Mutineer's Moon

shrugged again, this time physically. “All right, if they want to escalate, we’ve got more people and a lot more resources. Let’s escalate right back.”

“Ah?” Anu raised an eyebrow, his expression arrested.

“Exactly, Chief. They surprised us at Colorado Springs, and they’ve been riding the advantage of surprise ever since. They’ve been on the offensive, and so far it’s only cost them a few dozen degenerate military types in attacks on domestic terrorists and maybe—” he emphasized the qualifier “—one or two of their own people since they’ve started going after foreign bases on the ground. They’re probably feeling pretty confident about now, so let’s kill a few of their people and see if they get the message.”

He smiled unpleasantly and tried not to sigh in relief as Anu smiled back. He watched the chief mutineer’s slow nod, then swiveled his eyes challengingly to Jantu, enjoying the angry frustration in the Security man’s expression.

“How?” Anu’s voice was soft, but his eyes were eager.

“We’ve already made a start, Chief. My people are trying to predict their next targets so we can put a few of our own teams in positions to intervene. After that, we can start hitting suspects direct. Give ’em a taste of their own medicine, you might say.”

“I like it, Chief,” Inanna said softly. Anu glanced at her, and she shrugged. “At the least, it’ll keep them from having things all their own way, and, with luck, we may actually get a few of their Imperials. Every one they lose is going to hurt them far worse than the same loss would hurt us.”

“I agree,” Anu said, and Ganhar felt as if the weight of the planet had been lifted from his back. “Maker, Ganhar! I didn’t think you had it in you. Why didn’t you suggest this sooner?”

“I thought it would have been premature. We didn’t know how serious an attack they meant to mount. If it was only a probe, a powerful response might actually have encouraged them to press harder in retaliation.” And wasn’t that a mouthful of nothing, Ganhar thought sourly. But Anu’s smile grew.

“I see. Well, get it in the works. Let’s send a few of them and their precious degenerates to the Breaker and see how they like that!”

Ganhar smiled back. Actually, he thought, except for the possibility of ambushing the other side’s raiding parties it was the stupidest thing he’d ever suggested. Almost every degenerate his people had suspected of being among Nergal’s henchmen had already vanished as completely as Hector MacMahan. He’d target his remaining suspects first, but after that he might as well pick targets at random. Aside from the satisfaction Anu might take from it, they would accomplish exactly nothing, however many degenerates they blew away.

It was insane and probably futile, but Inanna had been right. The violence of the plan obviously appealed to Anu, and that was what mattered. As long as Anu was convinced Ganhar was Doing Something, Ganhar would hang onto his position and the perquisites that went with it. Like breathing.

“Let me have a preliminary plan as soon as possible, Ganhar,” Anu said, addressing the Operations head more courteously than he had since Cuernavaca. Then he nodded dismissal, and his three subordinates rose to leave.

Jantu was in a hurry to get back to his office, but Inanna blocked him in the corridor, apparently by accident, as she turned to Ganhar.

“Oh, Ganhar,” she said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“Oh?”

Jantu paused as Ganhar spoke. He wanted to hear anything that was trouble for Ganhar, he thought viciously.

“Yes. One of your people got caught in a malfunction in Bislaht’s transit shaft —a freak grav surge. We didn’t think she was too badly hurt when they brought her into sickbay, but I’m afraid we were wrong. I’m sorry to say one of my med techs missed a cerebral hemorrhage, and we lost her.”

“Oh.” There was something strange about Ganhar’s voice. He didn’t sound surprised enough, and there was an odd, sick little undertone. “Uh, who was it?” he asked after a moment.

“Bahantha, I’m afraid,” Inanna said, and Jantu froze. He stared at Inanna in disbelief, and she turned slowly to meet his eyes. Something gleamed in the depths of her own gaze, and he swallowed, filled with a sudden dread suspicion.

“I see it’s shaken you, too, Jantu,” she said softly. “Terrible, isn’t it? Even here in the enclave, you can’t be entirely safe, can you?”

And she smiled.

Chapter Eighteen

“God damn them! Damn them to Hell!”

Hector MacMahan’s normally expressionless face twisted with fury. His clenched fists trembled at his sides, and Colin looked away from the colonel, sick at heart himself, to study the other three people at the table.

Horus looked shaken and ill, like a man trapped in a horrifying nightmare, and Isis sat silently, frail shoulders bowed. Her lashes were wet, and she stared blindly down at the age—delicate hands folded in her lap.

Jiltanith was expressionless, her relaxed hands folded quietly on the table, but her eyes were deadly. Neither group of Imperials had operated so openly during her subjective lifetime, and though she might have accepted the possibility of such a response intellectually, she hadn’t really imagined it as a probability. Now it had happened, and Colin felt the fury radiating from her … and the focused strength of will it took to control it.

And how did he feel? He considered that for a moment, and decided Hector had just spoken for him, as well.

“All right,” he said finally. “We knew they weren’t exactly stable, and they’ve given plenty of past examples of their willingness to do things like this. We should have anticipated what they’d do.”

“I should have anticipated it, you mean,” MacMahan said bitterly.

“I said ‘we’ and I meant ‘we.’ The strategy was yours, Hector, but we were all involved in the planning, and the Council approved it. We figured if they knew we were hitting them, we’d be the targets they chose to strike back at. It was a logical estimate, and we all shared it.”

“ ’Tis true, Hector,” Jiltanith said softly. “This plan was product of us all, not thine alone.” She smiled bitterly. “And did not we twain counsel Colin madmen yet might dismay us all? Take not more guilt upon thyself than is thy due.”

“All right.” MacMahan drew a deep breath and sat. “Sorry.”

“We understand,” Colin said. “But right now, just tell us how bad it is.”

“I suppose it could be worse. They’ve gotten about thirty of our Terra-born—seven at once when they hit that Valkyrie at Corpus Christi; Vlad Chernikov would’ve made eight, and he may still lose his arm unless we can break him out of the hospital and get him into Nergal’s sickbay—but our own losses haven’t been that high. Most of the people they’ve slaughtered are exactly what they seem to be: ordinary citizens.

“The death toll from the Eden Two mass missile strike is about eighteen thousand. That was a pay-back for Cuernavaca, I suppose. The bomb at Goddard got another two hundred. The nuke they smuggled into Klyuchevskaya leveled the facilities, but the loss of life was minimal thanks to the ‘terrorists’ ’ phoned—in warning. Sandhurst and West Point were Imperial weaponry-warp grenades and energy guns. I imagine they were retaliation for Tehran and Kuiyeng. The Brits lost about three hundred people; the Point lost about five.”

He paused and shrugged unhappily.

“It’s a warning to back off, and I—we—should have seen it coming. It’s classic terrorist thinking, and it fits right into Anu’s own sick mentality.”

“Agreed. The question is, what do we do about it? Horus?”

“I don’t know,” Horus said in a flat voice. “I’d like to say shut down. We’ve hurt them worse than we ever