Unable to believe Basil’s blatantly irrational orders, considering the position he was in, Willis’s soldiers looked to Peter for guidance. “Hold!” he said. He could only hope that Andez and her guards weren’t mad enough to open fire.

Andez gestured helplessly at the standoff, and the weapons pointed toward them. She blinked. “Exactly how. are we to do that, Mr. Chairman?”

From where he stood beside the throne, OX said, as if giving a lecture to a novice prince candidate, “Basil, the conclusion is inescapable. It is only logical to admit defeat.” He added pointedly, “It would be the most efficient solution to this problem. As Chairman, you should appreciate that.”

Peter rose from the throne. “There’s nothing you can do. The whole population of Earth blames you, Basil, and you can’t use me — or Rory — as a scapegoat anymore. You’re done.”

The Chairman seemed pathologically unable to grasp that he no longer controlled the situation. He ripped the small personal communicator from his waist and activated a direct line to his EDF ships. “General Brindle, this is a direct order! Access the guillotine codes for the ships Admiral Willis took from the EDF and shut down the Confederation’s space navy. Hamstring them.”

After only a brief hesitation, barely a second longer than could be accounted for by the transmission lag, the EDF commander grudgingly acknowledged.

Peter felt more disappointed than angry. “Basil, this is pointless. Even if the General does as you say — ”

Basil stared directly at Peter as he continued speaking into the communicator. Now his smile seemed genuine. “And once those traitorous ships are helpless, General, bombard them with everything you have.”

156

Robb Brindle

Shizz, we’re dead in space!” Robb pounded his fist on the arm of his command chair and barked to his bridge crew, “Report — give me options.”

“It’s our guillotine code, sir,” said the helmsman, hammering at his console in frustration. “The EDF just triggered it. All Confederation ships have been nailed.”

“But how?” Estarra asked.

Robb’s muscles were tight with tension, and his head was beginning to ache. “A shutdown system built into all EDF capital ships, and the commander has the codes.”

“But these are Confederation ships now.”

Robb groaned. “Our codes should have been changed with a complete wipe and refit when the Admiral brought her ships to the Osquivel rings, but there was no time.”

“Bit of a tactical oversight, wasn’t it?” Rlinda Kett asked.

“We got a little distracted by General Lanyan’s attack,” Robb said. “Since then, there hasn’t been time to put our military ships in spacedock.”

“Too late now,” Sarein said. “What do we do?”

“We talk to General Brindle,” Estarra said. “Convince him not to make this worse.”

Robb shook his head, feeling incredibly weary. “You can argue logic all you want, but my father believes it’s his duty to follow the Chairman.”

Estarra pressed her lips together. “Well, I believe Ioutrank the Chairman.”

“He doesn’t accept the Confederation as a legitimate government,” Robb said.

Estarra glanced at her sister. “Sarein, you’re the Theron ambassador — that’s a title he should recognize.”

“And I’m his son,” Robb added. “But that won’t matter if the Chairman orders him to capture us.”

Sarein let out a cold laugh. “Capture? Trust me, Basil has something harsher in mind for us.”

Robb went to the comm station and tried to work the controls, to no avail. With the exception of life support, even the most basic systems were dead. “Doesn’t matter. We can’t transmit a message. We’re bound and gagged.”

Estarra’s eyes flashed as she stared at the darkened screen, as if willing it to display the threatening ships, the stars and planets. But it remained blank. The silence seemed more ominous than any overt threat.

Captain Kett came up beside the Queen, grinning.

“What is it?” Estarra asked. “If you have an idea — ”

“That guillotine code may have shut down all of your fancy EDF systems, but it couldn’t do a damned thing to theBlind Faith, ” she said. She looked at Robb. “I assume your launching bays have manual backup systems for opening the space doors? Good. BeBob and I can take you right in front of theGoliath, up close and personal. We’ll get the message across.”

Estarra smiled. “Then we’d better make it convincing.”

157

Jess Tamblyn

As Jess and Cesca raced down to the surface, the fiery elementals that gathered over the ruins of Mijistra seemed weak, desperate, disorganized. As their wental ship bulldozed through the scattering fireballs, they both could see through the flames to the flashing conflict on the ground, where the Mage-Imperator and a group of Ildirans faced a fiery man.

“Rusa’h is like us.” Jess increased their speed. “We’ve got to stop him.”

“No,not like us. The faeros burned away the soul of the person he once was,” Cesca said. “The wentals in us may always set us apart from other humans, but we’re still who we were inside.”

Jess brought the water-globule ship down fast, like the first heavy drop before a drenching downpour. As the liquid bubble touched the ground near the embattled Ildirans, the surface tension dissolved, like a burst water balloon, and its wental contents flooded out. He and Cesca stepped away from the soupy mud at their feet.

The Mage-Imperator and his companions had begun to succumb to the battering heat. “You are cut off from thethism, Rusa’h,” shouted the Mage-Imperator. “I will not allow your faeros to prey upon my people again.”

In the sky, most of the fiery shapes had flown away, leaving Rusa’h alone. But he was not weak.

Jess and Cesca approached the faeros incarnate, their bodies covered with a glistening film of water, and Rusa’h sensed their power. When he turned, his body seemed to swell, and his face showed an incredible struggle taking place within him.

“This is my Empire!” Like a wildfire let loose, Rusa’h hurled gouts of flame from his hands.

Jess intercepted the inferno, deflecting it from the weary Ildirans. Cesca joined her power to his; they had to extinguish this spark that spread destructive fire, consuming ships and cities and planets and people. They had to control the flames and stop the faeros from burning all the worlds in the Spiral Arm.

Showing no restraint, Rusa’h unleashed his furious strength, making Jess and Cesca stagger backward. The hard ground around them began to melt.