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at sub-light speed. It had come out of light speed over four years earlier, decelerating ever since. Prior to this, four teams had already been deployed in other systems. After each deployment, the mothership took four years at sub-light speed to move in and four years to move far enough out before triggering the warp drive, accounting for a great chunk of the relative time lost.
    As Donnchadh and Gwalcmai stood in the control room and studied the solar system, unspoken between them was the acceptance that their son had long ago turned to dust. They did not know his fate, but hoped he had lived a relatively happy life. They also learned that Enan had died over thirty years ago and there was a new ruler on board the ship. They felt distant from the younger generation around them, a generation that had not gone through the Revolution and did not even know what it was to walk on the surface of a planet. They had only each other and the interior of the mothership.
    They were relieved when they were sealed into their spacecraft, inside one of the mothership’s holds, as it approached the edge of the solar system. The interior of the ship, which they had named
Fynbar
after their son, was crowded with weapons, explosives, and technology, most of it appropriated from the Airlia. There was also a considerable amount of food and water crammed into the craft.
    The cargo bay door opened and Gwalcmai took the controls. The spacecraft was saucer-shaped, with a bulge in the forward center rising up and two large pods in the rear providing power. The forward bulge was where the two seats for Gwalcmai and Donnchadh were located. The craft’s surface was gray. As soon as the
Fynbar
was clear of the mothership, the larger craft turned away from the solar system, heading back toward deep space.
    The goal was the third planet, the only one in the system capable of supporting human life. It was a long way from where they had been left off to the planet. The two made most of the journey toward the third planet in silence, each lost in his or her own thoughts. From the Master Guardian they had learned how to cloak their ship from Airlia detection and Gwalcmai turned on the shield as soon as they were inside the orbit of the ninth and outermost planet.
    They did not electronically probe the planet as they came in because, while they could passively avoid the Airlia scans, any active scanning on their part would bring them to the attention of the Airlia. They did, however, use passive scanning, which boiled down to using the strongest magnification on their forward imagers to study the planet. They detected seven continents, if one included an icebound mass on the southern pole. As they closed on the planet, they spotted the main Airlia outpost on what appeared to be an artificially constructed series of concentric islands in the middle of one of the oceans. On the very center island, surrounded by six strands of alternating land and water, was a massive golden palace stretching up into the sky—exactly the same as the Airlia command center had been on theirown planet. As they closed on the third planet, they passed the fourth, a mostly red one with no apparent water, noting an Airlia outpost on that planet, including an interstellar transmitter array.
    As they got closer to the third planet, Donnchadh got up from her seat and began preparing for their arrival. She took two backpacks and filled them with supplies for an initial foray, including a brace of a dozen black daggers that could kill Airlia, small earpieces that would allow them to communicate with each other at distances if separated, and a half dozen explosive charges that she could detonate with a remote the size of a small ball. She also opened a metal case and took out a golden scepter, a foot long and two inches thick. On one end was the head of a lion with ruby red eyes. She slid it into an outside pocket of one of the packs.
    Donnchadh took two chains made of fine silver and looped