He shut off the audio input and flexed his blades, crossing the hall with a few purposeful strides.

All sentience had to perish.

Peace demanded it.

It was strange to Ah-hotep how much failure could masquerade as victory. From the ruins of the human citadel, she watched the blackstone resonator descending to its resting place close to the outer wall. The ground had been razed to a near-mirror finish, foundations laid by canoptek vassal teams so that the immense structure would slot neatly into place. Even deactivated the blackstone was pulling the edges of the overnull further, separating the reality of existence from the unreality of nightmare, as planned by Szarekh. Another star system subjugated to the great plan. The humans were all but mindless now, yet still the butchery of the skorpekh lord and his Destroyers continued. The overlord seemed unconcerned that his attempts thus far to halt the rampage had been ignored.

Not far away Simut also observed the proceedings, dressed in full battle panoply and accompanied by his lychguard. Phetos was closer to the contact site, providing the overlord with a secondary experience of the occasion. Other such ephemera of status – cryptothralls and canop­tek activators – attended in lines, and behind them the ranked might of the Szarekh phalanx under Simut’s command. They stood in the rubble of the citadel among the mangled, bloating corpses of the defenders gathering flies and other carrion-scavengers. Overhead crescent-shaped attack craft flew victory flights about the approaching needle of darkness, while higher up in orbit the tomb fleet attended to the moment of the master’s conquest.

On the surface it was a celebration, but Ah-hotep knew that the reality was different. Casualties had been far higher than necessary, among the regular legion and the Destroyers. Had Simut not interfered in her campaign the citadel would have fallen with the minimum of effort, but the overlord was utterly unaware of his own incompetence. Zozar’s slaughter was an inevitable and entirely pointless consequence of that ineptitude. She wondered if other branches of the expedition were led by similar mediocre talents, and if many more appropriate generals were held back by the Silent King’s need to place trusted confidants in positions of power.

It was a weakness to be exploited, that much was certain, but Ah-hotep was not yet sure how. Szarekh’s iron control and Simut’s ignorant para­noia made taking any military assets impossible. Forced to do what she could with such scraps of authority and materiel the overlord left to her, Ah-hotep was in a poor position to effect any change to their strategy, nor to rise in prominence within the dynastic hierarchy. The very inadequacies of the master to which she had been assigned was preventing her from fulfilling greater potential for her true lords in the technomandrite ranks.