Christopher Rowley.

The Vang.

The Battlemaster.

OUTMATCHED.

With shocking suddenness, a bizarre creature dropped upon them from the ceiling. It was dark gray with pink streaks, and a beard of green polyps matted its chest region. It had two humanlike legs and a number of long, narrow tentacles.

The thing struck with the hardened tips of tentacles that stabbed flesh as effectively as spears. Men were eviscerated, beheaded, amputated of one or more limbs in a frenzied but brief struggle.

Then Janodo of the Gate hit it with a shotgun blast, in the chest, where green polyps were thick. Blood and fragments spattered the floor.

The men stepped back, expecting the thing to fall dead. With another loud hiss, it seized Janodo and bounded out of the cowshed.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE UNIVERSE IS A THING OF LACY TEXTURES, SUDDEN EXPLOSIONS, cold vastness, frozen foams. On these insubstantial threads and tatters lost in the boundless void, primitive life survives by accident, a thing of the merest margins.

Through the slow tick of time, species have come and gone, their viability tested by climatic change, by asteroid impact, by evolutionary wedging.

The merest handful of species has ever risen beyond their evolutionary envelopes, the limited horizons of their home-worlds.

Of these, a tiny fraction have reached the stars.

In the midst of the fifty-fifth century of spaceflight, the third millennium of the ITAA Era, the human species, originating in the Sol system, was the dominant intelligence within the local galactic arm.

This position bad been achieved, however, only through the lucky discovery of the Starhammer weapon. Without this technology bequeathed from an ancient war, the human species would never have broken free from the domination of the laowon, the other Orion-arm bipedal spacegoing species of this era.

However, the discovery of the Starhammer had brought humanity face-to-face with the terrible reason for the great machine's existence, the ancient enemy to all other life, the self-termed Gods of Axone-Neurone.

This complex and largely parasitic lifeform, which had been destroyed by the Starhammer builders in self-defense, was not yet entirely extinct.

A few fragments persisted. Fortunately interstellar space is so vast and empty that most derelicts from the ancient space-reefs of war were lost forever in the dark.

And yet, here, there, they offered a terrible threat, like mines waiting to explode upon the unwary.

In this, of course, we see no more than another roll of the cosmic dice. A form of evolutionary wedging on a galaxy-wide scale. This kind of life, or that; either was possible.

Two thousand years terrestrial standard had passed since the events on Planet Saskatch. Again the dice tumbled from the cup.

The door to doomsday opened a crack once more and went unnoticed. A bleak unsympathetic light flashed out to illuminate the worlds of humanity.

It began with a trifling incident, in the barren hills of the Ruinarts, on Planet Wexel in the Scopus cluster.

Here, on the exposed face of some ancient sandstones, an autopick was drilling in search of gypsum deposits. The bore holes were spaced a couple of meters apart, probing downward toward what on the satellite mineral maps appeared to be a cave system.

Suddenly there came a harsh screech as the autopick's drill hit something harder than mere rock.

This autopick was a Daiko 400, very durable and somewhat stubborn. It pulled out the drill and inserted its hammerpick and hammered at the unbreakable thing for a full minute while rock powdered and blew away in the wind.

Finally it gave up and carefully checked its files. The rock face was a resistant sandstone from the Upper Karavian, some eighty million years old. The geo-survey showed no evidence of volcanics or harder rocks. And even the hardest rock would have given way under the hammerpick.

Baffled, the Daiko called for help.

The message was downloaded at Castle Karvur, fifty kilometers to the south. It was studied by the Karvur Autome, and then left for Count Geezl Karvur's personal attention. The Autome, a programming masterpiece from the Ienjii Software Period, knew that Count Karvur would be interested.

Eventually the count, a tall, gaunt-faced man in extended mid-life, returned from a rampage on his estates.

The twin daughters of a tenant in the West Ward had reached sixteen years. They were betrothed, and the count had made sure to exercise his patronal rights immediately upon their birthday chime. The weeping parents had been bound and gagged by his guards while Lord Geezl, the patrone of the district, took the young maidens by force in their own bedchamber.

The Karvur Autome, a rather stuffy software, would not assist the count in such matters. The count cared not, and employed a cameraman instead to film the proceedings for his later amusement.

All in all it had been an excellent break in the dreary life on the Karvur estates.

Now returned to the grim stone pile of Karvur Farm, the count examined his messages.

There were many, and they were all from creditors and lawyers and more creditors and collection agencies, and he blipped them to oblivion with scowls and groans all except the one from the autopick, tagged by the Autome.

The autopick indicated that something large and non-natural underlay the Karavian sandstones. In addition this thing was built of extremely resistant material.

Intrigued, the count flew out to check for himself in his luxurious Baschlit VTOL jet.

Dressed in black rainslick and boots of human hide, Karvur stalked about the site.

He summoned a power shovel, at work a few miles away, and when it had chugged its way over the hill, he put it to removing the sandstone cover over the hidden object. Then he flew away once more, intrigued by this discovery, but not yet obsessed.

A few days later he returned to the site and found a flat surface, a floor, made of a smooth indestructible material with the color of old bone.

Karvur's heart filled with a wild excitement.

It was also apparent that whatever this thing was, it was very large. There seemed no end to the ramifications of it.

The excitement mounted.

For nigh on thirty years now he had been exiled to this drab life on the ancient family estate in the Ruinart Mountains, doomed by a stupid mistake made in the rashness of youth.

He had spent those years searching Karvur Estate for something of value. Something that could bring him enough credit to allow him to return to the old life-style, when he'd had money.

Once, the very name Geezl Karvur had glittered in the celebrity columns of Wexel's greatest cities. He had owned three homes and a yacht with berths for two dozen guests. "Emperor" Geezl, his friends had called him with affectionate mockery, on account of the lavishness of his hospitality.

Alas, poor Geezl had become the victim of a skilled trickster by the name of Lari Afriq. An incredible twenty million in ITAA credits had been borrowed for a giant stock-market maneuver. The maneuver failed; huge amounts of credit disappeared. Finally the collateral for the loan turned out to be entirely Geezl's responsibility as Lari Afriq disappeared from the ruinous scene.

All Geezl had been able to retrieve from the wreck was the ancient Karvur farm in the rainshadow of the Ruinarts.

His lavish homes in Cowdray-Kara City and Frentana Beach were lost, along with the family's ancient mansion in Doisy-Dyan. His yacht was auctioned, his paintings and sculptures, his collection of rare books and historical objects; even the Karvur wine cellar, which had held some magnificent treasures from the Crook Islands, was sold.

The ancient stone farmhouse survived because it was held in trust by the family and never belonged to Geezl personally.

With the farm came the income from the estate, which covered some five thousand square kilometers of oak-infested uplands, and which provided a rather pinched sustenance for less than a hundred peasant families. Anyone with any gumption had long ago fled these parts, and the Karvur peasants were much beaten down.

When all traditional claims on this income were met there was scarcely enough to keep Geezl in fuel for the purple skin-flake Baschlit VTOL jet that was his sole remaining treasure.

He'd sneaked it out of CK City Air&Space under the noses of the creditors, and thus it was the one beautiful thing from the old life he had managed to hang on to.

And thus the count was left with nothing but the homely peasant girls to pursue for his pleasure and the seedy bars in Yellowfork town for solace and wild cronies. These at least were some kind of company.

He had little else. His old friends were in the glitter spots of the Twin Continent, thousands of kilometers away.

Furthermore, his own family was an unwelcoming lot. Little better than peasants themselves, they regarded the city-bred lord of the family manor with suspicious eyes from the first.

The titled branch of the family had left the farm centuries ago and had rarely been seen there since.

There was little love between the branches of the family, and Geezl was now the last of the wealthy Karvurs and was no longer rich. He had returned, impoverished, to live upon them on account of his birth and title.

Soon there came the tales of woe from the family servants, who were used to living there alone, dining off the Karvur accounts as they had for generations. The city-bred lord was a monster, with perverse ways with women. He drank too much and broke things and wept incoherently at times and was ill on the rugs at others.

The family protested. There were endless wrangles and domestic tempests. The count was unable to wrest complete control of his own income from the grip of the ancient accords. The lawyers in distant courts devoured the rest.

He grew embittered and desperate. He flung himself into one get-rich-quick scheme after another.

He'd tried to raise chickens, but they died of the putrid-rot disease peculiar to Wexel. He sank more money into a woodpulp-farming scheme. Only then did he discover that he was too far from any viable market for the stands of Kenaf he had planted. Worse, the quick-growing Kenaf had become a weed, spreading wildly through the Karvur lands and earning Geezl the hatred of the peasants.

He had searched for oil, for gas, for minerals, for anything of value, in fact. Apart from some gypsum deposits worth a pittance, he had found nothing.

Except for this odd thing, this sheet of unbreakable material that had been found by the autopick.

Geezl was galvanized into frenzied activity. All night he supervised the two machines as they dug around the thing. By daylight the awesome dimensions of what he had found had become clearer.

He had exposed the corner of an irregularly shaped object, something like a fluted spearhead, perhaps; it was as yet difficult to say since so much remained buried.

Even more exciting was the discovery of a rupture in the smooth, unbreakable surface. It was a sharp break, right through the entire thing. This crack was filled with the sandstone again, but it was quickly attacked by the autopick and eventually a cavity was exposed.

Count Karvur experienced an explosion of hopes. This was an archaeological event on the geologic time scale. It would be worth a fortune.

Soon it became apparent that there were dozens of such room-sized chambers, some hexagonal and others that were round.

Spheres, tubes, coils, and loops of the hard white material occupied some moms, some passages, and some shafts, but not others. It was like some giant three-dimensional puzzle.

The count explored furiously. There had to be something more! Something he could exploit!

So numerous were the cavities and the tubes and passages that interconnected them that the whole vast thing began to resemble a cross between an engine and a sponge to Geezl after a while.

Complexity was piled upon complexity, to a point beyond understanding. What could it all mean?

And then an opening was found to a passage that went down, deep into the heart of the complex workings of the ancient thing.

Geezl lowered a lamp into the depths. It dropped down a smooth tube for three meters or more and came up against a "floor." A number of other passages radiated away from this spot.

Geezl lowered himself into the interior of the maze. Within a few minutes he made the greatest discovery of all.

Trembling with excitement, he hurtled back over the moors to the farm with the purple Baschlit cracking sonic booms over the hamlets and villages.

There he drank wine and cavorted, shouting in a hoarse voice through the front rooms of the ancient house while the servants peered at him from around the doors. Occasionally he hurled a glass into the fireplace, or even out the window.

Later, he calmed and took his supper, then sat brooding into the night, communing with the planning software in his personal computer rather than discussing the matter with the Autome. The Autome's request for time was brusquely rejected. The Autome withdrew to the fastness of its antique computer chest.

Karvur returned to his study of the situation at hand.

A number of obstacles lay in his path, the first being his need for some scientific and technical assistance. He required sophisticated bioanalysis. But it would have to be from a secure source. He could not afford to lose control of this.

Fortunately, Geezl Karvur still had a few old friends that he spoke to occasionally over the net.

Although it had been years since he'd last seen any of them, Geezl kept in touch, while keeping his hopes alive of returning to the glittering cities someday.

Now he made inquiries about the life science departments in the various major universities on Planet Wexel.

When his Mends at Cowdray University asked what it was all about, he laughed evasively and claimed to have found a way to produce oil from the excrement of peasants. They chuckled indulgently. Geezl had been living out in the boondocks too long, it was plain; his mind was going.

Eventually, after some careful sifting of information and a number of phone calls, he was ready. He flew north across the east limb of Trias continent to the greatest metropolis on Wexel, Cowdray-Kara City.

From CK Air&Space, he took a taxi out to the campus of Cowdray University, arriving about seven o'clock in the evening.

There he met with one Caroline Reese, an up-and-coming junior professor. They rode up the College Spire to the revolving bar at its top and took seats in a window booth.

"CK City," Karvur murmured with a gesture to the window, where the towers glittered in the distance.

He sighed. "I used to love this city. But I see there have been many changes since I was here last."

Indeed there were many unfamiliar towers among the throng around Kara Park. CKC was a restless city, awash with the energies of humanity.

However, while most things changed, some things would always remain the same. Geezl knew that the white yachts would be moored in neat rows at the marina as they had always been.

Couples would be strolling in the Jardin de France. Diners would be taking their places in the hottest restaurants, overlooking the sea.

"You know the city?" said Ms. Reese, a woman in her middle years with tinted blond hair and firm features that showed a slight tendency to fleshiness.

"I used to live here once. I had an apartment in the Prevkyat, do you know it?"