EDWARDS HAD A DOZEN OF HIS GHOST RIDERS with him when he entered the Regent's Home Hive; and, for good measure, three Scrim and three Crann, trailing the general's tightly knit formation like obedient mascots.

The Inorganics were dressed for the occasion in outlandish uniforms culled from the starship's wardrobe - REF dress cloaks draped over their massively broad shoulders, caps perched atop cyclopean-eyed torsos, battle ribbons dangling from underarm weapons clusters, breechcloths fashioned from United Earth Government flags around narrow, skeletal hips and armored loins.  Edwards and his men wore crisply tailored camouflage jumpsuits and jet-black helmets with tinted faceshields.  Each carried a gleaming Wolverine assault rifle, a sawtoothed survival knife, twin Badgers in hip holsters, ammo and battery packs, bandoliers of concussion grenades and antipersonnel canisters.  Edwards wore jackboots, skintight pants and a flare-shoulder vest of black leather, richly embroidered gloves, and a high-collared duotherm shirt.  His blond hair stood spiked away from his polished skullplate like a fright wig, the neural headband riding above his ears like some Incan headdress of royalty.  His good eye and cruel mouth were highlighted with purple- and rubicund-colored cosmetics.  He was carrying a riding crop and leading a Hellcat on a chrome leash.

The Regent had a band waiting.

The Home Hive complex was an agglomeration of mile-high hemispheres that covered hundreds of square miles.  From above it had reminded Edwards of a molecule model - an arrangement of domes and the arched conduits that linked them, an obscene polymer or everready ester.  The place was mind-boggling in both size and structure, and defied the senses at each turn; so much so that Edwards himself had been sorely tempted to make a beeline back to the dropship and force the Regent to come to him instead.  But once through the hive's permeable membrane he decided he had made the right choice.  No show of trepidation or apprehension; a surefooted balls-to-the-wall walk into the enemy's camp.  After all, hadn't he just saved the Regent's neck - sent Tesla Peryton-bound with his tail between his legs?  If he had a tail, Edwards thought.  God knew the renegade had looked satanic enough to possess one in that twenty-foot-high guise.  But even Tesla's ersatz-Humanness paled in comparison to this... this band the Regent assembled!  A conceit almost bizarre enough to rival the wedding ceremony he had staged for Wolff and the rest.  An orchestra composed of two dozen of the Regent's stripped-down soldiers beating on drums, shaking rattles and bells, and blowing into makeshift horns, ocarinas, and flutes.  Edwards immediately recognized that the Regent was attempting to copy, perhaps interpret, the welcome the SDF-3 had given his simulagent well over two years ago, and appreciated the chance to vent his bottled-up amazement in a long, roaring laugh.