They all got off lucky.

For the second time within as many months, Petr moved along the corridors of the Poseidon. Blind to the humanity around him, he swam with the relentlessness of the hunter. Ignored the sights and smells in which he usually took such pleasure.

The almost death of a good portion of his Aimag opened his eyes.

As with the epiphany concerning Jesup, Petr’s eyes were opened to the uncompromising truth of his own hypocrisy. For so long Petr had believed himself to be doing the best for his Aimag.

When in reality, he worked for himself.

That Delta Aimag truly prospered under such leadership meant nothing. Such thinking by Sha was how they arrived at this day, this hour. This moment in time.

The ends justify the means. Or in this case, my means justify the ends.

Stripped of every charade and rationalization by such a close brush with the annihilation of most of Delta Aimag, he could not avert his eyes from his own selfishness. From the way he took his own people for granted. Their cares, their worries and fears, their honor and contributions to the Clan: all cast aside and ignored. By him. The ovKhan!

Now, as he pushed off one last stanchion and sailed toward the saKhan’s main office on the Poseidon, he did not ignore the people around him because their regard was nothing more than his due, but because of a duty to fulfill, a mission to accomplish.

A fine line, but one that made all the difference in the world.

Petr rapped sharply on the hatch, which swung in almost immediately. A haggard face greeted him; he’d never see saKhan Sennet look so terrible.

“ovKhan Petr, what occurred,” he began, holding up a hand as though to stay a strike of condemnation. He paused, continued. “I cannot begin—”

“saKhan,” Petr cut him off. “What almost occurred was a mistake… but it is the past. We must now move quickly to the future. We must move, or our Clan may be sundered beyond redemption.”

He risked much with his words; one did not cut off saKhan Sennet midsentence without good reason—accidental near-annihilation of Delta Aimag or not. His rage visible in his eyes, saKhan Sennet angrily demanded, “What are you talking about?”

“ovKhan Sha, saKhan. He lifted from Adhafera a week and more past, and we are giving chase. He must be stopped.” Petr stood just inside the hatch, his strained muscles pounded by multiple gravities for endless days calling out for rest. For sleep.

Disgust swam out from deep eyes to envelop the man’s face; a giant hand flicked, as though to cast away an unseen filth. “Not this again,” he began, the scorn in his voice a mirror of his visage. “You risked what you did on a whim? On your own assumptions of ineptitude? I have never made such an error before, but with you… a Trial of Grievance, here and now, is the only way you might survive this disaster.” Though the volume did not change, his voice hardened like endomorphic steel extruded from one of their many orbital factories; worlds might shatter against such a force of will.

Petr took the verbal whipping without a wince and walked past saKhan Sennet, his magnetic boots clanging softly, to the other man’s desk. Reaching into a hip satchel, he pulled out the battle armor ROM memory core along with a small reader. He placed the machine on the desk, where it audibly clicked with suction. Fitting in the core, he flicked the switch and took one step back. He did not turn toward the saKhan, unwilling to watch his reaction, his surprise.

Hopefully, surprise.

Petr tried not to think of the ramifications if this were not a surprise. Of the quick and brutal death at the other man’s hands if he guessed wrong.

The scene played out. He had only been able to bear to watch it one time before this. The art of it, a thrust to the midsection.

Audacious. Brilliant. Brutal. Terrific, and terrifying.

Sha’s plan encapsulated all a Clan Sea Fox merchant aspired to accomplish. To be. A hundred generations of teaching and refinement led to this. The sheer genius of it all simply took the breath away.

Yet, ultimately, it was traitorous. Destructive. The breaking of what made Clan Sea Fox… Sea Fox.

As the feed clicked off and the machine autoterminated its power, Petr slowly turned toward saKhan Sennet; for just an instant, the back of his neck itched, as though he waited to feel a hand descending in a strike to send him into ultimate oblivion.

Horror illuminated Mikel Sennet’s features in harsh lines. Petr let out a breath he had held unknowing. Though Fox Clansmen, as with any merchants, knew when to hide their hand, Petr did not think such emotion feigned. It was too primal; Sennet was truly stricken.

Eyes locked onto Petr’s like laser-guided landing lights. In those depths, the stunned disbelief read like a holofax in fifty-point type, able to be read from across the room. The man actually staggered slightly, tried to right himself and managed to unlatch himself from the floor. He swept his arms and legs back and forth futilely; a clumsiness embarrassing under any other circumstances went unremarked as his brain consumed what he’d just seen, unable to devote energy to fine motor control.

After a pregnant pause, full of strained anger and incredulity, Petr broke the silence. “My saKhan,” he began, as formal an address as he ever gave Khan Sennet, “there can be only one course of action. We must find the Khan. We must mobilize the fleet we have at hand and begin to move from system to system along the path he is likely to take.”

Licking his lips, Sennet began to nod slowly: a child coming out of the darkness with the realization he can turn on the light. He can act.

Petr felt like pushing forward, yet realized he might go too far too fast. He must allow Sennet to come to grips with this. To see the urgency himself and make a decision.

After what felt an eternity, Sennet responded, “Aff. Yes. We must move to protect the Khan.” Regaining his feet, he mastered himself, bringing his emotions under control and superimposing the ubiquitous Fox merchant caste mask.

“And what of Sha?” he asked, his voice once more as hard as a ferrous-nickel Gauss round, with eyes to match.

Petr’s eyes mirrored the savagery; his voice was a sentence of annihilation. “One Scout JumpShip. My personal Trinary.

“Leave him to me.”

Stewart DropPort, New Edinburgh

Lothian, Stewart

Prefecture VII, The Republic

24 September 3134

Anew world. New possibilities.

ovKhan Sha Clarke felt more confident than he had in days. Gazing out from the top of the off-loading ramp of the grounded DropShip Breaker of Waves, he could see the cityscape spread out before him, moving away from the DropPort into the distance: a surrealistic matte painting.

A twisting skein of metal, ferrocrete and high-strength polymers: man-made stalagmites rupturing the planet’s crust; spreading scintillating, serrated bones to the lapis lazuli sphere swathing Stewart.

In his years as a trader, Sha had beheld many cityscape vistas. Many that eclipsed New Edinburgh in size, or height, or population, or any number of parameters. But the jagged, strange design of the city’s largest buildings and its odd, twisting streets, set against such a magnificent dome of a sky, with literally not a single puff of white to pull at the eye (a stravag relief after the endless cloud cover of Adhafera), gestalted into a striking beauty all its own.

A light breeze—a touch harsh—carrying the dry aroma of desert sage and the ubiquitous reek of petrochemicals found in any city in the human sphere, caressed his nostrils.