Mutineer's Moon

“Not if you’d rather I didn’t,” she said, and he laughed helplessly. It was his first laughter since Sean’s death, and he was amazed by how much it helped.

“Well, I will be damned,” he said at last, then cocked an eyebrow. “But isn’t it also a bit risky to plant so many people in the very area where Anu is pushing hardest?”

“Colin, everything we’ve ever done has been a risk. Of course we took chances-terrible ones, sometimes—but Anu’s own control is pretty indirect. Both sides know a great deal about what the other is up to—we more than him, we hope—but he can’t afford to go around killing everyone he simply suspects.”

She paused, and her voice was grimmer when she continued.

“Still, he’s killed a lot on suspicion. ‘Accidents’ are his favorite method, but remember that shuttle Black Mecca shot down?” Colin nodded, and she shrugged. “That was Anu. It amuses him to use ‘degenerate’ terrorists to do his dirty work, and their fanaticism makes them easy to influence. Major Lemoine was aboard that shuttle, and he was one of ours. We don’t know how Anu got on to him, but that’s why so much terrorism’s focused on aerospace lately. In fact, Black Mecca’s claimed credit for what happened to Cal and the girls.”

“Lord.” Colin shook his head and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the console and propping his chin on his palms. “All this time, and no one ever suspected. It’s hard to believe.”

“There’ve been a few times we thought it was all over,” Isis said. “Once we even thought they’d actually found Nergal. In fact, that’s why Jiltanith was ever brought out of stasis at all.”

“Hm? Oh! Getting the kids out just in case?”

“Precisely. That was about six hundred years ago, and it was the worst scare we ever had. The Council had recruited quite a few Terra-born even then—and you’d better believe they had trouble adjusting to the whole idea!—and some of them took the children and scattered out across the planet. Which also explains ’Tanni’s English; she learned it during the Wars of the Roses.”

“I see.” Colin drew a deep breath and held it for just a moment. Somehow the thought of that beautiful girl having grown up in fifteenth-century England was more sobering than anything else that had happened so far.

“Isis,” he said finally, “how old is Jiltanith? Out of stasis, I mean.”

“A bit older than me.” His face betrayed his shock, and she smiled gently. “We Terra-born have learned to live with it, Colin. Actually, I don’t know who it’s harder on, us or our Imperials. But ’Tanni went back into stasis when she was twenty and came back out while Dad was still being Hidachi.”

“She doesn’t like me much, does she?” Colin said glumly.

“She’s a very unhappy girl,” Isis said, then laughed softly. “Girl! She’s older than I am, but I still think of her that way. And she is only a girl as far as the Imperials are concerned. She’s the ‘youngest’ of them all, and that’s always been hard on her. She fought Dad when he sent her back into stasis because she wants to do something, Colin. She feels cheated, and I can’t really blame her. It’s not her fault she’s stuck here, and there’s a conflict in her own mind. She loves Dad, but his actions during the mutiny are what did all this to her, and remember her mother was actually killed during the fighting.” She shook her head sadly.

“Poor ’Tanni’s never had a normal life. Those fourteen years she spent in England were the closest she ever came, and even then her foster parents had to keep her under virtual house arrest, given that her appearance wasn’t exactly European. I think that’s why she refuses to speak modern English.

“But you’re right about how she feels about you. I’m afraid she blames you for what happened to Cal’s family … and especially the girls. She was very close to Harriet, especially.” Isis’s mouth drooped, but she blinked back the threatened tears and continued.

“She knows, intellectually, that you couldn’t have known what would happen. She even knows you killed the people who killed them, and none of us exactly believe in turning the other cheek. But the fact that you were ultimately responsible ties in with the fact that you’ve not only effectively supplanted Dad after he’s fought for so long, but that you’re an active threat to him, as well. Even if we succeed, Dad faces charges because whatever he’s done since, he was a mutineer. And, frankly, she resents you.”

“Because I’ve moved in on your operation?” he asked gently. “Or for another reason, as well?”

“Of course there’s another reason, and I see you know what it is. But can you blame her? Can’t you see it from her side? You’re the commanding officer of Dahak, a starship that’s like a dream to all of us Terra-born, a combination of heaven and hell. But it’s a dream whose decks ’Tanni actually walked … and lost for something she never did. She’s spent her entire adult life fighting to undo the wrong others did, and now you, simply by virtue of being the first Terra-born human to enter the ship, have become not just a crew member, but its commander. Why should you have that and not her? Why should you have a complete set of implants—a bridge officer’s, no less—while she has only bits and pieces?”

Isis fell silent, studying his face as if looking for something, then nodded slightly.

“But worst of all, Colin, she’s a fighter. She wouldn’t stand a chance hand to hand against an Imperial, and she knows it, but she’s a fighter. She’s spent her life in the shadows, fighting other shadows, always indirectly, protected by Dad and the others because she’s weaker than they are, unable to fight her enemies face to face. Surely you understand how much that hurts?”

“I do,” Colin said softly. “I do,” he said more firmly, “and I’ll bear it in mind, but we all have to fight Anu, Isis. I can’t have her fighting me.”

“I don’t think she will.” Isis paused again, frowning. “I don’t think she will, but she’s not feeling exactly … reasonable, just now.”

“I know. But if she does fight me, it could ruin everything. Too much depends not only on smashing Anu but finding a way to stop the Achuultani. If she can’t work with me, I certainly can’t let her work against me.”

“What … what will you do?” Isis asked softly.

“I won’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re afraid of. She’s given too much—all of you have—for that. But if she threatens what we’re trying to do now, I won’t have any choice but to put her back into stasis.”

“No! Please!” Isis gripped his arm tightly. “That … that would be almost worse than killing her, Colin!”

“I know,” he said gently. “I know what it would do to me, and I don’t want to. Before God, I don’t want to. But if she fights me, I won’t have a choice. Try to make her understand that, Isis. She may take it better from you than from me.”

The old woman looked at him with tear-bright eyes and her lips trembled, but she nodded slowly and patted his arm.

“I understand, Colin,” she said very softly. “I’ll talk to her. And I understand. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

“Thank you, Isis,” he said quietly. He met her eyes a moment longer, then squeezed the hand on his arm very gently and rose. An obscure impulse touched him, and he bent to kiss her parchment cheek.

“Thank you,” he said again, and left the command deck.

Chapter Twelve

“Colin?”

Colin looked up in sudden relief as Horus stuck his head in through his cabin door. The old man had been more than two hours overdue the last time Colin checked with Nergal’s operations room.

“About time you got back,” he said, and Horus nodded and gripped his hand, but his smile was odd, half- way between apology and a sort of triumph.

“Sorry,” Horus said. “I got tied up talking to one of our people. He’s got a suggestion so interesting I brought him back with me.”

The old Imperial gestured to the tall man behind him, and Colin glanced at the newcomer, taking in the hard-trained body and salt-and-pepper temples. The stranger’s nose was almost as prominent as Colin’s, but on him