Jundrak came as a bringer of uncertain news. The manner of his coming was far from uncertain.
He came hurtling down the long-range spaceslip with tubes screaming; when still a couple of light-years from Smorn he cut the motors, to fall the remaining distance along the galactic causeway with transcendental velocity. Then, applying negative power, he came to an abrupt standstill.
His piloting was precise. He could now look down on Peredan’s fifty-year-old encampment without needing to adjust his position by as much as a single yard. With startling clarity in the crystal bright air, the minute empire of the pretender prince was laid out a few hundred feet below.
It was everything he had expected: stiff, colorful, bustling. Brightly painted spaceships stood on the launching ground. Gay pavilions were arrayed in semicircles for close on ten miles, extending in a neat swirl to enclose quarters, barracks, and the extraordinary amount of equipment comprising the ever-operating defenses. Stacked to one side of the camp, rearing like huge city blocks covered with red plastic sheeting, were the precious stores of weapons, trackers, every kind of fighting paraphernalia—Peredan’s reason for living.
