Mutineer's Moon

powerful enough to burn through any portable stealth field.

He pondered unhappily, trying to decide what to recommend this time. The logical thing was to withdraw a few fighters from offensive sweeps and use them to nail any of Nergal’s cutters that came in with active scanners, but Ganhar had developed a lively respect for Hector MacMahan—who, he was certain, was masterminding this entire campaign. The equally logical response would be obvious to him: cover Nergal’s cutters with his own stealthed fighters to nail Ganhar’s fighters when they revealed themselves by attacking the cutter.

The very idea reeked of further escalation, and he was sick of it. They couldn’t match his resources, but they knew where they were going to strike, and they could concentrate their forces accordingly; he had to cover all the places they might strike. He couldn’t have overwhelming force anywhere, unless Anu would let him back off on offensive operations and smother all possible targets with their own fighters.

Which, of course, Anu would never do.

He rubbed his closed eyes wearily, and his thoughts moved like a dirge. It was no good. Even if they managed to locate Nergal and destroy her and all her people, there was still Anu. Anu and all of them—even himself—and their endless futility. Anu was mad, but was he much better off himself? What did he think would happen if they ever managed to leave this benighted planet?

Like Jantu, Ganhar had reached his own conclusions about the Imperium’s apparent disappearance from the cosmos. If he was wrong, then they were all doomed. The Imperium would never forgive them, for there could be no clemency for such as they—not for mutineers, and never for mutineers who’d gone on to do the things they’d done to the helpless natives of Earth.

And if there was no more Imperium? In that far more likely case, their fate might be even worse, for there would still be Anu. Or Jantu. Or someone else. The madness had infected them all, for they’d lived too long and feared death too much. Ganhar knew he was saner than many of his fellows, and look what he had done in the name of survival. He’d worked with Kirinal despite her sadism, knowing about her sadism, and when he replaced her, he’d devised this obscene plan merely to stay alive a bit longer. She and Girru would have loved it, he thought bitterly. This slaughter of defenseless degenerates…

No, not “degenerates.” Primitives, perhaps, but not degenerates, for it was he and his fellows who had degenerated. Once there might even have been a bit of glamour in daring to pit themselves against the Imperium’s might, but not in what they’d done to the people of Earth and their own helpless fellows.

He stared down at the hands he had stolen, and his stomach knotted. He didn’t regret the mutiny or even the long, bitter warfare with Nergal’s crew. Or perhaps he did regret those things, but he wouldn’t pretend he hadn’t known what he was doing or whine and snivel before the Maker for it. But the other things, especially the things he had done as Operations head, sickened him.

But there was no way to undo them, or even stop them. If he tried, he would die, and even after all these years, he wanted to live. But the truly paralyzing thing was that even if he’d been willing to die, his death would accomplish nothing except, perhaps, to grant him a fleeting illusion of expiation. Even if he could bring himself to embrace that—and he was cynically uncertain he could—it would leave Anu behind. The madmen had the numbers, firepower, and tech base, and nothing Nergal and her people might achieve in the short- term could alter that.

Head of Operations Ganhar’s hands clenched as he stared at them and wondered when he’d finally begun to crack. He’d seen the awakening of guilt in a few others. It usually happened slowly, and some had ended their long lives when it happened to them. Others had been spotted by Jantu’s zealous minions and made examples, but there had never been many, and none had been able to do any more than Ganhar could.

He sighed and stood, walking slowly from his office. The futility of it all oppressed him, but he knew he would sit down at the conference table and tell Anu things were going according to plan. He might be coming to the realization that he despised himself for it, but he would do it, and there was no point pretending he wouldn’t.

Ramman sat in his small apartment, gnawing his fingernails. His pastel-walled quarters were littered with unwashed clothing and dirty eating utensils, and his nostrils wrinkled with the smell of sour bedding. There were extra disadvantages in slovenliness for the sensory—enhanced.

He knew he was under surveillance and that his strange behavior, his isolation from his fellows, was dangerously likely to attract the suspicion he could not afford, yet mounting terror and desperation paralyzed his ability to do anything about it. He felt like a rabbit in a snare, waiting for the trapper’s return, and if he mingled with the others, they must see it.

He rose and walked jerkily about the room, the fingers of his clasped hands writhing together behind him. Madness. Jiltanith and her father had to be insane. They would fail, and their failure would betray the fact that someone had helped them by giving them the admittance codes. The witch hunt might sweep up the innocent, but would almost certainly trap the guilty, and he would be the guilty. He would be found out, arrested … killed.

It wasn’t fair! But he’d been given his orders, and he had obeyed them. He’d planted the codes where he’d been told to. If he told anyone … he shuddered as he thought of Jantu and the unspeakable things perverted Imperial technology had been used to do to other “traitors.”

If he kept quiet, told no one, he would at least live a little longer. At least until Nergal’s people launched their doomed attack.

He sank back down on the edge of the bed and sobbed into his hands.

“ ’Tis time for Stalking-Horse,” Jiltanith said quietly. “That fact standeth proved by the fate which did befall Tamman’s group. That and the slaughter which e’en now doth gain in horror do set the stage and gi’ us pretext enow to cease when Stalking-Horse be added.”

“Agreed,” MacMahan said softly, and looked at Colin.

“Yes,” Colin said. “It’s time to stop this insanity. Is it set up?”

“Yes. I’ve scheduled Geb and Tamman to fly lead with Hanalat and Carhana as their wing.”

“Nay,” Jiltanith said, and MacMahan glanced at her in surprise, taken aback by the finality of her voice. “Nay,” she repeated. “The lead is mine.”

“No!” The strength of his own protest surprised Colin, and Jiltanith met his eyes challengingly—not with the bitter, hateful challenge of old, but with a determination that made his heart sink.

“Tamman hath been wounded,” she said reasonably.

“A flesh wound sickbay and his biotechnics have already taken care of almost completely,” MacMahan said in the cautious tone of a man who knew he was edging into dangerous waters, if not exactly why they had become perilous.

“I speak not o’ his flesh, Hector. Certes, ’twould be reason enow t’ choose anew, yet ’tis his heart hath taken too sore a hurt. I ha’ not seen him care for any as he doth for his Amanda, not since Himeko’s death.”

“We’ve all been hurt, ’Tanni,” MacMahan protested.

“That’s sooth,” she agreed, “yet ’tis graver far in Tamman’s case.”

“ ’Tanni, you can’t go.” Colin extended one hand to reach across the table. “You can’t. You’re the backup commander for Dahak.”

He could have bitten off his tongue as he saw her dark eyes widen. But then they narrowed again and she cocked her head. It was a small gesture, but it demanded explanation.

“Well, I had to pick someone,” he said defensively. “It couldn’t be Horus or one of the older Imperials—they were active mutineers; I couldn’t take a chance on how Dahak’s Alpha Priorities might work out if I’d tried that! So it had to be one of the children, and you were the logical choice.”

“And thou didst not think fit to tell me of’t?” she demanded, a curiously intent light replacing the surprise in her eyes.

“Well…” Colin’s face flamed, and he darted an appealing glance at MacMahan, but the colonel only looked back impassively. “Maybe I should have. But it didn’t seem like a good idea at the time.”

“Whyfor not? Yea, and now I think on’t, why didst thou not e’en tell a soul thou hadst named any one of all our number to follow thee in thy command?”

“Frankly … well, much as I wanted to trust you people, I didn’t know I could when I recorded