Instinct managed to find words amid the clouds of fear that shadowed Martinez’s mind. He had learned early that when he was caught out, he should always admit it and then beg forgiveness in as endearing a manner as possible. Honesty, he’d found, had its own brand of charm.

“I regret the suggestion extremely, Lord Commander,” he said. “I was thinking only of my own selfish desires.”

Enderby glared at Martinez for a few long moments, then took a step back. “Over the next few hours I shall do my best to forget your very existence, Lieutenant,” he said. “See that those letters are delivered.”

“Yes, Lord Commander.”

Martinez turned and marched for the door, ignoring the strong impulse to run.See if I ever try to save your miserable life again, he thought.

And, damn the Praxis anyway.

It was the alien Shaa, the Great Masters, who had imposed their absolutist ethic, the Praxis, on humanity after the surrender of Earth following the destruction of Delhi, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and a dozen other cities by antimatter bombs. Humanity was the second intelligent species to feel the lash of the Shaa. The first being the black-scaled, centauroid Naxids, who by the time of Earth’s surrender were sufficiently tamed to have crewed most of the Shaa ships.

No one knew where the Shaa originated, and the Shaa were not forthcoming on this or any other aspect of their history. Their capital, the city of Zanshaa on the planet of Zanshaa, was clearly not their planet of origin, and had been chosen in historical times for its convenient location amid eight wormhole gates through which the Shaa could access their dominion. The Shaa “year,”.84 Earth years, had no reference to the period of Zanshaa’s orbit about its primary, or indeed to the orbit of any other planet in their empire. Any reference to their origins had been erased from the records by the time their subject species were given access to them.