"And if I do not want to succeed you?"

"Irrelevant," snapped Arcturus. "You are a Mengsk. Who else is there?"

Anger touched Valerian. "Even a Mengsk you called a bookish, effeminale weakling?"

Arcturus waved a dismissive hand. "Words spoken in haste many years ago," he said. "You have proved me wrong, so move on. Scoring points over me does you no credit."

Valerian covered his irritation at his father's stoicism by drinking some port, letting the aromatic liquid sit in his gullet a while before swallowing. He watched as Arcturus used the pause to look around the room at the weapons hanging from the walls, the one point of common ground upon which they could converse without the threat of argument or resentment rearing its ugly head.

"You have made a fine home here, son." said Arcturus, apropos of nothing.

"'Home'?" said Valerian. "I don't know what that word means."

Seeing the puzzlement in his father's eyes, Valerian continued. "Until a few months ago, home was simply where we settled until we had to move on. From one crumbling Umojan moon to another. Or one of the few orbitals the UED or the zerg hadn't destroyed. You must know the feeling, surely?"

"I do," conceded Arcturus. "Though I'd forgotten it. For a long time, home was the Hyperion, but then with all that happened with Jim..."

"What about Korhal IV?" said Valerian, not wishing to endure another tirade regarding the treachery of Jim Raynor. Over the last few years, Valerian had thrilled to the adventures of Jim Raynor and had secretly admired the man as the thorn in his father's side the former marshal had proved to be.

Arcturus shook his head, quickly masking his irritation at the interruption. "Vast areas of the planet are habitable again and we have rebuilt much of what was destroyed, but even I don't have the power to undo in so short a time the damage done by the Confederacy. Korhal will be great again. I have no doubt, but it will never be what it once was."

"I suppose not," agreed Valerian. "I should have liked to see Korhal before the attack."

"Ah, yes, you would have liked it, I think," said Arcturus. "The Palatine Forum, the Golden Library, the Martial Field, the summer villa... yes, you would have liked it."

Valerian leaned forward. "I would like to learn of Korhal," he said. "From someone who was there, I mean. Not dry facts from a digi-tome or holo-cine, but the real thing. From someone who walked its surface and breathed its air."

Arcturus smiled and nodded, as though he had expected such a request. "Very well, Valerian. I will tell you of Korhal, what I know of it and what I have pieced together over the years, but I'll tell you more than that if you've the wit to hear it," said Arcturus, standing and draining the last of his port.

"What do you mean?" asked Valerian.

"The story of Korhal is the story of your grandfather and what it means to be a Mengsk. Korhal was the forge in which our dynasty was hammered into shape, raw and bloody, upon the anvil of history."

Valerian fell his heart quicken. "Yes, that's what I want."

Arcturus nodded toward the woman in the holographic plate upon the mantelpiece. "And I'll tell you of your mother."

"My mother?" said Valerian, instantly defensive.

"Yes," said Arcturus, making his way toward the door. "But first we have to bury her."

THE VILLA WAS DARK, ITS OCCUPANTS ASLEEP. From the outside it looked peaceful and quiet. Vulnerable. He knew, of course, that it was not: laser trips surrounded the villa in an interconnected web, motion sensors swept the high marble wall that surrounded it, and tremor alarms were set into the floors and walls around every opening. It wasn't the most expensive security system money could buy, but it wasn't far off.

To penetrate the Mengsk summer villa, a white-walled compound perched on a headland of white cliffs overlooking the dark waters of the ocean, would be no easy feat, and the silent figure took his time as he approached the farthest edge of the system's detection envelope.

The scanner attached to his belt, used by prospectors of the Confederate Exploration Corps, was a modified geo-survey unit, a harmonic detector set to read the electromagnetic returns of vespene gas. It had been a simple matter to adjust the sensors to pick up the security lasers and link its display to the goggles he wore over his young, handsome face.

For such a device to work, you had to know the frequency of the lasers and the exact mineral composition of the crystals that produced them. All of which had been simplicity itself to obtain from one of the techs who had installed the system only the previous summer.

The goggles bleached everything of color. The midnight blue of the sky was rendered a flat, rust color, the mountains to the north a deep bronze, and the sea a shimmering crimson.

Like an ocean of blood.

The walls of the villa were dark to him, the lasers and sensor returns gleaming like cords of silver strung like a hunter's trip wires.

"Too easy," he whispered, then inwardly chided himself for the unnecessary words.

The figure dropped to his belly and slithered around the northern side of the villa, avoiding the road that ran all the way to Styrling and keeping to the tall grass that waved in the brisk winds blown in off the sea.

The net of lasers moved regularly, but preprogrammed algorithms in the survey unit meant that by the time they shifted, he was already in a patch of dead ground.

Of course, no algorithm was completely perfect and there was always a chance that he would be detected, but he was confident in his abilities and wasn't worried about failure.

In truth, the prospect of failing was something that hadn't occurred to him. Failure was something that happened to other people, not to him. He was good at what he did and knew it. It gave him a confidence that reached out to others and made it all the easier to ensure he always got what he wanted.

Well, almost always.

He eased ever closer to the villa, keeping his movements slow and unhurried. He knew that to rush things would be to invite disaster, and it took him nearly two hours to come within six meters of the wall.

Passive infrared motion sensors were built into the eaves of the wall, but these were old systems, installed nearly a decade ago, and were about as sophisticated as those you'd find protecting some fringe world magistrate. It was most assuredly not what you'd expect to find protecting the summer villa of one of Korhal's most renowned senators and his family.

The figure was rendered invisible to these sensors by the coolant systems of the black, form-fitting bodysuit he wore. He had fashioned it in secret from the inner lining of a hostile-environment suit used by miners when prospecting high-temperature sites, and he smiled as he rose to his feet and the beams swept over him without detecting him.

Once again the laser net shifted, and he froze as the new pattern was established. He let out a breath as he saw a glimmering, hair-thin beam of light at his calf, and carefully eased away from it. It would be another seventeen point three seconds before they changed again, and he shimmied up to the wall, careful not to touch it for fear of setting off the tremors.

He was within the laser net, and so long as he kept close to the wall—but didn't touch it—he would be invisible to the villa's security. Taking a moment to compose himself, the figure eased around the compound, heading for the delivery entrances.

He froze as a patch of light was thrown out onto the ground.

A door opening.

A man came out, followed by another, and he felt a flutter of fear. Then they sparked up cigarettes and began to smoke and gossip. He let out a breath, his heart hammering against his ribs. Kitchen porters, nothing more.