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It worried Shanga. He wondered what the old trickster had up his long gray sleeve. Keeping promises wasn’t an expected part of the magicians’ repertoire, and the fighter commander felt it boded evil.

The noise was deafening as impellers whined, refueling lines were tucked away, commands snouted here and there. There was a constant steady rumble of eager machinery. In a few moments the hangar crew would clear the deck, all inner doors would be sealed, and the huge belly doors of the cruiser would cycle open, giving the Renatasians access to open space.

* * *

“This is the confrontation we’ve been waiting a decade for,” Shanga had told his men, all twenty-three of them, lined up at a ragged, ill-disciplined attention in their shabby, mismatched uniforms. They represented a dozen old-style nation-states, most of which no longer existed. They flew craft purchased, borrowed, leased, and stolen from as many systems, the ships equally threadbare. In common the flyers shared only a thirst for revenge.

“The Butcher awaits us out there,” Shanga had said, pointing vaguely toward the hangar doors overhead. Artificial gravity in the hangar had been reoriented to allow easier servicing and launching of the squadron. “He’s laughing at us, you know. His very existence, ten years after his crimes, is a mockery of justice. Well, we will silence that laughter, bring justice back to the universe!”

There was no cheering. Some of the warship’s crew members working on the Renatasian squadron had looked up momentarily, impressed more at Shanga’s vehemence than at any eloquence he might have possessed. To individuals in a hierarchy such as they served, strong feelings openly expressed were a threat to survival, the highest virtues moderation, compromise, a deaf ear and a blind eye to injustice.

There was nodding among the twenty-three at Shanga’s words, acceptance, a grim agreement, a pact. They looked at their commander and at one another, realizing that it might be for the last time.

“And afterward?” Bern Nuladeg lounged against the outstretched wing of one fighter at the end of the line of men, chewing an unlit cigar. “What’ll we do then?”

“Afterward, we’ll …” Shanga tapered off. He hadn’t planned for there to be any afterward. There were a billion or more Oswaft out there, of uncertain capability, allied with the unspeakable Vuffi Raa. The chances any Renatasian would survive the next few hours were slight. Moreover, their safety afterward, in Gepta’s hands, was questionable. The sorcerer would be completely unpredictable once he’d won his victory. There’d be nothing to come back to, not in a fleet commanded from the Wennis.

Shanga shook his head as if to clear it of useless speculations. “Afterward you’re on your own. Rendezvous with whatever ship will pick you up. Get home the best way you can—if you want to go home. For the time being, my friends, we live only for justice, only for revenge.”

There was muttering, but it was in resigned agreement with what their commander had said. If there was any future, let it come on its own terms, its very arrival a surprise.

They boarded their fighting vessels.

Shanga strapped himself into his pilot’s couch, made sure the canopy seals were good, that all mobile service implements had been properly detached and the access ports dogged down. He watched the hangarmen file out through various oval doorways in an unpanicky haste as the big red lights came on to signal the beginning of the cycling process. In effect, the hanger now became a huge airlock; he knew from long experience that, despite the best efforts to filter and scrub the salvaged air, the rest of the ship, from control deck through officer’s country down to the scuppers, would smell of aerospace volatiles for several hours.

It was a good smell, he thought to himself, an agreeable one to die with in your lungs if you couldn’t arrange for soft grass and evergreen boughs.

He flipped switches and the whining of his