The Nemes siblings seemed to welcome the embrace, throwing themselves onto the tumbling Shrike with clacking teeth and flying nails. I could see that the hurtling edges of their rigid hands and forearms were razor-sharp, guillotine surfaces sharper than the Shrike’s blades and thorns.

The three beat and chewed on each other in a wild frenzy, rolling across the platform, throwing bonsai cedar chips three meters into the air, and slamming against the rock wall. In a second, all three were on their feet, the Shrike’s great jaws clamping on Briareus’s neck even as Scylla slashed at one of the creature’s four arms, bent it backward, and seemed to break it at a joint. Still holding Briareus in its jaws, the huge teeth chewing and scraping at the silver form’s head, the Shrike whirled to confront Scylla, but by then both clone-siblings had their hands on the blades and thorns on the Shrike’s skull, bending it backward until I waited to hear the neck snap and see its head roll away.

Instead, Nemes somehow communicated, Now! Do it! and without an instant’s hesitation, the two siblings threw themselves away from the cliff face, toward the railing at the abyss-end side of the platform. I saw what they were going to do—throw the Shrike into space, just as they had done to the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard.

Perhaps the Shrike saw this as well, for the tall creature slammed the two chrome bodies against it, its chest spikes and wrist thorns sinking deep into the forcefields around the struggling, clawing siblings. The trio whirled and tumbled and bounced up like some demented, three-part wind-up toy locked into hyperfast berserk mode, until finally the Shrike with its kicking, clawing, visibly impaled forms slammed into the sturdy cedar railing, tore through it as though it were wet cardboard, and went hurtling out over and into the drop, still fighting. Aenea and I watched as the tall silver form with flashing spikes and the shorter silver forms with flailing limbs fell, fell, grew smaller and smaller, fell into clouds, and were swallowed. I knew that those watching from the ship would have seen nothing except a sudden disappearance of three of the figures on our platform, and then a broken railing and an emptier platform with just Nemes, Aenea, and me remaining. The silver thing that was Rhadamanth Nemes turned its featureless chrome face toward us.

The light changed. The breeze blew again. The air thinned. I felt my heart suddenly beating again… pounding loudly… and I blinked rapidly.

Nemes was in her human form again. “So,” she said to Aenea, “shall we finish this little farce?”

“Yes,” said Aenea.

Nemes smiled and went to phase-shift.

Nothing happened. The creature frowned and seemed to concentrate. Still nothing occurred.

“I can’t stop you from phase-shifting,” said Aenea. “But others can… and have.”

Nemes looked irritated for a second but then laughed. “Those who created me will attend to that in a second, but I do not wish to wait that long, and I do not need to shift up to kill you, bitch child.”

“That’s true,” said Aenea. She had stood her ground through all of this violence and confusion, her legs apart, feet firmly planted, arms easy at her sides.

Nemes showed her small teeth, but I saw that these teeth were elongating, growing sharper, as if being extruded farther from her gums and jawbone. There were at least three rows of them.

Nemes held up her hands and her fingernails—already pale and long—extended another ten centimeters, flowing into gleaming spikes.

Nemes reached down with those sharpened nails and peeled back the skin and flesh of her right forearm, revealing some sort of metallic endoskeleton that was the color of steel but which looked infinitely sharper.

“Now,” said Nemes. She stepped toward Aenea.

I stepped between them.

“No,” I said, and raised my fists like a boxer ready to start.

Nemes showed all of her rows of teeth.

Time and motion seem to slow again, as if I can once again see in the phase-shift mode, but this time it is merely the effect of adrenaline and total concentration. My mind shifts into overdrive. My senses become preternaturally alert. I see, feel, and calculate every microsecond with uncanny clarity.

Nemes takes a step… more toward Aenea to my left than toward me.

This is a chess match more than a fight. I win if I kill the unfeeling bitch or fling her off the platform long enough for us to escape. She does not have to kill me to win… only neutralize me long enough to kill Aenea. Aenea is her target. Aenea has always been her target. This monster was created to kill Aenea.

Chess match. Nemes has just sacrificed two of her strongest pieces—her monster siblings—to neutralize our knight, the Shrike. Now all three pieces are off the board. Only Nemes—the dark queen—Aenea, humankind’s queen, and Aenea’s lowly pawn… me.

This pawn may have to sacrifice himself, but not without taking out the dark queen. Of that he is determined.

Nemes is smiling. Her teeth are sharp and redundant. Her arms are still at her sides, long nails gleaming, her right forearm exposed like some obscene surgical exhibit… the interior not human… no, not human at all.

The cutting edge of her forearm endoskeleton catches the afternoon sunlight. “Aenea,” I say softly, “step back, please.” This highest of platforms connects to the stone walkway and staircase we had cut to climb to the overhang walkway.

I want my friend off the platform. “Raul, I…”

“Do it now,” I say, not raising my voice but putting into it every bit of command I have learned and earned in my thirty-two standard years of life. Aenea takes four steps back onto the stone ledge. The ship continues to hover fifty meters out and above us. There are many faces peering from the balcony. I try to will Sergeant Gregorius to step out and use his assault rifle to blow this Nemes bitch-thing away, but I do not see his dark face among those staring. Perhaps he has been weakened by his wounds. Perhaps he feels that this should be a fair fight. Fuck that, I think. I do not want a fair fight. I want to kill this Nemes creature any way I can. I would gladly accept any help from anywhere right now.

Is the Shrike really dead? Can this be? Martin Silenus’s Cantos seemed to tell of the Shrike being defeated in some far-future battle with Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. But how did Silenus know this? And what does the future mean to a monster capable of traveling through time? If the Shrike was not dead, I would appreciate its return about now.

Nemes takes another step to her right, my left. I step left to block her access to Aenea. Under phase-shift, this thing has superhuman strength and can move so fast as to be literally invisible. She can’t phase-shift now. I hope to God. But she still may be faster and stronger than me… than any human. I have to assume that she is. And she has the teeth, claws, and cutting arm.

“Ready to die, Raul Endymion?” says Nemes, her lips sliding back from those rows of teeth.

Her strengths—probable speed, strength, and inhuman construction. She may be more robot or android than human. It is almost certain that she does not feel pain. She may have other built-in weapons that she has not revealed. I have no idea how to kill or disable her… her skeleton is metal, not bone… the muscles visible in her forearm look real enough, but may be made of plastic fibers or pink steel mesh. It is unlikely that normal fighting techniques will stop her. Her weaknesses—I do not know. Perhaps overconfidence. Perhaps she has become too used to phase-shifting—to killing her enemies when they cannot fight back. But she had taken on the Shrike and fought it to a draw nine and a half years ago—beaten it, actually, since she had gotten it out of the way to get to Aenea.

Only the intervention of Father Captain de Soya’s ship, lancing her with every gigavolt available on the starship, had prevented her from killing all of us.