Mutineer's Moon

He yawned again, remembering the evening his universe had changed. He’d known something special was about to happen, although his wildest expectations had fallen immeasurably short of the reality. Full colonels with the USFC did not, as a rule, invite junior sergeants in the venerable Eighty-Second Airborne to meet them in the middle of a North Carolina forest in the middle of the night. Not even when the sergeant in question had applied for duty with the USFC’s anti-terrorist action units. Unless, of course, his application had been accepted and something very, very strange was in the air.

But his application had not been accepted, for the USFC had never even officially seen it. Colonel MacMahan had scooped it out of his computers and hidden it away because he had an offer for Sergeant Asnani. A very special offer that would require that Sergeant Asnani die.

The colonel, al-Nasir admitted to himself, had been an excellent judge of character. Young Asnani’s mother, father, and younger sister had walked down a city street in New Jersey just as a Black Mecca bomb went off, and when he heard what the colonel had to suggest, he was more than ready to accept.

The pre-arranged “fatal” practice jump accident had gone off perfectly, purging Asnani from all active data bases, and his true training had begun. The USFC hadn’t had a thing to do with it, although it had been some time before Asnani realized that. Nor had he guessed that the exhausting training program was also a final test, an evaluation of both capabilities and character, until the people who had actually recruited him told him the truth.

Had anyone but Hector MacMahan told him, he might not have believed it, despite the technological marvels the colonel demonstrated. But when he realized who had truly recruited him and why, and that his family had been but three more deaths among untold millions slaughtered so casually over the centuries, he had been ready. And so it was that when the USFC mounted Operation Odysseus, the man who had been Andrew Asnani was inserted with it, completely unknown to anyone but Hector MacMahan himself.

Now the cutter slanted downward, and Abu al-Nasir, deputy action commander of Black Mecca, prepared to greet the people who had summoned him here.

“Except for the fact that we’ve only gotten one man inside, things seem to be moving well,” Hector MacMahan said. Jiltanith had followed him into the wardroom, and she nodded to Colin and selected a chair of her own, sitting with her habitual cat-like grace.

“So far,” Colin agreed. “What do you and ’Tanni expect next?”

“Hard to say,” Hector admitted. “They’ve got most of their people inside by now, and, logically, they’ll sit tight in their enclave to wait us out. On the other hand, every time we use any of our own Imperials in an operation we give them a chance to trail someone back to us, so they’ll probably leave us some sacrificial goats. We’ll have to hit a few of them to make it work, and I’ve already put the ops plan into the works. We’re on schedule, but everything still depends on luck and timing.”

“Why am I unhappy whenever you use words like ‘logically’ and ‘luck’?”

“Because you know the southerners may not be too tightly wrapped, and that even if they are, we have to do things exactly right to bring this off.”

“Hector hath the right of’t, Colin,” Jiltanith said. “ ’Tis clear enow that Anu, at the least, is mad, and what means have we whereby to judge the depth his madness hath attained? I’truth, ’tis in my mind that divers others of his minions do share his madness, else had they o’erthrown him long before. ’Twould be rankest folly in our plans to make assumption madmen do rule their inner councils, yet ranker far to make assumption they do not. And if that be so, then naught but fools would foretell their plans wi’ certainty.”

“I see. But haven’t we tried to do just that?”

“There’s truth i’that. Yet so we must, if hope may be o’victory. And as Hector saith, ’tis clear some movement hath been made e’en now amongst their minions. Mad or sane, Anu hath scant choice i’that. ’Tis also seen how his ‘goats’ do stand exposed, temptations to our fire, and so ’twould seem good Hector hath beagled out the manner of their thought aright. Yet ’tis also true that one ill choice may yet bring ruin ’pon us all. I’truth, I do not greatly fear it, for Hector hath a cunning mind. We stand all in his hand, empowered by his thought, and ’tis most unlike our great design will go awry.”

“Spare my blushes,” MacMahan said dryly. “Remember I only got one man inside, and even if the core of our strategy works perfectly, we could still get hurt along the way.”

“Certes, yet wert ever needle-witted, e’en as a child, my Hector.” She smiled and ruffled her distant nephew’s hair, and he forgot his customary impassivity as he grinned at her. “And hath it not been always so? Naught worth the doing comes free o’danger. Yet ’tis in my mind ’tis in smaller things we may find ourselves dismayed, not in the greater.”

“Like what?” Colin demanded.

“That depends on too many factors for us to say. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t be surprises. It’s unlikely anything they do to us can hurt us too much, but you’re a miltiary man yourself, Colin. What’s the first law of war?”

“Murphy’s,” Colin said grimly.

“Exactly. We’ve disaster—proofed our position as well as we can, but the fact remains that we’re betting on just a pair, as Horus would say—Ramman and Ninhursag—and one hole card—our man inside Black Mecca. We don’t know what cards Anu holds, but if he decides to fold this hand or even just stands pat for a few years, it all comes unglued.”

“For God’s sake spare me the poker metaphors!”

“Sorry, but they fit. The most important single factor is Anu’s mental state. If he suddenly turns sane and decides to ignore us until we go away, we lose. We have to do him enough damage to make him antsy, and we have to do it in a way that keeps him from getting too suspicious. We have to hurt him enough to make him eager to come back out and start making repairs, but at the same time we have to stop hurting him in a way that leaves him confident enough to come right back out. Which means we have to hit at least some of his ‘goats’ after his important personnel have all gone to ground, then wind down when it’s obvious our returns are starting to diminish.”

“Well,” Colin tried to project both confidence and caution, “if anyone can pull it off, you two can.”

“Thanks, I think,” Hector said, and Jiltanith nodded.

The stocky, olive-brown-skinned woman sat quietly in the cutter, but her eyes were bright and busy. There were Terra-born as well as Imperials around her, and the trickiest part was showing just enough interest in them.

Ninhursag had never considered herself an actress, but perhaps she was one now. If so, her continued survival might be said to constitute a favorable review.

She’d lived in the enclave only briefly and had not returned in over a century, so a certain amount of interest was natural. By the same token, any Terra-born being brought into the enclave must be important and thus a logical cause for curiosity. The trick was to display her curiosity without giving anyone cause to suspect that she knew at least one of them was far more than he seemed. Her instructions made no mention of Terra-born allies, but they made no sense if there were no couriers, and if those couriers were Imperials she might as well have carried the information out herself.

At the same time, she knew she was suspect as one who had never been part of Anu’s inner circle, so a certain nervousness was also natural. Yet showing too much nervousness would be worse than showing none at all. Her actions and attitude must show she knew she was under suspicion yet appear too cowed for that suspicion to be justified.

In truth, it was the last part she found hardest. Her horror at what Anu and Inanna had done to her fellow mutineers and the poor, helpless primitives of this planet had become cold, hard fury, and she hated the need to restrain it. When she’d learned Horus and the rest of Nergal’s crew had deserted Anu and chosen to fight him, her first thought had been to defect to them, but they’d convinced her she was more valuable inside Anu’s organization. No doubt caution played a part in that—they didn’t entirely trust her and wanted to take no chances on infiltration of their own ranks—but that was inevitable, and her only other option would have been to strike out on her own, vanishing and doing nothing in order to hide from both factions.

Yet doing nothing had been unthinkable, and so she had become Nergal’s not- quite-trusted spy, fully aware of the terrifying risk she ran. Terror had been a cold, omnipresent part of her for far too long, but it was not her master. That had been left to another emotion: hate.

The sudden outbreak of violence had surprised her as much as it had any of Anu’s loyalists, but coupled