Heirs of Empire

All his life, Sean MacIntyre had known what had overwhelmed the Fourth Empire. He’d seen the ships brought back to Bia and read about the disaster, studied it, written papers on it for the Academy. He knew about the bio-weapon … but now he understood something he’d never quite grasped.

Those dead ships were real, and each had once been crewed by two hundred thousand people who’d worn the uniform he now wore. Real people who’d died because they’d tried to assist planets teeming with billions of other real people. And when they knew they, too, were infected, they’d come here to die rather than seek help for themselves and endanger still others.

The bio-weapon itself had died at last, but through all the dusty mille

He watched the display, measuring himself against those long-dead crews, and a part of him that was very young hoped Captain McNeal would hyper out for Thegran soon.

Fleet Commander Yu Lin had been to Urahan before, and she’d watched her snotty as they dropped out of hyper. It would never do to admit it, but she rather liked Mid/4 MacIntyre. Crown Prince or no, he was hardworking, conscientious, and unfailingly polite, yet she’d wondered how such a cheerful extrovert would react to Urahan’s death fleet.

Now she filed the ghosts in his eyes away beside the other mental notes she was making for his evaluation. It was interesting, she thought.

He seemed to feel exactly the way she did.

Imperial Terra considered her options as the coordinates for her next hyper jump were entered.

Although her Comp Cent wasn’t self-aware, it came closer than those of older Battle Fleet units. Terra was actually a good bit brighter than Dahak had been when he first arrived in Earth orbit, yet trying to reconcile the two sets of Alpha Priority commands no one knew she had was a problem.

Normally, she would have asked for guidance, but Alpha commands took absolute precedence, and her directive to seek human assistance didn’t carry Alpha Priority. There’d never seemed any reason why it should, but one of Vincente Cruz’s commands prohibited any discussion of his other orders with her bridge officers, which meant Comp Cent was faced with devising a course of action which would satisfy both sets of commands all on its own.

It did.

Sean sat beside the park deck lake, skimming stones across the water. A bio-enhanced arm could send them for incredible distances, and he watched the skittering splashes vanish into the mist while his implants’ low-powered force field shielded him from the falling rain.

Feet crunched on wet gravel behind him, and he read the implant codes without looking.

“Hi, guys,” he said. “How d’you like Commander Godard’s weather?”

He stood and turned to grin at his friends. This was the first time they’d all been off watch at once since leaving Urahan, and Terra’s logistics officer had decided the park decks needed a good rain. Fleet Commander Godard was a nice guy, and Sean didn’t think he’d done it on purpose.

“I like it.” Brashan trotted down to the lake and waded out belly-deep into the water. Unlike his human friends, he was in uniform, but Narhani uniform consisted solely of a harness to support his belt pouches and display his insignia, and Sean felt a familiar spurt of envy. Brashan had to spend more time polishing his leather and brightwork, but he’d never had to worry about getting a spot out of his dress trousers in his life.

“It reminds me of spring on Narhan,” Brashan added, folding down into the water until only his shoulders showed and extending the fan of his cranial frill in bliss. “Of course, the air’s still too thin, but the weather’s nice.”

“You would think so.” Tamman kicked off his deck shoes and perched on the outer hull of a trimaran, dangling his feet in the water. “For myself, I’d prefer a bit less drizzle.”

“You and me both,” Sean agreed, though he wasn’t sure that was entirely true. The humidity emphasized the smell of life and greenery, and he had his sensory boosters on high to enjoy the earthy perfume.

“Still want to go sailing?” Sandy asked.

“Maybe.” Sean skimmed another stone into the mist. “I checked the weather schedule. This is supposed to clear up in about an hour.”

“Well I’d rather wait until it does,” Harriet said.

“Yeah.” Sean selected another stone. “I suppose we could go up to Gym Deck Seven while we wait.”

“No way.” Tamman shook his head. “I poked my head in on the way down, and Lieutenant Williams is ru

“Yuck.” Sean threw his rock with a grimace. His human friends and he had played and worked out with Dahak’s training remotes since they could walk. They were about the only members of the crew who were both junior to Williams and able to give him a run for his money, but he kept producing sneaky (and bruising) moves they hadn’t seen yet whenever they got him in trouble.

“Double yuck,” Sandy agreed. She was nimble and blindingly fast, even for an enhanced human, but her small size was a distinct disadvantage on the training mat.

“Oh, well,” Harriet sighed, heading for the trimaran and begi

Deep in Imperial Terra’s heart Comp Cent silently oversaw her every function, monitoring, adjusting, reporting back to its human masters.

Terra was somewhat larger than an Asgerd-class planetoid, but she carried far fewer people, mostly because her sublight parasites, while larger and more powerful than their predecessors, had been designed around smaller crews. Horus’ old Nergal had required three hundred crewmen, and even the Fourth Empire’s sublight battleships had needed crews of over a hundred. With their Dahak-designed computers, Imperial Terra’s were designed for core crews of only thirty, and even that was more of a social than a combat requirement.

Yet Terra’s perso

Continuous self-diagnostic programs scrutinized every aspect of those computers’ operations, alert for any malfunction while Imperial Terra’s crewmen stood their watches and monitored their displays, and those displays told them all was well as their ship tore through hyper. But all was not well, for none of Imperial Terra’s crew knew about the Alpha Priority commands a programmer now dead with his entire family had inserted into their ship’s computer, and so none of them knew Comp Cent had become a traitor.

Sandy MacMahan crossed the cool, cavernous bay to the gleaming flank of the sublight battleship Israel. Number six perso