Mutineer's Moon

His henchmen nodded silently, and he waved for them to leave. They rose, and Jantu led the way out with Ganhar several meters behind him.

Anu smiled humorlessly at the sight. There was no love lost between those two, and that kept them from conspiring together even if it did make for a bit of inefficiency. But if Ganhar fucked up again, not even the Maker would save him.

Ina

They were all fools. Fools and incompetents, or they would have taken Dahak for him fifty thousand years ago. But Ina

That was why she remained loyal. She wanted to share that power as mistress, minion, or lieutenant; it didn’t matter to her. Which was just as well for her, he told himself moodily. Not that she wasn’t a pleasant armful in bed. And that new body of hers was the best yet. He tried to recall what the tall, raven-haired beauty’s name had been, but it didn’t matter. Her body was Ina

The conference room door closed silently behind the commander, and he stalked through his private exit, feeling the automatic weapons that protected it recognizing his implants. He entered his quarters and stared bitterly at the sumptuous furnishings. Splendid, yes, but only a shadow of the splendor in Dahak’s captain’s quarters. He had been pent here too long, denied his destiny for too many dusty years. Yet it would come. Inevitably, it would come.

He crossed the main cabin, ignoring Imperial light sculptures and soft music, overlooking priceless tapestries, jewel work, and paintings from five thousand years of Terran history, and peered into a mirror. There were a few tiny wrinkles around his eyes now, and he glanced aside, letting those eyes rest on the framed holo cube of the Anu-that-was, seeing again the power and presence that had been his. This body was taller, broad shouldered and powerful, but it was still a poor excuse for the one he had been born to. And it was growing older. There might be another century of peak performance left to it, and then it would be time to choose another. He’d hoped that when that time came he would be back out among the stars where he belonged, teaching the Imperium the true meaning of Empire.

His original body remained in stasis, though he hadn’t looked upon it since it was placed there. It caused him pain to see it and remember how it once had been, but he had saved it, for it was his. He had not permitted Ina

The day would come, he promised his stranger’s face, when he would have the realm that should be his, and when it came, he would have the Anu-that-was cloned afresh. He would live forever, in his own body, and the stars themselves would be his toys.

Ganhar walked briskly along the corridor, eyes hooded in thought. What were the bastards up to? It was such a fundamental change, and it came after too many years of unvarying operational patterns. There was a reason behind it, and, grateful as he’d been for Ina

He sighed. He’d covered his back as well as he could; now he could only wait to see what they were doing. Whatever it was, it could hardly make the situation much worse. Anu was mad, and growing madder with every passing year, but there was nothing Ganhar could do about it … yet. Maker only knew how many of the others were the “Chief’s” spies, and no one knew who Anu might decide (or be brought to decide) was a traitor.

Jantu was probably licking his chops, praying daily for something to use against him, and there was no sane reason to give him that something, but Ganhar had his plans. He suspected others had theirs, as well, but until they finally escaped this damned planet they needed Anu. Or, no, they needed Ina

He stepped into the transit shaft and let it whirl him away to his own office. There might be other reports by now—he was certainly driving his teams hard enough to produce them! If there were none, he could at least relieve his own tension by giving someone else a tongue-lashing.

General Sir Frederick Amesbury, KCB, CBE, VC, DSO, smiled tightly at the portrait of the king on his office wall. Sir Frederick could trace his ancestry to the reign of Edward the Confessor. Unlike many of Nergal’s Terra-born allies he was not directly descended from her crew, though there had been a few distant collateral co

Now, after all those years, things were coming to a head, and the Americans’ General Hatcher was shaping up even more nicely than Sir Frederick had expected. Of course, Hector was to blame for prodding Hatcher into action, and Sir Frederick had been primed to support the Yank’s first tentative suggestion, but Hatcher was doing bloody well.

He checked his desk clock, and his smile grew shark-like. The SAS and Royal Marines would be hitting the Red Eyebrows base in Hartlepool in less than two hours, after which, Sir Frederick would have to notify the Prime Minister. The Council reckoned the P.M. was still his own man, and Sir Frederick was inclined to agree, but it would be interesting to see if that was enough to save his own position when the Home and Defense Ministers—who most definitely were not their own woman and man, respectively—demanded his head.

Oberst Eric von Grau sat back on his haunches in the ditch. The leutnant beside him was peering through his light-gathering binoculars at the isolated chalets in the bend of the Mosel River, but Grau had already carried out his own final check. His two hundred picked men were quite invisible, and his attention had moved to other things. He cocked an ear, waiting for the thunder to begin, and allowed himself a tight smile.

He had treated himself to a quiet celebration when the orders came through from Nergal, and when news of the first three strikes rocked the world, he’d hardly been able to wait for the request from the Americans. German intelligence had spotted this January Twelfth training camp long ago, though the security minister had chosen not to act on the information.

But Herr Trautma

“Inbound,” a radio voice said quietly, and he gri