ECLIPSING BINARIES
Volume eight of The classic Family d’Alembert series
By E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith
With Stephen Goldin
Chapter 1
The War Against SOTE
Being summoned to Lady A’s office was never a casual matter. Tanya Boros had to pass
an ID and weapons checkpoint before she was even allowed into the elevator tube taking
her down to the lowest basement level. There she passed a human-supervised retina
scope check and a weapons detector scan. Then she had to walk alone down a brightly
lit L-shaped corridor with camera eyes watching her every step of the way. The walls
were gray and completely bare except for the innocuous-looking small projections she
assumed were blaster barrels pointed directly at her.
As she turned right at the far end of the hallway, she came abruptly to the heavy gray
magnisteel door that was the final barrier to Lady A’s office. There were some
people-ones who had made serious mistakes on their assignments-who had gone
through this door and never been seen alive again, though admittedly such cases were
rare. Lady A normally dealt with faulty subordinates in a more efficient manner, letting
others on her staff do the dirty work. More often a visit to Lady A meant a tongue-lashing
for some slipup, some operation that had gone less smoothly than planned even if it was
ultimately successful. Most of Lady A’s plans did go smoothly, but she was a
perfectionist and did not tolerate even minor faults in her hirelings.
Even at best, being called to this office merely meant another hard, demanding job from
a taskmaster who was never satisfied. There was still much to do if the conspiracy was
to topple the Stanley dynasty from the Imperial Throne, and Lady A could never quite
understand why her inferiors did not measure up to her own impeccable standards.
For all these reasons, Tanya Boros was understandably nervous as she stood before the
ponderous gray door. As far as she knew she’d done nothing wrong-but innocence was
not always an alibi in Lady A’s court. The woman who ran this vast, galaxy-wide
conspiracy had been in a foul mood for the last six months, ever since the failure of
Operation Annihilate. All plans had been put into abeyance while the conspiracy was
evaluated from top to bottom and its goals reassessed. Things were now starting to
move again-but Tanya Boros didn’t know what place she would fill in the new
organization, and that bothered her.
Nervously she inserted her comparison disc into the appropriate slot and put her eyes to
the viewer so the retina scope could check her pattern. Even after all the previous
precautions, no one was permitted into Lady A’s office without undergoing one final
identity check; Lady A was too thorough for anyone to catch her unawares.
Boros’s retinal patterns matched the ones on her identity card, which the door returned
to her. Then the heavy security portal swung slowly outward and Lady A said, “Come in,
Tanya. I’ve been expecting you.” Tanya Boros obeyed.
The office was quite dim after the bright lighting of the corridor outside. Three of the
walls were covered with cream-colored raw silk but were otherwise bare of adornment.
The fourth wall, opposite the door, was one large triscreen bearing the image of a
mist-shrouded stream tumbling between ancient eroding mountains.
The floor was hard and black, polished smooth as ice; it was difficult to walk on it without
making noise, and impossible to move quickly without slipping. Two black lacquered
chairs-neither very comfortable-and a black lacquered table between them were the only
concessions to a visitor’s comfort.
At the far end of the room near the left-hand corner stood a large, glowing green egg.
Carved from solid jade, it pulsated slightly from internal illumination. As the egg pivoted
slowly, Boros could see a computer terminal and keyboard built into the interior, which
had been hollowed out to form a comfortable seat. The computer terminal, it was
rumored, allowed instant access to all the conspiracy’s files as well as a direct telecom
link to the mysterious person known only as C. That immense jade egg represented the
very heart of the conspiracy-and seated within this egg, back straight and looking as
though she’d been born to rule the universe, was Lady A.
The woman who ran the greatest conspiracy in human history was of average height-but
that was the only thing average about her. Tanya Boros, never modest and renowned for
her own attractiveness, always felt plain in the presence of this magnificent woman. Her
figure and face were of classic beauty, mature but unwrinkled, and there was something
inhumanly cold about them. She wore a tight-fitting dress of jade green silk one shade
darker than the egg about her, with gold and silver phoenixes embroidered on the
shoulders and sleeves. Her jet black hair, tightly braided, was draped casually across her
left shoulder, and her green eyes peered out from beneath those arching black brows
with painful intensity.
As the door closed behind her, Tanya Boros stood in this regal presence not knowing
what to say. Even though she’d been raised in the upper echelons of galactic nobility,
she’d never met anyone else who was as awe-inspiring as Lady A.
“Don’t just stand there, child,” Lady A said. “Have a seat.” She gestured with a perfectly
manicured hand at one of the two black lacquered chairs.
“Thank you,” Boros said, taking the indicated seat. The two women sat in silence for a
long moment. Boros grew increasingly uncomfortable at the appraising scrutiny she was
being given. It felt as though Lady A were weighing her very soul and finding it a feather’s
weight this side of perfection.
“We haven’t had much chance to talk recently, have we?” Lady A said at last, breaking
the unbearable silence. “No, ma’am.”
“Not since Gastonia, really.”
Boros’s eyes widened a little. “That really wasn’t my fault. I did everything expected of
me. . . .”
Lady A raised a hand to silence her. “No one’s blaming you for anything. Don’t start
looking for excuses where none are due; it’s bad form. No, everything on Gastonia itself
went as scheduled. You performed admirably. The reason for failure lay elsewhere.”
She settled back in the glowing egg, but her body never fully relaxed. “To be candid, I
suppose I should admit the fault was mine.”
“Oh no,” Boros said quickly. “It was purely accidental . . . ”
“No.” Lady A slammed her left fist on the side of the egg with a force that echoed
through the quiet room. “If I won’t accept that excuse from my inferiors, I have no right to
lean on it myself. There are no accidents; there’s only sloppy planning or inadequate
execution.”
Unexpectedly she stood up and walked a few paces from her egg, staring out at the
triscreen with her back to Boros. “We’ve spent the last six months analyzing the failure,
both from our side and from the reports we’ve seen in the Empire’s records. If I needed
an excuse, I could blame it on that robot who’s now so conveniently destroyed, for its
failure to make certain Commander Fortier was dead before proceeding with its plans.
That was the pivotal factor.
“But to be honest, I must look beyond that to the errors in planning that made such a
mistake not only possible, but fatal to our plans. The fact is, the operation was over
planned. In trying to be so clever, we outfoxed ourselves. We had the force and the
resources to make the attack work. If we’d just gone ahead and bulled our way through,
it would have worked. Instead, we tried too hard for finesse, and it threw us just enough
off balance to let the Imperial forces recover. We lost a great deal in that disaster, more
than just the seventy-five percent of our fleet. But it’s a mistake that will not happen
again-I swear it by the throne I intend to take.”
Tanya Boros felt distinctly uneasy. Lady A was not known for being particularly
introspective, or for admitting weaknesses or imperfections in front of her subordinates.
Why was she behaving so uncharacteristically in front of Boros’? What had caused her to
reveal this unexpected side of her nature’?
The mask of perfection was suddenly back in place as though it had never been awry.
Lady A turned abruptly away from the triscreen and returned to the jade egg to face
Boros.
“All this, of course,” she said, “is of only peripheral interest to you. You need not concern
yourself, at present, with matters of policy. That will come later, if you develop as well as
I hope. In the meantime, I have to know whether you are prepared to begin assuming
responsibility for your proper role in this conspiracy.”
“My proper role?” Boros was puzzled. “I don’t understand. I’ve always taken your orders,
since you first contacted me on Gastonia. I didn’t like being forced to stay there, but, as