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  “Yes, it is a Brotherhood ship. And I’m glad to see you understand the ramifications of that.”

  “But why? In the name of God, Master Kraal, you don’t know me from—”

  “Trust, Constance.” He reached over, laying a dry hand on hers. Warmth, like that of his personality, leeched through the leathery skin, into her frigid hand. “Because right now, more than anything else in the universe, you and I need to trust each other. Yes, you’re a risk. WeVe guarded our technology most carefully over the years—as you have had personal experience with. At the same time, Constance, you must trust me since your father has come here and placed part of the burden on my shoulders. Since I must make the first gesture, I give you access to Brotherhood technology.”

  “And I will have to trust you with the artifact?” Here it is. What do you say now, Kraal? I get to be second in command as long as I hand over absolute power to you ? Damn it, Father, what did you do to us?

  He cocked his head. “Not entirely. Once it’s brought here, we—you, me, and your father—have to decide what to do with it.” He chuckled hollowly. “And I’m not so naive as to delude myself over how easy it will be to deal with this ...”

  “Power.” Not quite the answer she’d expected. It could still be a damn fine con job. She let her gaze drift out again over the sparkling lights of the night-clad city. “And Captain Carrasco? What are you going to tell him?”

  “If he takes the command . . . nothing.”

  She swung sharp eyes back to his. “Nothing?”

  Kraal shook his head. “I’ll leave that to your father and you when the time seems right. In the meantime, three people know what’s at stake, and my friend, Petran Dart, knows about the alien and has a few sketchy details. Don’t get me wrong. I trust Sol. But he’ll be vulnerable. If outside parties got their hands on him, a psych probe would have it out of him no matter what his intentions or desires. Same with the rest of the crew. True, you and Archon are just as vulnerable. We’ll have to take that risk and guard against it. In the meantime, I don’t want anyone else to know.”

  “Except Palmiere.”

  “And if I time this right, you’ll be ready to leave before he can manage to gum up the works. The sooner we move, the better. I’d suggest spacing for Arcturus as soon as possible. Not only that, but I have some ideas to mislead the opposition along the way. Unfortunately, time is of the essence—and the cover will fall apart too soon as it is.”

  “And Carrasco will accept that?”

  He winked at her, patting her hand in a friendly manner. “Of course not. But he’ll follow orders until his ship looks compromised.” Kraal pulled his hand back, staring absently out at the night. “... And, I’m willing to bet, even my orders won’t hold him back then. The ship and crew will be his one vulnerability. Again, with subterfuge, I might buy us a little time there, too.”

  “And backup?”

  “Not advisable—at least not from Frontier. You can bet spies will be watching every Brotherhood ship in Confederate space. Any attempt at camouflage will be blown if I space a fleet to cover for you—proof positive that we’re up to something. That doesn’t mean I can’t see to subtle shifts in Fleet schedules. In the meantime, you’ve got your father’s fleet. What are your thoughts on the matter?”

  She considered, flipping a red curl through her fingers. “I can see your point. I can agree to that. We take one ship. Go fast. Get in and get out again before the opposition can organize. We avoid the political bickering and the Artifact is safely here. Fait accompli. Would anyone believe we were after anything so important in a single ship?”

  “And a new ship at that—piloted by innocents.”

  “Innocents?”

  “Well, I’m thinking about keeping the new First Officers.” Kraal shrugged. “I think I can lay enough of a smoke screen to keep us ahead of Palmiere—if he leaks.”

  “If.” She shook her head. “So many ifs.”

  CHAPTER III

  Solomon Carrasco rose from the contour couch of the med unit. Opened, it looked like some giant clam, shell gaping wide to seize prey.

  A tall muscular man, he stood and walked to the center of his quarters and stretched his arms out before him. In the dim light he studied his fingers and slowly moved them. Fascinated by his control over bone and muscle, he studied the warm living flesh, watching the tendons stand out on the backs of his hands. The tingle that ran up his arms at once irritated and thrilled him. With mixed emotions he glared at the hulking machine he stood next to.

  I can see. Feel again. Blessed Architect of the Universe, this is truly a miracle. Light, images, the most incredible gift of all to a man condemned to darkness. He swallowed hard, enjoying the sensations of a body that functioned completely. Reverently he ran his hands over each other and encountered smooth skin. Feeling. FEELING!

  “Well?” The muted voice came from the darkness behind him.

  “You’ve read the med technical printout, you know how they are.” His voice carried, deep, resonant with the strength of a man who knows command. At the same time, one could hear a quiet, soft quality that bespoke weary pain.

  “The tech printout doesn’t tell me what’s inside your head, Sol.”

  A wry smile crooked Carrasco’s face. “There’s always psych for that.” His high smooth brow lined as he turned a brown-eyed knowing gaze on the med specialist who waited patiently.

  “All right! Damn it, they tingle like they went to sleep! And they’re not my hands. I mean, they don’t look the same. They’re . . . different.”

  “Regenerated. You’ll get used to them. And your eyes? Is there any restriction in the movement? Do they hurt as the light gets brighter?”

  Carrasco sighed loudly. “There’s a bit of a gritty feel-like after a good drunk.” His cheeks dimpled evilly. “You ever gone on a good dockside binge, Doctor?”

  The tech nodded slightly, nonplussed. He wore his white coat like an icon. Sol cataloged his plump tormentor’s body. The forehead receded above nondescript eyes. The hawklike look of his face came from the beak nose. The set of the mouth now reflected worry. “A time or two, Captain.” Then his face straightened. “Being intimately familiar with your personal history, I wouldn’t brag about binges. Two is not a sterling record of debauchery. And Happy Anderson dragged you kicking and screaming into both of those, as I recall.”

  Carrasco’s lips twitched sullenly.

  “Captain, please. Keep in mind, we employed a lot of new techniques; you’re sort of a guinea pig for us. Naturally, we’re concerned from several standpoints. We want your reactions from a human perspective. What’s it like to be rebuilt after so much pain? Do you feel any different about yourself on a less substantive level? I mean, come on, Sol. Level with me. I want to hear the human element.” He tapped the monitor with a thumb. “We’ve got the hard science here in the machine.”

  Carrasco chuckled hollowly—a sound like the patter of stellar dust on an abraded empty hull. “Anything would have been an improvement, wouldn’t it?” He closed his tender eyes at the engulfing memory: searing white-hot pain, blasting up his arms. Cauterized flesh dangling in strips from his roasted face. Meat cooking from charring bone. Agony . . .

  The tech’s voice reassured. “You surprised us all. We thought maybe we could make your retirement a little easier. We didn’t have the slightest idea you’d become a living miracle.” A pause. “You could go back to space, you know.”

  He stiffened, heart thudding dully. By forcing himself, he padded to his personal comm and tapped out a command. In a small dark alcove, a light formed. Carrasco pinched his eyes shut and fumbled at the controls with unsteady fingers to dim the display until his tender eyes could stand the glowing globe spinning free in the holo projector.

  “Know what that is?” At the tech’s confused look he added, “I named it Romulus and Remus. The scale here is bad so you don’t get the effect, but that red supergiant has a smaller neutron star orbiting inside the envelope. By that, we pro
ved tidal forces acted as the mixing agent to evolve homogenous configurations. Most spectacular, don’t you agree?” A wistful note had crept into his voice.

  Another star formed as the first blinked out. “That one, we called Beershy’s Breast. What looks like the nipple is a huge prominence. We don’t know what powers it yet. The magnetic fields don’t account for it. Octorhu Mbazi thinks . . . thought ... it might be some new form of solar vulcanism.”

  Mbazi. Dead. Silent, tumbling frozen through space. Like so many others. He let the program run. One after another stars—old friends—appeared on the holo, spinning for a couple of seconds before being replaced by yet another image to gently stroke memories. The sights stirred the depths of his emotions, dredging up a better past—long gone now. Each little pain stitched his peace, a link to the dead.

  “I’d never thought to see them again,” Carrasco murmured, reaching absently for the coffee dispenser with his left hand.

  The med noted the unconscious gesture, nodded his satisfaction, and made notes as Carrasco turned back toward him.

  “No.” The brown eyes remained steady in the long pale face. “I won’t go back to space, Doctor. My resignation was final.”

  “You’re the youngest Captain in the history of the Brotherhood fleet ever to have resigned his commission.”

  Carrasco nodded slightly, eyes seeking the stars again. “Always the trendsetter, hmm? Come on, Doctor. You know my record.” He drew his lungs full, stretching the shimmering fabric across his muscular chest. “You want the human element? Very well, here goes. I lost three ships and too many good people. What your little instruments can’t measure is the psychological pain ... the loss and grief. Those ships . . . those lives, were my responsibility. I can’t—”

  “You received a commendation every time, Sol. Order of the Square. Meritorious Conduct Medal. Honorary Sword of the Tyler from the Galactic Grand Lodge. Honorary Grand Senior Deacon. Want me to go on? The only person holding you to blame is yourself. The Galactic Grand—“

  “I told you. No. I’m not going back, Doctor. I’ve watched my last friend die out there. No more. Maybe . . . well, I guess I care too much.”

  The tech leaned against the med unit and crossed his arms, head tilted as he met Carrasco’s eyes. “Your men would literally walk through fire for you.” He waved down Carrasco’s protest. “You always managed to bring them back, Sol. Even this last time, you got Gage home. Fifty men and women are alive today because you had the guts and the nerves to hold that powerlead together with your bare hands until Happy got the reaction under control.”

  Carrasco’s gaze drifted back to the holo. A weirdly-lit nebula formed and twisted like a thing alive. “Gage is dead, too. She’ll never talk again . . . never think. She’s scrap now—a cold, lifeless hunk of steel, circuit maze, conduit, and fabric. Part of her has been melted down for reuse; the rest waits and rusts while pieces are carved off for this and that. No. I. . .1 couldn’t take that again.”

  “Your engineer, Happy Anderson, is healthy, working on a new ship about to be commissioned. Cal Fujiki is arguing passionately with the weapons theorists. Misha Gaitano still smiles and laughs because you did the unthinkable.”

  “Enough!” Carrasco swallowed hard, glaring out of his new eyes. “What does it take? No is still no. Want me to repeat it to prove my tongue and larynx work?”

  The tech met his glare, unfazed. An evaluative frown lined his normally placid features and he couldn’t help but glance at the small psych unit in his hand.

  “I’ll make that most clear in my report, Sol. And to be candid, I’ll back you up as far as I can. I—”

  “Back me up? What do you mean? Doctor, no matter what kind of maneuvering is coming out of Fleet—I’m out. You can recommend me for Grand Master for all I care—but I’m done with Fleet. Understand?”

  “Okay. I just said I agreed.” A pause. “Just remember,“ he added calmly, not letting Solomon Carrasco get under his skin, ”you could go back.“ He picked up his console and set the med unit on antigrav. When the massive hospital unit lifted from the floor, he steered it artfully from the dark apartment, letting the door snick shut behind him.

  Carrasco scowled down at his feet. He took a deep breath, held it, and let the surges of frustration and anger settle under the iron control of his mind. Defiantly, he ordered the lights up a little more and squinted his rebuilt eyes at the brightness before he threw himself into the welcome relief of his bunk. The damn med unit had been a foul prison.

  He couldn’t help himself; his gaze kept creeping back to the holo as he nursed his familiar coffee cup—now despicably clean. He studied it, curious as to how it had followed him. Last time he’d seen it had been on Gage, just before the last moments. His final action had been to fill the cup, and wander down to check . . .

  No, don’t punish yourself over it. He looked up at the stars, sipping coffee.

  “Each of those stars,” he growled, “I found, mapped, and named.” Something grew in his chest, expanding, filling him with a warm pride that threatened to bring him to tears.

  * * *

  “We just made a mistake,” Archon growled thickly as they walked through the giant doorway of President Palmiere’s private quarters.

  “Father!” Connie hissed, eyes flashing a warning. Damn it, of course they’d be under observation. Until they made it back to the Brotherhood suite, a virus in a specimen jar would be less subject to observation.

  Archon sniffed his irritation and paced on vigorously. She hurried her steps to keep pace, knowing that worried set of his shoulders. They marched down gleaming white halls, security coram globes hanging from the arched ceiling every fifty meters. Along the walls, oil paintings and holos of assorted planets and stations identified the various members of the Confederacy. Archon stepped into a grav tube as Connie followed; the fields lowered them to the ground floor. There, the broad hallway seemed to stretch forever, following the slight bend of the station. Office doors studded the gleaming white of walls. Here, the very heart of the Confederacy throbbed and pulsed while bureaucrats hustled back and forth.

  Archon took the next grav tube to the T deck. The private lift waited beyond the pressure doors. Connie didn’t even seat herself as the pneumatic doors slipped shut behind them. A barest hesitation indicated the vehicle was moving.

  Archon sat, feet thrust out, arms crossed, a brooding frown lining his thick brow.

  Two minutes later, a slight swaying betrayed a decrease in velocity. The door snicked open to the familiar landing of the Brotherhood main lodge. Three men and a woman lounged surreptitiously, nodding as Connie and Archon stepped out.

  “You weren’t followed. We’ve taken all the precautions we could,” the woman informed them as she straightened.

  Archon sighed and nodded too quickly. “Yes. Thank you. We appreciate your concern.” And he was dragging Connie in through the pressure doors as he spoke.

  In their rooms Archon sprawled on the bed. “He’s a serpent, a maggot living in the flesh of humanity. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw his soft white body. Oh, Connie, why did we listen to Kraal?”

  She paced slowly to the holo viewer which depicted the red star with its wealth of stations and transportation. “Because Kraal was right about Palmiere’s ability to cause trouble. I see that now. I’ll admit, I had my doubts. Thought this might be premature . . . rushing here to spill everything. Now, I understand. Palmiere is a typical politician—a power monger interested in promoting himself no matter what the cost to the poor people who trust him.”

  He shook his head wistfully. “They’re self-perpetuating vermin, Connie. All of them. Weaseling human trash— and Palmiere typifies it.”

  His eyes pleaded with her as she watched silently.

  “And that knowledge scares me to death. What Palmiere could do with the artifact would . . . would . . . God, I can’t even let myself think it.”

  * * *

  President Palmiere's smooth white sk
in contrasted with the rich black of his hair, eyebrows, and mustache and the darkness of his eyes. He frowned fleetingly before his lips thinned and he leaned back deeper into the self-contouring chair, steepling his fingers. A split-second expression of pleasure crossed his face as Archon, Speaker of Star’s Rest, and his daughter, Constance, disappeared through the security hatch.

  Around him lay the trappings of power. Antiques from Earth filled the room. Tapestries akin to those in the legends hung in bright colors from the walls, warming the atmosphere, hiding the complicated electronic and security devices that gave him privacy and galaxy-wide communication at the same time. On the desk before him sat a priceless Respitian opal the size of a cantaloupe.

  So, all the dreams might be realized. In one fell swoop, Giacomo Palmiere could become the most powerful man in history if he played this game just right. Imagine the power! The ability to control all of space—to eliminate rivals. This he must have.

  His nervous gaze roamed about the plush compartment. Here, in the very heart of Arcturus, he could be considered safe for the moment. But if he lost ... if someone else obtained Archon’s secret, he wouldn’t be. No one, anywhere, would be safe again. Now the time had come to pay the piper. Damn Sirians anyway.

  Being a fool hadn’t levered Giacomo Palmiere to the acme of the Confederacy. Holding the Presidency could be likened to performing ballet across a forty-five degree sheet of ice with one broken leg. Worlds and entire sectors of space shifted alliances, forever stirring the brew of Confederate politics. Fortunes accumulated and went bust in a matter of days, and through it all, humanity continued to burst forth, expanding through space like a supernova Shockwave.

  “Did you get it all?” His eyes never wavered from the white blast-proof door the man and woman had passed through.

  The individual who hobbled out from behind the historic-style bookcase had an oddly formed body, bone-thin with pale skin stretched over an ill-proportioned balloonlike head. “I got it all.” His accent was uncultured, the Russian sounding stilted and poorly pronounced.