He knew his grandfather must have sent word to him that Juliana was ill, but the weeks and months passed with no sign of his dad. Didn't he care?

It was hard for Valerian to reconcile the mounting evidence of his dad's indifference to their plight against the image he'd cultivated since a youngster.

The subject of his mum's illness was always quietly dismissed whenever he brought it up, but Valerian knew that if whatever was wrong with his mum was serious enough to warrant its being kept from him, it must be extremely serious indeed. A succession of physicians had come and gone, but none of them appeared to offer anything that stopped his mum's terrible, hacking cough or enabled her to put on weight.

He'd heard words like “long term," "inoperable," “terminal," "nonviable," "immedicable, "and yet others he didn't understand, but the meaning was all too clear. As each doctor arrived, Valerian felt a flutter of hope, but as each one left, that hope was crushed. Evidently, his grandfather was not about to give up, even if it seemed his dad already had.

Valerian fell his anger grow and tried to suppress it.

One of the few teachings of his dad that had stuck was that anger was a wasted emotion.

"Angry people do stupid things, Valerian," his dad had said. "Speak when you're angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret. So when your anger rises, think of the consequences before you act."

He put down his book and closed his eyes, trying to calm his seesawing emotions, but finding it difficult with all the noise coming from downstairs. It took a second to dawn on him that the noises from downstairs were not normal for this time of day, and he sat up as he caught a measure of the urgency in them.

Valerian heard the sound of someone crying and made his way quickly to his bedroom door. Something was definitely going on, so he made his way downstairs, heading toward the large room at the rear of the house that served as a warm gathering place in the evening.

He heard shouted oaths and more crying, and a cold hand seized his heart as he suddenly wondered if something had happened to his mum. Valerian broke into a run and skidded into the room from which the sounds of crying were issuing. The room was full of people, all staring in rapt attention at something displayed on the flickering holographic image of the cine-viewer in the corner of the room.

Valerian's first feeling was relief as he saw his mum standing in the center of the room: but then he noticed that there were a lot of people here who looked as though they'd just been given the worst news imaginable.

A few heads turned to face him, their faces streaked with tears, then quickly turned back to the unfolding drama on the cine-viewer. The image was fuzzy and dark, but from here it appeared to be showing a large black ball.

"What's going on?" he asked. "Why is everyone so sad?"

"Oh my darling, Val," said his mum, rushing to him and sweeping him up in a hug. "Oh honey, it's Korhal."

"Korhal? The planet dad comes from? What about it?"

His mum pulled back, as though not sure she should tell him what was going on. "It's okay, Mum," he said. "Just tell me."

"Korhal's gone, honey."

"Gone? How can a planet be gone?" said Valerian. "It's too big to be gone."

His mother struggled with her words, her eyes streaming with tears. "I mean...not gone, exactly, but..."

"The Confederacy has launched a thermonuclear strike against Korhal," said Master Miyamoto, appearing at his mum's side. "A thousand Apocalypse-class nuclear missiles, according to a military press release."

Valerian felt his stomach lurch and terrible fear freeze his limbs. "Korhal's destroyed? Dad? Is Dad dead?"

"No! No, he's alive," said his mum. "We had word from your grandfather not long after the first news reports came through. Your dad's fine."

Relief flooded him and he disengaged himself from his mum's arms as everyone in the room continued to watch the image on the cine-viewer. He stood before the flickering image of Korhal, watching the black disc of the world as nuclear firestorms raged across its surface with elemental fury. The once bountiful and green world was now a superheated sphere of blackened glass and phantoms.

Even with his limited understanding of the physics of nuclear detonations, Valerian knew that a thousand missiles was an inordinate amount of overkill. Such an overwhelming attack would have killed every living thing on the planet's surface.

"How many people lived on Korhal?" he asked.

"More than thirty-five million," said Master Miyamoto. "All dead."

The thought of such devastation was humbling. That so many people could be wiped from existence in such a short period of time was unbelievable.

What manner of madman could ever think to unleash such wanton destruction?

"The Confederacy did this?" asked Valerian.

"Men without honor did this," replied Master Miyamoto.

CHAPTER 16

FLAMES BURNED WITH A GREENISH GLOW FROM the bombed-out munitions plant, but Valerian couldn't tell if the color was the result of ignited chemical spillage or a fault of the cine-viewer. Fire crews fought a futile battle with the blaze and medics dragged screaming men and women from the wrecked interior of the building.

Valerian felt no sympathy for these people—they were employees of the Old Families and therefore part of the system that maintained the bloated, corrupt form of the Confederacy, the same men who had destroyed Korhal six years ago.

The image panned from the blazing plant to a sandy-haired young man standing at the edge of a perimeter enforced by Confederate marines clad in full combat armor and looking eager to use the heavy gauss weapons they carried.

"Another atrocity unleashed by Arcturus Mengsk and his Sons of Korhal that forces to number the dead in the thousands," said the reporter, his voice appropriately outraged, and mixed with not a little relish, thought Valerian. "An unknown number of bombs placed with uncanny skill throughout the Ares munitions factory has resulted in its complete destruction. There's no word yet from official sources of the number of people murdered in this latest act of terrorism, but one thing is certain: it will be high. Back to you, Michael."

Valerian muted the sound and shook his head as the image of the burning factory was replaced with the neon-lit, chrome interior of the UNN studios on Tarsonis. The broadcast was a few days old and he was under no illusions that much of what the reporter had said was true, which was a rarity these days.

The Sons of Korhal...

An appropriate name, thought Valerian, one apparently coined by his father in the wake of the nuclear attack on Korhal as he began rallying fragmented and scattered bands of revolutionaries to him in his bid to topple the Confederacy. Those ragtag soldiers had been molded into an army that was—if what he was hearing from his grandfather was true —proving to be a grave threat to the continued existence of the current regime.

Though to hear the reports of the UNN, Arcturus Mengsk was a madman, a lunatic who made raving pronouncements over the airwaves of his supposed divinity and the alien creatures that used mind-controlling drugs on the Tarsonis Council.

On those rare occasions where the UNN played snippets of his father's broadcasts, they were so chopped up, edited, or manipulated that even a child could tell they bore no resemblance to their original content.

It had been eight years since Valerian had last seen his father, eight years of forced relocations and moving from planet to planet as they kept one step ahead of Confederate assassins and kill teams. Whether or not such killers were still after them was a moot point —it did not do to take chances when their lives hung in the balance.