"It is done, Colin." Dahak's voice was strangely slurred, and Colin tasted blood from his bitten lip. "Battle Comp is destroyed. Live long and happily, my fr—"
The last warship of the Fourth Imperium exploded in a fury brighter than a star's heart and took the flagship of his ancient enemy with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A cratered battle steel moon drifted where its drives had failed, power flickering. One entire face of its hull was slagged-down ruin, burned nine hundred kilometers deep through bulkhead after bulkhead by the inconceivable violence of a sister's death. Two thirds of her crew were dead; a quarter of those who lived would die, even with Imperial medical science, from massive radiation poisoning.
Her name was Emperor Herdan, and her handful of remaining weapons were ready as her survivors fought her damage. It was a hopeless task, but they knew all about hopeless tasks.
"Ma'am, I've got something closing from oh-seven-two level, one-four-zero vertical," Fleet Commander Oliver Weinstein said, and Lady Adrienne Robbins looked at him silently. A moment of tension quivered between them, then Weinstein seemed to sag. "We've lost most of our scan resolution, ma'am, but I think they're coming in on gravitonics."
"Thank you, Ollie," Adrienne said softly. And thank You, Jesus.
Four battered worldlets closed upon their wounded sister. None were unhurt, and craters gaped black and sullen in the interstellar gloom. Five ships made rendezvous: the last survivors of the Imperial Guard.
"'Tis Emperor Herdan in sooth," Jiltanith said wearily. She closed her eyes, and Colin squeezed her hand as once she had squeezed his. He could taste her pain, and her shame at knowing that her heart of hearts had hoped that Two had been mistaken, that Herdan had died instead of Birhat.
"Yes," he said softly. He would miss Tamman... and somehow he must tell Amanda. But he would miss them all. All of his unmanned ships and nine of his crewed units were gone. Fifty-four thousand people. And Dahak... .
His mind shied away from his losses. He wouldn't think of them now. Not until horror had died to something he could handle and guilt had become sorrow.
"Who's least hurt?" he asked finally.
"Needst ask?" Jiltanith managed a pallid smile. "Who but Heka? Didst give Hector a charmed ship, my love."
"Guess I did, at that," Colin sighed. He activated a com link, and his holo-image appeared on MacMahan's bridge.
"Hector, go back and pick up the colliers, would you? And I want Fabricator straight out here."
"Of course, Your Majesty." MacMahan saluted, and Colin shivered, for he had spoken the title seriously.
"Thank you," he said quietly, returning the salute, then turned to study Two's display. Not a single Achuultani vessel remained in normal space within the prodigious range of Two's scanners. Less than a thousand of them had survived, and the tale of horror they would bear home would shake their Nest to its roots.
"Looks like we're clear, 'Tanni. I think we can stand down from battle stations now."
"Aye," Jiltanith said, and Colin could almost feel the physical shudder of relief quivering through the survivors of her crew. He slumped in his own couch. Only for a moment. Just long enough to gather himself before—
The display died. The command deck went utterly black.
"Emergency," Two's soprano voice said suddenly. "Emergency. Fatal core program failure. Fatal c—"
The voice chopped off, and Colin's head jerked in agony. He yanked his neural feed out of the sudden chaos raging through Comp Cent and stared at Jiltanith in horror as emergency lighting flared up.
"Fire control on manual only!" someone reported.
"Plotting on manual!" another voice snapped, and the reports rolled in as every system in the ship went to emergency backup.
"Jesu!" Jiltanith gasped. "What—?!"
And then the display flicked back to life, the emergency lighting switched itself off, and the backups quietly shut themselves down once more.
Colin sat stock still, hardly daring to breathe. Somehow, the restoration of function was more frightening than its failure, and the same strange paralysis gripped Jiltanith's entire bridge crew. They could only stare at their captain, and she could only stare at her husband.
"Colin?"
Colin jerked again as Two's soprano voice spoke without cuing. And then his eyes glazed, for the computer had used his name. His name, not 'Tanni's!
"Yes?"
"Colin," Two said again, and a shudder rippled down Colin's spine as the soprano voice began to shift and flow. Tone and timbre oscillated weirdly as Comp Cent's vocoder settings changed.
"Senior Fleet Captain Chernikov," Two said, voice deepening steadily, "was correct. It seems I do have a soul."
"Dahak!" Colin gasped as Jiltanith rose from her own couch, sliding her arms around his shoulders from behind. "My God, it is you! It is!"
"A somewhat redundant but essentially correct observation," a familiar voice said, but Colin knew it too well. It couldn't hide its own deep emotion from him.
"B-But how?" he whispered. "I saw you blow up!"
"Colin," Dahak said chidingly, "when speaking, I have always attempted to clearly differentiate between my own persona and the starship within which that persona is—or was—housed."
"Damn it!" Colin was half-laughing and half-weeping as he shook a fist at his console. "Don't play games with me now! How did you do it?!"
"I told you some time ago that I had resolved the fundamental differences between my design and the Empire's computers, Colin. I also informed you that I estimated an eight percent probability of success in replicating my own core programming, which might or might not create self-awareness in another computer. During the last moments of Dahak's existence, I was in fold-space communication with Two, whose computer already contained virtually my entire memory as a result of our earlier attempts to 'awaken' her. I dared not attempt replication at that moment, however, as any degradation of her capabilities would have resulted in her destruction. Instead, I stored my core programming and more recently acquired data base in an unused portion of her memory with a command to over-write it onto her own as soon as she reverted from battle stations."
"You bootstrapped yourself into Two!"
"Precisely," Dahak said with all of his customary imperturbability.
"You sneaky bastard! Oh, you sneaky, sneaky bastard! See if I ever talk to you again!"
"Hush, Colin!" Jiltanith clamped a hand over his mouth, and tears sparkled on her lashes as she smiled at the console before them. "Heed him not, my jo. Doubt not that he doth rejoice to hear thy voice once more e'en as I. Bravely done, oh, bravely, my Dahak!"
"Thank you," Dahak said. "I would not express it precisely in that fashion, but I must admit it was a... novel experience. And not," he added primly, "one I am eager to undergo again."
The silver ripple of Jiltanith's laughter was lost in the bray of Colin's delight, and then the entire bridge erupted in cheers.
"And that's that," Colin MacIntyre said, leaning back in his chaise lounge with a sigh.
He and Horus sat on the patio of what had once been his brother's small, neat house in the crisp Colorado night. The endless rains from the Siege had passed, though the chill approach of a far colder winter had frosted the ground with snow, but they were Imperials. The cold bothered them not at all, and this night was too beautiful to waste indoors.