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one scanned him with golden light and left him glowing that color when he left. He made his way down a short set of steps through a hallway where the lights were not functioning, and his own glow cast an eerie illumination on the walls. He took another slideway in a different direction.
    At a casual wave of his hand, a red-cushioned seat popped up beside him on the conveyor, and he sat upon it. The transporter went through a long tunnel that sloped gently downward toward the Military HQ complex, a heavily fortified bunker deep underground.
    In a few moments, he saw a cavern of bright white light ahead, and presently he was immersed in a scanner, this one with a rainbow of metallic colors that left him without a glow. Despite the security checkpoints, one could never be too careful when your mortal enemy was a race of expert shapeshifters.
    Robotic guards greeted the General with stiff salutes as he stepped off the slideway and strode through a wide entrance into the War Chamber. Each of the mechanical sentinels was a weapon in itself, featuring a destructive array of guns and explosives that the General could set off at a thought command.
    The machinery and personnel of tactics and strategy filled the immense War Chamber. Officers in red-and-gold uniforms rose stiffly and saluted as he entered. Those in his way stepped aside, enabling him to reach the red velvis command chair on a dais at the center.
    “Give me a full report,” General Sajak said, as he sat down and gazed about impatiently.
    His adjutant, Major Edingow, was an angular, square-jawed man who favored single malt whiskey and the camaraderie of officers’ clubs. He had halitosis, and to counteract it often chewed mints. This time he seemed to have forgotten his manners.
    Irritated, Sajak stepped back to escape the stale odor.
    Oblivious to the offense he was committing against his fastidious superior, the Major activated a telebeam bubble—a bright light that floated in the air—and moved it to a comfortable distance in front of the General. In a wordless broadcast, data flowed from the bubble into a receiver implanted in Sajak’s brain, and from there traversed the circuitous neural pathways of his mind. He felt a soft hum inside his skull. The facts unfolded in an orderly fashion, and he considered them.
    Concerned about the obsolescence of military technology in the eleven-year old attack force that he had dispatched, General Sajak had sent advance men to the Mutati homeworld, covert agents who were assigned to sneak in and commit acts of sabotage against Mutati infrastructures and military installations, softening them up for the bigger attack. Now he learned the results of the most recent forays, that many agents never got through, and that some were missing and possibly apprehended.
    At the edge of the glistening data bubble, Sajak saw his staff officers watching him alertly, ready to comply with his commands the moment he issued them. At a snap of his fingers, the bubble popped and faded away.
    Ignoring the faces that were turned toward him expectantly, General Mah Sajak considered the new information. For a century and a half—since galaxy-spanning podships first appeared mysteriously and began to increase contact between the races—Humans and Mutatis had been in an arms race, with huge research teams on both sides striving to make quantum leaps in military technology. He did not know what the Mutatis were working on now, but hoped it was not significant.
    A career soldier, it had been frustrating for him to deal with the limited cargo capacities of podships, which had prevented him—and the enemy—from mounting large-scale offensives. He needed the element of surprise to work in favor of his forces … but gnats of worry reminded him that the Mutatis might have their own surprise in store for him.

Chapter Six
    These machines are designed to mimic only the best aspects of their creators. To permit the opposite, either through something intrinsic