Empire from the Ashes

Chapter Sixteen

Head of Security Jantu leaned back and hummed happily, feeling no need to dissemble in the security of his own office, as he replayed the last command meeting in his mind.

The "Chief's" wrath had been awesome when the news came in. This time he'd half-expected it, which meant he'd had time to work up a good head of steam ahead of time. The things he'd said to poor Ganhar!

It was all quite terrible... but more terrible for some than for others. Most of the dead Imperials were Ganhar's people, and nothing that weakened Ganhar could be completely bad. The thought that degenerates could do such a neat job was galling, but whatever happened in the field, the enclave that was his own responsibility was and would remain inviolate, so none of the egg was on his face. No, it was on Ganhar's face, and with just a little luck—and, perhaps, a little judicious help—that might just prove fatal for poor Ganhar.

It had been kind of Nergal's people to take out Kirinal for him. Now if he could only get rid of Ganhar, he might just manage to bring Security and Operations together under the control of a single man: him. Of course, it was probable the "Chief" would balk at that and pick a new head for Operations, but Jantu would be perfectly happy if Anu made the logical choice. And even if he decided to choose someone other than Bahantha, the newcomer would be hopelessly junior to Jantu. One way or another, he would dominate whatever security arrangements resulted from Ganhar's... departure.

And then it would be time to deal with Anu himself. Jantu would not have let a sane man stand between him and power, and he felt no qualms at all over removing a madman. Indeed, it might almost be considered his civic duty, and he often permitted himself a mildly virtuous feeling when he considered it.

Jantu hadn't realized quite how mad the engineer was when the plot to seize Dahak first came up, but he'd recognized that Anu wasn't exactly stable. Overthrow the Imperium? Ludicrous! But Jantu had been prepared to go along until they had the ship, at which point he and his own henchmen would eliminate Anu and put a modified version of the original plan into effect. It would be so much simpler to transform Dahak's loyalists into helots and build their own empire in some decently deserted portion of the galaxy than to pit themselves against the Imperium and get squashed for their pains.

That plan had gone out the airlock when the mutiny failed, but there were still possibilities. Indeed, the present situation seemed even more promising.

He knew Anu and, possibly, Inanna believed the Imperium was still out there, waiting to be conquered, but the Imperium's expansion should have brought at least a colony to Earth long since, for habitable planets weren't all that plentiful. By Jantu's most conservative estimate, BuCol's survey teams should have arrived forty millennia ago. That they hadn't suggested all sorts of hopeful possibilities to a man like Jantu.

If the Imperium had fallen upon hard times, why, then Anu's plans for conquest might be practical after all. And the first stage was to forget this clandestine nonsense and take control of Earth openly. A few demonstrations of Imperial weaponry should bring even the most recalcitrant degenerate to heel. Once he could recruit a properly motivated batch of sepoys and come out of the shadows, Jantu could hammer out a decent tech base in a few decades and set about gathering up the reins of galactic power in a tidy, orderly fashion.

But first there was Ganhar, and then Anu. Inanna might be a bit of a problem, for he would continue to need her medical skills, at least until a properly-trained successor was available. Still, he felt confident he could convince the commander to see reason. It would be a pity to mar that lovely new body of hers, but Jantu was a great believer in the efficacy of judiciously applied pain when it came to behavior modification.

He smiled happily, never opening his eyes, and began to hum a bouncier, brighter ditty.

Ramman watched the tunnel walls slide past the cutter and worried. He had the code now. All he had to do was make it to the drop to deposit it. Simple.

And dangerous. He should never have agreed, but the orders had been preemptive, not discretionary. And if the whole idea was insane, he was still in too deep to back out. Or was he?

He scrubbed damp palms on his trousers and closed his eyes. Of course he was! He was a dead man if the "Chief" ever found out he'd even talked to the other side, and his death would be as unpleasant as Anu could contrive.

He clenched his teeth as he contemplated the bitter irony that brought him to this pass. Fear of Anu had tempted him to contact the other side in a desperate effort to escape, yet that same contact had actually destroyed his chance to flee. First Horus and then his bitch of a daughter had steadfastly refused to let him defect, far less help him do it!

He made himself stop trying to dry his hands, hoping he hadn't already betrayed himself. He should have realized what would happen. Why should Horus and his fellows trust him? They knew what he was, what he had been, and how easily trusting him could have proven fatal. So they'd left him inside, using him, and he'd let himself be used. What choice had he had? All they had to do to terminate his long existence was wax deliberately clumsy in their efforts to contact him; Anu would see to it from there.

He'd given them a lot of information over the years, and things had gone so smoothly he'd grown almost accustomed to it. But that was before they told him about this. Madness! It would destroy them all, and him with them.

He knew what they had to be planning. Only one thing made sense of his orders, and it was the craziest thing they'd tried yet.

But what if they could pull it off? If they succeeded, surely they would honor their word to him and let him live. Wouldn't they?

Only they wouldn't succeed. They couldn't.

Maybe he should tell Ganhar? If he went to the Operations chief and gave him the location of his drop, helped him bait a trap for Jiltanith's agent... surely that should be worth something? Maybe Ganhar could be convinced to pretend it had all been part of an elaborate counter-intelligence ploy?

But what if he couldn't? What if Ganhar simply turned him over to Jantu as the traitor he was?

The huge inner portals opened, admitting the cutter to the hollow heart of the enclave, and Ramman balanced on a razor edge of agonized indecision.

Ganhar rubbed his weary eyes and frowned at the holo map hovering above his desk. Its green dots were fewer than ever, its red dots correspondingly more numerous. His people had maintained direct links with relatively few of the terrorist bases the degenerates had hit, but the fallout from those strikes was devastating. In less than twenty-four hours, thirty-one—thirty-one!—major HQs, training, and base camps had been wiped out in separate, flawlessly synchronized operations whose efficient ferocity had stunned even Ganhar. The shock had been still worse for his degenerate tools; dying for a cause was one thing, but even the most fanatical religious or political bigot must pause and give thought to the body blow international terrorism had just taken.

He sighed. His personal position was in serious jeopardy, and with it his life, and there was disturbingly little he could do about it. Only the fact that he'd warned Anu something might be brewing had saved him so far, and it wouldn't save him very much longer.

His civilian minions' inability to stop their own soldiers or even warn him of what was coming was frightening. Nergal's people must have infiltrated the military even more deeply than he'd feared, and if they could do that much, what else might they have accomplished without his noticing?

More to the point, why were they doing this? Inanna's suggestion that age had compelled them to attack while they still had enough Imperials to handle their equipment made sense up to a point, but the latest round of disasters had been executed out of purely Terrestrial resources. It took careful planning to blend Terran and Imperial efforts so neatly, which suggested the entire operation had been worked out well in advance. Which, in turn, suggested some long-range objective beyond the destruction of replaceable barbarian allies.

Ganhar got that far without difficulty; unfortunately, it still gave no hint of what the bastards were up to. Drive his sources as he might, he simply couldn't find a single reason for such a fundamental, abrupt change in tactics.

About the only thing his people had managed was the identification of one of the enemy's previously unsuspected degenerate henchmen. Not that it helped a great deal, for Hector MacMahan had vanished. Which might mean they'd been intended to spot him, and that—

The admittance chime broke into his thoughts and he straightened, kneading the back of his neck as he sent a mental command to the hatch mechanism. The panel licked aside, and Commander Inanna stepped through it.

Ganhar's eyes widened slightly, for he and the medical officer were scarcely friends—indeed, about the only thing they had in common was their mutual detestation for Jantu—and she'd never visited his private quarters. His mental antennae quivered, and he waved her courteously to a Louis XIV chair under a seventh-century Tang Dynasty tapestry.

"Good evening, Ganhar." She sat and crossed her long, shapely legs. Well, not hers, precisely, but then neither was Ganhar's body "his" in the usual sense, and Inanna really had picked a stunningly beautiful one this time.

"Good evening," he replied. His voice gave away nothing, but she smiled as if she sensed his burning curiosity. Which she probably did. She might be unswervingly loyal to a maniac, and it was highly probable she was a bit around the bend herself, but she'd never been dense or unimaginative.

"No doubt you're wondering about this visit," she said. He considered replying but settled for raising his eyebrows politely, and she laughed.

"It's simple enough. You're in trouble, Ganhar. Deep, deep trouble. But you know that, don't you?"

"The thought had crossed my mind," he admitted.

"It's done lots more than that. In fact, you've been sitting here sweating like a pig because you know you're about one more bad report away from—pffft!" She snapped her fingers, and he winced.

"Your grief is moving, but I doubt you came just to warn me in case I hadn't noticed."

"True. True." She smiled cheerfully. "You know, I've never liked you, Ganhar. Frankly, I've always thought you were in it out of pure greed, which would be fine if I weren't pretty certain your plans include winding up in charge yourself. With, I'm sure, fatal consequences for Anu and myself."

Ganhar blinked, and her eyes danced at his failure to hide his surprise.

"Ganhar, Ganhar! You disappoint me! Just because you think I'm a little crazy is no reason to think I'm stupid! You may even be right about my mental state, but you really ought to be a bit more careful about letting it color your calculations."

"I see." He propped an elbow on his desk through the holo map and regarded her as calmly as he could. "May I assume you're pointing out my shortcomings for a reason?"

"There. I always knew you were bright." She paused tauntingly, forcing him to ask, and he had no choice but to comply.

"And that reason is?"

"Why, I'm here to help you. Or to propose an alliance, of sorts, at any rate." He sat a bit straighter, and a strange hardness banished all amusement from her eyes.

"Not against Anu, Ganhar," she said coldly. "Whether I'm crazy or not isn't your concern, but make one move against him, and you're a dead man."

Ganhar shivered. He had no idea what that icy guarantee might rest upon, but neither did he have any desire to find out. She sounded far too sure of herself for that, and, as she'd pointed out, she was hardly stupid. Assuming he survived the next few weeks, he was going to have to recast his plans for Commander Inanna.

"I see," he said after a long pause. "But if not against him, then against who?"

"There you go again. Try to accept that I'm reasonably bright, Ganhar. It'll make things much easier for us both."

"Jantu?"

"Of course. That weasel has plans for all of us. But then," her smile turned wolfish, "I have plans for him, too. Jantu's in very poor health; he just doesn't know it yet. He won't—until his next transplant comes due."

Ganhar shivered again. Brain transplants were ticklish even with Imperial technology, and a certain number of fatalities were probably unavoidable, but he'd assumed Anu decided which patients suffered complications. It hadn't occurred to him Inanna might be doing it on her own.

"So," she went on pleasantly, "we still have to decide what to do with him in the meantime. If he ever left the enclave, he might have an accident. I'd considered that, and it would've been a neat way to get him, Kirinal, and you, wouldn't it? You're in charge of external operations... he's your worst rival... who wouldn't've wondered if you two hadn't arranged it?"

"You have a peculiar way of convincing an 'ally' to trust you," Ganhar pointed out carefully.

"I'm only proving I can be honest with you, Ganhar. Doesn't my openness reassure you?"

"Not particularly."

"Well, that's probably wise of you. And that's my point; you really are much smarter than Jantu—less devious, but smarter. And because you are, I'm reasonbly certain your plans to assassinate Anu—and possibly myself—don't envision any immediate execution date." She smiled cheerfully at her own play on words. "But if you disappeared from the equation, Jantu is stupid enough to make his try immediately. He wouldn't succeed, but he doesn't know that, and I'm sure it would come to open fighting in the end. If that happened, Anu or I might be among the casualties. I wouldn't like that."

"So why not tell Anu?"

"The one absolutely predictable thing about you is your ability to disappoint me, Ganhar. You must be crazy yourself if you think I haven't realized Anu is. The technical term, if you're wondering, is advanced paranoia, complicated by megalomania. He hasn't quite reached grossly delusional proportions yet, but he's headed that way. And while we're being so honest, let's admit that paranoia can be a survival tool in situations like his. After all, a paranoic is only crazy when people aren't out to get him.

"But the point is that I'm probably the only person he trusts at all, and one reason he does is that I've very carefully avoided getting caught up in any of our little intrigues. But if I warned him about Jantu, he'd start wondering if I hadn't decided to join with you, instead. He's not exactly noted for moderation, and the simplest solution to his problem would be to kill all three of us. I wouldn't like that, either."

"Then why not—"

"Careful, Ganhar!" She leaned towards him, her eyes hard as two black opals, and her soft, soft voice was almost a hiss. "Be very, very careful what you suggest to me. Of course I could. I'm his doctor, after all. But I won't. Not now, not ever. Remember that."

"I... understand," he said, licking his lips.

"I doubt that." Her eyes softened, and somehow that frightened Ganhar even more than their hardness had, but then she shook her head. "No, I doubt that," she said more naturally, "but it doesn't matter. What matters is that you have an ally against Jantu—for now, at least. We both know things are going to get worse before they get better, but I'll do what I can to draw fire from you during conferences, and I'll support you against Jantu and maybe even when you stand up to him. Not always directly, perhaps, but I will. I want you around to take charge when we start rebuilding your operations network."

"You mean you want me around because you don't want Jantu in charge, right?" Ganhar asked, meeting her eyes fully.

"Well, of course. But it's the same thing, isn't it?"

It most definitely wasn't the same thing, but Ganhar chose not to press the point. She peered deeply into his eyes for a moment, then nodded.

"I can just see your busy little mind whirring away in there," she said dryly. "That's good. But, as one ally to another, I'd advise you to come up with some sort of forceful recommendation for Anu. Something positive and masterful. It doesn't have to actually accomplish much, you understand, but a little violence would be helpful. He'll like that. The notion of hitting back—of doing something—always appeals to megalomaniacs."

"I—" Ganhar broke off and drew a deep breath. "Inanna, you have to realize how what you've just said sounds. I'm not going to suggest that you do anything to Anu. You're right; I don't understand why you feel the way you do, but I'll accept it and remember it. But don't you worry about what else I might do with the insight you've just given me?"

"Of course not, Ganhar." She lounged back in her chair with a kindly air. "We both know I've just turned all of your calculations topsy-turvy, but you're a bright little boy. Given a few decades to consider it, you'll realize I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't already taken precautions. That's valuable in its own right, don't you think? I mean, knowing that, crazy or not, I'll kill you the moment you become a threat to Anu or me is bound to color your thinking, isn't it?"

"I suppose you could put it that way."

"Then my visit hasn't been a waste, has it?" She rose and stretched, deliberately taunting him with the exquisite perfection of the body she wore as she turned for the hatch. Then she paused and looked back over her shoulder almost coquettishly.

"Oh! I almost forgot. I meant to warn you about Bahantha."

Ganhar blinked again. What about Bahantha? She was his senior assistant, number two in Operations now that he'd replaced Kirinal, and she was one of the very few people he trusted. His thoughts showed in his face, and Inanna shook her head at his expression.

"Men! You didn't even know that she's Jantu's lover, did you?" She laughed merrily at his sudden shock.

"Are you certain?" he demanded.

"Of course. Jantu controls the official security channels, but I control biosciences, and that's a much better spy system than he has. You might want to remember that yourself. But the thing is, I think you'd better arrange for her to suffer a mischief, don't you? An accident would be nice. Nothing that would cast suspicion on you, just enough to send her along to sickbay." Her toothy smile put Ganhar forcefully in mind of a Terran piranha.

"I... understand," he said.

"Good," she replied, and sauntered from his cabin. The hatch closed, and Ganhar looked blindly back at the map. It was amazing. He'd just acquired a powerful ally... so why did he feel so much worse?

Abu al-Nasir, who had not allowed himself to think of himself as Andrew Asnani in over two years, sat in the rear of the cutter and yawned. He'd seen enough Imperial technology in the last six months to take the wonder out of it, and he judged it best to let the Imperials about him see it.

In fact, his curiosity was unquenchable, for unlike most of the northerners' Terra-born, he had never seen Nergal and never knowingly met a single one of their Imperials. That, coupled with his Semitic heritage, was what had made him so perfect for this role. He was of them, yet apart from them, unrelated to them by blood and with no family heritage of assistance to connect him to them, however deep the southerners looked.

It also meant he hadn't grown up knowing the truth, and the shock of discovering it had been the second most traumatic event in his life. But it had offered him both vengeance and a chance to build something positive from the wreckage of his life, and that was more than he'd let himself hope for in far too long.

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 military 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 with the odd instructions she'd received from Jiltanith, it made frightening, exhilarating sense. There was only one reason Anu's enemies could want those admittance codes.

She'd tried not to wonder how they hoped to get them out of the enclave, for what she neither knew nor suspected could not be wrung out of her, but she'd always been cursed with an active mind, and the bare bones of their plan were glaringly obvious. Its mad recklessness shocked her, but she knew what they planned, and hopeless though it might well be, she was eager.

The cutter nosed downward, and she felt her implants tingle as they waited to steal the key to Anu's fortress for his foes.