The Emperor’s commander of the invasion armada had wished to attack a dispersed arm of the enemy fleet at once. Strand had convinced the commander to wait. Since the Destroyer’s annihilation in the Solar System, the Emperor and Strand had come to terms again. Necessity had predicated it.

The Methuselah Man had instructed the armada commander in his plan. Strand had said the subhumans needed time for boredom to mentally prepare them for the coming shock before the moment was right to psychologically pinprick them.

As Pa Kur crunched across sand, he squinted at a bullet-fast object coming toward him. He shifted leftward with a cat’s quickness. A thick stalk of ras-grass flew past. If it had struck him, it could have easily breached the wind-suit. The storms here made breathing difficult without aid. He had no time for the theatrics of a torn suit.

Pa Kur had short silver hair and strange eyes even for a New Man. They were glassy like obsidian, showing no emotion. That took some doing on his part. He had never let anyone know that his Fifth Rank status rankled intensely. He desired greater rank with a seething passion. He also wanted to run a starship of his own. Those slots only went to Third Ranks and higher.

His yearning for starship command had been the prime ingredient for his taking so readily to Strand’s plan. The Methuselah Man’s idea was ingenious and subtle. It would also take perfect timing today. Pa Kur knew the others of his sept sneered at Strand’s guarantee of total victory if they would only do as he said. Pa Kur wanted to teach them otherwise.

The obsidian eyes seemed to glitter for just a moment. Pa Kur had studied subhuman psychology, the key reason Strand had chosen him for this task. Pa Kur also had a theory. If one truly wanted to understand greatness—such as that of the New Men—one must first grasp the base stock from which they had come. It would be similar to sub-men studying chimpanzees to learn more about themselves. It was a radical idea, he knew. It also allowed him to understand the subhumans more deeply than his so-called superiors and peers. It never mattered what an inferior believed. Even the enlightened Pa Kur subscribed to that thought.

Despite his fifth rank status, Pa Kur believed he understood Strand’s purpose better than anyone else on Palain IV’s water moon. This pinprick attack would be the first step toward unsettling the subhumans, of teaching them to always doubt themselves.

Within the bubble helmet, a static sound from the implant in his left ear caused Pa Kur to tilt his head.

“Report,” he said, in an emotionless voice.

“We’ve received the coded signal from him,” the scratchy voice said. “The word is: go.”