Here is a Treatment of Reichworld

Prologue

The light had travelled one hundred and fifty thousand years to reach his eyes. Four hundred billion stars poured their energies across the vast, empty gulf and reflected as points of light in his pupils, tiny and brilliant; yet through those eyes the same stars filled the heavens before him in a twin spiral of hard, blazing light and life that threw his shadow dark and long behind him.

Axel van Diemen had been to the outer stars of the Larger Magellanic Cloud before; a lifetime ago, when the dream was new and daunting.... when ghosts and memories drove him. But now, generations on, the past was safely distant and the dream much closer and real.

Mankind's dream...

... to cross the gulf to the Milky Way. To go back. To find the original home of man. And he was to lead the way.

He was twenty-six years old and had been so for the last ninety-one years.

The road had been hard and long, and his cold grey eyes saw the beginnings of its history dancing amid the brilliance of the stars that were so far away. At his back, bathing him in their own warm light, were the familiar stars of the 'Cloud; settled and orderly. Finally at peace; testament to his own people's strength.

The woman at his side saw his introspection in the set of his chiselled face and the thrust of his chin, she knew his thoughts, knew where his mind was. She looked much older, yet carried an aura of timeless elegance, and she saw things others could not. Her long grey hair and soft, classical willowy features counterbalanced his white-blonde mane and broad-shouldered stance; her grace tempered his power.

She could feel eagerness for the quest radiate from him; and she could feel the pain so carefully hidden.... the pain of love and loss; of bitterness and despair. Of unfulfilled desire

Fifteen generations of pioneers had culminated in the young man with the hard eyes; generations that had begun when survival in the 'Clouds was the first priority of a race lost and alone. Yet they survived, each generation adding the hard-won skills that the next would need to push back the boundaries... to build new worlds...to face impossible odds against a new race... to fight a war.

The war. A viscious and bloody contest, where the price of victory had almost been beyond payment; she saw the pain of it upon his soul still. Axel van Diemen was a product of his people's history and a symbol of their hope; he had done so much, yet there was so much more to do, so much more to endure. The road to the future had only just begun, the road from the past was as fresh as yesterday...

...and she could see it all from the very beginning; the steps that lead to this moment. They began so very far away and such a long time ago.

They began in hope ...

Peter van Diemen

Beginnings

At the end of the twenty-first century, mother Earth, and the human population she spawned, was not in good shape. The ravages of an indiscriminate population expansion split mankind into quarrelling factions as the gap between rich and poor grew ever wider. Poor nations were as dogs gnawing over the bones that were thrown from the tables of the powerful; resentment was the flavouring. Resource stripping left its pock-mark scars on the surface of the world and the fetid breath of its by-products filled the air. Ozone depletion and acid rain chipped away at the credibility of man's economic base, and even the great oceans felt the changes and responded with krill-death, algae blooms and species decimation.

As the physical world crept towards ruin, mankind sought solutions. Big business and big government combined into powerful blocs that directed their endeavours away from their exhausted world and sought solutions in the neighbouring planets. From Earth-orbital complexes the new corporate agglomerations began to exploit, then control, the wealth that began to pour in from the Moon, from the new Martian bases, and from the asteroid belt. With their chemical-powered ships, they began to plunder the resources of the system.

With the invention of the gravity compression generator, the doorway to the stars was unlocked, and greedy eyes turned to those great horizons; here was an opportunity to create a new society, one unemcumbered with the squalid masses of the old world. Alpha Centauri and Barnards Star were explored and development orbitals set up around the two worlds found there. Terra-forming systems were invented and applied; science staff were replaced with engineers and miners and infrastructure developers. A new technocratic society was in the making and soon new people would be needed to seed these new worlds... lots of people.

Four great colony ships were built. They could carry a hundred thousand people in deep-sleep, plus all the hydroponics, equipment, engineering and science that a budding colony would need to prosper. The third ship, the one built by the new Northern League of European States, the one named Thorn after the rune of good fortune... was ready. Commanded by Peter van Diemen, she was the hope of a generation, the pioneer of a new way of life.

***

Thorn departed Earth orbit amid fanfare and prayers, seeking Alpha Centauri. Jumping through compressions in space-time, the tyranny of distance was broken into a series of no-time events until the star of their destination blazed large and bright on the screens.

But something went wrong. A jump began... and never ended. The stars did not reappear, normal space-time seemed to be suspended. Thorn existed in a never-never land of mathematical uncertainties, isolated... lost...alone.

Captain Peter van Diemen was nothing if not resourceful, and for days his engineering staff sought the reason for their predicament. Carl Bender, able rating, piloted a heavy suit outside Thorn into the gravity shell that protected the vessel. In the strange reality that existed outside, he operated probes that would seek answers. None came. In desperation a colonist was woken from deep sleep, a scientist who eventually discovered the truth... the ship was trapped inside a wormhole. Worse. There was no way to determine where the 'hole would lead, or how long they would be trapped. The only things under control were inside Thorn, so Peter van Diemen sent most of his crew into the sleep tanks and rotated them in two month shifts; sooner or later, he reasoned, they would break free... or they would die.

Days dragged into weeks, weeks crawled into months, and all the while the screens remained blank. The routine of the ship became centred on work in the hydroponics, it kept people active and it held the despair at bay. Amid the gloom, relationships developed; Bender paired with Sheri Morgansen, his section leader, and Peter van Diemen yielded to the obvious attraction of Helena Bormann, his first officer. Normal relationships helped them to cope; they could be human beings for a while, pursuing human dreams... but only for a while. Reality came back in the form of a suicide; Sammy McManaman was ships cook and part-time amateur clairvoyant and he had cast the runes for the voyage, yet their fate belied the reading... salvation was sought at the end of a rope.

***

The star-ship Thorn drifted between realities, an encapsulation of technology and humanity that was helpless before the unknown physics of the wormhole. Inside the ship's gravity envelope one hundred thousand people dreamed their chemical dreams of new lives around the new worlds of Alpha Centauri, while outside the hull matter and anti-matter spun around each other in a vortex that corkscrewed through the boundaries and layers of space-time.

And the months added up to nearly two years.

Then, without warning, it was over. The familiar Jump disorientation swept through the ship bringing everyone to their knees and their blurred eyes saw on the screens that which had been denied them for so long... stars! Stars that literally crammed the heavens, stars that fought with each other for space, stars that formed a bright canopy over the new addition among them. Starfields rich in E's and F's and G's. Yet. Above all stood a sentinel that filled a third of the heavens; a sentinel that blazed with the light of four hundred billion stars dancing across the heavens in a great, double-spiral wheel of life. Four hundred billion points of brilliance exploding their light across the gulf to them, dazzling them, bathing them.

The Milky Way galaxy was calling to them...

Worlds to Build

Life returned to Thorn as people were brought out of deep-sleep, scientists and engineers who could analize their surroundings and determine the options available. And options there were! The Larger Magellanic Cloud contained a bubble of new generation stars that was thick with compatible stars... and the nearest one they named...Breakout. A blue world. With white clouds. Basking in the glory of a benign sun.

Hungry eyes drank in the beauty as everyone of the crew crowded the flight deck. They needed to touch reality again, to see the existence of life outside their metal confinement. They needed their faith acknowledged. For days now they had witnessed the slow arrival of the blue globe as Thorn inched ever closer from the last Jump; now that orbit was established, they could dream again.

Some cried as a new home beckoned.

For the settlers recently woken, Breakout was heaven for the taking; for Captain Peter van Diemen it was not quite right; too much water, too little heavy metals. Before he ceded control to the colony committee, he was determined to explore all options. And within two light years were two stars with big planetary systems that met all the criteria for human habitation, and he wanted to go there. Against the wishes of the scientific community, lead by the redoubtable Dr William Highbury, Peter van Diemen ordered Thorn to leave the orbit around the tempting new world and head into the interior of the 'Cloud.

***

Smolder. The second system visited yielded a young planet wracked with tectonic activity and polluted with the emissions of large volcanoes, it was heavy with metals and potential, yet had a deep and brooding presence.

Again, Thorn departed. Again, it journeyed into the unknown; and if the third world proved to be untenable, a decision would have to be made... there were no more chances, or time, left.

***

They called the new world Canaan.

It was a world in rebirth; a world that had thrown off the frozen cape of glaciation and was slowly reawakening to a new order. A new purpose. Life had exploded behind the retreating ice walls, and now new life came down from the skies. Intelligent life.

Within days, Thorn almost ceased to be a starship, and began to look like the orbital habitat she was designed to eventually be. The great bow doors were removed and converted into workshops; here the sleep-tanks would be recycled into a million different items. The first of the solar power plants moved into position. Auto-process plants were assembled for testing in orbit, then broken down again ready for transport to the surface. Satellites were sent out to fully map the physical, electrical and magnetic properties of Canaan.

As each duty magnified, more and more people were awakened. Dragged from their slumbers to gaze on the face of their future; then sent to work. Thorn's crew became the basis for the orbital settlement, with few requesting duties planetside. They built the sanctuary in orbit around Thorn, expanding the living areas as the tanks were pulled out. Huge water reservoirs were built in the old bow hangars and filled with treated water from dirtside.

Small groups were sent down to predetermined areas; the first priority was to confirm the initial biological compatibility models. Test sites dotted the landscape of the southern continent, where the steppes gave way to coastal vegetation and the seas were within smelling distance. Then mining. It was crucial to start lifting ores out of the ground, shape them, use them. Auto-plants, nuclear fuelled, refined the very source of their power. Others created form and shapes to pre-ordained formulae; the entire technology of the colony must be replicated to ensure its continual technological viability. There could be no retrograde steps. It was too important to allow that.

Energy. Everything took energy. First from the fuel cells, then, as demand increased, from the small fusion mill assembled and set up away from the settlement. Microwaves were beamed down to the remote locations and later, the ground aerials that the terraform teams laid would come online, tapping the planet's magnetic field.

All the while, as humans toiled to build a world, the stars shone down. Visible by day, ablaze by night; brighter than moons, a permanent twilight. Crowning all else, a wheel of fire, the halo of God with four hundred billion prayers to His name. A permanent reminder, filling the whole sky, that there was no way back.

Ever.

Settlement

Thorn the star-ship became Thorn the orbital, brooding over the fledgling colony on the ground below, supplying its offspring with engineering and 'ponics and aerial surveys; shepherding and nursing. And in this way the early months drifted into the early years; families grew, the settlement expanded. New areas were sought... and new discoveries made.

The circles were found under water, along the shoreline; primitive foundations for wooden round-houses. Thousands of years old, they defied the reality of a world where the only sapience had just arrived via star-ship. There was more. Buried beneath one of the circles was a finding, an object that spoke of a people who left no other trace of their passing, an object that was so totally and utterly un-alien as to be almost frightening... a small, golden ziggurat.

***

Captain Peter van Diemen watched from above the development of Canaan. He and Helena formed the nucleus of the orbital colony, yet they had strong links to the ground; without children themselves, they were god-parents to the three children of Carl and Sheri... the seeds of dynasty were stirring in the shadows, waiting to bestow themselves on three unsuspecting souls...

The fish farm was the home of Carl and Sheri; long hours in the sun and wind, water and salt constant companions during the routine days. Here was heaven on earth for the family building a future.

Fate meddled in their affairs when an overloaded freight skimmer smashed into the farm, taking three lives and leaving three orphans; Fate watched as the old Captain came down from the orbital and claimed his god-children.

The van Diemen dynasty had begun.

The Great Houses

Humanity blossomed in the rich star fields of the 'Cloud. In the face of unlimited opportunities, humanity pushed itself as never before in the hope of attaining its special place in the sun. There were no vast outpourings of peoples into the stars, the population base never supported such numbers. Rather, the initial forays into the nearby stars were by small groups seeking out their own domains. Once these small colonies proved their viability, they attracted people from the growing settlement on Canaan and these people brought with them skills and wealth.

The emphasis on technology had paid dividends. Most people were multi-skilled and highly adaptable; there was no lower order of unskilled people, everyone did whatever was necessary.

Canaan sponsored the settlements by providing the star-ships. Supply lines were short and help was, literally, at hand. The initial infrastructures, supplies, technologies and basic industrialisation were also provided, but on a temporary basis; once the viability was established and the new settlement showed signs of being able to stand on its own, those infrastructures were earmarked for the next colony of the next world. It was a period of mutual co-operation where the currency was obligation.

A social mind-set was in the process of being created, one that bonded humans together in the face of overwhelming opportunities. A mind-set that valued each and every human equally, a mind-set that linked them altogether in their determination to ensure the survival of not just themselves, but of the human race. It was almost akin to a kibbutz, everyone supported everyone else, colony supported colony and Canaan supported them all. There were no vested interests. There were no corporations, and there were no wheelers and dealers to poison the system.

These would all come later.

Within fifteen years of the founding of Canaan, the first-visited worlds of Breakout and Smoulder supported active colonies and humanity had reached nearly two millions. Two years later, eleven systems had been visited, nine of them acceptable. By the year 48 of the new era, three of these systems had been colonised and a new attitude started to prevail on the frontiers; free from the constraints of political interference from Canaan, many sought to give free rein to their own ambitions. Powerful men with obligations from others at their call looked at the fused canopy of stars that were so near, and so attainable.... and they planned the beginnings of their own dynasties.

By the year 115 of the new era, humanity had visited and stayed upon fifteen worlds, moons and satellites. Wherever there was an opportunity, humanity had attached itself there, like moss on a rock. The further out from Canaan man went, the more he became sponsored by the now ever-progressive groups that were evolving into powerful family dynasties.

Four such groups became the main players in the game now. Competition between them spurred each one on to further and further exploration and colonisation in the interests of power and wealth.

Human nature will always insure that a certain people will always strive to attain dominance over others. Always. And sometimes, they succeed. For success or evil, for greed or power, they strive. Never for good or benevolence, never for betterment of others, but always for the darker aspects of the human condition. Goodwill and largesse are merely tools to be used when conditions make them necessary.

The formation of the period of history that became known as the Era of the Houses can be traced back to this period of time. There are no exact dates that can be identified when it could be said, "Here began the reign of the great houses," yet their influence was certainly in evidence even though the proclamations of their autocratic designs have not yet been made. But by the year 136ne all four were powerful rivals for the wealth of the stars.

On the fringes of this competition stood those who, by design, luck, misfortune or indifference were destined to play pivotal roles in the affairs of the four, yet remained free of control and obligation to them. These were the older families and businesses that had been formed and built on Canaan and the first few settled stars. Independent players who could afford to stand aside and deal with each major house in turn, free from obligations or coercion. They became wealthy in their own rights, but were viewed with suspicion; corporate mercenaries with no allegiance save that bought and paid for.

As the years progressed, the great houses became defacto kingdoms, with all the trappings of royal wealth and power. Each of the families saw the growing clusters of colonised systems that owed allegiance to them as a personal fiefdom and it did not take long for each House to shed the last vestiges of the principles of individual freedom. Titles came into being, unarguable symbols of authority that left no doubt as to where the power lay and just what level of respect and obedience should be paid to that power.

No matter what the name, or what value of human society they purported to represent, all four societies were controlled by family dynasties. Mostly benevolent in the main, they were nonetheless autocratic in nature. Between them, they accounted for twenty-six worlds and colonies, five joint venture colonies and had five independent worlds and habitats owe them allegiance of one sort or another.

The most powerful of the four was the House of Hanso-Satt with seven established colony worlds.

The Republic of Aachen had five full colonies with two joint venture colony projects with other Houses and three small independent colonies owed allegiance to it.

The Orunn Kingdom boasted six colonies, two joint ventures and one allegiance.

The House deGuillame was the smallest of the four, with four colonies, one joint venture and one allegiance.

At the peak of human expansion, fifty-nine worlds were partly, or wholly, colonised: twenty-two of them by the four main centres of power. There were seventeen fiercely independent planets, but not all seventeen systems belong to these worlds, and there were five newly colonised worlds that were joint venture projects of the major royal houses. Five small settlements owed allegiance to one of the four kingdoms and there were three minor planets or systems that had been granted minor nobility status by one or other of the main four. Finally, there were the three original worlds first colonised.

The Houses grew and dominated for a period of two hundred and twenty three years. In that time they were the economic, cultural and military powerhouses in a bubble of new generation stars that contained eleven billion people, and life, although vigorous and progressive, was, at the same time, safe and prosperous. The rule of law dominated, with variations from world to world; people felt secure and trusted the powers-that-be to provide opportunities for on-going enterprise. There was no physical rivalry between the four Houses, although some disputes over territory and areas of exploration did spill over into conflict; these, however, were short and sharp with no on-going consequences.

Most trouble came from the independent worlds and their inability, or reluctance in some cases, to police the activities of disillusioned elements among them that preyed on the success of others.

The independent worlds were distributed at the edge of the group of new generation stars that bordered the older stars towards the centre of the 'Cloud. Their original founders had fled from the controlled and orderly societies that were coalescing in the centre of this area of new stars, and, leapfrogging each other in their haste they reached in towards the dense centre of the 'Cloud where the new stars mixed with the old. A long, straggling trail of sparesly-civilised worlds pointed like a finger to the heart of the 'Cloud.

While these worlds were civilised, conditions were not easy; low population bases meant a lot of work for everyone and if an advantage could be gained by the expedience of a little violence, or claim jumping, or even, occasionally, piracy, then a blind eye could be turned if the benefit was to the society as a whole. These worlds were strung out and, in some cases, far apart. The short lines of communications enjoyed by the stars of the great Houses were missing out there and the proximity of older stars with non-habitable systems combined to make for difficult policing.

Johannes van Diemen

Opportunity

Johannes van Diemen was not by nature a patient man...

.... but the world of business required patience as one of the building blocks of success and he had learned to master the art; knowing when to wait and how. Putting strategies in place that would take years to fulfill, placing investments, buying at the right time and selling at a better one; showing the calm face of diffidence to the constant scrutiny of eager competition. Patient in the things he could influence and control. Things like his company, Kompass Lines; running providor contracts for his client, the House of Hanso-Satt, distributing their goods into the Independent stars, bringing back Independent bulk goods. Neat, orderly, tidy. Except... his client had a major problem with freebooters raiding from inside the Independent stars, protected by the distance and inaccessibility of those stars. Fate's hand again dealt the cards for the van Diemen line; in return for suppressing freebooter activity, Johannes was offered title to a small world recently discovered, a world sufficiently remote from the orderly stars of the four Houses. The original survey had been accurate in its broad assessment of this little world tucked away on the inner periphery, but ridiculously short on detail. Point eight standard diameter, heavy mass, twenty one hour rotation, three hundred and ten day orbit. Two main seasons, small ice caps. Three large land masses separated by oceans that ran north to south, and lots of island strings to break up the currents. One of the land masses, the most equatorial one, was slightly smaller than the other two. All three had mountain ranges that fed prodigious rivers that in turn filled large lake systems; there was plenty of fresh water. Very little terraforming would be needed. The lack of detail in the survey was the one word.... "Forested," it said. The name given was "Blackwood".

All he had to do was sink his own money into its development and accept the obligations to his sponsor. Prestige, power and a small title lured Johannes, and all he had to do was remove the threat that the Independents posed to trade.

***

Jesse O'Cahill was second officer on Kompass Lines warship Kormorant. She adored two men; her brother Rory, master of Kormorant, and her boss and lover, Johannes van Diemen. Kormorant hunted down the freebooters; tempting them with soft targets of fat, slow freighters; seeking them out amid the false safety of their home worlds. The campaign was ended when Kormorant penetrated the armoured orbital at Tiberius Four and destroyed the heart of freebooter activity.

***

With peace and security in the region and increased turn-over and profits in his business, Johannes could now turn his attention to his new domain. Blackwood needed him and he needed it. Here he could establish his family and entrench his line. Yet, his wife refused to go; so with only his eldest son to help him, Johannes split his assets and set about developing his new home.

Again, the van Diemen line was helped by opportunity and circumstance; the world of Blackwood was named for a very good reason...

... the tree was unlike any tree ever seen before. Poets may have dreamed of it, but none could have imagined it. Its size alone delineated the smallness of man, forcing him to re-evaluate his perceptions of majesty and awe. The tree soared upwards for over one hundred metres, reaching into the sky as if that element was a living thing; the heavens impaled on its branches, the world grasped in its roots, each fixed in their place for all time. Communion between worlds. A trunk thicker than the outstretched arms of six men seemed to erupt out of the pungent soil and taper forever upwards, smooth and serene, until meeting the first chevroned branches, eighty metres from the ground. A bark like black walnut skin clad the trunk and the high foliage flickered in the breeze, silver underneath, dark, dark green on top.

This new world of his, this offered barony, had huge tracts of land on all three continents cloaked in a permanent forest of such giants.

There were billions of them. And they were important. Only lasers could cut them and the revealed iron-hard wood glistened with a subtle iridescence akin to fire opal.

Wines followed. Vast areas planted in grapes that produced wines that were matured in vats made of the blackwood... and what wines they were. The wood accelerated maturity and imparted its iridescence to the wine; wine from Blackwood shimmered in the glass and found an eager market throughout the human stars.

Johannes was safe, his family was now secure; the future beckoned. His great ranch-house that he built out of the blackwood stood sentinel over all, enduring symbol of his families position and power; he called it Darkhall and named the estates and the continent after it.

Axel van Diemen

Darkhall

Axel van Diemen was born of the world of wood and wines. He grew up with the smell of rain and soil, bent his back to the tasks of the land, and learned the ways of politics and diplomacy; ways that he would need to understand and use as he grew into his position. He was the great-grandson of Johannes, and he would one day inherit the very world he lived on. But young men need more than the soft folds of home; they need education... experience...

Canaan. It was in his blood.

A second home, where the ambience and the smells and the sights and sounds and noise and clamour were just as natural to him as their lesser counterparts back home. Where the familiarity of the place made things so much easier for him, to live in, to study in; to keep his mind on the task of learning without the pressures of new environments and foreign mores to distract him.

There was even an extended family of far-distant cousins from his great-grandfather's time, the links between them preserved across the generations in the name and the businesses they shared; people who welcomed him into their homes and hearts, strengthening the bonds of family.

Axel van Diemen, at twenty years of age and the heir to the title of Darkhall had been doing for two years what students since the dawn of time had always done.... enjoying himself. These were the halcyon days of knowledge and learning followed by wine-deep, meaningful nights in dark, smokey bars engaged in esoteric conversations with characters of equally doubtful sobriety and intelligence.

They made a welcome change from the days of duty, his obligation to the structured socialisation of the titled and wealthy with its veneers and ambiguities; where corporate leaders and matrons of influence sought to gain advantage with him in pursuit of a favourable match for their daughter; or a business deal with Darkhall or both. And why not? From their point of view he had the right breeding and business pedigree, with a minor title to inherit.

The various daughters they wheeled out saw something entirely different. They saw a tall, easy-going young man, one hundred and ninety centimetres of lean build, with slim hips and broad shoulders, with tanned, almost hairless skin and long yellow hair pulled back and falling to his shoulders. They saw a young man, one with a hunter's gait, moving with the minimum of effort for maximum purpose and effect, quiet and stalking; a hunter's face, lean, with his wide, blue-grey eyes set below a strong forehead, a large nose, saved from dominating his face by being fine and straight. His mouth was full and generous over strong white teeth; his chin square and proud, counterbalancing his nose. His smile slightly off-centre to the left. They saw a catch.

Somewhere in-between was the real world, but Axel felt that he could wait awhile before he found it. Or it found him.

It found him. Her name was Gaye-Anne and she studied uni-field maths. Here was the spirit he could share with, be with, grow with; here was a woman he could fall into love with and plan the future with. He did all those things, and the future looked perfect for Axel van Diemen. He was unaware that events on the periphery of the human stars were about to change everything...

Gaeia

The survey ship Mnemosyne orbited a world of cloud. A small, lonely world circling an old, enfeebled sun. No moons, no asteroid belts, no other planets. Just one world of unbroken white that glared up at them, and for hours the crew of Mnemosyne had glared right back.... in frustration. Scans and probes failed to register anything below the all-enveloping white; skimmers sent into the cloud operated normally, but also failed to register any detail of the surface.

And that night, as the two men and two women that made up Mnemosyne's crew tried to sleep, dreams came to them; dreams that seemed to test and probe, dreams that drove them from sleep. The explanation was on their screens, as words tumbled from the computer and formed the first contact between man and another intelligence.

For days the crew fed data through the machines, read books to it and talked to it; and slowly the intelligence that had found them grew to understand them. More. The entity behind the white clouds now knew enough about humans to contact them directly through one of the four, speaking through her... telling of a time of struggle about to descend on the warm, safe stars of the 'Cloud.

Far into the interior of the 'Cloud, among the older order of stars, an old race was preparing to leave their depleted system and flood into the sparsely populated stars of man. This race was warm-blooded, prolific and aggressive. Millennia past they had once tried to establish themselves in those same stars and in their xenophobia attempted to destroy the entity of the white planet; an entity the humans came to see as Gaeia-like. The Gaeia-entity flooded the minds of the invaders with visions of panic and horror, driving them back into the inner stars. Now the hordes were back, with seed ships... and massive generator ships that could suppress the mental powers of the Gaeia-world and eventually destroy it. The stars this race sought were now inhabited by man. Visions of the enigmatic circles on Canaan were in every mind.

***

The House deGuillame, in their push for new assets, had commissioned the survey by Mnemosyne, and any findings were considered to be their property. The reported contact with what purported to be an alien intelligence was to be restricted to the highest levels of the government until the Family determined how best to exploit the situation and the urgent requests for disclosure from Mnemosyne's crew fell on deaf ears. Certainly, the diagnosis of a second alien group was dismissed as fantasy, a mis-understanding of events around the white world; to discover one alien group, so the rationale went, would be an amazing coincidence, two would be unbelievable. And unlikely.

But word of the discovery leaked out. It reached Darkhall, where Axel was leaving to deliver equipment for a joint-venture contract to terra-form the new colony world of Sagitar. As second officer aboard the old Kormorant, he was also learning the discipline of military ways... just in case.

Aggressive, prolific...

Far in, towards the heart of the 'Cloud, the coloured stars of the old order of things are thick and bright and the habitable worlds are hard to find.

Along the finger of settled worlds that points into that heart of the inner stars, there, and there alone are the hard frontier worlds of man. Worlds where the romance of the frontier is broken by the shores of reality, ground out of a man's soul like wheat beneath a millstone.

Worlds where eyes lifted to the heavens saw no friendly star, no neighbour, but instead rested on the isolating wall of light from old order stars, unfriendly and ever-present.

Worlds where technology dribbled in and making-do was a way of life.

Cymbellene was such a world, and into its skies moved the seed-ships of an unknown and unsuspected foe. From within the ships, the Dens and Clans of a highly organised and disciplined society looked on their new home with hungry eyes.

Shapook'a'Coor was one who looked on. Tall, a symbol of youth and vitality, his pelt was a luxurious dark grey; thick, short hair growing from the tip of his canine-like muzzle to the start of his tail.

Intelligent eyes, wide set, peered out of a large, well-rounded skull and powerful shoulder muscles helped to keep his head erect and provide the drive behind long, sinewed arms. Ears long and flat curved along the side of his head, leathery protrusions from the svelte fur. A straight spine diminished into a bony tail that barely reached the ground and his legs were short for the torso, powerful limbs that ended in splayed feet that carried as a legacy of his carnivore heritage three heavily horned claws. As if in contrast, his hands were delicate, three long fine fingers and an opposable thumb; an artisan's hands.

He was dressed in a cape of ancestor skin that was slung around his thick neck and held with a golden pin. Leggings covered his legs, open to the front to expose his genitalia as a sign of his position and virility. Tokens and beads of office hung from his neck, but the final proof of his standing, his power and honour, was slung at his back under the cape. The two-handed big knife of his ancestors; the knife of the long edge....

.... the sa'ad knife.

The quest of long ages, the struggle of honoured ancestors, was about to be completed in triumph.

***

Human resistance was inadequate and futile, brushed aside like so much chaff as the great ships broke into their tribal parts and descended to the ground. Small groups of scared humans watched in horror as the hordes of small, dog-like creatures poured from the shells; an unstoppable tide protected by a fierce warrior class.

Despair and disbelief were in the holo's that were sent up to the last freighter in orbit, with instructions to take the word to the inner stars. Ariadne fled; escaping through a barrage of cannon fire, the freighter sought the inner Independent worlds, only to find the same story repeated time and time again.

Eventually a motley convoy of the desperate and dispossessed under the command of the gunboat Drifter made it into the inner stars of the Houses, and told their tale, and the word spread. From world to world, by whatever ships were available to carry that word.

The Fall

The bureaucratic machinery of the four main Houses lumbered into motion and a meeting was called. All the Houses, the worlds that owed allegiance to them and all the non-aligned worlds were brought together to devise a plan that would show a united human response to any threat. The Accord of Canopy was to reassure humanity of the political and military resolve to repel this menace. Behind the scenes another picture emerged. Here the heads of the four Houses gathered in secret to protect their own interests at the expense of the Independent stars and any other non-aligned group. They saw capital in the acquisition of those same stars once they were reclaimed. Competent officers were over-ridden and ignored, House interests came before anything else.

Axel's father, Raphael, was disturbed at the behaviour of the Houses. He recalled his son from Canaan and sent him to recover their people from the terra-forming on Sagitar, just in case the enemy got that far into the human stars.

Conspirators

Military successes came few and far between. A Byzantine chain of command and vested interests took their toll; good captains and generals were refused the right to engage the enemy less they provoke them into attacking the very inner stars of the Houses. Money was short and the financial dealings of the Houses was suspect under the strain of the war.

Four generals came together, officers who had served their Houses well yet had been humiliated at the Accord of Canopy. They sought a way to bring honour and pride back into the forces. They had private backing from industry and business, and the ear of a political radical. Gunter Fleischmann had a vision and a power of belief to carry that vision; he saw a greater picture than that espoused by the Houses. He saw that their day was done and a new system was needed, one designed for the people and the times that lay ahead.

A new military was also needed, and the development of it was placed in the hands of a man who proven time and again his ability, yet had been continually overlooked for higher office. General Otto Lomm was a giant, nearly two metres tall with broad shoulders and bull neck. Iron grey hair cropped short, bleak grey eyes cold as glass. A face weathered and lined from years outdoors; a real soldier. There were no medal ribbons on his chest, no symbolic sidearms, no trappings of rank. There was only the name tag on his chest - Otto Lomm - and the three stars on each epaulette.

Lomm gained approval to harry the dog supply routes, and the place he picked to operate from was a small, out of the way planet undergoing the middle stages of terra-forming... Sagitar. There he found the enemy already ensconced, driving the humans away from the areas they controlled, attacking anything that broadcast power. The dogs had a huge battle-craft in orbit and used it to keep Lomm's forces at bay. But here was an opportunity for Lomm to test his will and resolve, and with two destroyers and a gunboat he crippled the thousand-metre long enemy ship and gained space for his evacuation of a large part of the on-ground humans.

Axel van Diemen arrived at Sagitar one week after Lomm's partial victory, and immediately fell foul of the general's staff, in particular Lt Peter Anders. They demanded he place Kormorant and his two freighters under military law. Axel refused.

The Darkhall contingent on the surface was outside Lomm's reach, the dogs effectively covered them so they were unable to be evacuated.

Now Axel began to demonstrate the abilities that had been growing with him over the years. In a classic exercise in confrontation and conciliation he gained Lomm's backing to skim in under cover of darkness with two soldiers and lead the Darkhall people out by foot. And in the tiny construction town of Port August, he assembled over four hundred men, women and children for a four days march through enemy territory.

***

Shapok'a'Coor was a leader in the dog group that sought to track down and destroy those who had defiled their space. Through the rain and dark they pursued the fleeing humans, following their tracks and scents. Axel swept the rear of the desperate convoy, riding high in the cockpit of a huge mono-wheel, a driver beside him, a machine-pistol in his hands. With speed and intuition he fought a rearguard that trapped small dog groups in the open veldt... and destroyed them.

After three days, and at the point of rescue, Shapook'a'Coor led his remaining few warriors around the humans in the dead of night, and fell upon them as dawn broke. Lt. Erhardt Kanne held the convoy together and Axel swept the enemy remnants from the valley floor; Axel took the sa'ad knife of the last dog to die... Shapook'a'Coor.

The saga at Sagitar became know as Axel's Run and entered the annals alongside Lomm's successful retreat and evacuation. Axel van Diemen was twenty-three years old and was the first man to fight and beat the dog enemy on the ground.

Sagitar was abandoned.

New Ways

On New Earth, capital world of the House deGuillame, the best minds of a generation congregated; new weapons and technologies were needed to beat this horde that had descended upon them. New ideas to give hope. Behind the scenes the four generals were already plotting with Gunter Fleischmann. The structure of a new political system was ready, and he would deliver it to their backers and financiers and supporters, people and groups that felt that the days of the Houses had come to an end.

Central to the success of Fleischmann's group was a breakthrough in unified field technology. The manipulation of the hyperbolic tangent at the lapse point of the electron would allow ships to translate instantaneously between harmonically balanced points of space-time; it would also allow instantaneous communications. This was the link the plotters required to effectively drive their message to the people.

Gunter Fleischmann had devised a movement that united the historical and psychological characteristics of the race and woven into it the mystical histories of the Celts and Teutons. He needed symbolism and paranoia to force the people to accept his concept of the reichprinciple and he needed to weld them into a strong, single movement with a strong, unified military. Otto Lomm was recreating a war-machine based on the legion model and was actively recruiting disenfranchised officers away from the House militias; thousands flocked to his banner.

***

Pressure from the outer hordes forced construction to begin on a new type of star-ship. The new field technology was developed to build sixty very special ships that were to hold the line around the white Gaeia-world; the great generator ships of the enemy were already on route there, stopping along the way to help secure the new worlds they had taken from man.

The sixty ships were different from anything that had ever been built before. Stun-fighters they were called, and they carried a single pilot. Their processing power was a human brain.

***

The great Houses and the non-aligned worlds came to the table at Canaan. Only twenty-nine of sixty worlds were free of the dog hordes... and time pressed. Now the Houses had to face the reality of ceding power and control to a dominant reich, or go their own way against the enemy. Two Houses held out, certain that they could bring an end to this embryo movement that had swept all before it; their militia also sought to delay the process of military unification in the hope of gaining a greater advantage in this new system of equal worlds.

Fleischmann and Lomm knew the risks and the dangers. It was all or nothing and action was needed to sway the few who hovered around the edges. Disunity, or worse, civil war, would bring undone everything and leave the stars open to the enemy. In a day of ruthless efficiency, Lomm's inner cadre assassinated the political and military advisers of the two Houses; in the ensuing vacuum, candidates favourable to the reich stepped forward and the old ways disappeared.

The new instantaneous communications allowed for greater access to the masses and for the first time they saw events in real time; for the first time they could voice their opinions. And thanks to the manipulations and efforts of a media magnate with a financial stake in the new order, the opinions expressed by the people were favourable and vocal.

Now there was unity; now there was strength.

Stun-fighter

Axel van Diemen never liked Otto Lomm, while Lomm had a grudging respect for the son of the baron of Darkhall. Lomm recognised Axel's abilities on Sagitar; he wanted him for the new stun-fighters. Axel's fiance, Gaye, had to coax him into accepting; she understood that there couldn't be a future for the family they wanted and that life could never be normal until humanity was safe and secure. Sacrifices were called for, their wedding was delayed.

One hundred and twenty of the best combat pilots were chosen to try for the sixty stun-fighters. Axel made it through he cut. He was one of a small group of individuals that kept to themselves, the others formed a clique around two men; Kaspar Aurilian was cousin to the head of the House deGuillame, and consumed with bitterness at his fallen state now that the Houses were all-but defunct. Peter Anders was aide to General Otto Lomm and had formed in instant dislike towards Axel. Together the two men perpetuated their hostility to Axel, encouraged by their group of hangers-on. The tension remained manageable until the day the first trial with the stun-fighters were to commence.

All pilots had to bond with their ships; the human brain that controlled all aspects of the new weapons and drive systems required a sympathetic sub-neural linking with the human pilot. The interface was crucial for the combat they would face. But there was a problem with Axel's ship. Although deprogrammed of all human emotion, his ship had managed to withhold a tiny part of herself... her name was Anya and she was twelve years old. Her body had died during a dog attack and her brain had been rescued, now it found a sympathetic mind in her new pilot. She liked him.

To Axel she showed the true capabilities of the stun-fighters by interfacing with his mind at a level higher that design parameters called for; here he could almost feel the field laid out before him. It wasn't just what he saw that amazed him, it was what he felt! His mind seemed to feel the other ships, smell the hot earth outside the ship, see the fields around the other ships.... he could even touch the magnetic field of Canaan! It was staggering. It was totally different to training. Canaan was a plaything to him, its magnetic field a sea of currents that he could swim in, slipping in and out of altered space-time in the blink of an eye, to appear as a blinding ball of light moving at impossible speeds and angles in the real world. The old laws of the universe had been parted and thrown aside; everywhere was just somewhere else that could be reached by simply matching the harmonics of its space-time reality with the drive's field.

Axel's success stunned the generals. Once they had accepted the validity of his symbiosis they initiated a retraining for all pilots. This caused anger among the Aurilian/Anders group and at a time of their choosing, Kaspar Aurilian confronted the man who seemed to torment him by his very ability. He wanted his pride and honour restored, he wanted satisfaction for all the perceived insults he felt he had suffered at Axel's hands; he wanted a duel. All family members of the Houses studied fencing, it was expected. Now he wanted to teach a lesson with the one symbol that hadn't been taken from him. Axel fought him, but he used the big knife that he had taken from his enemy on Sagitar... the sa'ad knife. This final insult was too much for Aurelian, and in a moment of reckless disregard he dropped his guard... long enough for Axel to use the katana-like weapon in close. Aurelian's head was sliced from his body.

From that day on a feud existed between Darkhall and the House deGuillame.

Battle

General Otto Lomm had set his defence around the Gaeia-world. From afar he watched the convergence of five great generator ships and their cordons of battle-craft.

The enemy slowly closed in, certain of their power and cause. Stars were a crystal field on the bridge screens of the Ship-of-Clan and polarisers worked overtime to cut the glare. The arc of a white-shrouded planet was visible in one corner, yet in all that beauty there was not one feature that could be identified as being any particular place; chaos ruled. Other things than eyes were required to navigate the sea of stars and specialised Techs were on hand to interpret them. Priests joined the order of things, the better to understand the esoteric deliberations of the Techs and convert them into the simpler language of the brethren; to help the Chiefs of Rank better instruct their Commanders of Duty.

Engines of calculation reconciled the stars with the ancient maps and placed the sequence of the Cause into a three-dimensional matrix that could be seen and understood. And in a rare moment of quietude, Iffa Tellen'a'Koos, Priest of the Path, Presider over the Totem, looked out onto the field of light and wondered at the greatness of the ancestors. By what divine inspiration had they sought the stars....

Five colossal gen-ships, each one twelve thousand metres long, poured the modulated radiation from trapped singularities into the system of the Gaeia-world, radiation that suppressed that world's entity and brought crippling pain. Protecting the gen-ships was a fleet of battle-craft, and each battle-craft carried squadrons of single-fighters. As they spread out towards their ancient enemy, all that stood in their way were the sixty human craft; the stun-fighters looked small and vulnerable against such might.

Axel was chosen to lead one of two groups of five that swept the fighter cordons away and expose the flanks of the gen-ships. When the main attack groups poured through... they met disaster! Three were lost in a blinding wall of energy, and the human defence of the Gaeia-world was in disarray. Something special was needed, and Axel knew what it was; he could drop into the nether-world of hyper-space and approach the enemy from there, mapping the harmonic fields as he went. There, the holos were fixed with real-time scenarios and all communications ceased; hyper-space was a wasteland. Only the harmonic interpretations of gravity and mass formed images for Axel's ship to navigate by. Images of dense curves in black clouds of other-ness filtered through to Axel as he waited for his ship to slide close to the gen-ship, feeling her way metre by metre through the folds of hyper-space towards the place where the altered realities of the bulk of the target depressed the folds of space-time... and could be read. Like thieves in the night, they mapped each anomaly and current, marking an harmonic template with the shape of the giant ship's gravity well.

His weapons holo lit up with the three-dimensional imaging of the dog ship; at six points the dot that represented his ship moved and each time it did so a tongue of unified force speared out through hyper-space and into the unsuspecting interior. At the tip of the tongue was a small glowing ball of energy, condensed into an almost solid form by the unified field; when the field was collapsed and withdrawn, the energy ball would be stranded in real space-time and convert to its original state.... a miniature sun in the heart of the enemy.

It worked. With stunning success. The gen-ships broke up under the all-consuming power of their inner fires, fires that broke the controls on the generators themselves. The radiation was now un-modulated. Freed from the artificial constraints, it could revert to its natural form.... violent, virulent, aggressive. Now that it was directed away from its false destiny, the radiation could reach out into the unfettered spaces and be at one with the universe.....

..... it was purely a quirk of nature that the most violent reaction to its passing, as it changed from its captive state to its natural one, was in the flesh of oxygen-based lifeforms.

Corrupted flesh fell from the living bones of friend and foe alike. The dog fleet drifted away from its course carrying the uncounted rotting dead of its creators. The humans died, too, pilot and ship alike...

... Axel felt the voice in his mind as pain wracked his body. As his flesh began to break down the voice was calling him... calling him to it... calling him down. Down to the white world.

Wherever human eyes turned they saw the steel tombs of the recent dead, drifting dark and silent through the hard vacuum above the white world. Great battle-craft and tiny single-ships littered the orbit, most were invisible against the starfield, others were black specks crossing the pristine white of the planet. Scattered amongst them were pieces of metal torn from hulls, irregular shapes that tumbled and turned like blown confetti.

There was a black scar upon the white orb as the remnants of a gen-ship tore through the upper atmosphere, oxygen adding to the nuclear fires, trailing a long finger of thick black smoke through the billowing whiteness as it headed for final obliteration far below.

But beyond the carnage and wreckage, scattered in a canopy above the world they fought over, forty-four beacons called out their lonely signals.... automatics performing the one function they were designed for.

The human victory was complete. Otto Lomm was feted and lionised, a hero of the people. Faith in the new order of things was confirmed; there could be no turning back to the old ways. The lost worlds could now be reclaimed. The reich was saved, it could now grow and prosper. All was in order. The problem of thirteen missing stun-fighters and their pilots was a minor one, they were casualties of war.

Persona

Axel woke to a world he had never seen before. A world of light and forest. Rising naked from a grassy bower he was unkempt and weak, confused and hungry. Slowly, pieces filtered back into his mind.... the reasons for being here.... where? His shoulder! The pain! Axel looked down at his left shoulder and saw the mark. The black mark. A thin black streak ran from above his left nipple up to his shoulder and down his back. He couldn't see how far down his back the mark went. Tentatively he brought his fingers up and touched it; no different, only a slight numbness.

His ship was there, hovering above a meadow, across a stream; waiting for him with food and clothes. Anya had been unaffected by radiation. Little by little the pieces came together. Thirteen ships and pilots had made it down to the surface... a surface that no other eyes had ever seen. Yet he saw the sun and the stars; there were no white clouds above his head.

Three weeks had gone by; he needed to let the humans know they were safe, needed to let his wife know he was still alive. Yet there was a strange reluctance from all the ships to get a message out... something was stopping them... something had asked them not to. In anger he wandered down to the stream. In the shallows little shapes darted from place to place, camouflaged by the water's prismatic effect and to Axel's eye they looked like fish. He removed his boots and socks and threw them on the bank and waded out into the stream, pulling his pants legs up as he went. Immediately the little shapes congregated around him, feeding on whatever his feet churned up from the bottom, and when he stood very still he could discern their shapes. They were fish. He peered into the water again, bending low. Yep, they were fish.

They are indeed fish.

The voice popped into his head and instinctively he adopted a stance, acutely aware he was seriously disadvantaged in an emergency. Or a fight. But there was no-one there; his head swivelled backwards and forwards, upstream and downstream, across the stream and behind him on the bank. No one was there. Nothing at all except....

.... a shadow by the water's edge, like a sheet of glass that's not optically pure

.... faint ripples in the water, radiating not away but towards!

.... movement in the grass and wind

.... a settling of the pebbles under the shadow

.... a mist-like wraith above the water that twisted as it changed

.... sucking up from the water

.... then steadied and shimmered and solidified.

And a woman stood before him!

There were no surprises left for Axel, after the events of the last few weeks he was ready for anything. He just watched her and saw an older woman, probably in her late fifties he guessed, tall and amazingly well preserved with long grey hair streaming down her back and with the brightest blue eyes. She was wearing a loose, white toga-like garment that was gathered loosely and draped over her shoulder and the word Greek popped into Axel's mind. No shoes, no jewellery, no make-up. But her face was strong, high-cheeked and haughty with a nose generous and roman. There were smile lines down the sides of a mouth that was wide and thin without appearing mean.

Her name was Maja. She was a persona created by the Gaeia-world to interface with humans; or rather, she was one of several who would interface with the thirteen pilots. No other human would even guess at their existence. And she had a warning for Axel; the dog seed-ships still sought out the worlds of man and generator ships still orbited the dog home world; the war was not finished. Maja then revealed the whole truth to Axel... a truth that would forever alienate him, his companions and the ships from every other human. To save their lives, the entity had halted their aging processes. It altered the way parts of their bodies worked and stimulated latent areas of the brain that controlled regeneration. Axel's body cells would reproduce exactly as they were at that moment.... but they would not change in any way because the aging process has been locked out of his genes; they had been altered to remove the triggers that promoted cellular decay. Worse. The gene-drift was significant... he would not be able to have children.

The news stunned Axel. He could only think of Gaye... of her lost opportunity... of the cruelty of the war...

Axel van Diemen became bitter and angry. His companions shared the same feelings; freaks... different... what would society do to them once they were returned to their families? Once separated and alone, each would be vulnerable, especially the ships. In that frame of mind they were easy prey to the thoughts of the Gaeia-world as spoken through the lips of the personas; if the enemy could be finally destroyed on his home world, the war would truly be over and Axel and his friends would be heroes, not pariahs. The world was known to the entity, its position in time and space was understood; all that Axel and the others had to do...

Totem

Twelve stun-fighters came together in a little group, holding their positions in sub-space and absorbing the information that came flooding in from their sensors. Here was a heavy, old sun with six planets and one enormous asteroid belt. The gravity wells and sub-space deformations painted a clear picture of the system, but what they couldn't see was the physical world, the real space-time world of the enemy. For that they would have to drop into real space-time and that was when they would be most vulnerable; all they could do was choose an area away from the power and drive signatures that showed up at the far limits of their detectors.

So far so good.

The uni-fields re-aligned with the real world and a wide plain came into view, stretching out to the horizon in a dull carpet of greys and browns that disappeared into a purple haze. A bloody sun struggled to throw light through the thick haze of a polluted atmosphere, and off in the near distance a thin column of smoke climbed skyward from a dark shape on the surface; in the far distance several more faint columns could be seen. High above them a ring of hydroponic stations orbited the planet, vast platforms of domed agriculture each linked together by a network of processing plants, repair stations, transport points and storage. The engineering was on an heroic scale, built to last forever; the entire ring was detailed by the glow of the light receptors built into the outer edges of the platforms.

Patterns in the colours of the land suggested order; lines and arcs and regular shapes not found in nature and as one the twelve black stun-fighters dropped out of the sky and fell towards the ground. Now the patterns began to make sense as they resolved into the signs of civilisation; flat areas of low buildings, some in round groupings, others in curved shapes. In the centre of each group a larger, round building stood out. Axel had seen them before, on Sagitar. They were all the same washed-out shade of brown. Between the separate groups roads meandered and olive-grey vegetation changed the patterns again in orderly ranks of horticulture. Everything appeared dry and dusty.

They headed towards the nearest column of smoke, travelling five hundred metres above the surface, their uni-fields dull silver globes as they translated the magnetic fields of the dog world in almost-real-time; they needed to see what was below them.

As they progressed towards the column, the nature of the buildings changed. They began to crowd together in bigger groups around bigger roundhouses. Now they changed again, and huge compounded structures appeared, five story windowless buildings that looked like ancient fortresses. The roads, too, changed. They became wider and straightened up, deliberately pointing towards the big, black structure with the smoke towering above it. The vegetation began to disappear, buildings crowding together and changing to a taller style.

Signs of industry were seen. Heat sinks and power generators sprang up and the workplaces that fed from them sent a haze of particles high into the air to add to the pollution already there. Now the big structure came into focus and the column of smoke was seen for what it was.... a million votive offerings burnt in a million urns around the perimeter of an enormous black pyramid. Not pyramid, Axel, corrected himself; ziggurat. He could make out the pathways that scaled its height and he knew he had seen this before.

The twelve ships climbed above the structure and the pattern of habitation they had just crossed was repeated on all sides; everything radiated out from the ziggurat. And far beyond, towards the horizon, the system was repeated for the next ziggurat. Axel sat back, stunned at the scale of the civilisation as it disappeared into the ruddy haze in every direction he cared to look.

There was nothing of a high order that Axel could recognise; nothing that fitted into his world view. Only the ziggurats and the dog civilisation radiating out from them. This, surely, was the centre of their world; the original model for the golden artefact discovered so long ago on Canaan.

A long moment developed where he and his companions took in the reality and a little understanding of the nature of the beast. Here was the heart of all things that drove their enemy.

And here was the solution to the enmity of the dogs; here was the final solution.

Energy that had been squeezed into an impossibly small volume of space-time was freed of all constraints deep in the heart of the ancestral home of the Totem. Great blocks of rare basalt that had lain undisturbed for thousands of years felt the intrusion of new things.... powerful things.... punishing things.

The fires of suns awakened in the heart of the stone mountain and the works of unforgotten generations disappeared in a holocaust of incandescent lava. Concussions felled the schools and seminaries in the ziggurat compound and rivers of molten rock flowed upon the columns of faithful that packed the Path, and those farther away that shuffled forwards looked up with fear in their eyes at the destruction and horror sweeping down on them.

Axel saw the gouts of bright light break through the surface of the ziggurat, but he didn't see the tens of thousands of the faithful that filled the roads leading to their place of honour; he was too far away.

***

Ninety-six ziggurats were found. The battle-holo was dotted with glowing points that were evenly distributed in a band around what Axel thought might be the temperate zone of the planet and most of that band was flat. There were very few mountains on the dog world.

The moment the map was complete the battle computers separated it into six zones and in pairs the stun-fighters separated to begin the systematic destruction of the symbols of dog society, symbols that Axel and the others didn't understand or comprehend; symbols that had a deeper meaning than any human could imagine at that point.

Had he any idea of what he was destroying, Axel would have reconsidered; but there was too much pain and destruction to repay for calm appraisal. End it here, the pulse in his heart said; end it now.

Each ziggurat was different in size and the complexes on the summits varied from a short platform on the smaller ziggurats to entire temple-like structures on the two biggest ones. All were black, yet each was decorated with markings along the sides and pathways; whether they were painted or built in to the stone Axel couldn't tell, but each one was different.

And each one blew apart just like the first one did, the outer casing blocks flying away to impact among the buildings that sprawled out from the target, the inner ones slumping into liquid form, spraying away in fountains of lava and falling like burning rain, tendrils of black smoke marking the path of each droplet.

The pall of smoke from the last ziggurat fell behind and blended in to the dwindling landscape as Axel climbed away from the dog world to the rendezvous for the attack on the last remaining gen-ship.

***

The giant ship was moving, the deep pool of gravity distortion from the engines showed up in the holo as an expanding bubble at the stern; like the abdomen of an obscenely large insect. Axel checked the attack pattern for the tenth time, memories of the last assault flitting through his mind and the screaming image of Hans-Claude vomiting his way to death wouldn't go away. Suppose it happens to us.... But it shouldn't. Not this way. One concerted assault with every ship unloading at once and then straight into hyper-space and the harmonic stepping-stones that would take them home. They would be safely out of range before the shielding around the singularity broke down, long gone by the time the immediate s-t continuum was flooded with the deadly radiation.

They hoped.

The real universe disappeared as Anya dropped into the mathematical realm of the hyperbolic tangent and the dog gen-ship became a three-dimensional outline in the holo, the gravity-well hugging the outline. This was familiar territory now and Axel could only watch as the pre-programmed attack unfolded....

... soon, high in orbit around a world of broken dreams, the last great ship of conquest and vengeance tore apart. Engines of mighty power still tried to push it along the course set by dead hands, but the damage was horrendous, and as sections tore away and systems broke down the leviathan drifted.... into the ring of hydroponics.

With great slowness, the gen-ship slid its twelve thousand metre length along the ring, crushing the fragile structure for hundreds of kilometres, destroying the work of centuries. Those not killed by vacuum or impact died in rotting heaps as the deformed radiation swept through the ring. And as the assassins slipped away, the ship turned on its creators in a death throe of savage indiscrimination as it fell to the planet below. The dying generators shed the last of their corruption across great tracts of the world where innocents and survivors were trying to comprehend their ruin; and the pain of corrupting flesh washed over all beneath the path of the giant.

For many days after, above the huddled masses of misery and despair, the sky burned with the re-entry of their hopes, and famine and spiritual death became the fates of uncountable billions.

Reality check

Amid the euphoria of victory, the voice of reason spoke up. What would happen to the ships ? The military would certainly want them back, yet they were living entities in their own right; what would they do with a sentient star-ships that would live forever? It hit Axel hard then. He'd never thought that there would be a parting between them; it just hadn't entered his head. No. He didn't want that to happen. They needed to plan... to protect themselves... to stick together.

The plan went wrong when Axel insisted a remote shuttle be sent down to the Gaeia-world to pick them up. That had been the design they had all agreed upon; leave the ships down on the white world until their future could be guaranteed, then get picked up; say nothing about the regeneration techniques supposedly used on them; say nothing about the dog world. Not yet. Not until they found out the lay of the land, how they would be treated, how people would react to them. There were so many unknowns, so many variables. They had to tread warily.

But they were greeted with med-teams and quarantine and questions, they were isolated from one another. No amount of insistence could elicit information about their companions. They became worried. Questions, over and over. Blood tests, gene sampling. Axel's fears of discovery were fast becoming fact.

Twelve ex-heroes were unceremoniously escorted aboard a destroyer for the journey back to the inner stars, back to the free stars of the new reich. Without their ships they were vulnerable and exposed. They were also very worried.

There was a court... of sorts. Returned to the world of Canaan, they faced the disapproval of Otto Lomm and the architect of the reich, Gunter Fleischmann. The charge was genocide. Downloads from one of the stun-fighters had detailed the extent of the devastation on the dog world. Military scouting missions to occupied worlds had shown mass suicide among their enemies, fatal relief from the dishonour of losing their ancestral world. If the reactionary elements that still opposed the reich got hold of the material they could upset the stability of things; it could be enough to strengthen the hands of the waning Houses. The reactionaries were known and were watched. The greatest weapon against them would be the victory over the dogs and the absolute certainty of that victory. If the destruction on the dog world eliminated their capacity to continue the war, then man would have his victory. Reclaiming the lost worlds would then become the focus and internal enemies would be deprived of sufficient grounds for dissent.

The Gaeia-world had not finished with Axel and his companions. A mind-block prohibited each and every one from recalling any details of the white world. The mind blocks were untraceable. Whatever the Gaeia-entity had done was undetectable; every known test to the brain showed nothing out of place. Not even the stress of remembering showed up in the brainwaves of the twelve pilots. That meant they had to be watched. Forever, if necessary. The ships were a different matter. Lomm didn't want twelve murderous vessels like that at a loose end, but there was no way of determining their fate. All submissions to the Gaeia-world had gone un-answered so the assumption could be made that while the ships were safely out of reach on the white world they represented no danger. Still, it wouldn't hurt to boost the orbital with specialised sub- and hyper- detection equipment; just to be on the safe side.

The dog world was different. Here the dilemma was one of how to exploit it the most. Everything about the operation smacked of risk taking and daring, bravery and determination. These were the things that a war-weary populace desperately needed to boost spirits and renew faith.

***

Axel van Diemen returned home to Darkhall a hero. Among the throng that greeted him he could only focus on one sound and it came to him as a whisper from red lips; could see only one sight and she filled his eyes. His name was the whisper, delivered directly into his mouth.

Later, when first passions were burned out, Axel was able tell her what had fled his memory before, and Gaye heard the truth, and faced it. Yet it was only a half truth, for there was no certainty Axel was what the Gaeia-entity said he was, and if there was doubt, then there was hope. So life could go on in the way it was meant to, in the dreams of two people.

Consolidate

There was another side to the euphoria that swept the reich when the downfall of the dogs was broadcast to all corners. A side that suited Gunther Fleischmann and his inner committee perfectly.

In the quiet waters that trailed the celebrations he could now, finally, get to work and entrench the reichprinciple. While the focus of all was on the relief and celebration and while a holiday mood prevailed, he got busy. The cadres and groups so meticulously recruited on all the worlds were absorbed into the regulatory structure of the reich administration; they were quasi-legal at best, but would serve his purpose. From them the bureaucrats and judges and politicians were sourced and the daily modus operandi of the new system came into being.

There was no fanfare, no announcements, just a quiet progress through the layers of governments and administrations that pulled concessions and promises from distracted hands and cemented them into the reichprinciple. Little by little, bit by bit, the anonymous army of committed organisers that had so carefully been built up through all sections of society and government during the war years delivered the software that would run the reich. Through meetings and minutiae and tedious conferences the sovereign rights of worlds beyond their own borders was transferred to the reich, a natural consequence of the original agreement in principle, but now set in stone.

The transition was so gradual that few noticed the changes until it was too late to re-negotiate; by then, the reich was a functioning entity with its own administrators coming from all worlds. Fait accompli was a phrase that was heard often in the inner cabinets of once-powerful worlds. But they were outnumbered now by the principle they themselves had agreed to and only brave faces would hide the grimace of sour grapes.

Slowly, the reich ground forward; gained mass, impetus. Power.

***

In the dark recesses of military operations, a probing mission to the dog-world was planned. The evidence needed to be seen by other eyes.

For Axel van Diemen, his own concerns had narrowed down to his home and problems that loomed. One of the original tenets of the reichprinciple had been the abolition of the Houses, and their semi-noble obligated worlds, once the current ruling head of that House had died. Raphael feared for Axel once this came to pass; his own title of baron would cease with his death, and the trees and the wines of Darkhall, so long coveted by off-world interests, would be open to exploitation once his protection had gone.

Raphael planned to resign in favour of Axel. This he did before the new laws were promulgated and Axel's position was therefore legal. The reich moved quickly, enabling the laws so that no other House could do as Raphael had done. If the Gaeia-entity really had tampered with Axel's aging processes, Raphael reasoned, he would need the protection of the barony; he would need to be untouchable.

***

So much to learn! So much to consider!

Suddenly Axel's world expanded in a way he had never imagined as his new office placed its own demands on his time. He no longer had a choice in some areas of his life, he was public property now and he had a duty to serve the people and institutions that made up the barony of Darkhall. But first, he had to learn; the subtleties and nuances of dealing with powerful leaders, the obligations of membership in the reich, the pressures of treaties and contracts and the understanding of his role as head-of-state for the rest of the planet all had to be mastered. And a thousand other things besides.

Raphael built a team around his son that became de-facto regents as he began his new career. They shepherded him along, anxious and watchful; Axel wasn't known for his patience and his political acumen was nascent at best, a situation that could be exploited if he wasn't watched.

And watched he was; from afar; by unfriendly eyes. And those same eyes also watched Axel's companions as they struggled to return to civilian life.

***

Leonard Arkadian was going to the dog-world and he was taking four of the radiation-killed stun-fighters with him. They were now longer than the original ships, extended through the bow section to accommodate the large amount of computer hardware needed to replace the dead bio-systems. They also carried a crew of four.

He liked the new ships, having been one of the first to test their capabilities after the rebuilds and had found their performance astonishing. Everything he had heard and seen about the stun-fighters at the battle around the white world had been confirmed when he commanded one. It was completely different from anything he had ever experienced; and harder too. And there was a secret about them, a secret that he, as a senior commander was privy to; the modified stun-ships were no match for the originals. They would need AI computers before they could even begin to equal the performance levels of the bio-ships. That was why none of the original pilots had been considered for the project; too many questions about them, too many unknowns about the whereabouts of their ships. Too much suspicion.

Star-chamber

There was a meeting, across the stars, of the architects of the reich. On instantaneous hologrammes on a dozen worlds they reviewed the evidence of the latest mission to the dog-world. All the destruction, all the misery, all the despair. All the horror. Images of Thule and other worlds were shown and the results were the same; the fall and ruin of a race; the unimaginable death toll.

Why? That was the question asked. And Fleischmann had more. What was the Gaeia-entity? Was it an "it" or a "they"? There was no understanding of this entity, none at all. What were its feelings? Intentions? What does it want? They only knew it saved thirteen pilots. Why? The battle was over, the white world was safe. There could be no reason, save one... revenge. The pilots were used to extract revenge and destroy the dog culture. And that act constituted genocide... even if it was by proxy.

Further...

... a major problem was looming with the surviving stun-fighter pilots. Their accounts of their time on the white world has not been altogether believable; specialists had found anomalies in their behaviour and in their genetic make-up. So, quietly and surreptitiously, they were spied on. Experts pieced together fragments from here and there; cross-referencing everything they said and did. Hundreds of operatives copied words and images; they studied body language and tonal inflection. They remotely measured skin tension and respiratory rates. One group even read lips.

The conclusion was that the heroes have been altered by the Gaeia-world. Their opinion was that to halt the breakdown in their bodies, they were somehow altered to halt their aging process.

These were the two problems that Fleischmann and Lomm faced; public backlash for the dog genocide, and this small group of non-aging heroes in their midst. The second was the more important. No matter how benign Axel and the others were now, in time.... in time.... they would amass power if through no other means than longevity. Power that could be denied to future generations.

A solution was needed. A plan of containment and control was implemented, one that would free the reich from the responsibility of both problems and bind the heroes into an ever-decreasing spiral of contention and controversy. The idea was to release the findings of the mission to the dog-world and to leak to the public the truth about their heroes, then question the motives of the Gaeia-entity.

The broadcast of the destruction of the dog world was a sensation. The taste of victory turned sour as people saw the utter misery and despair their enemy had been reduced to and feelings of guilt rose like bile. The next stage of the plan came into effect when rumours of long life and even immortality were leaked to the media through the disenchanted and surly son of the head of the House deGuillame, Roberto. He had kept a hatred for Axel, accusing him of the murder of his cousin, Aurelian. He also blamed Axel for manipulating events to keep his own position, while ensuring that others lost theirs. The twelve became the focus for all the frustration, horror, loss, grief and pain that the war had caused. They became pariahs. Suddenly, people could no longer face the reality of their own nature and had needed an excuse to look each other in the eye. Public hostility was fierce, and directed at twelve men; and their families.

To protect them, Axel invited them to Darkhall where they would be under the protection of the barony; but it wasn't that easy. The destroyer Pleaides made a good-will visit to Darkhall and never left. It hung in orbit directly over Darkhall and became the focus of other ships that came and went. Military exercises, the Blackwood Assembly was told; trials of new operating techniques; logistic support; uni-field re-mapping.... the excuses went on, and Pleaides remained in orbit. Axel confronted his old boss, Otto Lomm, to release his companions into his care, and he used Kormorant in a stand-off with Pleaides to force Lomm's hand. Axel's companions could join him, but restrictions were in place to limit their movements; a second destroyer joined Pleaides on station above Darkhall. They were prisoners in all but name.

***

Eight years. Gaye could see them in her face in the mirror. Eight years in which the very survival of humans in the 'Cloud had been under threat; years of fear and hope and struggle and pain. She had borne them all, leaning on Axel, drawing from his strength; certain that when everything was over their lives and their world would be returned to them and they could pick up the pieces and continue as before. Like everybody else could, with peace, prosperity, family, home. But now... growing old while he stayed young; than not being able to have children; that was the pain. No child to share, no future for her. Or Axel. She knew that one day he would be thankful they had no children; what sort of life would it be if your children grew old and died while you still looked twenty-six?

Then... the two of them were walking through the vines one night with the leaves showing silver and the star-light throwing black shadows on the ground. The metallic smell of the still-warm dirt rose up from the ground and the minty scent of the eucalypts drifted across their path. Ahead, the tree-studded escarpment was a black horizon with the tail of the Great Wheel disappearing over it. A bottle of wine half empty and two glasses half full, a cigar to enjoy; the world turned on its magic and their cares and worries vanished.

The lights of Johannes' great house crept up-slope to them, a sea of light in a land of stars, and far beyond the house the glow of the city was a bright smudge between the black of the land and the carpet of stars...

..... a column of air suddenly twisted before them, scattering dirt and rustling the leaves of the vines. It was five or six metres away, yet they could see the shape of it as it slowly revolved. It was unusual, and Gaye smiled in surprise. Axel looked at the floor, a familiar feeling creeping over him....

.... air and dirt moved in towards the column and it became opaque

.... a form took shape, coalescing out of the stars and the night ... and Maja stood before them!

The entity wished to understand humans. Through Axel and his friends. The brief contact so far had served little purpose in the way of knowledge. Maja was there with a proposal. The entity would gain knowledge of human beings from the twelve companions through the inter-face of the personas such as she. The twelve would reap the understanding of coming to terms with their extended life-forces and because Maja could inter-face at their physical level and on their terms, she would be able to assist them, and her experiences would then become part of the entity's consciousness. But there were fears that the Gaeia-entity had about Axel and his companions. It was aware that the interference in their life-forces had caused resentment and fear; the twelve needed to protect themselves... and the entity offered to release the twelve stun-fighters.

***

Axel called his companions together. He had received word of the failing health of the last two heads of the great Houses; once they were gone he would be expected to renounce his own title and position... or fight for it. To a man they agreed to fight.

Otto Lomm got the sub-lim call on Canaan in the middle of a technical briefing on the new field-ship programme. It would have been the closest thing he had ever had as a break; a leisurely few days on Canaan with discussions in the pleasant ground-side offices of Mag-Shipping with the chance of putting casual clothes on and trying out a few of the local bars. Damn! What now? He cleared the room and ordered the lights down. The news he was given...that the two destroyers on station at Darkhall had been taken by stun-fighters... confirmed his worse fears... that the twelve were in collusion with the white world. Now he may have to fight another war.

A Future Planned

How do you bring sanity back? How do you stop things from going too far? Gunther Fleischmann had to find a way.

There was an ease about the man that Axel liked. When the standoff with Lomm resulted in a call from Fleischmann with a proposal to visit Darkhall, Axel feared the worst. The architect of the reich, the ruthless