"We will not survive this war through direct military action. We can only wait for the Dobro experiments to be completed. We must succeed in this generation, or we are doomed." He smiled at Kori'nh. "Only through the support of my people and the determination of others such as yourself can we survive."

After Kori'nh had left, the Mage-Imperator said to his personal guard, "Bron'n, secure all the trinkets our misguided Adar took from theBurton . Make certain no one else sees them, and then arrange for their destruction."

The bodyguard nodded gruffly. "Shall I deliver them here for your inspection first, Liege?"

"I have no need to see what they are. Such things are irrelevant."

Bron'n left, never questioning, always competent. With a sigh, Cyroc'h leaned back so that his pallid skin was bathed in colored sunlight. With uncharacteristic wistfulness, he recalled when he'd been simply the Prime Designate and could leave important decisions to his own father. He had enjoyed the benefits of being the firstborn noble son, virile and healthy, his hair long and free and crackling with life.

He had known that pressures and duties would eventually be placed upon his shoulders, but the time had seemed so far off when he would lose his manhood and gain thethism . It was the same for every Prime Designate. But such a day always came, eventually.

Almost two centuries ago, he remembered when his father, Mage-Imperator Yura'h, had received word about the first contact with human generation ships. The Solar Navy commanders, bureaucrats, and noble kithmen had pondered the meaning of this new and intelligent race that wandered clumsily between the stars without faster-than-light travel...

But that wasn't the only thing. Cyroc'h also kept locked in his memory the knowledge of what the hydrogues had done ten thousand years ago, in the previous titanic war. Only Mage-Imperators carried the dread information from generation to generation. Hydrogues had never bothered to understand other races, interested only in cosmic battles against the wentals and the verdani, and their volatile alliance with the faeros. They did not comprehend planet-bound Ildirans or the Klikiss, and the Mage-Imperator desperately needed a new kind of bridge, a powerful and skilled ambassador who could forge an alliance in a way the hydrogues could understand.

His own father had concocted the idea of using humans to augment the long-term but faltering Dobro breeding plan. After Yura'h's death, the new leader Cyroc'h had continued the hybrid program. And so must Jora'h, much as he would hate it. Or it would never come to fruition.

And now, with so many different plans under way, with the hydrogues reappearing and the fate of the Ildiran Empire at stake-why was his mortal body showing its failings? Seized by malignant growths as if by some cosmic joke?Why now?

He wanted to shout his anger to the blazing suns in the Ildiran sky, or go to the ossuarium and demand solutions from the glowing skulls of his ancestors. But nothing would give him the answer he needed.