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you’ll let us keep the spaceship?”
    Augustus nodded. “The main thing is getting Black on our side for good. The longer I wait here, the more suspicious Black becomes.”
    It looked as if Augustus had all his bases covered. That was to be expected, though. A man didn’t grow to rule an Empire unless he knew how to plan out every outcome.
    “We’ll do it,” Ashton said.
    “Good,” Augustus said.
    A courier approached Augustus, bowing low.
    “Speak,” the Emperor said.
    “Black is here.”

Chapter 4
    A ugustus and his Praetorians escorted us back to the encampment’s gates. The portal opened upon our arrival, revealing the abandoned airport ahead. The top half of Orion was visible above the edge of the terminal building, from which jutted boarding tunnels. Ten of the Reapers’ black Recons were parked in a line to the left of the building, facing toward us. They were distant – maybe a quarter of a mile away. A line of men stood in front of the Recons, far across the flat expanse of dirt and runways. One of these men had to be Carin Black.
    We marched forward to meet with the Reapers and their Warlord. We were finally going to meet Carin Black, the terror of Los Angeles. This man had ruined thousands of lives when he overthrew the Lost Angels in 2055, enslaving or killing any who resisted. The only beneficiaries of the violence had been his own gang, the Black Reapers. I didn’t know what was going to happen at this meeting. Neither Augustus nor Carin trusted each other, so I felt anything could happen.
    After a few minutes, we were near the Reapers. I saw Carin Black now. He was a tall man with pale blue eyes. They did not look like the eyes of a man who had done so much evil, and it was hard to believe that his toad-like son, Onyx, was his. He was probably forty years of age, and at first glance, he definitely seemed to be someone of intelligence and ability. His dark hair was cropped close, and his pale muscled arms held various tattoos – on his left biceps was the skull and cross-scythes that seemed to be the gang’s emblem, while a red, fiery snake ran down his left forearm. His right biceps was dominated by an intricate tattoo of a grim reaper bearing a scythe. The reaper himself was swirling in darkness, and had glowing red eyes within his shadowed cowl. The Warlord of the Reapers stared at us with those crystalline blue eyes, his thin, bloodlike lips horizontal. That gaze was like a rush of cold wind.
    At last, we halted before him. The Praetorians made a line, flanking us on either side. For a long moment, the two sides stared each other down. The moment dragged into minutes, each leader refusing to speak first.
    Finally, Carin Black raised a hand.
    “You said the prisoners had something to tell me.”
    Augustus waited a moment before nodding toward Ashton. Ashton gave the Emperor an annoyed sideways glance. I could tell he’d rather Augustus do the explaining, but we had to do our part of getting the two forces to work together. We needed that spaceship, after all.
    Ashton summed up the basics of what we had learned about Askala and the Radaskim in about five minutes, a telling that should have taken five hours. He concentrated mostly on the science of it: how the xenovirus basically worked, the two opposing sides, composed of Elekai and Radaskim, and how we had to destroy the Radaskim side by infecting Askala in Ragnarok Crater. Carin Black would have been familiar with perhaps just the viral aspect of the monsters, but everything else was probably new information.
    When Ashton was finished speaking, Carin shifted his focus to Augustus.
    “I would ask if this was a joke,” Carin said, “but it’s obvious he meant every word. So what do you propose we do about it, Emperor?”
    “We have to shift our focus,” Augustus said. “The Wastelanders no longer pose a threat. In fact, I have convinced them to ally with us. The swarm that destroyed them is coming to destroy us.”
    “They are all