‘Do not concern yourself with dynastic matters. When you have completed your task you may return to your place in court. Until then, be glad if I do not need to speak with you again.’

The image blinked away, leaving Simut alone in the darkness of the tomb ship. He could feel an insistent nagging from Ah-hotep, demanding to be released. Politer enquiries were made on behalf of Phetos. Remembering his promise to Tholotep, Simut opened the barrier wards and summoned his entourage back to the chamber. There was much to be done and not much time to accomplish it.

Ah-hotep despised hosting the overlord on her tomb ship even more than she had loathed being his puppet from afar. Just his raw presence at the centre of her personal matrix was an affront to all dignity, squatting in her command chamber like a parasitic worm eating at the guts of a king. His protocols polluted everything they came into contact with, as though incompetence was a virus. While the fleet gathered in strength around the resonator, ready to press on towards the third planet, Simut delved into her archives and vaults, raking over old encounters and activating her legion as though they were toys to play with. She was thankful to have had the foresight to wipe away every trace of the enemy vessel she had detected, so that it seemed her ship had been afflicted with the same blindness she had imposed on the Barge of the Stormhawk.

Unable to contain her frustration and revulsion, she excused herself on an errand into the depths and headed for the secret chamber isolated by the technomandrite protocols. To all cortical fields except her own, the room did not exist. The technomandrites had wrapped it up with dimensional wards that even she did not understand, its net of energies so finely described she could not follow the complexities. Only when physically stood at the boundary could she regard the chamber beyond.

Stepping inside, she knew it would not be long before Simut’s impatience got the better of him and he looked for her. To all intents her persona was located in the adjoining vaults, a resonance on the energy streams that gave the impression she was working on a transference fault. If the overlord tried his trick of forced translocation… That would be a problem.

Ah-hotep activated the communications grid, considering her words. She held her feelings in check at first, remembering that her reports needed to be clear to have any function.