shock wave rocking us all, tracers again lighting up the sky, shooting up to the clouds, then falling slowly like hot rain. The thing was gone, snuffed out by the blast. The echoes ricocheted off the mountains, slowly fading. My eyes were so dazzled I could hardly see—I had not had my helmet on.
'What the hell was that?' someone asked breathlessly.
'There's nobody here,' Valkyrie said. She was up and scanning with her E. 'Nobody—it's clear.'
'Perimeter is secure,' Merlin reported shakily.
'That was a nova beacon,' Snow Leopard stated quietly. His E was still smoking. He had blown the device apart.
'A nova! What the hell!' Dragon exclaimed.
'Well, where did it come from?' Scrapper demanded.
'Cinta,' Snow Leopard commanded, 'go to private.'
I snapped on my helmet. I was shaking. A nova beacon! That was a last resort distress signal. It would attract everyone on the planet, it would signal our location to everyone! What the hell!
'Aw right, who was it?' Psycho demanded angrily. 'Who's the retard who set off the nova!'
'Thinker, I don't like this,' Priestess told me.
'Neither do I, Priestess—this is bad news!'
'Count your novas, Valkyrie!' Snow Leopard ordered. Only Snow Leopard and Valkyrie carried novas.
'One is missing,' Valkyrie responded, looking through her fieldpak. 'Damn it!'
'That's it then,' Snow Leopard said. 'Where were they?'
'They were with the rest of the gear, right here.' We had piled our gear together where everyone could find it easily in the dark.
'Merlin? You were on duty.'
'I didn't see a thing, One! It was dead quiet. Then the damned thing went off, and it was so bright I couldn't see anything else!'
'Did anyone set it off by accident? Answer up!' But there was no answer. It seemed that nobody had set it off by accident. That left only one other possibility.
'We move!' Snow Leopard snapped. 'Now! On me, Beta!' I had never heard him so upset. We scrambled around hurriedly to get our gear. Our location had just been compromised in the worst possible way. A missile might be on its way, right now, death might be only instants away. We hustled into the dark behind our One.
###
Stumbling downhill through the dark, my mind was a torrent of contradictory images. Moontouch was with me like a phantom, swirling all around me. I had done all I could for her and for my child, but it had not been enough. I had never seen my son. And the way things were going, it appeared increasingly unlikely that I would ever see him, or ever again feel Moontouch's satin skin. Who was it, I thought? Who could have done such a thing?
'Tara, Wester.'
'Yes, Wester.' She sounded tense.
'You're a psycher! Who was it? You looked into everybody's mind, didn't you? Snow Leopard asked you to, didn't he?'
'It's not that easy, Wester.'
'What do you mean by that? I thought you were a hot psycher! Did you find anything or not?'
'Nobody knows, Wester. Nobody knows.'
I almost lost my balance. We were sliding down a steep slope of slippery pebbles.
'How can nobody know, Tara? Somebody set off that nova—one of us!'
'That's affirmative, Wester. But everyone is still in shock—I'll have to wait until things calm down. It wasn't conscious, Wester—it's a lot deeper than that.'
'You mean it was an accident?'
'No, Wester, it was deliberate—but it wasn't conscious.'
'What does that mean?'
'I can't say any more.'
'Talk to me, Tara!'
'I'm sorry. I'll tell you later.'
'Damn!' I switched over to Merlin. Not conscious! What did she mean? 'Four, Three.'
'Four. What.'
'You tell me, Merlin. You had the duty. What the hell happened?'
'Somebody set off a nova—haven't you figured that out yet?'
'Somebody! You mean one of us?'
'There was nobody else there, Thinker.'
'Couldn't it have been an accident?'
'That's a twelve, Thinker. It was deliberate.'
'But what does it mean?'
'Somebody is violently opposed to this mission, Thinker. That's clear.'
'Who?'
'I've got my own ideas. But I'm not ready to share them yet.'
'Come on, Merlin! This is life or death!'
'I may be wrong. I'll tell you when I'm sure.'
'Aw scut!' I broke the connection and almost walked over a cliff—I managed to stop just in time.
'Watch out for that drop.'
'Thanks!' We were putting distance between us and the campsite as rapidly as possible. Nothing had yet dropped from the sky to pulverize the site—we were lucky so far.
'Black Jade, Control!' It must have been a full-power blast, but we could barely hear it through the deceptors. 'We read your nova and note your zero. Do you require extraction, over?' But we couldn't respond. We just continued hustling over the rocks. I could see the mission coordinator in my mind, back in Recon Control, sipping on his dox, bored.
'Black Jade, Control. If you require extraction, please pop another nova, over.' We did not respond. There was no need. Our One did not want extraction. We were going to go on, no matter what. Speedy was whining, muttering to himself.
Damn! One of us was a traitor, conscious or not. My mind reeled at the concept. Who could it be? Not Snow Leopard, surely—impossible! He was our leader. He'd die for the mission. He almost had, on Mongera. He had no doubts of any kind. He would lead us into Hell, blind, no matter what. No, it was not Snow Leopard. I knew it wasn't me. Surely I'd know if it was me! No, impossible—I had been in the middle of a dream! Could it be Merlin? He had the watch. Merlin had been with us since the beginning of the squad, since Providence, since Planet Hell. But he never really belonged in a Legion squad. Four was a tech, a lab rat. Why had he volunteered to carry an E? They offered him a first-class research position after Mongera, but he turned it down. He had seen too much on Mongera. And he paid his dues on Coldmark. Both his legs were artificial. It was not inexplicable after all, I thought. He had thrown away his future to die in the mud, with Beta. He was one of us now. He would never betray us!
Who, then? Psycho? Out of the question! He was as predictable as a biogen. All he wanted was to fight, to annihilate our enemies with his Manlink. The little jerk was a giant pain in the ass, but he would never betray us. The Legion was all he wanted from life.
Beta Eight? Dragon? Out of a murky, violent past, he took to Legion life like a shark to water. He was a natural-born killer, and I could not imagine Beta without him. He had been wounded badly on Coldmark, and stood with us against the O's and the Systies on Mongera. No—not Dragon. If anyone had approached him proposing treason, he would have shot him in the head and told us about it later. Dragon was like Psycho—the Legion was his life.
That left Priestess, out of the survivors from our original squad. I simply discarded it. Beta Nine was a believer. Born in a Legion world, she had looked up to the stars and made a vow. She ran on pure faith. She carved a Legion cross into the walls of the Omni base on Andrion 3, and she took xmax in the chest on Mongera. Nothing could shake her faith in the Legion—she had enough faith for us all. No, it could not be Priestess.
Who was left? The two survivors from Gamma, Valkyrie and Scrapper. Valkyrie was my lover, in Hell—I had
