"Enemy rocket bomb at fifty thousand kilometers and closing," said a disembodied voice.

Lal strained for some glimpse of the enemy. he noticed the silvery crescent of another Dorvik battlewagon some two hundred kilometers away, but that was all.

Both men sat in the flagwagon's Imperial gardens and counted their last seconds.

A white glare lit the gardens. Lal looked up, startled. The battlewagon he had noticed before had fired its rockets and now moved slowly across the sky. The brilliance of its jets brought temporary daylight to the gardens.

"It won't work," Harl whispered.

But somehow it did. The feeble-minded rocketbomb accepted the other battle wagon as its target of opportunity, and the garden's curving crystal walls turned opaque as the wagon's screens powered up. When the walls cleared, the other wagon was gone: ten thousand men and the gross annual product of an enitre continent had been vaporized in less than a millisecond.

General e'Kraft's fangs clattered together with suppressed emotion. To lose men in war was expected, but to sit defenselessly and let an enemy destroy you with inferior weapons was nightmare. Abruptly he looked up, as if listening to some private voice. "Puissance, the crew of the Vengeance have removed to the Sword of Alkra."

Several more red dots appeared near the zenith, but Lal ignored them. The fleet would have to hold together jsut a little longer...

The aide reappeared. "Computations complete, Puissance. Just tell us which bat--"

"The Vengeance. As soon as the jump is made and your are sure the Enemy is nearby, annihilate the entire mass of the wagon."

Lal's urgency was conveyed to the other man, who vanished without even bowing.