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"And what did Duke say?"

"Duke didn't say anything, sir," said Whittler. "It was the emperor himself who sent word."

Valerian's head whipped up at the mention of his father.

"The emperor agreed to the Umojan conditions," said Whittler, and Valerian could hear the sycophancy in his aide's voice.

"So when will he get here?"

"He will travel to us aboard an in-system gun cutter. He has arranged to be here first thing in the morning.”

Valerian nodded and watched the sun set over the horizon, the descending orb bathing the landscape in a russet glow the color of blood.

"Did it work?" asked the armored figure standing in the doorway of the ship's bridge. The voice was muffled by the helmet, but the aching need was clear.

"It worked," confirmed the tech in oil-stained overalls hunched over a battered, jury-rigged comm unit. "The stuff we got on Braxis was the real deal. I've been able to decode all the Dominion datalinks. We got it alclass="underline" his flight plan, IFF codes, full manifest, and arrival point. Pilot's already plotting us a course.”

The figure nodded, hands curling into fists. "Good. Stay on it: listen for any more chatter."

"Will do."

The figure turned and made its way along a metal-framed corridor that led deeper into the starship, the CMC-300 Powered Combat Suit emblazoned with the red and blue flag of the Confederacy painted on several of the armored plates. A gauss rifle was slung over one shoulder and a long-bladed combat knife was sheathed in a leg holster.

The corridor's walls were denied from small-arms fire, scorched by the impacts of ship-to-ship lasers, and corroded from bio-organic weapons of the zerg. The interior of the ship had clearly seen better days.

It was a miracle the ship was spaceworthy at all, considering the damage it had taken during the battle around Tarsonis when Mengsk had unleashed those hellspawn monsters on them all.

The figure made its way into the depths of the ship, passing barrack rooms where Confederate marines cleaned their armor and stripped their weapons down for the hundredth time. There was no garrulous banter between these warriors anymore: the fall of the Confederacy and death of everything they held dear had seen to that.

At last, the figure came to a metal doorway and rapped a heavy gauntlet on the shutter.

"Come in," said a voice with a laconic, almost liquid accent.

The figure entered the room and removed the armor's helmet.

Captain Angelina Emillian shook her head and ran a hand through her tousled hair.

"We got what we need," she said, addressing the man who sat on the edge of the room's only bed. His white uniform jacket was unbuckled, revealing a hairless, slab-muscled chest, and he polished a large rifle that lay across his lap.

"Everything?" he said, putting down the rifle.

"Yeah," said Emillian. "The codes we got on Braxis are still active. They don't know we hit the base at Boralis yet, so they haven't bothered to change them.”

"Excellent work, Angelina," he said, standing and buckling his jacket. "Assemble the marines and warn them this one's going to be hard. When we launch your dropship, you be going in hot. We won't be able to extract you unless you kill him."

"That don't matter," said Emillian. "As long as that bastard Mengsk is dead I don't care."

"I know," he said. "Believe me, I understand hatred very well."

"I trained him, did you know that?"

"Yes," he said. "And that's why I know you'll kill him. You're better than him."

Emillian nodded toward his rifle. "You sure you don't want to go in with us? I know how you like to use that bad boy."

"Not this time," he said. "Our new allies are readying another mission as well as the assassination of Mengsk, and I need to help them coordinate."

"Oh? And where might that be?"

"The shipyards at Dylar IV," said Samir Duran.

CHAPTER 18

THE LAST TIME VALERIAN HAD WAITED FOR HIS father on Umoja, he had been seven years old. He remembered his wide-eyed optimism at the thought of meeting the heroic man who stood head and shoulders above lesser mortals. This occasion shared similarities with that day, in that Arcturus Mengsk was now literally head and shoulders above lesser men.

Emperor Arcturus Mengsk the First. It had a strange sound to it, as though it had not yet settled and was yet to earn its rank as a title.

Valerian stifled a yawn and wished he'd been able to sleep last night. He'd told himself it was simply that he'd drunk too much caffeine, but he knew it was the thought of his acknowledgment as the emperor's son that had caused his sleepless night. With the resources of the Dominion at his disposal, nothing would lie beyond his grasp. He could lead archaeological teams back to Van Osten's Moon or any number of sites that had recently come to light.

The day had dawned bright and warm, as though Umoja itself were preparing to welcome the new emperor, and the sun was a bloated red orb in the coppery sky. Valerian stood on the lawn before his grandfather's house, dressed in his finest suit and boots, with his ubiquitous scarlet cloak that accentuated his broad shoulders like armor. His sword was slung low by his left leg and a handcrafted blaster pistol was bolstered on the opposite hip. He presented a perfect image of an emperor's son, and despite his mother's reservations about today, he could see she was pleased with how fine he looked.

She sat in her wheelchair, wearing the most flattering clothes that could be tailored for her painfully thin form. Her hair was washed and cleaned and, even after all she had said about his father al the riverbank last night, Valerian could see she had put on a little makeup.

Even those cast aside by his father still made an effort to look presentable for him.

Standing with them was his grandfather, Charles Whittler, and Master Miyamoto— resplendent in his finest fighting robes—and behind them a line of Ailin Pasteur's servants. It had been Whittler's idea to have the serving staff stand ready to greet the new emperor, and though Valerian's grandfather had balked at the idea of putting on such a dog-and-pony show, Valerian had persuaded him that it couldn't do any harm.

"The great emperor likes to make us wait," grumbled Pasteur.

"Well, the Ruling Council did make him halt his ships beyond the outer marker," pointed out Whittler. "And gun cutters aren't exactly the fastest ships. A battlecruiser would have arrived here much sooner."

His grandfather mumbled something under his breath: Valerian didn't catch it, but could guess its substance. Ailin Pasteur and Charles Whittler had gotten off on the wrong foot and had never bothered to try and find the right one. He suspected his grandfather was unsure as to which of the Mengsks Whittler owed his loyalty, proving to Valerian that Ailin Pasteur was a shrewd judge of character.

"There," said Master Miyamoto, pointing to a spot of light in the orange-flecked clouds.

Valerian looked up, feeling his heartbeat shift up a notch as he saw the glowing cruciform shape of an aircraft dropping through the atmosphere. Two lighter ships swooped protectively around it, flying figure-eight patterns above and below the larger ship. Valerian fell a hand lake his and looked down to see his mother staring in apprehension at the approaching flyers.

"It'll be all right," said Valerian.

She looked up at him with a weak smile. "Remember what I told you," she said.

"I will," he promised.

The shapes resolved themselves from the clouds and Valerian saw that the central craft was a heavy gun cutter, a wide-bodied, pugnacious-looking aircraft long ago rendered obsolete by the development of the Wraith fighter. But it had range and was capable of interplanetary travel within a system, so had never quite vanished from the inventory.