Bellitran Xoras gurgles in delight.

  Her champions have been doing well—very well—and she’s up nearly a half billion belari on what is but the first of five days of the Bellitran empire’s annual games. Here on the Bellitran homeworld of Bellitor the celebrations are without peer: work has been cast aside, sub-species are allowed indulgences beyond their usual rigid stations, and the empire’s coliseums are packed for spectacles of amusement.

  Xoras, perched on a dais within one of the coliseum’s three-hundred high-noble suites, has been mightily enjoying herself. Beyond the titillating pleasure of her winnings, she has so far tasted the nectar-brew of Tenniton, the thrice-born babe of an Alicrox, and the expertly cooked head of one of her Gor security colonels—a tiresome creature who recently began seeing absurd threats in every innocent shadow—all while her tentacles are massaged with the narcotic spinal-fluid of a recently-extinct species. She forgets their name; did it start with an R?

  To be born a high-noble can be a heavy burden, Xoras muses, tentacles twitching in a sigh. But it is not all so bad.

  She waves away another proffered tray of delicacies, turning her attention back to the fight that is somehow still taking place down on the coliseum floor. It appears to finally be reaching some type of climax—or at least a death-rattling end.

  There are eight of the Humans left. Apparently these ones are among the Human’s warrior-caste, the symbols C-D-F, along with some image of an ancient Human weapon, inscribed upon each of their shoulder muscles in crude ink. Like livestock, Xoras thinks, scoffing. Not warriors. Except Bellitran livestock are kept pampered and clean, while these Humans look ragged and wild, like a cluster Vorie in heat. A fitting comparison, since the disgusting Humans reproduce almost as fast.

  The coliseum forge-master has provided the Human ‘warriors’ with weapons and armor that are some interpreted facsimile of those used by their homeworld-bound ancestors. Their shields are roughly the length of their torsos, while their bodies’ plate-metal covers the front parts of their vital organs. As with most things Human, the result is equal parts comical and disgusting, their pink and brown flesh peeking out almost bashfully from the little gaps in their polished armor.

  They keep their shields interlocked, carefully shuffling together in an amusing sort of dance in an attempt to keep their unarmored hindparts away from the teeth and claws of their opponent. And what a delightful opponent it is!

  Their enemy is an Ursox. A Centurion, to be exact, though Ursox morphology so often blends from one sub-genus into the next that it can be difficult to tell them all apart. Like most sentient Ursox it was exceedingly hard to capture, and is therefore even more rare to witness in battle. In fact, Xoras has only seen a Centurion on one prior occasion, on a homeworld game day just like this, nearly eight-hundred cycles ago.

  The Centurion may be a juvenile, but it is still more than a match for the silly Humans. Its gratingly high-pitched keen, a wail to its dead Nest-Weaver that will forever go unanswered, is thankfully silent, the organ having been plucked from its body and replaced with metal hooks, while its finger-like pedipalps have been replaced with sharp instruments of death. This, in addition to its usual jaws and hundreds of sharp legs, make it a wicked little killer. A livestock culler of sorts, Xoras thinks, simpering.

  The Humans are not entirely hopeless, of course—that would be boring, even for Xoras—and blackish bile seeps from dozens of small wounds where the Humans’ blades have managed to gain purchase between the serrations of the Ursox’s chitinous armor. Nearly every inflicted wound, however, has come at a cost, each thrust of a weapon exposing a human appendage, armored or not, to the Centurion’s razor-sharp forcipules, as evidenced by the seven dead Humans who lie upon the coliseum’s marble floor in various states of ruddy dismemberment.

  One of the wounded Humans stumbles, and Xoras hears the group squeal: another of them, a long-haired dark one, covers the lame Human with its shield, stabbing blindly at the Ursox as its fellows drag the wounded one back behind their shield-wall. Alas, the little hero is slow, too weak, and the Centurion cleanly separates its arm from the rest of its body before plunging its maw into the back of the creature’s unarmored neck.

  The coliseum erupts in a roar, more than three-hundred high-noble Bellitrans, three thousand Hastari praetorians, and three-hundred thousand high-caste subspecies voicing bloodthirsty approval, each in their own way. Another twenty million belari, Xorans smugly thinks, curling her tentacles in renewed pleasure.

  It has been lucrative to bet against the Humans during these games. This is a good thing for Xoras, as she would be betting against them regardless, simply as a matter of principle.

  Filthy, defiant, conniving little things. It doesn’t help that the head of her clan’s main rival, Bellitran Forlex, the current Primary Potentate of the Bellitran Empire, was put in command of the armada that sacked the Human world of Etana, from which most of these Humans originate. Xoras feels simultaneously enraged that the Humans did not manage to thwart Forlex’s fleet while also indignant that they inflicted as many casualties as they did—especially as three of the ships which they destroyed were from her own clan, including the Defiance of Darkness, upon which one of her youngling daughters was in command.

  Why could they not have managed a hit on Forlex’s flagship? Stupid incompetent little livestock creatures.

  Xoras’ suddenly unpleasant musings are interrupted as her first praetorian Hastari, five hundred kilograms of armored fur and muscle, kneels before her, offering up a ritual betting tablet. A change in the odds is being offered: the Humans, so clearly being done for, will soon be offered a single-round rifle. Her original bet is safe, of course, but 1:1 odds are now being offered on whether the Humans can finally bring down the Centurion.

  Xoras instantly wagers her entire winnings of the day on the Centurion. The betting tablet glows in acknowledgement, her genuflecting Hastari rises, and an opening appears on the coliseum floor just behind the bloodied Humans: a stone altar rises, bearing upon it a single Human-compatible rifle.

  Xoras leans forward eagerly, willing on the Ursox to finish the Humans off before they understand what’s happening, before they can organize themselves and bring the weapon to bear.

  Great-grandmother’s glands! Xoras curses. The thrice-damned Centurion has started its bloody wailing again. Or attempting to, at least. Doesn’t the stupid animal understand that no Nest-weaver is coming to its aid? Xoras silently rages. Doesn’t it understand that it’s just hurting itself by trying? Indeed, no supersonic keening is heard as the Centurion lifts its forlorn head to the sky; instead there is only a slight expulsion of ichor as the implanted hooks do their dissuading work.

  Gob-gland, but the Humans have not wasted any time. The rifle has been given to the smallest among them while others crouch in front of it, allowing it to steady the weapon upon another’s shield for greater accuracy. Forlex can practically hear the Human’s prayers as its hand fractionally tightens upon the rifle’s trigger mechanism, the Centurion so consumed by its self-pity that it still remains ignorant of what is taking place. She nearly pushes out a psychic warning to the Ursox, though such a shameful attempt at cheating would be apparent to all of the other Bellitrans assembled here.

  For a moment there is near total silence within the massive arena; only the distant sounds of capital-city celebrations intrude upon the hanging moment of death.

  Then a blast erupts, knocking the human backward despite its steadying helpers.

  The Ursox ceases its swaying, its self-destructive cry for help rudely interrupted. Would another Ursox recognize confusion in its chitin-black face? Anger? Or perhaps just relief.

  The Ursox crashes to the ground. And the coliseum erupts in madness.

  Xoras can barely manage a coherent thought as she rages, one tentacle overturning a heaped platter of delicacies while another crashes into the stoic form of one of her Hastari, sending the praetorian stumbling, though even her wild outburst is not enough to hurt the big creature.

  “WHAT NOW?” Xoras screams. Bits of half-digested food fly from her speaking orifice and land across her First Hastari’s gleaming armor as the praetorian again kneels before her, a supplicating hand across his huge chest.

  “My humblest apologies, Great One. You are being summoned by the Primary Potentate Forlex to the imperial palace,” the Hastari says, the growls of its native language translated into emotionless Bellitran high-speak.

  Outrage heaped upon outrage. An unexpected summoning? To her? In the midst of the first day of the games? Still, a part of her almost welcomes an excuse to leave the arena, so infuriated as she is. Also, one does not simply refuse the summoning Primary Potentate, unthinkably rude though this one may be.

  “FINE!” she says. She composes herself. “Reply my assent. Reply also that I have not yet had my first dinner.” It is a snide remark, totally untrue, but meant to send Forlex’s staff into a tizzy of food preparation if they have not arranged a meal already.

  The shutters of Xoras’ high-noble box suite begin to close and her retinue prepares for her departure, draping her in the further sashes and badges of her nobility while others scramble to summon her convoy. At least an imperial summoning, especially of a high-noble Bellitran of Xoras’ stature, grants her use of the Avenue of Glory, the Bellitran-only route that goes directly from the coliseum to the imperial palace.

  The dais upon which she reclines gently rises with a whisper of preposterously expensive anti-gravity, and then she is gliding down a newly-opened ramp, down into the massive, mosaic-lined corridors reserved only for Bellitran nobility. Her first Hastari strides before her, occasionally barking commands to her other servants in a show of dominance, but mostly communicating via implant-speak to her huge retinue of high-noble guards and retainers.

  Only when she is finally nestled inside her convoy-barge and accelerating down the Avenue of Glory does her rage abate, and she begins to reflect on the likely nature of the Primary Potentate’s summoning.

  A display of rudeness is a mark of desperation, not strength. Perhaps she wishes to confront me, Xoras muses. Such a display would be deliciously unseemly, and only further proof of the Primary Potentate’s weakened position. I must not make her mistake. I must have patience and discretion. Her time will come soon enough.

  Indeed, the leader of the Bellitran Empire has been overplaying her hand ever since her victory over the Humans' fortress-world of Etana. A glorious victory, true, but not without cost, as Xoras so bitterly knows. Certain edges of Bellitran space are slightly depleted, Ir’Lani and Ursox incursions more frequent, and while a portion of the defeated Humans will inevitably be integrated into the Harmonious Confederacy after a few thousand cycles, they are proving to be stubbornly rebellious little wretches so far.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then there are the rumors. Rumors of indiscretions. Rumors that the Primary Potentate Forlex has become a bit too attached to some of her human playthings, even as she is grossly wasteful of them, sacrificing tens of thousands as she drags about her entire armada in a inane victory tour of the inner empire to strut and crow of her magnificence.

  Xoras has heard whispers that not all of her new playthings are as subservient as they ought to be. That some have evaded her sacrifices, and dare speak to her; little lapdogs dressed up like admirals or Hastari praetorians. That would be perverse. So deliciously perverse.

  Naturally, Xoras has done her utmost to spread such rumors. Hers is not the only high-noble clan to chafe under Bellitran Forlex’s haughtiness, and in scarcely twenty cycles Forlex will need to obtain a two-thirds majority in the Clansgard if she is to be given another two-hundred cycle turn as Primary Potentate. Otherwise, Bellitran Ur’Dax will rotate as Primary Potentate, an ally of Xoras, and one who is keenly aware that Xoras’ own turn is at most two-thousand cycles away.

  So consumed is Xoras by her musings that she scarcely notices her convoy gliding beneath the hundred Arches of Glory, or the stamping salutes of the mixed-species imperial color-guard as she is escorted from her convoy by genuflecting imperial retainers. Her inward scheming only lapses when her dais gently stops just outside the massive double doors of the imperial throne room and a loud conversation intrudes.

  “You heard me. Alone,” an imperial Hastari growls to Xoras’ first Hastari.

  “And you heard me. High-noble Bellitran Xoras, descendant of a first founding clan, goes nowhere without her praetorians.” The two giant creatures converse in their own language of deep-throated grunts, and Xoras is forced to translate the argument to understand it; it is a small expenditure of effort that fills her with a fresh surge of fiery indignance.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Xoras barks, amplifying her voice so that all of her retainers and imperial guards within the courtyard can hear. Secretly though, she is almost giddy.

  After all, she must be allowed four of her Hastari praetorians; such is the right of all high-nobles when attending an imperial summoning, harking back to the ancient days when disagreements were settled in more literal backstabbings than is currently allowed. Otherwise she is fully within her rights to decline the summoning, just as any high-noble would be.

  Such an amateurish mistake for Forlex is scarcely to be believed, though it does make Xoras pause for a moment. Is there an emergency of such magnitude that Forlex does not even trust a high-noble’s Hastari in the throne room? No, but that cannot be right; the Hastari are not Bellitran, but they have been by their sides as bodyguards at every war council, at every secret meeting, and at every attempt at assassination since time immemorial, being as they are smart, massively lethal, and resistant to psychic suggestion. Xoras would trust her Hastari with the keys to the imperial vault, though she would never admit that to them. It is simply known.

  The imperial Hastari hesitates, and then tilts his head, clearly exchanging information with a higher officer. After a moment, lips twitching beneath his visor, he ruefully bows. Xoras’s first Hastari seems to gain an extra meter of height as the loss of face for his master’s opponent is confirmed.

  “Good,” her first Hastari snarls, showing more teeth than is necessary, his bright red eyes flaring beneath armor.

  Her first Hastari and his three lieutenants willingly give up their personal shield generators and side-arms to several bowing Gor, keeping only the two ritual blades that every Hastari carries upon them at all times, imperial throne-room or no, while the rest of Xoras’ retinue retreats back to her convoy, whispering excitedly between themselves at the display of dominance. They are already being offered refreshments and entertainment when the tall doors of the imperial throne room groan shut.

  It is silent inside except for the armored footsteps of Xoras’ four Hastari and the low hum of her dais, and Xoras allows herself a moment to appreciate the spectacle of this, the center of Bellitran hegemony.

  Hundreds of carved columns rise up on either side of the high-noble’s retinue as they make their way to the throne and its occupant in the distance. Xoras has no time to linger on their craftsmanship, but she knows that each column has been carved to depict a different species’ subjugation, glorious scenes colored with blood, ichor, or liquefied gas. Rising far above them is not a simple ceiling, but rather a resplendent star-map of the entire empire, each world pulsing in harmonious gold and silver from a background of deep, deep blackness: the inevitable Pax Bellitranna writ in all of its breath-taking magnificence.

  “All hail Primary Potentate Forlex!” Xoras cries as she approaches the imperial throne and the resplendent Bellitran who looms upon it, though they are still more than a hundred meters away. She says the words both in vocalized high-Bellitran and in the mind-speak that is only available to her ilk: “Glorious descendant of the first clans, high admiral of Imperial Fleet, ruler of—”

  Xoras suddenly stops, her dais shuddering to a halt. Her Hastari glance at her, then at each other, coded Hastari battle-speak flickering between them, and then at the empty darkness that surrounds them.

  Something is wrong. Something is alien. Here, in this very hall, at the beating heart of Bellitran power.

  A true perversion.

  She is motionless as the imperial throne begins to glide toward her. Panic rises in her gorge, panic that she ruthlessly shoves aside, the training of a high-noble Bellitran asserting itself over the useless fear-response of base flesh. She attempts an emergency broadcast to her convoy outside, knowing it to be useless even as she tries; all comms, psychic or otherwise, are blocked inside the throne room.

  Instead she pulses a psychic command to her fourth Hastari:

  Danger. Betrayal. Run. Raise the alarm.

  The Hastari is instantly sprinting, his recurved legs eating up the ground to the door with impossible speed.

  What? No! She tries to warn him when she feels the impending danger; she tries, but something is here, something is blocking her from shooting a psychic warning across even the meager distance to the Hastari who has nearly reached the throne room’s huge doors.

  She is helpless as she hears a surprised grunt, quickly followed by Hastari armor encountering multiple high-velocity rounds.

  It is over quickly, though she does hear several answering screams. One truism at least holds: that a Hastari’s blade never goes unbloodied.

  “What betrayal is this, Forlex? You would plunge us into civil war? Even you are not such a fool,” Xoras whispers, beginning to inch her dais backward, away from the approaching throne. But there is something else beyond Forlex, an indefinable itch at the back of her mind that makes her want to scream.

  The gliding throne halts. Forlex, her huge body encased in the ancient regalia-armor of the Primary Potentate, sits, silently considering Xoras and her three Hastari praetorians.

  “Speak! I will you!” Xoras yells, pushing the demand with such force that the air between them shudders, bending in waves of trans-dimensional strength.

  Forlex does not answer. Instead, walking slowly from behind the throne, a creature appears.

  By great-mother’s soul…

  A Human.

  And what is wrong with its eyes?

  “Xoras. The rival. Forlex has spoken much of you,” the Human says, its high-pitched voice butchering the sounds of high-Bellitran. Xoras does not only hear the creature, but feels it too. Grandmother above, the thing practically oozes a brackish-tasting psychic power.

  One of Xoras eyes twitches toward her first Hastari. Kill it! Kill it now! Xoras thought-screams. The thought is not yet finished before her first Hastari has flung one of its blades at the creature, dashing the remaining forty meters with its other blade held high.

  The blade slows, and so too does Xoras’ first Hastari, five hundred kilograms of genetically-refined muscle meeting some invisible, impossibly thick mud. There’s a rumbling hiss as multiple openings appear along the throne-room floor, dozens of imperial Gor shock-troops rising from beneath the room like thrall from fresh graves. Behind her, around her, Xoras can hear the clamp clamp of Gor feet and the snarls of their clinging Vorie as dozens more come out of the darkness to surround them. They carry not only blades, but guns. All the while, Xoras’ first Hastari moves, almost imperceptibly, the blood vessels of its red eyes bursting in rage.

  The Human casually steps to one side, allowing the Hastari’s flung blade to whip by her and clatter off in the distance.

  “Kill it,” the Human orders.

  Two Gor in possession of heavy lance-rifles step up beside the first Hastari, shove their weapons beneath his shoulder-joints, and fire.

  A moment of silence follows the reverberating crash of Hastari armor upon throne-room floor. Then the Human steps, almost daintily, over the crumpled corpse, the acrid smoke of burnt flesh parting before her like a veil.

  “Mothers above. What are you?” Xoras whispers. Her mind scrabbles against the Gor that surround her, but she cannot gain any purchase on their minds. It is as if they were dead, or made of stone. “Forlex, if you can hear me—you must awake! You must resist this thing! It is an unimaginable perversion!”

  Does Xoras imagine it, or does one of Forlex’s tentacles slightly spasm? But no, it is no use; this Human—this thing—has clearly had months with the Primary Potentate. The corruption has burrowed too deep.

  “See? I told you she was strong,” Forlex rumbles.

  The Human nods. Then it holds its chin with one hand, tilts its head slightly, and unleashes hell upon Bellitran Xoras.

  It takes everything she has to resist the first hammer blows of the attempted mind-intrusion—but then all of her training comes flooding back: countless cycles beneath the great-grandmothers’ uncompromising gaze that left her weepingly exhausted at the end of each day. She had hated every second of that training, but now she reaches back to all the cunning tricks of the matriarchs, tricks harking back from the ancient psychic duels that determined the chief of each Bellitran clan.

  She does not know how much time passes. A minute; five; ten. This thing has so much power— but there is a certain clumsiness too, like an untrained Hastari.

  How much time until my retinue grows impatient? Until my fifth Hastari demands an explanation?

  It is as if the creature can sense Xoras’ deeply-held thought. The assault suddenly ceases. The little human, its face sheened with sweat, turns to the Potentate upon her throne.

  “She is proving troublesome.”

  “And we are running out of time,” Forlex answers testily. “There are others we must attend to. Can you break her now or not?”

  The Human’s mouth twists, teeth flashing in a grimace.

  “No.”

  “Then we must dispose of her. Guards, destroy the heretic!”

  More than a hundred weapons rise.

  “HOLD CLOSE, BROTHERS!” Xoras cries, interspecies propriety discarded in the heat of battle. She expands her mind-field, drawing upon a reservoir of strength that she was not aware she possessed. Her Second and Third Hastari crouch, weapons raised, muzzles curled back in feral battle-lust as rounds detonate just beyond them, lance-beams fizzling out as they meet the protective shell of Xoras' psychic power.

  The first Gor who enters the bubble has its head cleanly separated from its neck, its two Vories erupting in red mist as the second Hastari brings its blade back around to meet them, but that is the last thing Xoras sees, for now she is holding off not only the Gor firing squad, but also the renewed mind attack of the Human abomination, and Forlex too.

  She can still hear though: the clashing of blade upon armor, grunts and snarls of Hastari and Gor. She squirms as a blade enters her body, but she does not lose her concentration, and the wielder of the weapon explodes beneath the weight of a Hastari fist.

  Her Hastari fight as only praetorian Hastari can; but they are only two against many. Slowly the death-grunts of the Gor grow more infrequent and the pained snarls of her Hastari grow weaker, until finally one and then the other of their four-meter frames crash wetly upon the stone floor.

  Xoras regrets that she never knew their names.

  Death will come as a relief, a part of Xoras thinks; but then the blades begin to enter her body and she debases herself, screeching for life and mercy as her tentacles writhe in agony. She makes one last, desperate mind-scream for help, not only for herself, but for her people, for her empire.

  This cannot be how Bellitor falls! But it is all useless.

  The last thing she sees is the white teeth of a Human girl's smile.