Mutineer's Moon

—sick heavens with fresh flame. There were no shields to absorb the destruction this time, and there was, at most, no more than a microsecond between the first missile impact and the last.

A hurricane of light lashed upward as vaporized earth and stone and flesh vomited into the night, and the fireballs ballooned out, merging, melding into one terrible whole. A second southern fighter was caught just at lift off and spat forth like a molten, tumbling spark from Vulcan’s forge, and the pressure wave snatched at them. It shook them as a terrier shook a rat, but Jiltanith met it like a lover. She rode its ferocity—embracing it, not fighting it—and the universe danced crazily, even madder somehow from within the protection of their drive field, as she shot the rapids of concussion. But then they flashed out the far side, and Colin realized she had used the terrible turbulence to put them on the track of the single fighter that had escaped destruction.

Colin needed no evaluation of his final attack. All that could be left was one vast crater. He had just killed over two hundred people … and all he felt was satisfaction. Satisfaction, and the need, the eagerness, to hunt down and kill the single southern fighter that had escaped his wrath.

There was no way to know who piloted that other fighter, nor if it was fully crewed or what weapons it carried. Perhaps there was only the pilot. Perhaps it wasn’t even armed.

All Colin would ever know was that he felt a sort of merciless empathy—not pity, but something like understanding—for that fleeing vessel. He and Jiltanith were invincible, and they were vengeance. He bared his teeth and called up his air-to-air weaponry as the firestorm’s white heat dulled to red astern, and Jiltanith hurled them out over the night-dark Pacific in pursuit.

His targeting systems locked. A command flicked through his feed to the computers, and two more missiles launched. They were slower than mass missiles, homing weapons with their speed stepped down to follow evasive maneuvers, but this time they carried warheads: three-kiloton, proximity-fused nukes. His eyes were dreamy as his electronic senses watched them all the way in, but in the moment before detonation a third missile came scorching in from the west. He’d almost forgotten Geb and Tamman, and the southern fighter probably never even realized he and Jiltanith weren’t alone.

There was no debris.

Jiltanith needed no orders. She swept on into the west, reducing speed, losing altitude, and their drive strength coasted back down to wrap invisibility about them once more. Colin checked his sensors carefully, and not until he was certain they had evaded all detection did she turn and flee homeward into the north while he switched on the fighter’s com and activated the fold-space implant he had dared not use in over a month. He felt an odd little “click” inside his skull as Dahak’s receivers recognized and accepted his implant’s ID protocols.

“Category One Order. Do not reply,” he sent at the speed of thought. “Authentication Delta-One- Gamma-Beta-One-Seven-Eight-Theta-Niner-Gamma. Priority Alpha. Stand by for squeal from this fighter. Execute upon receipt.”

He closed his implant down instantly, praying that the almost equally strong pulse from the fighter com had hidden it from Anu’s people. The coded squeal he and he alone had pre-recorded and tacked into the middle of the strike report lasted approximately two milliseconds, and Dahak had his orders.

And then, at last, there was a moment to relax and blink his eyes, refocusing on the interior of the cockpit. A moment to realize that they had succeeded … and that they were alive.

“Done,” he said softly, turning to look at Jiltanith for the first time since they launched their attack.

“Aye, and well done,” she replied. Their gazes met, and for once there was no hostility between them.

“Beautiful flying, ’Tanni,” he said, and saw her eyes widen as he used the familiar form of her name for the first time. For a moment he thought he’d gone too far, but then she nodded.

“Art no sluggard thyself … Colin,” she said.

And she smiled.

Book Three

Chapter Fifteen

Colin MacIntyre sat in Nergal’s wardroom and shuffled, hiding a smile as Horus bent a hawk—like eye upon him across the table while they waited for Hector’s next report.

Battle Fleet’s crews had gone in for a vast array of esoteric games of chance, most of them electronic, but Horus disdained such over-civilized pastimes. He loved Terran card games: bridge, canasta, spades, hearts, euchre, blackjack, whist, piquet, chemin de fer, poker … especially poker, which had never been Colin’s game. In fact, Colin’s major interest in cards had been that of an amateur magician, and Horus had been horrified at how easily a full Imperial who’d learned to palm cards with purely Terran reflexes and speed could do that … among other things.

“Cut?” Colin invited, and shook his head sadly as Horus made five separate cuts before handing the deck back.

“What’re your losses by now?” he mused as he dealt. “About a million?”

“ ’Tis more like to thrice that,” Jiltanith said sourly, gathering up her cards and not bothering to watch his fingers with her father’s intensity.

“Ante up,” he said, and chips clicked as father and daughter slid them out. If they’d really been playing for money, he’d be a billionaire, even without the ill-gotten wealth Horus had demanded he write off after he realized Colin had been cheating shamelessly. He grinned, and Jiltanith snorted without her old bitterness as she saw it.

She still wasn’t really comfortable with him, but at least she was pretending, and he was grateful to Hector. The colonel had torn long, bloody strips off both of them when he saw the scan record of what they’d gone into, but his heart hadn’t seemed fully in it, and Colin had seen the glint in his eye when Jiltanith called him “Colin” during their debriefing. He himself had feared she would retreat into her old, cold hostility once the rush of euphoria passed, but though she’d stepped back a bit and he knew she still resented him, she was fighting it, as if she recognized (intellectually, at least) that it wasn’t his fault he was what he’d become. Her presence at the card table was proof of that.

He wished there had been a less traumatic way to effect that change, but he hoped the colonel was pleased with the way it had worked out. The military arguments for assigning them to the same flight crew had been strong, but it had taken courage—well, gall—to put them forward.

“I’ll take two,” Horus announced, and Colin flipped the small, pasteboard rectangles across to him.

“ ’Tanni?” He raised a polite eyebrow, and she pouted.

“Nay, this hand liketh me well enow.”

“Hm.” He studied his own cards thoughtfully, then took one. “Bets?”

“I’ll go a hundred,” Horus said, and Jiltanith followed suit.

“See you and raise five hundred,” Colin said grandly, and Horus glared.

“Not this time, you young hellion!” he growled. “I’ll see your raise and raise you a hundred!”

“Father, art moonstruck,” Jiltanith said, tossing in her own hand. “Whyfor must thou throw good money after bad?”

“That’s no way to talk to your father, ’Tanni.” Horus sounded pained, and Colin hid another smile.

“See you and raise another five,” he murmured, and Horus glared at him.

“Damn it, I watched you deal! You can’t possibly—” The old Imperial shoved more chips forward. “Call,” he said grimly. “Let’s see you beat this!”

He faced his cards—four jacks and an ace—and glowered at Colin.