A sudden thought woke a mischievous smile as he tucked an arm around her waist to escort her back to the dais, and he raised his voice.
"Mother, say hello to my wife."
"Hello, Your Imperial Majesty," Mother said obediently, and Jiltanith stopped dead.
"What foolishness is this?" she demanded.
"Get used to it, honey," Colin said, squeezing her again. "For whatever it's worth, your shiftless husband's brought home the bacon this time." He grinned wryly. "In spades!"
Several hours later, a far less chipper Colin groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. Jiltanith and he sat side-by-side on Fleet Central's command couch while Mother reported Battle Fleet's status, running down every fleet and sub-unit in numerical order. So far, she'd provided reports on just under two thousand fleets, task forces, and battle squadrons.
And, so far, nothing she'd had to report was good.
"Hold report, Mother," he said, breaking into the computer's flow.
"Holding, Sire," Mother agreed, and Colin laughed hollowly. "Emperor"-that was a laugh. And "Warlord" was even funnier. He was a commander without a fleet! Or, more precisely, with a fleet that was useless to him.
The Empire had been too busy dying for an orderly shutdown. Herdan XXIV had lived long enough to activate Fleet Central's emergency subroutines, placing Mother on powered-down standby to guard Birhat until relief might someday arrive, but most of Battle Fleet hadn't been even that lucky. A few score supralight vessels had simply disappeared from Fleet Central's records, which probably indicated that their crews had elected to flee in an effort to outrun the bio-weapon, but most of Battle Fleet's units had been contaminated in their efforts to save civilians in the weapon's path. The result had been both predictable and grisly, and, unlike Dahak, their computers hadn't been smart enough to do anything about it when they found themselves without crews. Except for a handful whose core taps had been active when their last crewmen died, they'd simply returned to the nearest Fleet base and remained on station until their fusion plants exhausted their on-board mass, then drifted without life or power.
Unfortunately, none seemed to have returned to Bia itself-which made sense, given that Birhat, the first victim of the bio-weapon, had been quarantined at the very start of the Empire's death agony. Less than a dozen active units had responded to Mother's all-ships hypercom rally signal, and the nearest was upwards of eight hundred light-years away; Earth would be dead long before Colin could return if he waited for them them to reach Birhat.
There was a bitter irony in the fact that Birhat's defenses remained almost fully operational. Bia's mammoth shield, backed by Perimeter Security's prodigious firepower, could have held anything anyone could throw at them. But everyone who needed defending was on Earth.
"Mother," he said finally, "let's try something different. Instead of reporting in sequence, list all mobile forces in order of proximity to Birhat."
"Acknowledged. Listing Bia System deployments. Birhat Near-Orbit Watch Squadron: twelve heavy cruisers. Bia Deep-System Patrol Squadron: ten heavy cruisers, forty-one destroyers, nine frigates, sixty-two corvettes. Imperial Guard Flotilla: fifty-two Asgerd-class planetoids, sixteen-"
"What? Stop!" Colin shouted.
"Acknowledged," Mother said calmly.
"What the fuck is the Imperial Guard Flotilla?!"
"Imperial Guard Flotilla," Mother replied. "The Warlord's personal command. Strength: fifty-two Asgerd-class planetoids and attached parasites, sixteen Trosan-class planetoids and attached parasites, and ten Vespa-class assault planetoids and attached planetary assault craft. Current location: parking orbit thirty-eight light-minutes from Bia. Status: inactive."
"Jesus H. Christ!" Colin stared at Jiltanith. Her face was as shocked as his own, and they turned as one to glare accusingly at the console.
"Why," Colin asked in a dangerously calm voice, "didn't you mention them earlier?"
"Sire, you had not asked about them," Mother said.
"I certainly did! I asked for a complete listing of Battle Fleet units!" Mother was silent, and he growled a curse at all computers which could not recognize the need to respond without specific cues. "Didn't I?" he snarled.
"You did, Sire."
"Then why didn't you report them?"
"I did, Sire."
"But you didn't report this Imperial Guard Flotilla-" Flotilla! Jesus, it was a fleet! "-did you? Why not?"
"Sire, the Imperial Guard is not part of Battle Fleet. The Imperial Guard is raised and manned solely from the Emperor's personal demesne."
Colin blinked. Personal demesne? An Emperor whose personal fiefdoms could raise that kind of firepower? The thought sent a shiver down his spine. He sagged back, trembling, and a warm arm crept about him and tightened.
"All right." He shook his head and inhaled deeply, drawing strength from Jiltanith's presence. "Why is the Guard Flotilla inactive?"
"Power exhaustion and uncontrolled shutdown, Sire."
"Assess probability of successful reactivation."
"One hundred percent," Mother said emotionlessly, and a jolt of excitement crashed through him. But slowly, he told himself. Slowly.
"Assume resources of one hundred seven thousand Battle Fleet personnel, one Utu-class planetoid, and current active and inactive automated support available in the Bia System," he said carefully, "and compute probable time required to reactivate the Imperial Guard Flotilla to full combat readiness."
"Impossible to reactivate to full combat readiness," Mother replied. "Specified personnel inadequate for crews."
"Then compute time to reactivate to limited combat readiness."
"Computing, Sire," Mother responded, and fell silent for a disturbingly long period. Almost a full minute passed before she spoke again. "Computation complete. Probable time required: four-point-three-nine months. Margin of error twenty-point-seven percent owing to large numbers of imponderables."
Colin closed his eyes and felt Jiltanith tremble against him. Four months-five-and-a-half outside. It would be close, but they could do it. By all that was holy, they could do it!
"There," Tamman said quietly as a green circle bloomed on Dahak's visual display, ringing a tiny, gleaming dot. The dot grew as Dahak approached, and additional dots appeared, spreading out in a loose necklace of worldlets.
"I see them," Colin replied, still luxuriating in his return to Command One and a world he understood. "Big bastards, aren't they, Dahak?"
"I compute that the largest out-mass Dahak by over twenty-five percent. I am not prepared to speculate upon the legitimacy of their parentage."
Colin chuckled. Dahak had been much more willing to engage in informality since his return from Fleet Central, as if he recognized Colin's shock at suddenly finding himself an emperor. Or perhaps the computer was simply glad to have him back. Dahak was a worrier where friends were concerned.
He watched the planetoids grow. If Vlad was right about the Empire's technology, those ships would be monsters in action-and monsters were exactly what they needed.
"Captain, look here." Ellen Gregory, Sarah Meir's Assistant Astrogator, placed a sighting circle of her own on the display, picking out a single starship. "What do you make of that, sir?"
Colin looked, then looked again. The stupendous sphere floating in space was only roughly similar to the only Imperial planetoid he'd ever seen, but one thing was utterly familiar. A vast, three-headed dragon spread its wings across the gleaming hull.
"Well looky there," he murmured. "Dahak, what d'you make of that?"
According to the data Fleet Central downloaded to my data base," Dahak replied, "that is His Imperial Majesty's Planetoid Dahak, Hull Number Seven-Three-Six-Four-Four-Eight-Niner-Two-Five."
"Another Dahak?"
"It is a proud name in Battle Fleet." Dahak sounded a bit miffed. "Rather like the many ships named Enterprise in your own United States Navy. According to the data, this is the twenty-third ship to bear the name."
"It is, huh? Well, which one ar
e you?"
"This unit is the eleventh of the name."
"I see. Well, in order to avoid confusion, we'll just refer to this young whippersnapper as Dahak Two, if that's all right with you, Dahak."
"Noted," Dahak said calmly, and continued to close on the silently waiting, millennia-dead hulls they intended to resurrect.
"By the Maker, I've got it!"
Colin jumped half out of his couch as Cohanna's holo image materialized on Command One. The biosciences officer looked terrible, her hair awry and her uniform wrinkled, but her eyes were bright with triumph.
"Try penicillin," he advised sourly, and she looked blank, then grinned.
"Sorry, sir. I meant I've figured out what happened on Birhat-why it's got that incredible bio-system. I found it in Mother's data base."
"Oh?" Colin sat straighter, his eyes more intent. "Give!"
"It's simple, really. The zoos-the Imperial Family's zoos."
"Zoos?" It was Colin's turn to look blank.
"Yes. You see, the Imperial Family had an immense zoological garden. Over thirty different planets' flora and fauna in sealed, self-sufficient planetary habitats. Apparently, they lasted out the plague. I'd guess the automated systems responsible for restraining plant growth failed first in one of them, and the thing cracked. Once it did, its inhabitants could get out, and the same vegetation attacked the exterior of other surviving habitats. Over the years, still more oxy-nitrogen habitats were opened up and started spreading to reclaim the planet. That's why we've got such a screwy damned ecology. We're looking at the survivors of a dozen different planetary bio-spheres after forty-five thousand years of natural selection!"
"Well I'll be damned," Colin mused. "Good work, Cohanna. I'm impressed you could keep concentrating on that kind of problem at a time like this."
"Time like this?"
"While we're making our final approach to the Imperial Guard," Colin said, raising his eyebrows, and Cohanna wrinkled her nose.
"What's an Imperial Guard?"
Vlad Chernikov shuddered as he and Baltan floated down the lifeless, lightless transit shaft. This, he thought, is what Dahak would have become if Anu had succeeded all those years ago.
It was depressing in more ways than one. Actually seeing this desolation gnawed away at the confidence that anything could be done about it, and even if he succeeded in rejecting the counsel of despair, he could see it would be a horrific task. Dead power rooms, exhausted fuel mass, control rooms and circuit runs which had never been properly stasissed when the ship died. There was even meteor damage, for the collision shields had died with everything else. One of the planetoids might well be beyond repair, judging by the huge hole punched into its south pole.
Still, he reminded himself, everyone had his or her own problems. Caitrin O'Rourke was practically in tears over the hydroponic farms, and Geran was furious to find so much perfectly good equipment left out of stasis. But Tamman was probably the most afflicted of all, for the magazines had been left without stasis, as well, and the containment fields on every anti-matter weapon had failed. At least the warhead fail-safes had worked as designed and rotated them into hyper as the fields went down, but huge chunks of magazine bulkheads had gone with them. Of course, if they hadn't worked...
He shuddered again, concentrating on the grav sled he and Baltan rode. It was far slower than an operable transit shaft, but they dared not use even its full speed. They were no transit computer to whip around unexpected bends in the system!
He craned his neck, reading the lettering above a hatch. Gamma-One-One-Nine-One-One. According to Dahak's downloaded schematics, they were getting close to Engineering.
So they were. He tapped Baltan's shoulder and pointed, and the commander nodded inside the force bubble of his helmet. The sled angled for the side of the shaft and nudged against the hatch-which, of course, stayed firmly shut.
Chernikov smothered a curse, then grinned as he recalled Colin's account of his "coronation." The Captain-Emperor!-had exhausted the entire crew's allocation of profanity for at least a month, by Chernikov's estimate. He chuckled at the thought and climbed off the sled, dragging a cable from its power plant behind him and muttering Slavic maledictions. No power meant no artificial gravity, which-unfortunately-did not mean no gravity. A planetoid generated an impressive grav field all its own, and turned bulkheads into decks and decks into bulkheads when the power failed.
He found the emergency power receptacle and plugged in, and the hatch slid open. He waved, and Baltan ghosted the sled inside, angling its powerful lamps to pick out the emergency lighting system.
Chernikov did some more cable-dragging and, after propitiating Murphy with a few curses, brought it alive. Light bathed Central Engineering, and the two engineers began to explore.
The long-dead core tap drew them like a magnet, and Chernikov felt a tingle of awe as his eyes and implants traced circuit runs and control systems. This thing was at least five times as powerful as Dahak's, and he wouldn't have believed it could be without seeing it. But what in the galaxy could they have needed that much power for? Even allowing for the more powerful energy armament and shield, there had to be some other reason-
His thoughts died as his implants followed a massive power shunt which shouldn't have been there. He clambered over a control panel which had become the floor, slightly vertiginous as he tried to orient himself, then gasped.
"Baltan! Look at this!"
"I know," his assistant said softly, approaching from the far side. "I've been following the control runs."
"Can you believe this?"
"Does it matter? And it would certainly explain all the power demand."
"True." Chernikov moved a few more yards, examining his find carefully, then shook his head. "I must tell the Captain about this."
He keyed his com implant, and Colin answered a moment later, sounding a bit harassed-not surprisingly, considering that every other search party must be finding marvels of its own to report.
"Captain, I am in Mairsuk's Central Engineering, and you would not believe what I am looking at."
"Try me," Colin said wearily. "I'm learning to believe nineteen impossible things before breakfast every day."
"Very well, here is number twenty. This ship has both Enchanach and hyper capability."
There was a pregnant pause.
"What," Colin finally asked very carefully, "did you say?"
"I said, sir, that we have here both an Enchanach and a hyper drive, engineered down to a size that fits both into a single hull. I am not yet positive, but I would judge that the combined mass of both units is less than that of Dahak's Enchanach Drive, alone."
"Great day in the morning," Colin muttered. Then, "All right. Take a good look, then get back over here. We're having an all-departments meeting in four hours to discuss plans for reactivation.
"Understood," Chernikov said, and broke the connection. He and Baltan exchanged eloquent shrugs and bent back to the study of their prize.
"... can't be specific until we've got the computers back up and run a complete inventory," Geran said, "but about ten percent of all spares required controlled condition storage. Without that-" He shrugged.
Most of Colin's department heads were present in the flesh, but a sizable force from the recon group was prowling around other installations, and Hector MacMahan and Ninhursag attended via holo image from the battleship Osir's command deck. Now all eyes, physical and holographic alike, swiveled to Colin.
"All right." He spoke quietly, leaning his forearms on the crystalline tabletop to return their gazes. "Bottom line. Mother's time estimate is based on sixteen-hour shifts for every man and woman after we put at least one automated repair yard back on line. According to the reports from Hector's people, we can probably do that, but I expect to find ourselves pushing closer to twenty-hour shifts by the time we're done. We could increase the odds and decrease the workload by concentrating on a dozen or so units. I'm sure that's going to occur to a lot of
people in the next few weeks. However-" his eyes circled their faces "-we aren't going to do it that way. We need as many of these ships as we can get, and, ladies and gentlemen, I mean to have every single one of them."
There was a sound like a soft gasp, and he smiled grimly.
"God only knows how hard they're working back on Earth, but we're about to make up for our nice vacation on the trip out. Every one of them, people. No exceptions. We will leave this system no later than five months from today, and the entire Imperial Guard Flotilla will go with us when we do."
"But, sir," Chernikov said, "we may ask for too much and lose it all. I do not fear hard work, but we have only a finite supply of personnel. A very finite supply."
"I understand, Vlad, but the decision is not negotiable. We've got highly motivated, highly capable people aboard this ship. I feel certain they'll understand and give of their very best. If not, however, tell them this.