Nobody doubted that the Archimandrite would be true to his word. Few believed the Hierchon would give in so easily. Thay let go of the cluster of hands she was holding — a withered old petal of a flower of the mostly young and fair — and bent, spine protesting, to take her shoes off. She kicked them away and put her hand back in the centre of the circle again. The grass felt cool and damp beneath her feet.

A lot of people were singing now, mostly quite low. Lots of different songs.

Some crying, some sobbing, some wailing and screaming, most far away.

And somebody, ghoulish, counting the seconds to midnight. It came, and seconds later a great ringing shaft of light, blinding-bright, cut right through the very centre of the hab, barely fifty metres from where Thay stood. She had to let go of the hands of the others to shield her eyes; they all did. A hot blast of air knocked her off her feet, sending her tumbling with hundreds of other people across the grass. The beam immediately split into two and moved quickly out to the habitat’s perimeter on each side, detonating buildings, erupting flame from pod clusters and slicing the whole small world in two. The halves were pushed apart by the pressure of air in them and the atmosphere went whirling away into space in a twinned hurricane of gases, debris and bodies as buildings and pods exploded in two great retreating circles of effect making their way down the interior surfaces of the sundered halves, structures ripped open just by the force of the air inside them trying to get out.

Thay Hohuel was lifted up by the whirlwind of air and blown above the bubbling, lifting turf with everybody else, towards the quickly swelling breach. In the few seconds it took for her to be blown out into the darkness, she heard herself scream as the air went gushing from her lungs, sucked away to space. It was a high, hard, savage scream, louder than any she could have achieved just with her own muscles; a terrible chorus of pain and shock and fear, wrenched from her mouth and from the mouths of all those around her as they died together, the awful sound of them all only fading as the air bled from her ears into vacuum.

A vortex of bodies spun slowly out of the separating halves of the ruined habitat, jerking and twisting and spinning away in two long, scimitared comma shapes like some ballet of galactic design.

The images were beamed throughout the system by the occupying forces.

The Hierchon formally surrendered the following day.

* * *

The Archimandrite Luseferous stood in the nose of the Main Battle Hub Luseferous VII, staring out at the vision-filling view of the planet Sepekte and its vast, dusty-looking, very occasionally glittering halo of habitats, orbital factories and satellites. The entire outer nose section of the Luseferous VII was diamond film, a bowed circle of breathtaking transparency a hundred metres in diameter and supported by finger-thin struts. The Archimandrite liked to come here alone, just to look out at stuff. At such moments he could sense the colossal bulk of the Luseferous VII behind him, all its kilometres and mega-tonnes, all its warrens of docks, tunnels, chambers, halls, barracks, magazines, turrets and launch tubes. It was a pity it might have to be destroyed.

The strategists and tacticians didn’t like the look of the incoming Summed Fleet’s drive signatures. There were a lot of heavy ships on their way, and the first might be here in weeks rather than the months — maybe even a year — they’d been hoping for. The Luseferous VII, magnificent though it undoubtedly was, represented an unignorable and probably unmissable target. Their best strategy might be to use the great ship as the bait in a trap, their own forces seemingly disposed so that it looked like they were determined to defend it to the last, but in fact treating it as a disposable asset. Lure in as much of the Mercatorial fleet as possible and then destroy everything, including, unfortunately, the Luseferous VII itself.

The admiral who’d drawn the short straw in whatever competition or pecking-order judgement they’d used to decide who had to offer this suggestion to the Archimandrite had looked distinctly queasy when he’d outlined the plan, obviously fearing an outburst of rage from his commander-in-chief. Luseferous had already heard of the idea — Tuhluer proving his usefulness again — and come to accept that if they were not to jeopardise their whole mission here, even ideas as drastic as this had at least to be entertained. So he’d just nodded and acknowledged that all options had to be considered. Relief for the admiral concerned. A degree of consternation for the others, who all wished that they’d made the announcement now.

They would try to think of other strategies which didn’t involve the likely loss of the Main Battle Hub, but nobody seemed too optimistic. Always do what the enemy hoped you wouldn’t. Murder your babies. That sort of thing. The logic seemed impeccable.

Well, he could always build another Main Battle Hub. Just a lump of matter. Results were what mattered. He wasn’t a child. He wasn’t sentimental about the Luseferous VII.

More worrying was whether even that sacrifice might be enough. They had control of Ulubis system, they had lost only a handful of ships in the invasion and, having captured a few of the enemy craft, had conceivably come out ahead in the deal. However, the Summed Fleet squadrons on their way comprised a formidable force. They had fewer but better ships. It might be quite a close battle, and only an idiot wanted to get involved in one of those. And so near! That had been a terrible, terrible shock.

Luseferous hadn’t been able to believe it at first. He’d raged and fumed and spat, telling the techs to check and check again. There must be something wrong, there had to be an error. The Summed Fleet couldn’t be that close. They’d been assured it would be half a year — a whole year, even — before they had to face the counter-attack. Instead the Summed Fleet was practically on top of them before they’d had time to settle in properly.

Beyonder bastards. It had to be their fault. He would see what could be done about those treacherous fucks in due course. In the meantime, he had the counter-attack to worry about.

Of course, if by the time the Summed Fleet squadrons arrived they had what they’d come for, that might make all the difference.

A few weeks to find what they had come for. He had a very unpleasant feeling that this was not going to be long enough.

* * *

The ship thought it was dead. Fassin talked to it.

He’d hoped they might be able to make the return journey from the Rovruetz to Direaliete system faster than they’d made the outward trip, because the Voehn ship was quicker than the Velpin, but it was not to be. The Protreptic could accelerate faster than the Velpin, but the injuries the Voehn commander had inflicted on Y’sul meant the Dweller wouldn’t be able to survive the stresses. They went back slower than they’d come out.

Y’sul lay in a healing coma in an improvised cradle that Quercer Janath had made for him within one of the extended command-space seats. They ramped the acceleration up to five gees, coasted while they checked the Dweller wasn’t suffering further damage from the stresses involved, took the next smoothly incremented ramp of acceleration up to ten gees and checked again. Finally they settled on forty gees, though by the time they’d worked out that this was safe they were almost at the point where they would have to turn around and start decelerating again as they fell towards the waiting system.

Y’sul slept on, healing. The AI truetwin gloried in the exploration of the Voehn ship’s vastly complicated systems and multifarious martial capabilities.