The echoes of Seig Kaiser Reinhardt had rolled out from the world of Fezzan, as from a poisoned pill dropped into wine; a galaxy was rushing toward fearful conclusion. Supreme Admiral and First Minister Reinhardt von Lohengram, hailed as emperor of all by a worshipping army, had stood in his triumph over the undefended, sacrosanct world he had conquered because supermen stopped at nothing. The Gjallarhorn had been sounded, the arrow of Ragnarök loosed, and the fleets of empire had slid with the silence of assassins through the Fezzan corridor. Towards Alliance space, the final refuge of that unmanly spiritual sickness called democracy.

For Admiral Wolfgang Mittermeyer, left in command of the Fezzan garrison, it was all over already; had been for a year. As black uniforms and APCs raised dust over Fezzan's arid and ornate streets, he slumped at a desk in the former Landsherr's palace, staring at a picture in his hand.

He wondered if he should have told Evangelin, but how could he have told? He had been the perfect husband, for her sake, and it hadn't even been hard; she was the image of a perfect wife. Loving, obedient, incurious – sometimes he'd wanted to scream that he'd never loved her. Always him. Oskar, his Oskar, burning with the cold certainties that had so exquisitely punished Admiral Wolfgang 'Gale Wolf' Mittermeyer's weakness and hypocrisy. Love like a storm had driven Wolfgang Mittermeyer into the heart of enemy fleets, to the heights of command, all for the Empire that raised true men to their rightful glory – men like Kaiser Reinhardt von Lohengram, poor Seig and dear Oskar, if only they had lived! The Empire that put half-men in their proper place, at last, however they rose, or ran, or hid…half-men, homosexuals, himself.

"Cheer up Wolfie! You might be the best of them, which might make you the worst…but that's all done with now, in any case."

Wolfgang raised dull eyes to a gaze bright and honest as the kukri passing through his throat. Only brute impulse to sustain even insufferable life would've sent his hand holsterward, if Duchess Leledrick of Ellvadez had given him an instant.

Setting her heel on the blood-soaked picture of Admirals Ruenthal and Mittermeyer, Leledrerick strode across to the window. As her Ellvadezers swept through the palace full of horrified Imperial commanders, the city filled with bomb blasts and gunfire. Vulpine ecstasy blazed from violet eyes.

Even the reserve Imperial fleets in orbit failed to annihilate her within a minute, the end of the war was an ambivalent matter for Lelederick. Would rule over the most temperate planet truly console her for the loss of such a thrill? How long before she turned pirate again, or before the women who killed for peace got rid of her? The Reinhardts and Doolittles fought to shape a universe in their image, but she cared nothing for that. Only that the best woman won in the end - Mahmut Tughil Pasha, ex-Landsharr of Phezzan, with Lelederick of Ellvadez chewing the bones at her feet.

Duchess Lelederick raised Wolfgang Mittermeyer's blind eyes to the view from the high window. Then she flung the blonde head down the face of the palace, to the ground where dogs would lick up his blood.

"Now, though you'd have said that head was dead,

(For its owner, dead was he!)

It stood on its neck with a smile well bred, and bowed three times to me…

…and so, I trow, that deathly bow was a touching sight to see,

Though trunkless yet, it couldn't forget,

The deference due to ME!"

-0-

Operation Alamein showed a galaxy that had almost grown immured to brilliant coups that it had never known the meaning of brilliance. For centuries, electronic warfare had been blunted by counter-jamming, obliging military geniuses to fling bombardments at visible foes, like savages in loincloths or brocaded jackets. For centuries, the possibility had been forgotten that malicious code could be inserted in other ways than hostile transmission. It could be written into a cruiser's own software before it had even left the shipyard, activated months later by a single agent, and disseminated through a whole Imperial fleet through its own comms network.

It couldn't have worked if the tactical and technical acumen of the Empire had even been near the level of Fezzan and the Alliance; they were not. A kingdom that had spent centuries devoting its power to the promotion of corruption and the stifling of innovation in any form deserved what it got and got what it deserved. The empire had even obtained its most advanced technology from the Alliance, via trade with Fezzan; Lynn Lambretta of Alliance Intelligence could make a computer do practically anything, and Landsherr Mahmut had gone to school with her and Jenny Dolittle on Heinessen.

It couldn't have worked if the loyalty of Imperial soldiers had been unimpeachable, and there were certainly more fanatical Reinhardists than that worthy had any right to expect. A strong movement, however, had realised that there were alternatives to a form of government hopelessly outdated by the 18th century C.E.; Landsherr Mahmut had each of them on speed dial, as it were. Dupes were even more plentiful than agents – many souvenirs brought back to Imperial warships from shore leave turned out to be hidden transmitters – and blackmail could be deployed by the Fezzani spy network against anyone from a deckhand to a rear-admiral.

Enough warships and troops to retake Fezzan did escape viral paralysis. These were suddenly attacked by a more bizarre fleet than even Admiral Frentzen had imagined possible. Armed freighters and space liners, battered Alliance cruisers rebuilt with the pieces of Imperial vessels – not coming from the Fezzan corridor, but Imperial space. Aware that the Fezzans could start popping hatches and overloading reactors on the ships they'd taken at any time, Frentzen surrendered the fleet with sour stoicism.

Most of the Imperial garrison on Fezzan, either from base or humane motives, likewise surrendered. The remainder, ill-supplied with the powered armour that had gone to the Alliance – besieged by well-armed mercenaries, saboteurs and Fezzani citizen soldiers - still made a memorable slaughter before they were overrun. Admiral Adam had cut down more than fifty gunmen over three days - sweat in his eyes, blood binding his monosword to his palm - before a dark blur leapt from another armoured suit as a sticky bomb blew it in half.

Abrigia, the agent who had killed Oskar von Ruenthal and uncounted others, smiled with unbelievable sanguinity. Adam's own size and speed had thrown off many adversaries moments before their deaths, but it was that smile, and a bare few inches, that proved once again who was the deadliest man in the universe.

"Tell Johan…none of this was his fault." Anton Adam gasped into a pool of dust and blood.

"Indeed, no fault of his." Abrigia smiled, very obligingly. "We were just better than you."

-0-

Aboard the flagship Brunhilda, many light years away, Reinhardt took the news coolly. His countermeasures against Fezzan's new electronic warfare were rapid and comprehensive; his enemies had thrown away their trump card only to cut off the retreat of the man who had never lost a battle. The commander, his admirals and his fleet were quite assured that their hubris would be their downfall. Once the grand fleet had taken Heinessen, nothing would prevent it from returning to wipe Fezzan clean like a plate.

Some stress did become apparent in the high admiral's smooth jaw when it became clear he had rather more to do than that. Fezzan's phantom fleet, and most of the mercenaries it had conjured from nowhere, had come from the border world insurgencies.

In the wake of the Alliance invasion and Imperial civil war, a hundred militant groups had sprung up over a dozen worlds, willing to fight any faction that threatened their little scrap of land in space. Reinhardt's contempt for such blind children had almost been more than he could conceal – yet, on poor Seigfried Kircheis' advice, he had formally granted the self-government within the Empire that its far-flung baronies had always possessed in practise.

He had saved them from the Alliance, from the mad tyranny of the old nobles. He had given them freedom and peace – and now there was scarcely a border world that hadn't declared full, armed independence in the wake of Fezzan. Even the Imperial core worlds were in chaos, as every knot of troublemakers, spurred on in secret by Fezzan and the Alliance, rose up like the vomit they were after their idiotic dreams. Hildegard von Mariendorf, as acting First Minister, had put down the dissidents with all her considerable strength – no less than had been required.

"Your excellency should recall," Admiral Oberstein whispered, "That it was necessary to increase the levies on the border worlds to fund an invasion of this scale. Some suppression of dissent, particularly in connection with farcical 'local assemblies' also proved necessary as an emergency measure. Personal liberty and prosperity across the Empire has never been greater, because of Reinhardt von Lohengram."

"Yet it was not enough." Every heart shivered at Reinhardt's voice, even when he spoke to himself. "More freedom, more prosperity, more victory – without power, the people's liberty cannot be preserved. Direct and absolute rule of every world, when the last inveterate rebel is exterminated. I swore to restore honour and freedom to all humanity, and it shall be so."

Behind cold artificial eyes Oberstein was already planning the war on terror that would follow the war against rebellion – some sufficiently lunatic cults on Terra might do a great deal with some funding. It took an idealist to build an empire that would barely outlive him, but realists to preserve a thousand-year Reich. Every liberal protection Reinhardt had decreed could be denied to anyone at any time under emergency powers, very fortunately. Denouncements for sedition, complaint and insufficient patriotism were freely pouring in from besotted Reinhardtists; Lang's secret police had never been more busy or efficient.

The border worlds rebels seemed to have a hundred leaders and a thousand manifestoes, with no unifying idea except their chimerical, orderless version of freedom. Franz Valleymund, a deserter from the Alliance invasion, had led some refugees to a half-habitable snowball; now he and his local wife were hailed as the return of Heinessen and Nguyen. Sarah Rosenblum, formerly a housewife with four dead children, now led Alliance deserters and former Imperial troops. The exiled Count von Marmalade and his mixed-race boyfriend were endeavouring to turn their homeworld into a republic. A couple of lesbians had declared themselves the 'Bodacious Pirate Queens of the Serenity system' and sunk as many warships as had disputed the title. The mildest of them made Lelederick the traitor look virtually sane.

The woman with a blaster on her back looked insanely young to be speaking for the several billion citizens of Espada Prime, as she claimed. The tenth video Reinhardt had watched was particularly grainy, but her voice was clear as a blade.

"My name is Brigitta Grimaldi. My father was killed by the Alliance after my grandparents and my little brother were killed by Reinhardt von Lohengram. His soldiers took our food, even the farming tools we needed to grow food. He left us to wait for the Alliance and starve; that was his 'military genius'. Still, what has Odin ever done but take our bread and our bodies? We have our own history and culture, our own dreams that neither Odin nor Heinessen will ever understand. The Alliance gave us bread, with a way to keep our bread and our lives called freedom. They betrayed us too in the end, but they actually had a righteous cause to betray.

"We're not stupid, you know? We were liberated by Reinhardt from the Alliance, that he stood back and let invade us! From the evil nobles of Lippstadt, after he let them throw Westerland into nuclear fire! Seigfried Kircheis was the hero who gave us real freedom, and he is dead. Reinhardt let his jealous advisors murder that beautiful man, and Reinhardt has let his creatures take our bread and lives, again and again and again, just like the Goldbaums and Lippstadts before him! Only we know what we've suffered, but we know who we are. Farmers, fighters, artists, builders – soldiers, Alliance and Imperial, who simply said NO to their orders of massacre and robbery, as we all say NO, NO, NO, to the arrogance and bloody stupidity that will never possess us again!

"Centuries ago, a psychopath called Rudolf got people to call him an emperor by killing pirates. Wiping them out, men, women, children, as the Empire always does. With our comrades on Fezzan, not led by them, but beside them – we give notice that the border worlds are now the PIRATE REPUBLICS. Join us, and don't be afraid - we won't cut your throats unless you bring your treachery with you! The freedom you stole from us is the treasure we're going to steal back!"

Reinhardt, who had always believed that an enemy understood was an enemy defeated, didn't ask for a seventh video. Oberstein broke the silence by opining that the girl ought to have gone on the stage rather than playing at politics.

"…she'll be dead or imprisoned within a week, of course, as the 'pirate republics' fall into anarchy. It will be necessary to eliminate the Alliance more swiftly and thoroughly than was planned, before your return to Imperial space to restore -"

"How do they know about Westerland?"

"…Lynn Lambretta and Mahmut Tughril are among our enemies, your excellency. We could not expect it to remain a permanent secret – I did not expect anyone to believe the story or care. You did not bomb the planet – it is not even near the head of their list of equally irrational complaints -"

"How do they know that we took away his sidearm? HOW DO THEY KNOW THAT I LET KIRCHEIS DIE!"

Oberstein bowed and prudently withdrew. Reinhardt, pale fingers sunk in his golden hair, did not move or speak for hours as his fleet roared on its deathly course through the void.

-0-

Finally, Reinhardt watched the seventh video; ex-Landsharr Tugril Mahmut's proclamation of Fezzani independence. The individual who would be remembered as the finest political and military mind of his generation and the architect of a new galactic era – wore a flowing white dress with a woman's headscarf and veil. It was somehow the most disturbing thing Reinhardt had seen all day.

Tugril Mahmut had been a small, exquisitely handsome man, a brilliant planetary administrator in his twenties. Unlike many Fezzani his skin was pearl-white, and a brilliant blonde fringe half-hid one eye. Abrigia and Shara Badawi stood behind him; she in the hijab and veil that the Empire would have mocked, both uniformed as intelligence officers.

The former spies had done their long work faithfully and well, for the sake of the – man? – they looked on with the absolute belief Reinhardt could still recall in his own soldiers' eyes. The – woman? – who had sewn a web throughout the Empire before the first shot over Tiamat, that those white hands raised to heaven had finally pulled taunt.

"I am Roxanna Altun Tughril, Pasha of Fezzan. No longer Landsherr Mahmut Tughril of the Imperial dictators who have supressed every culture and way but their own for five centuries. As I may finally proclaim that I am mukhannath - what the Alliance call a transexual woman and the Empire has no printable name for - I may proclaim that Fezzan is freed from its invaders, freed from its overlords, freed from the terror of a world without weapons set between warring powers. I may proclaim that my God is merciful, my God is just, my God is great, and praise the deliverance he has brought for every world and each human soul in the galaxy.

"Both the Alliance for Democracy, earnestly, and the Galactic Empire, cynically, are practically founded on the principle of a single truth for humanity. A universe of sauerkraut, secret police and classical music, or a galaxy of hot dogs, pop charts and secular consumerism? The Empire that has preserved some of history's most precious culture, with its worst politics, or the Alliance that has a hundred ideas every day, some even brilliant? There is no choice – no need for any choice forced at gunpoint – no need to discard my Beethoven or Fezzani folk dance, my jazz collection or daily prayer. I may speak of music and faith, the things that truly matter, because this age of tyranny is done. Trust me on this – no more atrocities, no more secret police, no more galaxy grasping conquerors. No more Goldenbaums, no more genocides, no more Reinhardts.

"Fezzani are no terrorists, conspiring to seize the galaxy through fear and hate. We have hidden and worked in the shadows, but now we may speak out. The peace and safety of the galaxy, with its prosperity and trade, is best served by a multiplicity of states. I believe in God, and I believe in a galaxy of a thousand gods and peoples. A patchwork cloak of jewels, spread over the endless velvet of space – every kind of jewel, freely reflecting and speaking with every other. The endlessly diverse miracle of untold truths and culture that this galaxy truly is. The day of tyranny is done, at last – any deluded person who plans to force a thousand unique humanities into a single empire - for their own peace and safety - will fail as Reinhardt has failed.

"There will be chaos, fertile and fruitful. There will be wars, tragic and foolish, but there will be peace at last. A balance of power, treaties of friendship and understanding. As soon as the great fool surrenders himself to justice - the Reinhardt whose delusions of godhood have destroyed his own nation and millions of innocent lives. As for Fezzan, we will be ruled by the council of elders that administered our affairs before Goldenbaum; young as I am, I offer my service. As for the border worlds, now the Pirate Republics, their independence from the Empire, or any other power, is guaranteed by Fezzan. We possess an intact Imperial fleet with nuclear armaments, thousands of Imperial prisoners – and a firm will to bring peace by the most peaceful means that prove possible. The weak and innocent have nothing to fear from the power of Fezzan, that you have seen – it is the mighty and guilty who have cause for terror, for I believe in the God who humbles the proud."

Reinhardt had never known fear or humility. Despair - the black, sucking wound that childhood indignities had eaten out of his soul – he knew well how to deal with. The Kaiser had taken the sister of an impotent child, but he was dead, with his unworthy nobles. As Tughril would die with her black slaves and every dirty fanatic on her dustbowl planet. Martyrs to their absurd faith – no god, but Reinhardt von Lohengram, would punish pride and temerity.

In subsequent weeks, it became clear that the Pirate Republics would neither swiftly collapse nor fall to the rump of the Empire, any more than an Alliance unscarred by civil war would fall to a divided Empire. Attacks on the Iserlohn and Fezzan corridors from the Empire had been repulsed. With his lines of retreat and supply completely cut, Reinhardt had plundered outlying Alliance worlds under threat of nuclear bombardment, without hesitation.

Occasionally, Reinhardt had mouthed desired for a worthy opponent, or successor, but the only true desire of the dictator was to live and win. Several assassins, furthermore, had been dispatched by Reinhardt against Roxanna Tughril. The few not subsequently dispatched by Abrigia had been publicly beheaded, according to Fezzani tradition.

Roxanna and her allies among Fezzan's merchant princes had naturally been elected to the ruling council of a new nation more oligarchic than democratic. A single planet that would alter the destiny of the universe – but not a single woman, Roxanna sincerely insisted. A billion unnamed agents, activists, soldiers and ordinary civilians had made the new world that Reinhardt had only desired to rule and she only meant to serve.