It had been over a generation and more of their people since the Ruk learned who the architects of their Fall were.

They had put in a lot of time into nursing that grudge over thousands of years. Hundreds of millions of young Ruk were hitting the Citadels, restaffing old ones, and wonder of wonders, even starting work on a new one, the first time in nearly twenty millennia.

There were five Citadels that had taken a vote to do some massive internal changes to their systems. This was unprecedented, as messing with the nature of a Citadel could be seen as an insult to the original designers.

But for the sake of vengeance, a revision was necessary to enact revenge... and unlike some short-lived beardless races, making a Citadel JUST for revenge was not something the Ruk were going to do. Each Citadel was just too much of an investment.

Between vengeance and wisdom, there was a middle road, and so revisions were made.

Technology of other races was put into place. It was kept carefully sequestered from the Ruk’s own systems, interfacing only through the Ruk themselves. Psionically-enhanced technology forged to the standards of Angeltech were put into place as the Ruk re-mastered their own technology to limits that began to approach the levels of their Ancestors... and in some cases, even to exceed them.

---

I was sitting in the control room of the Ruk, out of the way by dint of sitting on a Disk six feet in the air, so they could just walk right under me.

King Rargyle extended the invitation, I accepted, and here I was.

They were all plugged in via their armor, and they’d given me a connection to link in via my Band, so we were all watching the same data. If they were glancing a little askew at all the things I was watching simultaneously, they didn’t say anything. After all, they had prior experience at me being a Warlord.

Their presence in the Markspace and the Function, their internet, was hungry. They were grim and focused like I’d never seen them.

They were ready to exact some revenge.

“Huntsmasters,” King Rargyle called out softly.

Five Citadels were currently streaking through the Void between systems: the Unforgotten, the Grimshield, the Hammers Down, the Oath in Stone, and the Redoubt of History. The momentous thing about this is that they were using Tachyon Drives to do so.

There had never been a Citadel not using Dark Matter Mass Drivers to move.

The deeper meaning to this was that all that mass-manipulation power could be used to drop the gravity signature of the Citadels to null.

Dropping the gravity signature meant the Anti-Life couldn’t ‘see’ them at anything over a light-second or three of distance.

“Deploying now,” came the musical voice, adding a lyrical spin to Ruk that always faintly amused them.

From the hangar bays of the five Citadels, the Hunting Squadrons swarmed out.

The ships were all MF Gunboats and Cutters... and using Mass Drives, very specifically. Mass Drives that were all attuned to Ruk frequencies, and tweaked to have much higher local disruption than was actually proper.

The proper way to hunt was to use hounds.

The Huntmasters were all Elvar. This ancient arrangement had been brought up again, and the Elvar took to it almost despite themselves. Shadowplay, strike and fades, and guerilla warfare were things they were very adept at, and the symbology of the hunt tended to overlay many of their fleet actions. Being the hunters and trackers for the Ruk had been a position they had long held in the ancient past, and they took to it with gusto once again.

This time, their prey was the Anti-Life.

The mass-detecting gravity sensors attuned to the Dark Matter of the Anti-Life had been the focus of an incredible amount of research time. Deploying them around the galaxy had taken time, but not so much as it might have without the assistance of humanity and the Corunsun realm. Among other things, it had made tracking phlos much easier, and we were much closer to locating the Intergalactic Phlos now...

But now, now the Ruk could track the Anti-Life. And if they could track them, they could hunt them.

It had taken twenty years of deliberate testing to ascertain the effective sensory/response level of the Anti-Life to Mass Drives, which ranged from a light year to half a light year. The Anti-Life were definitely wary of Ruk Citadel movements now, and given the speeds they could move in the void, didn’t want them nearby. They had shifted away from Citadel travel paths whenever they sensed them.

The Elvar were perfectly happy to prey on this tendency, and so were driving the Anti-Life subtly this way and that by traversing their sensory range, pretending to be Citadels.

Now the five Citadels of the Vengeance Fleet were scattered at five locations, sitting out there in the void, bereft of mass signatures.

The prevailing belief was that the Anti-Life were much more sensitive to Mass Drives than the tests had shown, but the ‘threat radius’ was in play. Using Prescience to check this sort of thing out was a bad idea and could possibly alert and alarm the Anti-Life if they saw something trying to see such things, so it was down to good old temporal obfuscation and skill.

And so, as we watched, the Hunter squadrons got into position and began to show themselves.

It was an artful display of maybe-corralling prey. Had the Anti-Life ever been subjected to such? We had no idea if there was something anywhere that had preyed on them.

It required patience, but the forces involved had all sorts of that, and I always had stuff to do in the back of my head, so this wasn’t a waste of my time.

They’d picked a random set of Anti-Life, and simply narrowed down their victim as they responded to movements of Citadels here and there. It wasn’t out of line, either, as the Citadels out there were all engaged in far more moving around than they’d done in the past few thousand years... and the Kings of the Mountains were happy to contribute to the Anti-Life’s unease.

This was a species-wide spectacle, as the Ruk hunted things of Dark Matter the size of gas giants through the empty void, tracking them past nebula and dying suns, the clutter of Kuiper belts and the cold, vast emptiness between stars.

There it was, the final riff and casual dodge, that mass of Dark Matter going in that direction as our hounds moved this way and that, leaving big open areas that it could withdraw to... but statistically, only five were viable, and there were Citadels waiting silently at each one of them.

The guns warmed up on the Redoubt of History, as the other four Citadels smoothly, and with alien drives, moved on Harmonic wings to other locations in support of the lucky Citadel... just in case there was a sudden retreat, or something else came in to support or attack. While the Ruk Citadels might be able to consume and feed on an Anti-Life, there had been no record of actual conflicts with a Citadel... but that only made stories of at least ten Citadels gone missing in the Void to unknown attackers all the more ominous.

The likelihood that the Anti-Life hadn’t wiped those Citadels was pretty small, because there was basically little else out there that had a potential chance to do so, especially so fast that the Ruk couldn’t get off an emergency call.

The thing came flowing through space on a reality-bending version of Sundiving, manipulating gravity in ways no material creature could, ignoring some strictures on time and space, and so perfectly capable of FTL travel.

The readouts were current, the target was sizable, arc, trajectory, and course, coordinates laid, distance comprehended...

Axes cut Rifts. Railcannons fired Singularity Shells.

Their reactions weren’t slow, probably comparable to computers vs normal nervous systems, but still, gas giant. They had to think, they had to take action, and when those precisely-cut Rifts opened, and the Singularity Shells came out at a considerable fraction of light speed right in their path, they didn’t have any time to do any more than the electromagnetic equivalent of ‘bleep!’

A small series of Faux Black Holes ignited in the depths between the stars. Event horizons swallowed dark matter, compressed it to points, and then the artificial holes collapsed, and all that dark matter did what stuff under impossible compression does.

Where once was a non-baryonic life form of unknown age, planet-rivalling mass, and genocidal frame of mind, was now a new sun floating in space where none had been before, and some new non-Dark mass had been added to the galaxy.

There was a rumble through the Markspace...

Trembel, oo oooo oo, Trembel, vir kommen...

Billions of Ruk hummed deep in their throats as they watched that sun burning. How long it would burn, none of them knew, but as long as it did, it would be a monument to the wrath and the vengeance of the Ruk!

But there was work, and there was war...

“Continue,” King Rargyle directed, and the Citadels pulled away from that sun, while the Huntmasters looked at the galaxy, and found another target...

------

It was the first successful true Hunt of the Anti-Life. Previous kills had been off watching Anti-Life investigating systems, Sun Guns lying in wait, or ambushes set up as the Anti-Life were lured here and there.

This time, they’d been hunted down, driven this way and that, and terminated properly. A true hunt, not an ambush.

King Rargyle gave me a mug of their brew, a hideously potent agglomeration of something that approached alcohol, but could blister paint and serve as anti-freeze with no modifications. It had strong tastes, as the Ruk didn’t have sensitive taste buds, and it could totally overpower normal humans.

A normal human drinking a mug of this would fall over stoned after just one of them, and his liver would be protesting his life decisions for him for some time.

I tunked with the Unforgotten’s bridge crew solemnly, a formality being shared all over the Citadel; we all turned to the empty throne at the back of the room with its own mug sitting on it, bowed, and drained the whole thing as they all did the same, all of them looking at me.

I sloshed it around, judging the explosions going off in my mouth – they definitely did things with alkalines no sane human would do with their booze – and swallowed slowly, to see how the aftertaste mixed.

“This is definitely not made for our saliva interactions,” I informed them all loftily. “The krogol aftertaste is too salty, and the mbrungal too thick. This is Gubman’s, right?”

There was a chorus of aye’s around, impressed that I knew that. It was a prized Ruk brew. Of course, being able to share sensory information with the kids meant I had a catalogue of booze tastes that was beyond encyclopedic at this point. “You ever had a pint of ale more balanced for human tastes?” There was emphatic denial from all around at even the thought of such a sissified drink. “Sorry, balanced for Rantha tastes?”

There was sudden silence. A normal human would have rolled their eyes up and fallen over after just one salute to King Gravity. I was conversing with them easily...

“You’ll probably find it a little strange, but it’s because the additives to the brew react differently with our biochemistry than yours. I’ll have Pabst send over a kegger for you. Him, Schlitz, Bud, Foster, Guinness, Helles, and Strohz are all Natural Brewers, and love making up alternative drinks for non-Human standards.”

“Will it be strong enough?” King Rargyle asked carefully. He’d tried human wines and beers before, and might as well have been drinking fruity water.

“Well, there’s the stuff, and there’s the Good Stuff. If you’re still standing after the Good Stuff, that’s impressive. Otherwise, you’ll have a pretty deep sleep.”

I instantly had some Ruk very, very interested in the products of Weiser Brothers, Inc...