► At maximum nonmilitary cruise, the Piar Cohn barreled through space at just over a thousand lights. That wasn’t the fastest speed in the Empire, but it was respectable, and in a pinch Aymes knew his ship could pull another two hundred without overly stressing the wave-generation system. More than that and there was a fair to good chance of them blowing something irreplaceable and never seeing home again.

He was standing in the forward officers’ lounge, one of the few places on the ship that offered a “view,” such as it was. The thickly armored screens ahead of him were transparent, so he could look out at the visible moving stars, all blueshifted as the Cohn raced toward them.

Occasionally, a particularly close stellar body, ten light-years away or so, would streak past dramatically, but for the most part there was more of an ordered procession to be observed than a rampant rush into the future.

“Captain.”

Aymes didn’t turn around at the voice. He continued to watch the procession. “Yes First?”

“We are approaching the first checkpoint, sir. Long-range instruments detect no sign of the targets.”

Aymes nodded slowly. Not really anything unexpected there.

“Proceed as scheduled. I’ll make further decisions once we’ve got better scans.”

“Yes Captain.”

They wouldn’t find any sign of the Drasin at their first stop, Aymes would bank on that. No useful sign, at least. The Drasin left unmistakable carnage behind them, marked into the very worlds of every system they touched, but what the Cohn was looking for was any information on where they had gone.

That wasn’t going to be located so easily.

Still, he and his crew had to check by the numbers, just to be certain. The risks were too great to do otherwise.

He shuddered to think of what would have happened if the Drasin had been lost with a sufficient breeding group of first-generation drones. As it was, the havoc they would wreak was nearly incalculable, but if they had sufficient resources to propagate a new first generation . . . well, not even the Empire would be safe, he’d bet.

Frankly, Aymes thought that the Department of War was flat-out insane for unleashing such things on the universe. What good were systems that had been emptied of their most viable worlds? Certainly, the Drasin made for excellent terror weapons and a shatteringly impressive strategic threat, but from what he’d read, the orders for the last series of incursions into Oather space had been anything but strategic.

Should have cut through the small colonies immediately, gone straight to the homeworlds. Turn one or two of those into Drasin fodder and the rest would have capitulated to the Empire in days—weeks at the outside, Aymes thought, annoyed by the unprofessional nature of the action.