“Oh, really?” Amanda glanced up at him again. “I suppose you’ve already learned that?”

“Perhaps not,” he agreed with another small smile, and she snorted as a final hatch admitted them to the dim vastness of Dahak’s Command One.

A sphere of stars engulfed them. The diamond-hard pinheads burned in the ebon depths of space, dominated by the cloud-banded green-and-blue sphere of the planet Birhat, and Amanda shivered. Not from cold, but with the icy breeze that always seemed to whisper down her spine whenever she stepped into the perfection of the holographic display.

“Hi, Amanda. Tao-ling.” His Imperial Majesty Colin I, Grand Duke of Birhat, Prince of Bia, Sol, Chamhar, and Narhan, Warlord and Prince Protector of the Realm, Defender of the Five Thousand Suns, Champion of Humanity, and, by the Maker’s Grace, Emperor of Mankind, swiveled his couch to show them his homely, beak-nosed face and grinned. “I see Tamman peeled off early.”

“When last seen, he was headed for the park deck,” Tsien agreed.

“Well, he’s in for a surprise.” Colin chuckled. “Harry and Dahak finally bullied Sean into letting Sandy try her hand at laser tag.”

“Oh, my!” Amanda laughed. “I’ll bet that was an experience!”

“Aye.” Empress Jiltanith, slender as a sword and as beautiful as Colin was homely, rose to embrace Amanda. “Belike he’ll crow less loud anent her youth henceforth. His pride hath been humbled—for the nonce, at least.”

“He’ll get over it,” Hector MacMahan remarked. The Imperial Marine Corps’ commandant leaned on the gunnery officer’s console while his wife occupied the couch before it. Like Amanda, he wore Marine black and silver, but Ninhursag MacMahan wore Battle Fleet’s midnight-blue and gold, and she smiled.

“Not if Sandy has anything to say about it. One of these days that girl’s going to make an excellent spook.”

“You should know,” Colin said, and Ninhursag managed a seated bow in his direction. “In the meantime, I—”

“Excuse me, Colin,” Dahak murmured, “but Admiral Hatcher’s cutter has docked.”

“Good. Looks like we can get this show on the road pretty soon.”

“I hope so,” Horus said. The stocky, white-haired Planetary Duke of Terra shook his head. “Every time I poke my nose out of my office, something’s waiting to crawl out of the ‘in’ basket and bite me when I get back!”

Colin nodded at his father-in-law in agreement, but he was watching the Tsiens. Tao-ling seated Amanda with an attentiveness so focused it was almost unconscious … and one that might seem odd to those who knew only Star Marshal Tsien’s reputation or knew General Amanda Tsien only as the tough-as-nails commandant of Fort Hawter, the Imperial Marines’ advanced training base on Birhat. Colin, on the other hand, understood it perfectly, and he was profoundly grateful to see it.

Amanda Tsien feared nothing that lived, but she was also an orphan. She’d been only nine years old when she learned a harsh universe’s cruelest weapon could be love … and she’d relearned that lesson when Tamman, her first husband, died at Zeta Trianguli Australis. Colin and Jiltanith had watched helplessly as she hid herself in her duties, sealing herself into an armored shell and investing all the emotion she dared risk in Tamman’s son. She’d become an automaton, and there’d been nothing even an emperor could do about it, but Tsien Tao-ling had changed that.

Many of the marshal’s personnel feared him. That was wise of them, yet something in Amanda had called out to him, despite her defenses, and the man the newsies called “the Juggernaut” had approached her so gently she hadn’t even realized he was doing it until it was too late. Until he’d been inside her armor, holding out his hand to offer her the heart few people believed he had … and she’d taken it.

She was thirty years younger than he, which mattered not at all among the bio-enhanced. After all, Colin was over forty years younger than Jiltanith, and she looked younger than he. Of course, chronologically she was well over fifty-one thousand years old, but that didn’t count; she’d spent all but eighty-odd of those years in stasis.

“How’re Hsu-li and Collete?” he asked Amanda, and she chuckled.

“Fine. Hsu-li was a bit ticked we didn’t bring him along, but I convinced him he should stay to help take care of his sister.”

Colin shook his head. “That wouldn’t have worked with Sean and Harry.”

“That’s what you get for having twins,” Amanda said smugly, then bent a sly glance on Jiltanith. “Or for not having a few more kids.”

“Nay, acquit me, Amanda.” Jiltanith smiled. “I know not how thou findest time for all thy duties and thy babes, but ’twill be some years more—mayhap decades—ere I again essay that challenge. And it ill beseemeth thee so to twit thine Empress when all the world doth know thee for a mother o’ the best, while I—” She shrugged wryly, and her friends laughed.

Horus was about to say something more when the inner hatch slid open to admit a trim, athletic man in Battle Fleet blue.

“Hi, Gerald,” Colin greeted the new arrival, and Admiral of the Fleet Gerald Hatcher, Chief of Naval Operations, bowed with a flourish.

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” he said so unctuously his liege lord shook a fist at him. Admiral Hatcher had spent thirty years as a soldier of the United States, not a sailor, but BattleFleet’s CNO was the Imperium’s senior officer. That made it a logical duty for the man who’d served as humanity’s chief of staff during Earth’s defense against the Achuultani, yet not even that authority could quash Hatcher’s cheerful irreverence.

He waved to Ninhursag, shook hands with Hector, Tsien, and Horus, then planted an enthusiastic kiss on Amanda’s cafe-au-lait cheek. He bent gracefully over Jiltanith’s hand, but the Empress tugged shrewdly on the neat beard he’d grown since the Siege of Earth and kissed his mouth before he could recover.

“Thou’rt a shameless fellow, Gerald Hatcher,” she told him severely, “and mayhap that shall teach thee what fate awaiteth when thou leavest thy wife behind!”

“Oh?” He grinned. “Is that a threat or a promise, Your Majesty?”

“Off with his head!” Colin murmured, and the admiral laughed.

“Actually, she’s visiting her sister on Earth. They’re picking out baby clothes.”

“My God, is everybody hatching new youngsters?”

“Nay, my Colin, ’tis only everyone else,” Jiltanith said.

“True,” Hatcher agreed. “And this time it’s going to be a boy. I’m perfectly happy with the girls, myself, but Sharon’s delighted.”

“Congratulations,” Colin told him, then waved at an empty couch. “But now that you’re here, let’s get down to business.”

“Suits me. I’ve got a conference scheduled aboard Mother in a few hours, and I’d like to grab a nap first.”

“Okay.” Colin sat a bit straighter and his lazy amusement faded. “As I indicated when I invited you all, I want to talk to you informally before next week’s Council meeting. We’re coming up on the tenth anniversary of my ‘coronation,’ and the Assembly of Nobles wants to throw a big shindig to celebrate. That may be a good idea, but it means this year’s State of the Realm speech is going to be pretty important, so I want a feel from the ‘inner circle’ before I get started writing it.”

His guests hid smiles. The Fourth Empire had never required regular formal reports from its emperors, but Colin had incorporated the State of the Realm message into the Fifth Imperium’s law, and the self-inflicted annual duty was an ordeal he dreaded. It was also why he’d invited his friends to Dahak’s command deck. Unlike too many others, they could be relied upon to tell him what they thought rather than what they thought he wanted them to think.

“Let’s begin with you, Gerald.”

“Okay.” Hatcher rubbed his beard gently. “You can start off with a piece of good news. Geb dropped off his last report just before he and Vlad headed out to Cheshir, and they should have the Cheshir Fleet base back on-line within three months. They’ve turned up nine more Asgerds, too. They’ll need a few more months to reactivate them, and we’re stretched for personnel—as usual—but we’ll make do, and that’ll bring us up to a hundred and twelve planetoids.” He paused. “Unless we have another Sherkan.”