It was bad enough for his Imperials, he thought, watching the dust-caked woman concentrate, but at least they had their biotechnics to support them. The Terra-born did not, and their primitive equipment required far more of pure muscle to begin with. But Horus had less than five thousand Imperials; barely three thousand of them could be released to construction projects, and the PDCs were only one of the clamorous needs Geb and his assistants had to meet somehow. With enhanced personnel and their machinery spread so thin, he had no choice but to call upon the primitive substitutes Earth could provide. At least he could lift in equipment, materials, and fuel on tractors as needed.

A one-man grav scooter grounded beside him. Tegran, the senior Imperial on the Escorpion site, climbed off it to slog through the blowing dust to Geb’s side and pushed up his goggles to watch the power bore at work.

Tegran was much younger, biologically, at least, than Geb, but his face was gaunt, and he’d lost weight since coming out of stasis. Geb wasn’t surprised. Tegran had never personally offended against the people of Earth, but like most of the Imperials freed from Anu’s stasis facilities, he was driving himself until he dropped to wash away the stigma of his past.

The cutting head died, and the power bore operator backed away from the vertical shaft. A Terra-born, Imperial-equipped survey team scurried forward, instruments probing and measuring, and its leader lifted a hand, thumb raised in approval. The dust-covered woman responded with the same gesture and moved away, heading for the next site, and Horus turned to Tegran.

“Nice,” he said. “I make that a bit under twenty minutes to drill a hundred-fifty-meter shaft. Not bad at all.”

“Um,” Tegran said. He walked over to the edge of the fifty meter-wide hole which would one day house a hyper missile launcher and stood peering down at its glassy walls. “It’s better, but I can squeeze another four or five percent efficiency out of the bores if I tweak the software a bit more.”

“Wait a minute, Tegran—you’ve already cut the margins mighty close!”

“You worry too much, Geb.” Tegran grinned tightly. “There’s a hefty safety factor built into the components. If I drop the designed lifetime to, say, three years instead of twenty, I can goose the equipment without risking personnel. And since we’ve only got two years to get dug in—” He shrugged.

“All right,” Geb said after a moment’s thought, “but get me the figures before you make any more modifications. And I want a copy of the software. If you can pull it off, I’ll want all the sites to be able to follow suit.”

“Fine,” Tegran agreed, walking back to his scooter. Geb followed him, and the project boss paused as he remounted. “What’s this I hear about non-military enhancement?” he asked, his tone elaborately casual.

Geb eyed him thoughtfully. A few other Imperials had muttered darkly over the notion, for the Fourth Imperium had been an ancient civilization by Terran standards. Despite supralight travel, over-crowding on its central planets had led to a policy restricting full enhancement (and the multi-century lifespans which went with it) solely to military personnel and colonists. Which, Geb reflected, had been one reason the Fleet never had trouble finding recruits even with minimum hitches of a century and a half … and why Horus’s policy of providing full enhancement to every adult Terran, for all intents and purposes, offended the sensibilities of the purists among his Imperials.

Yet Geb hadn’t expected Tegran to be one of them, for the project head knew better than most that enhancing every single human on the planet, even if there had been time for it, would leave them with far too few people to stand off an Achuultani incursion.

“We started this week,” he said finally. “Why?”

“Wellllllllll …” Tegran looked back at the departing power bore, then waved expressively about the site. “I just wanted to get my bid for them in first. I’ve got a hell of a job to do here, and—”

“Don’t worry,” Geb cut in, hiding his relief. “We need them everywhere, but the PDCs have a high priority. I don’t want anybody with implants standing idle, but I’ll try to match the supply of operators to the equipment you actually have on hand.”

“Good!” Tegran readjusted his goggles and lifted his scooter a meter off the ground, then grinned broadly at his boss. “These Terrans are great, Geb. They work till they drop, then get back up and start all over again. Enhance me enough of them, and I’ll damned well build you another Dahak!”

He waved and vanished into the bedlam, and Geb smiled after him.

He was getting too old for this, Horus thought for no more than the three millionth time. He yawned, then stretched and rose from behind his desk and collected his iced tea from the coaster. Caffeine dependency wasn’t something the Imperium had gone in for, but he’d been barely sixty when he arrived here. A lifetime of acculturation had taken its toll.

He walked over to the windowed wall of his office atop White Tower and stared out over the bustling nocturnal activity of Shepard Center. The rocket plumes of the Terran space effort were a thing of the past, but the huge field was almost too small for the Imperial auxiliaries and bigger sublight ships—destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and transports—which thronged it now. And this was only one of the major bases. The largest, admittedly, but only one.

The first enhanced Terra-born crewmen were training in the simulators now. Within a month, he’d have skeleton crews for most of the major units Dahak had left behind. In another six, he’d have crews for the smaller ships and pilots for the fighters. They’d be short on experience, but they’d be there, and they’d pick up experience quickly.

Maybe even quickly enough.

He sighed and took himself to task. Anxiety was acceptable; depression was not, but it was hard to avoid when he remembered the heedless, youthful passion which had pitted him in rebellion against the Imperium.

The Fourth Imperium had arisen from the sole planet of the Third which the Achuultani had missed. It had dedicated itself to the destruction of the next incursion with a militancy which dwarfed Terran comprehension, but that had been seven millennia before Horus’s birth, and the Achuultani had never come. And so, perhaps, there were no Achuultani. Heresy. Unthinkable to say it aloud. Yet the suspicion had gnawed at their brains, and they’d come to resent the endless demands of their long, regimented preparation. Which explained, if it did not excuse, why the discontented of Dahak’s crew had lent themselves to the mutiny which brought them to Earth.

And so here they were, Horus thought, sipping iced tea and watching the moonless sky of the world which had become his own, with the resources of this single, primitive planet and whatever of Imperial technology they could build and improvise in the time they had, face-to-face with the bogey man they’d decided no longer existed.

Six billion people. Like the clutter of ships below his window, it seemed a lot … until he compared it to the immensity of the foe sweeping towards them from beyond those distant stars.

He straightened his shoulders and stared up at the cold, clear chips of light. So be it. He had once betrayed the Fleet uniform he wore, but now, at last, he faced his race’s ancient enemy. He faced it ill-prepared and ill-equipped, yet the human race had survived two previous incursions. By the skin of their racial teeth and the Maker’s grace, perhaps, but they’d survived, which was more than any of their prehistoric predecessors could say.

He drew a deep breath, his thoughts reaching out across the light-years to his daughter and Colin MacIntyre. They depended upon him to defend their world while they sought the assistance Earth needed, and when they returned—not if—there would be a planet here to greet them. He threw that to the uncaring stars like a solemn vow and then turned his back upon them. He sat back down at his desk and bent over his endless reams of reports once more.