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Excellency. He wishes to speak with you at once.”
    Valerian’s stomach tensed, but years of practice at hiding his emotions enabled him to respond calmly. “Thank you, Charles. Tell him I will be there in a moment.”
    Whittier gulped. “Sir, he’s pretty impatient.”
    Valerian turned cool gray eyes upon his assistant. “I will be there in a moment, Charles,” he repeated in a soft voice.
    “Of course, sir.” Whittier closed the door.
    Valerian wiped his face with a cloth, composing himself. After the debacle at Stewart’s compound, he’d known he’d be hearing from his father soon. Offthe beaten track the planet might have been, but word of zerg in terran space would have gotten to Arcturus at light speed. He finished his glass of water, changed his shirt, and went into Whittier’s office.
    Whittier jumped at the sound of the opening door. Valerian sighed. Whittier was an extremely capable assistant and Valerian relied upon him a great deal, but the man had the constitution of a rabbit.
    “Thank you, Charles, put him through,” Valerian said. He returned to his training room and went to the small vidsys that was set up in a curtained-off area. Steeling himself for the confrontation—for he knew such the conversation would be—he touched a button.
    The visage of Arcturus Mengsk appeared. Mengsk was a big man, and managed to convey that even on a small screen. His hair was thick, if more salt than pepper these days, as was his mustache. Piercing gray eyes met those of his son.
    “Four years with no sign of the zerg, and then all of a sudden they show up on a remote planet which happens to be where you’ve set up a former black marketer. I didn’t get where I am today by believing in coincidence. Anything you care to tell me?”
    Valerian smiled. “And good afternoon to you too, Father.”
    Arcturus waved a hand. “Rule number one for running an empire, son: When the zerg are a topic of conversation, the niceties go out the airlock.”
    “I’ll remember that. The situation is under control, Father.”
    “Define ‘under control,’ and tell me why the zerg are there in the first place.”
    Valerian debated. He could remain silent, or lie, or tell the truth. It was too late to sweep everything completely under the rug. But the most important thing to Valerian was that Mengsk not know about Jake’s … unique situation. Valerian still held out hope that he and Jake could sit down as fellow lovers of archeology and discuss the wonders he had discovered. If Mengsk learned about it, Jake would be snatched from Valerian’s hands and his mind poked, prodded, scanned, and eventually rendered inert. What Arcturus wanted was an edge, some new technology, some new and better way to smear his enemies into paste. He cared nothing for the glories of a vanished civilization or unequaled cultural insights.
    Quickly, Valerian tried to think what Arcturus would know already, and would likely know shortly. The emperor would know that three of Valerian’s ships had been there, and from their logs probably that three more had been recalled. Depending on the condition in which the zerg had left the hangar, he could possibly know that a ship had been stolen and others had been sent after it. Jacob Ramsey’s name might be in some log somewhere, but Valerian knew Ethan would not have left any traceable information about the archeologist or his discovery. Ethan would have kept that sort of thing carefully locked up in his head. Which, sadly, had likely been ripped from hisshoulders or dissolved in acid. No one had been left alive, either in the compound or in the ships in orbit above the planet.
    “I spoke with my contact there before the zerg descended,” Valerian said, choosing his words carefully. “One of their ships was hijacked several hours before the zerg attacked. It could be that this was part of a personal grudge against Stewart. My sources indicate that the pilot was formerly romantically involved with him.