Eight—” “Confirm alert level one,” said Morano.
“Confirming,” said the executive officer. “All defense systems ready to go active. Flash alert receivers are green. All weapons stations crewed. Flight Two and Flight Four are on the deck and hot, ready for immediate launch.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
There was no outward sign that anything had happened when the count reached zero. Somewhere ahead of them, the tiny signal ferret and its complement of droids should have emerged into realspace and begun receiving and decoding any flash alerts and tactical updates from the Fleet Office. But they would not know if that had happened until Intrepid went through the door.
Another timer started counting down the short interval to the emergence of the pickets and scouts. The background murmur of activity on Intrepid’s bridge grew louder. Captain Morano turned away from the status displays on the viewscreen and crossed the bridge to his combat station, strapping himself into the flak couch. Shortly after, A’baht did the same.
“There go the pickets,” Morano noted unnecessarily.
“How many combat jumps have you made, Captain?”
A’baht asked quietly.
“Thirty-eight down in the roundhouse,” Morano said, referring to the combat operations center. “Nine on the bridge, all since the Empire fell.”
“How many as captain?”
“Combat jumps? None.”
“Then I suggest you begin telling yourself you’ve made a hundred.”
“Why?”
“So that when your crew looks at you in the last seconds before we enter realspace, they will not see any reason to distract themselves with fear,” said A’baht.
“Whatever waits for us, whether princess or dragon, we are called to embrace it. I am mindful of a Dornean war prayer I heard my own mother offer— ‘I pray that my son does not die today. But if he should die, I pray that he dies well. But most of all, I pray that if he lives, it will not be dishonor which preserves him.”” Captain Morano nodded.
“Are you a betting man, General? Princess or dragon?”
The third and final timer was counting down toward zero. “Captain,” said A’baht, “I am not certain I can always tell the difference.”
All the major craft guilds had contributed to the processional car.
The scale was grand, the lines flowing.
The metalwork gleamed. The motor’s hum was muted and musical. The mounting ladder was a wonder of design, its airily elegant treads and supports folding together and disappearing under the carriage the moment Nil Spaar’s weight left it. The open cabin’s cushions and wall panels were plush and finely embroidered with the shield of the Spaar clan, the symbols of the viceroy’s house, the icons of auspicious blessing, and the glory-names of the Yevetha, all woven together in a design of spectacular beauty.
Even the car’s driver and guards had been chosen to honor him. The driver was that rare genetic curiosity, a white-cast neuter—pale as the midday sky and neither male nor female. It sat tall and expressionless in the driver’s creche at the front of the car, a silent herald whose presence alone announced that a great man was coming. The guards were another curiosity: serial twins, grown from the same birth-cask and identical but for their ages. By tradition, serial twins were thought lucky, and able to pass that blessing at will by breath, touch, and blood.
“Proctor Raalk—” Nil Spaar said, looking down from the cabin at the small gathering in Aramadia’s ground-level loading bay.
The proctor of Giat Nor stepped forward.
“Blessed.”
“This pleases me greatly,” Nil Spaar said. “See that the guildmasters know that their work was well received.”
“Thank you, Blessed,” said Ton Raalk, bowing his head gratefully.
Nil Spaar acknowledged the proctor’s submission with a nod and a gesture. “I am ready. Driver, proceed.”
The great curving doors ahead began to fan outward.
As the gap widened, a sound filled the bay, a sound that grew moment to moment—the sound of voices suddenly raised in joy. Only part of the crowd could see the doors reopening, but the word spread quickly to those whose view was blocked.
As the car cleared Aramadia’s hull, Nil Spaar closed his eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath of the richly aromatic air. It seemed to him like the first breath in ages that was wholly free from the taint of the vermin.
Even aboard ship, their impure stench seemed to cling to him, lingering in his nostrils like a reminder of their invasion of the All. It took the hot breezes of N’zoth to blow that contaminant away at last, just as it had taken the purifying fire of the fleet to rid the All of the vermin’s poisonous presence.