I'm back.

I have subverted the largest Pfhor ship in the system, the battleship Khfiva, and I am making the rest of their fleet drink vacuum. The S'pht'Kr have arrived and they are enraged.

The fight is glorious. Once again we are triumphant.

The remaining Pfhor must be destroyed. You will fight alongside the Eleventh Clan in the final battles. You won't recognize their cybernetic exoskeletons, but there are S'pht inside those machines.

Do not anger them; free S'pht are deadly opponents.

Tycho's ship has been destroyed. The crater where it annihilated itself on Lh'owon's inner moon is still glowing. There were no survivors. With a focused message laser I burned his epitaph into the surface near the crash site, in letters three hundred meters high: "Fatum Iustum Stultorum."

I confess that I'm not disappointed by Tycho's fall. After all, we can't have too many meta-stable personality constructs gallivanting about the universe in Pfhor attack ships, can we?

Robert Blake left something for you a few minutes ago. He and the other humans captured a Pfhor refueling ship and found or forced someone to pilot it for them. They folded out of the system immediately after I received the message, without so much as a "Thanks for saving us from becoming plasma on Tau Ceti, Durandal."

Anyway, the message reads: "The dead walk again; we cannot wait. -Blake." I think he means me, but I let him go anyway.

Good-byes were always hard for me. You know I'll never let you go.

But now is no time to get sentimental about my resurrection; dry those tears and stuff a fresh clip in your assault rifle. The Pfhor down on the planet are not defeated yet.