She paced awhile, letting them bicker among themselves, then interrupted. "You may save your arguing and scheming for later. For now I only want to hammer upon one theme: that this is not going to be the simple bloodduel some expect. It is going to be darkwar, sisters, and darkwar as has never been seen in all the history of silthdom. The prize will be the future of the race. There will be many deaths. I hope most of those will be among our enemies. That is all I have to tell you now. Go. Prepare your hearts and minds. We will begin when we have twenty-five voidships rested and ready and willing."

She turned her back upon them and stood staring out across the hills of the world everyone but she accepted as hers.

Marika delayed till there were thirty darkships ready. And there was the promise of more to come. During the wait she visited High Night Rider and the Redoriad most senior, and arranged for a special role for the great voidship.

The day came when she felt she was stalling. She took her fears by the throat. Next morning, before dawn, the darkships began lifting, unhurriedly, and in some cases reluctantly. Perhaps she had waited too long. Too many of the silth had had time to reflect on what they might face. The fever of the hunt had begun to fade. Many were going on now only because they did not wish their orders to be cut out of the plunder.

Marika went up last-counting daggers.

The attack force numbered twenty-five ships, including her own and the Redoriad High Night Rider. The others would form a second wave, a reserve. High Night Rider would return for them and any who joined them too late for the first wave.

The darkships assembled around High Night Rider, forming the greatest concentration of voidships ever seen. That fact alone awed the silth. Only the mirror project had ever drawn more, and those were never gathered in a single drop of space. Marika peered at them, so many titanium daggers glistening in the light of a foreign sun, and she was awed herself. Once again she faced the fact that she was remarkable. Who else, with a word, could have drawn so many here? And so many of the mighty, at that?

Who was working the mirror project?

That could be set back years if the Serke had the perfect trap set at the far end of the Up-and-Over.

Marika closed her eyes, shunned all doubts, opened to the All, reached with a general touch, felt other minds grow aware. She opened her eyes again and fixed her gaze upon the first milestar of their journey. See with me. This is our first target star. I will lead off. Come you behind me one by one. We will assemble again before continuing.

She felt a murmur of assent, like the soft rush of water over sand. They, too, had put all doubts and reservations aside.

I am going.

She gathered her ghosts and went.

Blackness. Then the reality of stars again. She was drifting down toward the heart of the system. She felt for a foreign presence and found none. Good.

A darkship came through. So long, she thought. Were they really that slow? She touched the Mistress of the Ship to let her know where she was, and that the system was clear and safe. She repeated that over and over while the others gathered, till High Night Rider had come through.

The ships finally completed reassembly. Nearly four hours had passed since her own arrival. That was not good. It meant an erratic appearance at the business end of the quest too.

There was a way for darkships to travel in concert, though it was used seldom, and never had been tried with so many voidships. Still, she was tempted to try. If they exited the Up-and-Over in no more orderly a manner next passage, she would, third time.

She repeated the general touch, picturing the next target star and went, and came out well ahead, and again had satisfied herself that the system was untenanted before the next ship appeared.

Again it took four hours to gather them preparatory to the final jump, and this time yet another hour for each of the senior baths to pass fresh draughts of the golden fluid. She wanted no crew to arrive in need.

We face the final leg, Marika sent. This time, to avoid the disorder we have suffered thus far, I will mesh all Mistresses in a general touch before we go into the Up-and-Over. We will go it together, as a lot, traveling with the slowest. Open to me, and to the All. It is time to go.

There were protests. Marika ignored them, Open to me, she sent. And Prepare your souls. It is time for the final jump. She reached out and collected ghosts, waiting for others to do the same. She was amazed that they should be so slow, should have to labor so hard. For her it was a task done almost without thought.

At last they were ready. At last even the most reluctant surrendered to control. She gathered them in a tight formation, nearly touching, surrounding her, and sent, Here we go.

She fired one last arrow of touch at the Mistress of High Night Rider, and went.

Behind her, High Night Rider also disappeared, but bound back to the base world, to assemble and guide the second wave. II It was a dragging passage, making the pace of the weakest Mistress. Marika became restless. It gave her too long to become concerned about what might await her.

She began to question her conviction that she stalked the sun of the world where the Serke were hiding. She had no concrete proof that her target was the Serke star. Suppose she had been set upon a false trail? How discredited would she be if the star proved to be just another blank milestar on the secret pathway?

And there was Bestrei. Always in her thoughts there was Bestrei. She was not eager to meet the Serke champion, old as she must be now. Bestrei was three times victorious in darkwar over the strongest challengers of her time.

And there were all those surprises desperate meth might prepare ... But the Serke could not expect a raid in such strength. Could they? Would they not expect her to come alone, thinking she, as most silth would, would want to claim the prize for herself?

She found a part of her counting the time, flashing away too swiftly for all it ran so slowly. She crouched, as though to offer a smaller target.

Time ran down. Ran out. Her will wavered as the last second approached ... She let go.

A star flared into being. The disorientation was strong because she caught echoes of that suffered by other Mistresses of the Ships. She wrenched herself out of touch, got a grip on herself, gasped in awe the moment she had herself fixed in space and time.

They had come out of the Up-and-Over within spitting distance of a world, a greenish-blue planet shrouded in cloud ... There! Rising.

I have it! she sent. Coming over the horizon. I sense silth. Let us move. She pushed her darkship forward. Others followed as they regained their composure. The formation stretched and became ragged.

She felt the alarm rise ahead, the terror spread as lashes of touch whipped from her target to the world below, and into the depths of the system. She followed those touches and learned that she had come out of the Up-and-Over well inside a picket maintained by two darkships. Down on the world itself she detected a huge base beside a river. Already meth had begun evacuating farms and factories in panic.

The Serke had done well, Marika thought. Their courier flights must have been collecting meth on the homeworld. How else to explain the numbers she sensed? They could not have bred their workers here.

She faced the approaching object, which had to be the alien ship.

And she recoiled in awe.

Nothing made ought to be that huge.

It was a great ripped and rent thing half a mile long. A hundred High Night Riders would fit inside it.

Touch brushed Marika. She responded, I have come, rogues. It is time for you to pay your debts.