Firstborn

destroyed—away from the ships themselves. The men here would be blood loyalists of the emperor’s household. From this room, the Imperial High Admirals could command the ten separate battles and work for victory right under the emperor’s eyes. Unfortunately, they were losing. All of them.
    Such brilliance,
Dennison thought.
Like a master of games, sitting before his boards, playing ten opponents simultaneously.
Varion seemed to be most brilliant when he was stretched, and these ten battles must have stretched him greatly, because he was in rare form. He pressed his advantage on all ten fronts, and while the battles were by no means over, Dennison could see where they were headed.
    “I can’t let you take command,” the emperor said.
    Dennison looked back.
    “If that’s why you came back to the Point,” the emperor said, “then I must disappoint you. I read our almost inevitable doom in these battles, and the men who fight them are good tacticians. Our best. I realize you must want to fight your brother, but we both know you don’t have the skill for it. I’m sorry.”
    Dennison turned back toward the viewscreens. “I didn’t come to fight him, your majesty. I fled that opportunity.”
    “Ah. Well, perhaps you will survive his attack, lad. In a way, you are his family. He might let you live.”
    “As he let his father live?” Dennison replied.
    The emperor did not respond. Dennison turned watch the screens, staring at Varion in his power, his perfection.“If he comes, I don’t want to live,” Dennison whispered. “He’s taken everything from me.”
    “Your father and Kern.”
    Dennison shook his head. “Not just that. He’s stolen my purpose. I was created to defeat him, and yet I am just as powerless as the rest of you. Nobody can face Varion. For the others, there is no shame in this—but
my
inability is a profound failure. I could have been him.”
    “You don’t want to be that creature, Dennison,” the emperor said, shaking a weary head, leaning back. “What has his life been? Nothing but success after success. That has bred an arrogance that will kill him someday. Better to be the failure who nobly strived than the success who never really had to.”
    Dennison closed his eyes. The words seemed foolish. Better to be Dennison the failure than Varion the genius?
    What could I possibly have that Varion does not?
    Dennison hesitated. Around him there were sounds—breathing, grumbling, called commands. One of the Admirals cursed loudly.
    Dennison didn’t open his eyes. That Admiral’s curses—he knew what had caused them. “The battle for Tightendow Prime,” Dennison said. “Varion just took the eastern fighter flank, didn’t he?”
    “Actually, yes,” the emperor said.
    Dennison stood with eyes closed. “On the fifth screen. He is pressing toward the gunships in the western screen-sector. He is taking them now, though moments ago they seemed safe. On the first monitor, he is pushing toward the flagship. It will fall within ten minutes. On the ninth screen, Taurtan, he is leading your fighters into a trap. They are being cut off somehow—I don’t know how, but I know he is doing it. They are lost.”
    Silence.
    “On the eighth screen, the planet Falna, he is collapsing the front line. After that, he will find a way to push the gunships into retreat, breaking their firing lines and opening the way for his fighters.”
    “Yes,” the emperor whispered.
    Dennison opened his eyes. “I don’t know
how
he will do these things, your majesty. That is the difference between him and me. Somehow, he can make his dreams into realities.” Dennison turned toward the emperor. “Do we still have the bug in Varion’s
klage
transmitter?”
    “For all the good it does,” the emperor said. “We discover his orders only a few moments before they are carried out. Perhaps that has allowed us to survive this long.”
    “Just before he died,” Dennison said, “Kern told me that you might have found a way to fake the transmissions coming in and out of Varion’s ship.”
    “The long distance ones, yes,” the emperor said, frowning. “But it’s far better just to spy on him. If we started fabricating messages, it wouldn’t take long for Varion and his men to discover the trick. We’d trade a long-term tactical advantage for a few minutes of confusion.”
    “Your majesty,” Dennison said, “there
is
no more long-term. If Varion wins this day, then we are all dead.”
    The