Alastor paused to let this sink in, then continued. “We will help you to eliminate any signs of rebellion, and we will provide security for you and your cohorts. Your sanctuary will not be breached. You will continue to run the infrastructures of this great city, and we will keep the peace between you and the lesser beings in the artisan sector. In addition, we will help you reclaim the land surrounding your city. More territory means more agriculture, and we can increase the food rations for all, while providing them with work and wages.”

“You would do all this? Why? What’s in it for you?” Eladin asked.

“We ask for only a small thing: a place for our species to survive. The dawn of a new era is upon us. Eursans and Mendraga will live in perfect symbiosis. All we ask for is permission to harvest the one thing a Mendraga needs to survive: fluid from Eursan bodies.”

“You expect us to allow you to murder our citizens? That’s barbaric!”

“Of course not. We would process this transaction in a most humane way. All citizens, in exchange for protection and increased food rations, will have to make a weekly donation. The harvesting process would be relatively painless—its only side effects being mild light-headedness and nausea.”

“I am sorry,” Eladin said. “At this time I cannot authorize such a thing. If you could just give us some time to consider your most generous offer…”

“I was afraid you might say that. Chancellor Steigen?”

Steigen jerked like a gun-startled horse. He trembled as he stood and faced Alastor.

“Yes, my Lord?”

“We seemed to have reached an impasse in our negotiations. Is there anything you can do to persuade our friends from Hastrom City?”

Chancellor Steigen looked between the projected councilors and the extra-terrestrial visitors. His eyes brimmed with tears, and he dropped his head. When his eyes met Alastor’s again, Alastor nodded once.

“I had hoped that it would not come to this. Forgive me,” Chancellor Steigen said.

He went over to a computer terminal in the back corner of the room and began to enter rapid commands.

“Steigen, what are you doing??”

Steigen did not reply, his face lit by flashes of color as protocols streamed past his eyes. A crude pyramid shape appeared on the screen, filled with thousands of rectangles arrayed in rows, each rectangle containing a single name. Chancellor Steigen reached out with a slender finger and touched the rectangle at the top; it expanded to fill the screen. On it were the vital signs of Premier Eladin, including heart rate, body temperature, and mood. Eladin’s heart rate was highly elevated, and his mood was indicated in red flashing text:

AGITATED

“Steigen, don’t… please.”

Steigen entered a series of keystrokes, and a small button appeared in the bottom right corner of the readout. Steigen reached out with his slender finger and pressed it.

TERMINATE? YES or NO? THIS OPERATION IS IRREVERSIBLE.

Steigen pressed “YES.”

Eladin’s glowing projection disappeared. The councilors began to shriek and sob.

“What have I done?” Steigen’s body swayed, and he reached out to grasp the terminal to steady himself, but his arms had become senseless. He collapsed to the floor.

“I wish to speak with the Corpus Verum directly. For the gods’ sakes, Alastor, can you get the damned chancellor off the floor?”

“Certainly, sire.”

      TWO - Centennial Fulcrum

Letho saw the first body, garbed in the telltale bright orange jumpsuit of a dockworker. Clutched in his hand was a small handgun.

“Hey, Deacon, there’s that dock worker. You can go ahead and have that talk with him,” said Letho.

“Very funny, Letho,” said Deacon. Letho had drawn the Black Bear, and the Tarsi were sniffing at the air. Deacon took the dockworker’s handgun and checked it.

“Still loaded,” he said.

“Mendraga have been here,” Thresha said.

“How do you know?” Bayorn asked.

“Can’t you smell it?”

Bayorn issued a few terse commands to the Tarsi that had survived the events on Alastor’s ship. They nodded assent and took up watch positions around Deacon’s ship. Maka took his place beside Bayorn, and the group moved farther into the cavernous depths of the Centennial Fulcrum’s docking station.There was a definite scent on the air, but it was faint. It was the smell of rot, just pungent enough to bring one’s stomach contents to a roil, but not quite enough to cause a full heave.

They continued to make their way through the abandoned cargo area. The place looked as though some sort of skirmish had taken place there. Work surfaces were overturned. Waste and once-precious things littered the floor, discarded in panicked flight. Some of the walls were marked with the scoring of small weapons fire. As they headed toward the dock foreman’s office, they happened upon more bodies. These unfortunate fellows were dry, their skin stretched taut, lips pulled back from yellow teeth. Telltale puncture wounds marked their necks and chest.

Letho and Deacon each took one side of the doorway to the foreman’s office. The office was a small, box-like enclosure built into the side of the tall steel walls of the docking area. It was made of plasteel set in a metal frame, but the blinds were drawn, making it impossible to see inside.

Letho squeezed the handle of his Black Bear. The wood and steel whispered that everything was going to be all right.

Bayorn attempted to peer between the blinds, then pointed to a spot where the blinds were being pulled down by a set of fingers entangled in them.

“There aren’t any Mendraga in there, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Thresha.

“She’s right; the stench would be much stronger if her kind were present,” said Maka, sneering. Thresha bared her teeth, then grinned at Maka.

Maka raised his arm as if to strike, but Letho shook his head. Maka backed down, but the look that he cut Letho told him that he was not at all pleased about it.

“All right, on three!” said Letho, kicking the door down.

Deacon went to one side of the office and flipped the light switch, while Letho moved farther into the tomb-like enclosure. The remains of a man lay sprawled across a set of chairs in the corner, as if he had become tangled in his own feet and fallen on the way out the door, then decided to remain in that pose for eternity. Letho went to the man and turned him over. His throat, too, was a torn mess.

“You forgot to count to three,” Deacon muttered.

“This must be the dock foreman,” Bayorn said.

“Oh yeah, what was your first clue?” Letho snapped.

A thin smile adorned Letho’s face, but the inflection of the reply was all but a slap to Bayorn’s snout. Maka grunted and put his hand on Letho’s shoulder, and their eyes met. Letho sighed and hunched his shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Bayorn. That was uncalled for. Recent events have me a little keyed up.”

“It is okay, Letho.” The words from Bayorn’s mouth and his icy gaze told two different stories. Letho felt as if the Tarsi was inside his mind, rifling through his thoughts.

Letho turned his attention to the dock foreman. His sallow skin was stretched tight across his skull, and had begun to peel back in places, revealing patches of bare bone.

Letho sat down at the foreman’s desk and found that his workstation was still in working order. Cooling fans whined and chittered as stuck bearings inside took on the task at hand. The dock foreman hadn’t bothered to lock his workstation with a password, so Letho was able to go straight into the operating system. He pulled up the news site for the station and began to read.

“Hey, Deacon, what year is it?” Letho asked.

“What?” Deacon asked, laughing, not sure if Letho was joking. But when Letho continued to stare at him, Deacon answered. “2350.”