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us, too, Sir. That’s why I wanted to take this chance to tell you.” She looked directly into his eyes. “It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve under you, Sir. I regret nothing which has ever happened since you selected me for your staff.”
    â€œThat…means a great deal to me, Nimue,” Pei said very softly. Like his brother, he was a traditionalist, and it was not the way of his culture to be emotionally demonstrative, but he knew she saw the pain in his eyes. “And may I also say,” he added, “that I am deeply grateful for all the many services you have performed.”
    It sounded horribly stilted to his own ear, but it was the closest either of them dared come over a public com circuit, especially since all message traffic was automatically recorded. And, stilted or no, she understood what he meant, just as completely as he’d understood her.
    â€œI’m glad, Sir,” she said. “And please, tell Shan-wei goodbye for me. Give her my love.”
    â€œOf course. And you already know you have hers,” Pei said. And then, whatever his culture might have demanded, he cleared his throat hard, harshly. “And mine,” he said huskily.
    â€œThat means a lot, Sir.” Alban smiled almost gently at him. “Goodbye, Commodore. God bless.”

    The destroyers did succeed in pushing the scout ship back. Not as far as they would have liked, but far enough to give Admiral Pei a distinct feeling of relief.
    â€œGeneral signal to all units,” he said, never looking away from the master tactical display. “Pass the order to execute Breakaway.”
    â€œAye, aye, Sir!” the senior flag bridge com rating replied, and a moment later, the light codes on Pei’s display flickered suddenly.
    Only for an instant, and only because his sensors were watching them so closely.
    Or , he thought wryly, that’s the theory, anyway .
    Forty-six huge starships killed their hyper drives and disappeared as they dropped instantly sublight. But in the very same instant that they did, forty-six other starships, which had been carefully hidden away in stealth, appeared just as quickly. It was a precisely coordinated maneuver which Pei’s command had practiced over and over again in the simulators, and more than a dozen times in actual space, and they performed it this one last time flawlessly. The forty-six newcomers slid quickly and smoothly into the holes which had abruptly appeared in the formation, and their drives’ emissions signatures were almost perfect matches for those of the ships which had disappeared.
    That’s going to be a nasty surprise for the Gbaba , Pei told himself coldly. And one of these days, it’s going to lead to an even bigger and nastier surprise for them .
    â€œYou know,” he said, turning away from the display to face Lieutenant Commander Alban and Captain Joseph Thiessen, his chief of staff, “we came so close to kicking these people’s asses. Another fifty years—seventy-five at the outside—and we could have taken them, ‘star-spanning empire’ or no.”
    â€œI think that’s probably a little over-optimistic, Sir,” Thiessen replied after a moment. “We never did find out how big their empire actually is, you know.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t have mattered.” Pei shook his head sharply. “We’re in a virtual dead heat with them technologically right now, Joe. Right now. And how old are their ships?”
    â€œSome of them are brand new, Sir,” Nimue Alban replied for the chief of staff. “But I take your point,” she continued, and even Thiessen nodded almost unwillingly.
    Pei didn’t press the argument. There was no reason to, not now. Although, in some ways, it would have been an enormous relief to tell someone besides Nimue what was really about to happen. But he couldn’t do that to Thiessen. The chief of staff was a good