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of the battle. At a minimum, they're more advanced than the Realm of Tarzhgul was. For one thing, they've got deflector technology."
    "Hm . . . inventive Korvaasha," Sarnac mused. "Not too good."
    "No, sir. But not entirely unanticipated. When the shifting of the displacement network left the various pieces of the old Unity on their own, most of them simply died. They'd been locked into a rigid totalitarian structure so long that they couldn't function in the absence of higher authority. The ones who survived were the ones who, for whatever reasons, could adapt. The dangerous ones. There must be a lot of variation among the surviving Korvaash cultures in the galaxy by now." A bleak smile. "Maybe there are even some we can get along with. But not these, it seems."
    "Hardly," Sarnac agreed. The deflectors worried him. The device was an application of gravitics, fending off incoming objects with a force proportional to their own kinetic energy. Varien hle'Morna had gotten the idea from relics of the prehistoric spacefaring culture that was one facet of the enigma of Raehaniv origins. That the Korvaasha—whose lack of inventiveness relative to humans was widely thought to be not merely a cultural trait but a racial one—had apparently come up with it on their own was disturbing.
    "Could they have the continuous-displacement drive?" Rimaeriy asked.
    "Unknown. The fact that it came before deflectors in our history is immaterial; our development was shaped by a quirky genius working with archaeological hints. But even if they do have it, it's of limited use to them in the current tactical situation, because they have no knowledge of where we come from in realspace."
    Heads nodded around the table. Exploration was something that the League did with great caution. Survey ships carried no astronomical data that were not rigged for instant cybernetic lobotomy in the event of probable capture.
    "We, on the other hand, know exactly where they are," Draco continued. One of the holographic star-symbols flashed obligingly. "And we do have the continuous-displacement drive. This sets them up for the classical trap used in the liberation of Raehan by Eric and Aelanni DiFalco."
    Tiraena's great-grandparents , Sarnac thought. Aloud: "Yes—come at the defenders of a displacement point from a direction where you've got no business being, and then come through the displacement point like you're supposed to. One problem, Captain: we're talking a displacement connection that bypasses a realspace distance of over three hundred light-years. Any units we send there via continuous-displacement drive are going to have to be units built for speed and endurance and little else."
    "Yes, sir," Draco acknowledged unflinchingly. "Also, there's the possibility of an additional problem: if they do have continuous-displacement drive, the maneuver won't come as a surprise to them. Even if they've never used it themselves, the theoretical possibility should be apparent to them, and we have to assume that they'll have taken precautions against it.
    "But," he continued after letting the silence stretch just long enough, "we've developed an operational plan that takes both of these considerations into account and, I believe, offers a very high probability of success. I invite your attention to the folders in front of you, marked 'Most Secret.' "
    He continued, holding everyone's attention. Sarnac found himself admiring not just the plan itself—without question a brilliant piece of work—but also the dynamism of Draco's presentation. No doubt about it, he was a man who had that indefinable thing called "charisma" coming out his ears.
    And he was also a man Sarnac had known before. He was surer of that than ever. But every time a gesture or a mannerism awakened the insubstantial wisp of familiarity, it flitted elusively away like the tatters of an old dream.
    But the dream didn't lie comfortably in the past—it was new and it came to renew itself more and