So.
        So this is how it was.
        The two MegaCommand Cruisers were blind, dead and disabled.
The ship captained by Asodo Hatch was on a collision course with
that which was ruled by his rival. Hatch and his men had suited up
in their deepspace battlearmor. The space armor, and the
lightbattle Weapons Minor which came with those suits, were
powered by corrosion cells, powerpacks in which small quantities
of antimatter were destroyed by controlled contact with normative
matter.
        At the moment, Hatch's MegaCommand Cruiser was still drawing
on its emergency power supplies to maintain its artificial
gravity. So for the moment, all the armor-suited warriors were
firmly orientated to the floor. They were anchoring themselves in
preparation for the opening of the airlocks.
        "All men anchored," said San Kaladan, when he was sure the
job was done.
        "Very well," said Hatch. "Open the airlocks."
        Hatch wanted all his men out of the ship before it collided
with Lupus's helpless craft, so he had no time to cycle his people
through the airlocks in the conventional manner, one or two at a
time. That would have been intolerably slow. So he was going to
open his ship to the night.
        "Opening the airlocks ... now," said San Kaladan.
        All through the MegaCommand Cruiser, airlocks opened. The
ship's atmosphere boiled out into the vacuum, carrying with it a
brief blizzard of papers and unanchored detritus. Hatch felt the
air-tug tide of the venting atmosphere pull at his suit, then
subside.
        "Interior pressure is zero," said San Kaladan.
        "Pressure at zero," acknowledged Hatch.
        Then, with San Kaladan at his side, Hatch left the bridge,
and ventured through the airless corridors of the ship. He moved
clumsily in his armor. The cumbersome armor, black upon black,
was swollen at the joints where extra engineering protected the
machinery. In the corridors, Hatch met with other battle-warriors
similarly suited, their features invisible behind the bulbous
faceplates of helmets. Those faceplates were tinted against
radiation and blast - tinted so heavily that they were almost
black. This was an army of shadows, an army of night. An army of
armored creatures insectile with antennae.
        "Free yourselves," said San Kaladan, seeing that some men
were being slow to free themselves from the various devices which
they had used to anchor themselves as the ship vented its air.
        Hatch clumped ponderously down the corridor to the nearest
airlock. All its doors were jammed open. Open to the night. He
entered the airlock and stood in the last doorway. Stood on the
edge of the immensities of eternity. He could exit simply by
stepping from the ship. By stepping out into the deepness and
darkness of space.
        "Ship's gravity dies in three," said San Kaladan. "Three.
And. Two. And. One. And. None."
        The ship's artificial gravity died away to nothing. Hatch
floated. He took hold of the rim of the airlock's outermost
doorway and hauled himself forward. He began to float outward, out
toward the coldness of deep space.
        As Hatch quit the ship, he felt a wave of coldness sweep over
him. He knew the sensation was entirely psychological, for his
suit insulated him perfectly against the numb death of the vacuum.
        Nevertheless: he felt what he felt, and he could not deny it.
He was still moving, still floating away from his ship,
slowly but surely. If he did nothing to stop himself, he would
float forever. For the time being he chose to do nothing. When the
two MegaCommand Cruisers collided, he did not want to be too
close.
        So Hatch floated in space, his ship sliding through vacuum at
a constant velocity, on a collision course with the helpless hulk
up ahead. From here he could appreciate the huge bulk of the
MegaCommand Cruisers, vast leviathans of the intergalactic depths,
colossal in their menace. Both ships were outlined in the darkness
by patterns of winking lights: electrical emergency beacons which
had come on automatically when their asmas failed. Hatch was
reminded of fish he had read about, fish which lived in the
lightless abysses of the ocean depths, and which were patterned
with self-generated luminescence.
        The best energies of the Nexus had gone into the design and
construction of those ships, for the wealth and reach of the Nexus
had automatically increased the number and the strength of its
enemies, as if by the operation of an inexorable law of physics.
Though the Nexus had paid lip-service to the highest of ideals, it
had ultimately, in truth, been a society of high-energy warlords.
Hence in the Nexus - a society of incredible wealth - poets,
architects, musicians and healers had had to struggle for
survival, while those who devoted themselves to games of death and
war were richly rewarded.
        Thus the greatest creation of the Nexus was the MegaCommand
Cruiser, a battle machine capable of fulfilling the worst
scenarios of Ultimate War.
        Members of the Free Corps were typically oblivious to the
probable consequences of the military dynamics which had governed
the Nexus for so long, but Hatch was ready to believe that there
was a good chance that, were the Chasm Gates ever to be reopened
by miracle or by a vaunting renaissance of high technology, then
the Nexus might well be found in ruins.
        While Lupus Lon Oliver thought that a great Age of Light
surely now dominated the Nexus, Hatch darkly suspected it to be
peopled by hairy savages runting around in the wasteland ruins of
cities ten thousand years dead. If Hatch's grim premonitions were
right, then the Nexus truly lived only here, here in this illusion
tank universe where two dead ships cruised through frictionless
space toward the moment of collision.
        There was no sound but for Hatch's breathing, the beating of
the blood in his ears, and the white noise deliberately generated
by the suit itself - absolute silence being bad for the soul. So
floated Hatch, and with him in the darkness floated his forces,
the wink-lights of their suits creating transient constellations
in the abyss. From the enemy's direction there was no answering
light.
        Where was Lupus Lon Oliver?
        Not in his ship, surely.
        Surely he couldn't be so stupid, so blind to what had
happened.
        Or could he?
        Hatch imagined Lupus on the deck of his MegaCommand, staring
at dead screens.
        That MegaCommand Cruiser was coming ever-steadily closer as
Hatch and his battle-suited warriors drifted through the vacuum.
Hatch's men began firing rocket flares at regular intervals. By
the green-white ignition of the flares, Hatch saw vast swathes of
the bare hull of the enemy ship. But none of the enemy. What was
Lupus playing at?
        - He's still in his ship.
        - He must be.
        - He doesn't realize!
        If Lupus did not realize that the two ships were on a
collision course, then he would have no good reason to abandon
ship.
        Hatch flicked the chin switch that would allow him to speak
with his troops by means of the modulation of electromagnetic
waves of a particular frequency. There was a special name for this
electromagnetic communicator, but Hatch found he had momentarily
forgotten it, because he used such primitive devices so seldom.
        It was -
        Vidrolation, of course, that was it.
        "Crew," said Hatch, speaking over his vidrolator. "Crew, this
is Captain. Just before collision you must brake. Remember your
physics." Some would resent this lecture, but he had to give it.
Nexus Startroopers typically made stupid mistakes when forced to
fight in spacesuits in hard vacuum and zero gravity, for they
spent most of their careers living and working at standard
gravity in natural atmospheres. "Remember your physics. When the
ships collide, our ship will slow down. Nothing will diminish our
own forward velocity, so we must use rockets to slow ourselves
down. So remember: just before collision you must brake."
        Hatch's MegaCommand Cruiser - empty, airless, abandoned, dead
- was like a big piece of paper being carried along by the wind.
His men were like a thousand scraps of confetti being carried
along by the same wind. And Lon Oliver's ship was like a fist
poised in space.
        When the fist slammed into the big sheet of paper - when
Lon Oliver's ship collided with Hatch's wreck - then the bits
of confetti would be swept onward by the wind.
        That was how Hatch visualized it. Intellectually he knew that
he, his men and his ruined ship were sliding through the
frictionless vacuum of space with nothing to drive them forwards
and nothing needed, but he preferred to think of them as being
driven by a wind. The image comforted him. He had never liked deep
space, and he did not like it now.
        "Just before collision you must brake," said Hatch, allowing
himself to admire his own calm, his own sense of timing.
        Not just after. Just before. When the ships collided, Lupus's
ship would soak up some of the momentum of Hatch's ship, and thus
the Startroopers would be swept past the tangled wreckage. By
braking beforehand, they would be able to close with Lupus's ship
more quickly. Hatch was looking for the edge. Hatch wanted to get
on board Lupus's ship as soon as possible. To take Lupus by
surprise, if Lupus hadn't already worked out what was going on.
        - Has he worked it out?
        It was basic. Or was it? Maybe Lupus was still sitting
inside his glorified tin can trying to work out what had happened.
Maybe Lupus thought Hatch had devised some miraculous way to kill
the asmas on Lupus's own ship while preserving those aboard his
own vessel. Maybe Lupus thought that this was a repeat of their
last battle scenario, and that Hatch was trying to hide himself
somewhere in the hope that his enemy would quietly expire of
starvation.
        "Sir," said San Kaladan.
        Hatch resented the interruption. He was about to tell San
Kaladan to shut up - when he caught himself. There had been
something not quite right in Kaladan's voice. Something sickly.
Fear?
        "Switch to intimate," said Hatch.
        "Switching," said San Kaladan.
        "Can you hear me?" said Hatch, broadcasting in the intimate
mode, which involved sending out electromagnetic signals too weak
to be picked up by ordinary suit receivers at any distance greater
than thirty paces.
        Both men could, however, hear anything broadcast at full
power by the Startroopers floating with them out in the vacuum.
        "Yes," said San Kaladan. "Clear if not loud."
        "Then speak your mind," said Hatch.
        There was a pause. Hatch wished he could see San Kaladan's
face. But instead there was only the armored suit and the big
bulbous faceplate. The faceplate was black, and reflected the
lights of the big sliding MegaCommand Cruiser, and the ignition of
a flare. Holding a conversation like this was grotesque. It was
more like a seance with the dead than a consultation with the
living.
        "Sir," said San Kaladan diffidently.
        And Hatch wished they were free in the flesh so he could
place one of his big hands firmly on San Kaladan's shoulder,
establishing physical contact, abolishing the inhibiting effect of
his captaincy. But all he had to negotiate with was this
effectively disembodied voice.
        "Sir," said San Kaladan. "I've been thinking."
        "Speak," said Hatch.
        "I have a wife and children on Borboth."
        Borboth was the home planet of the Nu-chala, the servant of
the great lord who was the spiritual leader of the congregation of
Nu-chala-nuth.
        Of course, a wrecked MegaCommand Cruiser floating helplessly
in deep space would in due course become a coffin for all its
crew. San Kaladan would never see his wife and children again.
That was no great tragedy as far as Hatch was concerned, for San
Kaladan was in truth nothing but a transitory software artefact,
an interactive feature of the wargaming environment of the
illusion tanks. Nevertheless, the software artefact named San
Kaladan behaved like a human being and could only be effectively
managed by treating it as if it was in fact possessed of full
humanity.
        "I share your sorrow," said Hatch. "I too have wife and
children."
        "But," said San Kaladan, "we - we - we might still - "
        "What are you thinking of?" said Hatch, starting to get
seriously alarmed.
        "If we made peace with our enemies, if we - well, we could
rig the ship for survival - maybe there'd be rescue, someone must
know - the Nexus could rescue us, we could - I mean, if we make a
peace we've got a hope, but if we break both ships in battle
there's nothing, it's all over, we're finished."
        Hatch listened to this badwork babble, this panic-speech. San
Kaladan did not exist, was no more than a software phantom. But
this software artefact could cause the logical equivalent of panic
amongst other software artefacts if it was not settled down
promptly. Or - or, in the worst case, it could kill Hatch.
        And Hatch, if killed in this illusion tank battle, would lose
the competition for the instructorship of the Combat College, and
would be exiled, forced out into the streets of Dalar ken Halvar,
there to die for real at the hands of his Free Corps enemies.
        "We all must make our sacrifices," said Hatch. "Like me, for
instance. San Kaladan ... do you know where I came from?"
        "You came from the planet of Olo Malan, a planet in the Tulip
Continuum, in the Permissive Dimensions. You - there was a city,
Dalar Dalvar."
        "Dalar ken Halvar," said Hatch.
        "Ken Halvar, yes," said San Kaladan, accepting the
correction. "Your home cosmos was cut off from the Nexus for
twenty thousand years, but you had access to a tutorial facility,
a Combat College. You were a Stormtrooper when the Tulip Continuum
was reunited with the Nexus. That's all I know."
        "Then know this," said Hatch. "I brought the Way to my
planet. I wrote a thesis which taught my city of Nu-chala-nuth.
But that was not enough. To secure our freedom to follow the Way,
we - there was oppression, religious oppression. So we had to
stage a revolution. I was one of its leaders."
        "I didn't know that," said San Kaladan.
        "But that's what happened," said Hatch. "For the sake of our
religion, I had to help lead a revolution. Unfortunately, my
brother - my brother, Oboro Bakendra, he was bitterly opposed to
Nu-chala-nuth and all that it stood for. He was a priest of the
Great God Mokaragash. In the end - in the end I had to kill my
brother. I had to cut down my brother. Then - then kill and burn
an old man, Sesno Felvus, the High Priest of the Great God
Mokaragash. I renounced the traditional god of my people and I
killed the High Priest of that god."
        Hatch said this, then fell silent. He experienced a wailing
desolation. He had now cut himself off from his people.
Irrevocably. He had denounced his brother, his god, his high
priest - in front of the witnesses in Forum Three. He would never
be allowed to forget it.
        There was silence from San Kaladan.
        "That was the measure of the sacrifice I had to make," said
Hatch. "Will you make a lesser sacrifice?"
        "It is an honor," said San Kaladan slowly. "It is an honor
to die in the company of a martyr."
        It was a quote from the Ezra Akba, the holy book of Nu-
chala-nuth, and Hatch answered in kind, matching this quote with a
quote of his own:
        "Blood answers to blood, and that which was speaks now to
that which is, and so we hold the sun, and find the sun
sufficient."
        In this context, "the sun" designated a killing blade, a
blade bright with sunlight. Hatch had given voice to a part of the
Martyr's Creed, and San Kaladan answered in kind:
        "We find the sun sufficient."
        "Then let us switch to the broadband and speak to our
troops," said Hatch. "It's time to brake, time to fire rockets.
Give them the order."
        Obedient to this command, San Kaladan switched from the
intimate mode to broadband broadcast. He gave the necessary order,
speaking brusquely, harshly:
        "Collision shortly. Prepare to fire braking rockets. I count.
Nine. And. Eight. And."
        The enemy MegaCommand Cruiser loomed huge ahead. Somewhere in
that ship was Lupus Lon Oliver, the enemy whom Hatch must seek out
and kill.
        "And. Seven. And."
        The two ships were still some heartbeats short of collision.
        Had they started the countdown too soon?
        - Battle is no place for finetuning.
        Thus thought Hatch.
        Thus the Nexus doctrine. Thus the voice of experience.
        In any case, San Kaladan was still speaking:
        "And. Six. And."
        Hatch knew that if his timing was off, he must still stay
with it. His every trooper would be hot by now, hot and sweating,
geared up with fear and fury. To change the timing now would throw
them all into confusion.
        "Five," said San Kaladan, strengthening as the ritual of the
countdown secured him in his identity as a warrior. "And. Four.
Hatch remembered his father on the sands. The sands of the
Season. After his father had killed himself, he had wanted to die.
But he could not die. He would not.
        "And. Three."
        There was a rising excitement in San Kaladan's voice. He was
working himself up. He was entering battle-mode.
        "Two. And. One. And. Fire."
        All through Hatch's battleforce, rockets flared. Hatch felt
the gentle tugstrings of his own retro-rockets slowing him. Out in
the night, the wink-lights which mapped out the spread-pattern of
his battle-armored troops began to slow, performing the slow-
motion ballet of deepspace manoeuvering. Hatch and his thousand
Startroopers were slowing, like a thousand fireflies caught in an
invisible net. Their dead ship, cruising forward through space at
a constant velocity, seemed to accelerate away from them. Hatch
knew: yes. Yes! He was in error! He had let San Kaladan give the
order to fire rockets too soon!
        Hatch's abandoned MegaCommand Cruiser drove onward. Ahead lay
Lon Oliver's ship. They were closing. Closing, fast. Three. And.
Two. And. One. And -
        The ships collided. The ships impacted in the silence of
vacuum. The ships crumpled as they smashed against each other. Gas
ruptured outward from Lon Oliver's ship, venting in vast sheets,
in pluming spasms.
        The fist caught the big sheet of paper. The confetti was
carried past in the wind. The confetti was still braking, was
still slowing, was still shedding velocity - but too slowly! Hatch
and his men were being carried past the wreckage. Hatch realized
he had been badly wrong in his guestimates. Retro-rockets had been
fired too late rather than too early. Hatch had been betrayed by
his lack of deepspace experience.
        "Ha!" said a voice, in pleased surprise. "It works! It
works!"
        It was San Kaladan. Hatch was surprised at San Kaladan's
surprise. But of course Hatch's inexperience merely reflected the
inexperience of the Nexus Stormforce as a whole.
        He watched.
        The collision had left the two MegaCommand Cruisers locked
together in a deathgrip. Air was still boiling out of the wreckage
of the enemy MegaCommand, spewing out into deep space. Inside that
ship, men would be dying in the sudden vacuum.
Rockets flared in the dark as Hatch's men began to move
toward the ships.
        "Come in slowly," said Hatch, manoeuvering himself toward the
hull of the enemy ship. "Brake in good time."
        And he braked, and let the hugeness of the whalebulk hull
drift up toward him. He landed on the skin of leviathan. His knees
anticipated the shock, soaked it up. Already strobe lights were
blinking on the hull. They marked places where Hatch's men had
found access to the interior through rents and ruptures.
        Hatch used the rockets of his battle-armor to manoeuver
himself to the nearest rent. He entered the ship, moving warily
lest he tear his anger on the sharp-fang edges of the hole in the
hull. His armor was tough, but, unlike his skin, it had no pain
receptors to warn him of damage. If he tore a hole in his armor,
he would not know about it until he was dead.
        Once inside the ship, Hatch let himself float. The interior
was airless, but still lit by emergency electricals. He realized
that Lon Oliver's ship was still maintaining a faint degree of
artificial gravity, enough for Hatch to be featherweighted down
toward the ship's deck. Abruptly that gravity strengthened to full
force. Hatch gasped in surprise. Was he all right? So far, so
good. He gave a command, and the built-in headlamp of his battle-
armor came to life. He wanted to be sure that he would still have
lighting if the emergency electricals suddenly failed.
        Now where was he?
        Every fire alarm inside a MegaCommand was location-coded, so
if he could just find a fire alarm, then he would know where he
was. Hatch sought such an alarm, found one, checked it, and
orientated himself. As he did so, the open broadband channel began
to fill with warnings and alarms. His men were running into armed
resistance. Some of Lon Oliver's men had managed to get into their
battle-armor and were putting up a strong fight.
        Where now?
        Hatch's mission was very simple. He had no need to kill out
the ship. All he needed was Lupus's head. Hatch made his way to
the nearest maintenance panel. The panel would be linked to the
simple-minded electronic computers which would be running the
ship's emergency systems.
        Hatch used a chin-switch to put his electromagnetic
communicator into the receive-only mode.
        "Jack to this panel," said Hatch, talking to his battle-
armor, and simultaneously jamming his battle-armor's right fist
against the maintenance panel. "Then get access to the emergency
computer."
        His battle-armor extruded a jack, thrust it deep into a
data-access socket, and began to ream the maintenance panel,
raping it thoroughly, stripping its defenses and winning the
deepest secrets of its privacy.
        "We have access to the emergency computer," said the
automated voice of Hatch's battle-armor.
        "What is the status of the bridge?" said Hatch.
        There was a minuscule pause as his battle-armor interrogated
the MegaCommand Cruiser's emergency computer. Then:
        "The bridge is undamaged," said his battle-armor. "There is
full atmosphere and full gravity on the bridge."
        "Good," said Hatch. "Is the captain on the bridge?"
        Again the pause. Then:
        "The captain is on the bridge."
        "Good," said Hatch. Then: "Is there pressure in the Central
Robotic Maintenance Tube?"
        "There is full atmospheric pressure in the Central Robotic
Maintenance Tube."
        "Are its interior airlocks functional and undamaged?"
        "They are functional and undamaged."
        "Good," said Hatch. "Disengage."
        His battle-armor freed itself from the maintenance panel,
and Hatch, ignoring the strident battle-commands, made his way to
the Central Robotic Maintenance Tube and entered the outer chamber
by way of an airlock.
        Hatch looked around the outer chamber. It was empty, as he
had expected. This facility was never used except when maintenance
robots entered the ship when it was in drydock.
        "Right," said Hatch.
        Then he began to strip off his armor.
        Hatch stripped down to his Standard Gray. He grabbed his
sheathed sword, his short and brutal battle-sword, which he had
earlier fixed to the back of his deepspace battlearmor, using for
that purpose some heavy-duty glue. Hatch wrenched with all his
strength and tore the sword free from the armor.
        Then Hatch began to make his way along the Central Robotic
Maintenance Tube. If this lost pressure, he would die. But he had
no option. This was the fastest way to the bridge, and the tube
was so small that there was barely room for him to crawl along it.
It would be impossible for a man in vacuum armor to enter that
tube.
        Hatch crawled the length of the tube, and exited by way of an
airlock in chamber devoted to the storage and maintenance of the
ship's robotic cleaning machines. This gave him access to the
kitchens, and from the kitchens he gained access to the officers'
mess. Hatch entered the mess, which was bare and functional,
devoid of personality. Hatch unsheathed his sword, discarded the
scabbard, and ventured down the short corridor which led to the
bridge.
        Hatch went striding down the corridor, and entered the
bridge. All those on the bridge were focused on display screens.
        Asodo Hatch closed the distance to the seat where Lupus Lon
Oliver sat.
        "Lupus," said Hatch, speaking softly, quietly.
        Lupus Lon Oliver looked up.
        "Hi," said Hatch.
        Then brought his sword slamming down.
        Lupus dodged from the blade, almost but not quite evading it.
The blade slammed against skullbone and sliced away a crescent of
blood, cutting away an ear in the course of its butchering.
        Lupus scrambled to his feet, and as he scrambled he tried to
pull his sidearm from his belt. Hatch whacked him on the side of
the head with the flat of his blade. Lupus staggered. Hatch kicked
his legs from under him. Lupus crashed down, deadweight falling.
Hatch, panting, steadied himself, steadied his breath, then said:
        "Lupus."
        Lupus looked up. And Hatch chopped down. Lupus tried to pull
away. Blade chopped into bone. Stunned but not dead, the wounded
Lupus groped on the deck. All around the bridge, men were leaping
from their consoles. The fastest-witted starwarriors were already
sprinting toward Hatch.
        But there was time, there was plenty of time for Hatch to
swing into an executioner's stance, and this he did, and he
brought his sword down hard and fast. Hatch chopped two-handed.
His blade impacted with flesh. With bone. But Lon Oliver's head
was still attached to the neck by a hinge of skin and flesh. A
mighty man was Asodo Hatch, but it had been a long time since he
had chopped off anyone's head, and he had quite lost the knack of
it.
        "Well, the hell with it," said Hatch. "It's a killing, not a
sacrifice."
        Then he threw back his head and laughed, and was still
laughing as the first attacker slammed into him, taking him down
in a tackle. Down went Hatch, the world wavering as if he had
taken a deep-sea dive, and when the world ceased to waver -