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boots
of the suit from its legs and fitted them on her feet.  A few steps showed that
they would serve to protect her feet, and she liked the thought of keeping the
extras built into the boots with her.  The helmet was the last thing she was
determined to keep, not wanting to leave behind its sensors, lights and
electronics.  And she could use it to carry things as well.
    On last thought she
detached the backpack unit, unbuckling it from its mounts and attaching the
straps.  The O2 bottles went to the floor, until all she had left was the
propulsion unit and the fuel cells.  The straps went over her shoulders as she
adjusted it for comfort, folding the control arms back into the unit.
    She stowed the rest of
the suit under the bench.  No use leaving the thing out where any passerby
could see it.  Jacking rounds into the chambers of the pistols, she holstered
them again and prepared to explore.  Where to? she thought.  So many
choices.
    The entrances to the
low buildings, the ones with the look of subway stations?   That is where she
thought most of the people who came through here would go.  Why not?  
She walked into the entrance and down the steps.
    *    *    *
    The flagship Orca shut down its space warping engines as it came to a rest in relativistic space
once again.  Space was no longer being destroyed to the front of the massive
warship, nor created to the rear, the space cycling drive offline for the first
time in weeks.  Within seconds a dozen more huge vessels slid into place in a
distant circle around the flagship, negative matter pylons using magnetic
tractor beams to pull the thin shielding of anti-gravity generating material
back into the dual storage bottles. 
    The huge vessels sat
motionless in space, seven burning stars to its front, the nearest, an M5 red
dwarf, over eighty billion kilometers off the port bows.  Weapons systems were
off line, the leaders expecting no threat so far out of the Supersystem, as
antimatter conversion engines powered down from the immense energy requirements
that had been provided for the warping of space.
    "Admiral,"
said the captain of the Orca to his superior, both men still moving
stiffly from the effects of the cryotanks all had emerged from just before the
transition to relativistic space, "Nav Computer indicates target dead
ahead at two hundred and twenty-four billion kilometers."
    "Coordinates?"
asked the tall, cadaverous man in the highly decorated uniform, strutting the
Admiral's walk to the rear of the bridge.  "Of course," he said with
an evil looking smile, "Galactic Standard Coordinates 0 mark 0 mark 0. 
The center of everything."
    "Yes, sir,"
agreed the thickly built Captain, Valari Midas, as the screen expanded the view
of the object at the center of the system.  The ultra-thin ribbon appeared to
be in orbit about nothing from here, though both men knew that an object denser
than thousands of stars sat in the center of the ribbon.
    The white haired man on
the Admiral's walk stared at the ribbon in the distance, the target of this
mission that had been so costly to their worlds.  His brown eyes squinted and
attempted to bring the object into even greater focus, trying to make out
details from so far across the matter filled system of multiple stars in orbit
around the hole.
    "A great number of
systems, indeed, sir," said the captain.  "Each star with at least
one terrestrial planet, some with over a half dozen."
    "Plus the worlds
of the dirty methane breathers," said Admiral Miklas Gerasi.  "At
least a dozen of those, as well as the filth who live on the couple of hot
planets.  We will make this system ours, Captain, after we have secured the 'Donut’ and its star spanning technology.  Then we shall bring the purifying flame of
the Nation of Humanity to these fallen worlds."
    "Truly God has
sent us here, captain," he continued as he looked intently at the view
screen.  "I have heard that man commingles with aliens on many of the
worlds