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“You’ve been listening to our
dissidents,” the Voice guessed.

“Uh uh,” Park held up an
admonitory finger. “Your faction is now the dissident one. They are in charge
of your council now.”

“You can’t do that!” the Voice
shouted. “Only the Council may…”

“The Premm Council did,” Park
told him. “You and your inner circle were amazingly stupid. Almost all of you
stopped along the way here. I hear some of you really were suffering, but most
of you faked it. Consequently, the balance of power shifted in your absence.
You know, I would have thought there would be a certain required quorum in
order to hold a meeting of your Council, but apparently, the Council is any
group of sufficiently ranked priests getting together.”

“I am still the Voice,” the Voice
insisted. “The office is for life.”

“The Council was debating
changing that last I heard,” Park noted. It was not actually true, but the
Voice believed him. “The main argument was whether to just change the term of
office or to bump you off. Either way there would be an opening, wouldn’t
there.”

“The Holy Prophecy,” the Voice
began again a little desperately.

“…is being interpreted by others
now,” Park finished for him. “If you survive the next few months I should
probably have you chat with an Atackack friend of mine. He has a prophecy too.”

“I am not interested in the
ramblings of a filthy madman,” the Voice replied, “or in any false prophecy he
may have invented.”

“I prefer his over the one you
seem to have invented,” Park responded.

“I invented nothing!” the Voice
told him. “My prophecy is true and even now the Holy Friends of the Premm are
on their way to cleanse Mother Earth.”

“You’re wrong there,” Park
replied. “We stopped all of them. Caught them flat footed when they tried
jumping to another system.”

“You fool!” the Voice started
laughing. “The ships you destroyed, that entire battle was a mere diversion. It
allowed the real fleet to leave Trohavn while you were busy.”

“What?” Park demanded, then
chuckled. “Nice try, but we would have heard the radio noise as they jumped out
of the system.”

“Not if they traveled to the
outer limits of our system,” the Voice grinned at him. “The noise from there
would have been too faint to notice. Mother Earth will be cleansed!”

“You had better hope you’re
wrong,” Park told him, “because if what you are saying is true, I won’t rest
until every Premm world has been cleansed in the same manner.”

“You haven’t the power,” the
Voice laughed.

“You haven’t a clue.” Park
retorted as he and the opthers left the Voice alone in the room.

“Sir?” Tina asked. “Would you
really destroy the Premm worlds?”

“No, Tina,” Park responded. “My
parents didn’t raise me to be a genocidal maniac, but laughing boy in there
doesn’t know that. In fact, he and his sort have been spending so much time
telling others that I am the epitome of evil, he believes it himself. He’s
bought into the whole pirate thing. Well, that’s his fault for being so
credulous.”

“Well, you can’t blame that first
captain who called us pirates for firing on his ship,” Tina pointed out.

“He shot first,” Park pointed
out. “I wonder whatever happened to him.”

“He was killed on a subsequent encounter,”
Tina reminded him. “Third time was the charm. He refused to back down and Iris
blew his ship apart.”

“Too bad,” Park sighed. “I could
use him now. He gave me a lot of trouble, but he was very loyal to the
Alliance. We’ll need his sort of steadfast diligence and loyalty to keep the
Premm from causing problems for the Alliance while we find a way to ease them
back into a normal relationship.”

“Will they be forced to rejoin
the Alliance, sir?” one of the other officers asked.

“I can’t say what the Diet will
decide,” Park told him, “but I hope not. Let them stay autonomous or rejoin as
they decide, but there will be reparations to be made from both sides. There
always are.”

“Reparations, sir?”

“We came in and conquered them,
Captain,” Park replied. “They declared unprovoked war on us. The way I see it,
they got what they asked for, but, now having given them what they deserved, we
owe it to the common people of the Premm to give them a chance back to a normal
life. By coming here we took on the responsibility of helping them.”

“You Pirates are a strange
people, sir,” the captain responded.

“None stranger,” Park agreed,
“but you have a military viewpoint of the war. It’s Us vs Them for you, isn’t
it? They’re the enemy. I have to take a broader look at it. How to change Them
into Us. If we do it right, they’re no longer the enemy, are they?”

“No, sir,” the man shook his head,
“I guess not.”

“Tina, contact
Tawatir
, please,” Park instructed her.
“Tell them I need them to go over every recorded radio whisper since we got
here. If a Gilara fleet left here, I need to know when and which way they
went.”

It took another few hours, but
when the answer came, it turned out the Voice had not been lying. At least a
dozen ships had left from Trohavn’s outer system just the day before and they
appeared to be headed for Sol System.

Park barely noticed the travel
through the place that was, at least mathematically, no place at all, but which
had been garnered with many names, including subspace, hyperspace, other-space
and so forth. His head was too filled with scenes of every mountain range on
Pangaea erupting volcanically. In his mind’s eye, he saw Van Winkletown being
covered over by a thick layer of slowly cooling ash, a latter-day Pompeii. He
also saw the rivers of Pangaea filled with bubbling-hot lava.

Somewhere in the back of his
mind, a tiny voice was telling him it wouldn’t count as genocide if he wiped
out the people who could do something like that. And that bothered him even
more than the nightmare visions.

“Successful transition of Sol
System,” Garro Tinns announced.

“All ships have arrived in
formation,” Marisea added.

“Scanning for ships,” Iris added.
“We’re roughly one light hour from Earth, though.”

“Marisea, hail Earth, tell them
why we’re here and then keep an ear out for talk about the Dark Ships,” Park
ordered. “Garro, plot a course for Earth, we can adjust later if we need to,
but for now all roads lead to home.” He wanted to chuckle at the paraphrase,
but there was no laughter in him at the moment.

“I’ve spotted the Dark Ships,
Park,” Iris reported half an hour later. “They’re coming in from solar north of
the ecliptic, and just outside the orbit of Mars. There’s a fleet from Earth
just leaving to intercept them. We’re likely to be late to the party, but that
all depends on how long twenty of our ships can hold out against over seventy
of theirs.”

“Seventy?” Park asked. “I thought
only two dozen left from Trohavn.”

“They apparently stopped for
reinforcements,” Iris told him.

“Garro, adjust our course and
intercept those Dark Ships. Trag, this will be a full thrust emergency,” Park
ordered. “Breaks in the acceleration only for shift changes. Relay instructions
to the rest of our ships, all ship to travel at maximum gee, forget about
formations. We need to get there ASAP!”

“Aye aye, sir,” returned a chorus
of voices as everyone went to work. Marisea gave the crew five minutes warning
after which
Tawatir
and her escorting
ships surged ahead with their thrusters on full. Normally, the trip from
Saturnian orbit to Earth took a week, but at emergency speed, it was less than
two days before they reached the turn-around point after which they were
decelerating toward their rendezvous with the Dark Ships. On the way they
learned that Captain Paul Gonnes had been placed in charge of the defense fleet
from Earth. In return they shared what was known about the Dark ship aliens’
ultimate weapon.

“We’re still going to be…”
Tragackack paused to consider his words, “late to the party, sir.”

“That’s true,” Garro chimed in.
“We are three hours away from initial contact with the Dark Ships, but Captain
Gonnes’s fleet will be launching missiles in just a few minutes.”

“Record that battle,” Park
ordered. “We’ve never actually seen what our fights look like from the outside
and pipe a feed down to Engineering for Ronnie if she wants it. I’m sure she
will.”

They spent the next two and half
hours watching the battle between the Dark Ships and
 
those that had launched from Earth and Luna.
“I don’t think I ever realized just how slowly these things develop,” Park
commented. “We spend so much of the time in stasis that we don’t have the sensation
of two fleets slowly passing each other.”

“Park, look at the way the Dark
Ships attack,” Iris pointed out. “Their energy weapons are continuous fire, and
once they lock on to a target they don’t let go until either the target is
destroyed or it passes out of range. If they didn’t out-number us that would be
a real weakness and it explains why we do so well against them when we have the
superior numbers.”

“And when our stasis fields kick
in they don’t change target, but waste energy trying to drill through,” Park
nodded. “They’re pretty devastating with that power-draining weapon though.
We’ve lost two thirds of our ships because of it. There are still thirty-nine
Dark Ships left, though.”

“We’ll have to see how our attack
fairs,” Iris told him. “So far none of the Dark Ships have reacted to our
presence and we’re only five minutes from extreme missile range. Is it possible
they haven’t noticed us?”

“They are a little preoccupied,”
Park told her, “and they don’t have stasis shielding, they must be taking
damage as the fight goes on.”

“I hope so,” Iris replied. “Four
minutes.” She continued the countdown until it was time to fire her missiles.
“We’re running low on the long range ones,” she commented while queueing up the
next salvo. Only three left in our racks and the other ships are getting low
too. I hope we really are a surprise.”

“Make every shot count then,”
Park told her.

Iris got the long range missiles
of and then, a minute later a mixed set of other missiles followed on their
tails and then suddenly they were within range of the Dark Ships’ weapons. At
first nothing happened and it became apparent that the Dark Ships really had
not seen them coming, but once the first missiles started finding their targets
the other ships turned to defend themselves.

All power went out on
Tawatir
and the crew found themselves in
total darkness. “Uh oh!” Iris commented into the darkness. “We’re a sitting
duck.”

Park was about to say something
when suddenly power was restored. “Hah! It worked!” they heard Ronnie say over
the intercom.

“What did you do, Ronnie?” Park
asked her.

“She can’t hear you yet,” Marisea
told him. She flipped a switch. “Try now.” Park repeated his question.

“Gave us a jump start!” Ronnie
responded. “I kept the batteries off line. We only need them when firing up the
engines. Then when we got hit, I put them back on line and voila! Back in
business. I might be able to set it up to work automatically, but I’ll need
some lab time.”

“First we need to end this battle,”
Park told her as Iris fired the gravity cannon.

In the next instant they heard
the familiar screech of tearing of metal and the flicker of light that
accompanied the not-quite perfect stasis shielding. The sensations lasted less
than a subjective second at the end of which damage reports started rolling in
without Park having to ask for them. “Anything major?” Park asked, interrupting
the flow.

“Park we have a crack on the port
side of the hull,” Ronnie reported. “It’s about two thirds back toward our
stern. It’s minor now, but it’s been spreading toward that damaged spot on our
belly and another hit or two could open us up.”

“If they hit us in the same
place,” Park finished the thought. “I’ll keep it in mind. Fleet status?”

“Ten ships are powerless, but the
Dark Ships seem to be ignoring them for now,” Iris reported.

“Smart thinking,” Park replied.
“Go after the ones who can hurt you first.”

“That and the fleet from Earth is
hitting them again,” Iris told him. “There are only thirty Dark Ships left. We
did a number on them. Maybe you should give them a chance to surrender?”

Park broadcast his usual demand
for surrender, not expecting any response, but this time he got one. “Fah!” the
translator interpreted an odd verbal outburst. “That would dishonor us and our
ancestors. Never surrender!”

“Great,” Park muttered, “We’re
fighting Peter Quincy Taggart. I just hope they don’t have an Omega-13 device.”

“They have their planet melter,”
Iris pointed out. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that. Several dark ships
seem to have released a cloud of some very small objects. Lots of little
things. We’ll never stop them all; not in the shape we’re all in.”

“We’ll try,” Park promised.
“Maybe if we can get them to surrender, they have a way to stop those things.”

“Fifteen seconds to extreme
range,” Iris announced. “These will be our last long range missiles though.
After that… well, let’s see. Five... four… three... two… one… launch.”

“Trag,” Park told his pilot. “It
looks like over half the Dark Ships are bunched together about twenty degrees
to starboard.”

“You want me to avoid the swarm,
Admiral?” Tragackack asked.

“No,” Park shook his head. “Let’s
kick over the hornet’s nest. Drive straight through them.”

“Park, what about that hull
damage?” Marisea asked as Iris launched a round of high speed missiles and some
of the ones they called Stasis Specials.

“They don’t know about it,” Park
responded. “Did you relay Ronnie’s battery trick to the rest of the fleet.”