He had acquired nothing but a few black stains on his clothes for all his effort. Now, his aching muscles and scratchy eyes suggested that he should have gotten more sleep. The colonists were up at the first light of dawn, ready to work until deep dusk.

Davlin’s imager was hidden in the seams of his jumpsuit, a thin powerpack incorporated into the lining of a pocket, several flexible lenses disguised as buttons. He recorded the action of the big construction machine as it smashed down the last support beam of the old gathering hall. Davlin saw nothing out of the ordinary, no hidden underground vaults, buried pods, or lock-chambers.

Apparently, the Ildirans had been nothing more than simple settlers, just like the new human colonists. Or perhaps they were very clever at constructing their masquerade. There must be much more to the mighty and ancient empire than the aliens were willing to show their new allies, but Davlin could find no proof of it.

His first report seemed rather thin, a gleaning of curious—but militarily insignificant—details. These Ildirans set up their “splinter” colonies by clustering everyone in a single metropolis, leaving most of the landmass uncultivated. They always seemed to pack themselves into a small area, even when they could have spread out across the whole continent.

The Hansa settlers, on the other hand, would first pick clean the emptied Ildiran town, then clear more land and claim huge swaths of acreage, anointing themselves new land barons. Before long, the untouched landscape would be a patchwork of agricultural and mining domains, giant estates for a new gentry.

The Ildirans’ gregarious nature could be exploited as a weakness, Davlin supposed. An Ildiran colony needed a certain population density in order to achieve their telepathic connection. When half of their Crenna colony had died from the blindness plague, they had fled back to dense population centers on their main worlds. The humans who had come to take their place, however, liked to be alone, to work for themselves. Including Davlin himself.

After the gathering hall had been dismantled, Davlin worked with the crew to clear the area for erecting prefab structures. The new buildings would become businesses, meeting rooms, restaurants, stores, drinking establishments. Davlin had claimed one of the intact abandoned Ildiran dwellings for his house, though most of the ambitious colonists chose to start their own homesteads far away, across many miles of cultivated fields. Within months, a second wave of colonists would arrive: Hansa bureaucrats, merchants, businessmen, support personnel, service industries.

By then, perhaps, Davlin’s spying work would be done.

Three men approached the demolition crew, carrying a polished black obelisk topped with a stylized face of the Mage-Imperator. The stone seemed porous and lightweight, but it must have been heavy, since they augmented their efforts by using gravity-assist lifters. “Hey, anybody want one of these? This is the twelfth one so far—those aliens sure must like to look at their fat old emperor.”