Sobon woke with a start, and his first in-stinct was to spin up his aether dy-namos, which had con-tin-ued slug-gish-ly cir-cling af-ter he fell un-con-scious. It was a good re-ac-tion, he de-cid-ed, the lit-tle bit of self-af-fir-ma-tion keep-ing him go-ing when his en-tire body wracked with pains from the jolt. Sobon kept his fo-cus on the dy-namos, but forced his breath-ing to steady, then tried to sense the world be-yond his skin.

  Of the old man, there was no sign, but some-thing in the far dis-tance was mak-ing him un-com-fort-able. Sobon re-viewed his body, to make sure it wasn't a mis-un-der-stood sig-nal from some-thing in-side, then sighed, and looked at his right-hand-ed spike. The thread of 'healthy' aether he'd pro-duced was so small, and yet... he knew from the ef-fort it took to cre-ate thread out of qi that it was also denser and pur-er than nat-ur-al pow-er. He pulled it out of his spike, mourn-ful-ly, and broke it into pieces, dis-trib-ut-ing it across his body.

  The aches and pains eased, but not enough. Mus-cles that were sleep-ing stirred, but not enough. Even his bones seemed to shift their at-ten-tion to him, briefly, but noth-ing he had done was enough, could pos-si-bly be enough. The Rapi-er's med-bay had its own small dy-namo, and small in space-ship terms meant the spike it pro-duced was only as wide as Sobon's thumb--his adult, cy-borg thumb, not this child's. That was the pow-er that ad-vanced med-i-cine re-quired--med-i-cine that could ful-ly re-store lost limbs in hours and in-te-grate cy-borg parts with a man's spir-it in min-utes.

  It was also high-er-or-der aether, gen-er-at-ed by a four-di-men-sion-al hy-per-torus, but there was no point in think-ing about that, now.

  A minute or two af-ter Sobon fed his body the aether, he forced him-self out of bed. In con-trast to when he had only bare-ly been able to sit up, his body was--at least--will-ing to obey his com-mands, even if every-thing still hurt, and some things were still too wound-ed to con-trol. He limped to what he was sure was a win-dow, though it was board-ed up with rot-ting wood, and did his best to peer out-side.

  The clin-ic, such as it was, was on the sec-ond sto-ry of a build-ing, built on a hill-side. Most of the build-ings around it were com-plete-ly ru-ined, though there were ob-vi-ous places where some-one was liv-ing in those ru-ins--rat-ty cloth stretched over open-ings or a camp-fire placed care-ful-ly un-der the re-mains of a floor above, de-spite the build-ing miss-ing walls and a ceil-ing. Those ru-ins stretched on for a while, un-til--up-hill a ways--there was a mas-sive stone wall block-ing all oth-er views in that di-rec-tion.

  Un-like the ru-ins, the wall was pris-tine, and he could see the gleam-ing met-al of sol-dier's ar-mor atop it. The wall was un-nerv-ing; once he laid eyes on it, he could sense it, so it had to have been re-in-forced by aether, or had a ...spell cast over it. What-ev-er the lo-cals did with their bas-tardized aether, he sup-posed. He glanced around, look-ing for signs of oth-er ac-tiv-i-ty, and no-ticed an area slight-ly up-hill where all the ru-ins had been re-duced to seared grav-el in a large ra-dius, and the ru-ins just past them were black-ened by char.

  Mo-tion caught his eye as he con-sid-ered that, and he looked down the street, where an old man with a long, clean white beard walked un-hur-ried-ly down the wind-ing street, flanked by two sol-diers in shin-ing met-al ar-mor with nasty-look-ing polearms. As soon as his eyes touched the old man, though, he felt the old man's at-ten-tion snap to him, and he raised a fin-ger to point in his di-rec-tion.

  Shit. He pulled away from the win-dow, de-bat-ing whether he would sur-vive jump-ing down onto the street, when the win-dow was torn to pieces by one of the guards bod-i-ly leap-ing through, whose out-stretched arm at-tempt-ed to ar-rest his mo-men-tum on the stone wall, only for the stone wall to tear it-self apart in re-sponse.

  Be-hind Sobon, sick chil-dren did their best to scream, but it most-ly came out as coughs.

  Sobon took a step back, but the sol-dier was as cold as any cy-borg he had ever fought with, or against. His polearm flicked out, a nasty blade on the back side of it lov-ing-ly cupped Sobon's neck, so gen-tly that the ra-zor-sharp edge didn't cut him, even when Sobon stum-bled back a step.

  "You're com-ing with us, boy," the guard said, his shin-ing eyes vis-i-ble even with the light of day be-hind him.

  Sobon, though he trust-ed this man not at all, could rec-og-nize that there were no oth-er op-tions aside from his own death. So he nod-ded, not quite able to work his tongue well enough to speak, and with his jaw so tight with ten-sion he could feel his teeth grind-ing. Es-cap-ing the butch-er had been a long shot, and run-ning away from the old man had seemed doable, as long as the old man didn't see good rea-son to chase him, but this was dif-fer-ent.

  The man reached out and grabbed him by the throat, drag-ging him out of the win-dow. Along the way, the man's head banged into the stone top-ping the win-dow, and for a mo-ment, the stone won; the sol-dier paused, back-ing up un-til he could clear-ly see what had got-ten in his way, and then forcibly head-butt it, shat-ter-ing the stone and col-laps-ing the wall on top of it.

  In the same mo-ment, the guard leaped out, but be-hind them, Sobon heard a noise that he knew was the roof col-laps-ing on the clin-ic. It last-ed too long to have been noth-ing more than the wall, and Sobon didn't hear much in the way of stone land-ing on the street.

  He hadn't known any-thing about the oth-er in-valids there, and for all he knew, they were all lost caus-es, but that was no ex-cuse. The rot-ten mon-ster hadn't need-ed to take out the win-dow; he had done it pure-ly out of spite, and killed every-one else there for no rea-son at all.

  "Re-joice, boy." Sobon's eyes widened at the ut-ter-ly calm, even bored, tenor of the white-beard-ed man's voice. He tried to turn to look at him, but couldn't; the sud-den move-ment had shocked his en-tire sys-tem, or else one of them--the old man or the sol-diers--had par-a-lyzed him, some-how. "You have enough qi to be re-cruit-ed into our sol-diery. You will have the glo-ri-ous chance to die for the Czar and have your past sins posthu-mous-ly wiped out, so that you can en-joy an eter-ni-ty of servi-tude in the ser-vice of the Di-a-mond Lord, rather than an eter-ni-ty of suf-fer-ing and lamen-ta-tion as one of the un-cho-sen." His voice re-mained bored and rote, to the very end, and he bare-ly paused be-fore ad-dress-ing the sol-dier. "Take him back and meet us at the end of the street. I'll throw in five pence if you don't make us wait."

  The sol-dier hold-ing him grunt-ed, and Sobon was dragged by his neck on an in-creas-ing-ly fran-tic jour-ney down streets and across rooftops, bare-ly able to even open his eyes as the pres-sure on his neck seemed to crush his spir-it as though on ac-ci-dent.

  Fi-nal-ly, Sobon was tossed to the ground, rolling on hard stones, and he dim-ly heard the man re-port, "Slum re-cruit from Min-is-ter Celb." And then, with an ex-plo-sion of force, he was gone.

  There was a mo-ment of still-ness, then foot-steps marched up to him, and then a hand grabbed each of his arms. Sobon found he still couldn't move as he was lift-ed up and turned to face an ugly, owlish man sit-ting be-hind a small table in a cramped stone room.

  He was writ-ing, and Sobon found him-self un-sur-prised to note that the old man seemed to be sound-ing out the let-ters one by one as he wrote. Every-thing here was so prim-i-tive, so bar-bar-ic, that he want-ed to de-stroy it all. In his mind, the idea of a Crestan bat-tle-cruis-er nuk-ing the plan-et and start-ing over from scratch went from a state-ment on his own peo-ple's self-ish-ness to an in-creas-ing-ly earned out-come of this all.

  The scribe fin-ished writ-ing, and clear-ly re-viewed what he had writ-ten down. "Mi... ni... ster... Celb. One... re-cruit." The man looked up from his let-ters, his owlish fea-tures and small round glass-es mak-ing him look only more fool-ish in Sobon's eyes as the man stud-ied him. Sobon glared back; from what he could tell, ei-ther the man had no qi of his own, or he was too weak to be worth men-tion-ing. "Looks to be... half-star bronze at most. Just bare-ly above the thresh-old. Dis-ap-point-ing." He dipped his pen in an inkpot and moved it back over the pa-per, his mouth mov-ing as he wrote. "H-a-l-f s-b-a... no," he paused, and pulled out a blade. "not b, t." He wiped, or sliced, the pa-per, flicked some-thing away, then re-trieved his pen. "t-a-r. Half star." The scribe looked pleased with him-self, then looked up and nod-ded. "You may take him away."

  "Where, sir?"

  "Oh, half stars go to the, um," he turned and looked at a very ob-vi-ous chart on the wall, and he strug-gled to read it. "To the... yes, bar-racks three." He turned to the sol-diers and nod-ded. "To bar-racks three."

  "Yes, sir." The two sol-diers dragged Sobon out, and Sobon could feel the ground scrap-ing against his legs. The sol-dier who had spo-ken wait-ed un-til he was out of earshot be-fore scoff-ing. "Don't un-der-stand why that one is even still alive."

  "Can al-ways use the ex-tra sol-diers," the oth-er replied.

  "Not the boy," replied the first. "I mean Scribe Thims. Half the guard could do his job bet-ter than he could."

  "Oh, I won't ar-gue that," replied the oth-er guard, sound-ing al-most cheer-ful. "You know I killed a star beast last week and now even I can read and write bet-ter than that old bas-tard. Didn't even get to sit around and ab-sorb its qi, let alone the core, but just be-ing around the blast-ed thing as it was dy-ing was good for my brains. My skin, too, I think, but no one's men-tioned it."

  "No one knows what your skin looks like," the first guard snort-ed. "You nev-er take off your ar-mor and you nev-er bathe."

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  "I do too take off my ar-mor!"

  "Not at work."

  "I... well, no." The guards both went silent for a time. "Still, pity the boy, in'nit?"

  "Bet-ter him than any of the city kids."

  "I sup-pose," he said, slow-ly. "Still, the starspawn are nasty un-til you get your first star."

  "First noth-ing," the first replied. "Any-thing less than third star Bronze hard-ly sur-vives a fight." At once, the two of them re-leased Sobon, who had been lis-ten-ing as well as look-ing ahead, and watch-ing as they ap-proached a man guard-ing a rat-ty wood door. "Slum re-cruit, half star."

  "Not even a half star," replied the door guard. "Let me get the leg chains."

  Sobon wasn't much of a crier--that sort got weed-ed out by the Marines quick-ly enough--but the knot of frus-tra-tion in his chest was get-ting to be un-bear-able. This was fast be-com-ing a dis-as-ter, with no chance of re-cov-ery; it was dif-fi-cult to know just how bad things ac-tu-al-ly were, but these didn't seem like the sort of peo-ple who would wait for him to heal be-fore throw-ing him to his death.

  "Ac-tu-al-ly..." the voice of the man at the door came back. "He's pret-ty wound-ed, isn't he?"

  "Oh, bad-ly," agreed the cheer-ful guard.

  "We'll be ship-ping out soon, he's wound-ed and a half-star, and I'm al-most out of leg-irons, so would you do us all a fa-vor and throw him in the corpse pit? If he's go-ing to die, he might as well feed the bar-gles."

  "Sounds good to me!" The cheer-ful guard reached down and stripped the clothes off of Sobon with a sin-gle vi-o-lent yank, then dragged him along by his arm into the bar-racks. "More's the pity, boy, but all for the best, you'll see. At least, as-sum-ing the Chan-cel-lor's ly-ing about all that Di-a-mond King stuff." A pause. "Di-a-mond... Lord? King? Em-per-or? What-ev-er it was. Nev-er held to that stuff any-way." Then, loud-er, "Open up the corpse pit, got a fresh one for you."

  "Fresh one," replied a voice, also too cheer-ful, and there was a metal-lic scrap-ing.

  Sobon found him-self fight-ing the spir-i-tu-al pres-sure that was still crush-ing him, still par-a-lyz-ing him, but it was only as he was lift-ed and thrown into dark-ness that the for-eign en-er-gy washed away from him, leav-ing him just bare-ly able to move. He twist-ed to look down, grab-bing his body, spir-it, and two dy-namos with his will, his mind scream-ing at him, and just bare-ly man-aged to ori-ent his body to ful-ly land on the back of what looked to be a gi-ant, fur-ry pig.

  It squealed at him, and Sobon pushed off from it, back-ing against the wall and pour-ing every ounce of his spir-it into the two dy-namos. Al-though he could feel his spir-it suf-fer-ing as the qi left him, he knew this was one last do-or-die chal-lenge, and though it would prob-a-bly kill him, he would make a show-ing of it.

  "He's not dead?" Dim-ly, Sobon heard some-one above.

  "Oh, he ba-si-cal-ly is," ar-gued the cheer-ful guard. "And he's only half-sies."

  Sobon fo-cused on the dark-ness, where he could see a half dozen enor-mous fur-ry pigs stalk-ing in and out of the bro-ken light from over-head. One made a mock-ing, growl-ing squeal at him, a noise that sound-ed like a de-mon-ic laugh, and which bared the crea-ture's sharp teeth at him. Still, they stalked for a mo-ment in-stead of charg-ing.

  "You can't just throw a live one down there," ar-gued the voice. "What if he in-jures a bar-gle? They're sen-si-tive. You go in-jur-ing them and they'll be squeal-ing for weeks."

  One of the bar-gles fi-nal-ly charged, and Sobon took his left spike and gath-ered the aether in his palm. He dodged, smack-ing the thing in the head, then spun around, find-ing an-oth-er bar-gle ap-proach-ing, mouth split en-tire-ly too wide, to show off a mouth-ful of very sharp teeth, go-ing back far too deep into his head. Sobon used his mo-men-tum and forced his feet out from un-der him, feel-ing the im-pact on his hips, and thrust his left hand into the pig's throat as hard as he could.

  It col-lapsed on top of him.

  "I told you, he's only half-sies," the cheer-ful guard said. "Look, some dimwit Min-is-ter thought he was worth re-cruit-ing, but he's half-sies and half dead. Be-sides, if the bar-gles haven't com-plained yet, he couldn't have caused any trou-ble."

  "Well..."

  An-oth-er bar-gle ap-proached him, teeth spread and drool leak-ing out from his low-er jaw. Al-though he was too far away to hit, Sobon jabbed at his snout, us-ing the mo-tion to throw a small mea-sure of aether at it. As it hit, the bar-gle leaped back, a scream com-ing from its mouth.

  "There, see? I told you, sen-si-tive. Who told you it was al-right to throw a live one in there? Be-cause I as-sure you, the base com-man-der isn't go-ing to be hap-py lis-ten-ing to bar-gletalk."

  "I thought this group was mov-ing out soon?"

  "Hadn't heard that."

  Sobon strug-gled to get out from un-der-neath the bar-gle that had him pinned, but two more were cir-cling now, teeth glar-ing at him in the dark-ness. Des-per-ate, Sobon took more of his body's spir-it--though it felt en-tire-ly too low to him al-ready--and jammed it into his right hand cy-cle, and then ripped the pow-er from his spike back into his body. The re-sult was a brief spike in his body strength, and he man-aged to pull his legs free, just as one of the bar-gles got up the nerve to snap at him.

  This time, Sobon smashed him straight in the snout with his left hand, and like the first two, he dropped with-out a sound.

  "In any case," the cheer-ful guard said, "they only need to take one bar-gle along for field ra-tions, so I'm sure the com-man-der will be hap-py to leave the yowl-ing men-ace to you." He chuck-led. "None of my busi-ness, af-ter all. I'm just fol-lowin' or-ders."

  "You haven't said whose or-ders they were."

  Sobon fed some of his body's spir-it back into the dy-namos, find-ing--as he ex-pect-ed--most of the right-hand aether had been used up al-ready. Still, just bare-ly, he came out ahead; like the dy-namos them-selves, aether could con-tribute to a pos-i-tive feed-back cy-cle, but only for healthy peo-ple, and only when care-ful-ly con-trolled. As the last bar-gle still threat-en-ing him stud-ied him, try-ing to de-cide whether or not to try his luck, the whin-ing one in the back of the room dug it-self into a pit and switched to a more pa-thet-ic, whim-per-ing ca-dence to his noise-mak-ing.

  At last, the clos-er bar-gle at-tacked, and Sobon dodged and punched him in the side of the head. He, like the rest, col-lapsed.

  "Mat-tak said he's out of leg irons," the cheer-ful guard replied. "He's also th' one who said these folk are ship-ping out. Says there's no point in him dy-ing in the field, since he's too weak to be any use to us."

  "Too weak," snort-ed the guard on pit duty. "Still man-aged to spook one of the bar-gles, though. ...Come to think of it, not so much gnaw-ing and tear-ing down there. Did he scare the rest off? Usu-al-ly they're too dumb to in-tim-i-date, but I sup-pose even a half star might have a lucky break."

  "Oh come on, a half-sy that could even use the qi in 'em is un-heard of. Takes folk years to learn how to har-ness that stuff. What, are you re-al-ly goin' to look? Macabre, ain't it?"

  "Shut it," the pit duty guard said. "It's my job, in-nit?"

  Sobon was look-ing up when the two guards peeked over the edge of the pit down at him. For ef-fect, even though the pain was mad-den-ing, he de-lib-er-ate-ly raised one leg and put it on the near-est bar-gle, which was still out af-ter he'd punched it. He had no idea if it was dead or stunned--he doubt-ed he had done enough to kill any of them--but he gave the two his best, de-fi-ant stare any-way, and fo-cused on just hold-ing onto his two dy-namos, keep-ing them spin-ning with every-thing that he had.

  The two guards stared at him for a mo-ment, then ex-changed glances, and sud-den-ly one guard slugged the oth-er in the face and start-ed shout-ing, his voice am-pli-fied and echo-ing off the walls of the bar-gle pit. "BASE COM-MAN-DER! WE GOT A PROB-LEM WIT' TH' BAR-GLES!"

  Sobon found him-self sneer-ing up-wards, even though he felt faint. Now that the im-me-di-ate prob-lem was han-dled, he found his head swim-ming, and he felt like falling over. He pushed him-self as best he could to stand there de-fi-ant-ly, even as his limbs trem-bled and his wounds bled. It oc-curred to him that the filthy pit junk had prob-a-bly got-ten into his wounds, but for just this mo-ment, he judged that the most im-por-tant thing he could do was im-press who-ev-er was in com-mand.

  "What do you mean, prob-lem." The voice that came back was in-tense enough that Sobon could taste the spir-i-tu-al pres-sure.

  "Blighter threw a live one in the pit and said he was dead, then changed his sto-ry to say he was only a half star, but he's gone and killed or stunned all the bar-gles."

  "What?" In a flash, there was a man stand-ing in the mid-dle of the bar-gle pit, and Sobon blinked and turned to face him. He was be-gin-ning to see a pat-tern, here; like the Min-is-ter, this base com-man-der was some oth-er race than the lo-cals, and he car-ried him-self very dif-fer-ent-ly. His fea-tures showed age, but he car-ried him-self with im-pec-ca-ble pre-ci-sion and spir-i-tu-al force.

  The com-man-der ges-tured, and the wave of his arm car-ried enough spir-i-tu-al pres-sure to lift Sobon up and pin him against the wall.

  "Only stunned," the com-man-der said af-ter a mo-ment. "But he dis-abled all of them. How..." he glanced at Sobon, then in a flash, they were both above ground, Sobon on the ground--and bound with rope. How, he had no idea, but his hands and feet were to-geth-er, and he wise-ly chose not to re-sist or even strug-gle.

  "Who de-ter-mined this man to be a half star? He's clear-ly at least two bronze stars."

  "Sir!" some-one shout-ed. "That would be Scribe Thims, sir! We was there, we watched him do it!"

  "You watched him do it, and didn't ar-gue? You can't tell the dif-fer-ence be-tween half a star and two stars?"

  "Ah, well, sir..."

  "Take him to the med-ical tent, and I want those two and Thims de-tained. I will de-ter-mine who here was ly-ing, or in-com-pe-tent, be-fore the end of the day, and see them put to death."

  Sobon hissed a half-laugh into the dirt, en-joy-ing a mo-ment of re-lief and the knowl-edge that these bar-bar-ians would suf-fer. Ap-par-ent-ly, that was wrong; sud-den-ly, he was jerked into the air by his bonds, and the face of the Base Com-man-der was inch-es from his own.

  Sobon took the mo-ment to study him, but the se-vere fea-tures of the man were dif-fi-cult to place, ex-cept to say that they were not like the lo-cals. He showed no signs of be-ing over-weight, at least, and his aether--from what Sobon could tell with-out open-ing him-self up more--was both in-tense and odd-ly steady, un-like the twist-ed and vi-o-lent qi that had sur-round-ed most peo-ple so far.

  "What amus-es you, sol-dier?"

  Sobon was be-gin-ning to feel the lim-its of his ex-haus-tion again, hav-ing spent too much of his body's qi re-fill-ing his two spikes. Still, he didn't dare not try to use this to weasel some oth-er ad-van-tage out of the sit-u-a-tion. "...not sol-dier," he said, find-ing his mouth dry and his tongue un-will-ing to prop-er-ly co-op-er-ate. "...not re-cruit. Not go-ing to work for you ...mur-der-ing ass-holes."

  The base com-man-der, with-out any in-crease in his emo-tions at all, reached out and grabbed Sobon by the throat, again.

  "You must be a slum re-cruit then, as any-one else in this place would know they had no choice." The com-man-der lift-ed him by the neck, but didn't par-a-lyze Sobon, and in fact didn't seem to squeeze him at all. "But I'm cu-ri-ous what you mean by mur-der-ing. We are a law-ful peo-ple."

  What could Sobon say? What had the id-iot guards called the man? How could he get the most sym-pa-thy here? He set-tled on a phrase he hoped would be poignant. "Fam-i-ly... killed by... Celb."

  The Base Com-man-der's head rolled back slight-ly. His aether field re-mained steady, but Sobon was sure that the look on his face flick-ered to anger slight-ly.

  "I will in-ves-ti-gate this claim," he said. "But you are still a sol-dier of the Czar's Grand army. All men of at least half a bronze star's qi rank-ing are draft-ed, for the good of all. No mat-ter your cir-cum-stances, you will serve." The Com-man-der re-leased him, and Sobon col-lapsed on the ground. "See that his wounds are treat-ed."

  "Yes, sir."

  Sobon gri-maced, but it hid a smile. He want-ed to see every-one that had wronged him burned; this was a good start, but get-ting prop-er med-ical help would be a far, far bet-ter start to his re-venge.

  Even if it came with mil-i-tary ser-vice.