'And how did you defeat the Klikiss?' PD asked.

'Did you form an alliance with the hydrogues?' QT added.

The hydrogues were part of our plan. Because of our artificial body design, we could survive a hostile gas-giant environment that would destroy any organic being. When we discovered hydrogues in their deep-core cityplexes, we learned to communicate with them, developed a common language, and offered them the technology of Klikiss transportals, which they adapted as gigantic transgates in their gas planets. Suddenly, warglobes could move from planet to planet, without traversing space. During their great war with the verdani and wentals, during the betrayal of the faeros, the hydrogues used those transgates to great advantage.'

'How did that exterminate the Klikiss race?' PD pressed.

'During a Swarming, Klikiss flood through the transportals all at once, dispersing to thousands of unclaimed planets to establish other hives.' Sirix swivelled his head, particularly proud of the irony and clean efficiency of the plan. 'Before the last Swarming began, we modified the transportals. When the breedex fissioned and the myriad hives passed through the gateways, we rerouted the path. Every one of the travelling Klikiss exited through hydrogue transgates deep within gas giants, where they were instantly crushed. Over eighty per cent of the Klikiss race died on that first day, before they guessed what we had done. Then we began our attack.

'From that point, allied with the hydrogues, we set about destroying the survivors. We also made a pact with the Ildirans, arranging to protect them from the hydrogues in exchange for their long-term cooperation. In the end, we robots achieved exactly what we wished. Afterward, as we were designed to do - in the fashion of our Klikiss creators - we allowed ourselves to hibernate for centuries, until the Ildirans awakened us at a mutually agreed-upon time.'

The two compies looked up at the high Klikiss towers. Sirix expected PD and QT to feel pride in understanding the robots' moment of triumph. Sirix would take whatever time was necessary to complete the recapture of every world that by all rights belonged to the Klikiss robots.

He was sure the humans would fall as efficiently as the Klikiss race had.

Ten

Nira

Only one treeling remained on Ildira, a single pale green shoot rising from a chunk of worldtree wood. The charred lump had been dead, but somehow, after being reunited with her beloved Jora'h, Nira had reawakened a spark of the verdani in the wood. It had felt like becoming a green priest again - a personal resurrection after all the horrors she had suffered in the breeding camps on Dobro.

Now that she had forgiven Jora'h, she never wanted to be apart from him again.

She knelt with him in the skysphere terrarium, glad just to be close. With a warm smile, she set the rejuvenated treeling among the other blackened chunks in the terrarium dome. A Roamer trader had brought the fragments to Mijistra as mere curiosities, back when Mage-Imperator Jora'h had thought Nira dead. He had bought every scrap of wood, in memory of her.