“WHAT DO YOU MEAN nothing?” I asked, my back to the bridge. I shut my eyes, unwilling to see the disappointing star field shining out beyond the bridge’s false window.

Lieutenant Juliana Pherrine’s voice quavered as she answered me. “I’m sorry, my lord. Osman’s scouts have probed more than sixty percent of the volume, but thus far they’ve found no sign of the lost legions.”

I swore, slammed my adamant fist against the glass, wishing that it were a real window, wishing I might shatter it at a blow and admit the empty Dark of space. “Tell the scouts they will deploy the last of their light probes and rendezvous with us at this location. I will accept their apologies in person.”

Rage is blindness. Gibson’s voice sounded in my ear. I mastered my breathing, inhaled sharply. “Thank you, lieutenant. That will be all.” I heard her feet retreating on the walk behind me, and only after she had vanished down the stair to take up her station once again did I turn and approach the captain’s station by the holography well. “Corvo, Varro, Aristedes, with me. M. Durand, you have the bridge.” I gave Valka a thin smile where she lingered by the captain’s chair, indicating in our private way that she should join us.

The ready room stood just off the bridge, through a side door that split open at my approach. I hardly slowed down, sweeping the others behind me like plankton in the passage of a shark.

“We were prepared for this, Hadrian,” Corvo said once the door had sealed. “There was always a chance the scouts would not have found anything by the time we arrived.”

I was nodding as she spoke. She was right, and acknowledging that wore my anger down.

Tor Varro cleared his throat. “There is little point in summoning the scouts to us. They’re on the far side of the target volume. We waste time calling them here. We should allow them to continue their sweep unmolested and to report to us by telegraph.”

He, too, was right. I’d acted hastily in ordering Pherrine to summon the scouts to us. I had been alone for far too long, and the impact of my years of solitude was making me coarse. I felt a sudden sympathy for Bassander Lin, who often stayed awake for lonely years between the stars.

“Very good,” I said. “Varro, tell Pherrine to belay my previous order, please.”

The scholiast bowed and shuffled from the room. I seated myself at the head of the table, assuming the seat typically occupied by the captain herself. My coat slid up, making me aware of the high collar where it played about my cheekbones. I hung one leg over the arm of the chair, eyes moving from Corvo to Aristedes to Valka. “Have the other ships all joined us?” I was fairly certain of the answer.

“We’re waiting on the Cyrusene,” Corvo said. “It was slightly off course and is correcting to meet us here.”

“How long?”

“Three days—they weren’t far off.”

“Right.” I chewed my tongue a moment, thinking. “We have a choice to make. Join the scouts patrolling the volume trying to find whatever may be out there or push on to Dion and Nemavand.”

Aristedes cleared his throat and—taking my sitting down for permission to do so himself—eased into the chair opposite my own at the end of the ellipsoid table. “Nemavand would be the strategic choice. Ramannu Province is in dire need of reinforcement. Cielcin raids across the region have increased, and if we lose Nemavand, we lose the Veil.”

“And then ’twill be fighting in Centaurus proper,” Valka said, but by her sympathetic smile I guessed she guessed my innermost thoughts. To push on to Nemavand—assuming we were not attacked crossing the volume to Dion—was to abandon the lost legions to whatever fate had found them, and it was surely to return to Forum in disgrace.

Not for the first time, the thought of going renegade reared in my mind. Most of the men and officers would follow me into exile if I took the Tamerlane and ran. We could take the fight to the Cielcin on our own terms . . . but no.

“We’re already fighting in Centaurus proper,” Lorian said. “This Dorayaica cut past the frontier to attack Hermonassa. There have been deeper raids since the beginning of the war.”

“Possibly all led by Dorayaica,” I said.

“We’ve no way of knowing that,” Corvo said—quite correctly—though I could not shake a premonition that I was equally correct. I was equally sure that Dorayaica was the Aeta-Prince I had seen in my visions. The one who burned the stars.

Tor Varro returned at that moment, announced by the hissing of the doors. “The scouts will continue their work,” he said, not sitting.

“Very good, counselor,” I said. My fingers went to the pendant through my shirtfront. It was faintly warm. “But if we leave, we are almost certainly condemning those legions to die.”

“If they are not dead already,” Lorian said.

Valka massaged her tattooed arm. “Though if we do nothing, surely the next ships that pass this way may be lost, no?” She directed the question to Aristedes—whose role was tactics, after all. “Is that worth the risk?”

Lorian drummed on his cane with slow fingers, placing each fingertip with delicate care. I wondered if it was some orthopedic exercise. “It’s hard to say.”

“It is not likely that another fleet will pass this way so well prepared for attack,” Varro said. “If we are unsuccessful, it may be the road through Gododdin from the inner Empire becomes impassable, and all traffic will come nearer the core. It will add decades to our supply lines.” He shook his head. “Respectfully, I must disagree with Commander Aristedes. We should remain in the volume and attempt to locate who or whatever is behind these attacks.”

“We should,” Corvo interjected, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, “convene with the other captains at the very least.”

Massaging my jaw, I mused, “Three days will not hurt us. Inform the other ships that we will await the Cyrusene and convene once they exit warp.”

---

The holographs appeared like ghosts, like the shades of Tiresias and Agamemnon called from Hades by brave Ulysses. Corvo stood beside me in the main conference well—just down the hall from the bridge. There was Eldan, captain of the Pride of Zama, a swarthy fellow with an easy smile and the fine bones of a palatine nobile. And there were Adina of the Cyrusene, fair-haired and pale-eyed almost as Lorian; and Yanek, captain of the Androzani, a hook-nosed man who put me mind of an eagle I had seen once in my grandmother’s menagerie. Last of all was doughty Mahendra Verus, the dictionary definition of the Imperial officer in his crisp uniform glittering black and silver.

All saluted, thumping their chests and raising their right hands in greeting. “Lord Marlowe,” Verus said, nodding to each of us in turn, “Captains Corvo, Eldan, Adina, Yanek. I trust the journey was not hard on you.”

“Smooth sailing, captain,” Corvo replied, “and yourself?”

“Nothing to complain of.”

Captain Adina raised her voice. “Apologies for the delay. Our navigator had a slight rounding error calculating the jump.”

I waved a dismissive hand. “No matter, captain.” I stepped past Corvo into the middle of the projection well, onto a red target painted on the glossed metal floor. I took a moment studying the faces of the others, all practically strangers to me, though I had sat with Verus through hours of meetings. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a decision before us. As I am sure you are all aware by now, the scouts launched from Gododdin have thus far failed to ascertain the fate or location of the 116th and 337th Sagittarine Legions.”

“We should plow on ahead to Nemavand,” said smiling Eldan, taking Lorian’s position from our earlier discussions.

I raised an eyebrow at the smaller man. “Thank you for your opinion, Captain Eldan. I will take it under advisement. Now,” I swept my gaze over all those assembled before me, not bothering to mask my irritation with Eldan’s interruption. “We may do as the good captain so enthusiastically suggests, or we may remain and assist the scouts in their sweep.” I keyed the remote I’d taken from the wall, allowed a holograph of the local region to flower in the dark between us. Identical projections would be appearing seconds later on the other ships, delayed only by the speed-of-light lag between their ships and ours. Most of the volume glowed a pale white, with a glowing red rosette blossoming from the middle. “Our scouts have completed their sweep of everything within a nine light-year radius of the relay here.” I stuck a finger through the projection to indicate the center. “That leaves us with the outer layer of this volume to search.”

“Given the nine-year delay between the time stamp on the black box signal and its receipt by the relay, perhaps we will have something very soon.” Verus’s projection strode closer to the projection, ghostly hand sweeping about the edges of the space. “Do we know where Osman’s scouts are?”

“The Legendia?” Corvo shook her head, floating hair a shaggy cloud about her stern face. “Not precisely. They uploaded the results of their scan to the comms relay, but they’re currently at warp. The last we saw they were on the far side of the volume.”

“Do we know when they’re due to drop out of warp?” Adina asked. The scout ships had spent the past several years effecting micro-jumps through the volume surrounding the relay, pausing to deploy their light-probes before jumping again, hoping to find some scrap or shred of evidence to indicate that once a legion convoy had passed this way.

So far they had found nothing but ghosts.

The thought put me in mind of the fog-bound woods of Earth in the Golden Age, of armies marching beneath the whispering trees, never to return.

Beside me, Otavia Corvo checked some figure on her wrist-terminal. The captain wore entoptic lenses, I knew, so whatever it was she saw shone directly on her retinas. I hated the things myself, preferring the more primitive holograph displays hovering above the terminal. “Twenty-seven days.”

“Twenty-seven days!” Eldan exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “You want us to idle here for a month like some primitive sailing ship thirsty for a gust of wind?” He half-turned away, hoping perhaps to hide the look of disgust on his too-expressive face.

“No, captain,” I said in my iciest impersonation of my father. “I expect you to follow orders, whatever those orders may be.” I took a step nearer his projection, pausing just long enough that he turned—discomforted—to look at me. “I am entirely happy to discuss the particulars in person, if you would prefer to shuttle to the Tamerlane.”

“I . . .” Eldan’s eyes went over my shoulder to where Corvo stood, but he found neither help nor sympathy there. “I . . . that won’t be necessary.”

Briefly the Marlowe smile stole over my face. “Good.” I turned, conscious of my silhouette in the brushed metal wall of that round chamber, a black-clad specter tall and thin as a lance. “As I was saying, we have a decision to make. Captain Eldan has correctly guessed at the nature of that decision. Do we press on at once to reinforce Nemavand and the inner rim? Or do we remain and attempt to trap these trappers in a net of our own?” As I spoke, I held one hand out before me, palm up as if testing the weight of some invisible tray. I had made up my mind to remain, but I did not wish to bully the others into falling in line. “Captain Eldan here suggests that we should hurry on. He is mindful, no doubt, of our brothers and sisters at the front. That is admirable—but he has not thought it through.”

“Those legions are dead, boy!” Eldan waved a dismissive hand.

“You will address me as my lord, captain,” I said, pressing all the juice from each word. Only after I had spoken did I recognize my father’s voice. “And that may be, but if they are . . . their attackers certainly are not. Unless we can confirm this volume is empty, the road through Gododdin to the outer provinces will be as good as useless. We do not know what is out here.”

I clicked the remote in my left hand and disappeared the device into a pocket of my greatcoat. The holograph image of local space dissolved, leaving Corvo and me alone with the shades of the four captains.

Corvo spoke up. “I have a suggestion, captains.”

It had been her idea. I stepped smoothly aside and let my captain take her position on center stage. Otavia drew herself up to her full height. She towered over the two patricians and even the palatine Eldan. “This target volume is thirty-six light-years across. At full thrust we might cross that in . . . half a month?” She pretended to mull the figure over in her head before continuing. “I propose we proceed across the volume at slow warp. Say . . . 50 C.”

“Fifty times light speed? That’s . . . seven months to the far side? Eight?” Adina sounded scandalized. “So slow?”

“Foolishness,” Eldan said. “This is a waste of time.”

“Snivelry!” Yanek spat. “You would run and skip out of here without even trying for a fight?”

Verus raised a hand for quiet. “Enough, both of you. Eldan, we understand your position.” He folded his arms, chin tucked against his breastbone as he stood there thinking. “There’s good sense in what Captain Corvo suggests. It’ll give the scouts time to map more of the outer regions of the volume, right at that nine-light-year radius where the ships should be.”

“And we’ll still be moving toward Nemavand,” Yanek pointed out, “which should satisfy the good captain of the Pride of Zama.” He turned hooded eyes on Eldan. I could practically feel the class resentment smoldering in the man. Eldan had been counting on his palatine blood to browbeat the others—even Verus, who, though patrician, was his military superior.

“We can rendezvous on the far side of the volume,” Corvo said, “take stock of what new intelligence we have, and make a determination then.” She crossed her arms, a gesture which served only to further emphasize her height and powerful build. To someone like Eldan, who saw such things as signs of virtue, it was a clear statement, as clear as my outright threat had been.

That’s that.

“It makes us a big ugly target streaking across space,” Eldan said.

I hooked my thumbs through my belt and stepped forward. “Precisely.”

---

The silent stars rushed by, turned by the roil of our passage from pinpoints to luminous whorls—their light smeared across the manifold wave-front of the Tamerlane’s warp envelope. We’d been at it for days, weeks, and the attitude of the men was one of pregnant expectation, the sort of tense silence that feels the same as a scream. The dome above my head was one of the few places along the Tamerlane’s dorsal hull where one might look out at the stars. The dome served no practical function, had only been installed by the conscientious architect in the full knowledge that life aboard starships was so often claustrophobic. The dome could be sealed at an order, concealed beneath a layer of armor like the lid of a mighty eye.

I was alone then, trying to clear my head after another meeting with Corvo, Varro, Durand, and Aristedes. I was not particularly worried about Cornelius Eldan. Men and officers like him were common as sand. Though cowardice perhaps motivated his desire to make for Nemavand with all due haste, cowardice is only a kind of prudence, and prudence would see him fall in line. Men like Eldan were truly strong only when pitted against their social inferiors. He would not have the spine to resist opposition from Verus, Corvo, and myself.

An image of the four captains was taking shape on the folio page before me.

White charcoal on black paper.

I had taken to such inverted images only recently. One had to sketch not the shadows—as was the case in traditional charcoals—but the light. My image of Verus, Eldan, Yanek, and Adina shone as they had like ghosts from the projector. I blew dust from the page and admired my work. Adina’s eyes were perhaps not so closely set as I’d portrayed them, nor Yanek’s nose so large, but their slight caricature portrayed the spirit of each, I decided. Good enough. Setting my pencil aside, I turned the inky pages in my hands. There were the Irchtani flying with their zitraa, there Catraeth on Gododdin in all its pale beauty. One single page was devoted to a still life of the Galath blossom, which still had not withered and dried even after all the years away from Forum. Another page showed Valka dozing—as she often did—in her armchair in our quarters, dressed in naught but a blanket.

Smiling, I shut the book. But for three off-duty crewmen, I had the observation dome to myself. The men—two men and a woman—laughed quietly and spoke among themselves, the remnants of some holograph game between them. I did not know their faces, and so guessed they were from one of the lower cohorts, soldiers who only rarely came out of fugue to do their duty. I took them for a trias, the smallest, humblest unit of legionnaires there was. Three common soldiers.

It is good that we are reminded the soldiers we command are men. We are not the Extrasolarians, not the Mericanii of old. They are not machines. We do not spend men’s lives like coin, but as sacrifices freely given, offered as our ancestors burned their best on altars to please the uncreated gods. That is why the best commanders, the best captains and kings, make themselves known to their people—that their people may be known to them. That we might not betray their trust and obedience when the critical time came.

As come it must.

Light flashed brighter than the sun, and the whole of the Tamerlane lurched. Gone were the violet fractals and streaks of distended stars. As my vision cleared and I struggled to my feet, I looked up and saw the naked stars.

Unmoving.

The alarm sounded a moment later.

Vwaa! Vwaa!

The same alarm I had heard ten thousand times. And Corvo’s voice on the comm, “All hands! Battle stations!”

Though I was safe for the moment aboard my own ship, my hand went anxious to my sword. It seems a strange thing to say, but I felt my heart grow lighter and I turned toward the door. But the path had straightened before my feet once again. Forward. Always forward. I hurried from the dome, blood quickening in my veins, heartbeat coming like the martial drumbeat in time with the blare of the alarm.

The enemy had found us at last.