

  “Some died even harder, mewling like wounded kittens,” the Karg said in his ear-hurting voice. “All provided us with limited sport, as you too will provide us when we find your pathetic ships.

  “I now know you by name, Supreme Lord Admiral Venturi, of the Avenging Arm of Lokhar. You belong to Orange Tamika and are here to halt our invasion. That is ironic, don’t you think? As your frail ship has given us the means we’ve sought for jumping the last lap into your space-time continuum.”