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Empire expects more.
No wonder they had pushed Dennison so hard; no wonder they had refused to let him leave the service. He
was
Varion.
    And yet he wasn’t. Whatever Varion had, it hadn’t been transmitted to Dennison. That confidence of his hadn’t come from a random mingling of chromosomes. The victories, the power, the sheer momentum. These could not be copied.
    The High Emperor will find that I am even capable of defeating myself.
Varion knew—knew that he was special, somehow.
    “Dennison,” Kern said.
    Dennison looked up. Kern sat below, in a chair just before the holo, looking up disapprovingly. He had paused the recording. The point he had inadvertently chosen showed a disturbing image. Varion’s weapon raised, smoking, a corpse falling to the grass below. . . .
    “Dennison, I asked you a question,” Kern said.
    “He’s going to win, Kern,” Dennison said, staring at the holo. “The empire . . . to Varion, what is the empire but another collection of recalcitrant planets to be brought into line?”
    Kern glanced at the holo, and—realizing where he’d paused it—turned off the image.
    “We are High Officers, Dennison,” Kern said sternly. “Such talk isn’t fitting.”
    Dennison snorted.
    “Varion
can
be defeated,” Kern insisted.
    Dennison shook his head. “No. He can’t. And why should we bother, anyway? When does a man stop being a hero and start being a tyrant? If he had the right to bring the rebellious Reaches into line, then why shouldn’t he claim the same moral right regarding us?”
    Kern frowned. “Only the planets that raided us were conquered—at least, at first, back when Varion was still nominally under control. This complete conquest of the Reaches was his own plan, done against the High Emperor’s wishes. By the time we realized our mistake, he was already too powerful. We really only had one option—gather strength and wait, hoping that he would be satisfied with taking the Reaches.”
    Dennison shook his head. “If you hoped that, then you never really knew him. He is a conqueror, Kern. It’s like he feels some divine right to take the High Throne for himself.”
    Kern’s frown deepened. He reached over, turning the recording back on. Once again, Dennison was confronted by the frozen image of his father dying, his brother . . . his other self . . . watching impassively.
    “At least the High Empire believes in honor, Dennison,” Kern said. “Is there honor in that face? The face of a man who would slaughter his own father?”
    Dennison glanced away, shutting his eyes. “Please.”
    He heard the holo wink off. “I’m sorry,” Kern said sincerely. “Here, let me show you something else instead.”
    Dennison turned back; the holo shifted to an image of Varion. This image, however, was in motion. Varion sat behind a broad, black commander’s desk, a small data pad in his hand.
    “What is this?” Dennison asked, perking up.
    “The feed from a bug we have in Varion’s study,” Kern explained. “Aboard the
Voidhawk
.”
    Dennison frowned. “How—?”
    “Never mind how,” Kern said. “This is our only bug feed of the
Voidhawk
that didn’t fuzz off within an hour of the incident on Kress. I doubt that Varion’s scanners caught the other twenty but missed this one.”
    “He knows about it, of course,” Dennison said. “But why would he. . . .” He trailed off. Silvermane had left the bug because it amused him. Even as Dennison watched, Varion looked up—directly toward the ostensibly hidden camera—and smiled.
    “That man . . .” Kern said. “He wants us to watch him, to know how unconcerned he is by our spying. He’s so arrogant, so certain of his victory. You would bow before this creature? Whatever the empire is now, it will be worse with him at the head.”
    Dennison watched Varion lounge in his study.
But I
am
him—an inferior knock-off, at least.
    Kern eventually snapped off the feed. “I’m giving you a sub-command,