A hand-sized patch of blue caught his eye, just visible between two laurels. Unlike Harry, it was patiently and absolutely still, but he had them both now, and he grinned and began a slow, stealthy move to his left. A few more meters and—
Zaaaaaaaaaaa-ting!
Sean jerked in disbelief, then punched the ground and used a word his mother would not have approved. The chime gave way to a raucous buzzing that ripped at his augmented hearing, and he snatched his ears back to normal and stood resignedly.
The buzz from the laser-sensing units on his harness stopped at his admission of defeat, and he turned, wondering how Harry had slipped around behind him. But it wasn't Harry, and he ground his teeth as a diminutive figure splashed ashore. She'd shed her bright blue jacket (Sean knew exactly where), and she was soaking wet, but her brown eyes blazed with delight.
"I got you!" she shrieked. "Sean's dead! Sean's dead, Harry!"
He managed not to use any more of his forbidden vocabulary when the eight-year-old ninja began an impromptu war dance, but it was hard, especially when his twin threw herself into the dance with her half-pint ally. Bad enough to lose to girls, but to be ambushed by Sandy MacMahan was insupportable. She was two years younger than he, this was the first time she'd even been allowed to play, and she'd killed him with her first shot!
"Your elation at Sean's death is scarcely becoming, Sandra." The deep, mellow voice coming from empty air surprised none of them. They'd known Dahak all their lives, and the self-aware computer's starship body was one of their favorite playgrounds.
"Who cares?" Sandy demanded gleefully. "I got him! Zap!" She pointed her pistol at Sean and collapsed with a wail of laughter at his expression.
"Luck!" he shot back, holstering his own pistol with dignity he knew was threadbare. "You were just lucky, Sandy!"
"That is incorrect, Sean," Dahak observed with the dispassionate fairness Sean hated when it was on someone else's side. " 'Luck' implies the fortuitous working of chance, and Sandra's decision to conceal herself in the lake—which, I observed, you did not check once—was an ingenious maneuver. And as she has cogently if unkindly observed, she 'got' you."
"So there!" Sandy stuck out her tongue, and Sean turned away with an injured air. It didn't get any better when Harriet grinned at him.
"I told you Sandy was old enough, didn't I?" she demanded.
He longed to disagree—violently—but he was an honest boy, and so he nodded begrudgingly, and tried to hide his shudder as a vision of the future unrolled before him. Sandy was Harry's best friend, despite her youth, and now the little creep was going to be underfoot everywhere. He'd managed to fend that off for over a year by claiming she was too little. Until today. She was already two course units ahead of him in calculus, and now this!
The universe, Sean Horus MacIntyre concluded grumpily, wasn't exactly running over with justice.
Amanda Tsien and her husband stepped out of the transit shaft outside Dahak's command deck. Her son, Tamman, followed them down the passage, but he was almost squirming in impatience, and Amanda glanced up at her towering husband with a twinkle. Most described Tsien Tao-ling's face as grim, but a smile flickered as he watched Tamman. The boy might not be "his" in any biological sense, yet that didn't mean he wasn't Tamman's father, and he nodded when Amanda quirked an eyebrow.
"All right, Tamman," she said. "You can go."
"Thanks, Mom!" He turned in his tracks with the curiously catlike awkwardness of his age and dashed back towards the transit shaft. "Where's Sean, Dahak?" he demanded as he ran.
"He is on Park Deck Nine, Tamman," a mellow voice responded.
"Thanks! See you later, Mom, Dad!" Tamman ran sideways for a moment to wave, then dove into the shaft with a whoop.
"You'd think they hadn't seen each other in months," Amanda sighed.
"I do not believe children live on the same time scale as adults," Tsien observed in his deep, soft voice as she tucked a hand through his elbow.
"You can say that again!"
They turned the final bend to confront the command deck hatch. Dahak's crest coiled across the bronze-gold battle steeclass="underline" a three-headed dragon, poised for flight, clawed forefeet raised to cradle the emblem of the Fifth Imperium. The crowned starburst of the Fourth Empire had been retained, but now a Phoenix of rebirth erupted from the starburst, and the diadem of empire rested on its crested head. The twenty-centimeter-thick hatch—the first of many, each fit to withstand a kiloton-range warhead—slid soundlessly open.
"Hello, Dahak," Amanda said as they walked forward and other hatches parted before them.
"Good evening, Amanda. Welcome aboard, Star Marshal."
"Thank you," Tsien replied. "Have the others arrived?"
"Admiral Hatcher is en route, but the MacMahans and Duke Horus have already joined Their Majesties."
"One day Gerald must learn there are only twenty-eight hours even in Birhat's day," Tsien sighed.
"Oh, really?" Amanda glanced up at him again. "I suppose you've already learned that?"
"Perhaps not," he agreed with another small smile, and she snorted as a final hatch admitted them to the dim vastness of Dahak's Command One.
A sphere of stars engulfed them. The diamond-hard pinheads burned in the ebon depths of space, dominated by the cloud-banded green-and-blue sphere of the planet Birhat, and Amanda shivered. Not from cold, but with the icy breeze that always seemed to whisper down her spine whenever she stepped into the perfection of the holographic display.
"Hi, Amanda. Tao-ling." His Imperial Majesty Colin I, Grand Duke of Birhat, Prince of Bia, Sol, Chamhar, and Narhan, Warlord and Prince Protector of the Realm, Defender of the Five Thousand Suns, Champion of Humanity, and, by the Maker's Grace, Emperor of Mankind, swiveled his couch to show them his homely, beak-nosed face and grinned. "I see Tamman peeled off early."
"When last seen, he was headed for the park deck," Tsien agreed.
"Well, he's in for a surprise." Colin chuckled. "Harry and Dahak finally bullied Sean into letting Sandy try her hand at laser tag."
"Oh, my!" Amanda laughed. "I'll bet that was an experience!"
"Aye." Empress Jiltanith, slender as a sword and as beautiful as Colin was homely, rose to embrace Amanda. "Belike he'll crow less loud anent her youth henceforth. His pride hath been humbled—for the nonce, at least."
"He'll get over it," Hector MacMahan remarked. The Imperial Marine Corps' commandant leaned on the gunnery officer's console while his wife occupied the couch before it. Like Amanda, he wore Marine black and silver, but Ninhursag MacMahan wore Battle Fleet's midnight-blue and gold, and she smiled.
"Not if Sandy has anything to say about it. One of these days that girl's going to make an excellent spook."
"You should know," Colin said, and Ninhursag managed a seated bow in his direction. "In the meantime, I—"
"Excuse me, Colin," Dahak murmured, "but Admiral Hatcher's cutter has docked."
"Good. Looks like we can get this show on the road pretty soon."
"I hope so," Horus said. The stocky, white-haired Planetary Duke of Terra shook his head. "Every time I poke my nose out of my office, something's waiting to crawl out of the 'in' basket and bite me when I get back!"
Colin nodded at his father-in-law in agreement, but he was watching the Tsiens. Tao-ling seated Amanda with an attentiveness so focused it was almost unconscious... and one that might seem odd to those who knew only Star Marshal Tsien's reputation or knew General Amanda Tsien only as the tough-as-nails commandant of Fort Hawter, the Imperial Marines' advanced training base on Birhat. Colin, on the other hand, understood it perfectly, and he was profoundly grateful to see it.