Mutineer's Moon

Hatcher couldn’t answer any of those questions. Perhaps he never would be able to, but he didn’t think it would work out that way, for the evidence, fragmentary as it was, suggested at least one other unpalatable fact. At least two factions were locked in combat, and one or the other was going to win, eventually.

He closed the folder, buzzing for his aide to return it to the vault. Then he sighed and stood looking out his office windows.

Oh, yes. One side was going to win, and when they did, they were going to make their presence felt. Openly felt, that was, for Hatcher was morally certain that they’d already made themselves at home. It would explain so much. The upsurge in terrorism, the curious unwillingness of First World governments to do much about it, those mysterious “vacations,” Hector’s obvious involvement with at least one faction of what had to be extra-terrestrials…

All the selective destruction could mean only one thing: a covert war was spilling over into the open, and it was being fought on Hatcher’s planet. The whole damned Earth was holding its collective breath, waiting to see who won, and they didn’t even know who was doing the fighting!

But Hatcher suspected that, like him, most of those uncertain billions prayed to God nightly for the side that was trashing the terrorists. Because if the side that backed people like Black Mecca won, this planet faced one hell of a nightmare…

Colonel Hector MacMahan sat in his office aboard his people’s single warship, and studied his own reports. His eyes ached from watching the old-fashioned phosphor screen, and he felt a brief, bitter envy of the Imperials about him. It wasn’t the first time he’d envied their neural feeds and computer shunts.

He leaned back and massaged his temples. Things were going well, but he was uneasy. He always was when an op was under way, but this was worse than usual. Something was nagging at a corner of his brain, and that frightened him. He’d heard that taunting voice only infrequently, for he was good at his job and serious mistakes were few, but he recognized it. He’d forgotten something, miscalculated somewhere, made some unwarranted assumption … something. And his subconscious knew what it was, he reflected grimly; the problem was how to drive it up into his forebrain.

He sighed and closed his eyes, allowing his face to show the worry he showed to neither subordinates nor superiors, but he couldn’t pin it down. So far, their losses had been incredibly light: a single Imperial and five of their own Terra-born. No Imperial, however young, could have survived a lucky burst from a thirty-millimeter cannon, but Tarhani should never have been permitted to lead the Beirut raid at her age. Yet she’d been adamant. She’d hated that city for over fifty years, ever since a truck bomb blew her favorite grandson into death along with two hundred of his fellow Marines.

He shook his head. Revenge was a motivation professionals sought to avoid, far less accepted as a reason for assigning other personnel to high-risk missions. But not this time. Win or lose, this was Nergal’s final campaign, and ’Hani had been right: she was old. If someone were to die leading the attack, better that it should be her than one of the children…

Yet MacMahan knew there was another factor. For all his training and experience, all the hard-won competence with which he’d planned and mounted this operation, he was a child. It had always been so. A man among men among the Terra-born; a child—in years, at least—when he boarded Nergal.

The Imperials were careful to avoid emphasizing that point, and he knew they accepted him as an equal, but he couldn’t accept them as equals. He knew what people like Horus and ’Hani, Geb and Hanalat, ’Tanni and Tamman, had seen and endured, and he felt a deep, almost sublime respect for them, but respect was only part of his complicated feelings. He knew their weaknesses, knew this entire situation arose from mistakes they had made, yet he venerated them. They were his family, his ancestors, the ancient, living avatars of the cause to which he’d dedicated his life. He’d known how much the Beirut mission meant to ’Hani … that was the real reason he’d let her lead it.

But that got him no closer to recognizing whatever that taunting little voice was trying to tell him about.

He rose and switched off his terminal. One other thing he’d learned about that voice; letting it mesmerize him was worse than ignoring it. A few more raids on Anu’s peripheral links to Terra’s terrorists, and it would be time for Operation Stalking-Horse, the ostensible reason for winding down the violence.

He was a bit surprised by how glad that made him. The northerners’ targets were terrorists, but they were also humans, of a sort, and their slaughter weighed upon his soul. Not because of what they were, but because of what it was doing to his own people … and to him.

“It seems to me,” Jantu said thoughtfully, “that we ought to be thinking of some way to respond to these attacks.”

He paused to sip coffee, watching Anu from the corner of one eye, and only long practice kept his smile from showing as the “Chief” glared at Ganhar. Poor, harried Ganhar was about to become poor, dead Ganhar, for there was no way he could respond, and Jantu waited expectantly for him to try to squirm out of his predicament.

But Ganhar had himself well in hand. He met Jantu’s eyes almost blandly, and something about his expression suddenly bothered the Security head. He had not quite put a mental finger on it when Ganhar shattered all his calculations.

“I agree,” he said calmly, and Jantu choked on his coffee. Fortunately for his peace of mind, he was too busy dabbing at the coffee stains on his tunic to notice the slight smile in Commander Inanna’s eyes.

“Oh?” Anu eyed Ganhar sharply, his eyes hard. “That’s nice, Ganhar, considering the mess you’ve made of things so far.”

“With all due respect, Chief,” Ganhar sounded far calmer than Jantu knew he could possibly be, “I didn’t get us into this situation. I only inherited Operations after Kirinal was killed. In the second place, I warned you from the start I was unhappy about how quiet the degenerate militaries were being and that we had no way of knowing what their Imperials were going to do next.” He shrugged. “My people gave you all the information there was, Chief. There simply wasn’t enough to predict what was coming.”

Anu glared at him, and Ganhar made himself meet that glare levelly.

“You mean,” Anu said dangerously, “that you didn’t spot the information.”

“No, I mean it wasn’t there. You’ve had eight Operations heads in the last two thousand years, Chief— nine, counting me—and none of us have found Nergal for you. You know how hard we’ve worked at it. But if we can’t even find them, how are we supposed to know what’s going on in their inner councils? All I’m trying to say is that we can’t do it.”

“It sounds to me,” Anu’s soft voice rose steadily towards even more dangerous levels, “like you’re trying to cover your ass. It sounds to me like you’re making piss—poor excuses because you don’t have one Maker—damned idea what to do about it!”

“You’re wrong, Chief,” Ganhar said, though it took most of his remaining courage to get it out. Anu wasn’t accustomed to being told he was wrong, and his face took on an apoplectic hue as Ganhar continued, taking advantage of the pregnant silence. “I do have a plan, as it happens. Two, in fact.”

Anu’s breath escaped in a hiss. His minions seldom took that calm, almost challenging tone with him, and the shock of hearing it broke through his anger. Maybe Ganhar really had enough of a plan to justify his apparent confidence. If not, he could be killed just as well after listening to him as before.

“All right,” he grated. “Tell us.”

“Of course. First and simplest, we can do nothing at all. We’ve got our people under cover now, and all they’re managing to do is tear up a bunch of purely degenerate terrorists. It makes a lot of noise, and it may look impressive to them, but, fundamentally, they aren’t hurting us. We can always recruit more of the same, and every time they use Imperial technology, they risk losing people and we have a chance of tracking them back to Nergal.“

Ganhar watched Anu’s eyes. He knew—as, surely, Jantu and Inanna did—that what he’d just suggested was the smart thing to do. Unfortunately, Anu’s eyes told him it wasn’t the smart thing to suggest. He shrugged mentally and dusted off his second proposal.

“That’s the simplest thing, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the best,” he lied. “We know some of their degenerates, and we’ve spotted some others who could be working for them.” He