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had begun to part in his reception.
                  "Orbidux." He heard him say. "Strength and honor."
                  "Strength and honor." His commander said and shook his hand and made to pass by, but Anders took him by the arm.
                  "Your captivity went well?" He asked.
                  "As well as it can." Nyar said. "What is this? Why are you touching me?"
                  "There's someone you should meet." Anders said and gestured toward Sejanus.
                  Thus their eyes met, cold against cold, and they took a step nearer one another. It was as if two great spatial entites had broached one another and the intervening space that had once been cold with dormancy was now caught up into the warring conflagration of these orbital bodies. As if a thaw had come across the land and unleashed the life that longed to boil over beneath. Nyar stopped where he stood, but Sejanus came on.
                  He drew the shiv from his coat sleeve and slashed at his throat and, though the shock of surprise had been put into his face, Nyar had been quick and the blade cut only into the tough leather of his greatcoat. Sejanus stabbed again in a wild frenzy at his eyes, shifting closer to do it, and the other Blackbloods looked on mortified; the aura of invulnerability they had crafted for their leader had been breached and by only a mortal man. Nyar leaned away from the point of the knife and Sejanus made a quick step forward and slashed him across the bridge of the nose, down along his cheek. Then the others were upon him.
                  He wrestled in their grasp, shouted and raged at the man who stood smug again before him. Blows rained upon him from all around and brought him to his knees. Nyar took the shank from his grasp as from an unruly child and held it before his eyes, all but puncturing them. But he moved the point of the knife away and above his brow and there made a long, slow cut down to his quivering jaw. Sejanus remained silent beneath the shouts and jeers of the Blackbloods.
                  "I don't know who you are." Nyar said to him. "And I remember most that would try to kill me. I don't suppose it will matter now."
                  He placed the blade against the hollow of his throat and Sejanus could feel it pierce the skin. A gunshot stilled his hand. They all of them looked up at the detail of Enforcers upon the cruciform walkways above, rifles trained upon them.
                  "Release the prisoner." A voice called down to them from beyond the audio filters of the helmet of its speaker and the hands let go of him. "Prisoner, proceed to the mess hall doors."
                  He raked them all with a steady gaze, bloodied and beaten, and settled them on Nyar. A moment passed wherein they were swallowed into that primordial duel as old as sentient life itself, into a confused jungleplace that brooked nothing of neutrality. Then the Orbidux stepped aside and cleared a way for him by his assent through the Blackbloods and which led in their minds only to a doom they promised him.

Day 2
                 
    The auxiliary lift thundered up the shaft with him alone as its occupant. Above, in each of the corners, he saw the camera bulbs that wathced him close as a captured specimen. He looked up into them in turn and then away at the doors shut against him. High and to the right of the threshold he watched the altitude readout tick off with alacrity and for him it might as well have read the same from moment to moment, for all that he felt it move. Then it warbled and the doors slid open with a magnetic sigh.
    He stepped out onto a bridge of steel enclosed below and to the sides by walls of polymer glass and above by the tower's apex. A pair of guards awaited him and ushered him forward along the causeway. He looked out over the edge and saw through the thick