All Colin would ever know was that he felt a sort of merciless empathy—not pity, but something like understanding—for that fleeing vessel. He and Jiltanith were invincible, and they were vengeance. He bared his teeth and called up his air-to-air weaponry as the firestorm’s white heat dulled to red astern, and Jiltanith hurled them out over the night-dark Pacific in pursuit.

His targeting systems locked. A command flicked through his feed to the computers, and two more missiles launched. They were slower than mass missiles, homing weapons with their speed stepped down to follow evasive maneuvers, but this time they carried warheads: three-kiloton, proximity-fused nukes. His eyes were dreamy as his electronic senses watched them all the way in, but in the moment before detonation a third missile came scorching in from the west. He’d almost forgotten Geb and Tamman, and the southern fighter probably never even realized he and Jiltanith weren’t alone.

There was no debris.

Jiltanith needed no orders. She swept on into the west, reducing speed, losing altitude, and their drive strength coasted back down to wrap invisibility about them once more. Colin checked his sensors carefully, and not until he was certain they had evaded all detection did she turn and flee homeward into the north while he switched on the fighter’s com and activated the fold-space implant he had dared not use in over a month. He felt an odd little “click” inside his skull as Dahak’s receivers recognized and accepted his implant’s ID protocols.

“Category One Order. Do not reply,” he sent at the speed of thought. “Authentication Delta-One-Gamma-Beta-One-Seven-Eight-Theta-Niner-Gamma. Priority Alpha. Stand by for squeal from this fighter. Execute upon receipt.”

He closed his implant down instantly, praying that the almost equally strong pulse from the fighter com had hidden it from Anu’s people. The coded squeal he and he alone had pre-recorded and tacked into the middle of the strike report lasted approximately two milliseconds, and Dahak had his orders.

And then, at last, there was a moment to relax and blink his eyes, refocusing on the interior of the cockpit. A moment to realize that they had succeeded … and that they were alive.

“Done,” he said softly, turning to look at Jiltanith for the first time since they launched their attack.

“Aye, and well done,” she replied. Their gazes met, and for once there was no hostility between them.

“Beautiful flying, ’Tanni,” he said, and saw her eyes widen as he used the familiar form of her name for the first time. For a moment he thought he’d gone too far, but then she nodded.

“Art no sluggard thyself … Colin,” she said.

And she smiled.

Colin MacIntyre sat in Nergal’s wardroom and shuffled, hiding a smile as Horus bent a hawk—like eye upon him across the table while they waited for Hector’s next report.

Battle Fleet’s crews had gone in for a vast array of esoteric games of chance, most of them electronic, but Horus disdained such over-civilized pastimes. He loved Terran card games: bridge, canasta, spades, hearts, euchre, blackjack, whist, piquet, chemin de fer, poker … especially poker, which had never been Colin’s game. In fact, Colin’s major interest in cards had been that of an amateur magician, and Horus had been horrified at how easily a full Imperial who’d learned to palm cards with purely Terran reflexes and speed could do that … among other things.

“Cut?” Colin invited, and shook his head sadly as Horus made five separate cuts before handing the deck back.

“What’re your losses by now?” he mused as he dealt. “About a million?”

“ ’Tis more like to thrice that,” Jiltanith said sourly, gathering up her cards and not bothering to watch his fingers with her father’s intensity.

“Ante up,” he said, and chips clicked as father and daughter slid them out. If they’d really been playing for money, he’d be a billionaire, even without the ill-gotten wealth Horus had demanded he write off after he realized Colin had been cheating shamelessly. He grinned, and Jiltanith snorted without her old bitterness as she saw it.

She still wasn’t really comfortable with him, but at least she was pretending, and he was grateful to Hector. The colonel had torn long, bloody strips off both of them when he saw the scan record of what they’d gone into, but his heart hadn’t seemed fully in it, and Colin had seen the glint in his eye when Jiltanith called him “Colin” during their debriefing. He himself had feared she would retreat into her old, cold hostility once the rush of euphoria passed, but though she’d stepped back a bit and he knew she still resented him, she was fighting it, as if she recognized (intellectually, at least) that it wasn’t his fault he was what he’d become. Her presence at the card table was proof of that.

He wished there had been a less traumatic way to effect that change, but he hoped the colonel was pleased with the way it had worked out. The military arguments for assigning them to the same flight crew had been strong, but it had taken courage—well, gall—to put them forward.

“I’ll take two,” Horus announced, and Colin flipped the small, pasteboard rectangles across to him.

“ ’Tanni?” He raised a polite eyebrow, and she pouted.

“Nay, this hand liketh me well enow.”

“Hm.” He studied his own cards thoughtfully, then took one. “Bets?”

“I’ll go a hundred,” Horus said, and Jiltanith followed suit.

“See you and raise five hundred,” Colin said grandly, and Horus glared.

“Not this time, you young hellion!” he growled. “I’ll see your raise and raise you a hundred!”

“Father, art moonstruck,” Jiltanith said, tossing in her own hand. “Whyfor must thou throw good money after bad?”

“That’s no way to talk to your father, ’Tanni.” Horus sounded pained, and Colin hid another smile.

“See you and raise another five,” he murmured, and Horus glared at him.

“Damn it, I watched you deal! You can’t possibly—” The old Imperial shoved more chips forward. “Call,” he said grimly. “Let’s see you beat this!”

He faced his cards—four jacks and an ace—and glowered at Colin.

“Horus, Horus!” Colin sighed. He shook his head sadly and laid out his own hand card by card, starting with the two of clubs and ending with the six.

“No!” Horus stared at the table in shock. “A straight flush?!”

“ ’Twas foredoomed, Father,” Jiltanith sighed, a twinkle dancing in her own eyes. “Certes, ’tis strange that one so wise as thou should be so hot to make thyself so poor.”

“Oh, shut up!” Horus said, trying not to smile himself. He gathered up the cards and glared at Colin. “This time I’ll deal.”

“Damn them! Breaker take them to hell!”

The being who had once been Fleet Captain (Engineering) Anu leapt to his feet and slammed his fist down so hard the table’s heavy top cracked. He stared at the spider-web fractures for a moment, then snatched it up and hurled it against the battle-steel bulkhead with all his strength. The impact was a harsh, discordant clangor and the table sprang back, its thick Imperial plastic bent and buckled. He glared at it, chest heaving with his fury, then kicked the wreckage back into the bulkhead. He did it several more times, then whirled, fists clenched at his sides.

“And you, Ganhar! Some ‘intelligence analyst’ you turned out to be! What the hell do you have to say for yourself?!”

Ganhar felt sweat on his forehead but carefully did not wipe it away as he fastened his eyes on the center of Anu’s chest. He dared not not look at him, but it could be almost as dangerous to meet his gaze at a moment like this. Ganhar had assisted Kirinal in running Anu’s external operations for over a century, but the newly promoted operations head had never seen Anu quite this furious, and he silently cursed Kirinal for getting herself killed. If she’d still been alive, he could have switched his leader’s wrath to her.