Description: CHAPTER 1 TWILIGHT NIGHT. Night had fallen on Eikana and clung about the rooftops and bristling antennae that crowned the old refinery like weathered tombstones. No light of moon was there, and the stars kept silent vigil, distant and cold as the gray sands that flatly stretched to the horizon all around. "The Pale won''t know what hit them," Crim said, whispering despite the relative safety of the ship around us. I sensed the anticipation in the man--sensed it in all the men about me, the soldiers huddled like the Achaeans in the bowels of their wooden horse. Each one of them seemed to be holding his breath. "They better not!" groused Pallino. "The fleet''s still three hours behind." "Heat sinks are holding, my lord," said the pilot officer, reassuring. "Only way they''ll see us coming is if they sight us out a window." I knew the pilot was right. The Ascalon was the fastest ship in our fleet, a Challis-class interceptor whose massive heat sinks made it possible to mask its sub-light emissions for days, thus making it invisible to heat and light detection and perfect for such stealth missions as ours. It was a small ship, a mere five hundred feet from end to end, its hydroponics and life-support systems designed to support an active crew of perhaps ten men and fugue creches to sustain another forty. A small complement, but enough--I prayed--for our task. Three hours. We had three hours to secure the Yamato Fuelworks at Virdi Planum . Peering out the slit window, I could clearly see the silver line of the bundled hadron colliders. Fully operational, the machines produced kilotons of antimatter a day, iron hearts synthesizing the volatile substance from the collision of the smallest quanta to fuel the sector''s starships. In the distance, I could make out the silvered domes where containment silos waited to be hauled from Eikana''s surface to high orbit. Without antimatter, our starships could not travel faster than light''s slow speed. Without Eikana, the local capital at Nessus--and by extension, the great mass of the Imperial navy in the Centaurine provinces--was as good as crippled. It was a cunning target. It was not like the Cielcin to choose cunning targets. Not like most Cielcin. Something of my disquiet must have registered on my face, for Pallino asked, "You all right, Had?" I snapped my attention to the other man, found him watching me with shrewd eyes. When I''d first met Pallino on Emesh centuries before, he''d been a grizzled old soldier, one-eyed and scarred. Decades of loyal service to myself and to the Imperium had won him a new eye and a second youth, while I--whose palatine genetic advantages promised me centuries--had grown older. Pallino had slept for more nearly a hundred years on ice aboard the Tamerlane while I had served as counselor to the Magnarch on Nessus. I had passed him by, but even still there was a spark of almost paternal concern in the once-older man''s face. "This attack has Dorayaica''s name all over it," I said, sure I was right. The Scourge of Earth , they called it. The Prophet . Prince of the Princes of the Cielcin, great enemy of man. While most of the great Cielcin war fleets migrated from system to system, burning and pillaging entire worlds as they went, Dorayaica moved deliberately. Its alien mind had grasped our own strategy with a vision none of its fellows possessed. It burned shipyards, disrupted supply chains, captured legionary transports. Pallino made a face. "You don''t know that." "I do," I said, eyes flitting over the masked and armored soldiers of our cadre. My Red Company. Raising my voice, I addressed them all. "I want the refinery cleared before our fleet arrives!" I leaned away from the bulkhead, one hand grasping the loop on the padded arch above my head to steady myself. "I want clean knife-work, lads. We must not alert their ships to our presence." It was imperative we seized the Fuelworks by hand. It took one errant shot from a ship''s tactical maser or misplaced photonic explosive to detonate the huge AM reservoirs beneath the outlying domes, and there was enough antimatter on Eikana to transform Virdi Planum from plateau to crater and crack the planet''s crust. "Clean as can be, lord," said Crim, one hand checking the set of knives in the bandoleer he wore. The Ascalon banked into a low arc, its knife-like body cupping the air as we slid lower. The silver line of the foundry''s colliders swung into place beneath us. "Prepare yourselves!" I exclaimed, and pressed the trigger on my suit''s neck flange, which triggered the helmet to rise. Metal panels rose about my face, unfurling like the petals of a flower, and closed about my head. The suit''s augmented vision flickered on a moment after, twin cones of light projected onto my retinas. Pallino and Crim had done the same. A sea of armored soldiery stared back at me: featureless ivory masks with the pitchfork-and-pentacle of the Red Company painted over the spot where their left eye should be. We had to move fast. The few seconds where the Ascalon hovered above the top of the collider were the most risky. It would be all too easy for any of the xenobites in the refinery ahead to spot the vessel crouching like a vulture above the pipeline. "Venting the cabin in five, four, three . . ." The end of the pilot officer''s countdown vanished beneath the rush and thunder of blood in my ears. Almost seventy years I''d been trapped on Nessus, my punishment for surviving the trial on Thermon. That trial had cost another twelve years. It had been more than a century since I''d faced the Cielcin in battle. So long . . . The shudder of my own heart was drowned by a violent hissing as the Ascalon ''s rear compartment was vented of air. Eikana had none, and so the ramp opened on grim silence. All the better--there would be no wind to carry our voices or the clangor of our feet. I led the way down the ramp, Pallino close at my side. Ahead, a few hundred yards of covered pipeline marched toward the squat and brutish buildings of the refinery complex. Not far ahead to either side, the rails of ladders rose, and with a gesture I ordered that my men should fan out. I paused to let them filter past, and turning back, watched the black blade of our starship rise on silent repulsor fields, ramp closing. Then it was gone, a darker shadow against the dark of night. "Lord Marlowe." The man who had spoken was a common trooper, the last in line. I realized then that I''d been standing atop the collider for far too long. My gaze lingered on the silver expanse of the machine where it marched out to the horizon. The refinery''s hadron colliders girdled the entire planet, so if I''d wanted I might have followed the track of that machine about the planet''s equator until I came upon the complex from the far side. A single road, unbroken--a ring around the world. "Lord Marlowe?" the man said again. Stirring at last, I followed him down the ladder. -- The men ahead of me moved in triases, in knots of three darting cover to cover. We progressed quickly along the ramparts that ran along the outside of the great machine, and for the better part of a minute the only sound in my universe was the noise of my own bootheels reverberating through my armored suit. "Contact," one of the soldiers said. "On the left." A horned figure stood upon the roof of the nearest building, black against the darkness, an unearthly gargoyle crouched upon the heights above. It had not marked our approach, and I caught myself wondering if our inhuman adversary had fallen asleep at its watch. One of our hoplites raised his lance. Invisibly, a laser flashed, smote the gargoyle. No sound. No cry. The horned figure toppled, fell. "Two more," came the voice of one soldier over the line. "Nice shot, one-three!" "They''re down," came the first voice again. "Sure seems like they weren''t expecting us," said another. "There''s almost no guard!" And why would there be? The Cielcin were counting on their long-range sensors, were counting on us to launch a full-frontal assault on their orbital blockade. They were not expecting the attack to come from men on the ground--and therein lay our advantage and our hope. Ahead, the central building loomed. There the newly created antimatter was extracted from the collider and funneled through magnetic coils to storage in one of the outlying silos. There too were the controls for the whole refinery. Our goal. If we could shut down the collider and clear the refinery of the volatile substance, we''d be able to bring ships and troops down with impunity when the fleet arrived. We would need them. A hatch cycled on the wall to our right, and a figure in gnarled black stepped out. Eight feet tall it was, and it had to stoop to clear the airlock. At a glance, the xenobite might have been human. Two arms, two legs, a slim torso. The horns atop its head might have been only some feature of its cruel helmet. But I knew the Cielcin well, knew the subtle differences, the way the uncanny horror of the creatures unrolled itself the longer one loo

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