Empire from the Ashes

Chapter Forty-Three

Lawrence Jefferson stared at the blank com screen. How? How had they found it? Had he come this far, worked this hard, to fail at the last minute?!

A fisted hand pounded his knee under cover of his borrowed desk, and a chill stabbed him as something else Horus had said struck home. If they'd been hunting the bomb "for months," they knew far more than he'd imagined. Ninhursag! It had to be Ninhursag, and that gave ONI's increased activities on Earth a suddenly sinister cast. Obviously they hadn't ID'ed him, but if they'd deduced the bomb's existence, what else had they picked up along the way?

He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. All right. They knew the bomb was there and active, but if they'd known more, Horus would have said so. Which meant they didn't know it would detonate twelve hours after the Mark Ninety activated. Would they assume the fact that it hadn't instantly detonated meant it wouldn't unless they triggered it somehow?

He bit his lip. The bomb had originally been timed to detonate during the next meeting of the Assembly of Nobles, when Horus would be on Birhat with Colin, Jiltanith, and both the Imperium's senior military commanders. That would have gotten all five of them at once, but now they were spread out in two different star systems and they knew someone was after them, which meant the chance of recreating that opportunity was unlikely ever to come again. Yet Horus said Colin was going to "hang in" to the last possible minute, and Hatcher and Tsien must be up to their necks in the evacuation operation. Even if they guessed time was short, their efforts to save Birhat's population were almost certain to keep the two officers within the danger zone until too late. But by the same token, both of them would be doing everything they could to convince Colin to leave, and if he gave in, he'd evacuate to Dahak. Any other ship would be unthinkable, and if Colin MacIntyre got away from Birhat aboard Dahak, very few things in the universe—and certainly nothing Lawrence Jefferson had—could get to him.

The Lieutenant Governor hesitated in an atypical agony of indecision. There was still a chance Colin would die with his senior military commanders. If that happened, and if Jefferson could insure Horus and Jiltanith died as well, his original plan would still work. But if Horus and Jiltanith died and Colin didn't, he'd move in with Battle Fleet and the Imperial Marines. He'd take Earth apart stone by stone, and the hell with due process, to find the man who'd destroyed Birhat and murdered his wife, unborn children, and father-in-law, and when he did—

Jefferson shuddered, and the panicked part of his brain gibbered to give it up. They didn't know who he was yet. If he folded his hand and faded away, they might never know. In time, if they continued to trust him, he might actually have the chance to try again. But he couldn't count on eluding their net, not when he didn't know how much they'd already learned, and the gambler in his soul shouted to go banco. It was all on the table, everything he had, all he'd hoped and dreamed and worked for. Success or failure, absolute power or death: all of it hinged on whether or not Colin MacIntyre agreed to leave Birhat within the next twelve hours, and Jefferson wanted to scream. He was a chess master who calculated with painstaking precision. How was he supposed to calculate this? All he could do was guess, and if he guessed wrong, he died.

He pounded his knee one more time, and then his shoulders relaxed. If he stopped now and they found him out, the crimes he'd already committed would demand his execution, and that meant it was really no choice at all, didn't it?

"—so Adrienne's parasites are embarking their first loads now, and my Marines have taken over at the mat-trans," Hector MacMahan reported. "So far, there seems to be more shock than panic, but I don't expect that to last."

"Do you have enough men to control a panic if it starts?" Hatcher asked. "I can reinforce with Fleet personnel if you need them."

"I'll take you up on that," MacMahan said gratefully.

"Done. And now," Hatcher's holo-image turned to Colin, "will you please get aboard a ship and move out beyond the threat zone?"

"No."

"For Maker's sake, Colin!" Ninhursag exploded. "Do you want this thing to kill you?"

"No, but if it hasn't gone off yet, maybe it won't unless we set it off."

"And maybe the goddamned thing is ticking down right now!" MacMahan snapped. "Colin, if you don't get out of here willingly, then I'll have a battalion of Marines drag your ass off this planet!"

"No, you won't!"

"I'm responsible for your safety, and—"

"And I am your goddamned Emperor! I never wanted the fucking job, but I've got it, and I will by God do it!"

"Good. Fine! Shoot me at dawn—if we're both still alive!" MacMahan snarled. "Now get your butt in gear, Sir, because I'm sending in the troops!"

"Call him off, Gerald," Colin said in a quiet, deadly voice, but Hatcher's holo-image shook its head.

"I can't do that. He's right."

"Call him off, or I'll have Mother do it for you!"

"You can try," Hatcher said grimly, "but only the hardware listens to her. Or are you saying that if Hector drags you aboard a ship with a million civilian evacuees you'll have Mother order its comp cent not to leave orbit?"

Colin's furious eyes locked with those of Hatcher's image, but the admiral refused to look away. A moment of terrible tension hovered in the conference room, and then Colin's shoulders slumped.

"All right," he grated, and his voice was thick with hatred. Hatred that was all the worse because he knew his friends were right. "All right, goddamn it! But I'll go aboard Dahak, not another ship."

"Good!" MacMahan snapped, then sighed and looked away. "Colin, I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry. But I can't let you stay. I just can't."

"I know, Hector." It was Colin's turn to turn away, and his voice was heavy and old, no longer hot. "I know," he repeated quietly.

Brigadier Alex Jourdain sealed his Security tunic and looked around his comfortable apartment. He'd lived well for the last ten years; now the orders he'd just received were likely to take it all away, and more, yet he was in far too deep to back out, and if they pulled it off after all—

He drew a deep breath, checked his grav gun, and headed for the transit shaft.

" 'Tanni, I—" Horus cut himself off as Jiltanith, still in her nightgown, turned from the window and he saw her tears. His face twisted, and he closed his mouth and started to leave, but she held out a hand.

"Nay, Father," she said softly. He turned back to her, then reached out to take her hand, and she smiled and pulled him closer. "Poor Father," she whispered. "How many ways the world hath wounded thee. Forgive my anger."

"There's nothing to forgive," he whispered back, and pressed his cheek to her shining hair. "Oh, 'Tanni! If I could undo my life, make it all different—"

"Then would we be gods, Father, and none of us the people life hath made us. In all I have ever known of thee, thou hast done the best that man might do. 'Twas ever thy fate to fight upon thy knees, yet never didst thou yield. Not to Anu, nor to the Achuultani, nor to Hell itself. How many, thinkest thou, might say as much?"

"But I built my Hell myself," he said quietly. "Brick by brick, and I dragged you into it with me." He closed his eyes and held her tight. "Do... do you remember the last thing you ever said to me in Universal, 'Tanni?"

She stiffened in his arms, but she didn't pull away, and after a moment, she shook her head.

"Father, I recall so little of those days." She pressed her face harder into his shoulder. " 'Tis like some dark, horrible dream, one that e'en now haunteth my sleep on unquiet nights, yet when waking—"

"Hush. Hush," he whispered, and pressed his lips into her hair. "I don't want to hurt you. Maker knows I've done too much of that. But I want you to understand, 'Tanni." He drew a deep breath. "The last thing you ever said was 'Why didn't you come, Poppa? Why didn't you love us?' " Her shoulders shook under his hands, and his own voice was unsteady. " 'Tanni, I always loved you, and your mother, but you were right to hate me." She tried to protest, but he shook his head. "No, listen to me, please. Let me say it." She drew a deep, shuddering breath and nodded, and he closed his eyes.

" 'Tanni, I talked your mother into supporting Anu. I didn't realize what a monster he was—then—but I was the one who convinced her. Everything that happened to you—to her—was my fault. It was, and I know it, and I've always known it, and, O Maker, I would sell my very soul never to have done it. But I could never undo it, never find the magic to make it as if it had never happened. A father is supposed to protect his children, to keep them safe, and that—" his voice broke, but he made himself go on "—that was why I put you back into stasis. Because I knew I'd failed. Because I'd proven I couldn't keep you safe any other way. Because... I was afraid."

"Father, Father! Dost'a think I knew that not?" She shook her head.

"But I never told you," he said softly. "I cost us both so much, and I never had the courage to tell you I knew what I'd done and ask you to forgive me."

Colin paced the conference room like a caged animal, fists pounding together before him while he awaited his own cutter, and his brain raced. The evacuation Adrienne and Hatcher had planned but never been able to rehearse was going more smoothly than he would have believed possible, but all of them knew they weren't going to get everyone out. Unless they could deactivate the bomb, millions of people would die, yet how in God's name did you deactivate something you couldn't approach with as much as a scanpack, much less the weapons to—

He stopped suddenly, then slammed himself down in his chair and opened his neural feed to Dahak wide.

"Give me everything on the Mark Ninety," he said sharply.

The door chime sounded, and Horus turned from Jiltanith to answer it.

"Yes?"

"Your Grace, it's Captain Chin," an urgent voice said. "Sir, I think you'd better come out here. I just tried to com the mat-trans center, and the links are all down."

"That's impossible," Horus said reasonably. "Did you call Maintenance?"

"I tried to, Your Grace. No luck. And then I tried my fold-com." The captain drew a deep breath. "Your Grace, it didn't work either."

"What?" Horus opened the door and stared at the Marine.

"It didn't work, Sir, and I've never seen anything like it. There's no obvious jamming, the coms just don't work, and it'd take a full-scale warp suppressor within four or five hundred meters to lock a Fleet com out of hyper-space." The captain faced Horus squarely. "Your Grace, with all due respect, we'd better get Her Majesty the hell out of here. Right now."

"You know, it might just work," Vlad Chernikov murmured.

"Or set the thing the hell off!" Hector MacMahan objected.

"A possibility," Dahak agreed, "yet the likelihood is small, assuming the force of the explosion were sufficient. What Colin suggests is, admittedly, a brute force solution, yet it has a certain conceptual elegance."

"Let me get this straight," MacMahan said. "We can't get near the thing, but you people want to pile explosives on top of it and set them off? Are you out of your frigging minds?"

"The operative point, General," Dahak said, "is that a Mark Ninety is programmed to recognize Imperial threats."

"So?"

"So we don't use Imperial technology," Colin said. "We use old-fashioned, pre-Imperial, Terran-made HE. A Mark Ninety would no more recognize those as a threat than it would a flint hand-ax."

"HE from where?" MacMahan demanded. "There isn't any on Birhat. For that matter, I doubt there's any on Terra after this long!"

"You are incorrect, General," Dahak said calmly. "Marshal Tsien has the materials we require."

"I do?" Tsien sounded surprised.

"You do, Sir. If you will check your records, you will discover that your ordnance disposal section has seventy-one pre-Siege, megaton-range nuclear warheads confiscated by Imperial authorities in Syria four years ago."

"I—" Tsien paused, and then his holo-image nodded. "As usual, you are correct, Dahak. I had forgotten." He looked at MacMahan. "Lawrence's Security personnel stumbled across them, Hector. We believe they were cached by the previous regime before you disarmed it on Colin's orders before the Siege. Apparently, even the individuals who hid them away had forgotten about them, and they were badly decayed—they used a tritium booster, and it had broken down. They were sent here for disposal, but we never got around to it."

"You want to use nukes?" MacMahan yelped.

"No," Dahak said calmly, "but these are Terran warheads, which rely on shaped chemical charges to initiate criticality, and each of them contains several kilograms of the compound Octol."

"And how do you get the explosives into position?" MacMahan asked more normally.

"Somebody walks in, sets them, fuses them, and walks back out again," Colin said. MacMahan raised an eyebrow, and Colin shrugged. "It should work, as long as he doesn't have any active Imperial hardware on him."

"Background radioactivity?" Hatcher asked. "If this stuff's been squirreled away inside a nuclear warhead for twenty-odd years, it's bound to have picked up some contamination."

"Not sufficient to cross a Mark Ninety's threshold," Dahak replied.

"You're certain?" Hatcher pressed, then waved a hand. "Forget that. You never make unqualified statements if you aren't certain, do you?"

"Such habits imply a certain imprecision of thought," Dahak observed, and despite the tension, Colin smiled, then sobered.

"I think we have to try it. It's a risk, but it's the smallest one I can come up with, and you may be right about a timer, Hector. We don't have time to come up with an ideal, no-risk solution."

"Agreed. How long to strip out the explosives and get them down here, Dahak?"

"I have already initiated the process, General. I estimate that they could be delivered to the Palace within twenty minutes in their present state, but I would prefer to reshape them into a proper configuration for maximum destructive effect, which will require an additional hour."

"Eighty minutes?" MacMahan rubbed his chin, then nodded. "All right, Colin, I'll vote for it."

"Gerald? Tao-ling?" Both officers nodded, and Colin glanced at Chernikov.

"I, too," the Russian said. "In fact, I would prefer to place the charge myself."

"I don't know, Vlad—" Colin began, but MacMahan interrupted crisply.

"If you were thinking about doing it yourself, you can just rethink. Whatever happens down here, you, personally, are going to be aboard Dahak and outside the lethal zone when we set it off. And if you know anybody better equipped for the job than Vlad, I don't." Colin opened his mouth, but MacMahan fixed him with a challenging eye and he closed it again.

"Good," MacMahan said.

"Suppressor's active, Brigadier," the Security tech said, never looking up from his remote panel. "Their coms are blocked."

"Elevators and switchboard?" Brigadier Jourdain asked, and another man looked up.

"Shut down. They've pulled almost all the regular Security people for crowd control, and I've cut the links to the lobby station. We're placing the charges to blow the switchboard when we leave now; it'll look just like a Sword of God hit, Sir."

"All right." Jourdain faced his handpicked traitors. "Remember, these are Imperial Marines. There's only twelve of them, but they're tough, well trained, and if they've tried their coms since the suppressor went on-line, they're going to be ready. Our coms are out, too, so stick to the plan. Don't improvise unless you have to."

His men nodded grimly.

"All right. Let's do it."

Horus stood outside Jiltanith's bedroom while she jerked on clothes, and his mind raced. It was preposterous. He was in his own HQ building in the middle of Earth's capital city, and he couldn't even place a com call! There could be only one reason for that, but how had "Mister X" pulled it off? Captain Chin was right. The only thing that could shut down fold coms without active jamming was close proximity to a warp suppressor, but a suppressor powerful enough to do the job was far too large to have been smuggled through White Tower's security... which meant someone on his own security staff must have brought it in, and if he'd been penetrated that completely—

He crossed to his desk and touched a button, and the desktop swung smoothly up. The habits of millennia of warfare die hard, and despite his fear, he smiled wolfishly as he lifted the energy gun from its nest. He punched the self-test button, and the ready light glowed just as the bedroom door opened... and Captain Chin half-ran into his office.

"Your Grace," the Chinese officer said flatly, "the elevators are out, too."

"Shit!" Horus closed his eyes, then shook himself. "Stairs?"

"We can try them, Sir, but if they've cut the coms and elevators, they're already on their way. And without the elevators—"

"Without the elevators, they're coming up the stairs," Horus grunted. Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful! Head down the stairs and they risked running into the bastards head-on. For a moment, he was tempted anyway, but Imperial weapons were too destructive. If they got caught in a stairwell, a single shot might take out all their men—and 'Tanni. But if they didn't try to break out, they left the initiative to the other side. On the other hand—

Jiltanith stepped out of the bedroom, convoyed by four stocky, black-and-tan rottweilers. Her dagger glittered on her belt, and Horus' mouth tightened as she reached out and took Captain Chin's grav gun from its holster. The Marine didn't protest; he simply shifted his energy gun to his left hand and passed over his ammunition belt with his right, and she gave him a strained smile. The belt wouldn't fit around her pregnancy-swollen waist, so she hung it over her shoulder like a bandolier.

"All right, Captain," Horus said. "We have to let them come to us. The stairs merge into the central core one floor down; have ten of your people set up to cover the landings. Leave the other two here to cover the access to my office. 'Tanni, lock your bedroom door, then go to my room and lock yourself in. Hopefully, if anyone gets this far, they'll head for your room first."

"Father, I—" she began, and he shook his head savagely.

"I know, 'Tanni, but you're going to have to leave this to us. We can't risk you, and even if we could—" He waved at her swollen belly, the gesture both tender and oddly apologetic, and she nodded unhappily.

"Art right," she sighed, and looked down at the bio-enhanced dogs.

"Go thou wi' Captain Chin," she told them, "and watch thyselves."

"We go, pack lady," Galahad's vocoder said, "but keep Gwynevere with you." She nodded, and Horus looked at Chin as the other three dogs leapt away.

"We're out of communication, and we're going to be spread out. Watch your rears as well as your fronts."

"Yes, Your Grace!" Chin saluted and vanished after the dogs, and Horus turned to the two Marines who'd been left behind.

"Anyone who gets this far will have to come up the last stair. After that, they'll go for 'Tanni's bedroom first. Pick yourselves positions to cover the stairs. If you have to fall back, head this way; don't head for my room. We want them to keep on thinking she's in her room as long as we can."

"Yes, Sir." The senior Marine jerked his head at his companion, and they ran towards the tower's central access core.

"Go, 'Tanni!" Horus said urgently.

"I go, Father," she said softly, yet she paused just long enough to throw one arm about him and kiss him before she wheeled away. He watched her go, Gwynevere trotting ahead of her like a scout, and turned to survey his office one more time. He'd accomplished a lot from this place. Commanded the Siege of Earth, directed the reconstruction in its wake, coordinated the introduction of an entire planet to Imperial technology... . He'd never expected to fight for his daughter's life from it, but if he had to do that too, then, by the Maker, he would.

He walked slowly to the office foyer. It was the only way into his personal quarters, and he upended his receptionist's desk and piled furniture about it. He built a sturdy barricade facing the entry, then stepped away from it to the wall beside the entry and settled his back into a corner.

"The explosives have arrived at the Palace, Colin," Dahak said as Colin entered the command deck of the computer's starship body.

"Good." Officers popped to their feet as their Emperor and Warlord strode across to the captain's couch, but he waved them back to their duties. Dahak had moved beyond the weapon's threat radius, and Colin felt a sick surge of guilt as he realized that, whatever happened, he personally was safe. It seemed a betrayal of all his subjects, and knowing Hector and Gerald were right to insist upon it only made his guilt worse.

He settled into the command couch. The display was centered on Birhat, not Dahak, and he watched sublight craft streaming from the planetary surface to the waiting planetoids. Like Dahak, all those starships were beyond threat range, and thousands more of his subjects were embarking aboard them as he watched, but it was taking time. Too much time they might not have. He drew a deep, deep breath and pressed himself back in his couch.

"Tell them to proceed, Dahak."

Brigadier Jourdain followed his men up the stairs. There were only twelve Marines, one tired old man, and a pregnant woman to stop them, while he had over a hundred men, all fully enhanced courtesy of Earth Security. It would be more than enough, he told himself yet again. Some were going to get killed, but not enough to stop them, and dead Security men would be convincing proof of how hard Brigadier Jourdain and his men had fought to protect their Empress.

He bared mirthless teeth at the thought as his point man approached the landing. They were one floor below Duke Horus's office and living quarters, and they hadn't seen a soul. Perhaps he'd worried too much. Surely if the Marines had figured anything out—

Something rattled. The lead Security man saw the small object skitter past his feet, and his eyes flared. No! His implant scanners hadn't picked up a thing, so how—

Eleven men died in a blast of fury, and the Marine who'd thrown the grenade grinned savagely as he and his partner reactivated their own implants and brought their energy guns to bear on the smoke-streaming door.

Captain Chin's head jerked up as the explosion rattled. Please, God, let someone else have heard it! he prayed, then settled back down in firing position.

Brigadier Jourdain's ears cringed as thunder filled the stairwell. The screams of the merely wounded were faint and tiny in the explosion's wake, and he swore viciously. So much for surprise!

"Clancey! Get up there!" he barked, and Corporal Clancey settled his automatic grenade launcher into firing position. He jerked his head at the other three members of his section, and the four of them pushed forward through the men above them on the stair.

The waiting Marines had their own implant sensors on-line now, but there was a limit to what the devices could tell them. They knew the stairs were full of men, but they couldn't tell what weapons they carried or precisely what they were doing. The second Marine held a grenade, ready to throw it, but the same suppressor that blocked their coms from hyper-space would smother any hyper grenade's small field, and they'd had only one HE grenade each. He couldn't afford to waste it, and so he gritted his teeth and waited.

Clancey and his team reached the landing and eased forward, boots skidding in what had once been their point men, backs pressed to the walls. They, too, had their sensors on-line, and they didn't like what they were telling them. There were two Marines up there, and only one of them was where their grenades could get at him; the other was further back, sheltering in a cross-connecting corridor to cover his companion, and Clancey swore. God, what he wouldn't give for hyper grenades! But at least the bastards didn't seem to have any more grenades of their own.

He nodded to the two men against the opposite wall.

"Go!"

They spun into the doorway, launchers coughing on full auto. The closer Marine's fire ripped both of them apart, but their grenades were already on the way, and a staccato blast rattled teeth as they detonated in sequence, killing him instantly.

Clancey cursed as an energy gun splattered his companions over him, but his implants told him the Marine who'd fired was dead. He went down in a crouch, hosing more grenades to keep the surviving Marine's head down while more Security men charged the door. Explosions shattered walls and furnishings, and the building's fire suppression systems howled to life as flames glared. More men charged up the stairs, white faces locked in death's-head grins, and then Corporal Clancey discovered he'd been wrong about what the Marines had.

The grenade landed 1.3 meters behind him, and he had one instant to feel the terror before it exploded and killed six more men... including Corporal William Clancey, Earth Security.

Vlad Chernikov felt blind and maimed. For the first time in twenty-five years, every implant in his body had been shut down lest the Mark Ninety decide they were weapons, and the sudden reversion to the senses Nature had provided was a greater psychic shock than he'd anticipated.

He grimaced the thought aside and hoisted the charge Dahak had designed. The initiator charges of the obsolete warheads had been formed in hundreds of precisely shaped blocks, and Dahak had reassembled a hundred and fifty kilos of them into a single massive shaped-charge. That might be more than they needed, but Dahak believed in redundancy.

He slung the charge on his back—at least his muscular enhancement still worked, since it used no power and hence offered no emissions signature to offend the Mark Ninety's sensibilities—and started down the hall to the gallery on the longest sixty-meter hike of his life.

The scream of alarms filled the stairwell as thermal sensors responded to the fires the explosions had set. Their shrill, atonal wail set Jourdain's teeth on edge, but White Tower's soundproofing was excellent, and his men at the switchboard had cut all lines to its top fifteen floors. None of which meant people wouldn't notice if grenades started blowing out windows.

"Push 'em back!" he shouted, and started up the stairs. His point had stalled amid the carnage of shattered bodies, and he snarled at them. "Come on, you bastards! There's only twelve of them!"

He flung himself through the doorway, landing flat on his belly in Clancey's blood. More of his men crouched behind him or threw themselves prone, and at least a dozen energy guns snarled. Walls already torn and pocked by grenade fragments ripped apart under focused beams of gravitic disruption, and the Marine fired back desperately. Another of his men went down, then two more, a fourth, but there was only one Marine left. It was only a matter of time—and not much of it—until one of those energy guns found him.

There were five separate stairs. Captain Chin had placed two Marines to cover each, but Jourdain had elected to assault only three, and combat roared as his other assault teams ran into their own defenders. The Marines had the advantage of position; their attackers had both numbers and heavier weapons. It was an unequal equation, and it could have only one solution.

Jourdain's number three assault team lost ten men in the first exchange, but its commander was a hard-bitten man, an ex-Marine himself, who knew what he was about. Once he'd pinpointed the defenders, he sent six men down one floor. They positioned themselves directly beneath the Marines, switched their energy guns to maximum power, aimed at the ceiling, and simply held the triggers back. The Marines never had time to realize what was happening, and assault team three charged forward over their mutilated bodies.

Captain Chin heard feet behind him and rolled up on one knee just as the leading "Security men" appeared in the hall. His energy gun howled, and three of them vanished in a gory spray. He flung himself back down, flat on his belly against the wall, and his single grenade killed three more attackers.

"Wire the doors and get your ass up here, Matthews!" he shouted to his teammate. Private Matthews didn't waste time answering. She yanked the pin from her own grenade and wedged it against the stairwell door so that any effort to open it would release the safety handle. Then she grabbed her energy gun and headed for the captain's position.

She arrived just in time to help beat off the next assault, and then Chin swore as the attackers fell back.

"They're not coming up our stair at all," he spat. "They're going to leave someone to pin us down and get on with it."

"Only if we let 'em, Cap," Matthews grunted, and before Chin could stop her, the private lunged to her feet. She charged down the hall, energy gun on continuous fire, and Chin leapt to his feet and followed. Matthews killed six more men before answering fire blew her apart, and Chin vaulted her body. The captain landed less than a meter from the remaining three men holding the blocking position, and four energy guns snarled as one.

There were no survivors on either side.

Staff Sergeant Duncan Sellers, Earth Security, swore monotonously as he ran down the hall. He'd gotten separated from the rest of his team, and the entire floor had filled with smoke despite the fire suppression systems. His enhanced lungs handled the smoke easily, but he dreaded what could happen if he blundered into his friends and they mistook him for a Marine.

He turned a corner and gasped in relief as he picked up the implants of his fellows ahead. He opened his mouth to shout his own name, then whirled as some sixth sense warned him. A shape bounded towards him, but his instant spurt of panic eased as he realized it was only one of the Empress's dogs. Big as it was, no dog was a threat to an enhanced human, and he raised his energy gun almost negligently.

Gaheris was four meters away when he left the floor in a prodigious spring. Sergeant Sellers got off one shot—then screamed in terror as bio-enhanced jaws ripped his throat out like tissue.

Alex Jourdain advanced in a crouch, weapon ready, and disbelief filled him. There were only twelve of them, damn it!

Perhaps so, but by the time his three assault teams merged at the foot of the single stair leading to the next floor, he'd lost over seventy men. Over seventy! Worse, he'd added up the Marine body count from all three teams and come up with only eight. Two more were pinned down at the west stairwell, but the last pair of Marines was still unaccounted for—and ten of his own men were equally pinned down in the stairwell firefight. That left him with only nineteen under his own command, and he didn't like the math. Eight Marines had killed seventy-six of their attackers. That worked out to almost ten each, and if Horus and the two remaining Marines did as well...

He shook his head. It was the stupid and incautious who died first, he told himself. The men he had left were survivors, or they wouldn't have gotten this far. They could still do it—and they'd damned well better, because none of them could go home and pretend this hadn't happened!

"Hose it!" he barked to his remaining grenadiers, and a hurricane of grenades lashed up the stairs and blew the doors at their head to bits.

"Go!" Jourdain shouted, and his men went forward in a rush.

Corporal Anna Zhirnovski cringed as another grenade exploded. The bastards had gotten Steve O'Hennesy with the last salvo, but Zhirnovski was bellied down behind a right-angled bend in the corridor. They couldn't get a direct shot at her, but they were trying to bounce the damned things around the corner, and they were getting closer. It was only a matter of time, and she rechecked her sensors. At least seven of them left, she thought, and despair stabbed through her. They wouldn't waste this much time—or this many men—on killing one Marine unless they had enough other firepower to kill the Empress without their input, but there wasn't a damned thing she could do about it. She and Steve had been cut off from the central core, and even launching a kamikaze attack into them would achieve nothing but her own death.

Her muscles quivered with the need to do just that, for she was a Marine, handpicked to protect her Empress' life, but she fought the urge down once more. She was going to die. She'd accepted that. And if she couldn't kill the men attacking her (and she couldn't), she could at least keep them occupied. And, she told herself grimly, she could make them pay cash when they came after her to finish off the witnesses.

Another string of grenades exploded, and she detected movement behind them. They were trying a rush under cover of the explosions, and she waited tensely. Now!

The grenadiers stopped firing to let their flankers go in, and Anna Zhirnovski rolled out into the corridor, under the smoke. Men shrieked as her snarling energy gun ripped their feet and legs apart, and Zhirnovski snap-rolled back into her protected position.

Two more, she thought, and then the grenades began to explode once more.

Oscar Sanders unwrapped another stick of gum, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed rhythmically without ever taking his eyes from the HD. Every news service was covering the chaos at the mat-trans facility across the Concourse from Sanders' position in the White Tower lobby, and he shook his head. Virtually every member of White Tower's usual security force was over there trying to sort out the confusion, and they were fighting a losing battle. Sanders had never seen so many people in one place in his life, and the threat that could produce it was enough to make anyone nervous. Evacuating an entire planet because of one bomb? What the hell sort of bomb could—

He looked up at a sudden slamming sound. It came again, then again, and he frowned and glanced at his console. Every light glowed a steady green, but the slamming sound echoed yet again, and he stood.

He walked around the end of the counter and followed the sound up the corridor. It was coming from the stairwell door, and he drew his grav gun and reached for the latch. He gripped it firmly and yanked the door open, then relaxed. It was only a dog, one of Empress Jiltanith's.

But Oscar Sanders's relief vanished suddenly, and his gun snapped back up as he realized the dog was covered with blood. He almost squeezed the trigger, but his brain caught up with his instincts first. The dog was not only covered with blood; one of its forelegs was a mangled stub, and the door was slick with blood where the injured animal had tried repeatedly to spring the crash bar latch with its remaining leg.

It took only a fraction of a second for Sanders' stunned brain to put all that together—and then, with a sudden burst of horror, to remember whose dog this was. He jerked back, a thousand questions flaring through his mind, and that was when the strangest thing of all happened.

"Help!" Gaheris's vocoder said just before he collapsed. "Men come to kill Jiltanith! Help her!"

Vlad Chernikov turned the last corner, and the magnificent statue stood before him. Even now he felt a stir of awe for its beauty, but he hadn't come to admire it, and he advanced cautiously.

The shaped charge on his back seemed to take on weight with every stride. It was silly, of course. He was already well inside a Mark Ninety's interdiction perimeter; if the thing was going to decide the charge was a weapon, it would already have blown up the planet.

That, unfortunately, made him feel no less naked and vulnerable, and he missed his implants' ability to manipulate his adrenaline level as he stepped around the inert scanner remote still lying where it had fallen when Dahak hastily deactivated it.

He moved to within two meters of the sculpture and studied it carefully. The problem was that his weapon was insufficient to reduce the entire statue to gravel, so he had to be certain that whatever bit he chose to blow up contained the bomb. And since neither he nor Dahak could scan the thing, he could only try to estimate where the bomb was.

It would help, he thought irritably, if they knew its dimensions. It was tempting to assume they'd used Tsien's blueprints without alteration, but if that assumption proved inaccurate, the consequences would be extreme.

Well, there were certain constraints Mister X's bomb-makers couldn't avoid. The primary emitter, for example, had to be at least two meters long and twenty centimeters in diameter, and the focusing coils would each add another thirty centimeters to the emitter's length. That gave him a minimum length of two hundred sixty centimeters, which meant the bomb couldn't be inside the human half of the statue. It would have had to be in his torso, and while the Marine was more than life-sized, he wasn't that much larger, so the bomb itself had to be inside the Narhani. Unfortunately, the Narhani was big enough that the thing could be oriented at any of several angles, and he couldn't afford to miss. Of course, the power source for the bomb was a fair-sized target all on its own, and the designers had had to squeeze in the Mark 90, too. They'd undoubtedly put at least part of the hardware inside the Marine, but which part?

They'd counted on the bomb's never being detected, Vlad thought, so they probably hadn't considered the need to design it to sustain damage and still function, which might mean the power source was inside the Marine and the rest of the hardware was inside the Narhani. That was a seductively attractive supposition, but again, he couldn't afford to guess wrong.

He stepped even closer to the statue, considering the angle of the Narhani's body as it reared against its chains. All right, the bomb wasn't inside the human and it was the next best thing to three meters long. It couldn't be placed vertically in the Narhani's torso, either, because there wasn't enough length. It could be partly inside the torso and angled down into the body's barrel, though. The arch of the Narhani's spine would make that placement tricky, but it was feasible.

He rocked back on his heels and wiped sweat from his forehead as the unhappy conclusion forced itself upon him. The possible bomb dimensions simply left too many possibilities. To be certain, he had to split the statue cleanly in two, and to be sure the break came within the critical length, he'd have to come up from below.

He sighed, wishing he dared activate his com implant to consult with Dahak, then shrugged. He couldn't, and even if he could have, he already knew what Dahak would say.

He wiped his forehead one more time, took the bomb from his back, and bent cautiously to edge it under the marble Narhani's belly.

The last exchange of fire faded into silence, and Brigadier Jourdain's mouth was a bitter, angry line. Ten more of his men lay dead around the head of the ruined stairs. Two more were down, one so badly mangled only his implants kept him alive, and they wouldn't do that much longer, but at least they'd accounted for the last two Marines.

He glared at the closed door to the foyer of Horus's office and cranked his implant sensors to maximum power. Damn it, he knew the Governor was in there somewhere, but the cunning old bastard must have shut his implants down, like the Marines covering that first stairwell. As long as he stayed put without moving, Jourdain couldn't pick him up without implant emissions.

Well, there were drawbacks to that sort of game, the brigadier told himself grimly. If Horus had his implants down, he couldn't see Jourdain or his men, either. He was limited to his natural senses. That ought to make him a bit slower off the mark when he opened fire, and even if he'd found an ambush position to let him get the first few men through the door, he'd reveal his position to the others the instant he fired.

"All right," the brigadier said to his seven remaining men. "Here's how we're going to do this."

Franklin Detmore ripped off another burst of grenades and grimaced. Whoever that Marine up there was, he was too damned good for Detmore's taste. The ten men assigned to mop him up had been reduced to five, and Detmore was delighted to be the only remaining grenadier. He vastly preferred laying down covering fire to being the next poor son-of-a-bitch to rush the bastard.

He fed a fresh belt into his launcher and looked up. Luis Esteben was the senior man, and he looked profoundly unhappy. Their orders were to leave no witnesses; sooner or later, someone was going to have to go in after the last survivor, and Esteben had a sinking suspicion who Brigadier Jourdain was going to pick for the job if he hadn't gotten it done by the time the Brigadier got here.

"All right," he said finally. "We're not going to take this bastard out with a frontal assault." His fellows nodded, and he bared his teeth at their relieved expressions. "What we need to do is get in behind him."

"We can't. That's a blind corridor," someone pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's got walls, and we've got energy guns," Esteben pointed out. "Frank, you keep him busy, and the rest of us'll go back and circle around to get into the conference room next door. We can blow through the wall from there and flank him out."

"Suits me," Detmore agreed, "but—" He broke off and his eyes widened. "What the hell is that?" he demanded, staring back up the corridor.

Esteben was still turning when Galahad and Gawain exploded into the Security men's rear.

Vlad settled the charge delicately and sighed in relief. He was still alive; that was the good news. The bad news was that he couldn't be certain this was going to work... and there was only one way to find out.

He set the timer, turned, and ran like hell.

Alarms screamed as Oscar Sanders hit every button on his panel. Security personnel and Imperial Marines fighting to control traffic in the mat-trans facility looked up in shock, then turned as one to run for White Tower as Sanders came up on their coms.

The foyer door vanished in a hurricane of fire, and two men slammed through the opening. They saw the piled fortress of furniture facing the door and charged it frantically, firing on the run, desperate to reach it before Horus could pop up and return fire.

He let them get half way to it, and then, without moving from his position in the corner, cut both of them in half.

Jourdain cursed in mingled rage and triumph as his men went down. Damn that sneaky old bastard! But his fire had given away his position, and the brigadier and his five remaining Security men knew exactly where to look when they came through the door.

Energy guns snarled in a frenzy of destruction at a range of less than five meters. Men went down—screaming or dead—and then it was over. Two more attackers were down, one dead and one dying... and the Governor of Earth was down as well. Someone's fire had smashed his energy gun, but it didn't really matter, Jourdain thought as he glared down at him, for Horus was mangled and torn. Only his implants were keeping him alive, and they were failing fast.

Jourdain raised his weapon, only to lower it once more as the old man snarled at him. Horus couldn't last ten more minutes, the brigadier thought coldly, but he could last long enough to know Jourdain had killed his daughter.

"Find the bitch," he said coldly, turning away from the dying Governor. "Kill her."

Vlad rounded the last corner, skidded to a halt, and flung himself flat.

The charge went off just before he landed, and the floor seemed to leap up and hit him in the face. His mouth filled with blood as he bit his tongue, and he yelped in pain.

It was only then that he realized he was still alive... which meant it must have worked.

Agony drowned Horus in red, screaming waves—the physical agony his implants couldn't suppress, and the more terrible one of knowing men were hunting his daughter to kill her. He bit back a scream and made his broken body obey his will one last time. Both his legs were gone, and most of his left arm, but he dragged himself—slowly, painfully, centimeter by centimeter—across the carpet in a ribbon of blood. His entire, fading world was focused on the closest corpse's holstered grav gun. He inched towards it, gasping with effort, and his fingers fumbled with the holster. His hand was slow and clumsy, shaking with pain, but the holster came open and he gripped the weapon.

A boot slammed down on his wrist, and he jerked in fresh agony, then rolled his head slowly and stared into the muzzle of an energy gun.

"You just can't wait to die, can you, you old bastard?" Alex Jourdain hissed. "All right—have it your way!"

His finger tightened on the firing stud... and then his head blew apart and Horus' eyes flared in astonishment as two bloodsoaked rottweilers and a Marine corporal charged across his body.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"

Jiltanith stiffened, then shuddered in relief as she recognized the voice. It was Anna, and if Corporal Zhirnovski was calling her name and there were no more screams and firing—

She jerked the door open, and Gwynevere shot out it, hackles raised, ready to attack any threat. But there was no threat. Only a smoke-stained, bloodied Marine corporal, one arm hanging useless at her side... the sole survivor of Jiltanith's security team.

"Anna!" she cried, reaching out to the wounded woman, but Zhirnovski shook her head.

"Your father!" she gasped. "In the foyer!"

Jiltanith hesitated, and the corporal shook her head again.

"My implants'll hold it, Your Majesty! Go!"

Horus drifted deeper into a well of darkness. The world was fading away, dim and insubstantial as the hovering smoke, and he felt Death whispering to him at last. He'd cheated the old thief so long, he thought hazily. So long. But no one cheated him forever, did they? And Death wasn't that bad a fellow, not really. His whisper promised an end to agony, and perhaps, just perhaps, somewhere on the other side of the pain he would find Tanisis, as well. He hoped so. He longed to apologize to her as he had to 'Tanni, and—

His eyes fluttered open as someone touched him. He stared up from the bottom of his well, and his fading eyes brightened. His head was in her lap, and tears soaked her face, but she was alive. Alive, and so beautiful. His beautiful, strong daughter.

" 'Tanni." His remaining arm weighed tons, but he forced it up, touched her cheek, her hair. " 'Tanni..."

It came out in a thread, and she caught his hand, pressing it to her breast, and bent over him. Her lips brushed his forehead, and she stroked his hair.

"I love you, Poppa," she whispered to him in perfect Universal, and then the darkness came down forever.