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  But then it was time for work, and she/they sent the command to Thermopylae's AI to release the docking clamps. The pod's reaction thrusters flared briefly, wafting the massive parasite away from the transport's hull, then shut down. She/they waited patiently until the pod had cleared the safety perimeter for its normal-space drive, and then she/they went sliding gracefully towards the outermost atmosphere of Indrani.

  * * *

  "I trust you've been enjoying yourself down there, Captain," Adrian Agnelli said dryly.

  "I always take a certain pleasure in the efficient performance of my duties, however arduous or onerous they may be," Maneka replied cheerfully, looking into the projected holographic display above the optical head Lazarus had extended and swivelled around to face her.

  At the moment, she sat in a folding chair atop Lazarus' after missile deck, parked beside a broad river estuary and shaded by towering trees very like some huge, Old Earth conifer. She was also deplorably out of uniform, in an eye-stunningly red T-shirt (whose nano-printed front depicted the fully animated singing face of one of the Concordiat's better known shatter-rock vocalists) and a pair of very short white shorts. A floppy sun hat completed her extremely nonregulation ensemble, and Agnelli chuckled as he absorbed the impact.

  "May I assume from your appearance that your survey activities have been successfully concluded?" he inquired.

  "You may, sir," Maneka told him, and sipped iced tea from the tall, condensation-bedewed glass in her other hand. She looked back at the display with a smile, then straightened in her chair and became somewhat more serious.

  "Officially, Governor," she told the man who had shifted from potential adversary to close friend over the past year and a half, "Lazarus and I have completed our survey of the proposed colony site. We're prepared to certify that the atmosphere is fully compatible with human environmental needs. We've been unable to detect any biohazards, and while there are several large local predators in the vicinity, none will pose a significant threat if routine out-world precautions are taken. Our samples of soil and local plant life have also confirmed the initial probe findings. Indrani's going to require more terraforming than some planets to support Terran food crops, but less than at least eighty percent of those we've successfully colonized elsewhere. All in all, sir, this looks like it's going to be a very nice place to live."

  "Captain," Agnelli said with total sincerity, "I cannot begin to tell you how happy—and relieved—I am to hear that. May I conclude that, in your capacity as the colony's military commander, you're prepared to authorize the beginning of disembarkation?"

  "Yes, Governor. I am," she said.

  "Excellent!" Agnelli beamed hugely at her, then nodded to someone outside the visual range of his own communicator's visual pickup.

  * * *

  "So they've found their accursed home at last, have they?" General Ka-Frahkan snarled to Na-Tharla.

  The two Melconians stood in Death Descending's Combat Information Center watching the icons of the Human convoy they had followed so far, and Ka-Frahkan's eyes were hot and hating in a face which had become noticeably gaunt.

  "Yes, sir," Na-Tharla responded, although he knew the question had been purely rhetorical. "And, I hope you'll forgive me for saying, that it's not a moment too soon."

  Ka-Frahkan looked up from the plot sharply. He opened his mouth, but Na-Tharla met his eyes levelly, and the general cut off what he'd started to say.

  The transport's captain was even more gaunt and worn looking than the Army officer, and well he should be. Even with all the personnel of Ka-Frahkan's brigade in cryo sleep, the wakeful portion of Death Descending's complement had been on sharply reduced rations for the last several months, and Na-Tharla had worked himself harder than any other member of his crew. Ka-Frahkan was an Army officer, not a naval officer, yet he was only too well aware of the miracles of improvisation Na-Tharla had performed to keep the ship's critical systems running this long. And the brilliant fashion in which Na-Tharla had managed to track the Human ships, despite all their efforts at evasive routing and the Bolo transports' infernal, never-to-be-sufficiently-accursed sensor sweeps had been masterful. Death Descending was only a transport, yet the general felt confident that none of the Emperor's cruiser or even battlecruiser commanders could have done a better job under such impossible conditions. Under the circumstances, the captain was entitled to express himself openly.

  "I not only forgive you for saying it, Captain," Ka-Frahkan said after a moment, "but I agree wholeheartedly. And I'd like to take this moment to say, because I don't think I have, really, how deeply I admire you and your crew for getting us here. You are truly heroes of the People."

  "Thank you, sir—on behalf of my people, as well as myself."

  Na-Tharla bent his head in a brief but obviously sincere acknowledgment of the compliment. Then he cleared his throat and looked back up at the general.

  "Now that we've arrived, General, may I ask how you intend to proceed?"

  "You certainly may," Ka-Frahkan agreed, but for several seconds, he said no more, only stood there, watching the icons. Then he drew a deep breath, wheeled away from the plot, and stepped out onto the main command deck where he could see the visual imagery of the far-distant planet the Human shuttles were landing upon even as he stood there.

  It was remarkable, really, he thought, that they were here and obviously still undetected and unsuspected, even given the superb job Na-Tharla had done of shadowing the Human convoy. A dozen times, at least, the Humans' sweeping Bolo transports must have come within a hair's breadth of detecting them, yet somehow Na-Tharla had always managed to elude their peering eyes.

  But there were limits to the miracles even someone as formidable as Na-Tharla could be expected to work. As the captain had predicted when Ka-Frahkan ordered him to pursue the Humans, Death Descending had traveled far beyond any point at which she could have returned to Melconian space.

  Even discounting the near total depletion of the transport's consumables, and ignoring the fact that her power plants were far overdue for shutdown and overhaul, her hyperdrive would have required a total overhaul of its own. None of which was likely to happen, given that they were literally hundreds upon hundreds of light-years away from the nearest Navy base.

  "What we will not do is to act hastily," he continued. "We've all come much too far, at much too high a cost, to act until we're certain of success."

  He considered the visual display for another several seconds, then turned away from it at last, and faced Na-Tharla squarely.

  "I realize we've been on short rations for some time now, but that was largely because we had no idea how far we might have to stretch them. Now that we've reached our destination, how long can we continue to sustain ourselves before we must attack?"

  "At least another several Human months, sir," Na-Tharla said slowly. "Until, of course, you awaken your personnel. An entire heavy brigade would devour all the supplies we still have within a very short period."

  "How short?" Ka-Frahkan pressed. Na-Tharla looked at him, and the general's ears flipped a shrug.

  "My people will need some time—three days, minimum, although five or six would be far better—to recover from the effects of cryo before they'll be fit for combat," he explained.

  "I see." Na-Tharla consulted his mental files on the state of their logistics, then shrugged himself.

  "If we're to retain a reserve of eight days, let's say, for your personnel, in order to give them long enough to recover and for us to mount the operation, then we have sufficient supplies to carry the remainder of our personnel for approximately seventy days at current calory levels, sir," he said.

  "Seventy days," Ka-Frahkan murmured, kneading the ridge of his muzzle thoughtfully. Then he snorted. "Well, it will just have to be long enough, won't it?"

  Na-Tharla said nothing, simply waiting with polite attentiveness, and Ka-Frahkan gave him a harsh chuckle.

  "Our primary difficulty, of course, lies in the two
Bolos," he said. "If this Human commander proceeds with the same intelligence and forethought he's displayed thus far, he'll leave at least one of the Bolos aboard its transport, orbiting the planet. He has none of the heavy weapons-equipped orbital platforms the Concordiat uses to defend its inhabited worlds, but he does have a pair of Bolos he can use as a substitute. And I'm afraid that if he chooses to leave both of them in orbit, the probability of our succeeding in our mission will be severely curtailed."

  He made the admission calmly, much though he disliked doing so. Na-Tharla had more than earned both honesty and openness from him.

  "I doubt he'll do that, however," Ka-Frahkan went on after a moment. "He has two general zones which require protection. One is the surface of the planet, where his people intend to settle and make their homes. The second, is the space around that planet, where the Humans will undoubtedly establish their primary industrial nodes. And from which, although I feel confident at this point that it isn't truly foremost in his mind, any outside military threat must come.

  "So the most reasonable way for him to proceed is to leave one Bolo in space, probably still mounted on its transport in order to give it full mobility, while he takes the other planet-side, to provide immediate security for the new settlement. In fact, he'll probably leave the Bolo they've already landed to conduct a survey of their future colony site on the planet."

  He paused, and Na-Tharla rubbed the side of his own muzzle with a thoughtful frown.

  "It would seem to me, sir," he said slowly, "that positioning his Bolos in the way you've described ought to make our task considerably more difficult. Surely the Bolo in space will pose a severe threat to any operation we might attempt to mount?"

  "It certainly will," Ka-Frahkan agreed. "Not only will it serve as a most formidable orbital fortress, but its sensors will also be best positioned to give the colony early warning of the approach of any threat.

  In addition, it will be mobile. Should we manage to somehow elude its sensors and land an assault force, it will be in a position to maneuver itself and its weapons into position to bombard us from space. With the planet-side Bolo available to mount counterattacks, and with such heavy fire coming down on us from overhead, the Brigade would undoubtedly be wiped out long before it could reach attack range of the colony.

  "How, sir?" Na-Tharla asked with simple and genuine curiosity.

  "The Brigade includes three special reconnaissance platoons, Captain Na-Tharla. They are equipped with the best EW stealth suits the Empire can provide, and they're trained to operate in all environments .

  . . including deep space.

  "It's unlikely that the Humans believe for an instant that they're under threat of attack. From what I've observed of their operations, I expect them to act as if they do believe that, taking all prudent precautions against even the most unlikely of eventualities. Any thought they may have of external threats, however, will almost certainly focus upon possible Fleet attacks. A ... brute force threat, one might say. They won't be expecting a stealth attack, and I think the odds are exceedingly good that we'll be able to get at least one recon platoon into range to attack the transport with fusion warheads.

  "Destruction of the transport and the Bolo's assault pod will, at the very least, severely damage the Bolo. It's more likely, however, that the attack will catch the Bolo with its battle screen down, in which case a sufficiently powerful warhead—of which we have several in stores—will breach its unprotected war hull. In short, I believe the odds are that we will be able to kill it as the opening gambit in our attack."

  He paused once more, watching Na-Tharla's expression closely. The captain was silent for several seconds, obviously thinking hard. Then his ears rose in a gesture which mingled assent with qualified confidence.

  "Once we've disabled or destroyed the orbiting Bolo, the mobility advantage shifts to us," Death Descending's commander said slowly, thinking aloud. "The Bolo on the planet will have no choice but to remain close to the colony site, lest we manage to decoy it out of position and make our troop landing behind it or launch a bombardment of our own from space. Of course, we have no bombardment capability, but it won't know that. So it will have to react as if we do, which will allow us to land your Brigade around the curve of the planet from the colony, where it will be unable to engage us on our approach."

  "Precisely," the general said, flicking his ears in emphatic agreement. "Any Bolo is always a formidable opponent, but I rather suspect that any Bolos assigned to these colony efforts will be older, less capable models. The demands of the main fronts have been pressing both sides too hard for me to believe the Concordiat is willing to divert first-line Bolos to something like this. After all," he showed his canines in a mirthless grin, "even an 'obsolete' Bolo should be equal to almost any threat—short of, say, an Imperial Heavy Assault Brigade—which might be encountered out here in the depths of unexplored space.

  "My combat mechs, on the other hand, while not Bolos, are first-line units. I anticipate heavy losses, but I confidently expect to succeed in destroying the Bolo or at least crippling it sufficiently to prevent it from interfering with our destruction of the Human colony."

  "I'm glad, General," Na-Tharla said after a moment. "I would hate to believe we've come so far without a significant chance of victory." He snorted softly. "I take no more pleasure in contemplating the probability of my own death than anyone, but I find I can accept the fact that even if we win, we can never get home, as long as we accomplish what we came for."

  "Agreed," Ka-Frahkan said. "On the other hand, Captain, I have no intention of destroying the Humans and then simply sitting down and waiting to die ourselves!"

  "Indeed?" Both of Na-Tharla's ears cocked interrogatively.

  "But that, as I say, is a worst-case outcome. I believe we stand an excellent chance of capturing the Humans' industrial infrastructure intact, as well. That's one of the reasons I wanted to know how long we can wait before we launch our attack. The longer the Humans have to settle into a sense of security, the lower their guard is likely to become. And our drones have already indicated that their industrial ships are designed on a modular basis."

  Na-Tharla's ears flicked agreement. The heavily stealthed platform had shown them that at least three of the Human ships were already being dismantled into three large, independent modules each. From the data they'd been able to gather so far—limited, admittedly; even with the People's stealth technology, getting a platform close enough for detailed looks was out of the question—it appeared that each of those nine modules was intended to serve as the core of its own, separate industrial platform. Given the impressive automation of Human manufacturing capacity, he doubted it would take long for those industrial nodes to come on-line and begin expanding exponentially.

  "I want them to have sufficient time to get as much as possible of their base infrastructure in place,"

  General Ka-Frahkan said with bleak satisfaction. "By dispersing it, they deprive it of strategic mobility. It won't be able to drop into hyper and run away from us, and I would prefer to see that true of as many of their ships as possible. I want all of those ships taken or destroyed, Captain, but I especially want to gain possession of their manufacturing capacity.

  "I realize it will be designed to produce additional Human technology, not immediately suited to our needs, but their mission planners will have provided sufficient capability to sustain and nurture the population they intended to place on this planet. It would be surprising indeed if we couldn't sufficiently adapt that capacity to provide the repairs and overhauls your vessel requires. So once we destroy the enemy, we will have many possible futures open to us.

  "Which," his voice was suddenly hard and cold, like iron grating across the stone floor of a dungeon,

  "is more than they will."

  4

  "God, what a beautiful evening," Adrian Agnelli said softly.

  He sat with his guests under a sky which was rapidly settling into the deep, cobalt blue vau
lt of oncoming night. The distant mutter of waves came from behind him, rolling up over the lip of the bluff overlooking the ocean they hadn't yet gotten around to naming. In front of him, on the western horizon, the last fragments of day blazed in a crimson conflagration beyond the peaks of the inland mountains which fenced in the coastal plateau they'd chosen for the site of the City of Landing. Agnelli had hoped for a name with a bit more imagination, but tradition had carried the day. And it didn't really matter to him as he watched the sun-struck clouds fuming up about the sharp-edged peaks like the smoke of some stupendous bonfire. The brightest stars of unfamiliar constellations were already dimly visible overhead, and the larger of Indrani's two sizable moons was also visible, high in the eastern sky.

  There weren't very many guests. The Governor himself, his daughter Allison, Lieutenant Governor Berthier, Brigadier Jeffords, Maneka, and Edmund Hawthorne. Over the often seemingly endless months of the voyage here, the six of them had become a tight-knit, efficiently functioning command team for the colony effort. The last two months, as the colony began to become an actual living, breathing entity, had been exhausting for all of them, yet Maneka often thought that there were no words in any human language to express the satisfaction all of them took from their demanding duties.

  Even me. Maybe especially me. She glanced sideways at Hawthorne's profile and felt a warm glow deep inside her. I joined the Brigade because I believed in what it stands for, and I still do. But I've seen enough death and destruction to last me for two or three lifetimes. It's so ... unspeakably wonderful to see my efforts contributing to life for a change.

  She looked around. The table sat on a terrace behind the rapidly rising shell of what would become Landing's combined town hall and Governor's residence. At the moment, it didn't look particularly prepossessing, but Maneka had seen the plans. It would be a gracious structure when it was completed, and the people who'd designed it had been careful to provide for the inevitable growth it would suffer as the colony's population grew and government and its service organizations grew with it.