“I already have,” another voice answered. Colin looked up as a second man stepped in through the far study door, and his normally mild eyes were emerald fire as he took in the blond-haired newcomer’s midnight blue uniform, the Fleet issue boots, the heavy energy gun slung from one shoulder.

“About damn time,” the first voice grunted. “All right, you bastard—” the energy gun prodded “—on your feet. Over there against the wall.”

Grief and horror mingled with the red fangs of bloodlust, but even through that boil of emotion Colin knew he must obey—for now. Yet even as he promised himself a time would come for vengeance, an icy little voice whispered he’d made some terrible mistake. His captor’s sneering cruelty, the carnage that had claimed his friend’s entire family… None of it made any sense.

“Turn around,” the voice said, and Colin turned his back to the wall.

The one who’d been doing all the talking was of no more than medium size but stocky, black-haired, with an odd olive-brown complexion. His eyes were also odd; almost Asiatic and yet not quite. Colin recognized the prototype from whence all Terran humans had sprung, and the thought made him sick.

But the other one, Anshar, was different. Even in his fury and fear, Colin was puzzled by the other’s fair skin and blue eyes. He was Terra-born; he had to be, for the humanity of the Imperium had been very nearly completely homogenous. Only one planet of the Third Imperium, had survived its fall, and the seven thousand years between Man’s departure from Birhat to rebuild and Anu’s mutiny had not diluted that homogeneity significantly. Only after Dahak’s crew reached Earth had genetic drift set in among the isolated survivors to produce disparate races. So what was he doing in Fleet uniform? Colin’s sensors reached out and his eyes widened as he detected a complete set of biotechnic implants in the man.

“Pity the degenerate was so stubborn,” the first one said, jerking Colin’s attention back to him as he propped a hip against the desk. “But he saw the light when we broke his little bitch’s neck.” He prodded Harriet’s corpse with the muzzle of his energy gun, his eyes a goad of cruelty, and Colin made himself breathe slowly. Wait, he told himself. You may have a chance to kill him before he kills you if you wait.

“Of course, we told him we’d let the others live if he called you.” He laughed suddenly. “He may even have believed it!”

“Stop it, Girru,” Anshar said, and his own eyes flinched away from the butchered bodies.

“You always were gutless, Anshar,” Girru sneered. “Hell, even degenerates like a little hunting!”

“You didn’t have to do it this way,” Anshar muttered.

“Oh? Shall I tell the Chief you’re getting fastidious? Or—” his voice took on a silky edge “—would you prefer I tell Kirinal?”

“No! I … just don’t like it.”

“Of course you don’t!” Girru said contemptuously. “You—”

He broke off suddenly, whirling with the impossible speed of his implants, and a thunderous roar exploded behind him. The bright, jagged flare of a muzzle flash filled the darkened hall like lightning, edging the half-opened door in brilliance, and he jerked as the heavy slug smashed into him. A hoarse, agonized cry burst from him, but his enhanced body was tough beyond the ken of Terrans. He continued his turn, slowed by his hurt but still deadly, and the magnum bellowed again.

Even the wonders of the Fourth Imperium had their limits. The massive bullet punched through his reinforced spinal column, and he flipped away from the desk, knocking over the chair in which the dead girl sat.

Colin had hurled himself forward at the sound of the first shot, for he knew with heart-stopping certitude who had fired it. But he was on the wrong side of the room, and Anshar’s slung energy gun snapped up, finger on the trigger—only to stop and jerk back towards the hallway door as a heavy foot kicked it fully open.

“No, Sean!” Colin bellowed, but his cry was a lifetime too late.

Sean MacIntyre knew Colin could never reach Anshar before the mutineer cut him down—and he had seen the slaughter of innocents that filled the study. He swung his magnum in a two-handed combat stance, matching merely human reflexes and fury against the inhuman speed of the Fourth Imperium.

He got off one shot. The heavy bullet took Anshar in the abdomen, wreaking horrible damage, but the energy gun snarled. It birthed a terrible demon—a focused beam of gravitonic disruption fit to shatter steel—that swept a fan of destruction across the door, and Sean MacIntyre’s body erupted in a fountain of gore as it sliced through plaster and wood and flesh.

“NOOOOOOOO!!!” Colin screamed, and lunged at his brother’s murderer.

The devastation the slug had wrought within Anshar slowed him, but he held down the stud, shattering the room as he swept it with lethal energy. Instinct prompted Colin even in his madness, and he wrenched aside, grunting as the suppresser on his back took the full fury of the blast.

It hurled him to one side, but Girru and Anshar hadn’t realized what the suppresser was, and no Terran “knapsack” could have absorbed the damage of a full power energy bolt.

Anshar released the trigger stud and paused, expecting his enemy to fall.

But Colin was unhurt, and long hours spent working out against Dahak’s training remotes took command. He hit on his outspread hands and somersaulted back at Anshar while the mutineer gawked at him in disbelief. Then his boots slammed into Anshar’s chest, battering the energy gun from his grip.

Both men rolled back upright, but Anshar was hurt—badly hurt—and Colin forgot Dahak, the Imperium, even his need for a prisoner. He ignored the dropped energy gun. He wanted nothing between Anshar and his own bare hands, and Anshar paled and writhed away as he saw the dark, terrible death in Colin’s eyes.

Fury crashed through Colin MacIntyre—cold, cruel fury—and one hand caught a flailing arm and jerked his victim close. An alloy—reinforced knee, driven with all the power of his enhanced muscles, smashed into the wound Sean’s bullet had torn, and a savage smile twisted his lips at Anshar’s less than human sound of agony.

He shifted his grip, wrenching the arm he held high, and reinforced cartilage and bone tore and splintered with a ghastly ripping sound. Anshar shrieked again, but the sound was not enough to satisfy Colin. He slammed his enemy to the floor. His knee crashed down between Anshar’s shoulders, and he released the arm he held. Both hands darted down, cupping the mutineer’s chin, and his mighty back tensed, driven by the biotechnic miracles of the Fourth Imperium and the terrible power of hate. There was a moment of titanic stress and one last gurgling scream, and then Anshar’s spine snapped with a flat, explosive crack.

Colin held his grip, feeling the life flow out of his victim in the steady collapse of Anshar’s implants, and the killer in his soul was sick with triumph … and angry that it was over.

He opened his hands at last, and Anshar’s face struck the floor with a meaty smack. Colin rose, scrubbing his hands on his jeans, and his eyes were empty, as if part of himself had died with his brother.

He turned away, smelling wood smoke, plaster dust, and the stench of ruptured bodies. He could not look at Cal’s slaughtered family, but neither, though he would have sold his soul to do it, could he take his eyes from Sean.

He knelt in the spreading pool of his brother’s blood. The energy gun had mangled Sean hideously, but the very horror meant death had come quickly, and he tried to tell himself Sean had not suffered as his ripped and torn flesh said he had.

Their long-dead mother’s eyes looked up at him. There was no life in them, but an echo of Sean’s outrage remained. He’d known, Colin thought sadly, known he was a dead man from the instant Anshar began to raise his own weapon, yet he’d stood his ground. Just as he always had. And, just as he always had, he had protected his younger brother.