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  Tiny figures stood skylined against the night for a moment, dark shadows blocking out the starlight. Then they made their way over the rise and down into the valley, occasionally masked by the silver spray of the falls.

  Cautiously, Sage traded places with Jahup and brought up the spyglass to his eye again. He peered at the figures and only made out glimpses of the small group walking through the trees, but he identified the Phrenorians easily.

  On average, the Sting-­Tails stood taller than humans. The chitinous exoskeletons, four “lesser” arms, and segmented tails gave them more than a passing resemblance to Terran scorpions. The primary arms that came out from the shoulders ended in huge pincers big enough and strong enough to crush a man’s head. Generally their exoskeletal coloration ran the gamut of blue and purple, the preferred colors of the Phrenorian elite, but there were greens and dark reds mixed in. They wore little armor because their chitin was as tough as any AKTIVsuit, and oftentimes only a little less dense than shielding on the Army’s heavy combat powersuits. Only bare latticework featuring yellow and red plates protected their abdomens and provided a tactical platform for weaponry and supplies.

  All of the Phrenorians carried weapons, rifles and sidearms, and they looked alert. Several anti-­grav “mules,” floating flat cargo carriers, transported heavy loads strapped aboard them.

  Sage wondered if the polymer crates carried supplies or equipment. Either way, it was a lot of material.

  A door on the blister irised open as the new arrivals approached. A dozen Phrenorian warriors stepped out, fanning into position on either side of the opening. Another Phrenorian, this one colored deep blue and purple, stepped out as the supply train came to a halt.

  Evidently a conversation took place, then a PAD glowed briefly, revealing the alien features of the Phrenorian officer. The Sting-­Tails’ heads narrowed as they went from shoulders to forehead. Three pairs of oily black eyes gleamed above the Phrenorian’s slash of a mouth. Chelicerae, tiny arms that resembled the Sting-­Tails’ lesser arms, surrounded the razor-­slit mouth. Another pair of eyes, not seen at the moment, was set into the back of the warrior’s head.

  One of the newly arrived Phrenorians stepped forward and pressed a lesser hand against the PAD. In that brief instant of pale light, Sage recognized the warrior.

  Zhoh GhiCemid was, according to Terran military intel, a high-­ranking warrior in the Phrenorian Empire. Information experts had tracked GhiCemid at the scenes of several major battles in the Khustal System. The Pagor System had fallen and the Sting-­Tails were making a major push into new territory. The Loki System that contained Makaum was only a short distance out of the way for them.

  No one knew what Zhoh GhiCemid was doing on Makaum, but everyone knew the stakes had been raised.

  Silently, Sage watched Zhoh GhiCemid and his warriors disappear into the blister. When the door irised closed again, he leaned back, collapsed the spyglass quietly, and considered his options. After a minute he glanced at Jahup.

  The young scout signed quickly in the code they’d worked out before leaving Fort York. We go.

  Sage shook his head and signed back. We stay. See more. Then go.

  Jahup frowned and let out a short breath filled with irritation. Dawn soon.

  We go before dawn.

  Reluctantly, Jahup nodded.

  Sage didn’t want to chance another recon. Getting caught might accelerate the Phrenorians’ plans. The Terran Military needed to know everything he could discover now. He lifted a waterskin from his hip and drank deeply to stay hydrated, signaling for Jahup to do the same. Then he settled in to wait.

  TWO

  J-­Keydor Node

  Stronghold RuSasara

  Makaum

  4917 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)

  Captain Zhoh GhiCemid of the Phrenorian Empire’s Brown Spyrl struggled to keep his fury under control as the sec door closed behind him and he stepped into a well-­lit, broad hallway. He knew he was failing to keep his emotions to himself when the lieutenant to his left took a half step away and the sergeant on his right dropped a lesser hand to the pistol holstered at his hip. Zhoh’s anger radiated in waves of edgy pheromones, signaling a warning to those around him. He smelled the cold stink of himself and concentrated on being calm.

  “Are you well, sir?” Lieutenant Sibed DenSkel asked. The question was designed to allow Zhoh to take no offense.

  “I am fine, Lieutenant,” Zhoh replied. He wanted to tell Sibed that getting called from his bed in the middle of the night like a youngling was not how an honored warrior was to be treated. But he knew the lieutenant was only following orders. “Have your sergeant stand down before I take his actions as an affront to me.”

  “Yes sir.” In a strident voice and with a fearful and angry pheromone release of his own, the young lieutenant ordered the sergeant to remove his hand from his weapon.

  Reluctantly, the sergeant did so. He kept his emotions and his scent under control.

  “Excuse Sergeant Orek. General Rangha insists that we remain vigilant, and the general can be very exacting.”

  Zhoh said nothing. Any response he made to acknowledge the explanation would have been seen as a sign of weakness. He was getting tired of seeming fragile to warriors he should have been commanding. His patience was wearing thin on this planet. The Empire was not being as forceful as they should have been in pursuing their goals on Makaum. Either the planet was worth conquering or it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, the warriors here would be better served stationed somewhere else. And if the Phrenorian Empire wanted the world, General Rangha should have been pursuing that more aggressively.

  The hallway held doors to several rooms. Some of the rooms were open. Most of them were quarters for warriors who watched silently as the small party strode by.

  For more than two Empire Standard months, Zhoh had served on Makaum, watching and learning, and waiting to seize an opportunity that would put his military career back on solid footing. He had learned what the Terran Army was doing, what the (ta)Klar were doing, and what the Makaum factions were doing. He had thought he’d known what the Empire’s warriors here were doing, which was very little.

  However, that wasn’t so. He hadn’t known anything about this base until tonight.

  Two hundred meters into the installation, they approached a lift against the wall.

  Zhoh’s chelicerae tightened in displeasure, and he knew the subtle fragrance of his pheromones changed as well. The lift was an open invitation to invaders, a way to trap all who served below. Doubtless there would be other escape routes, but the chokehold was too attainable.

  “Things are not as they seem, Captain.” Sibed waved his left primary hand toward the featureless wall beside him.

  Glancing at the wall, Zhoh noticed the faint outline of half a footprint at the juncture where the wall met the floor. He smudged the footprint with the claw on his big toe. “Your secrets would be better kept if you maintained cleanliness, Lieutenant.”

  “Of course, Captain.” Sibed’s embarrassed pheromones mixed with resentment and anger. “I will make note of this.” He placed his top right lesser hand against the wall. Pale infrared lights cycled under the wall’s surface.

  Zhoh glanced around the hallway. “You have other points of egress from the hallway.”

  “Yes sir.” Sibed watched Zhoh with the eyes in the back of his head.

  Certain that the lieutenant would not tell him where all of the entrances were, Zhoh remained silent. If he had designed the fortification, he would have put a few of the doors in some of the rooms as well. Doing so was expensive and redundant, but it would help with security. There would be other surprises hiding behind the walls too, and many of them would be lethal. The waiting lift so readily in sight probably didn’t do anything. It was bait in a very lethal trap.

  A section of the wall slid to the side to reveal a lift lar
ge enough for six Phrenorians. Other wall sections probably held fighting points where warriors could trap invaders or kill them at will. The setup impressed Zhoh. It meant that whoever had designed it had recognized the chances of one day being found out. Or maybe, when the installation had served whatever purpose it was there for, it would be turned into a kill box against enemies.

  Those enemies could get in, but they couldn’t get out.

  Sibed gestured for Zhoh to precede him.

  “You go first, Lieutenant.” Zhoh still wasn’t certain why he’d been brought to the command post, and he was certain that was what this place was. General Rangha could have been merely throwing his weight around, or he could have summoned Zhoh there to kill him. Either was possible given Zhoh’s current predicament.

  With the ill-­fated brood his treacherous wife had given birth to, and the blame she had placed on him for the genetic defects that had required the immediate deaths of those spawn, the titles and office Zhoh had been given by the Phrenorian Empire primes had been negated. He was just a warrior once more, and only bravery and success would lift him back to a place of honorable standing in the Empire. He should have been at the front of the war, leading warriors into battle and claiming the flesh of those he defeated, eating those enemies and joying in victory, not shepherding researchers working only to create poison to sell to the humans and other lesser species.

  As he stepped into the lift, Zhoh slid a lesser hand closer to his Kimer particle beam pistol and another to his patimong. In close quarters the honor blade would prove instantly more lethal. If things went badly, he would bury the length of orange-­red daravgane resin in the sergeant’s thorax. The patimong would have no problem slicing through the sergeant’s chitin. The blades were designed to do exactly that.

  The other accompanying warriors started to board the lift too, but Sibed waved them back. It was an obvious attempt to put Zhoh at ease, or to show that Sibed did not fear Zhoh, but that didn’t insure that weapons would not come out.

  Or that the lift would not explode somewhere deep in the bowels under the base. It was a trap that Zhoh had used before. He had entered the lift because sometimes chances had to be taken in order for enemies to reveal themselves.

  Sibed waved a lesser hand with a key cube over the control panel. Lights glowed briefly, then the lift dropped at a rapid rate and stopped to shift sideways for a time, shifted still again, then dropped some more before shifting twice more. The path to wherever they were going was not straightforward. Zhoh’s equilibrium rocked slightly, but he maintained his balance.

  The lift did not blow up. That thought had crossed Zhoh’s mind, that Rangha might have called him to his death. His wife’s father wanted him dead. He dropped that thought from his mind, knowing that he shouldn’t even have considered that.

  At least, he shouldn’t have had to allow distractions along those lines. Yet here he was, on this blighted planet with no real chance of war glory ahead of him.

  Zhoh also knew the installation was larger than he’d imagined earlier. A lot of resources had gone into the construction.

  Angrily, he wondered if it was all a waste. The commanding officer in charge of the Phrenorian army on Makaum wasn’t known for his abilities in the field. General Rangha wasn’t even a blooded warrior.

  Finally the lift doors opened onto another hallway that was narrower than the one above. A dozen warriors stood on guard along the way. They wore particle beam rifles and pistols and patimongs, and dressed in raintai, the ceremonial armor of warriors who guarded the Phrenorian primes.

  The distinctive armor was constructed from a spyrl’s blood-­kin warriors fallen in a victorious battle, symbolic of the glory their forebears had won. The armor pieces were all deep purple and blue, thick layers of chitin processed with sul’kala oil made from the apodemes that attached a Phrenorian’s muscles to his exoskeleton and made him stronger.

  Zhoh struggled to keep his anger and contempt under control. As a general recognized by the primes, Rangha could choose to have his private guards wear the armor, but doing so could be to honor the warriors that had pledged to lay down their lives before their general’s. Or such a show could be considered boastful.

  Zhoh considered the present choice as boastful. General Rangha had achieved his rank through privilege from the Empire based on his bloodline. Sometime in the distant past, one of Rangha’s ancestors had been a hero to the Phrenorians, a warrior who had made a name for himself in battle against harsh odds. His descendants had been partitioned out of dangerous ser­vice to continue breeding strong warriors.

  That way of thinking was changing these days. Defeating the Terrans was proving to be more difficult than the Empire had at first believed. Warriors died quickly in battle against the Terrans. Although the humans were more fragile with their soft bodies and thin bones, they did not quit or turn away from a fight. Zhoh would never respect the Terrans because there remained so much weakness in them, but he would acknowledge their ferocity and dedication to battle.

  If the war against the Terrans was to be won quickly, Phrenoria needed to bring out their best warriors now. Zhoh had championed that line of rationale for the last six years, until the time Sxia, his wife, had delivered their malformed brood only months ago.

  That old anger settled in over the new and Zhoh got control of himself as he walked at the lieutenant’s side. Their footsteps echoed in the hallway. One day Sxia would pay for her betrayal, and her father would bleed for the political favors he had pulled in to salvage his daughter’s future and bury her genetic defects. She would never again have a brood. That had been taken from her, and blame for that had also been placed at Zhoh’s feet.

  Zhoh would have no other wife, and there would be no children to carry on his name so that he would be forever remembered. His present hadn’t been the only thing that had been taken from him. His future had been stripped away as well.

  None of the guards looked directly at Zhoh, but they all took notice of him. Some tightened their grips on their weapons, but not enough to be offensive about it. He was a renowned warrior, one who had killed hundreds of his opponents, and no few in personal combat. They were wise to be wary of him. Zhoh took a shadow of satisfaction at that.

  Sibed stopped in front of an inset door. Massive hinges on the side gave an indication of how thick the entrance was and how much it weighed.

  Zhoh’s respect for the general dropped even further. A true warrior wouldn’t hide away in a hole in the ground.

  As if guessing his thoughts, the lieutenant said, “General Rangha isn’t all that is protected within this vault.”

  Zhoh chose not to answer.

  With a hiss that revealed the airlock within, the huge door recessed a meter, then swung to the side, revealing the massive room on the other side. Where Zhoh had only expected the general’s living quarters, the vault had to be at least a klick square and half that deep, lit now by bright lights. Several war machines, ranging from heavy powersuits to tracked assault vehicles ten meters tall to aerial manned and unmanned vehicles, gleamed in the brilliant incandescence. Machine oil stink overlay everything.

  An assault force lay ready and waiting before Zhoh. All thoughts of his anger drifted away from him as he gazed on the collection of armament.

  “I can smell your surprise from up here, Captain Zhoh,” a mocking voice stated.

  Using his rear eyes, Zhoh glanced up the wall behind him and spotted General Rangha leaning on a balcony overlooking the floor and the immense room. The general supported himself on his primary hands. The great claws fastened on the waist-­high railing.

  Rangha’s age showed in the dulling luster of his chitin. His days of lannig, the moulting process that promoted growth all Phrenorians went through till their final years, were behind him. He had seen his final rebirth. There was no stronger body awaiting him these days.

  Although his hair didn’t turn
gray as a Terran’s did, the thin black braids festooned with awards his ancestors had won in ser­vice to the Empire were dull and flat. His exoskeleton wasn’t as broad and as formidable as Zhoh had expected, and he knew the old general hadn’t been challenged physically in a long time. There were no scars on his chitin. Pain and struggle made a warrior larger and stronger. Rangha had not experienced much of either. Like his guards, he too wore ceremonial armor.

  “Greetings, General.” Zhoh turned and performed a small bow. “May your next lannig be ruthless and painful and grow you ever stronger so that you may serve the Empire.”

  The traditional greeting was proper, but Zhoh hoped it shamed the general all the same, drawing attention to the fact that such a thing would never again happen for him.

  “And may yours test you,” Rangha called down, “to the limits of your endurance.”

  That was a thinly veiled curse, or perhaps a threat. Zhoh was not certain which it was. Of course, it was also a traditional response among Phrenorians. Lannig was a painful process.

  Zhoh bowed again and snapped a primary hand at the guards in their ceremonial armor. “Had I known the occasion merited formal dress, I would have come properly attired.”

  “Stronghold RuSasara, as this place is known, stands on tradition, Captain. You were not so informed because your manner of dress is not a reflection of this place.”

  You are not—­and will not be—­any part of this place. The general’s words couldn’t have been any clearer. Zhoh kept calm through willpower, barely able to withstand the continued rebuke around him.

  “You must have many questions, Captain.”

  Stubbornly, Zhoh refrained from stating the obvious. He might have questions, but the general would tell him only what he wished him to know.

  Rangha snapped one of his primary hands and the loud, flat clap of chitin striking chitin echoed across the cavernous space. “Come up, Captain, and let us talk.”