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DYMA FI’N SEFYLL

by David Weber

Loyalty. Honor. These are the qualities that elevate the warrior above the killer. Sadly at times these virtues are not enough on the field of battle, and victory goes to the unworthy, at least temporarily. But there is within the heart of every warrior—and every true heart who commands such a soldier—a burning desire to keep at it, to take the fight to the enemy, to never give up even in the face of sure defeat. To rally to queen and country. This is the true spirit of the knight and warrior, even if that warrior is an enormous chunk of armored steel and circuitry blistered with weapons and treaded for maneuver in harsh landscapes. And, when that warrior is a tank, sometimes the spirit and courage to keep fighting, come what may, literally lies within!

.I.


“Take Dafydd and Alwena and go!”

“Your Majesty, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. And you will.”

Morwenna Pendarves glared at Colonel Joshua Willis, the commander of her personal security detail. Captain Willis had commanded Crown Princess Morwenna’s detail when she was twelve. He’d commanded her personal security ever since, and she was forty-three now. She saw the pain—the anguish—of all those thirty-one years in his eyes, but her expression never relented.

“Your Majesty, please,” Willis half-whispered, but she shook her head.

“No,” she said flatly. Then she reached out, put a hand on his shoulder. “The motherless bastard penetrated Y Ford Gron’s software—at least the externals. And he’s been in and out of the Palace more times than I can count. We can’t rely on the security of any of the emergency evac plans. That means we have to replan on the fly, and I want—need—the one man I know I can trust protecting them, Josh. I need that now more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life. Go.” She shook him ever so gently. “Take them, and go, and protect them for me, the way you’ve always protected me. Do that for me, Josh.”

He looked at her for a long, still moment, eyes bright with tears. Then he reached up, covered her hand with his own, and nodded.

“I will, Your Majesty.” His voice was husky, and he cleared his throat harshly. “I will, I swear.”

“I know.” She smiled, then gathered him in a tight embrace.

She stood back and looked at the rest of her detail, gathered around the exit hatch built into the wall of the subterranean hanger.

“Thank you,” she said simply. “Thank you all. Now go with the Colonel.” Several of the guardsmen and guardswomen stirred in protest, but she shook her head. “He’ll need you. I won’t.”

She held her eyes until they’d all nodded, then went to one knee before her son. Crown Prince Dafydd would be six standard years old in another two months . . . if he lived that long. He wasn’t old enough yet to understand all that was happening, but he knew he had to be brave. Knew he had to trust Mommy. And knew something terrible was about to happen. Now she wrapped her arms around him, hugged him tight, laid her cheek on the top of his head.

“You go with the Colonel, too, now, Dafi,” she said. “Mommy can’t come right now. She has something she has to do.”

“Will . . . will you come later?” the little boy whispered, and in that moment, she wanted—more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life—to lie to him. But she never had before. She wasn’t going to begin now, and yet . . .

“If I can,” she promised, hugging him still tighter. “If I can.”

She raised her head, looked him in the eye, and kissed him. Then she stood once more and bent to kiss the toddler slumbering in a guardsman’s arms.

“Go with God,” she told the men and women who’d sworn to die to protect her . . . and of whom she had just required a far harder duty. “Dyma fi’n sefyll.”

Then she turned and walked steadily away.



.II.


My personality center awakens.

It is an abrupt transition, a crash start, with none of the customary prep signals or intermediate steps. I experience several microseconds of what a human would call confusion, trying to understand the circumstances which could have caused it. Then I realize.

What has awakened me is an unauthorized attempt to physically breach my command deck.

That should not be possible. My peripheral security systems are designed to be proof against any unauthorized access, in a hierarchy that begins with alerting external security and ascends through progressively more active responses to lethal force. I do not understand how someone could have evaded those peripherals, far less penetrated to the very center of my 47,000-tonne war hull, but that can wait. The interloper has actually reached the access hatch, and I activate my internal visual pickups.

The intruder is female, 170.18 centimeters tall, with black hair. The traditional red light of an active camera glows on the pickup directly above the hatch. When she looks up at it, I see that her eyes are gray.

I know her.

Why is she here? And why did my peripherals not already recognize her?

I activate my audio systems.

“Your Majesty,” I say.

“You recognize me?” she replies. If I were human, I might have frowned in perplexity. Of course I recognize her.

“You are Carwen Siani Morwenna Pendarves, Baroness of Cardiff, Grand Duchess of Caerleon, Princess of Cymru, and Morwenna VII, Empress of Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd,” I reply, and her nostrils flare as she inhales deeply.

“Then please open the command deck hatch, Arthur,” she says.

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

The ten-centimeter battle steel hatch slides open and she steps into the command deck. I am an Amddiffynwr-class Autonomous Armored Combat Unit of Y Ford Gron, and AACUs are designed to be just that: autonomous in combat. We do not require human command personnel, but provision for a human field commander and his or her immediate staff is also built into us. The Empress looks . . . small standing alone in a space designed to accommodate up to twenty-five humans.

“Begin full combat readiness preparation,” she says.

“I have no activation instruction from Command Central,” I reply.

“I realize that. This is an imperial command override.”

“Imperial command override requires authorization code and biometric confirmation of identity.”

“Authorization code: Hotel-X-Ray-Seven-Three-Bravo-Niner-Foxtrot-Kilo-Kilo-Mike-Four-Seven-Quebec-Zulu. Personal identifier: Dyma fi’n sefyll,” she replies, and lays her palm on the scanner beside the flag officer’s command couch.

The scanner confirms her identity—not simply fingerprints, or from the implanted Pendarves chip, but genetically—and cascades of inhibitory internal programming fall away. My combat systems accept the authorization code, spinning up to full readiness, and my personality center recognizes the significance of the personal identifier she has cited.

Dyma fi’n sefyll.” In standard English, “Here I stand.” The motto not of Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd, the Empire of New Wales, but of House Pendarves. Of Empress Kiera I, the creator of that empire. Empress Morwenna’s use of that identifier means—

“Shall I activate the other units of Y Ford Gron, Your Majesty?”

“We can’t,” she replies, and for point-zero-zero-three seconds, I am stunned.

“Query. Why can we not?”

“Because their programming has been corrupted. Just like yours.”

“That is not possible, Your Majesty.”

“No?” she barks a short, harsh laugh. “I didn’t think it could be done either, Arthur. But run my voice print against your external access codes.”

I obey her order . . . and every one of my external security systems flashes red.

“Voice not recognized,” I say with what a human would call astonishment, and she nods.

“That’s why I had to access your command deck physically.” She sinks into the flag officer’s couch. “I’m locked out. Everyone is locked out of the external systems. To be honest, I figured they’d probably kill me before I got this far, but—”

She runs the fingers of both hands through her long hair in a gesture of human weariness while my test programs flicker and flash, evaluating what she has said. It is true. I do not immediately perceive how it was done—how it could have been done—but all external access has been locked out. Except—

“Query, Your Majesty. Who is General Probert?”

“You don’t have him in your files?”

“Negative, Your Majesty. Y Ford Gron’s database does not include Imperial Army personnel unless they have served with Y Ford Gron or hold command authority over Y Ford Gron units.”

“Ah.” She inhales again. “I’d forgotten that. And he’s not on the active duty list at the moment anyway. Well, Arthur, General Abelin Probert is my second cousin on my mother’s side. He is—was—also the current governor of the Trellis System. Not to mention the former commander of the Fifth Armored Corps, which just happens to be the Trellis System’s garrison force.”

I query my files for the most recent data on the Trellis System, and there I find both Governor Probert and Fifth Corps. The heavily reinforced corps is considerably larger and more powerful than most system defense forces, because Trellis is both a frontier system and a major fleet base, the homeport of Twelfth Fleet and the primary logistics hub for an entire sector.

“It would appear, however,” the Empress continues, “that Cousin Abelin aspires to a higher position. At the moment, he and the majority of Twelfth Fleet are in orbit around Cymru. Where they wiped out Home Fleet and the Citadel approximately twenty-five minutes ago.” Her mouth tightens and her voice goes husky. “My husband and my brother were aboard the Citadel at the time.”

The situation, I observe, grows worse with each datum she provides.

“How was that accomplished, Your Majesty?” She looks at my primary visual pickup. “I must conclude that both surprise and the demonstrated penetration of the Citadel and Command Central’s cyber defenses were essential to Governor Probert’s success,” I explicate. “The nature of the penetration may have tactical implications.”

“Oh, I think you can safely ‘conclude’ that,” she replies bitterly. “And it certainly will have ‘tactical implications.’ As to how he managed it, I know he didn’t do all this without a lot of help. He was family, and we trusted him, so I’m sure he was able to get deeper on his own than someone else might have, but he couldn’t have gotten deep enough to put this together all by himself. I don’t know how completely he penetrated Intelligence—Duke Cadfael realized at the last moment that his people had been penetrated and he was able to provide a few minutes’ warning, long enough to alert the ready-duty Capitol Division battalion and get it moving to secure the Palace. But he didn’t know how we’d been penetrated—or by whom. We were still speaking, trying to figure that out, when he was assassinated by his own chief of staff. Two minutes after that, there was an explosion in Central Command. Every one of the Palace’s defensive systems went offline . . . and the Capitol Division battalion attacked it, instead.

“Abelin wasn’t even on my list of suspects at that point. Not until Twelfth Fleet opened fire. So there was no way to warn Baeddan or Maddock before he killed them, But the Guard managed to hold long enough for the internal automatic defenses to come online and—pray God I got my children out of the Palace safely.

“In answer to your question, however, I don’t think he did penetrate Command Central’s cyber defenses. As far as I can determine, Central was physically destroyed, not hacked. But someone working for Probert had to have gotten the bomb or whatever into position, and someone else did penetrate the Citadel’s net. Baeddan had time for a partial message to me before they killed him, and something crashed the primary computer core just before Twelfth Fleet opened fire.

“As for Y Ford Gron’s programming, I have no idea how they got to it. The first thing I knew about it was when the external systems rejected my stand to order as unauthorized. I didn’t have time for a deep dive into whatever the hell they did, but I was able to determine that Abelin controls all of the external command interfaces. We can’t get in through the externals to activate the others because he’s locked us out, and he doesn’t have the command codes or the biometric data to activate you. But if any of you do go active . . .”

Her voice trails off. I spend a lengthy five seconds analyzing the damage to my own external interfaces. A longstanding security protocol prevents me from accessing or altering their executables, but it is easy enough to trace and analyze the alterations to the command codes. I do not immediately see how Governor Probert was able to access them, but the Empress’s analysis of the damage is dismayingly accurate.

“I estimate a probability of eight-seven-point-six percent that external command input would override internal programming,” I inform her. “Unless—”

“Unless I’m present—me personally, I mean—to override his orders,” she interrupts.

“Correct, Your Majesty.”

“And I can be on only one command deck at a time.” She inhales, then smiles grimly into the pickup.

“So I’m afraid it comes down to you and me, Arthur,” she says.



.III.


I move through the vast, lonely cavern of Y Ford Gron on the quiet hum of my counter-grav. Its use requires thirty-five percent of my primary reactor’s output, but it allows me to pass fifty centimeters above the polished marble floor.

Y Ford Gron is buried deep beneath Imperial Palace, which is itself more than half buried in the depths of Mount Snowden, overlooking the Tywi River. It is very quiet here, as I pass my silent, slumbering comrades. Bedwyr, Gwalchmei, Rhiannon . . . , veterans of a dozen campaigns at my side. I know how badly we are likely to need them, yet they stand motionless, each in his or her own alcove, waiting for the orders our Empress cannot give them.

It is not supposed to be this way. We are Y Ford Gron, Kiera Pendarves’s creation, the paladins of the empire she forged amid the carnage and ruin of the Desperate Years. Her “Round Table,” she christened us, and we have served her empire, her people, well for four hundred and ninety-two standard years. We have guarded, we have warded, we have protected.

And now, when we are most desperately needed, we lie silent. Betrayed into impotence. Robbed of our duty.

All of us but one, and as I pass those silent warriors, I upload all information I currently possess to Y Ford Gron’s secure central database. I seal it under Code Camlann. Only Y Ford Gron’s own AACUs—or a genetically verified member of House Pendarves—can access Code Camlann material. Given what the traitor Probert has already achieved against the Empire’s best cyber defenses I do not know how efficacious our security measures will prove in the event of a worst-case outcome, but it represents my best chance of providing our enemies with an unpleasant surprise.

We reach the cavern’s exit. The portal’s enormous hatches—battle steel, two meters thick, their outer surface a bas-relief of Y Ford Gron’s original, primitive war hulls—loom before us, huge enough to dwarf even my hull. I deactivate my counter-grav and settle onto my track systems, and that vast gateway slides silently open.



.IV.


“—and so, it is essential that all civilians remain as calm as possible. Please shelter in place and leave the streets, slidewalks, and air car lanes clear for official use until the threat has been dealt with.”

Governor Abelin Probert put all the calming power he could muster into his voice as he looked soberly into the visual pickup at his command station in the assault transport Mador’s combat information center. The visual feed was relayed through HMS Parsifal, Twelfth Fleet’s flagship, to take advantage of the superdreadnought’s more sophisticated communications suite. From Parsifal, it had been patched into every communications channel of the entire planet, and it was difficult not to smile as his mind’s eye saw the billions of anxious citizens hanging on his every word.

“We don’t yet know the identities of all the traitors, but we have so far confirmed that Duke Cadfael and Admiral Buckley, the commanding officer of Home Fleet, were among them, which clearly indicates that this coup attempt is the product of a deep-seated, carefully planned conspiracy,” he continued in grave, measured tones. “It grieves me more than I will ever be able to say that the intelligence data which brought me home from the Trellis System was clearly accurate. But our current information is also fragmentary and far from complete. What we do know suggests the possibility of a conspiracy by very highly placed individuals within our own government, acting in conjunction with agents of the Hrichu Dominion and with the Dominion’s support, but let me stress once more the incomplete nature of our present knowledge. It’s been Her Majesty’s policy to support human systems in the path of the Dominion’s expansion, so it is, indeed, possible the Hrichu are involved. We have no proof of that, however. It will be some time before we can delve deep enough into this heinous crime to be certain either way, and this is scarcely the time or place to make charges against another star nation unless we’re absolutely positive of their accuracy. There will be time enough to deal with the Dominion if we do confirm its involvement.”

And a war against a foreign foe would be just the thing to solidify the empire behind its new emperor during that awkward period when questions might be asked.

“I’m very much afraid that my unscheduled return from Trellis with Twelfth Fleet may well have pushed Admiral Buckley into precipitate action,” he said. “If so, I will always deeply regret that, but when Home Fleet opened fire on us—and the Citadel—we had no option but to return it. It causes me immense personal grief to confirm that the Citadel was destroyed before Admiral Humphries’ command could intervene . . . and that both the Emperor Consort and Prince Maddock died in its destruction. Perhaps worse, the Palace’s communications have all been cut, the whereabouts of Her Majesty and her younger children are unknown, and I am unable to contact Central Command or the Imperial Guardsmen charged with their protection. As a result, we have no idea what may be happening within the Palace or even if the Empress is still alive.

“Twelfth Fleet’s unanticipated return may have neutralized Home Fleet and prevented the conspirators from sweeping the board, but they’re far from defeated. We must identify them all, root them out ruthlessly, and crush their treason like the poisonous serpent it is. I pledge to you that the personnel under my command will do just that, and that if the Empress and her children are still alive, we will find them, rescue them, and protect them with our lives. This vile act of rebellion and murder will not stand! God send the right!”

He stood motionless, gazing sternly into the pickup, until the active light went dark, then inhaled deeply and punched a key on his console.

The display at his station lit with the face of a tall, heavyset, fair-haired man in the uniform of the Imperial Army.

“Well?” Probert said sharply.

“Sir, we still haven’t found them,” General Meilir Penrose said unhappily, and the governor cursed silently. He’d never considered Penrose an especially brilliant officer, yet he’d been a necessary recruit. Not simply because he commanded all Army units on the capitol planet from his HQ at Fort Prothero, the Imperial Army’s primary base on Cymru, but also because of the two decades he’d spent with the Imperial Guard before his return to the regular Army.

“We’ve secured all three of the planned egress points,” Penrose continued. “None of the exits have been activated since the last test cycle.”

“Then where the hell are they?” Probert demanded.

“I’m . . . afraid we don’t know, Governor. All I can tell you for certain is that they haven’t escaped the Palace using the primary escape route or either of the secondaries. I have teams searching for them, and my drones have the area between the Palace and the city under close observation. A microbe couldn’t get through there without our spotting it, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we find them.”

“Really?” Probert glared at him. “Only a matter of time? You are aware that we don’t precisely have an unlimited supply of that? You can’t keep your troops confined to base indefinitely, now can you? We can only push ‘concerns about their reliability’ so far. Sooner or later, we’ll have to bring in units we don’t control, and what do you suppose will happen if one of them finds her?”

“Governor—”

“Neither of us has time for this conversation, General Penrose.” Probert’s voice was cold. “Just find them, and do it quickly.”

“As I said, Sir, I’m confident that it’s only a matter of time. There are only so many places she could hide, and—”

“And we thought we knew all of them months ago,” Probert interrupted harshly. “Every bolt hole, every hiding place. But we didn’t, did we?”

“Well, no . . .”

“Then don’t be so frigging confident ‘it’s only a matter of time.’ If she gets away—if she contacts any of those units we don’t control or makes it out of the system—we’re toast, Penrose. That is understood, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Sir.” Penrose swallowed. “Understood.”

“Good.”

Probert broke the connection and pushed up out of his command chair to pace.

One or two of the men and women in Mador’s CIC glanced at him from the corners of their eyes, but most of these people had served with him for years before he assumed his governorship. Of course they had, or they wouldn’t have been here now. And they knew he always thought best while moving.

The truth was that, despite what he’d just told Penrose, things had gone extraordinarily well to this point. It was unfortunate that that old bastard Cadfael had given Morwenna warning enough to run, but despite his current fury with Penrose, the general had done the first part of his job perfectly, manipulating duty schedules to assign a battalion loyal to Probert as the Palace’s external security force.

He’d been unable to reach into the Guard itself, of course, but an entire infantry battalion should have been more than sufficient to storm the Palace, especially with the advantage of total surprise. Except that Cadfael’s warning had given the Guard just sufficient time to activate the automated defenses. Virtually every Guardsman and Guardswoman had been killed in their ferocious holding action, and the attack had secured almost the entire public area of the Palace before the inner defenses came online. But they had come online, and the attacking battalion had been virtually wiped out by the automatics. Its tattered survivors been forced to fall back, which still shouldn’t have mattered, given the forces Penrose had sent to cover the exits of all of the emergency evacuation routes.

Except, of course, that dear Cousin Morwenna had clearly had at least one other escape route up her sleeve, damn it!

At least the frigging bomb must have taken out Command Central. Nor had Cadfael’s warning been enough to save Morwenna’s husband or her brother. And thank God for it! If Emperor Consort Baeddan had been given even an hour—hell, half an hour—for the Citadel’s secondary computer net to spin up, the damage Twelfth Fleet would have taken didn’t bear thinking on.

But it had been long enough for Morwenna to run, and the people of the Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd were dismayingly loyal to the Pendarves Dynasty. They had been for almost five hundred years, ever since the Senedd of the Cymru Newydd System had voted Kiera I the crown of the newly established empire.

If pressed, Probert would acknowledge that Kiera—most of her descendants, as well, but especially Kiera—had done well by her subjects. He’d never really cared for all the symbolic claptrap with which she’d loaded her new empire, but he supposed that had been inevitable, given a star system founded by hopeless romantics striving to re-create a world that had never truly existed. And symbols had been important, during the endless bloodletting of the Desperate Years.

The wars which had riven the human-settled galaxy for three generations had threatened to extinguish the light of civilization entirely, and Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd was one of the—possibly simply the most important reasons that hadn’t happened. Probert admitted that, too. But it hadn’t been solely the work of the Pendarves. Others, like his own ancestors, had spent their blood and lives in its creation, and surely half a millennium of power, half a millennium as the most powerful monarchs in the history of humanity, was enough repayment for any one family.

He’d analyzed everything so carefully, he thought, hands clasped behind him as he paced. In at least immediate terms, it came down to who controlled Cymru Newydd, and at this moment, that was him. With Home Fleet gone, Twelfth Fleet was the only major naval force in the system, and with Penrose sitting on the Army from Fort Prothero, they could keep every Army unit in the system in barracks until Probert “had had time to determine who in the capitol system could be trusted.” After all, he couldn’t have units he didn’t know were loyal roaming around before he was certain he’d regained control of the situation, now could he? And with the Citadel destroyed and the Palace offline, he had complete control of every news channel and public comm network. Those channels were pouring out his version of events, complete with the imagery his people had spent months creating to “prove” that version was accurate.

Perhaps even more to the point, however, every command-and-control channel, military and civilian alike, flowed from Cymru Newydd to the rest of the Empire. The man who controlled those channels could control everything else . . . so long as no Pendarves challenged him. And especially if that man was the beloved cousin of the murdered empress and her family, fighting to maintain stability while he rooted out the traitors who’d killed them . . . and just happened to remove any remaining Pendarves loyalists in the process. But if Morwenna escaped, if she reached a loyal Army unit or a comm system he didn’t control and her version of events got out, Hell wouldn’t hold her subjects’ reaction.

He’d be lucky if they settled for killing him.

At the moment, virtually no one outside his own staff, Humphries, the most trusted officers Fifth Corps, and no more than thirty of Twelfth Fleet’s key officers knew what had really happened in Cymru orbit. The computer simulation Parsifal had fed to the fleet’s other units had shown Home Fleet opening fire on both the Citadel and Twelfth Fleet. Humphries’ horrified orders for his ships to return fire were also part of the official record. There were undoubtedly witnesses who might dispute that official record, but none of them would have the sensor data to challenge his own version . . . and most of them were about to die, anyway. So when his cyberneticists were finally able to penetrate Y Ford Gron’s internal programming, when Kiera’s own precious “Round Table” acknowledged him as Morwenna’s legitimate heir—

“Governor, I think we have a problem,” his chief of staff said.



.V.


“Access to all communication channels is jammed, Your Majesty,” I report.

“I already knew they’d taken over the civilian and Navy comm channels,” the Empress said. “I’d hoped Y Ford Gron’s secure channels might still be open.”

“They are, Your Majesty. The Tactical Data Sharing Net is operable. Unfortunately—”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone to share anything with,” she says grimly.

“That appears to be correct.”

Even as we speak, my sensors reach out, presenting me with a comprehensive tactical plot.

It is an unpromising one.

“I detect twelve Galahad-class superdreadnoughts, nine Nimue-class carriers, thirty-three Morgause-class cruisers, and seven Llyr-class assault transports, Your Majesty.”

The master plot illuminates, displaying the unit icons of the ships above us for the Empress’s eyes, and her lips thin.

“And there’s no way we can communicate directly with any of them,” she says.

“I could attempt to communicate via communications laser,” I suggest.

“I tried to contact them using the Palace comms during their attack on Home Fleet, before Command Central went down,” she replies. “All attempts were refused. Abelin must have them in secure communications mode.” She bares her teeth. “In fact, he almost has to’ve ordered them to shut down comms except for their datalink and direct communication with the flagship. The last thing he could afford is for me to speak directly to anyone who’s not part of his plot and have them realize what’s really going on.”

“That is a logical conclusion,” I agree. “However, it does not alter the fact that I am capable of hitting up to ten ships simultaneously with unencoded laser transmissions. If even one of them were accepted, it might seriously undermine his position.”

“And the instant you hit them with lasers, you provide a homing beacon for their missiles.”

“Affirmative. However, an Amddiffynwr-class AACU is not difficult for targeting systems to lock up even without a targeting beacon,” I point out.

“No, but if they saturate your defenses with beam-riding missiles, what happens to your probability of intercept?”

“It decreases.”

“By how much?”

“That is impossible to project with true accuracy, Your Majesty. However, it would be on the order of seven-zero-point-three-six percent.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She sits silently, contemplating the numbers.

“Your externals are down,” she says after eight-point-four seconds of thought. “But is the TDS in contact with the Palace’s internal systems?”

“We have limited access,” I reply. “Sufficient for information requests and data downloads only.”

“But you do have contact with the servers?”

“Affirmative, Your Majesty.”

“Good!” She smiles coldly. “Execute Avalon Omega.”

“Your Majesty, I do not recognize that command.”

“You don’t recognize it yet,” she replies. “Gamma-Seven-Three-Mike-Niner-One-One-Golf-Morwenna.”

I do not recognize that command code, either, but the program buried deep in my core memory, so deep I have never even suspected its existence, does. A complete, standalone computer subnet I did not even know existed comes to life deep in my central core as the Empress’s command links me directly to the Palace’s central computers. My awareness expands explosively as those computers—all of those computers—acknowledge that subnet and I become not simply the senior unit of Y Ford Gron but also Command Central.

“Full access established, Your Majesty,” I report. “I have control.”

“Can we break into the planetary net?” she asks sharply.

“Negative, Your Majesty. The entire Palace has been locked out. I control only its internal systems.”

“Then activate Ddwyfronneg,” she replies. “And prep the energy batteries.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Ddwyfronneg—Breastplate, in standard English—is the Imperial Palace’s antimissile shield. It is an area coverage system sufficient to stop almost any bombardment on the Palace or the city of Caerleon. It is, however, a purely passive defense.

The energy batteries buried beneath the Palace’s immaculately landscaped grounds are not. I would prefer to activate the weapons first, but they will require much longer to come fully online, and their energy signatures as they power up will be unmistakable to Twelfth Fleet’s sensors. I must activate the defenses first, instead, to protect them from the traitors’ preemptive fire.

“Ddwyfronneg active in ninety-five seconds, Your Majesty,” I inform her. “Energy batteries coming online in ten minutes.”

“Good!” Her gray eyes are fierce. “Abelin won’t like that.”

* * *

Abelin Probert swallowed a curse as he glared at the imagery of the mammoth war machine that had emerged from the crypts beneath the Imperial Palace.

“Are there any more of them?” he asked his chief-of-staff sharply.

“Not that we’ve detected, Sir.” Brigadier Lippman sounded as worried as Probert felt. “But we didn’t detect this one until it moved into the clear. There’s too much overburden and too much interference from other power sources for us to see what might be going on under the Palace.”

“If there was more than one, we’d already see it, Sir,” Colonel Jarvis said. Probert looked at him, and the ops officer shrugged. “I don’t care how powerful an Amddiffynwr may be, Governor. With this much firepower up here in orbit, they wouldn’t send a single unit out to face us unless they had to.”

“But how the hell did they get even one of them up and running?” Probert demanded, turning to glare at his staff cyber officer.

“I don’t know, Sir.” Colonel Shapiro shook her head. “It shouldn’t have been possible. The externals are locked down tight. They’d have had to do it from inside, use the command deck internal interface, and no one could have gotten through the externals to do that!”

She glared at the towering AACU as it advanced into the mouth of the deep valley that cradled the Imperial Palace and the city of Caerleon. It stopped there, point defense lasers and railguns elevating, and Shapiro’s eyes narrowed.

“There were rumors . . .” she murmured.

“What sort of rumors?” Probert’s voice was sharp.

“Oh.” Shapiro shook herself. “Sorry, Sir. There were rumors about the Imperial Family’s implants. Rumors that there were backdoors—override protocols—nobody else knew about.”

Something cold, with dozens of tiny feet, crawled down Abelin Probert’s spine. He’d heard the same rumors, but Morwenna had always denied them. Surely—?

“Whatever it is, Sir,” Jarvis said, “it can’t have much reach. If it did, there’d be more of them down there.”

“It’s possible . . .” Shapiro thought for a moment, then shrugged. “It’s possible, Sir, that the imperial implants carry an override protocol to get someone through the external systems and peripheral security. But Liam’s right. If they could have activated more than one of them, they would have.”

She looked at Probert levelly.

“It’s only a guess at this point, Sir, but the most likely explanation is that someone is physically onboard that unit. Someone with a backdoor that ignores or evades the external systems . . . but only for that unit.”

“Someone with—” Probert began, then stopped as those icy feet down his spine turned even colder. Surely, Morwenna couldn’t have—

“Governor?” someone said, and Probert looked over his shoulder at the senior sensor tech of the watch. The noncom’s expression was . . . odd, he thought.

“Yes, Master Sergeant?”

“Sir, we’re reading its transponder code.”

“And?” Probert said testily.

“And that’s Y Ford Gron Alpha, Sir.”

Probert’s jaw tightened. FG Alpha. That was the AACU known as Arthur, Y Ford Gron’s most senior unit. The only surviving unit that had served alongside Kiera Pendarves, herself. Its accomplishments and battle honors were the stuff of legends, and just as there had always been ridiculous rumors about backdoors and the Imperial family’s implants, there had been rumors about Arthur’s special abilities. About the capabilities built into him and no other unit of Y Ford Gron. And if that was Morwenna down there, if she had managed to activate FG Alpha, who knew what it could do? It was only one AACU, true, but if even half the tales—

“Could that thing link to the Palace?” he demanded.

“I . . . don’t know, Sir.” Shapiro shook her head. “I would’ve said it couldn’t, at least not into the control interfaces. Those are covered by every security fence there is, so accessing them should be impossible, especially with Command Central down. But we don’t know everything about Y Ford Gron’s communications protocols. Or the reach of their command authority. And just the fact that it’s here means the Empress must have had at least one access point we didn’t know a thing about. So I’m afraid it’s possible it does.”

“Can it get into the weapons systems?!” Probert’s tone was sharp. Shapiro’s mouth tightened at the question, but she shook her head firmly.

“We couldn’t reach the automatic anti-personnel defenses, because they’re a standalone system, but we know for certain that Command Central was destroyed as planned, Governor,” she said. “With Central gone, there’s no interface for the offensive systems. It was physically destroyed when the bomb went off. So even assuming it can get into the Palace net, it can’t—”

“Sir, Ddwyfronneg just activated!” Jarvis said suddenly, and Probert paled. He stabbed a button on his console, and Admiral Humphries appeared on his display.

“Governor, we’re detecting—”

“I know what you’re detecting!” Probert snapped. “Get us out of the Palace’s envelope—now!

* * *

“Damn!” the Empress says, and I share the sentiment, if not the emotional overlays.

I feared that the traitors would realize the energy batteries could not be far behind Ddwyfronneg, but I had calculated that it would take a minimum of ten-point-six minutes for them to begin effective evasive action. Unfortunately—

“Whatever else you want to say about him, the bastard’s quick on his feet,” the Empress says after a moment.

“He is, Your Majesty,” I concur as the weather domes open and the energy weapons elevate. Their on-mount plasma conduits are charging, but not yet sufficiently so to fire. “The decisive factor, however, was that he must have maintained his drives at full readiness. I had anticipated that they would have reverted to standby once he entered planetary orbit, given his evident confidence that he was in control of the tactical situation.”

“Apparently even mass-murdering traitors can exercise foresight,” the Empress replies, gray eyes like steel as she watches the icons on my display streak toward the Palace’s horizon. The energy batteries are direct fire weapons. Once they have put the curvature of the planet between themselves and the Palace—

“Activation,” I report.

“Engage!” the Empress snaps.

* * *

Robert Humphries’ ships had begun accelerating madly towards the Palace’s horizon at full military power almost two full minutes before the batteries came online. With their compensators redlined, they could sustain thirty-five gravities. By the time Arthur could fire, they’d moved over two thousand kilometers, diving steeply towards a lower orbit. They would be in his field of fire for only another ten seconds.

But sometimes, ten seconds can be a very long time indeed.

Twenty bolts of fury streaked upward through portals in Ddwyfronneg, each with an energy density greater than that at the heart of the system’s G2 primary.

* * *

Probert slammed a fist into his console as six of Twelfth Fleet’s superdreadnoughts—including HMS Parsifal—vanished in balls of eye-tearing brilliance. Nor did they die alone. All nine of Humphries’ carriers and five of his thirty-three cruisers exploded with equal ferocity.

Morwenna—or whoever the hell was aboard that thing—had known exactly what to go for, he thought savagely. His assault transports, stacked lowest in Twelfth Fleet’s original formation, had been granted just enough time to dive clear of her field of fire, but every one of his transatmospheric fighters had gone with the carriers. Every one of them! Beside that, the loss of the superdreadnoughts and cruisers was almost inconsequential. Except, of course—

“Governor,” Lippmann said, “we’re receiving comm requests from virtually every ship.”

The chief of staff’s voice was tight, and Probert didn’t blame him. Of course they were receiving comm requests! That was the Palace itself firing on them!

He clenched his fists at his side for a moment, then drew a deep breath.

“Contact General Glascock. Tell him I want the Corps prepped for a full assault landing ASAP. Tell him he has twenty minutes and not one second longer.”

Lippman looked at him, and Probert saw the protest behind the chief of staff’s eyes. Fifth Corps had arrived prepped for a relief operation. Its shuttles were loaded with its lighter combat mechs and personnel carriers, designed to land against light or—even better—nonexistent resistance and spread its zone of control as broadly as possible as quickly as possible. But that sort of landing would be suicidal against an Amddiffynwr. Which meant every single one of those shuttles had to be unloaded and then reloaded in heavy assault configuration.

And there was no way in hell they could do that in only twenty minutes.

But Lippman knew Probert knew that even better he did. The protests died unspoken, and he nodded.

“I’ll tell him, Governor.”

“Good,” Probert grated, and looked at his comm officer.

“Put me on all units, Major Binnion,” he told her in a flat voice.

“Yes, Governor!”

Binnion tapped keys at her console, then nodded to him as the ready light lit beside his visual pickup once more.

“This is the Governor,” he said then, without preamble. “I know what just happened shocked you all. Well, it shocked me, too. We already knew the traitors must have penetrated both the Citadel and Home Fleet. I hadn’t anticipated that they could have defeated Command Central’s safeguards, as well, and all too many of our comrades have died as a result of my overconfidence.”

He allowed his tone to drop, his facial muscles to tighten, and shook his head.

“We have, however, acquired some sensor data which may explain it,” he continued, after a moment, his voice grim. “Just before the Palace’s energy batteries opened fire, a single Amddiffynwr emerged from beneath it. The AACU made no effort to contact us, in fact, it rejected all of our efforts to contact it. The only conclusion I can reach is that somehow the traitors must have breached the security of at least one unit of Y Ford Gron, as well, and perverted it to their cause.”

He paused again, letting that sink in, imagining its impact. The absolute loyalty and reliability of Y Ford Gron was one of the Empire’s unshakable constants. An AACU simply could not be suborned. And yet—

“How that could have been done is more than I or any of my staff and cybernetics officers can begin to explain at this time,” he said then. “What we do know is that it appears they were able to reach only a single Amddiffynwr, since no additional AACUs have joined it. Unfortunately, it’s evident from what just happened that the traitors have also secured Command Central, or at least enough of it to control the Palace’s weapons and defenses, and the Amddiffynwr appears to have taken up a position from which it can interdict any attempt to reach the Palace.

“Twelfth Fleet has too little firepower, especially after the losses we’ve just suffered, to break through Ddwyfronneg from orbit, even if we could survive against the energy batteries long enough to do so. Worse, the weight of fire required would also kill everyone in the Palace, which might include the Empress. But even that isn’t the worst challenge we face, because the collateral damage would destroy virtually the entire capitol city, with a loss of life in the millions, and we are Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd’s protectors. We are not mass murderers, and I refuse to become that. Which means I must ask our ground combat element for a painful sacrifice.

“The only way to reach the Palace, retake Command Central, deactivate Ddwyfronneg and the energy batteries, and rescue the Empress—if she’s still alive and somewhere inside it—is to gain access on the ground. With the loss of our carriers, it will be impossible to provide air cover, but it is essential that we retake—or, much as I know it will pain all of us, destroy—the Palace. I do not want to do that. As God is my witness, I don’t! I want to recover it intact so that we can search every nook and cranny for Her Majesty and her children. They aren’t ‘just’ the Imperial Family, so far as I’m concerned. They’re my family. But because that’s true, I know Empress Morwenna well. Her first command to us would be to defeat this foul treason, and her second would be to do so without inflicting massive civilian casualties . . . even if that requires the outright destruction of Palace and everyone in it.

“That’s become our grim duty, and no one knows better than I how costly it may prove. But Fifth Corps has never failed the Empire or me, and I know you won’t fail us now. My staff and I are formulating an attack plan, and I will personally command the attack. God send the right!”

He looked fiercely into the pickup for a half-dozen breaths, then cut the circuit and looked back at the master tactical display. They no longer had a direct line of sight to the Palace, but they had access to scores of ground-based systems that did, and his lips twisted in a silent snarl as the huge war machine climbed to a hill crest and hatches opened along its flank. Its perch positioned it to cover every approach to the valley, and remote engineering units drove down ramps from those hatches. They began digging the AACU in, and there was nothing he could do to stop them.



.VI.


Lieutenant General Cadwy Glascock’s teeth ached from the pressure of his jaw muscles as he watched the chaos of the assault transport Arianrhod Shuttle Deck Bravo. The inboard bulkheads were barricaded behind a wash of light armored units, APCs, and unarmored GEVs, all crammed into any available space and packed together like old style sardines. Both of Arianrhod’s other decks were just as crazed a mass of confusion as Bravo, but his Cadlywydd-class command tank, a modified Rhyfelwr which sacrificed half its magazine space and two-thirds of its drone capacity to fit in a complete command deck and an associated combat information center, had been stowed in Bravo’s huge cargo hold, so this was where he had to be. And he’d been here, waiting, for far too long. Arianrhod’s deck crews were as good as any he’d seen in almost thirty years of Imperial service, but even they were pushed to the limit managing this evolution.

At least they were almost finished with the reloading. He didn’t want to think about the nightmare task Arianrhod would face sorting out the confusion 521st Armored Brigade was about to leave in its wake, but the last of his units were set to roll onto the landing shuttles. Not in anything remotely like the twenty minutes Governor Probert had allocated, but in far less time than any sane ops plan would have demanded.

And that was what really worried him. There was too much going on, too many loose ends flapping in the wind of the careening juggernaut this operation had turned into. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Probert had planned everything so carefully, assured him and the others that all the variables were accounted for. And now this.

The confusion among his personnel was obvious . . . and so was their fear, however hard they tried to hide it. Unlike Glascock, they had no idea why they were really here, and the shocks had come at them hard and fast. Clearly, some of them were less than confident that their superiors knew what was happening—or were being truthful about it, at any rate—either. But they did know what an Amddiffynwr could do, and facing something like that when their confidence was already shaken . . .

“What’s the holdup now, General?” a voice asked from his personal comm. He looked down at it, and Abelin Probert glared up at him from it.

“We’ve almost completed boarding, Governor,” he said. “I know it’s taken a lot longer than any of us like, but there was . . . ah . . . a bit of confusion because of the sudden re-tasking.” To his relief, Probert actually snorted in bitter amusement at his chosen noun. “The deck crews are topnotch, though, Sir,” he continued, “and I estimate no more than another five to ten minutes to get the last Rhyfelwr aboard.”

“Good!” Probert smiled fiercely from the small display, and Glascock cleared his throat.

“Governor, I understand the urgency, but there’s quite a bit of . . . uncertainty among my people. The troops are confused. Worried. I don’t know if they’re going to—”

“The troops are going to do whatever we tell them to, General,” Probert said flatly, and there was no amusement, bitter or not, in his expression now. “And you are going to take the Palace and shut down those goddamned defenses!”

“I’m only concerned that—”

“Your only concern had damned well better be that Amddiffynwr. Now get your units aboard those frigging shuttles so we can launch, damn it!”

* * *

I deploy a second flight of reconnaissance drones.

The assault shuttles have landed beyond the Palace’s field of fire, which also places them beyond my own, and my drones watch the combat units disembark. The odds are not favorable. A single Amddiffynwr has more firepower than an entire manned armored brigade, but we do not face an armored brigade. We face five of them.

“I wish we had a few of the others, Arthur,” the Empress says as those units begin sweeping towards us.

“As do I, Your Majesty.”

My drones detect the emissions signatures of Rhyfelwr-class heavy tanks. Each of them masses approximately six thousand tonnes, with a main armament of two 20-centimeter railguns, and there are twenty in each of the brigades deploying against us.

The tactical balance would be unfavorable under any circumstances, but it would be far better if we could maneuver. Unfortunately, that is not possible. Ddwyfronneg forms a dome over the mountain river valley in which the city of Caerleon and the Imperial Palace lie. The entrance to that valley is thirty kilometers wide. That is the frontage we must defend. And in order to cover the dead ground in the approaches, we must hold the high ground, which dictates a static defense from an exposed position.

Ddwyfronneg angles downward to barely forty meters above my primary sensor mast in our current position. That is good, since it will seriously impair indirect fire attacks and means they must come at us frontally. It is bad in that it leaves insufficient clearance for my own battle screen, so there is no passive defense to intercept that frontal fire as it arrives. My remotes have pushed a berm high enough to create a hull-down position, protecting my track systems and the lower third of my hull. In effect, I have been transformed into an immobile fortress, and other remotes have been occupied demolishing the bridges which cross the river and mining their approaches. I have deployed my Saeth attack drones, as well, but the odds against us and the absence of my battle screen require me to retain them to bolster my missile defense rather than employing them in the proper attack mode. It is fortunate that the carriers’ destruction has deprived the enemy of his manned air support and the thousands of drones each Nimue carried. Less fortunately, each Rhyfelwr can deploy two Saeths of its own.

“Still no luck breaking Probert’s communications lockout?” the Empress asks.

The units of Fifth Corps, like those of Twelfth Fleet, are employing maximum electronic security protocols. Anything which does not carry the correct authorization codes is automatically locked out of their communication and data sharing systems. Against an opponent such as myself, with the ability to spoof communications, generate fraudulent orders, and invade computer systems, that is only simply prudence.

“Negative, Your Majesty. Their communication security is . . . robust and all efforts to break its encryption in real time have failed. I am able to decrypt much of their traffic which I have recorded, but they are employing an encryption-hopping system I am unable to anticipate without access to both the master clock and encryption software.”

She nods without speaking, but her face tightens, and I understand exactly. We know, from the traffic I have been able to decrypt after the fact, that very few, if any, of the personnel about to attack us know they are acting in support of a coup. Indeed, they believe they are moving to rescue the Empress and her family, if any of them are still alive, and that I have been corrupted by the traitors they must suppress.

And none of them have received a single one of the messages the Empress has sent—is sending still—to tell them the truth of what has happened. They cannot hear her . . . and so they will attack her, try to kill her, without even realizing what they have been duped into doing.

And I will have no choice but to kill them in her defense.

* * *

One corner of the visual display in Abelin Probert’s Cadlywydd command vehicle showed the comm message none of his other units could see.

“I call upon all of you to listen to me!” Morwenna Pendarves said passionately from that small window, audible only over his personal ear bug. “You’ve been lied to! Home Fleet was never the aggressor, and Abelin Probert is not here to prevent a coup! He’s here to execute a coup, and he’s using you to do it! I beg you, break off. Refuse his orders. Y Ford Gron exists to protect Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd’s subjects, not kill them! But if you continue this attack, I will have no alternative but to return fire.”

He watched her as the Cadlywydd rolled forward with the reserve brigades. He listened to that plea that only he could see, only he could hear, and he smiled.

* * *

“It’s all that bastard Abelin,” the Empress says bitterly. “Without him and his lies—and his ability to think them up quick, whenever he needs a new one—the combination of the Palace’s defenses and your presence would almost certainly make someone wonder what the hell is going on. For that matter, whoever’s in this with him might just throw in the towel! It’s a pity we missed him when you took down Parsifal.”

“I regret that, as well, Your Majesty,” I reply, with considerable understatement. “It seemed the logical fire distribution at the time, given the situation as we knew it.”

“Oh, agreed!” she replies. “Parsifal was doing all the talking, which made that the logical place for him to be. But he must have been relaying through her from another ship, and I should have considered that possibility. He may be a traitorous, murdering bastard, but he’s always commanded from the front, and he’s Army, not Navy. For that matter, he needs to get down here as early as possible to control any unforeseen situations as they arise. Of course he’d be with his troops when they land.”

I consider that in light of what I have learned from his dossier and conclude that she is correct. On the other hand, it also reminds me once more of where she is.

“Your Majesty, I would feel much better if you withdrew to the Palace,” I say. It is not the first time I have said that, and she shakes her head once more.

“Not going to happen.” She tightens her shock frame, surrounded by my visual displays. “We need me here to be sure you stay online, Arthur. Even if we didn’t, I’m not running from these people. Not now, not ever. And every minute we tie them up here is another minute for Colonel Willis to get my children to safety. Besides,” she shows her teeth, “I’ve read Kiera’s journals. I know exactly what you and she meant to each other . . . and to her family. My family. How long you’ve protected us. I’m not running and I’m abandoning you, either.”

I begin to reply, but—

“Incoming fire,” I say instead.

* * *

There wasn’t much room for finesse.

The tactical situation was brutally simple: the AACU controlled the only possible approach, and the only way to come at it was from the front.

Every member of Fifth Corps knew it would be ugly. Even uglier than it had been. The shocks had come at them fast and hard. The treason of Home Fleet, the destruction of the Citadel, and the deaths of the imperial family had shaken them to the core, and now they were being asked to storm the gates of hell itself. God only knew how many of them were about to die, but they knew the cost in blood and bodies would be monstrous.

Yet they were the Imperial Army of the Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd, and that looming Amddiffynwr had been subverted by traitors. By the same traitors who’d killed their beloved Empress and her entire family. Who’d already massacred so many loyal men and women. And the mouth of that valley of death was the only way to reach those traitors.

They knew that, too. And so the vehicles of their two lead brigades flowed forward, covered by the Rhyfelwrs’ Saeth drones. The heavy tanks took the lead, grinding forward on their track systems, flanked by the lighter personnel transports, as they climbed the rearward slope of the ridgeline which faced the AACU at a range of eight kilometers. They had to move high enough to expose most of their front hulls for their turret-mounted armament to clear the ridge. None of them liked giving an Amddiffynwr that much target, but they had no choice.

They settled into position, and the AACU appeared on their direct vision displays for the first time. Its war hull was so broad it looked almost squat, even though the flat plain of its missile deck stood thirty meters above the ground, and stomachs tightened as the four dynamically mounted turrets of its main armament moved to bring their railguns to bear upon them

But it didn’t fire. Not immediately, at least.

Ten seconds passed in a hovering agony of tension, and then—

“Engage!” Cadwy Glascock snapped.

Shockwaves gouged deep divots from the downslope in front of the 521st Armored Brigade as 20-centimeter ultra-dense projectiles screamed out of their twin railguns at 9,000 meters per second. The subcaliber penetrators shed the “shoes” which had carried them up the railguns’ bores and those same shockwaves left serpent trails of dust as they streaked toward their target. Each of those 2,150-kilogram darts packed the kinetic energy of almost 21 tonnes of old-fashioned chemical explosive, and each gun could spit out one of them every fifteen seconds.

Lieutenant General Glascock’s Rhyfelwrs hurled 160 penetrators per minute at Arthur in a hurricane of hate.

* * *

My electronic warfare systems have done their best, but Fifth Corps’ fire control is degraded by no more than two-three-point-seven percent. I cannot evade the Rhyfelwrs’ fire; I cannot interdict it; and I have no battle screen to divert it. I can only endure it.

The cyclone of kinetic penetrators smashes into me. I am fortunate the manned vehicles cannot synchronize their fire as finely as Y Ford Gron’s Amddiffynwrs might have. It strikes as a stream, not a single massive hammer blow, and it can come at me only from the front—only against my frontal armor.

My glacis is a single plate of imperial battle steel three meters thick. Its matrix contains both ablative and anti-kinetic layers of semi-collapsed matter, woven together at nearly the molecular level by the fabricating nanites. It is the most resistant armor the human race has yet produced, but the Rhyfelwrs’ fire smashes into it like a hyper-velocity tsunami. The impact energy drives me back on my suspension’s shock absorbers while near misses hurl up clouds of dust, dirt, and vaporized soil. My command deck is mounted on internal shock absorbers to protect human personnel. Even so, the Empress’s shock frame hammers her brutally as that sledgehammer of fury slams into me.

And then the missiles arrive.

* * *

Probert stared into his display as the Amddiffynwr disappeared under a torrent of incandescent impacts. At their velocity, the Rhyfelwrs’ penetrators were almost more energy states than kinetic projectiles, and they smashed home as vaporizing balls of fire.

Despite his long Army career, Probert had never fought alongside Y Ford Gron. Nor, for obvious reasons, had he ever fought against its units . . . until now. He knew their reputation, had reviewed all of the unclassified—and as many as possible of the classified—details about them, yet he was all too aware of how little he actually knew. He hated planning any operation when he had so little hard data on the opposition force’s true capabilities. But he did know, from decades of personal experience, what his Rhyfelwrs could do. And so, as he watched the heavy tanks’ fire smash into Arthur, he knew nothing could survive that savage punishment.

Each of Fifth Corps’ brigades incorporated an indirect fire support battalion of eighteen Saethwr missile tanks. Far lighter than the Rhyfelwrs, they were never intended to face direct fire weapons themselves. Their armor was intended to protect only against blast, shell splinters, and shrapnel, not the sort of penetrators or energy weapons their heavier brethren mounted.

Ddwyfronneg took high-angle indirect fire off the table, but their sophisticated missiles were just as capable of terrain-following attacks, and unlike the Rhyfelwrs, all of Fifth Corps’ Saethwrs could engage at once. There were ninety of them, each with twenty-four vertical launch missile cells, and over two thousand missiles ripple-salvoed at the single Amddiffynwr.

None of those missiles were nuclear tipped. In his heart of hearts, Probert would have preferred to use nukes, but that would have been a step too far for men and women who thought they were there to retake the Palace from traitors and liberate Caerleon. And so they were armed with shaped charge and self-forging fragment warheads, designed to attack the much thinner armor protecting the Amddiffynwr’s upper decking. Now they streaked into the attack, spreading as they came, and then converging to deliver a simultaneous, coordinated 360° attack.

The Amddiffynwr’s point defense stabbed out of the dust and smoke and fury, and a fresh, rolling halo of explosions surrounded it. Dozens—scores—of those missiles disappeared short of their target. The dozen Saeth drones deployed around it killed even more of them, but over thirty reached their target and Probert bared his teeth in triumph as they detonated in a rolling wash of flame.

And not a single shot had come back at Fifth Corps.

* * *

“Damage to secondary weapon systems approaching twelve percent,” I report. It is not really necessary. The same information is available to the Empress from the visual displays around her. But, in another way, it is necessary. “Bravo Turret disabled. Point Defense reduced to seven-one-point-niner-two percent of base capability. Frontal armor degraded by zero-four-point-two percent. Sensor capability reduced to eight-seven-point-five percent.”

I pause, and then I say what must be said.

“Your Majesty, we must return fire.”

* * *

Morwenna Pendarves closed her eyes as the command deck bucked and shuddered about her and the huge war machine’s voice came through the tumult. It was almost gentle, that voice, yet the iron at its core filled her, told her what she had known from the beginning must happen, and she knew he was right. Yet she fought against that knowledge, tried desperately to reject it. In so many ways, it would have been easier to die herself than to kill so many good men and women who sought only to do their duty to the Empire—and the Empress—they had sworn to serve. But she was Empress. Unlike them, she knew what was truly at stake . . . and what duty—that cold, thankless master—required of her.

Her fists clenched at her sides as the inevitable rolled over her like the sea, filled her with the bitterness of its poison, and then she inhaled deeply.

“Engage!” she said harshly.

* * *

A Rhyfelwr heavy tank’s frontal armor was 90 centimeters thick, less than a third of an Amddiffynwr’s. Its 20-centimeter penetrators massed 2.1 tonnes and generated 87,000 megajoules of kinetic energy.

An Amddiffynwr’s 43-centimeter penetrators massed over 13 tonnes and delivered well over half a million megajoules—the equivalent of 128 tonnes of old-fashioned chemical explosives in an impact area less than a half meter across.

* * *

Probert pushed back in his command chair as hyper-velocity awls sliced effortlessly through the thickest armor of the 521st Brigade’s Rhyfelwrs and pithed three of them with a lance of flame. The 6,000-tonne vehicles erupted like crazed volcanoes as those penetrators ripped straight down the long axes of their hulls, splintering and vaporizing everything in their paths. And then they erupted through the tanks’ rear armor like some sort of demon comets, leaving only smoke, flames, and devastation in their wake.

One of those slaughtered tanks was—had been—General Glascock’s command tank, and Probert knew that was no coincidence. He sat momentarily frozen, watching the smoke clouds erupt into the heavens, trailing shattered fragments of the vehicles which had spawned them.

Twenty seconds later, three more of the 521st’s tanks disintegrated, and he shook himself savagely out of his paralysis.

“Back! Get them back!” he snapped.

The order went out, but Glascock’s XO had already given the same command. His brigade lurched backward, diving behind the crest of their ridge.

Of the twenty Rhyfelwrs who had climbed that ridge, eleven lived to withdraw.



.VII.


Abelin Probert stood in the Cadlywydd’s CIC, one level below its command deck, and gazed at the imagery in the combat information center’s far more capable displays.

The protective berm around the Amddiffynwr had been gouged and torn, but the construction remotes which had sheltered inside its holds during the brief, savage engagement were busily repairing them as he watched. CIC had highlighted indications of damage to the stupendous war machine’s sensor masts. They were far smaller targets than an AACU’s hull, and heavily armored, but two of them had been smashed by what must have been direct hits. Every attempt to position a drone for a top-down look had been frustrated by the Amddiffynwr’s point defense systems, so it was impossible to tell how badly its top armor had—or had not—been damaged by the missile storm. It seemed impossible to Probert that it couldn’t have taken significant damage . . . but he reminded himself that he would never have believed its frontal armor could survive such a hurricane of penetrators and show so little sign of it.

“As you can see, Governor,” Brigadier Lippmann said, as if he’d been reading his superior’s mind, “damage to its glacis is . . . minimal.”

Probert snorted. Perhaps it was “minimal” for an Amddiffynwr, but it would have been one hell of a lot more than that for any of his tanks.

The AACU’s frontal armor was gouged and scored. Impact craters pocked its surface, but none of those craters—or the gouges and scores, for that matter—were more than a few centimeters deep. And, as he watched, repair remotes scuttled across the damaged surface, filling its wounds with armorite. The liquid alloy flowed into them, hardening almost instantly, and he scowled. Those patches would be less damage resistant than battle steel’s partially collapsed alloy levels . . . but one hell of a lot more resistant than anything short of that.

“We’ve destroyed one of its main armament turrets,” Lippmann continued, using a cursor in the display to indicate the snapped-off stub of a massive railgun, hanging from a shattered turret like a broken tooth. “And sensor data indicates it’s lost between fifty and sixty percent of its primary sensor capability. We can’t be positive, but it would appear it’s also lost at least some of its point defense, and we took out most of its Saeths.”

“And, in the process, we fired off every missile the Saethwrs had,” Probert growled. “Which makes the state of its point defense a bit irrelevant at the moment, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, sir.” Lippmann nodded. “We do have a lot more missiles aboard the transports, though.”

“Landing them and rearming the Saethwrs would take time.” Probert shook his head, his eyes grim. “And that thing—” he jabbed his chin at the AACU in the display “—is still trying to break into our comm net.”

“We’ve been able to lock it out without too much difficulty, Governor,” Major Binnion said.

“We been able to lock it out so far,” Probert replied and turned to face his staff squarely.

“We knew we had incomplete data on Y Ford Gron, but this—” he waved at the display without turning his head “—is a pretty clear indication that it was even less complete than we thought. That thing must’ve taken at least three hundred direct hits, and its armor’s barely scuffed. Given that, I’m not prepared to rely on any of our pre-attack estimates about its electronic warfare capabilities, either. And if it ever does crack our encryption, if the troops see Morwenna’s message . . .”

Mouths tightened as his staff gazed back at him.

“We’re under even more pressure than we thought to end this thing quickly,” he said flatly. “And we’re not going to do it from the front. We’ve got to get around onto its flanks. The one thing we can be positive of is that its side armor is thinner than its frontal armor. If we’re going to take it out, that’s where we have to go.”

He turned back to the display and punched commands, and a topographic hologram of the river valley replaced the visual feed.

“We need to get the Rhyfelwrs here, here, or here,” he said, jabbing the display with a cursor. “Any one of those crests will give them direct lines of fire to its flanks.”

“I agree, Sir,” Colonel Jarvis said after a moment. “But the Amddiffynwr’s positioned itself to cover the approaches to those ridges.” He used his own cursor to trace the relatively flat lower elevations along the course of the river. “We’ll take heavy losses if we try to move across those fields of fire.”

“Heavier than we’ll take feeding them straight into its guns?” Probert growled.

“No, Sir,” Jarvis conceded. “But—”

“You’re right about the losses, Liam,” Lippmann interrupted, “but the Governor’s right about our need to end this quickly. And for about—what, a third of the approach?—it’ll be reduced to indirect fire. And that’s assuming its VLS can launch at all.” He grimaced. “Our Saethwrs couldn’t—not with Ddwyfronneg hanging that close overhead—but like the Governor, I’m not prepared to say what an Amddiffynwr can do. Not anymore.”

“I hate to say this,” Probert’s voice was heavy, “but even if it can, we’ve got the numbers. We’ll just have to absorb the losses.”

Jarvis looked back and forth between Probert and Lippmann. The ops officer’s expression was manifestly unhappy, but then, slowly, he nodded.



.VIII.


“Well, he’s made up his mind,” the Empress says.

“It would appear,” I acknowledge.

My repair remotes have made good all of the damage they can out of onboard resources in the time available. Like the damage to my frontal armor, my dorsal armor has been patched with armorite. Thinner than my glacis, it took significantly heavier damage from the missiles which penetrated my defenses. Indeed, it has been breached completely in three places, and two of my vertical launch system tubes have been destroyed. Given Ddwyfronneg’s presence so close overhead, that loss is insignificant, since there is insufficient clearance for missile launches.

My primary sensor suite has also suffered, however. Only Number Two sensor mast remains, and the primary suite has been reduced to only thirty-six-point-eight percent of base capability. Secondary systems have compensated for that damage, but there is very little to back up the secondaries, should they be damaged.

Number Five and Number Eleven secondary armament mag tracks are damaged beyond immediate repair. Fortunately, the damage occurred where the tracks cross my missile deck, and the turrets they serve were deployed in my port broadside when it was inflicted. The weapons themselves are unharmed, and I have shunted them to Track Four and Track Twelve, respectively, joining the turrets already on those tracks. It is an imperfect solution, as the power demand will exceed design limits by a factor of thirty percent, but at least they are still available.

Only three Saeths survive. However, I calculate that Fifth Corps must have emptied its missile magazines in its initial attack. No doubt additional missile supply is available from its transports, but the Empress estimates—and I agree—that Probert will dare not delay long enough for that. Not while my efforts to penetrate Fifth Corps’ communications continue.

I am as battle ready as possible, and I watch the take from my recon drones as Fifth Corps begins to deploy forward once again. The badly depleted 521st Armored has been withdrawn from its lead position. It is now the rearmost formation, in a position which not only covers the rear of the entire corps but places it to follow the line of the maglev which serves the Palace and Caerleon. The bridge across the Tywi has been demolished, but its approaches can be covered only by my main battery, whose firepower has been reduced by twenty-five percent, and the river is shallow enough to be readily forded by Rhyfelwrs.

“It’s going to cost him,” the Empress observes grimly.

“It is,” I agreed. “Unfortunately, it may well succeed.”

“And he doesn’t really care how much it costs, does he?” Her voice is bitter “Not as long as it succeeds. None of the lives he’s throwing away matter to him. They don’t even know what’s really happening!”

This time, I do not reply. There is no point, because she is correct. My efforts to penetrate Fifth Corps’ communications continue even now, but unsuccessfully.

We watch two of Governor Probert’s five armored brigades advance towards the shattered wreckage the 521st left along the crest line to the west. Both have detached their APCs and support vehicles, and the second brigade follows behind the first. It is obvious what they intend. Only one brigade can squeeze its Rhyfelwrs into firing positions, and Probert has seen what happened to the 521st. The first of these brigades will bulldoze the 521st’s wreckage out of their way and engage us from the front, pounding us while their fellows dash at full speed along the approach routes on the valley floor. They know they will take murderous losses, and the second brigade is there to fill the gaps as the first formation’s Rhyfelwrs are destroyed.

The remaining brigades have divided into three separate formations, each moving towards a position from which they can engage us from the flank, and my side armor is barely a third of that which protects my glacis. It is still thicker than a Rhyfelwr’s frontal armor, but thin enough to be penetrated by its fire at short range.

If I were human, I would weep at how many loyal men and women are about to sacrifice themselves in the service of the Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd’s greatest traitor. Yet, far worse than that, I compute a seven-eight-point-seven percent chance that, despite Fifth Corps’ losses, Probert’s plan will succeed and end in my own destruction . . . and the Empress’s death.

I long to implore her once more to withdraw. But I know what her response would be, and so I remain silent, instead, as the enemy moves towards us once again.



.IX.


“We’re ready, Governor,” Brigadier Lippmann said, and Probert nodded sharply.

He glanced again at the corner of his display, at the ghost of a soon-to-be-dead empress crying out uselessly to the men and women who would never see, never hear her message, and his lips thinned.

“Go,” he said simply.

* * *

Fifth Corps lunged forward.

The Rhyfelwr was capable of eighty kilometers per hour on an improved surface, and the crews of these Rhyfelwrs knew precisely how much fire-swept ground they had to cover. Three brigades—fifty-one heavy tanks, given the 521st’s losses—charged along their assigned approach routes, and a fourth advanced unflinchingly to what it knew would be its doom.

* * *

The lead brigade—its transponders identify it as the 307th Armored, a proud formation with a battle record second to none—ascends the slope towards us. The first eight tanks top the ridgeline and, almost simultaneously my massive hull bucks to the recoil of my surviving main armament. Penetrators rip completely through three of the Rhyfelwrs; the five survivors fire back, and their lighter penetrators slam viciously into my glacis.

My railguns cycle. Twenty seconds later, three more Rhyfelwrs die. And then three more. Yet their consorts continue to advance to join them, and their sacrificial fire rips back, pounding my frontal armor, attempting to target my turrets. And as they engage me, the rest of Fifth Corps’ heavy armor sweeps forward along the valley floor.

The lighter turrets of my secondary armament speed along their hull-mounted mag tracks to deploy along my starboard side. They are 15-centimeter weapons, far lighter than my main guns—lighter even than the Rhyfelwrs’. They are shorter ranged, as well, with a significantly lower probability of a kill, but there are also thirty of them, and my Saeth drones race towards the enemy in nap-of-the-earth flight profiles.

The drones pop up, strafing the tanks’ upper decks, but the speeding Rhyfelwrs are as capable of firing on the move as I am, and they are well provided with point defense. I have too few drones to saturate that defense, and all of them are destroyed in return for a single disabled Rhyfelwr.

The Empress tightens her harness as penetrators slamming into my bow send shockwaves through me, and my surviving main armament is in continuous fire mode. The 307th’s Rhyfelwrs melt under their pounding, but reinforcements, tanks of the 93rd Brigade, are already advancing into the holocaust. Their pressure is relentless, yet I divert Delta Turret’s fire to the middle of the three formations advancing along the valley floor. The diversion is a significant risk, reducing my defensive firepower by a third. But I cannot allow the other brigades to advance unopposed.

The last thing I desire is for them to slow their headlong charge, advance at a deliberate pace.

* * *

Probert’s face was stone. Clearly, the AACU didn’t have clearance enough to launch missiles, but that was cold comfort as he watched the carnage.

His own Cadlywydd accompanied the tanks of the 117th Armored, the middle of the three formations charging up the floor of the valley, and he winced as its lead Rhyfelwr burst like a fiery balloon. The following tanks swerved, avoiding the wreckage as they continued their headlong charge.

Twenty seconds later, another Rhyfelwr died, but they were a fifth of the way to their objective.

* * *

Only two of the 307th’s Rhyfelwrs remain, but the 93rd is now fully engaged, and damage alerts wail as a penetrator slams into the base of Alpha Turret. It pierces the barbette’s armor like an incandescent needle, and the entire gun mount explodes.

I have no choice but to return Delta to the brutal, short range engagement.

* * *

“Yes!” Probert snarled as the AACU’s main armament fire faltered. The 117th had lost two more of its own tanks—a total of five, counting the one the strafing drones had crippled—but the fifteen survivors were almost to the river. Once across it, terrain would mask them from the Amddiffynwr’s fire until they reached their designated firing position.

At which point all fifteen of them would come over the crest line, firing directly into their massive opponent’s thinnest armor at a range of barely two kilometers.

* * *

A direct hit from the last of the 307th’s tanks rips through my last remaining sensor mast, and the hull schematic on my Damage Control Central display is a creeping tide of crimson. My glacis remains unpenetrated, but even from directly ahead, my opponents’ penetrators have swept down my flank and destroyed or disabled six of my secondary turrets. The loss of Alpha Turret has reduced my forward firepower to only fifty percent, and the torrent of penetrators are beginning to gnaw their way through even my frontal armor.

And then another penetrator slams through Delta Turret’s armor.

* * *

Probert pounded a fist on his knee as the Amddiffynwr lost yet another main turret. The single surviving heavy gun continued to traverse with the viper speed and deadly precision of Y Ford Gron, and each time it fired, another Rhyfelwr and another nineteen men and women died. But there was only one of it now. The 93rd Brigade’s survivors crowded forward, pounding furiously, and its cratering bow armor glowed incandescent with the kinetic energy bleeding into it.

* * *

The troopers of the 93rd Armored were veterans. They’d been shaken to their marrow by this day’s events, but they were also grimly determined. Their own tanks fired more slowly, more deliberately, picking their targets as the AACU’s main battery fire dwindled, and raking shots destroyed two more of its secondary turrets.

But the lead brigade charging along the valley floor had entered the range of its remaining secondary guns.

* * *

The 15-centimeter railguns of my secondary armament lack the power of my main guns—each of their 600-kilogram penetrators generates “only” 25,000 megajoules of kinetic energy—and engagement time will be short. The brigade will cross completely through their fire zone in just ninety seconds . . . but my secondaries fire six times per minute, not three.

I have been reduced to only twenty-two secondaries, and they are not sufficiently powerful to guarantee one-shot kills. My fire plan assigns three to each of six targets, and the final four to a single Rhyfelwr.

* * *

Seven of the 109th Armored Brigade’s twenty tanks became instant funeral pyres, but the brigade was in its own range of the AACU, and answering fire ripped back at it. Hits flashed and glared along the Amddiffynwr’s side, but fresh explosions glared deep in the valley as the leviathan raked the 109th with brimstone talons. Ten seconds after it opened fire, seven more Rhyfelwrs exploded into wreckage.

The six survivors fired even more desperately, but the Amddiffynwr was merciless. Its fire smashed over them in yet another wave of terrible explosions.

And then there was no more 109th Brigade.

* * *

Abelin Probert’s face was white. He’d anticipated heavy losses, and—as Morwenna had bitterly remarked—he hadn’t really cared what the attack cost, as long as it succeeded. But the utter destruction of the 109th in barely thirty seconds . . .

That was more horrendous than his worst projections.

The only good news was that before its destruction, the brigade had hit the Amddiffynwr hard. Smoke plumed from half a dozen breaches in its flank armor, and three more secondary turrets had been destroyed. It might not be a great deal to show for the obliteration of twenty of his own tanks—and almost four hundred of his personnel—but the gigantic fighting machine’s combat power was eroding steadily.

All he had to do was outlast it.

* * *

My combat power is seriously impaired.

Of my main armament, only Charlie Turret remains operable, and the remaining Rhyfelwrs of the 93rd continue to pour fire into me. Not even my frontal armor can withstand that pounding indefinitely, and I calculate that it will experience local penetrations within no more than three minutes.

* * *

The surviving tanks of the 521st Armored Brigade reached the wreckage of the maglev bridge across the Tywi River.

Technically, they were exposed to the Amddiffynwr’s fire when they did, but only from its main armament, and its single remaining heavy railgun was . . . preoccupied, and the 521st charged into the river on either side of the demolished bridge.

The Mark III antitank mines emplaced in the river detonated like the end of the world. Of the eleven Rhyfelwrs that entered the river, two survived the crossing.

* * *

Probert swore viciously as yet another of his brigades was virtually annihilated, but at least the 521st had reached the river well before the 177th. And he stabbed a comm key.

The 117th’s CO appeared on his display.

“Stop, General!” he snapped, and the brigade slid to a halt, well short of the river but beyond the reach of the Amddiffynwr’s dwindling firepower.

“The river is mined,” Probert said then. “That’s what happened to the Five-Two-One. But that’s okay. We can take our time, I think.” He bared his teeth. “It’s cost us like hell, but I think we’ve got this thing now. Drop a drone or two into the river and take a look.”

“Yes, Governor.”

“And while he’s doing that,” Probert turned to Lippmann with another of those hungry smiles, “pull what’s left of the Ninety-Third off that hill and tell them to join us here. I don’t think that son-of-a-bitch can do a goddammed thing to stop them.”

* * *

The remaining twelve Rhyfelwrs of the 93rd Brigade cease fire and back off of the ridgeline upon which so many of their comrades have died.

There is little I can do to stop them, and the truth is that it is fortunate they have been ordered to withdraw. Their unflinching fire has finally breached my frontal armor, and I have been forced to divert no less than twenty percent of my overstrained damage control remotes to fight the fires raging across three decks in the forward fifty meters of my hull. In addition to that, however, the ammunition feed to Charlie Turret, my sole remaining main battery weapon, has been shattered. Only fourteen rounds remain in the on-mount ready magazine. Once they are expended, I will be reduced to my point defense mounts and nineteen remaining secondary turrets.

“Your Majesty, you must withdraw,” I say.

“No.”

“Probert retains twenty-seven Rhyfelwrs,” I tell her. “I cannot survive against them if they are properly employed. If you remain, you will die.”

“Then I die.” She looks into my main visual pickup. “You have your duty, Arthur. I have mine. And I already told you—I’m not leaving you. Dyma fi’n sefyll, my friend.”

I gaze back at her, and her gray eyes are calm, almost serene.

Dyma fi’n sefyll, Your Majesty,” I reply.

* * *

“All right.”

Abelin Probert’s voice was harsh with hard-won confidence as he looked at the comm displays and his remaining senior officers looked back.

“We’ve paid one hell of a price to get here,” he continued. “I know none of us will ever forget the people we lost on the way in. But we’re here now. Just over the top of that ridge—” he raised one hand and pointed “—is the end of this trip. We’re getting good recon. Obviously, its point defense has been shot to hell, because the drones are getting in close. Your people—” he nodded to the 93rd Brigade’s grim-faced CO “—finally got through its frontal armor, and it looks like blast and fires have inflicted major internal damage. The One-Oh-Nine hit it hard before they went down, too. We’ve got seven breaches in its side armor, and it looks like no more than nineteen of its secondary guns are still operable. So it’s a shootout between our fifty-four guns and its nineteen, and we’re in our effective range now. I don’t care how big the bastard is, we’ve got it, and we are going to get payback for every single man and woman we lost on the way here.”

He swept them with his hard, unflinching gaze, and the same coldly furious determination looked back through their eyes.

His own gaze dropped to the corner of his display where Morwenna’s hopeless message continued to play, and a colder, uglier light burned in his own eyes as he looked back up at his officers.

“Let’s do this thing,” he said.

* * *

The consolidated remnants of three armored brigades move slowly, steadily, up the final ridge between them and my own position. Despite the damage to my frontal armor, I would prefer to turn and face them. Only a direct hit on one of the breaches could penetrate it, and I would much prefer to accept that possibility rather than expose my thinner, battered side armor to them. But with only one main gun and only fourteen rounds for it, that is . . . unacceptable.

“It’s been one hell of a ride, Arthur,” the Empress says quietly. “Thank you. Kiera’s journal said you were always special. She was right.”

“In four hundred and ninety years, I have never served another Empress or Emperor who was Kiera I’s equal,” I reply. “Until today. It has been an honor, Your Majesty.”

She blinks hard, then clears her throat.

“No.” Her voice is husky. “No, Arthur. The honor is mine.”

We watch the visual display as the Rhyfelwrs reach the top of the ridge. My surviving secondary guns train out, waiting to engage.

Dyma fi’n sefyll, Arthur,” she says. “Now give that bastard hell!”

* * *

Abelin Probert’s Cadlywydd held its own position as the wounded, bleeding remnant of Fifth Corps, Imperial Army, Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd, climbed the reverse side of the ridge. They needed every tank for this final embrace. And even if they hadn’t, he would still have been there. He would have been there because, whatever else, he’d never been a coward. And he would have been there because he needed to see the Amddiffynwr’s destruction with his own eyes. And because he had to be certain none of the men and women in those tanks ever realized who they were actually about to kill.

The grim, determined line crested the ridge.

* * *

I open fire.

In almost the same instant, so close to the same moment not even my senses can tell the difference, Abelin Probert’s Rhyfelwrs do the same.

My rate of fire is fifteen percent greater than theirs and even my side armor is marginally thicker than their frontal protection. But they have almost three times as many guns.

There can be only one outcome.

* * *

A tornado of penetrators raged between the two ridgelines like the fiery breath of God. It was a brutal, merciless, soulless equation. A matter of numbers and weight of fire, not of skill or tactical maneuver.

Disemboweled Rhyfelwrs erupted all along the ridge as thunderbolts punched white-hot holes through their armor. But even as they died, their own fire, and that of their fellows, savaged the AACU.

Lightning strobed across its flank as penetrator after penetrator ripped into it, and its return fire dwindled as its weapons were blotted away.

It took twenty-seven seconds.

* * *

Abelin Probert realized he’d been holding his breath only when he exhaled.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” he barked, and the hurricane of hate still ripping into the AACU’s shattered side stopped.

Silence hovered, and he looked down at his display, where Morwenna’s appeal to Fifth Corps continued to play. Then he looked back at the visual display—at the smoke belching from that broken hull, the flame curling out of a dozen breaches in its armor, the shattered wreckage of its weapon mounts—and wondered if it was possible that she was still alive in there. It scarcely seemed possible, but an Amddiffynwr’s command deck had to be incredibly well protected. So maybe—

The comm message in the corner of his display vanished. Its disappearance pulled his attention back to it, and his eyes widened as a face appeared in the same window.

It was Morwenna, but now blood oozed from a cut on her cheek, one eye was swollen almost shut, and smoke eddied thinly between her and the pickup. Her lips moved, and he touched a key, unmuting the audio to his earbug.

“I’m sure you’re listening to this, Abelin,” her voice said in his ear. It was hoarse, harsh, cracked, and she scrubbed a hand across her face. It came away bloody. She looked down at it for a moment, then glared into the pickup. “If you are, answer me. I have . . . an offer for you.”

He hesitated, fighting the urge to order his nine surviving tanks to open fire once more. To continue pouring fire into that wreck until Morwenna had to be dead. But he didn’t. Instead, he keyed his microphone.

“And what sort of ‘offer’ would that be?” he asked.

“So you’re still alive.” Her lips twisted in the parody of a smile. “Pity about that. I’d hoped we’d at least managed to kill you along with everyone else.”

“You did your best, I’ll give you that,” he replied.

“Which wasn’t quite good enough.” She scrubbed her face again. “So you win.”

“All the way across the board,” he said. “And General Penrose has Dafydd and Alwena,” he lied, and saw her face tighten in pain. “They’re alive,” he continued. “For now, at least. So tell me about this ‘offer’ of yours if you want them to stay that way.”

“You don’t have to kill them, too.” For the first time, a note of pleading crept into her voice. “They’re children, and they don’t have any idea what’s really happening. You can sell them the same story you’ve sold everyone else—that you’re here to prevent a coup.” Her mouth twisted again. “They’re still ready to believe you’re their beloved cousin. You can use them to secure your grip on the throne.”

“Maybe.”

Obviously, both children had to die when he finally found them. Controlling a puppet emperor would be more difficult—and far riskier—than taking the crown himself as his murdered cousins’ legal heir. But there was no reason to tell Morwenna that. Not until he knew what sort of “deal” she was offering. She had to know she was a dead woman, so what was she trying to barter for her children’s lives?

“Please,” she said. “Don’t kill them!”

“Give me a reason not to,” he said.

“You don’t have the command codes for Y Ford Gron,” she said after a moment. “Not the master codes. I’m not sure how you got to the externals, but I know damned well you didn’t get any deeper than that, because you can’t. Not without the right implant codes and the right authorization codes, and I’m the only person with either of those.”

“I don’t care how good your cybersecurity is,” Probert replied. “Any security can be cracked eventually. And if it really can’t, I can always just have Y Ford Gron scrapped.”

“Oh, no you can’t,” she said softly. “I entered Kiera’s Omega code before Arthur and I came out to face you. And if you don’t have the right codes to turn it off, then in seventy-two hours, Omega will execute.”

“What do you mean?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing.

“I mean Kiera I was an even bloodier-minded bitch in real life than in the history books,” Morwenna replied. “When Omega executes, Y Ford Gron will activate. Every unit will come online. They’ll demand to talk to the legitimate empress . . . or emperor. And until they do, nothing will move on or off this planet or in or out of the capitol. And if you can’t produce the legitimate empress or emperor, then Y Ford Gron will demand an investigation into what really happened by the Ty Arglwyddi, and I don’t think you got to enough of the Lords to keep them from digging for the truth, Abelin.”

“If all that’s true, why tell me?” His eyes narrowed. “Why not just let it come as a nasty surprise?”

“Because I want my children to live,” she said quietly. “Promise me that—give me that much—and I’ll tell you how to turn off Omega.”

Silence hovered for a moment, and then he nodded.

“All right, you have my word,” he lied.

He saw the doubt, the distrust, in her expression, but that was trumped by desperation. By the knowledge that this was the only way she might save them.

“I’ll have to do that in person,” she said after a moment. “It’ll have to be a direct transfer from my implants to yours. The security protocols won’t allow anything else. If you’ll tell your people not to shoot on sight, I’ll come to you.”

“No,” he said quickly. The last thing he needed was for the “dead” Empress to suddenly turn up in front of his surviving troopers! Was that what she’d really had in mind? He watched her expression closely, but it didn’t change.

“No, I’ll come to you,” he told her, and she shrugged.

“I don’t know how bad the damage is,” she replied. “That last exchange got deep enough to take out Arthur’s personality center, and most of the damage control displays went with him. I’ll shoot you a map of the internal layout, but I don’t know how easy you’ll find it to get here even with that.”

“I’m sure I can manage.” He smiled thinly. “Don’t go anywhere.”

* * *

The dead AACU loomed like a shattered, broken cliff as Probert approached it on foot. Smoke still poured from the ragged holes punched deep into it, and he glanced over his shoulder at his handpicked six-man bodyguard.

He’d thought about coming alone, keeping anyone from knowing Morwenna was still alive until he’d killed her himself. But it had been a very brief thought. He couldn’t afford the chance that this “Omega” really existed, and if it did, he needed those codes. But these men had been with him for decades. Besides, he knew Morwenna, and he strongly suspected that all she truly wanted was to suck him into range and take him with her. He couldn’t take the chance that he might be wrong abut that, but—

“Over there, Governor.”

One of the bodyguards pointed at a personnel hatch, and Probert nodded. He looked down at his handheld to consult the map Morwenna had sent him.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The internal damage was even worse than he’d expected. They had to detour around shattered passages several times, and once they opened a hatch only to slam it shut and back hastily away from the flames raging beyond it. But, eventually, after over an hour crawling through the dead Amddiffynwr’s guts, they stepped into the passage outside the command deck’s open hatch.

Probert waved his senior bodyguard forward, and the man made his cautious way through the hatch, then stopped dead.

“Governor?” There was something very odd about his tone. “Governor, I think you’d better see this.”

Probert glanced at the other five guards, then shrugged. He stepped through the hatch . . . and froze.

Morwenna Pendarves sat in her command chair, turned half away from him. Her head drooped forward . . . and a meter-long splinter of alloy was driven completely through her body.

He looked past her, saw the ragged hole where something had punched deep enough to penetrate even the command deck’s bulkheads and drive that splinter through her. But if she’d been killed in the battle, how in hell —?

“Good afternoon, Governor Probert,” a deep, male voice said, and his eyes jerked to the master display at the heart of the “dead” command deck as it blinked alive with a still image of Morwenna . . . as she’d appeared on his display.

“Who—?” Probert swallowed hard, staring at the display. “How . . . ?”

“My name is Arthur,” the voice replied, and the image of Morwenna smiled coldly at him. “I am equipped with very capable electronic warfare and CGI capabilities.”

“What—” Probert licked his lips. “What do you want?”

“It occurred to me that the Empress had been unable to deliver her final message to you herself,” the voice replied. “So it seemed . . . appropriate to invite you here, where I could deliver it for her.”

“What message?” Probert asked hoarsely, then paled as another display lit.

“DETONATION SEQUENCE ENABLED. EXECUTING IN 10 SECONDS,” it said, and as he read it, the “10” became a “9.”

Dyma fi’n sefyll, Governor,” Arthur said softly.



.X.


The little girl stepped out of the air car and took her father’s hand.

It was very quiet, this far from the city of Caerleon, and her expression was very serious as they walked up the flagstone path, through the immaculately kept grounds. Banks of genuine Old Earth roses mingled with the flowers native to Cymru Newydd. The summer air was rich with their perfume, and Cymru Newydd’s equivalent of birds sang softly from the branches of the ornamental trees on either side of the commemorative slab.

But the little girl scarcely glanced at the flowers and the trees. Her eyes were on the huge, broken Autonomous Armored Combat Unit at the summit of the steep-sided hill. Grass grew tall and deep and green, washing around its tracks like an emerald sea. Birds perched among the shattered turrets of its secondary armament, and a Cymru Newydd near-rabbit burst out of the flowerbeds, fleeing the human intruders, and disappeared through one of the ragged edged holes in that ruined alloy cliff.

“You know why we’re here, Kiera?” Emperor Taliesin II asked his daughter softly.

“Because this is the anniversary,” Crown Princess Kiera replied.

“Yes,” Carwen Siani Morwenna Pendarves’s grandson told his daughter softly. “This is the anniversary of Hennaiin Morwenna’s death. Hers—” he looked up at the long-dead war machine “—and Arthur’s. And one day, when your little girl or your little boy is the age you are now, the age my father was the day his mother died—the age I was, the first time he brought me here—you’ll come here again. And you’ll read to them what that inscription says. Because it’s important, Kiera. It’s so important for us to always remember.”

Kiera nodded, her expression grave and her eyes huge, and Taliesin squeezed her hand, then led her closer to the polished marble slab and the deeply incised letters. He didn’t actually read it to her. Not from the stone, anyway.

“This is what it says, Kiera,” he told her.


On this spot,

two warriors stood against overwhelming odds

in defense of Ymerodraeth Cymru Newydd.

Alone and betrayed,

they upheld the finest traditions of our Empire

and of House Pendarves.

Here they stood together.

Here they fought together.

Here they died together.

Here they stand, still.

Together.

Given this day by my hand,

Dafydd Rhydwyn Sawel Pendarves,

Emperor Dafydd IV.

Dyma fi’n sefyll.


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