“There,” Rim-Sin said, while pointing at the cylinders, “is the answer.”

  Ningal blinked several times. “The soldier fetuses?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Ningal faced Rim-Sin, confusion evident. “Wait, slow down. I don’t follow your logic.”

  “The People are smart enough,” Rim-Sin said. “Well, maybe that’s not even true. You and I are geneticists. We recognize the limitations of the People. The common ruck is too weak and too stupid to win against the Vims. But what if we improved the race? What if we designed a stronger, smarter race that could fight to the bitter end no matter what?”

  “You’re talking about genetic manipulation?” asked Ningal.

  “Exactly,” Rim-Sin said. “We take the soldier fetuses and infuse them with better DNA. We make them smarter and maybe even stronger. Then, the soldiers will be harder and tougher. The next time the Vims come to exterminate us, they will face a soldier race of the People. The new and improved soldiers will fight better with whatever weapons the artificers can invent for them.”

  Ningal blinked several times, as she envisioned a problem. “If we do that, will…will the soldiers be People anymore?”

  Rim-Sin laughed. “Of course they will be People. They’ll have our DNA.”

  “Does that mean soldiers are People now?”

  “Ah,” Rim-Sin said shrewdly. “That’s a penetrating question. If soldiers are People, how can we expunge them so easily when they get old? That’s you’re real question, isn’t it?”

  Rim-Sin was so smart, and he could ask the difficult questions. He was a true Realist.

  “That is my question,” Ningal said.

  Rim-Sin nodded. “Can you see now why an expunger is fitter to lead than any other? I have thought through these questions for many years. To answer your question: yes, it was wrong of us to expunge the old soldiers. It was unethical and immoral.”

  “But you did it anyway,” Ningal said.

  “Yes,” Rim-Sin said. “I did so because I knew I must survive at my post. I knew that only I held the key to the People’s survival. That meant I must survive any indignity in order to climb the ladder of success. Can you understand that?”

  “…a new People,” Ningal said, trying to envision the process.

  “A better People that will not whimper as they gutter out and die in the lonely night,” Rim-Sin said harshly, “but a People that will prevail over everything.”

  Ningal stared at him. He was so hard, so realistic. She must do the same. “The Elders won’t agree to this.”

  “No,” Rim-Sin said. “I know that. Thus, we must follow the example of your grandfather and do it ourselves.”

  “Modify the soldiers in my care?” Ningal said, suddenly understanding.

  “Yes,” Rim-Sin said in a ringing voice.

  Ningal turned away as doubt began to assail her. Did Rim-Sin truly love her, or did he merely use her? Had he plotted all this out before he ever carried her into the nook? She regarded him. He was so strong and ruthless, and he had such fire in his belly. She was drawn to that. If she said no to all this…would he leave her?

  Ningal swallowed uneasily. Was she being weak by doing what he wanted? She’d betrayed her husband. Would fate now turn around so Rim-Sin betrayed her in time?

  “Ningal?” Rim-Sin said.

  She looked up at him.

  He stepped forward and bent onto one knee. He reached out and grasped her right hand. He implored her with his eyes. “Will you marry me, my love?”

  “Yes,” Ningal said, as her heart raced.

  Rim-Sin stood, and he kissed her hard, hugging her tightly against him. “We’ll get married in a week,” he said. “First, though, we must begin our work in here.”

  “It will take years to figure out how to do it.”

  Rim-Sin shook his head. “Everything is ready. We can start the first injections tonight.”

  “Now?” breathed Ningal, beginning to tremble at the audacity of this. Could she really do it?

  “We’re saving the race,” Rim-Sin told her. “Trust me. This is the right thing to do.”

  After a moment, Ningal nodded even though this was wrong. She felt that. But she wanted to marry Rim-Sin more than anything. And if he was right—maybe he was—she would be like her Grandfather Sargon the Assassin.

  Whatever the case, under Rim-Sin’s guidance, Ningal began to alter the latest patch of fertilized soldier eggs. Surprisingly, Rim-Sin had brought the genetic material with him this night.

  What did his preparedness imply?

  Ningal refused to think about it. She was getting married to a real man. That was the important point. That was the key. Right?

  -12-

  It turned out far easier to modify the soldier eggs and fetuses than Ningal would have imagined. Firstly, no one suspected that anyone would tamper with such a thing. Secondly, the idea of enhancing soldiers’ intelligence beyond that of the Akkad’s crew was nearly inconceivable. This actually might be one of the genius moves of Rim-Sin.

  As the new fetuses developed through the months, readying to come to term, Ningal realized it would be obvious to the puppy trainers that this batch was many times more intelligent than the old had been.

  It was part of the idea that soldiers weren’t People but closer to animals that the handlers called them puppies instead of babies. It was a small thing, but it was actually huge.

  Ningal and Rim-Sin didn’t stop with one patch, but kept improving each set of newly fertilized soldier eggs.

  “We want to inundate the system,” Rim-Sin told her one day.

  “How can we fool the soldier trainers?” Ningal asked nine days later.

  They sat at home in their tiny suite of compartments. Rim-Sin sat at a small desk, working on his ubiquitous tablet, figuring out something. He was always doing that.

  Ningal was curled up in a chair, watching a holo-vid. She paused the show as she asked her question.

  “What was that?” Rim-Sin asked, not looking up from his work.

  Ningal repeated the question.

  Rim-Sin looked up at her, finally setting aside his tablet. His features had become deadly serious.

  Ningal felt a wave of fear. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No,” Rim-Sin said. “I’ve wondered how long it would be for you to figure out the main problem.”

  “The trainers?” she asked.

  Rim-Sin shook his head. “Soon, far too soon, the authorities will realize what we’ve done. There will be less than one hundred modified soldiers by that time. Worse, they’ll be babies instead of adults. If the Elders are wise, they’ll eliminate all our work.”

  “Kill the modified soldiers?” asked Ningal.

  “Exactly,” Rim-Sin said.

  “Will they know we modified them?”

  “I would think so.”

  “Will they eliminate us, too?” Ningal asked in horror.

  “That is the question, isn’t it? Yes. I would think they’d eliminate you and me as well.”

  A sharp cramp twisted in Ningal’s stomach, forcing a wince from her. Rim-Sin was different from her former husband. Then, she’d been bored. With Rim-Sin, she was often frightened. Tonight, she felt terror.

  “Our actions have sealed our fate,” Rim-Sin said, no doubt driving the point home with his brutal logic.

  “Then…why did we do this?”

  Rim-Sin nodded. “You ask the prime question. It’s one of the reasons I chose you to be my mate.”

  “We’re doomed?” asked Ningal. “That’s what you’re telling me?”

  Rim-Sin’s laughter erupted, a harsh, unsettling echo in the confined space. “No, we’re far from doomed, my dear. The plan is moving just as I envisioned it many months ago.” He thrust up to his feet. “We’re the pioneers of the People’s ultimate victory. Without us, this voyage is doomed. With us, we will eventually defeat the Vims. In fact, I believe we shall hunt them down and destroy them forever, although that will be millennia into the future.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know,” Rim-Sin said. “Here is the point. Do you have the stomach to make the hard choices?”

  Ningal swallowed. She used to think she did, at least while married to the weakling archivist. Married to Rim-Sin—his harsh ideas often startled her. Then he would propound them endlessly. Sometimes, she wished he could relax and talk about happy things.

  “No,” Rim-Sin said quietly. “I understand what you’re saying. You’re beautiful and highly intelligent, but you lack the hardness one needs to lift a race from obscurity into galactic greatness.”

  Despite her fear, Ningal smiled faintly.

  Rim-Sin’s eyes were beginning to shine, as they did sometimes when he became passionate about an idea. Sometimes, Ningal wondered if Rim-Sin had a touch of madness, or more than a touch. She also knew, however, that genius and madness were often kissing cousins.

  “Early in my career as a geneticist,” Rim-Sin said as if talking to a crowd, “they put me in the expungement wing of the gene labs. Most consider that as a degrading position.”

  Ningal knew he was right even as his passion swept her along.

  “I expunged the old and weak soldiers,” Rim-Sin said, with his eyes shining brighter. “I did the hard task, the dirty thing that no one really wanted to think about, let alone talk about it.”

  Ningal had heard more about expungement that she ever wanted to hear. It was one of his favorite topics. Could his years there expunging old soldiers have warped his mind? Ningal was surprised she’d never asked herself this before.

  “What?” Rim-Sin said sharply.

  Ningal’s head jerked and she smiled again, wider than before, forcing the thought from her mind. Rim-Sin was uncanny at times about understanding what she was thinking. He was so intense all the time, too. Did the two things go hand in hand?

  “Your time in the expungement wing gave you greater insights,” Ningal said.

  The effect of her words was startling, as his eyes almost popped outward as they shined with a mad light. Then, he grinned and laughed in a more normal manner. He nodded, however. This was his belief as well.

  Ningal had parroted it to please and to divert him from her new, hidden insight, the one about his possible warping.

  “I learned harsh lessons in expungement,” Rim-Sin said. “In the end, it showed me the method to achieving our People’s ultimate victory.”

  “Yes?”

  “We cannot fail at our great task, my darling,” Rim-Sin said. “We must do whatever we must to achieve this step in the People’s higher evolution.”

  “Guided evolution?” she asked.

  “Exactly,” he said, pointing at her. “In my youth, I had to deal with reluctant soldiers—I mean reluctant to die for the good of the ship. They would often plead with me. I had to learn how to reject their pleas. It taught me more about logic than anything else I’ve ever done.”

  Ningal nodded. He appeared to be settling down. That was good. She didn’t like it when he got that excited. Still, she wanted to know how they were going to avoid death for what they’d done to the eggs and fetuses.

  “I see the question in your eyes, my dear.”

  “You do?” whispered Ningal, frightened anew.

  “I have already created the answer to our dilemma.”

  Ningal shook her head. She didn’t know what he was saying.

  “I don’t know if you’re ready to hear it, though,” Rim-Sin said.

  “It is harsh?”

  “How could it be otherwise?” he asked. “It will bring us victory in the end, though.”

  “Because it will save the modified soldiers?” she asked.

  “And it will save us along with them. I still need to guide the new and improved People on the right path. Without me there, this will all be for naught.”

  Ningal scrunched her brows, trying to understand his hints.

  “Your grandfather’s action showed me the way,” Rim-Sin said.

  “Assassination?” she asked, startled.

  Rim-Sin nodded.

  “Who will you assassinate?”

  “Ah,” Rim-Sin said. “Why not wait, my dear. Let it be a surprise for you as well.”

  “Is that important?” she asked.

  Rim-Sin swiftly moved across the small room until he stood before her, looking down at her in the chair. Despite her fear, Ningal couldn’t resist his magnetic pull. She smiled, a complex mix of emotions, and opened her arms to him.

  “It must be a surprise,” he said, “in order to protect you.”

  “If you insist,” she whispered.

  Rim-Sin reached down and touched her face. “Soon,” he said. “Soon you will understand, and then you will comprehend my brilliance.”

  “I already do.”

  “No,” he said. “You do not, but you will. This I promise.”

  -13-

  The next few weeks proved difficult for Ningal. She was fraught with anxiety, fearing their secret would be uncovered. She feared even more the drastic measures Rim-Sin might take to conceal their actions.

  Whatever action he took would have to be big. Smart soldiers would be impossible to hide. Eventually—

  Ningal caught her breath one day in the birthing area of the gene labs, a sudden realization striking her. She inspected a set of unfertilized eggs under a microscope. It wasn’t what she saw that caused her to make the sound. She sat up, realizing that Rim-Sin would have to change everything about how things worked on the Akkad. There was no way, in the end, hiding what they had done. He wouldn’t have enough soldiers to defend them against the Elders. But that meant…

  Ningal scowled as she tried to pierce the fog of her thoughts. What wasn’t she seeing? There had to be a logical answer to this. It was likely a simple answer. Given what he’d said the other day, it would have something to do with the expungement wing of the gene labs.

  Ningal gasped again, and she shook her head. She had an idea as to what Rim-Sin might be planning. But it was so monstrous that she couldn’t accept it. She needed to speak to him and ask him straight. How would he react to that, though?

  Ningal swiveled in her seat and stared at a bulkhead. She didn’t know what to do. If only she could ask her grandfather. He was in stasis. Might there be a way to unfreeze him?

  Ningal squinted. She would begin working on a way to unfreeze her grandfather. Surely, if anyone had an answer to all this, it would be the Great Sargon, Chief Analyzer.

  It took three weeks before she managed to get an appointment with the scientists in the cryogenic region of the ship.

  Ningal would gain entrance to that area of Akkad in another week.

  Unfortunately, the infection began three days later. It hit those in the Akkad swiftly and brutally, passing from person to person so soon the entire vessel was down with the dreaded bug. Then People began to die. They didn’t die in small numbers, but in huge swaths. It was sickening and horrifying.

  The Elders held an emergency meeting while everyone else was confined to their quarters.

  Ningal and Rim-Sin were in the small suite. He sat at his desk, working on figures as if ultimate doom hadn’t struck the Akkad. She sat curled up in her chair, shivering with fear. When would she come down with the dreaded new bug?

  Finally, Rim-Sin set down his tablet. Without turning around, he said, “You’re making your chair squeak. You must relax so I can think.”

  Her head jerked up as she glared at the back of his head. “How can I relax when I’m probably next? We’re probably next.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said.

  “How can you be so calm about this? The People are dying. It’s over for the Akkad.”

  Rim-Sin turned to study her, his gaze piercing. “That anger…it’s just a mask, isn’t it? You think I engineered all this, don’t you?”

  “You mean the infection?” she said, her voice rising.

  “What else could I mean?”

  Everything Ningal had been thinking welled up and spewed from her mouth. “Are you a monster?”

  Instead of inducing rage, the question made Rim-Sin grin. “No. I’m a visionary, my darling.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  The grin disappeared. He cocked his head. “Do you want to die?”

  “No!” she shouted.

  “Then don’t worry. You won’t die for a long time, if even then.”

  That cut through her fear. It was such a strange thing to say, especially now. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m a genius,” Rim-Sin said. “I’m the greatest geneticist our People ever possessed. I have created a new and improved People. They will survive the Vims, and eventually hunt them down and do to them as they have tried to do to us. In the meantime, perhaps I can discover the secret to immortality. Perhaps I can make it so our cells never deteriorate and slay us over time.”

  “That isn’t possible.”

  “Of course it is,” Rim-Sin said.

  He was mad and a genius. Which part of him was the strongest? “What have you done?” Ningal said.

  “You mean to those aboard ship?”

  “What else could I mean?”

  Rim-Sin let out a deliberate sigh, raising his hand with the index finger pointed upward, signaling for her full attention. “First, never use that tone against me again. I will not abide it. Do you understand that?”

  Fear washed through Ningal. She nodded.

  “Say it,” Rim-Sin said.

  “I understand you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me my tone of voice.”

  “Yes,” Rim-Sin said. “I do.”

  “Is the infection of your making?” Ningal asked quietly.

  “Of course it is,” he said. “But don’t worry. I’ve made sure everyone who should survive received a modification injection. We need People to train the new soldiers. We need those to train the soldiers in flying the Akkad and maintaining the engines and other technologies.”

  “Everyone else is dying?”

  “How else can I insure our safety and that of our new People?” Rim-Sin said. “Those who would have killed us are now dying.”

  Ningal blinked several times, the weight of his words too much to take all at once. Finally, she asked in an agonized voice, “Was there no other way?”