Zach Hughes - For Texas and Zed

On Texas, Emily heard the engagement called the Slaughter of Wolfs Star.

With the miniaturized multiple-blink generators installed, the Texican fleet blinked circles around the traditional formations of the Cassiopeians. So efficient had become the killers from extra-galactic space that the destruction was selective. First, Darlene projectiles took out the protecting Vandys, then, millions of men dead, a concerted effort demolished the Cassiopeian force of Middleguard cruisers, leaving a core of huge Rearguards grouped together like frightened, herded meacrs.

"To the death," vowed the elected battle leader of the Cassiopeians.

"Death it is, then," Lex sent. "In three minutes and live seconds your ship dies." He himself pushed the button which sent a Darlene projectile blinking into the main control room, there to hang in air as Lex sent, "There is death, my friend. Now you must choose. Surrender, if you will."

"Never," said the dictator, speaking his last word.

"Any more heroes?" Lex sent.

The final engagement of the War of Texican Conquest saw a battered Empire allied with the Cassiopeians, their traditional enemies. Lex sent a phalanx of captured Cassie Rearguards into the scattered formations, spreading fire on all sides. Two days after the final surrender, ship works on a thousand planets began conversion of the huge warships into merchantmen.

Behind him, Arden Wal administered all of the Cassiopeian territory, bending his main effort to trade, for the Cassies excelled at agriculture. In exchange for foodstuffs, a flow of manufactured goods began to stream out of the old Empire even before Lex began the slow, triumphal march to the home planet, old Earth. Blant Jakkes was in charge of the outer limits of Empire. Form had died at the Second Battle of Wolfs Star. Billy Bob Blink, after the final victory, said goodbye and blinked toward Texas. All over the galaxy, young Texican officers were assuming their duties as administrators of planets, groups of planets, vast star fields. An isolated dictatorship, embracing six planets, resisted. The main military planet was broken, burned, using captured Empire planetkillers, and there was peace.

The Texas-built Lone Star , flagship of the victorious Texican fleet, neared old Earth, paused as scanners played over the planetary surface to show, in full color close-ups, a park planet, manicured and clean, population confined to towering cities, the main administrative city covering the central belt of the North American continent in what had once been the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri. The spaceports which had once served the capital were deserted. In the streets there was little movement.

Lex scorned the spaceports, lowering the Lone Star into the vast reaches of the park surrounding the Emperor's palace. The building, when he stepped out onto the earth of his mother planet, towered over him, gleaming, dazzling in the bright summer sun. The planet was weather-controlled. The temperature, after he confines of a warship, seemed chill at seventy-two degrees. Around him growing things followed orderly patterns as he walked, at the head of his crew of officers, toward the group which was forming to greet him on the palace entry.

The Lady Gwyn was there, dressed officially. In addition, there were somber-faced old men, documents in hand. "In the name of the Emperor," said one official, "we welcome you to Earth."

Lex waved them aside, taking the steps two at a time, his officers following, hands on their side arms. The Lady Gwyn, as they passed, said bitterly, "Gentlemen, this is your new Emperor."

Lex heard. He kept his face forward, striding purposefully up the stairs to the grand entry door. Inside, a huge hall stretched away from him. Uniformed attendants stood fearfully at attention. "The Emperor," Lex said to one of them.

"This way, sir," the attendant said, bowing, leading Lex across the huge hall into a series of corridors until, with another bow, the man indicated a door flanked by two men, tall by Empire standards.

"To see the Emperor," the attendant said. "President Lexington Burns."

Lex brushed past the two guards.

The Emperor was a very old man, small, seemingly enfolded in official robes of purple. Contrary to Lex's expectations, the room was only of moderate size and there was no throne, only a large desk flanked by a bank of communication equipment. The walls were simple white, decorated with sun paintings, the floor not as luxuriously thick in pile as the corridors outside.

"Ah," the Emperor said, standing, making a short, stiff bow. "President Burns. Or should I say Emperor Burns."

"I don't want your title, old man," Lex said.

The Emperor remained standing. Lex examined the simply furnished room.

"If I may have your permission to sit," the Emperor said. "Age is a terrible adversary, even more irresistible than your Texicans."

"Sit, sit," Lex said impatiently.

"Thank you. May I send for something? A brandy, perhaps?"

"Nothing," Lex said. He stalked toward the desk. One chair faced it. He sat, letting his feet stick straight out in front, oversized for the chair. He looked at the old man, wondering.

"So now it's over," the Emperor said. "Strangely, I'm not even sorry."

"Old man, you launched population reducers on Texas," Lex said.

"I plead guilty," the Emperor said, with an open-handed gesture. "For I must confess that even then I felt,

shall we say, a prescient foreboding." He sighed. "Ah, well, there is an end to everything, man, his works, even the universe ultimately."

Lex had looked forward to the moment. All the way, all that long, terrible way, with death his constant companion, feeling the pain of his victims, drinking blood with his soul, a bitter draught. Now, as he looked at the withered, old, feeble man he felt as if he'd been cheated.

"Empires," said the old man, "are among the most fragile of man's creations, coming and going as history marches inevitably onward. Now my time has come, just as yours will come."

"You won't live to see it."

"Ah." Lex noticed that the old hands were shaking even more. "I ask only, if I am allowed that favor, that I be allowed to choose my own way, a peaceful slumber, as it were, in my own bed."

Lex rose, walked to a white wall, examined a particularly effective painting. When he turned, the old man's eyes were on him.

"No," Lex said. "We won't ask that. You can go, if you want to. Pick a place. Just go."

"Ah. There is a planet. It's in the Sirius sector, a family place. Thinly populated, treed, a green place of quietness and peace. I used to go there when—"

"Yeah, sure," Lex said. "Just go, huh? Take any with you who want to go. But do it."

For he had seen, in those few troubled moments, that the death of one old man, already near a natural decease, would change nothing. He turned on his heel and left the Emperor's office, finding his officers in conference with the Emperor's people, discussing an orderly turnover of the mechanics of government. Bored by the discussion he wandered the halls and rooms of the huge building. He discovered the war room in a sub-basement, a huge, gray place of the most sophisticated instrumentation, and that occupied his attention for an hour. Beyond the main room, with its vast arrays of communications, computers and gear, was a wonder which halted his step upon entering, a vast, complicated, scaled model of the galaxy. The loom stretched far and away, two hundred, three hundred feet, and it was filled with it—the galaxy, the stars and the fields and the glowing areas of space debris.

At first he thought he was alone in the room, but he gradually felt the presence of another and he turned to face a uniformed woman.

"Sir," she said.

"Who are you?"

"I am the operator."