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proceed to your residence to refresh herself after the journey? I trust I'll see her this evening?"
    "She's not on Mars, Cornelian."
    For a moment Prime Cornelian was visibly stunned.
    He quickly recovered. His nails clicking on the stone floor, he walked slowly over to stand beside the senator.
    "Did I hear you correctly?" he hissed, his metallic breath warm on Senator Kris's face.
    With effort, Senator Kris retained his composure. "She's not on Mars. I know what you want from her, and I've taken steps to assure that you never receive it."
    For a moment there was nothing but the hot, oil scented bellows of Prime Cornelian's breath on the senator's face.
    "You were very foolish to do this, Kris."
    "She's my daughter."
    "Yes, but she would have been—will be—much more!"
    "I could not allow that to happen."
    "She will go through that with or without you! Who do you dare to think you are?" One metallic hand, fingers splayed and locked, drew back and came across Senator Kris's face, cutting deep across the cheek and knocking him to the ground.
    "You dare to oppose me? Your daughter belongs to me!"
    "Not if I can help it," Kris said through pain.
    Prime Cornelian moved forward to stand over the fallen senator; straddling his body, his head ratcheted down to stop inches from Kris's own. Kris could hear the whirs and tickings within Prime Cornelian's corpus; could smell the faint scent of plastic, metal, and lubricants.
    "Listen to me very carefully," Prime Cornelian hissed. The slits of his eyes had become thin and sharp as knife blades. "No one ever disobeys me, Kris. No one."
    Prime Cornelian lowered his metallic torso to rest upon the prone body of Senator Kris. Sudden fear rose into the senator's eyes, and he stared straight into the huge elongated quartz orbs of Prime Cornelian.
    With a faint humming sound, Prime Cornelian's body began to descend, like a shop press toward its lower plate. The senator's body began to feel pressure, and he found it hard to breathe.
    "Comfortable, Kris?" Cornelian purred.
    Prime Cornelian's body continued to lower in precise increments.
    Senator Kris gasped, and suddenly two ribs in his chest cracked with a muffled snap, followed by two more.
    "Cornelian—for the love of--God!"
    Cornelian's face split into a smile, even as the rest of his torso continued its inexorable lowering.
    Another rib cracked, and another, and now Senator Kris's face began to go blue with lack of oxygen. The red gash on the senator's face showed deep purple.
    "Cor . . . nelian!"
    There was another chorus of breaking ribs, and then Prime Cornelian suddenly pulled his body up and away from the gasping senator.
    Senator Kris fell into unconsciousness, then rose out of it to find himself being dragged across the floor toward the elevator cage by two burly Marines.
    He tried to gasp out words, but they would not rise through the pain he felt.
    "Don't worry, Kris—you'll live, at least for a while. Look on this as an example of what is to come. I very much wanted to kill you a moment ago. I could have lowered myself until your body had turned to jelly. Besides being messy, though, it occurred to me in the middle of that plan that it would be best to let you live—although in a rather reduced state. "By the way: I lied about the plebiscite."
    There came excruciating pain in Senator Kris's chest as the Marines dumped his body on the floor of the elevator.
    The senator floated down toward unconsciousness once more, hearing Prime Cornelian's final words:
    "You're alive because you'll make wonderful bait to catch your daughter!"

Chapter 6
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    I t is strange how, one's perspective changes with morning light.
    Despite his heartsickness, Dalin Shar slept well. And when he awoke, with the sun streaming through his open window and a soft breeze wafting the curtains, it seemed as if the events of the day before had happened to someone else.
    He was not quite himself again, to be sure. But now it seemed like his