Green beams sliced towards him, breaking his line of thought. Jets screeching into full life, the gunship raced upwards, the battlefield dropping away in a matter of seconds, alien weapon-lightning dissipating beneath it. Nem­etus looked north to see the outriders breaking away, a streak of blue leaving wide furrows in the tilled soil. His view turned with the gunship and he leaned out from the boarding steps, just able to see the lifter cars ahead, the tip of the main building visible above the horizon.

The harder battle was about to begin.

Though he had no direct cortical link with Zozar – it was far too much of a risk that the Destroyer taint would spread to him – Simut could still monitor from afar the progress of the skorpekh lord. The overlord was aware that an attempted flanking attack had been forestalled by the enemy, but Zozar himself had almost breached the barbarians’ defences.

With Tholotep rushing to steal his crown, Simut had no time for flourished manoeuvres or other subtlety. He needed to win; to place the resonator and activate the overnull. And he needed to do it as quickly as possible, which meant pushing the resonator carriers into harm’s way. That required the enemy to be overwhelmed by more pressing concerns.

‘Translocate the legion!’ he announced, striding down from the throne to address Phetos and Ah-hotep. ‘Full attack!’

‘Where shall the legion attack, Light of the Stars?’

Simut regarded his royal warden with a mixture of confusion and disdain. ‘The enemy, of course. Attack the enemy!’

The overlord felt a flicker of exchange between Phetos and the plasmancer.

‘Might I suggest deploying the bulk of the cohorts to annihilate resistance on the surface, and a smaller strike force to occupy the orbital station?’ said Ah-hotep.

‘Yes, that is my will.’

‘Which attack do you wish to lead, Sunderer of the Fourth Wall?’

‘Lead…?’

Simut felt his enclosing panoply, the phase blade in two of his hands. It felt right that he should be at the head of the army as they gained his victory.

But the memory of his hasty departure from the Barge of the Stormhawk was still sharp. He was not confident of his full integration to the resurrec­tion systems of the Sun of Endings, nor of its survival if it was attacked again. Even if he was waylaid and resurrected, his absence provided an opportunity for Tholotep to seize his command. The protocols the rogue emissary had wielded when communicating with Simut – ­stolen authority of the king – might well be turned to the vault matrix itself.

‘The expedition still requires my strategic guidance,’ he told his underlings. ‘As much as I would glory in the role of battlefield general, the good of the mission requires that I remain in an objective position.’

‘Then shall I guide the army upon the station?’ suggested the plasmancer.

‘You seem eager at the prospect. Why so keen, Ah-hotep?’