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  “Are you claiming to have spoken to the Hormagaunt?”

  “Stow it, Professor. Now is not the time.”

  “I see. I think I understand.”

  “I don’t,” Meta said.

  “Please, Meta,” Ludendorff said. “It is imperative that you follow your husband’s advice.”

  “Oh,” Meta said, reaching out with a suited hand. She gripped one of Maddox’s photon-suit sleeves. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Maddox had seen something odd ahead, concentrating on it. “I don’t know, but I think we’re about to find out.”

  -44-

  The shuttle raced toward a pulsating section of…of reality, for want of a better word.

  “It’s green,” Meta said.

  “Deeply green,” Ludendorff added.

  “What is it?” Meta asked.

  “I’m unsure,” Ludendorff said. “Do you have any idea?”

  “Indeed,” Maddox said. “It’s a wall, a piece of separation of one part of the null region from another.”

  “Explain,” Ludendorff said.

  “We’re in an outer envelope of the Hormagaunt’s making. It didn’t like the null region, the nullity. It claimed Builders put it there, doing so for nefarious reasons. Finding the nullity highly discomforting, the Hormagaunt created an envelope, an area, where it could subsist on its own away from the null region.”

  “The envelope being the place we entered when trying to reach the null region from our universe?” Ludendorff asked.

  “Exactly,” Maddox said.

  “Hmm…” Ludendorff said. “I suspect the envelope is protection for the null region.”

  “That’s exactly what I told the Hormagaunt.”

  “You spoke to it?” Ludendorff said in awe.

  “Why would that be bad?” Meta demanded.

  “Enough,” Maddox said. “Let’s drop that angle for the moment. Can we punch through that deep green…membrane?”

  “Yes, membrane,” Ludendorff said. “That’s very good, Captain. I believe that’s exactly what it is. I suspect the Hormagaunt wove the membrane much as a spider builds its web. The Hormagaunt would feed on souls, if I remember correctly. Why didn’t it devour yours?”

  “It’s a space spider?” Meta asked.

  “What?” Ludendorff said. “No. That’s not what I meant. But yes, in a way that is right. It built the membrane from its own substance, just as a spider builds a web.”

  “Oh.” Meta leaned forward, peering through the polarized window. “The membrane is like spider-silk—”

  “No, no,” Ludendorff said, “nothing like that. It’s an analogy, a close one, but the membrane is—”

  “What is a Hormagaunt then?” Meta asked.

  “Not a Hormagaunt,’” Ludendorff said, “but the Hormagaunt.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” Meta said.

  “I think he’s saying there’s only one Hormagaunt in existence,” Maddox said.

  “Exactly, my boy, exactly,” Ludendorff said. “You never did say why it didn’t devour you or your soul.”

  Maddox glanced at the professor. “We made a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “Not now, Professor,” Maddox said.

  Ludendorff stared at the captain.

  “Only one Hormagaunt,” Meta said in the silence. “That doesn’t make sense. How did it come to exist or is it the last of its kind?”

  “No, no,” Ludendorff said. “According to legend, it is the only Hormagaunt that ever was. However, your question is a good one. The existence of a single Hormagaunt lends credence to the idea concerning a Deity-driven act of creation in the beginning. There is only one because God—if you will—only made one and no more.”

  “Or we only know about the one,” Meta said. “Or maybe it was built in an alien laboratory.”

  Ludendorff stared at Meta. “Yes,” he finally said. “Both of those are possibilities, although an alien and a laboratory might be the same thing as saying God.” He turned to Maddox. “You said you saw the Hormagaunt. Did that mean you came face-to-face with it?”

  “Hang on,” Maddox said. “We’re either going to crash against the membrane or go through.” He braced himself. The others did likewise.

  THIS IS MY PARTING GIFT, FOOD.

  Maddox cried out in pain, doubling over.

  “Darling!” Meta cried, reaching for him, stopped short because of her seat restraints. She made to remove the restraints.

  “Don’t!” Ludendorff shouted. “We’re hitting the membrane.”

  Through the polarized window, the pulsating deep-green substance rushed nearer. Meta screamed. Ludendorff swore a blue streak. Maddox slowly sat up as pain pounded in his skull.

  As the scout shuttle reached the membrane, a hole appeared, allowing them through without a problem. Immediately, everything changed. Darkness flooded around the shuttle and each of them grunted as if struck in the gut.

  “I’m checking suit photon levels,” Ludendorff said. “Ah…it’s just as I thought. We left the envelope and are in the null region proper. My suit is acting just like it did last time we were in a place like this.”

  “I’m finding it harder to breathe,” Meta said.

  “Check your suit photon readings,” Ludendorff said.

  “I’m not seeing anything,” Meta said.

  “Is your photon generator on?”

  “Oh,” she said. “No.”

  “Hurry, switch it on,” Ludendorff said.

  “Oh,” Meta said a second later. “Yes. That’s better. I can breathe and think. What is the null region again?”

  “Nullity repackaged,” Ludendorff said. “The Builders did something strange with it, allowing it to store things but drain the life essence from entities inside it.”

  “Is it safe to unstrap?” Meta asked.

  “It should be,” Ludendorff said.

  Meta undid her straps, rising from her seat, coming to Maddox and patting his suited shoulders with her gloved hands. “Darling, what’s wrong?”

  “Words,” Maddox muttered, as he touched his helmet top.

  Meta stroked his back.

  “Can you describe these words?” Ludendorff asked over the helmet comm.

  “Yes…” Maddox wheezed. “At times, the Hormagaunt speaks directly into my mind. It did so from close range when I was before it, and again later while I was on Victory. The farther I am from the Hormagaunt, the worse the words projected into my mind feel.”

  “Interesting,” Ludendorff said.

  “Not in the slightest,” Maddox said. “The spots in front of my eyes are fading. Did we make it?”

  “We’re in the null region,” Ludendorff said. “I see no indication yet of a world or giant ring.”

  Maddox wheezed as he bent forward and began checking the flight board.

  “Look, there at the edge,” Ludendorff said, indicating a sensor panel. “There’s something out there.”

  “I have a question,” Meta said.

  Maddox nodded.

  “Why does the shuttle work as well as it does in the null region?” she asked.

  Maddox sat up, blinking. “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Ludendorff said. “The Hormagaunt did something to it. Now, my boy, I’m bubbling with curiosity. You clearly didn’t want to speak while in the envelope. I suppose you feared the Hormagaunt would overhear you. What happened in the envelope?”

  “Give me a second,” Maddox said. He projected his thoughts at the Hormagaunt and waited. He couldn’t sense anything from the creature. “I guess you’re not here,” Maddox whispered.

  There was something at the edge of his mind…no. It was nothing. “I think I’m beyond its range,” Maddox said. He took a deep breath. Then, he told them what had happened to Victory and to him in order to meet the Hormagaunt outside the starship. He told them how he’d made a bargain with the creature, agreeing to free it so it could cruise through the universe, feasting once more.

/>   “Aladdin and his lamp,” Ludendorff said, “or Hercules and Atlas.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Meta.

  “Your husband had an encounter with a terrible beast, this one from the dawn of time, as in the myths and legends.”

  “How do you know that it’s from the dawn of time?” Maddox asked.

  “I know from my history lessons as a Methuselah Man in training during my youth under the Builders,” Ludendorff said.

  “Oh,” Maddox said. “Yes. That makes sense.”

  “What about Hercules and Atlas?” Meta asked. “I’ve heard about the one but not the other, unless you’re talking about a map, an atlas.”

  “In the ancient Greek myths,” Ludendorff said in a pedantic tone, “there came a time when Hercules needed Atlas’s aid. Atlas was a Titan and held up the sky as punishment for the crimes he’d committed against the gods. Anyway, Atlas shifted the load onto Hercules’s shoulders and went off to do the demigod’s errand, collecting some special apples that were in his daughter’s care. Upon returning, Atlas told Hercules he enjoyed being free and had decided he wouldn’t take up the sky again. Hercules realized he was trapped, but did some quick thinking. ‘Fine, fine,’ Hercules said, ‘I get it. The sky is a heavy load. Before you go, do you mind if I put a pad on my shoulders so the sky doesn’t hurt as much?’ Atlas thought about it and agreed. Hercules shifted the sky back onto the Titan’s shoulders. Then, Hercules picked up the golden apples and raced away.”

  “What golden apples?” Meta asked.

  “The ones that Atlas’s daughter tended in Hera’s garden,” Ludendorff said. “That’s why Hercules needed Atlas’s aid. One of Hercules’s Twelve Labors included gathering these golden apples.”

  “I see,” Meta said. “You’re saying that Maddox tricked the Hormagaunt just like Hercules tricked Atlas.”

  “No!” Maddox said. “I’m going to do exactly what I told the Hormagaunt I would do.”

  “But—” Meta said.

  “Tut, tut, my dear,” Ludendorff told her. “If you think about it, your husband is doing the right thing.”

  “The prudent thing…” Meta said. “Especially if the Hormagaunt can hear our thoughts and—”

  “Enough,” Maddox said. “Let’s concentrate on what’s ahead of us, not what lies behind. We have to find the heavy world and the accelerator ring. Is that what we’re seeing on the sensor?”

  They all stared at the blip at the edge of the sensor screen.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Ludendorff said. “We must head there.”

  “Right,” Maddox said, “my thoughts exactly.”

  -45-

  Dag the Champion did not understand the complexities of the supposedly “new drive” in the Queen’s hauler. She’d tried to explain it to him, but the science of it had gone over his head.

  At a vast expenditure of power, the hauler’s advanced trio engine complex created and helped the other ships travel through a Quantum Xanadu or QX-Tube, and the science behind it was technically exotic. The tube acted in some ways like a wormhole and others like a drive. The tube did not appear in normal space-time, and that allowed the flotilla to leave and arrive at places unnoticed.

  The hauler’s great engine complex was presently running smoothly as the flotilla waited two light-years from the location in the Solar System’s Oort cloud—the location Victory had used to attempt to breach the null region.

  The hauler also had a unique scanner that used similar principles as the Long-Range Builder Scanner inside Pluto. It could not scan a hundred light-years, but it could “see” the nearer Oort cloud, and that included the Star Watch flotilla of Conqueror-class battleships waiting for more high-speed icy planetesimals to appear. As critical as the ability to see so far, the exotic scanner saw these things in real instead of lagged time.

  Dag only knew these things secondhand, as the Queen escorted him to a waiting insertion pod. They moved swiftly down hauler corridors, the Queen keeping up a running discourse, informing him of last-minute changes to the plan.

  Dag wore his Merovingian armor and helmet and carried a long white lance. He listened, realizing the Queen hadn’t told him any of this in advance so he couldn’t use it unless she deemed him loyal.

  “The mobile null region is like nothing you’ve encountered before,” the Queen said. “It would sap your strength and will within seconds—if I were silly enough to allow you to remain within its influence. Why do you think you’re going inside insertion pods?”

  “I assume so we can assault the planet,” Dag said.

  She gave him a swift and accusing side-glance.

  “But I could be wrong,” he added hastily.

  “You are not wrong,” she said. “I’m talking, and the question was rhetorical. Do you know what that means?”

  Dag didn’t know if he was supposed to answer that or not.

  “Well, do you, you dolt? I asked you a question. I expect an answer.”

  “I do know what rhetorical means, O Queen.

  She laughed a moment later. “I’m confusing you, which is my intention. A confused opponent acts in a predictable manner. Remember that.”

  He nodded as they turned a corner.

  “Surbus controls the null region,” she continued. “I do not think he has wormed out all its secrets yet. As I have said in the past, it is an ancient construct. He can suck in asteroids and spit them out again at a quarter of light-speed. That is the least of the mobile null region’s powers. It is enough to destroy the Commonwealth, however. I suspect Surbus has learned to hate the strange realm. That is why I think he’s serious about taking a treasure trove of wealth and running away. The fool would leave the greatest weapon in existence lying abandoned in the Solar System. Well, not in the Solar System, exactly, but close enough.”

  Dag nodded.

  “I am about to project a QX-Tube from the hauler to the mobile null region. Your insertion pods will use the tube. I will attempt to put you as near the heavy planet as possible. You must race to the surface and unload, getting underground as quickly as possible. The planet radiates a protective shell against the nullity in the null region. It is not true nullity, of course. The Builders were imprecise in their terminology, in this case.”

  Dag nodded once more.

  “The point is, the planet radiates a projective zone. The closer one is to the planetary core, the greater the protection. Surely, you can understand that.”

  “Yes, O Queen.”

  “Now—and this is quite important—are you listening?”

  Dag nodded.

  “The mobile null region—no, no, that’s not how it is. The Inertialess Ring possesses amazing defenses. I suspect it is how Surbus captured the Koniggratz… You do know what I mean when I say that?”

  Dag shook his head.

  “The Koniggratz is a Bismarck-class battleship.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Where was I?” she asked. “Ah! The Inertialess Ring has potent defenses, particularly against approaching warships. The larger the vessel, the quicker the ring’s defenses activate. That means, naturally, that attacking with a few tiny platforms is the only way to physically capture the ring, as rushing it with large warships would never work. Does that make sense?”

  Dag nodded.

  “That is why you’re going in insertion pods and why my soldiers will orbit the planet with armed shuttles. I’m not sure how long the soldiers can last in orbit. The planet will partially shield them from the null region, but not enough, I suspect. I heard about Ludendorff’s photon suits, but never discovered their actual structure.”

  He glanced at her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said with a dismissive wave. “We have what we have. I will launch your team into the mobile null region. You must do the rest.”

  “May I ask a question?”

  “Hurry,” she said. “We’re almost to the hangar bay.”

  “Will the planetary undergr
ound be like our simulations?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “You’ve practiced the palace assault. The controls to everything lie in the palace. You must secure the palace and deactivate the ring, put it to sleep. Once you do that, you will summon me. I will do the rest.”

  “You’ll use the tube to join us?”

  Her head moved cobra-quick as she stared at him. “Why do you ask such a precision question?”

  “The better to serve you, O Queen,” he said.

  “Or the better to backstab me,” she muttered.

  Dag did not say more in order to try to assure her. He’d learned talking too much was the wrong approach with her.

  “Hmm, you don’t appear to have a guilty conscience,” she said. “No matter. We’re here.” She halted.

  Dag halted beside her. Then, inspiration struck. He marched just a little ahead, whirled around to face her and went on one knee, placing the white lance before her. He bowed his head. “I am yours to command, O Queen. I am yours to unleash against your enemies.”

  She smiled and reached out, touching the steel of his helmet as if it were his cheek. “How charming,” she said. “Yes, O Champion. I unleash you upon Surbus the Traitor. Crush his head as I have dictated. Storm the palace and secure it. I must have the planet smasher. I yearn to demolish one Commonwealth world after another as I listen to the lamentations of Star Watch, their pleading for mercy.” She shook her head as her eyes shined.

  Dag waited, marveling at her performance, awed at his part in the grand scheme of the universe.

  “Arise, Champion. Go with my love.”

  Dag stood, towering over her. He made a fist and crashed that against his armored chest. “I hear and obey, O Queen. I will do as you have commanded and will crush Surbus’s head, or I give him leave to crush mine.”

  For just a second, worry showed in her eyes. Her lips moved as if to utter what: a warning against boasting? Instead, she smiled and nodded, giving him a tender touch on the shoulder.

  Dag raised his lance in a grand salute, spun on his heel and headed for his hardened insertion pod, an ugly little contraption that could hold ten armored Merovingians.

  This was going to be glorious.