“How well do you think his kind is likely to stand up to bullets, armored fighting vehicles, aircraft?” Atvar asked rhetorically. The officers all laughed, looking forward to an easy conquest, to adding a fourth planet and solar system to the dominions of the Emperor.

Not to be outdone in enthusiasm by his commander, Kirel added, “These are recent images, too: they date back only about sixteen hundred years.” He paused to poke at a calculator. “That would be about eight hundred of Tosev 3’s revolutions. And how much, my fellow warriors, how much can a world change in a mere eight hundred revolutions?”

The officers laughed again, more widely this time. Atvar laughed with them. The history of the Race was more than a hundred thousand years deep; the Ssumaz dynasty had held the throne for almost half that time, ever since techniques for ensuring male heirs were worked out. Under the Ssumaz Emperors, the Race took Rabotev 2 twenty-eight thousand years ago, and seized Halless 1 eighteen thousand years after that. Now’ it was Tosev 3’s turn. The pace of conquest was quickening, Atvar thought.

“Carry on, servants of the Emperor,” the fleetlord said. The officers stiffened once more as he left the command station.

He was back in his suite, busy with the infinite minutiae that accompanied command, when his door buzzer squawked. He looked up from the computer screen with a start. No one was scheduled to interrupt him at this time, and the Race did not lightly break routine. Emergency in space was improbable in the extreme, but who would dare disturb him for anything less?

“Enter,” he growled.

The junior officer who came into the suite looked nervous; his tail stump twitched and his eyes swiveled quickly, now this way, now that, as if he were scanning the room for danger. “Exalted Fleetlord, kinsmale of the Emperor, as you know, we draw very near the Tosev system,” he said, his voice hardly louder than a whisper.