In Fury Born

Chapter Fifty-Five

The man on Alicia's com screen was as civilized looking as Edward Jacoby, but Alicia knew he was the one she'd come to find. Direcats were bigger than Old Earth kodiaks, with fangs a saber-tooth would have envied, and they were not omnivorous. A carnivore that size required a huge range, even on virgin Mathison's World, and the government had regulated direcat hunting with an iron hand. Those warehouse racks contained at least a full year's pelts-and could have come from only one source.

And so she smiled at the face on her screen, smiled politely, with only professional interest, even as everything within her screamed to touch him and rip away the knowledge she must have.

"Good evening, Captain Mainwaring. My name is Lewis Fuchien. I'm glad I caught you groundside."

"So am I. Mister Jacoby said you might screen."

"Indeed. I understand my consignment falls within your vessel's capacity?" Fuchien asked, and she nodded. "Excellent. While your fee initially seemed a bit high, Edward has shared Monsieur Labin's report with me, and-"

"I hope you didn't take it at face value," Alicia interrupted wryly. "Monsieur Labin was rather more impressed than circumstances merited."

"Modesty is admirable, Captain Mainwaring, and I realize Gustav Labin is a bit excitable, but Edward assures me you'd take good care of my cargo."

"That much, at least, is true, Sir. When someone entrusts me with a shipment, I do my best to insure it reaches its destination."

"No shipper could ask for more. However-" Fuchien smiled pleasantly "-I would like to meet the rest of your ship's company. It's a policy of mine to consider the reliability of a crew as a whole, not just its captain."

"I see." Alicia's face showed nothing, but her mind raced with tick-like speed, conferring with Tisiphone and Megaira on a level deeper than vocalization and far, far faster than conscious thought. She couldn't very well bring her nonexistent crew down to have lunch with the man! But -

"Did Mister Jacoby mention my Cathcart charter?" Fuchien nodded, and she smiled. "I certainly understand your caution, and frankly, I'd feel happier myself if my purser could sit in on our discussions, but my engineer and exec are buried in a drive recalibration. I really can't interrupt them-in fact, I ought to be up there helping out right now-given our time pressure for Cathcart, but if you have a free hour or so, may I offer you Star Runner's hospitality for supper? The food may not be five-star, but I think you'll find it palatable, and it'll give you the chance not only to meet my people but look the ship over in person, as well. If you like what you see, you, my purser, and I can settle the details over brandy. Would that be convenient?"

"Why, thank you! That's far more than I'd hoped for, and I'd be very happy to accept, if I may include my own accountant."

"Of course. I'll be taking my cargo shuttle back up at seventeen-thirty hours. Would you care to accompany me, or arrange your own transport?"

"If you won't mind seeing us home again, we'll ride up with you."

"No problem, Mister Fuchien. I'll expect you then."

Fuchien and his accountant-a short, stout woman with laugh wrinkles around computer-sharp eyes-arrived at the shuttle ramp precisely on time, and Alicia was waiting at its foot, tall and professional in her midnight blue uniform. Their brief handshakes lasted barely long enough to skim the surface of their thoughts, but that was sufficent to confirm her suspicions.

"Captain, may I present Sondra McSwain, my accountant?"

"Pleased to meet you, Ms. McSwain."

"Likewise, Captain. After what Mister Fuchien's told me about your reputation, I expected you to be three meters tall!"

"Reputations always grow in the telling, I think." Alicia grinned back. McSwain's mind held neither the scummy taint she'd picked up from Labin nor the cultured avarice she read in Fuchien. It ticked like a precision instrument, skilled and professional but laced with a sense of humor, and Alicia's grin turned wry. How odd to find an incorruptible person on a planet like Dewent!

She shook herself and gestured at the ramp.

"Mister Fuchien. Ms. McSwain. We have clearance and my crew is preparing to roll out the carpet."

The flight up was routine, but the accountant's obvious delight made it seem otherwise. Ms. McSwain, Alicia decided, seldom saw the insides of the ships and shuttles that thronged Dewent's port facilities. Even this short jaunt was an exotic treat for her, yet she had the ability to recognize her own excitement for what it was and laugh at it. Alicia found herself explaining instruments and procedures with unfeigned cheer, and even Fuchien allowed himself to smile at her drum roll questions.

They were halfway to rendezvous when Tisiphone nudged Alicia.

You are forgetting our purpose, Little One, and an illusion of this complexity requires preparation. May I suggest we begin?

I guess so, Alicia sighed, but I think I'm going to enjoy this less than I expected. Why the hell does she have to be so nice?

Have no fear, the Fury said with unusual gentleness. Megaira and I also like her. We will allow no harm to befall her, yet we must begin soon.

Gotcha.

Alicia turned her head and smiled at McSwain as the accountant's questions temporarily ran down.

"There's a member of my crew I want you to meet, Ms. McSwain. A colleague of yours, you might say. Forgive us, but we were expecting a stringy, dried-up cold fish of a credit-cruncher." McSwain met her eyes, and they chuckled together. "I think Ruth is going to be pleasantly surprised."

"I once had a 'stringy, dried-up cold fish,' " Fuchien confessed, "but he fell afoul of an audit. Sondra is a vast improvement, I assure you."

"And I believe you." Alicia keyed a com screen alight with Ruth Tanner's face. "Ruth? Forget Plan A and go to Plan B. Mister Fuchien's accountant is human after all."

"Really? What a nice change," Megaira replied in Ruth's voice. Her image's eyes swept the cockpit until they found McSwain, and Ruth's face smiled. "Goodness! Who would've thought someone on this chauvinist backwater would have enough sense to hire a woman!" Her eyes cut to Fuchien's face, and her smile became a grin. "Oops! Did I just put my foot in my mouth?"

"Not with me," Fuchien assured her. "My colleagues' shortsightedness in that respect is my gain, Ms. Tanner. You are Ms. Tanner, I presume?"

"In the flesh," Megaira replied. "I hope you'll enjoy your visit. We don't entertain often, so we're putting our best foot forward, and …"

The conversation rolled on, and neither Fuchien nor McSwain noticed when their eyes began to turn just a bit disoriented.

This, Alicia thought, was the strangest thing they'd tried yet. In her present, straitened condition, Tisiphone would have found herself hard put to weave an illusion half this complex. But she wasn't forced to weave it alone, for Megaira had opened a direct tap to the Fury, throwing her own tremendous capacity behind the spell like a gigantic amplifier that restored Tisiphone, however briefly, to the peak of her long lost power.

And with that aid, the Fury surpassed herself. She wove her web with consummate skill, ensnaring both her guests and extending a tendril of herself to Alicia, as well. It was an eerie sensation, even for one who had become accustomed to the bizarre, for Alicia inhabited three worlds at once. She saw once through her own senses, again through Megaira's internal sensors, and last of all, she shared her guests' illusion. She sat with them at supper, chatting with Megaira's other selves while the AI provided their conversation and Tisiphone gave them flesh, even as she sat alone with them at the table. It was almost terrifying, for it wasn't what the Fury had done to Lieutenant Giolitti. There would be no hazed memories or implanted suggestions. This was real. Backed by the AI's enormous power, Tisiphone took them all one step out of phase with the universe and made her reality theirs.

Nor was that all she did. There was no rush, and she plumbed Lewis Fuchien's memories to their depths, filing away every scrap of a fact which might be of use. By supper's end, they knew everything he did, and the merchant was convinced Captain Mainwaring's crew was perfect for his needs.

The meal ended, and the entire crew-except Tanner-"excused" itself to return to duty. Fuchien lifted his brandy and sipped appreciatively.

"Well, Captain Mainwaring, you and your people have not only met my standards but far exceeded my hopes. I believe we can do business."

"I'm delighted to hear it." Alicia sat back with her own brandy and smiled, then gestured at the empty chair which held her purser's ghost. "In that case, why don't you and I sit back while Ruth and Sondra do battle?"

"An excellent idea, Captain." Fuchien beamed. "Simply excellent."

Dewent dewindled in the galley view screen as Megaira's velocity mounted, and Alicia watched it while she tried to define her own emotions. A complex broth of anticipation, hunger, and fear-fear that she might yet blow her chance-simmered within her, and over it all lay a haze of excitement as she looked ahead to Wyvern, mingled with relief at leaving Dewent astern.

She still didn't like Fuchien, but neither did she dislike him as much as she had expected. He was as ambitious and credit-hungry as Jacoby, but without the other's outright evil. He knew of his associate's drug deals yet took no part in them, and while he suspected his Wyvern contact of fencing goods for the pirates terrorizing the sector, he himself had had no direct dealings with them. He disapproved of them, in a depressingly mild sort of way, yet it was unrealistic to expect more from him. He was a Dewentan, and servicing "outlaws" was what Dewent did. By his own lights, Lewis Fuchien was an admirable and honest businessman, and Alicia could almost understand that.

That was one reason she was glad to leave, for she didn't want to understand it. On a more pragmatic level, their departure meant her and her "crew's" deception only had to stand up for one last planet. Only one, and then she didn't care who knew. Fleet was welcome to pursue her. Indeed, she would welcome their pursuit if her flight could lead them to the pirates.

She leaned her elbows on the edge of the console, propping her chin in her hands and brooding down on the rapidly diminishing image, and let her mind reach out ahead. Wyvern. The planet Wyvern and a man named Oscar Quintana, Lieutenant Commander Defiant.

Wyvern had a peculiar aristocracy, with no use for titles like "baron" or "count." Their ancestors had been naval officers-little more than freebooter refuse from the centuries-past League Wars, perhaps, but naval officers-and the ship name appended to Quintana's title indicated that he sprang from one of the founding noble houses. Peculiar as it might sound to off-world ears, he'd be a powerful man, probably a proud and dangerous one, and it behooved her to approach him with caution.

Hey, Megaira interrupted her thoughts, don't get too bothered, Alley! If he knows what's good for him, he'll approach us with caution.

True, Tisiphone seconded. Indeed, Little One, unless we are much mistaken, this Quintana must be a direct contact for the ones we seek. If so, I shall turn him inside out with the greatest pleasure.

"You two are in a bloodthirsty mood," Alicia observed. "Or are you just worried that I'm getting ready to funk out?"

Us? Megaira was innocence itself. Perish the thought.

"Sure." Alicia stood and yawned, stretching the tension from her shoulders and grateful to be distracted from her moodiness. "As a matter of fact, I'm not that worried over Quintana. If he's what we think he is, I hereby give you both carte blanche for anything we have to do to him."

My thanks, Little One-not that I intended to wait upon your permission to deal harshly with such scum.

"Oh, yeah? Harsh is okay with me, but remember-even if he's a direct link, we still need to get to the next step. I'm afraid that may limit what we can do to him. I mean, we couldn't even squash that slime Jacoby."

Ah, funny you should mention that, Alley. Megaira's elaborately casual voice set off a clangor of warning bells, and Alicia's eyebrows rose.

"I know that tone," she said. "What've you been up to?"

It wasn't just me, the AI said quickly. I mean, I thought it was a great idea, but I couldn't have done it by myself.

"You fill me with dread-and you're stalling."

It was your idea, Tis. Why don't you explain?

But I could not have accomplished it without your expertise, and you have a better grasp of the details, so perhaps you should explain.

The Fury's tone was serious, yet Alicia felt her amusement. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the empty air.

"One of you had better trot it out, ladies!"

Well, it's like this, Alley. You remember when we made that credit transfer and Tis and I raided Jacoby's data base?

"Of course I do," Alicia said, then paused. "Did you horrid creatures put something into it? You didn't hit him with a virus, did you?"

Of course not, Megaira said virtuously. What a horrible idea! I'd never do something like that-not even to a fossil like that Jurgens Twelve of his. Not that it might not have been kinder. That relic should've been scrapped years ago, Alley. It's so stupid-

"Quit stalling! What did you do?!"

We didn't put a thing into it. Instead, we took something out.

"Besides the information on his distribution network?"

Well, yes. I guess to be perfectly honest, we did put something in, but it's only a delayed extraction program.

"What kind of extraction program?"

A starcom credit transfer.

"A credit transfer? You mean you robbed him?"

If you want to put it that way. But we talked it over, and, personally, I think Tis was right. You can't really rob a thief, can you?

"Of course you can rob a thief!" Alicia closed her eyes and flopped back into her chair. "I thought you were supposed to have my value system!"

And so she does, but I am making some progress with her. Rather more than with you, in fact.

"I just bet you are," Alicia muttered, running her fingers through her hair. "All right, how much did you hit him for?"

All of it, Megaira said in a small voice.

"All of what?"

All of everything. We found all his hidden accounts as well as the open ones, and we, well, we sort of cleaned him out.

"You-" Alicia gurgled to a stop, and pregnant silence hovered in her stunned mind. But then her closed eyes popped open as panic cut through her shock. "Good God Almighty, Megaira! What do you think he's going to do when he figures out we robbed him?! We can't afford that kind of-"

Peace, Little One. He will not realize we were to blame.

"How do you know?! Damn it, who else is he going to suspect?!"

That I cannot tell you, but it will not be us, for the theft has not yet occurred. Nor will it … until he orders his first off-planet credit transfer to one of his drug-distributing cronies. Megaira was very clever, and I rather expect- the Fury's dry delight was unmistakable -that he will suspect whichever of his fellow thieves he has attempted to pay.

"You mean-?"

Exactly, Alley. See, what'll happen is the first time he orders a payment to one of the accounts I listed in my program, it'll automatically dump every credit he has into the transfer and then reroute it. His payee won't see a centicredit, but the program'll bootstrap itself-and the transfer-through his starcom, then transmit itself back out. And it'll erase itself from each system it moves through till it reaches its destination, too.

"Oh, Lord!" Alicia moaned, covering her eyes with her hands. "I never should have inflicted you two on an unsuspecting galaxy! Just where-if I dare ask-will this wandering program finally end its criminal days?"

It'll probably take it a while to make connections, but it's headed for Thaarvlhd. I set it up to open a numbered account when it gets there.

"Thaarvlhd?" Alicia repeated blankly. Then, "Thaarvlhd?! My God, that's the Quarn Hegemony's central banking hub for this sector! Damn it, the Quarn take money seriously, Megaira! Violating Thaarvlhd's banking laws isn't a harmless little prank like murder!"

I didn't violate a thing. They're used to orders like this one, and I included all the documentation they need.

"Documentation?"

Sure. They don't care about names, but I included everything they want on human accounts: your retinal prints, your genetic pri-

"My prints?!" Alicia yelped. "You opened an account in my name?!"

Of course not. I just explained they don't use names, Alley. That's why they're so popular.

"Sweet Suffering Jesus!" Alicia never knew exactly how long she sat there, staring at nothing, but then a thought occurred to her. "Uh, Megaira."

Yes?

"I'm not condoning what you've done-not condemning it either, you understand, or at least not yet-but I was wondering… . Just how much did you two rip him off for?"

Hard to say, since we don't know exactly when the program'll trip.

"A rough estimate will do," Alicia said in a fascinated tone.

Well, using his last two years' cash flow as a basis, I'd say somewhere between two hundred fifty and three hundred million credits.

"Two hun-"

Alicia closed her mouth with a snap. Then she began to giggle-giggles that gave way to howls of laughter. She couldn't help herself. She leaned forward, hugging her ribs and laughing till her chest hurt and her eyes teared. Laughing as she had not laughed in months, with pure, devilish delight as she pictured ultra-civilized Edward Jacoby's reaction. And she'd thought they couldn't hurt him! Dear God, he wouldn't have a pot to piss in, and he'd never even know who'd done it!

She pummeled the deck with her feet, wailing with laughter, until she could get control of herself again, then straightened slowly, gasping for breath and mopping her eyes.

I take it you are less displeased than you anticipated? Tisiphone asked mildly, and Alicia giggled again.

"Stop that!" she said unsteadily. "Don't you dare set me off again! Oh. Oh, my! He is going to be upset, isn't he?"

It seemed an appropriate-and just-way to deal with him.

"Damn straight it did!" Alicia shook herself, then straightened sternly. "Don't you two think you can get away with something like this again-not without checking with me first, anyway! But just this once, I think I'll forgive you."

Yeah, for about three hundred million reasons, I'd guess, Megaira sniffed, and Alicia dissolved into laughter once more.

Chapter Fifty-Six

The assembled officers rose as Rachel Shu followed Howell into the briefing room. More than one set of eyes were a bit apprehensive, for the intelligence officer had just returned from meeting Control's latest messenger, and Howell's people were only too well aware of the casualties they'd taken on Ringbolt.

Howell took his place at the head of the table and watched his subordinates sit, then nodded to Shu.

"All right, Commander. Let's hear it."

"Yes, Sir." Shu cleared her throat, set a notepad on the table, and keyed the tiny screen alive. "First, Control sends us all a well done on the Ringbolt operation." Breath sighed out around the table, and Howell smiled wryly. "He regrets our losses, but under the circumstances, he understands why they were so high, and it appears both our primary and secondary missions were complete successes."

She paused, and Howell listened to a soft murmur of pleasure walk around the room. How many of those officers, he wondered, ever really spent a few hours thinking about what they'd done? Not many-perhaps none. He certainly tried to avoid the memories, though it was growing harder. Yet it was often that way. There were things he'd done in the service of the Empire which he tried just as hard never to remember. This wasn't that much different, he told himself, and pretended that he didn't know he lied.

Of course, much of their pleasure stemmed from the fact that they'd expected to be reamed. A pat on the back always felt better when one had anticipated a rap in the mouth. That much was the same as in the Fleet.

He let the murmurs run on a moment longer, then tapped his knuckles on the tabletop. Silence fell once more, and he nodded to Shu.

"Preliminary evaluation of the captured data," the commander continued, keying the advance to display the next screen as she picked up her report again, "indicates we probably secured more from Ringbolt than we would have from Elysium, and our financial backers are delighted. Control asked me to tell you all that their support has firmed up very nicely once more, and that most of them seem convinced we know what we're doing after all.

"On another front, the Ringbolt attack has apparently produced the desired effect in the Senate and Ministry. Control didn't want to come right out and say so, but he seems confident that ONI and Marine Intelligence on Old Earth are coming to precisely the conclusions we want, and pressure from the Senate is growing every day. Best of all, public opinion here in the sector itself is shaping up very nicely. 'Panic' might be putting it too strongly, but there's widespread anxiety and an increasing perception that the imperial government is powerless to stop us."

Shu touched the advance key again and allowed herself a small frown.

"We do have one unanticipated complication. Apparently, one of the people killed on Ringbolt was Simon Monkoto's brother Arlen."

Howell sat a bit straighter and saw others do the same at mention of that name. Shu saw it, too, and her smile was wintry.

"We all know Monkoto's reputation, but his outfit isn't up to our weight even if he knew where to find us. The problem is that he's calling in a lot of debts from his colleagues, and most of them are angry enough over Ringbolt to throw in with him even if they didn't owe him. Among them, they may be able to assemble an independent force that is a threat, and because they're independents, Control's ability to track them will be much lower than for the regular El Grecan Navy. On the other hand, they are independents. Their fleets represent their working capital, and they can't tie them up indefinitely on this kind of altruistic operation."

"What's the chance of El Greco picking up the tab?" Alexsov asked.

"Unknown. Mercenaries of Monkoto's caliber normally don't come cheap, but these aren't normal circumstances. I don't now about the others, but the Maniacs'll probably settle for basic expenses with no profit margin, and that could make them extremely attractive to El Greco. Still, that might work in our favor. If they hire on with El Greco, the El Grecans will tie them into a comprehensive strategy. Under normal circumstances, that would make them even more dangerous; as it is, they'd simply be easier to watch-and avoid-given the joint planning between the Empire and the El Grecans."

Alexsov nodded thoughtfully, and Shu shrugged.

"Control isn't too concerned about them at present. As I say, they'd have to find us before they could hurt us, even if they managed to assemble enough firepower to come after us. It's unlikely they can do that, but Control isn't taking any chances. He wants us to relocate to the AR-Twelve site as soon as possible to get us further away from El Greco."

"Makes sense," Howell agreed. "And it sounds like we're in pretty good shape, if Monkoto is Control's worst worry."

"He is and he isn't, Sir," Shu said. "Control's arranging recruitment to make good our Ringbolt losses, and he's managed to scare up two new BCs to replace Poltava." Howell grunted. Crewing two more battlecruisers might stretch them thin, but the firepower would be well worth the inconvenience.

"In the meantime, though, Control himself is going to have to stay close to Soissons, because that's the most delicate problem area just now. In particular, McIlheny seems to be getting closer than we'd like. According to Control's courier, he's currently promising some significant report to Admiral Gomez and Governor Treadwell. Control couldn't hold the dispatch boat, so we don't know what sort of report, but he informs me that he's prepared to deal with it, whatever it is.

"Assuming he's right about that-and he usually is-our only other local concern is Admiral Gomez. She's backed off just a bit and endorsed Treadwell's request for heavier units, which may divert some of the pressure for her relief, but she and the Governor are just about ready to start sticking knives into each other. If she isn't relieved, she may be able to force Treadwell into adopting a more effective posture, and none of us wants to see that."

Shu shrugged again.

"If that looks like happening, we'll simply have to proceed with the backup plan and eliminate her. We're looking at several options for that, but Control is leaning towards passing us her itinerary. She's taken to traveling about in Antietam with minimal escorts in the interest of speed; if he can pass us her schedule, we might be able to intercept and take her out. In many ways, that would be the ideal solution, given her popularity with the Fleet. It would not only get rid of her but turn her into a martyr and provide yet another reason for Fleet to go after the nasty pirates."

Her smile was most unpleasant, and Howell hid an inner shiver. He'd served under Gomez, and while he was willing to admit she might have to be eliminated, he didn't look forward to it. Shu obviously did. He didn't know whether she had some special reason to dislike Gomez or if it was simply the professional neatness of using an enemy's death to advance their own ends which appealed to her so, and frankly, he didn't want to know.

"All right," he said, deliberately breaking his own train of thought. "What did Control have to say about the physical take from Ringbolt?"

"Quite a bit, Sir. In fact, that was my next point." Shu flipped quickly through screens of data, then nodded. "He was a bit surprised by how much we got away with, and, of course, we lack the facilities to transport cargo, as opposed to data, directly to the Core Sectors. Moreover, our backers have specifically asked that we not send it to them. Control believes they're nervous about having traceable hardware and experimental material in their labs, not to mention the potential for interception en route."

"So he just wants us to dump it all?" Henry d'Amcourt demanded. "Jays, Commodore-that's almost a billion credits out the airlock!"

"I didn't say Control wants it dumped, Henry."

Shu disliked interruptions almost as much as she disliked d'Amcourt personally, and her voice was chill, but Howell understood his quartermaster's anguish. The surviving shuttles had returned with an unanticipated fortune in tissue cultures, experimental animals, and an entire arsenal of new and advanced gene-splicing nanites, not to mention apparatus researchers on most Rogue Worlds (and not a few Incorporated Worlds) would have killed for. Henry wasn't so much affronted by losing the money involved as he was by losing the potential in supplies and ammunition it represented.

"All right, Rachel," the commodore interposed tactfully. "From what you're saying, I gather Control has something specific in mind?"

"He does, Sir." Shu turned to face him, just incidentally turning her back on d'Amcourt, who only grinned. "He suggests we distribute it through Wyvern-preferably via a series of cutouts which can't be traced directly to us but guarantee at least some of it turns up here in the Franconia Sector and, if at all possible, in the Macedon Sector, as well."

"Ah?" Howell leaned back and smiled, and she nodded.

"Exactly. We can realize perhaps seventy percent of its open market value in the transaction, which should please some of us," she very carefully did not look at d'Amcourt, "but he's especially interested in having some of it spotted as far away from the Core Sectors as possible."

Howell nodded. Throwing some fourth or fifth-stage patsy out here to the Ministry of Justice or its Rogue World equivalent would divert attention from their real backers, and it could serve as a wedge into Macedon at the same time. They'd been looking for something to suggest the "pirates" were turning their attention towards the Franconia Sector's neighbors. But coupled with the sheer value involved, that meant this particular shipment had to be handled very carefully indeed. He glanced at Alexsov.

"Greg? Can Quintana handle it?"

"I believe so," Alexsov replied after a moment's thought. "He'll want a bigger cut if he has to arrange to burn a customer, but he'll go along. And he certainly has the contacts and organization to make it work."

Howell toyed with his stylus a moment, then nodded.

"All right. But I want you to set it up in person, Greg. It's about time you checked in personally with Quintana again anyway, isn't it?"

"Yes, Sir. I can go ahead in a dispatch boat and have everything set by the time the transport arrives."

"I don't think so," Howell mused. "I hadn't thought about how useful this could be until Control pointed it out, but he's absolutely right. So no slipups are allowed. I want the arrangements made and triple-checked before we hand Quintana the first flask of this cargo. And I don't want you wandering around in an unarmed dispatch boat, either. Take one of the tin cans, make your arrangements, and then meet us at the AR-Twelve rendezvous."

"If you say so, Sir. But should I really be absent for that long?"

"I think we'll be all right. Control hasn't sent us a fresh target yet, and we'll be meeting his next courier there, anyway. You should be back in plenty of time to coordinate the next op."

"Yes, Sir. In that case, I can leave this afternoon."

Chapter Fifty-Seven

"So, Captain. You have a delivery for me, I understand?"

Alicia looked up sharply at the first-person pronoun. She stood at the foot of the shuttle's ramp, the turbine whine of other shuttles at her back, and the fellow before her was dressed almost drably. She'd hardly expected Quintana to appear in person the moment she landed, nor had she expected to see him so simply dressed, but her second glance confirmed his identity. The match with the holo image Fuchien had shown her was perfect.

"I do-if you have the documentation to prove you're who I think you are," she said calmly, and he gave her a faint smile as he extended a chip.

She slipped it into a reader, checking it against Fuchien's original and watching him from the corner of an eye. She didn't even look up when four heavily-armed bodyguards blended out of the crowd to join him; her free hand simply unsnapped her holster. He saw it, but his eyes only twinkled and he folded his arms unthreateningly across his chest.

Her reader chirped as she completed her examination, and she ejected the chip with a nod.

"Everything checks, Lieutenant Commander," she said, returning it to him. "Sorry if I seemed a bit suspicious."

"I approve of suspicious people-especially when they're being suspicious in my interests," Quintana replied, and extended his hand.

She clasped it, and the familiar sensation of heat enveloped her. The merchant was still speaking, welcoming her to Wyvern, but all Alicia truly "heard" was the soaring, exultant carol of the Fury's triumph.

The Quarn freighter Aharjhka loped towards Wyvern at a velocity many a battlecruiser might have envied. For all its size and cargo capacity, Aharjhka was lean, rakish, and very, very fast, for the great Quarn trade cartels competed with one another with a fervor other races lavished only on their ships of war.

The bridge hatch opened, and the being a human would have called Aharjhka's captain looked up as a passenger stepped through it.

"Greetings, Inspector. Our instruments have detected the ship you described."

The Quarn's well-modulated voice was deep and resonant, largely because of the density of the atmosphere, for Quarn ships maintained a gravity more than twice that of most human vessels. But the Standard English was almost completely accentless, as well, and Ferhat Ben Belkassem hid a smile. He couldn't help it, for the sheer incongruity of that perfect enunciation from a radially symmetrical cross between a hairy, two-meter-wide starfish and a crazed Impressionist's version of a spider never failed to amuse him.

He crossed to a display at the captain's gesture. Whoever had reconfigured it for human eyes hadn't gotten the color balance quite right, but there was no mistaking the ship in Wyvern orbit. Star Runner had made a remarkably swift passage, actually passing Aharjhka en route-not that he'd expected anything else.

"So I see, Sir," he said through his helmet's external speaker, and the captain turned the delicate pink the Quarn used in place of a chuckle at the choice of honorific.

Ben Belkassem grinned, and the captain's rosy hue deepened. Quarn had only a single sex-or, rather, every Quarn was a fully functional hermaphrodite-and humanity's gender-linked language conventions tickled their sense of the absurd. But at least it was a shared and tolerant amusement. Different as they were, both species understood biological humor, and humans gave back as good as they got.

The prudish Rish were another matter. If the Quarn found humanity's sexual mores amusing, they found those of the Rish uproarious, and the matriarchs were not amused in return. Worse (from the Rishathan viewpoint), the highly flexible Quarn vocal apparatus could handle both human and Rishathan languages, and they found it particularly amusing to enter a multi-species transit facility, make sure Rish were present, and ask one another "Have you heard the one about the two matriarchs?" in perfect High Rishathan.

Ben Belkassem had been present when one of those jokes led to a lively brawl and an even livelier diplomatic incident-not that the Rish were likely to press the matter too far.

On a personal level, nothing much short of a six-kilo hammer could hurt a Quarn, and even a fully mature matriarch fared poorly against three hundred kilos of muscle and gristle from a 2.4-G home world, whether the possessor of that muscle and gristle was officially warlike or not.

On a diplomatic level, the Terran Empire and Quarn Hegemony were firm allies, a fact the Rishathan Sphere found more than merely unpalatable yet was unable to do much about. It wasn't for want of trying, but even the devious Rishathan diplomatic corps which had once set the Terran League at the Federation's throat had finally given up in disgust. What was a poor racial chauvinist to do? Bizarre as each species found the other's appearance, humankind and Quarnkind liked one another immensely. On the face of it, it was an unlikely pairing. The Rish were at least bipedal, yet they and humans barely tolerated one another, so a reasonable being might have expected even more tension between humanity and the utterly alien Quarn.

Yet it didn't work that way, and Ben Belkassem suspected it was precisely because they were so different. The Quarn's heavy-gravity worlds produced atmospheric pressures lethal to any human, which meant they weren't interested in the same sort of real estate; humans and Rish were. Quarn and human sexuality were so different there were virtually no points of congruity; Rish were bisexual-and the matriarchs blamed human notions of sexual equality for the "uppityness" of certain of their own males. There were all too many points of potential conflict between human and Rish, while humans and Quarn had no conflicting physical interests and were remarkably compatible in nonphysical dimensions.

Humans were more combative than the Quarn, who reserved their own ferocity for important things like business, but both were far less militant than the Rishathan matriarchs. They were comfortable with one another, and if the Quarn sometimes felt humans were a mite more warlike than was good for them, they recognized a natural community of interest against the Rish.

Besides, humans could take a joke.

"We will enter orbit in another two hours," Aharjhka's captain announced. "Is there anything else Aharjhka can do for you in this matter?"

"No, Sir. If you can just get me down aboard your shuttle without anyone noticing, you'll have done everything I could possibly want."

"That will be no problem, if you are certain it is all you need."

"I am, and I thank you on my own behalf and that of the Empire."

"Not necessary." The captain waved a tentacle tip in dismissal. "The Hegemony understands criminals like these thugarz, Inspector, and I remind you that Aharjhka has a well-equipped armory if my crew may be of use to you."

The Quarn's rosy tint shaded into a bleaker violet. The Spiders might regard war as a noisy, vulgar, inefficient way to settle differences, but when violence was the only solution, they went about it with the same pragmatism they brought to serious matters like making money. "Merciless as a Quarn" was a high compliment among human merchants, but it held another, grimmer reality, and the Quarn liked pirates even less than humans did. They weren't simply murderous criminals, but murderous criminals who were bad for business.

"I appreciate the thought, Captain, but if I'm right, all the firepower I need is already here. All I have to do is mobilize it."

"Indeed?" The Quarn remained motionless on the toadstool-like pad of its command couch, but two vision clusters swivelled to consider him. "You are a strange human, Inspector, but I almost believe you mean that."

"I do."

"It would be impolite to call you insane, but please remember this is Wyvern."

"I will, I assure you."

"Luck to your trading, then, Inspector. I will have you notified thirty minutes before shuttle departure."

"Thank you, Sir," Ben Belkassem replied, and made his way to the tiny, human-configured cabin hidden in Aharjhka's bowels, moving quickly but carefully against the ship's internal gravity field.

His shoulders straightened gratefully as he crossed the divider into his quarters' one-G field. It was a vast relief to feel his weight drop back where it ought to be, and an even vaster one to dump his helmet and scratch his nose at last. He sighed in relief, then knelt to drag a small trunk from under his bunk and began checking its varied and lethal contents with practiced ease while his mind replayed his conversation with the captain.

He certainly understood the Quarn's concern, but the captain didn't realize how lucky Ben Belkassem had been. Aharjhka's presence at Dewent and scheduled layover at Wyvern had been like filling an inside straight, and the inspector intended to ride the advantage for all it was worth. Very few people knew how closely the Hegemony Judicars and Imperial Ministry of Justice cooperated, and even fewer knew about the private arrangement under which enforcement agents of each imperium traveled freely (and clandestinely) on the other's ships. Which meant no one would be expecting any human-even an O Branch inspector-to debark from Aharjhka. Aharjhka wasn't listed as a multi-species transport, and only a convinced misanthrope or an intelligent and infinitely resourceful agent would book passage on a vessel whose environment would make him a virtual prisoner in his cabin for the entire voyage.

Of course, Ferhat Ben Belkassem was an intelligent and infinitely resourceful agent-he knew he was, for it said so in his Justice Ministry dossier-but even so, he'd almost blown his own cover when he recognized Alicia DeVries on Dewent. It had cost Justice's Intelligence and Operations Branches seven months and three lives to establish that one of Edward Jacoby's (many) partners had links to the pirates' Wyvern-based fence, and they still hadn't figured out which of them it was. Yet DeVries had homed in on Fuchien as if she had a map, and she'd built herself a far better cover than O Branch could have provided.

Ben Belkassem had personally double-checked the documentation on Star Runner, her captain, and her crew, and he'd never seen such an exquisitely detailed (and utterly fictitious) legend. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised, given the way DeVries had escaped hospital security on Soissons, penetrated Jefferson Field, and stolen one of the Imperial Fleet's prized alpha-synths. If she could make that look easy, why not this?

Because she was a drop commando, not a trained operative-that was why. How had she come by such perfectly forged papers? Where had she recruited her crew? For that matter, how did she cram them all aboard what had to be the stolen alpha-synth? It couldn't be anything else, whatever it looked like, but how in the name of all that was holy did she slide blithely through customs at a world like MaGuire? Ben Belkassem had never personally crossed swords with Jungian customs, but he knew their reputation. He couldn't conceive of any way they could have inspected "Star Runner" without at least noticing that the "freighter" was armed to the proverbial teeth!

It seemed, he thought dryly, checking the charge indicator on a disrupter, that the good captain had lost none of her penchant for doing the impossible. And, as he'd once told Colonel McIlheny, he hadn't amassed his record by looking serendipity in the mouth. Whatever she was up to and however she was bringing it off, she'd not only managed to find the link he'd sought but done so in a way which actually got her inside the pipeline. Under those circumstances, he was perfectly content to throw his own weeks of work out the airlock and follow along in her wake.

And, he told himself as he buckled his gun belt and slid the disrupter into its holster, even a drop commando could use a bit of backup, whatever her unlikely abilities … and whether she knew she had it or not.

Alicia retina-printed the last document and watched Oscar Quintana's secretary carry the paperwork from the palatial office. The merchant pushed his chair back and rose, turning to the well-stocked bar opposite his desk.

"A rapid and satisfactory transaction, Captain Mainwaring. Now that it's out of the way, name your poison."

"I'm not too particular, as long as it pours," Alicia replied, glancing casually about the office. I don't see any obvious pickups, she thought at Tisiphone. How about you?

There are none. Quintana does not care to be spied upon in his own lair-that much I have obtained from him already.

Think we've got enough time?

I know not, but sufficient or no, this may be the only time we have.

Then let's go for it, Alicia said.

She rose from her own chair and walked across to Quintana. He glanced up from the clear, green liqueur he was pouring into tiny glasses, then capped the bottle and smiled.

"I trust you'll enjoy this, Captain. It's a local product, from one of my own distilleries, and-"

His voice chopped off as Alicia touched his hand. He froze, mouth open, eyes blank, and Alicia blinked in momentary disorientation of her own as the flood of data poured into her brain. Their earlier handshake had been sufficient to confirm their quarry but too brief for detailed examination of Quintana's knowledge. They'd dared not probe this way then, lest one of his bodyguards notice his glaze-eyed stillness and react precipitously.

It was still a risk, but Alicia was too caught up in the knowledge flow to worry about someone's opening the door and finding them like this. If it happened, it happened, and in the meantime … .

Images and memories flared as Tisiphone plucked them from Quintana. Meetings with someone named Alexsov. Credit balances that soared magically as loot from pillaged worlds flowed through his hands. Contact times and purchase orders. Customers and distributors on other Rogue Worlds and even on imperial planets. All of them flashed through her, each of them stored indelibly for later attention, and again and again she saw the mysterious Alexsov. Alexsov and a man called d'Amcourt, who listed and coordinated the pirates' purchases, and a woman called Shu, who frightened the powerful merchant noble, however he might deny it to himself. Yet both of those others deferred to Alexsov without question. There was no doubt in Quintana's mind-or in Alicia's-that Alexsov was one of the pirates' senior officers, and she wanted to scream in frustration at how little Quintana knew of him.

But at least she now knew what he looked like, and …

Her green eyes brightened as the last, elusive details clicked. Alexsov due to return here soon … and Quintana's own constant need for dependable carriers.

Her hungry smile echoed the Fury's hunting snarl, and she felt Tisiphone reach even deeper, no longer taking thoughts but implanting them. A few more brief seconds sufficed, and then Quintana's eyes snapped back into focus and his voice continued, smooth and unhurried, unaware of any break.

"-I highly recommend it."

He handed her one of the glasses, and she sipped, then smiled in unfeigned enjoyment. It was sweet yet sharp, almost astringent, and it flowed down her throat like rich, liquid fire.

"I see why you think highly of it," she said. He nodded and waved at the chairs around a coffee table of rich native woods. She sank into one of them, and he sat opposite her, peering pensively down into his glass.

"Lewis said you have a charter on Cathcart, Captain Mainwaring?"

"Yes, I do," Alicia confirmed, and he frowned.

"That's a pity. I might have a profitable commission for you here, if you could see your way to accepting it."

"What sort of commission?"

"Very much like the one you've just discharged, but with a considerably higher profit margin."

"Ah?" Alicia crooked an eyebrow thoughtfully. "How considerably?"

"Twice as great-at a minimum," Quintana replied, and she let her other eyebrow rise.

"I suppose you might call that 'considerably higher,' " she murmured. "Still, Cathcart is a bird in the hand, Lieutenant Commander, and-"

"Oscar, please," he interrupted, and she blinked, this time in genuine surprise. From what she'd seen of Quintana's mind, he didn't encourage familiarity with his employees. On the other hand -

On the other hand, Little One, a voice whispered dryly in her mind, you are a handsome woman and he is a connoisseur of women. And, no, the voice added even more dryly, I did not instill any such notion in his mind!

"Oscar, then," Alicia said aloud. "As I was saying, I know I have a cargo on Cathcart, and the port master will slap me with a forfeit penalty if I don't collect it as scheduled."

"True." Quintana pondered a moment, then shrugged. "I can't guarantee the commission I'm thinking of, Theodosia-may I call you Theodosia?" Alicia nodded and he continued. "Thank you. I can't guarantee it because there are other principals involved, but I believe you and Star Runner would be perfect for it. I'm reasonably confident my colleagues will agree with me, and even if they don't, I have other consignments for a discreet and reliable skipper, so I have a proposal for you. I anticipate seeing one of my senior colleagues in the near future. Starcom your regrets to your Cathcart contract, and I'll introduce you to him when he arrives. If he accepts my recommendation, you'll make enough to cover your forfeit and still show a much higher profit than on this last shipment. If he chooses to make other arrangements, I will personally guarantee you commissions of at least equal value."

Alicia let herself consider the offer carefully, then shrugged.

"How can I pass up an offer like that? I accept, of course," she said … and she smiled.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

The small, well-dressed diner accepted the proffered chair with distracted courtesy, then reached into his jacket for a micro-comp. He set it beside his plate, punched up a complicated list of stock transactions, and studied them intently. Only the most suspicious might have noticed the way he set it down, and only the truly paranoid would have suspected the ultra-sensitive microphone concealed in the end pointed toward a nearby table.

Ben Belkassem spread a small sheaf of hard-copy on the table, then punched more keys and brought up yet another layer of meaningless sales while he uncapped his stylus. He scribbled notes on the hard-copy, frowning in concentration as the tiny ear bug from his computer whispered to him.

"… derstand, Captain." Oscar Quintana sipped wine and blotted his lips, eyes gleaming with sardonic amusement. "It's regrettable, of course, but a certain … wastage must be anticipated in any transaction."

"Precisely. But the object is to make certain the wastage is suffered in the right place."

Gregor Alexsov's own wine sat untasted, and Quintana smothered a mental sigh. The man had done wonderful things for his credit balance, but there was no lightness, no sense of what the game was all about, in him. Those hard, brown eyes swivelled over his face like targeting lasers, and the thin lips wrinkled in what was obviously intended as a smile.

Sad, so sad, but that probably represented Alexsov's best effort. Well, a man couldn't be good at everything, Quintana supposed.

"If you'll give me a list of what you want wasted and where, I'll see to it," he said.

"Thank you." Alexsov's eyes moved away, scanning the crowded restaurant, and his mouth tightened with disapproval. "I'll have it for you by the time we reach some less public place."

"I applaud your caution, Captain Alexsov," Quintana said, ignoring the way his guest winced at the use of his name, "but it's unnecessary."

"Perhaps, but I dislike meeting among so many strangers."

"None of whom," Quintana pointed out, "are close enough to hear a word we're saying. Half the deals on Wyvern are concluded in this restaurant, Captain, because it's swept for bugs several times a day, and despite your concern, we've been less than specific. Even had we not, none of our business violates any of Wyvern's laws, and-" he gestured dryly at the six well-armed retainers seated at flanking tables "-I hardly think anyone would be foolish enough to intrude on us. I am Lieutenant Commander Defiant, you know."

"No doubt. But an agent of the Empire, or even some of your non-imperial neighbors, might not care."

"Which would be fatally foolish of him, Captain." Steel glinted behind Quintana's smile as his relaxed pose slipped for just a moment, and his eyes locked with Alexsov's. Then he shrugged and waved a hand, banishing the mood. "Have it as you will, however. In the meantime, I think I may have located just the skipper we need. She's a newcomer to Wyvern, but her credentials are excellent. Good-looking young woman, but she's already demonstrated her competence on several occasions, and-"

Ben Belkassem's meal arrived. He made himself smile around a silent curse on all efficient waiters as he put his computer away, but he'd heard enough. He knew now why DeVries had spent the last three weeks cultivating Quintana, and he had a name-one which was almost certainly genuine, given "Alexsov's" reaction to its use-beyond the Wyverian. Perhaps even more importantly, it seemed DeVries was about to move another link up the chain.

The inspector sampled his food with an admiring smile. He didn't know how she was manipulating her enemies, but no one could get this far this fast on pure luck. For all his ego, Quintana was a shrewd operator; she had to be influencing him some way to win such a recommendation after carrying a single cargo for him, and the inspector wondered what sort of magic wand she used.

He paused, smile fading at a sudden thought. He knew she was working Quintana somehow-might it be equally obvious to someone else? Of course, he had the advantage of knowing who she was and some of the other things she'd done, but if anyone ran an analysis and recognized her straight-line movement to Wyvern or, worse, checked her career before MaGuire … .

He laid aside his fork and reached for his own wineglass, remembering Alexsov's evident caution, and his brain was busy behind his eyes.

Commander Barr looked up in surprise as Captain Alexsov strode onto Harpy's bridge. He hadn't expected the chief of staff back aboard for another hour, and his expression suggested he had something on his mind.

"Good evening, Sir. Can I help you?"

"Yes." Alexsov slid into the exec's chair and reached for the synth-link headset. "Patch me into the port records, please."

Barr nodded to his communications officer, then turned his chair to face Alexsov.

"May I ask what you're looking for, Sir?"

"I don't know yet." Alexsov smiled thinly at the CO's expression. "I may not be looking for anything at all, but if I find it, I'll recognize it."

"Of course, Sir."

Barr turned his chair tactfully away as the chief of staff closed his eyes in concentration. This was Alexsov's first trip in Harpy, but aside from a certain fetish with schedules, he'd evinced few of the oddities Barr's fellows had warned him about. Until now, at least.

Alexsov suspected what Barr was thinking, but it bothered him far less than his inability to pin down what made him so uneasy. It was just that it was unlike Quintana to recommend any captain, much less one he'd dealt with only once, as enthusiastically as this one. Of course, if Mainwaring was as attractive as Quintana had implied, that might explain a good bit of his enthusiasm, Quintana being Quintana. Still, whatever had aroused his initial admiration, her record since entering the Franconia Sector was impressive. She had a fast ship, and she'd certainly demonstrated a short way with would-be hijackers. That cargo of Dreamy White was a point in her favor, too; anyone who'd transport that had very few scruples.

He reached the end of the data and leaned back, frowning without opening his eyes. If only the woman had a longer history in-sector! Without querying the Melville data base directly via starcom-and vague concern was hardly enough to justify that sort of risk or expense-he couldn't check her previous record. There was nothing in her recent activities to arouse suspicion, and if this was a false background, it was the most convincing one he'd ever seen. But perhaps that was the real problem. Maybe she was too good to be true?

Nonsense! He was getting as paranoid as Rachel Shu! But that paranoia, he acknowledged, was exactly what made Rachel such a success.

His frown deepened. Smitten by her looks or no, Quintana must have checked her out. The merchant's dealings might be legal under Wyverian law, but Quintana had to know how meaningless that would be if the Empire ever discovered them. O Branch had no qualms about arranging a quiet little kidnapping or assassination, and ONI would be right behind them on this one. Possibly not even such a quiet assassination. The Empire would want other Rogue Worlders to rethink their positions on aiding its enemies.

He removed his headset and coiled the lead with methodical neatness.

Every indication was that Captain Mainwaring was genuine. If she was, she could prove an invaluable resource; if she wasn't, she was a deadly danger. Any operative who could penetrate this deeply had to be eliminated, but all he had was a worry-a "hunch," much as he hated the word-and that wasn't enough. Rachel, he suspected, would simply have her killed out of hand, but Rachel wasn't noted for moderation, and if his hunch was wrong, Mainwaring was just as perfect for the job as Quintana thought.

Fortunately, there was a way to be certain. He put the headset away, nodded briefly to Commander Barr, and headed for sickbay.

The hover cab stopped outside the imposing gates, and Alicia stepped out into Wyvern's autumn night, damp and rich with the scent of unfamiliar, decaying leaf mold. She fed her credit card into the cab's charge unit and looked around, tugging her bolero straight. Chateau Defiant lay thirty kilometers from town, and clouds hid both moons. Without sensory boosters, the blackness would have been Stygian; even with them, it was dark enough to make her jumpy-especially in light of the importance of this meeting.

Calm down, Alley. Get your pulse back down where it belongs, girl!

Yes, Ma'am, Alicia thought back obediently, and brought her augmentation on line. Her racing heart slowed, and she felt herself relax. Not enough to lose her edge, but enough to kill the jitters.

Just keep your head together, okay? I want you-hell, I want both of you-back up here in one piece. Or two. Or whatever.

Have no fear, Megaira. I shall keep my eye upon her.

Ha! That's what worries me most!

Alicia swallowed a chuckle as she reclaimed her credit card. The gates opened silently, and Quintana's voice issued from the speaker below their visual pickup.

"Hi, Theodosia! We're in the Green Parlor. You know the way."

"Pour the drinks, Oscar," she replied with a cheerful wave. "I'll see you in a couple of minutes."

"Good," Quintana said, and switched off with an unhappy glance at Gregor Alexsov. "Is this really necessary?" he asked, gesturing distastefully at the peculiar, long-barreled pistol one of Alexsov's people carried.

"I'm afraid so." Alexsov nodded, and the man with the pistol retreated into the next room and pulled the door almost closed. "I trust you completely, Oscar, but we can't afford any slips. If she's as trustworthy as you believe, it won't hurt her a bit. If not … ."

He shrugged.

Alicia strode up the walk with brisk familiarity. She'd been here several times in the past weeks, although Oscar Quintana's memories of her overnight visits differed somewhat from her own. She grinned at the thought, relaxing further with the amusement, and never noticed the catlike shape that slid tracelessly through Quintana's sophisticated security systems behind her.

She was one of Quintana's "special friends" now, and the retainer who met her at the door gave her a wry, half-apologetic smile as he held out his hand. She smiled back and slid her CHK from its holster, then handed over her survival knife and the vibro blade from her left boot. He stowed them carefully away and gestured politely at the scan panel beside him, and Alicia made a face.

"Oh ye of little faith," she murmured, but it wasn't bad manners on Wyvern, where titles of nobility-and estates-had been known to change hands with sudden and violent unexpectedness. No doubt Tisiphone could have gotten an entire arsenal past the man behind the scanners, just as she did Alicia's augmentation, but there was no real point in it.

"There, see?" she said as he peered at her internal hardware without seeing it.

He smiled at her teasing tone and bowed her past, and she grinned back as she turned down a corridor hung in priceless tapestries. If not for the way it was paid for, she could have gotten used to this kind of life, she thought, nodding to an occasional servant as she passed.

The double doors to what Quintana modestly called the Green Parlor stood open. She stepped through them, and he turned to greet her, standing beside a tallish man she recognized from his mind.

"Theodosia. Allow me to introduce Captain Gregor Alexsov."

"Captain." Alicia held out her hand and made herself smile brightly.

"Captain Mainwaring." Alexsov extended his own hand graciously. She took it and felt the familiar heat, then -

No, Alicia! Tisiphone screamed in her mind, and something made a soft, quiet "PFFFFT!" sound behind her.

Ben Belkassem muttered balefully as he filtered through the pitch-black grounds. This damned house was even bigger than he'd thought from the plans, and he'd almost missed two different sensors already. He paused in the denser darkness under an ornamental tree and checked his inertial tracer against the plat of the grounds. Quintana had mentioned the "Green Parlor," and if his map was right that was right over there … .

Alicia gasped and snapped around to stare at Quintana as pain pricked the back of her neck. He looked distressed-he was actually wringing his hands-and her eyes popped back to Alexsov, then widened as she collapsed. The carpet bloodied her nose as her face hit it, and deep within her she felt the elemental rage of the Fury.

She tried to thrust herself back up, but Alexsov had chosen his attack well. He knelt beside her, and she couldn't even feel his hands as he removed the tiny dart and rolled her, not ungently, onto her back.

"I apologize for the necessity, Captain Mainwaring," he murmured, "but it's only a temporary nerve block." He snapped his fingers, and one of his henchmen handed him a hypospray. "And this," he went on soothingly, pressing the hypo to her arm, "is a perfectly harmless truth drug."

Horrified understanding filled Alicia as the hypo nestled home.

Tisiphone! she screamed.

I am trying! Anger and fear-for Alicia, not herself-snarled in the Fury's reply. Their cursed block has cut off your main processor, but-

The hypo hissed, and Tisiphone cursed horribly as the drug flooded into Alicia's system … and her augmentation sensed it.

She gasped and jerked, and Alexsov leapt back in consternation. Even that small movement should have been impossible, and his brow furrowed in lightning speculation as she quivered on the carpet. Escape protocols blossomed within her, fighting the nerve block, trying to get her on her feet, but they couldn't, and panic wailed in her mind as the idiot savant of her processor considered its internal programs. Escape was impossible, it decided, and truth drugs had been administered.

Ben Belkassem eased through the ornamental shrubbery to the glowing windows. Their translucent green curtains let light escape yet were too thick to see through, but he'd expected that. He checked for security sensors and placed a tiny, sensitive microphone against the glass.

"… happening?!" Naked panic quivered in Oscar Quintana's voice. "You said she was just supposed to be paralyzed, damn it!"

"I don't know what it is." That lower, calmer voice belonged to the man named Alexsov, Ben Belkassem thought-then stiffened as understanding caught up with his racing mind. Paralyzed! Dear God, they must be on to her!

Alicia's eyes glazed. She was numb below the neck, but she felt the neuro-toxin in her gasping respiration, the growing sluggishness of her mind.

To come this far, she thought despairingly. To get this close-!

Glass shattered behind Oscar Quintana, and he whirled. The tinkling sound still hung in his ears as the curtains parted, and he had a vague impression of a black-clad figure that raised a hand in his direction. Then the emerald green beam struck just above his left eye and he died.

Ben Belkassem hit the carpet rolling and cursing his own stupidity. He should have pulled out, goddamn it! What DeVries had already accomplished was more important than either of their lives-far too important for him to throw away playing holovid hero! But his body had reacted before his brain, and he skittered frantically across the floor towards a solid, ornate desk while answering disrupter beams flashed about him.

Somehow he made it into cover, and his shoulder heaved. The desk crashed over, blocking the deadly beams, and his machine-pistol popped into his free hand.

Someone else had a slug-thrower, and he winced as penetrators chewed into the desktop. Its wood couldn't stop that kind of fire, and he ducked to his left, exposing himself just long enough to find the firer. His disrupter whined, and the fire stopped, but he felt no exultation. He'd seen DeVries in that moment-seen the way her body quivered weakly-and his mind flashed back to Tannis Cateau's briefings.

She was dying, and he swore viciously as he rose on his knees to nail a second gunman with his CHK. The thunder of weapons shook the room, Quintana's guards had to be on their way, more penetrators chewed at the desk, and then someone killed the lights and the chaos became total.

Tisiphone battered at the block with all her might, then made herself stop. She had to get into Alicia's main processor to reach her pharmacope, but the drug Alexsov had used blocked voluntary nervous impulses and sealed the processor's input tantalizingly beyond her reach. She couldn't reach it, yet she had to. She had to!

And then it came to her. The block couldn't cut off its victim's involuntary muscles without killing her, and the processor's output reached all of Alicia's functions! And that meant -

Ben Belkassem cried out and dropped his pistol as a tungsten penetrator slammed through his upper arm, yet he scarcely felt it. Any minute someone else would come in through those windows behind him and he'd be as dead as Alicia DeVries. Someone with more guts than sense rushed him. The flash of his disrupter lit the darkness with emerald lightning, seventy kilos of dead meat slammed to the carpet, and white-hot muzzle flashes stabbed at him as his own shot drew the fire of another machine-pistol. He wasn't afraid as the penetrators screamed past-there was no time for fear-yet under the wild adrenalin rush was the bitter knowledge of how completely he had failed.

But then the man behind the machine-pistol screamed. It was a horrible, gurgling sound … and Ben Belkassem knew he hadn't caused it.

There was an instant of shocked silence, and then someone else was firing. Someone who fired in short, deadly bursts, as if the darkness were light, and the whining disrupters were no longer firing at him. He shoved himself up on his knees and gawked in disbelief.

He had no idea why Alicia DeVries wasn't dead or how she'd reached the man whose weapon she was firing, and it didn't matter. The rock-steady pistol picked off guards with machinelike precision. She was a ghost, appearing in glaring muzzle flashes only to vanish back into the darkness like death's own ballerina, and the screams and shrieks of the dying were her orchestra.

But then her magazine was empty, and there were still three enemies left. Ben Belkassem hunted for them desperately, lacing the smoke-heavy blackness with disrupter fire in a frantic effort to cover her, then groaned in despair as an emerald shaft struck her squarely between the shoulders.

DeVries grunted, but she didn't go down, and his own disrupter fell to his side in shock.

She was dead. She had to be dead this time! But she spun toward the man who'd shot her even as two more disrupters hit her. A vicious kick snapped his neck, and the two remaining guards screamed in terrified disbelief as she charged them. One of them rained green bolts upon her as she closed, but the other tried to run. It made no difference; the fleeing guard got as far as opening the door, spilling light into the death-filled gloom, and then he died, as well.

She spun again, whirling to face Ben Belkassem, and he dropped his weapon and raised his good hand with frantic haste.

"Stop! I'm on your side!"

She slid to a halt, jacket charred from disrupter hits, and frozen eyes regarded him from a face of inhuman calm.

"Ben Belkassem! I'm Ferhat Ben Belkassem!" he said desperately, and saw recognition in those icy eyes. "I-"

"Later." Her voice was as inhumanly calm as her expression. "Get over there and cover the door."

Ben Belkassem scrabbled up his weapons and raced to the door before his dazed mind even considered arguing, and only then did he truly realize how quick and brutal the fight had been. He fed a fresh clip into his pistol, clumsy with only one working arm, and when he looked out into the corridor the first of Quintana's retainers were only now racing towards him. He dropped the three leaders, then glanced over his shoulder as the survivors fell back.

DeVries knelt beside Alexsov, ignoring the blood soaking his tunic and pooling about her knees. She pressed her hands to his temples, leaning over him, her face almost touching his as blood bubbled on his lips, and Ben Belkassem shuddered and turned back to his front. He didn't know what she was doing. What was more, he didn't think he wanted to know.

More guards came at him. These had found time to scramble into unpowered armor, and the loads in his CHK were too light to get through it at anything above point-blank range. He dropped it and shifted to his disrupter, praying the charge held out. Five more men went down, and then the survivors withdrew to regroup.

Something thundered behind him, and he swore feelingly. DeVries was by the windows, firing someone else's weapon out into the grounds. They were pinned; no matter how many they killed, the others would get them in the end. But he'd seen the way DeVries moved. If either of them could make it … .

"I'll cover you!" he shouted, starting towards the window

"Watch your front," she said calmly, never even turning her head. "These bastards have a surprise coming."

There was no time to ask what she was talking about. A fresh rush was coming down the corridor, and a buzz from his disrupter warned of an exhausted charge as he beat it back. Her "surprise" had better come soon, or -

Something howled in the dark. Something huge and black, borne on a cyclone of turbines, wing edges and nose incandescent from reentry. Chateau Defiant heaved as rockets and plasma cannon shattered its other wings, and Ben Belkassem rolled across the floor, coughing on smoke and powdered stone.

A steely hand grabbed his collar, dragged him out the windows, and hurled him at the grounded assault shuttle. He charged its ramp like his last hope of salvation, DeVries on his heels, and heard incoming fire spanging off the armored hull and the whine of powered turrets and the end-of-the-world bellow as the shuttle's calliopes covered their retreat. He staggered through the troop bay to the flight deck and slumped against a bulkhead, suddenly aware of the pain in his arm and the weakness of blood loss, as the shuttle leapt back into the heavens.

DeVries shouldered past him to the pilot's couch, and he slid down to sit on the deck in fresh shock that owed little to blood loss as he realized that seat had been empty when the shuttle swept down to save them.

He sat there, searching for a rational explanation, but none occurred to his muzzy brain. Disrupter fire had charred her jacket in half a dozen places, yet she was alive. That was insane enough, but where was her crew? And what in God's name had she been doing with Alexsov back there?

"What-?"

He stopped and coughed, surprised by the croak of his own voice, and she spared him a glance.

"Hang on," she said in that same calm voice, and he clutched for a handhold as something fast and lethal sizzled past and she whipped the shuttle into wild evasive action-without, he noted numbly, even bothering to don the flight control synth headset.

And then she started talking to herself.

"Okay. Dial 'em in and take them out," she told the empty air.

He clawed his way forward and tumbled into the copilot's seat just as something carved a screaming column of light through the night. He gaped out the cockpit canopy, then jerked back as terrible white fire erupted far below. Another followed, and a third, and DeVries spared him a wolf's smile. She flipped on the com-he hadn't even realized it was turned off-and an angry male voice filled the flight deck.

"… say again! Cease fire on our shuttle, or we will destroy your spaceport! This is First Officer Jeff Okahara of the starship Star Runner, and this is your final warning!"

"Way to go, Megaira," his pilot murmured, and Ben Belkassem closed his eyes. It had been such an orderly universe this morning, he thought almost calmly.

"Star Runner, you are ordered to return your shuttle and its occupants to the port immediately to answer for their unprovoked attack on Lieutenant Commander Defiant's estate!" another voice roared over the com.

"Bugger off!" Okahara snarled back. "Your precious lieutenant commander just got what he fucking well had coming!"

"What?! What do you mean-"

"I mean you'd better notify his heirs! And anybody else who tries to murder our captain is going to get the same!"

"Listen, you-"

The furious voice chopped off. Ben Belkassem heard another voice, quick and urgent, muttering words that included "HVW" and "battle screen," and looked across at Alicia again.

"Quite a freighter you have there, Captain Mainwaring," he murmured.

"Isn't it?" The turbines died as the shuttle streaked beyond air-breathing altitude and the thrusters took over. "Strap in. We don't have time to decelerate, so Megaira's going to snag us with a tractor as we go by."

"Megaira? Who's Megaira?"

"A friend of mine," she replied with a strange little smile.

Commander Barr couldn't believe any of it. One minute everything was calm, the next a shuttle from an unarmed freighter screamed planetward at insane velocity and reduced Chateau Defiant (and, presumably, Captain Alexsov) to flaming rubble. And when Groundside tried to down the shuttle, that same unarmed freighter blew the engaging weapon stations into next week with HVW!

Barr had no better idea of what was happening than anyone else, but his drive was working hard, because he knew Harpy didn't even want to think about engaging that "freighter." God only knew what it might produce next, and he intended to be several light-seconds away before it got around to it.

Now he stared into his aft display, wondering who was aboard that shuttle. He could still nail it short of the freighter-which was putting out battle screen now, for God's sake!-which might be a good idea. Except that Captain Alexsov might be aboard it. And, Barr admitted, except that firing on it seemed to be a good way to convince the freighter to respond in kind.

Then he no longer had the option. The shuttle slashed towards the freighter at far too high an approach speed, only to stop with bone-breaking suddenness as a tractor yanked it inside the screen. Barr winced. He'd been through exactly the same maneuver in training exercises, but his sympathy was limited, for the freighter was already swinging to pursue him.

A groggy Ben Belkassem swam back to awareness draped across Alicia DeVries' back in a fireman's carry. It was an undignified position, but he was in no condition to argue, and a part of him apologized for every doubt he'd ever entertained over Sir Arthur Keita's descriptions of drop commandos.

She dumped him gently on the floor of the ship's elevator and crouched beside him, ripping his blood-soaked sleeve apart.

"Nice and clean," she told him. "Got some nasty tissue damage, but it missed the bone." He hissed as she strapped a pressure bandage tight. "We'll take care of that in a minute. Right now we've got other worries."

"Like what?" he gasped.

"Like eight Wyvern Navy cruisers and a Fleet tin can we have to kill."

"Kill a Fleet destroyer?!"

"The one Alexsov came from, HMS Harpy. Her transponder's buggered to ID her as Medusa, but-"

The lift door opened, and she seemed to teleport through it. Ben Belkassem followed more slowly onto what he realized must be the bridge and peered about him.

"Where is everybody?"

"You're looking at everybody. Megaira, give him a display."

He jumped as a holo display sprang to life, hanging in midair and livid with the red-ringed blue dots of hostile Fasset drives. Eight came from the direction of Wyvern, already shrinking astern; a ninth glowed dead ahead.

Commander Barr swallowed bile. Harpy was putting everything she had into her drive … and the cursed freighter was gaining. It was running away from the Wyverian cruisers with absurd ease, shrugging aside everything they and the planetary defenses could throw without even bothering to reply. Clearly it had other concerns.

"Stand by! The instant they flip to engage us, I want-"

"And now …" Alicia murmured beside Ben Belkassem.

Commander Barr and the entire company of HMS Harpy died before they even realized their pursuer had already flipped.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Delicious smells filled the small galley, and Ferhat Ben Belkassem sat at the table. He wore a highly atypical air of bemusement and sprawled in his chair without his usual neatness, but then he'd earned a little down time-and hadn't expected to live to enjoy it.

He felt a bit like the ancient Alice as he watched Captain DeVries stir tomato-rich sauce with a neurosurgeon's concentration. Her dyed hair was coiled in a thick braid, and she looked absurdly young. It was hard to credit his own memory of icy eyes and lightning muzzle flashes as she sampled the sauce and reached for more basil. The lid rose from a pot beside her, hovering in midair on an invisible tractor beam, and linguine drifted from a storage bin to settle neatly in the boiling water.

"And what do you think you're doing? I told you I'd put that in when I was ready," she said, and this time he barely twitched. He was starting to adjust to her one-sided conversations with the ship's AI-even if they were yet another of the "impossible" things she did so casually.

Ben Belkassem had boned up on the alpha-synths after DeVries stole this ship. Too much was classified for him to learn as much as he would have liked, but he'd learned enough to know her augmentation didn't include the normal alpha-synth com link. Without it, the AI should have been forced to communicate back by voice, not some sort of … of telepathy!

Yet he was beyond surprise where DeVries was concerned. After all, she'd survived multiple disrupter hits with no more than a few minor burns, killed eleven men saving his own highly-trained self, taken out a few ground-to-space weapon emplacements, escaped through the heart of Wyvern's very respectable fortifications, and polished off a destroyer as an encore. As far as he was concerned, she could do anything she damned well liked.

She murmured something else to the empty air, too softly this time for him to hear, and he sat very still as plates and silverware swooped from cupboard to table like strange birds. Yes, he thought, very like Alice, though a bit more of this and he could qualify as the March Hare. Or perhaps DeVries already had that role and he'd be forced to settle for the Mad Hatter.

He smiled at the thought, and she spared him a smile of her own as she set the sauce on the table and produced a bottle of wine. He raised an eyebrow at the Defiant Vineyards label, and she sighed as she filled their glasses.

"He really was an outstanding vintner. Too bad he couldn't have stopped there."

"Um, you are speaking to me, this time, Captain?"

"You might as well call me Alicia," she said by way of answer, dropping into the chair opposite him as the pot of pasta moved to the sink, drained itself, and drifted to the table.

"Dinner is served," she murmured. "Help yourself, Inspector."

"Fair's fair. If you're Alicia, I'm Ferhat."

She nodded agreement and heaped linguine on her plate, then reached for the sauce ladle while Ben Belkassem eyed the huge serving of pasta.

"Are you sure your stomach's up to this?" he asked, remembering the tearing violent nausea which had wracked her less than two hours before.

"Well," she ladled sauce with a generous hand and grinned at him, "it's not like there's anything down there to get in its way."

"I see." It was untrue, but if she cared to enlighten him she would. He served his own plate one-handedly, sipped his wine, and regarded her quizzically. "I don't believe I've gotten around to thanking you yet. That was about the most efficiently I've ever been rescued by my intended rescuee."

She shrugged a bit uncomfortably. "Without you I'd've been dead, too. Just how long have you been tailing me, anyway?"

"Only since Dewent, and I had a hard time believing it when I first spotted you. You know about the reward?" She nodded, and he chuckled. "Somehow I don't think anyone's going to collect it. How the devil did you get so deep so quickly? It took O Branch seven months to get as far as Jacoby, and we still hadn't fingered Fuchien."

She looked at him oddly, then shrugged again.

"Tisiphone helped. And Megaira, of course."

"Oh. Ah, may I take it Megaira is your AI?"

"What else should I call her?" she asked with a smile.

"From what I've read about alpha-synth symbioses," he said carefully, "the AI usually winds up with the same name as the human partner."

"Must get pretty confusing," another voice said, and Ben Belkassem jumped. His head whipped around, and the new voice chuckled as his eye found the intercom speaker. "Since you're talking about me, I thought I might as well speak up, Inspector. Or do I get to call you Ferhat, too?"

He spoke firmly to his pulse. He'd known the AI was there, but that didn't diminish his astonishment. He'd worked with more than his share of cyber-synth AIs, and they were at least as alien as one might have expected. They simply didn't have a human perspective, and most were totally disinterested in anyone other than their cyber-synth partners. When they did speak, they sounded quite inhuman, and none of them had been issued a sense of humor.

But this one was an alpha-synth AI, he reminded himself, and its voice, not unreasonably, sounded remarkably like Alicia's.

" 'Ferhat' will be fine, um, Megaira," he said after a moment.

"Fine. But if you call me 'Maggie' I'll reverse flow in the head the next time you sit down."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he said a bit faintly.

"Alley did … once."

"A base lie," Alicia put in around a mouthful of food. "She makes things up all the time. Sometimes-" she held Ben Belkassem's eyes across the table "-you might almost think she's shy a brick or two."

"Point taken," the inspector said, beginning to wind linguine around his fork. "But you were saying she and … Tisiphone helped you?"

"Well," Alicia waved at the bulkheads, "you certainly saw how Megaira-by the way, that's 'Star Runner's' real name, too-got us off Wyvern."

"So she did, and most efficiently, too."

"Why, thank you, kind Sir," the speaker said. "I see he's a perceptive man, Alley."

"And your modesty underwhelms us all," Alicia returned dryly.

"Oh, yeah? Just remember, I got it from you."

Ben Belkassem choked on pasta. Definitely not your typical AI. But his humor faded as Alicia replied to Megaira.

"I'll remember. And you just remember I'd still've been dead if not for Tisiphone." She looked back at Ben Belkassem. "She was the one who jump-started my augmentation after that bastard knocked it out."

"Really?"

"Don't sound so dubious." He felt himself blush-something he hadn't done in years-and she snorted. "Of course she did. Who do you think put me back on line after Tannis and Uncle Arthur shut me down? I don't exactly have an on-off switch in the middle of my forehead!"

He took another bite to avoid answering, and her eyes glinted.

"Of course, that's not all she does," she continued, leaning across her plate with a conspiratorial air. "She reads minds, too. That's how I know just who to look for as my next target. And she creates a pretty mean illusion, as well-not to mention sticking the occasional idea into someone else's brain." He gawked at her, and she smiled brightly. "Oh, and she and Megaira do a dynamite job of raiding other people's data bases … or planting data in them, like 'Star Runner's' Melville Sector documentation."

She paused expectantly, and he swallowed. It was too much. Logic said she had to be telling the truth, but sanity said it was all impossible, and he was trapped between them.

"Well, yes," he said weakly, "but-"

"Oh, come on, Ferhat!" she snapped, glaring as if at a none too bright student who'd muffed a pop quiz. "You just talked to Megaira, right?" He nodded. "Well, if you don't have a problem accepting an intelligence-a person-who lives in that computer," she jabbed an index finger in the general direction of Megaira's bridge, "what's the big deal about accepting one who lives in this computer-" the same finger thumped her temple "-with me?"

"Put that way," he said slowly, easing his left arm in its sling, "I don't suppose there should be one. But you have to admit it's a bit hard to accept that a mythological creature's moved in with you."

"I don't have to admit anything of the sort, and I'm getting sick and tired of making allowances for everyone else. Damn it, everybody just assumes I'm crazy! Not a one of you, not even Tannis, ever even considered the possibility that Tisiphone might just really exist!"

"That's not quite true," he said, and it was her turn to pause. She made a small gesture, inviting him to continue.

"Actually," he told her, "Sir Arthur never questioned that she was 'real' in the sense of someone-or something-in your own mind." He raised a hand as her eyes fired up. "I know that's not what you meant, but he'd gotten as far as worrying that something had activated some sort of psi talent in you and produced a 'Tisiphone persona,' I suppose you'd call it, and I think he may have gone a bit further, whether he knew it or not. That's the real reason he was so worried about you. For you."

The green fire softened, and he shrugged.

"As for myself, I don't pretend to know what's inside your mind. You might remember that conversation we had just before Soissons. I can accept that another entity, not just a delusion, has moved in with you. I just … have trouble with the idea of a Greek demigoddess or demon." He smiled a touch sheepishly. "I'm afraid it violates my own preconceptions."

"Your preconceptions! What do you think it did to mine?"

"I hate to think," he admitted. "But even those who accept something exists can be excused for worrying about whether or not it's benign, I think."

"That depends on how you define 'benign,' " Alicia replied slowly. "She's not what you'd call a forgiving sort, and we have … a bargain."

"To nail the pirates," Ben Belkassem said in a soft voice, and she nodded. "At what price, Alicia?"

"At any price." Her eyes looked straight through him, and her voice was flat-its very lack of emphasis more terrible than any trick of elocution. He shivered, and her eyes dropped back into focus. "At any price," she repeated, "but don't call them 'pirates.' That isn't what they are at all."

"If not pirates, what are they?"

"Most of them are Imperial Fleet personnel."

"What?" Ben Belkassem blurted, and her mouth twisted sourly.

"Wondering if I'm crazy again, Ferhat?" she asked bitterly. "I'm not. I don't know who hit Alexsov-it may even have been me, though I was trying to keep him alive-but he was pretty far gone by the time we got to him. But not so far that we didn't get a lot. Gregor Borissovich Alexsov, Captain, Imperial Fleet, Class of '32, last assignment: chief of staff to Commodore James Howell." Her mouth twisted again. "He still holds-held-that position, Inspector, because Commodore Howell is your pirates' field commander, and both of them are working directly for Vice Admiral Sir Amos Brinkman."

He stared at her, mind refusing to function. He'd known there had to be someone on the inside-someone high up-but never this! Yet somehow he couldn't doubt it, and the belief in his eyes eased her bitter expression.

"We didn't get everything, but we got a lot. Brinkman's in it up to his neck, but I think he's more their CNO, not the real boss. Alexsov knew who-or what group of whos-is really calling the shots, only he died before we got it. We still don't know their ultimate objective, either, but their immediate goal is to get as much as possible of the Imperial Fleet assigned to chasing them down."

"Wait a minute," Ben Belkassem muttered, clutching at his hair with his good hand. "Just wait a minute! I'll accept that you-or Tisiphone, or whoever-can read minds, but why in God's name would they want that? It's suicide!"

"No, it isn't." Alicia's own frustration showed in her voice, and she set aside her fork, laying her hand on the tablecloth and staring at her palm as if it somehow held the answer. "That's only their immediate goal, a single step towards whatever it is they ultimately intend to accomplish, and Alexsov was delighted with how well it's going."

Her hand clenched into a fist, and her eyes blazed.

"But whatever they're up to, Tisiphone and I can finally hit the bastards!" she said fiercely. "We know what they've got, we know where to find it, and we're going to rip the guts right out of them!"

"Wait-slow down!" Ben Belkassem begged. "What do you mean, you 'know what they've got'?"

"The 'pirate' fleet," Alicia said precisely, "consists of nine Fleet transports, seventeen Fleet destroyers, not counting the one we destroyed, six Fleet light cruisers, nine Fleet heavy cruisers, five Fleet battlecruisers, and one Capella-class dreadnought."

Ben Belkassem's jaw dropped. That was at least twice his own worst-case estimate, and how in hell had they gotten their hands on one of the Fleet's most modern dreadnoughts?

Alicia smiled-as if she could read his mind, he thought, and shuddered at the possibility that she was doing precisely that.

"Admiral Brinkman," she explained, "is only one of the senior officers involved. According to the record, most of their ships were stripped and sent to the breakers, but that was only a cover. In fact, they simply disappeared-with all systems and data bases intact. As for the dreadnought, she's the Procyon. If you check the ship list, you'll find her in the Sigma Draconis Reserve Fleet, but if anyone checks her berth-"

She shrugged.

"Dear God!" Ben Belkassem whispered, then shook himself. "You said you know where they are?"

"At this particular moment, they are either at or en route to AR-12359 /J, an M4 just outside the Franconia Sector. Alexsov was supposed to rendezvous with them after completing his business on Wyvern, and unless Alexsov was wrong, Admiral Brinkman-" the rank was a curse in her mouth "-will be sending them new targeting orders there within the next three weeks. Only they won't be able to carry them out."

Her cold, shark-like smile chilled his blood.

"Alicia, you can't take on that kind of opposition by yourself-not even with an alpha-synth! They'll kill you!"

"Not before we kill Procyon," she said softly, and he swallowed. Fury or no Fury, there was madness in her eyes now. She meant it. She was going to launch a suicide attack straight into them unless he could dissuade her, and his mind worked desperately.

"That's … not the best strategy," he said, and her lip curled.

"Oh? It's more than the entire sector government's managed! And just who else do you suggest I send? Shall we report to Admiral Brinkman? Or, since we know he's dirty, perhaps we should take a chance on Admiral Gomez. Of course, there's the little problem that I don't have a single scrap of proof, isn't there? What do you suppose they'll do if a crazy woman tells them 'voices' insist the second in command of the Franconia Naval District is actually running the pirates? Voices that got the information from someone who's conveniently dead? Assuming, that is, that they forget their shoot on sight order long enough for me to tell them!

"Those bastards murdered every single person I loved, and Governor Treadwell, the entire Imperial Fleet, and even Uncle Arthur can go straight to Hell before I let them get away now!"

Her eyes glared at the inspector, and he shuddered. The amusement of only minutes before had vanished into a raw, ugly hatred totally unlike the woman he remembered from Soissons. And, he thought, unlike the woman he'd observed on Dewent and Wyvern. It was as if learning who her enemies were had snapped something down inside her … .

"All right, granted we can't inform Soissons. Hell, with Brinkman dirty, there's no telling how far up-or down-the rot's spread." He was too caught up in his thoughts to notice he was taking Brinkman's guilt as a given. "But if you go busting in there, the only person who knows the truth-whether anyone else is ready to believe you or not-is going to get killed. You may hurt them, but what if you don't hurt them enough? What if they regroup?"

"Then they're your problem," she said flatly. "I'm dropping you at Mirbile. You can follow up without explaining where you got your lead."

She was right, he thought, but if he admitted it she'd go right ahead and get herself killed.

"Look, assume you get Procyon. I'm not as sure you can do it as you are, but let's accept that you kill Howell and his staff. You'll also be killing the only confirmation of what you've just told me! I may be able to get Brinkman and his underlings, but how do I get whoever's behind him?" He saw the fire in her eyes waver and pressed his advantage. "They may be tapped in at a level even higher than Brinkman-maybe even at court back on Old Earth-and if it starts unraveling out here, you can bet Brinkman will suffer a fatal accident before we pick him up. That breaks the chain. If you hit them by yourself, you may guarantee the real masterminds get away!"

He makes a point, Little One, Tisiphone murmured. I swore we would reach the ones responsible for your planet's murder. If we settle for those whose hands actually did the deed, you may die and leave me forsworn.

"I don't care if he's right!" Alicia snarled. "We've finally got a clear shot at the bastards! I say we take it!"

Ben Belkassem thrust himself back in his chair, eyes huge as he realized who she was arguing with, and made himself sit silently.

Yet what if he speaks the truth? Would you settle for underlings, leaving those who set this obscenity in motion untouched? Knowing they may plot anew, murder other families as they did those whom you loved?

Alicia closed her eyes, biting her lip until she tasted blood, and the Fury's voice was almost gentle in her brain.

You sound more like myself than I do, Little One, but I have learned from you, as well. We must strike the head from this monster if we seek true vengeance … and if we would not have it rise again.

"But-"

She's right, Alley, Megaira broke in. Please. You know I'll back you, whatever you decide, but listen to her. Listen to Ferhat.

Tears burned the corners of her eyes, tears of pain and hate not even Tisiphone could fully mute, of frustration and need. She wanted to attack, needed to attack, and she had a target at last.

So what would you do? she demanded bitterly.

Lend me your voice, Little One, the Fury said unexpectedly, and Alicia's eyes opened in surprise as she heard her own voice speak.

"Alicia wishes to strike now, Ferhat Ben Belkassem." The inspector stiffened and sweat popped on his forehead at the strange timber of Alicia's voice. "She believes, and rightly, that we must strike our foes now, while we know where we may find them. Yet you counsel otherwise. Why?"

Ben Belkassem licked his lips. He'd told Alicia the truth; he couldn't quite accept that she'd been possessed by a creature from mythology, but he knew it wasn't Alicia speaking. Whoever-whatever-had entered her life, he was face to face with it at last, unable even to pretend it didn't exist, and terror chipped away at his veneer of sophistication, revealing the primitive behind it to his own inner eye.

"Because-because it isn't enough … Tisiphone," he made himself say. "At the very least, we need outside confirmation of the ships they have from witnesses no one can sweep under the rug because they're 'crazy.' That would lend at least partial credence to the rest of what Alicia-to what the two of you have just told me. And we have to hurt them worse than you can, destroy more of their ships and shatter the raiding force so badly they'll need months to reorganize while we go to work from the other end."

"Well and good, Ferhat Ben Belkassem," that dispassionate, infinitely cold ghost of Alicia's contralto replied. "Yet we have but our good Megaira. You yourself have said we dare not seek aid from the Franconia Sector, and no other can reach hither before our enemies depart their present rendezvous."

"I know." He drew a deep breath and stared into Alicia's eyes, seeing her own will and mind within them, behind that other's words. "But what if I could tell you where to find a naval force that could go toe to toe with the 'pirates'? One that doesn't have a thing to do with the Fleet? And one that's right here, already in the sector?"

"There is such a force?" the icy voice sharpened, and Alicia's eyes widened as he nodded.

"There is. You were going to drop me off at Mirabile-why not take me to Ringbolt, instead?"

Chapter Sixty

The battleship Audacious hung in geosynchronous orbit above the heat-glass scar of Raphael, and Simon Monkoto paced her bridge. His eyes no longer burned with hate; they were as hard as his face, filled with a bitter determination cold enough to freeze the marrow of a star.

He knew his people were growing restive as they waited for him to find a way to take the offensive, but none of them had complained. Professional warriors all, they accepted that warriors often died, yet they also knew this wasn't just about Arlen. It was about the civilians who had died with Arlen, as well. About the murder of a city and the radioactive filth the warhead had blasted into Ringbolt's atmosphere. Mercenaries tended to be loyal first and foremost to their own, but they understood justice … and vengeance. That was why the other outfits had responded in such strength.

He paused by the master plot, studying the light codes. Meaningless to the untrained eye, they told Monkoto everything at a glance.

The Ringbolt System was alive with ships. Most were small-cruisers or lighter-but they included a solid core of heavy hitters. The Falcons, Westfeldt's Wolves, Captain Tarbaneau and her Assassins… . He couldn't have picked a more battle-hardened group, yet they, like his own Maniacs, expected the great Simon Monkoto to Do Something. They owed him, and they wanted the people who'd done this thing, but there was a limit to how long they could sit here losing money. Unless the El Grecan government agreed to put them on the payroll, they'd have to start pulling out soon, and -

A soft buzz drew his eyes to the gravitic plot. He stepped closer, then stiffened as the preposterous nature of the incoming Fasset signature penetrated. Whatever it was, it was moving faster than a destroyer, yet its drive mass was greater than a battleship's!

More buzzers began to sound as other eyes and brains made the same observation. Additional sensors sprang alive, battle boards blinked green and amber eyes that turned quickly to red, and Simon Monkoto smiled.

That was an Imperial Fleet drive, but the ships that murdered Raphael had been Empire-built, as well.

"You don't think you could've come in just a bit more discreetly?" Ben Belkassem asked politely from the chair Alicia had installed beside her own on Megaira's bridge. "They're probably in hair-trigger mode, you know."

"We don't have time to be inconspicuous," Alicia said absently. She wore her headset this time, and readiness signals purred to her from her weapon systems. She didn't want to use them, but if she had to … .

"Howell won't stay at the rendezvous more than another three weeks," she continued, "and it's a two-week trip from here even if we could make it a straight shot-which we can't. We have to come in on a Wyvern-based vector, or they'll know we're not Alexsov the instant they pick us up. That gives us less than two days' leeway, and I'm not going to lose them now."

"But-"

"Either your friend Monkoto helps us, or he doesn't," she said flatly. "Either way, I'm going to be at AR-12359/J within the next nineteen standard days." She looked at him, and that same, strange hunger flickered in her eyes. "Tisiphone, Megaira, and I aren't going to miss our shot. Not now."

He closed his mouth. Ferhat Ben Belkassem didn't frighten easily, yet there were times Alicia DeVries terrified him. Not because she threatened him, but because of the determination that burned in her like fiery ice. People had called her mad, and he'd disagreed; now he was no longer certain. She wouldn't stop-couldn't stop-and he wondered how much of that sprang from Tisiphone, whatever Tisiphone truly was, and how much from herself.

Audacious rendezvoused with the other capital ships of the mercenary fleet barely half a million kilometers out from Ringbolt, for it was obvious the bogey was far faster and more maneuverable than they were. So far it had shown no sign of hostility, but Monkoto spread "his" ships-tight enough to concentrate their fire, dispersed enough to intercept any effort to get by them-and readiness reports murmured in his link to Audacious's cyber-synth.

He returned his attention to the bogey with a sort of awe. Whatever it was, it was pouring on an incredible deceleration. It was well inside the primary's Powell limit, but it was decelerating at over thirteen hundred gravities-which, if it kept it up, would bring it to a halt, motionless with regard to Audacious, just over five thousand kilometers short of his flagship. If its intentions were hostile, that was suicide range, and -

The light cruiser Serpent finally got close enough for a visual, and Monkoto gawked as CIC shunted it to his display. A freighter? Impossible!

But a freighter the image before him was, and a freighter it remained-a slightly battered, totally unremarkable freighter … with more drive power than a battleship.

"We're coming into com range, Ferhat. Want me to hail them?" Megaira asked eagerly through a wall speaker, and Ben Belkassem heard Alicia's soft chuckle beside him.

Megaira liked the inspector, and Ben Belkassem was bemused by how much he liked her in return-and how much he enjoyed her bawdy, wicked sense of humor. She'd even built herself a "Megaira face," a svelte, stunning redhead, so she could flirt via com screen while her sickbay remotes worked on his arm, and he knew she simply ached to use that face (and figure) on a new audience. Whatever else happened, he would never again think of AIs in quite the same way.

"Have you identified Audacious?" he asked.

"Yup. Just as big and nasty as you said, but I could spot her half my drive nodes and still run her into the ground."

"Be nice," Alicia said, and Megaira sniffed.

"Never mind, Megaira," Ben Belkassem grinned. "Go on and call them."

"Sure thing," she said, and he twitched his uniform straight for the pickup. His own baggage remained somewhere on Wyvern, but Alicia and Megaira had outfitted him in "Star Runner's" midnight blue, and he had to admit he liked the way it made him look.

"Admiral, the bogey identifies itself as the private ship Star Runner," Monkoto's com officer announced. "They're asking for you by name."

Monkoto scratched his nose. Odder and odder, he thought with his first real smile since the Ringbolt Raid, but that "private ship" business had to be a fiction. Whatever that thing might look like, it was no freighter.

"Route it to my station," he said, and leaned back as a lovely young woman in dark blue and silver appeared on his screen. He eyed her high-piled, Titian hair admiringly while he waited out the transmission lag, then her own eyes sharpened and looked back at him.

"Admiral Monkoto?" she inquired in a musical contralto, and he nodded. There was another lengthy delay while his nod sped to her screen, then she said, "I have someone here who wishes to speak to you, Sir," and disappeared, replaced by a small, hook-nosed man in a sling and the same blue uniform.

"Hello, Simon," the newcomer said, not waiting for Monkoto to respond. "Sorry to drop in on you without warning, but we need to talk."

Ben Belkassem watched Alicia from the corner of his eye as they stepped out of the personnel tube onto Monkoto's flagship.

Something was happening inside her, something that was burning holes in the Alicia DeVries he'd first met, and it was getting worse. Right after leaving Wyvern, hours had passed between flashes of that something else, but the intervals were growing shorter. It wasn't Tisiphone-he was positive of that now-and that made it worse. It was as if Alicia herself were burning out before his eyes. He could almost feel her … slipping away. Yet she had herself under control just now, and that was enough. It had to be.

"It's been a long time, Ferhat," a mellow tenor said, and Simon Monkoto held out his hand in greeting.

"Not that long," Ben Belkassem disagreed, returning the mercenary's clasp with a toothy grin.

"And this must be Captain Mainwaring," Monkoto said, and Alicia smiled tightly without confirming his assumption. He didn't notice; his eyes were locked on Ben Belkassem, and his humor had vanished.

"You said you have some information for me?"

"I do-or, rather, Captain Mainwaring does."

"What-?" Monkoto began eagerly, then chopped himself off. "Forgive me. My colleagues are waiting in the main briefing room, and they should hear this along with me. If you'll join us, Captain?"

Alicia nodded and followed the tall, broad-shouldered mercenary into a lift. She watched his face as the elevator rose, seeing the pinched nostrils, the deep-etched furrow between the eyes, and she didn't need Tisiphone to feel his hunger calling to her own, sharp-edged and jagged.

The lift doors opened, and Monkoto ushered them into a briefing room.

"Captain Mainwaring, Mister Ben Belkassem, allow me to introduce my colleagues," he said, and worked his way down the table, starting with Admiral Yussuf Westfeldt, a stocky, gray-haired man. Commodore Tadeoshi Falconi was as tall as Monkoto but thin, with quick, assertive movements; Captain Esther Tarbaneau was a slender, black-skinned woman with a very still face and startlingly gentle eyes; and Commodore Matthew O'Kane was a younger version of Monkoto-not surprisingly: he'd begun his career with the Maniacs.

Between them, Alicia knew, these people controlled over seventy ships of war, including two battleships, nine battlecruisers, and seven heavy cruisers, and no regular navy could have matched their experience. They looked back at her with hooded eyes, and she wondered what they made of her.

Monkoto finished the introductions and took a seat at the center of the long table, across from her and Ben Belkassem. The outsized view screen at her back was focused on Megaira's freighter disguise, and she tried not to wipe her palms on her trousers as she faced people who fought for pay and remembered the million-credit reward the Empire had offered for her.

"I've dealt with Mister Ben Belkassem before," Monkoto informed his fellows, "and I trust him implicitly. Certain conditions of confidentiality apply, but he represents a … major galactic power."

The others nodded and regarded the inspector with renewed curiosity, wondering which branch of the imperial bureaucracy he worked for, as Monkoto gestured for him to take over.

"Thank you, Admiral Monkoto," he said, returning the searching gazes steadily, "but under the circumstances, I feel I ought to put all my cards on the table. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ferhat Ben Belkassem, and I am a senior inspector with Operations Branch of the Imperial Ministry of Justice."

Breath hissed in along Monkoto's side of the table. O Branch agents never revealed their identities unless they were up to their necks in fecal matter and sinking fast, but at least he'd guaranteed their attention.

"I realize that may be a bit of a shock," he continued calmly, "but I'm afraid there are more to come. I know why you're here-and I know where you can find the pirates." A ripple ran through his audience. "To be more precise, my associate does."

Eyes swiveled back to Alicia, hot and hungry and no longer hooded, and she made herself sit straight and still under their weight.

"How?" Monkoto demanded. "How did you find them?"

"I'm afraid I can't reveal that, Sir," Alicia replied carefully. "I have … a source I must protect, but my information is solid."

"I would certainly like to believe that, Captain Mainwaring," Esther Tarbaneau said in a soft soprano, "but you must realize how critical your credibility is, even with Inspector Ben Belkassem to vouch for you. How is it that a single merchant skipper could locate them when the Empire, El Greco, and the Jung Association have all failed?"

"Captain Mainwaring is more than she seems, Captain Tarbaneau," Ben Belkassem put in.

"Indeed?" Tarbaneau arched politely skeptical eyebrows, and Alicia sighed. She'd known all along it would come to this.

Cut the holo, Megaira.

Are you sure, Alley? the AI asked anxiously. I don't like the thought of doing that with you over there all alone.

I'm not "all alone," and we don't have a choice. Do it.

There was no response, but she didn't need one. Every eye jerked to the view screen in a single, harsh gasp, and most of the mercenaries hunched convulsively forward-O'Kane actually jerked to his feet-as the "freighter" vanished. The lean wickedness of an imperial alpha-synth could not be mistaken, even with splotches of titanium marring its immaculate hull.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Ben Belkassem said quietly, "allow me to introduce Captain Alicia DeVries, Imperial Cadre." Eyes whipped back to her, and he nodded. "I assure you, Captain DeVries's … instability has been grossly exaggerated. We've been working together for the past several weeks," he added, which was true enough, though Alicia hadn't known it at the time.

The mercenaries sank back in their chairs, eyes narrowed, and he hid a smile as he watched them leap to the conclusion he'd intended. Alicia really did have a marvelous cover-even if no one had set it up on purpose.

"So," Monkoto said forty minutes later, drumming his fingers on the conference table while he stared at a holographic star map. AR-12359/J burned a sullen crimson at its heart, and a computer screen at his elbow glowed with all the data Alicia had been able to supply on the "pirates' " strength. "We know where they are; the problem is what we do with them."

He pinched the bridge of his nose as he met his colleagues' eyes, then turned to Alicia, smiling grimly as he recognized the questions in her eyes.

"Neither you nor the Inspector are Fleet officers, Captain, but that's what we do for a living, and I'm afraid this-" he gestured at the star map "-is a classic nasty fleet problem."

"Why?" Impatience burned in Alicia's blood once more, yet Monkoto's obvious professionalism-and matching hunger-kept it out of her voice.

"Put most simply, they're in n-space and they'll see us coming. Ships run blind in wormhole space, but their gravitics will pick us up long before we arrive, at which point they'll simply run on an acutely divergent vector. By the time we can kill our velocity and go in pursuit, they'll be long gone."

Alicia stared at the admiral, stunned by how calmly he'd said it, then jerked around to glare at Ben Belkassem. He'd been so glib about "getting help"-had he known how hopeless it was?!

"The classic solution is a converging envelopement," Monkoto went on, "with someone coming in at high velocity on almost any possible escape vector, but that also requires an overwhelming numerical advantage. We-" he waved at his fellows "-can probably take these bastards head on, though that Capella-class'll make things tight, but not if we spread out to envelope them."

Alicia dropped her eyes to the star map, fingers curving into talons under the table edge as she glared at the crimson star.

"We could call in the Empies for more ships," O'Kane suggested.

"Somehow I don't think so," Monkoto murmured, watching Ben Belkassem's face. "If we could, you wouldn't be talking to us, would you, Ferhat?"

"No," Ben Belkassem said unhappily. "We have reason to believe there's a leak-a very, very high-level leak-from Soissons."

"Well, isn't that a fine crock of shit," Westfeldt muttered softly.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Alicia almost begged, and Monkoto leaned back in his chair and met her eyes with a cool, thoughtful gaze.

"Actually," he said, "I think there is … especially with an alpha-synth to help." He swept the others with a shark's lazy smile. "Our problem is that they can see us coming, but suppose we were the ones in normal space?"

"You've got that evil gleam in your eye, Simon," Falconi observed.

"It's very simple, Tad. We won't go to them at all; we'll invite them to come to us."

Chapter Sixty-One

The green-uniformed woman rapped on the edge of the open office door, and the massive, silver-haired man behind the deck looked up. He grunted in greeting, waved at an empty chair, and returned to his reader, and the corners of the woman's mouth quirked as she sat and leaned back to wait.

It wasn't a very long wait. The silver-haired man nodded, grunted again-a harsher, somehow ugly grunt this time-and switched off the reader.

"Took your time getting here," he rumbled, and she shrugged.

"I was running that field exercise we discussed. Besides," she pointed at the reader, "you seemed busy enough." She spoke lightly, but her eyes were worried. "Was that about Alley?"

"No. Still not a sign of her."

Sir Arthur Keita sounded oddly pleased, for the man whose iron sense of duty had started the hunt for Alicia DeVries, and he smiled wryly as Tannis Cateau inhaled in wordless relief. She couldn't very well say "Thank God!" but she could think it very loudly. Then his smile faded.

"No, this is about our other problem," he said, "and I'm afraid it's coming to a head. I'm placing Clean Sweep on two-day standby."

Tannis twitched upright, eyes wide, and Keita watched her mind race, following her thoughts with ease. She'd been kept fully briefed on his downloads from Colonel McIlheny, and she knew something McIlheny didn't-that his reports to Sir Arthur had been quietly received on Old Earth, re-encrypted, and starcommed back across the light-years to Alexandria, just over the Macedon Sector border from the Franconia Sector. And they had been sent there because that was as far as Sir Arthur Keita had gone when he took his leave of Soissons.

The brigadier rocked gently in his chair, reexamining every tortuous step which had brought them to Clean Sweep. It would be ugly even if it went perfectly, but McIlheny and Ben Belkassem had pegged it; someone far up the chain of command had to be working with the pirates, and that made very officer in the Franconia Sector suspect. No doubt most were loyal servants of Crown and Empire, but there was no way to tell which of them weren't, which was why Keita hadn't gone home-and why an entire battalion of drop commandos had been gathered in bits and pieces from the most distant stations Keita could think of to the remotest training camp on Alexandria.

Countess Miller had wanted to send Keita a full colonel to command them, but he'd refused. The Cadre had so few officers that senior, he'd argued, that the sudden disappearance of any of them was too likely to be noticed. Which was true enough, though hardly the full story.

Major Tannis Cateau's fierce resolve to protect Alicia Devries was the rest of it. No one else would be allowed to serve as Alicia's physician if she could be brought in alive … and, Sir Arthur knew, Tannis hoped-prayed-she'd be there when Alicia was found. If anyone could talk her into surrendering, that anyone was Tannis Cateau.

Keita understood that, and he owed her the chance, threadbare though they both knew it was, almost as much as he owed Alicia herself. But that wasn't something he cared to explain to Countess Miller, and so he'd kept Tannis here by pointing out that a battalion was a major's command and insisting that Major Cateau, already on the spot, was the logical person to command this one. The Fleet or Marines might have questioned one of their medical officers' competence in such matters; the Cadre did not.

"Have you told Inspector Suares?" Tannis asked finally, and he nodded.

"He agrees that we have no choice. His marshals will begin arriving at Base Two this afternoon."

"But they won't have time for live-fire exercises, will they?"

"I'm afraid not, but at least they're all experienced people. And there's not supposed to be any shooting, anyway."

Tannis snorted, and Keita was hard put not to join her.

Ninety of Inspector Suares' three hundred imperial marshals were O Branch operatives, the others specially selected from Justice's Criminal Investigation Branch, and most were ex-military, as well, but Keita didn't quite share Old Earth's conviction that no one would offer open resistance. No emperor had ever before ordered the entire military and civilian command structure of a Crown Sector taken simultaneously into preventive custody. Seamus II had the constitutional authority to do just that, so long as no one was held for more than thirty days without formal charges, but it would engender mammoth confusion. And sufficiently well-placed traitors might well be able to convince their subordinates some sort of external treason was under way and organize enough resistance to cover their own flight.

"I wish we didn't have to do this," Tannis said into the quiet.

"I do, too, but how else can we handle it? We tried to wait till we found the guilty parties, but all our investigators seem to've hit stone walls-even Ben Belkassem hasn't reported in over a month. If we act at all, we have to take everyone into custody at once or risk missing the people we really want, and I'm afraid we're finally out of time." Keita tapped his reader. "I've just read a message from Ben McIlheny, and I wish to hell Countess Miller had let me tell him about this!"

"Why?"

"Because he didn't know anybody was getting set to act, so he decided to push things to a head on his own. He tried to run a bluff and force the bastards into overt action by reporting to a very select readership that he was about to unmask the traitor."

"He what?" Tannis jerked upright in her chair, and Keita nodded.

"Exactly. He figured they couldn't take a chance that he was really onto them … and he was right." The brigadier's face was grim. "His last data dump was accompanied by a followup to the effect that Colonel McIlheny is in critical condition following a quote 'freak skimmer accident,' unquote. Lady Rosario has him in a maximum-security ward with handpicked Wasps watching him round-the-clock, and Captain Okanami thinks he'll pull through, but he'll be hospitalized for months."

"They must be getting desperate to try something like that!"

"No question, but it's even worse than you may guess without knowing who he sent his report to." She raised an eyebrow, and Keita's smile was thin. "Governor General Treadwell, Admiral Gomez, Admiral Brinkman, Admiral Horth, and their chiefs of staff," he said, and watched her wince.

"So at least one of those eight people is either a traitor or an unwitting leak," he continued quietly, "and I doubt the latter after the microscope McIlheny's put on his information distribution. But the fact that they tried to shut him up seems to confirm his theory that they're after more than just loot. If they didn't have a long-term objective, they'd've cut their losses and disappeared rather than risk trying for him, and I doubt it was a simple panic reaction. If whoever set this up were the type to panic we'd have had him-or her-long ago. So either their timetable's so advanced they hoped to wrap things up before anyone figured out what had happened to McIlheny and why, or else-" he met Tannis's eyes "-everyone on his short list of suspects is guilty and they thought no one else would pick up on his report because no one else would ever see it."

"Surely you don't really think-" Tannis began, and he shook his head.

"No, I don't think they're all dirty. But then I wouldn't have believed any of them were. My personal theory is that they underestimated McIlheny's ability to crash land a skimmer even after two of its grav coils suddenly reversed polarity on final. They didn't expect him to live, much less leave enough wreckage for anyone to figure out just how 'freak' a freak accident it was. And, of course, we don't think they know about the way he's been keeping us informed. At the very least, they probably counted on several weeks, possibly even months, of confusion before we put it together.

"The problem is that we can't rely on that. I may be wrong, and even if I'm not, his survival and the questions his subordinates are asking about the nature of his 'accident' may force them into something precipitous. If that's the case, we need to get in there before they start wiping their records or bug out on us. We may not get them all when we come crashing in, but we may lose them all if we don't."

"I see," she said quietly, and Keita nodded again.

"I believe you do, Tannis. So get back to Base Two and get ready to welcome Suares. I want everyone aboard ship in forty-eight hours."

Sir Arthur Keita stood on the flag bridge of HMS Pavia, flagship of Admiral Mikhail Leibniz, and watched the visual display as the task force formed up about her in Alexandria orbit. Like the Cadre strike team it was to transport, its units had been drawn from far and wide-a three-ship division here, a squadron there, a single ship from yet another base. Its heaviest unit was a battlecruiser, for it had been planned for speed, yet it was a powerful force. Like Keita himself, its commanders hoped there would be no fighting; if there was any, they intended to win.

"Departure in seven hours, Sir Arthur," Admiral Leibniz said quietly, and Keita nodded without turning. He hoped Leibniz wouldn't construe that as discourtesy, but he didn't like this mission.

He sighed and concentrated on the gleaming minnows of the ships, half eager to depart into wormhole space and get this ended, half dreading what might happen when he reached his destination. And that, he knew, was why he disliked this operation so. Somewhere at the far end of his journey he would find a traitor, possibly-probably-more than one, and treason was a crime Sir Arthur Keita simply could not understand. The thought that any officer could so degrade himself and his honor made his skin crawl, and knowing that someone sworn to protect and defend had murdered millions made him physically ill.

He wanted that traitor unmasked and destroyed. There was, could be, no trace of mercy in him, but there was sorrow for the shame that traitor had brought to everything Keita himself held sacred.

"Excuse me, Sir Arthur, but you have a priority signal."

The voice broke into his reverie, and he turned to find it belonged to a youthful communications officer who extended a message chip to him.

Keita took the chip and frowned as he recognized the Cadre Intelligence coding. None of the flag bridge's readers could unscramble it, so he excused himself and made his way to Tannis Cateau's command center. The major started shooing the staff away from the com section at sight of the message chip, but he waved for her to remain when she started to follow them. She sat back down at her desk, keeping her back to him while he inserted the chip, only to look back up with a jerk as a voice spoke.

"Well, I will be goddamned," it said softly, and her head whipped around in astonishment, for it belonged to Sir Arthur Keita, and he was grinning as he met her startled gaze.

"Something new has been added," he announced. "This-" he jerked his chin at the reader screen "-is from the team we placed on Ringbolt. It would seem our missing O Branch inspector arrived there two days ago and put on some sort of Pied Piper performance."

"Pied Piper?" His eyes were positively glowing, Tannis thought.

"Our people couldn't get all the details-they're isolated from our official presence there, and the locals are playing their cards mighty close-but it seems Ben Belkassem turned up aboard a tramp freighter named Star Runner, or possibly Far Runner, for a personal meeting with Admiral Simon Monkoto."

"He did?" Tannis' eyes narrowed in speculation, and Keita nodded.

"He did. And six hours later the Monkoto Free Mercenaries, the Westfeldt Wolves, O'Kane's Free Company, the Star Assassins, and Falconi's Falcons were under way. Not some of them-all of them."

"My God," she whispered. "You don't think he-?"

"It would seem probable," Keita replied, "and please note that he appears to have gone directly to the mercenaries; not the Fleet and not the El Grecan Navy. Not to anyone who might have reported back to Soissons. He didn't tell us, either, but then he didn't know we were out here. If he's avoiding Soissons, he may have starcommed Justice HQ, but it'll take Old Earth another four days to relay to us if he did, and in the meantime … ."

He began feeding numbers into his terminal, and Tannis frowned.

"I know that tone of voice, Uncle Arthur. What are you up to?"

"Our people may not have gotten everything, but they did find out where all those mercenaries are headed and when they're supposed to get there, and unless I'm mistaken-aha!" The result of his calculations blinked before him, and his grin became savage with delight. "We can get there within forty-one hours of their ETA if we move our departure up a bit."

"But what about Clean Sweep?"

"Soissons won't go anywhere, Tannis, and-" he swivelled to face her, and she saw the hunger in his eyes, heard it in his voice "-this little detour may just tell us who, because only one thing in the universe could have sucked Simon Monkoto away from Ringbolt!"

Chapter Sixty-Two

"Well it's about damned time," Commodore Howell muttered to himself.

He glared at the gravitic plot and reminded himself-again-that he wasn't going to climb down Alexsov's throat the instant he saw him. He suspected it wasn't going to be an easy resolve to keep.

He turned his back on the plot and interlaced his fingers to crack his knuckles. Alexsov was at least twelve days late, which would have been bad enough from anyone else. From the obsessively punctual chief of staff it was maddening, and vague visions of horrible disaster had haunted the commodore, only just held at bay by his faith in Alexsov.

He drew a deep breath and summoned a wry smile, wishing-not for the first time-that "pirates" weren't cut off from the Empire's starcom network. This business of relying solely on starships and SLAM drones wore on a man. And, his eyes narrowed again, speaking of SLAM drones, just why hadn't Gregor used one to explain his delay? His eyes lit with a touch of real humor as he realized he had at least one perfectly valid reason to tear a long, bloody strip off his chief of staff … and how much he looked forward to it.

Well, unless they're stone blind they've got us on their gravitics by now, Megaira commented.

Alicia only grunted in response. She sat in her command chair, clasping her hands in her lap to keep from gnawing her fingernails. She'd smelled enough fear on Cadre strikes, but drop commandos were passengers up to the moment they made their drops. Whether or not their targets would be there when they arrived was something their chauffeurs worried about, and she'd never realized how tense the final approach must be for Fleet personnel. She was blind, unable to see out of wormhole space. She couldn't know if an ambush awaited her, or even if the enemy were there at all, but if they were, they could see her just fine.

Calmly, Little One. We will find them and perform our appointed task.

She heard Tisiphone's tension, but it was a different sort of strain. The Fury never doubted they would find those they sought; eagerness sharpened her tone, not uncertainty.

"Yeah, sure," Alicia said, and twitched in surprise at the saw-toothed anticipation quivering in her own voice.

She felt Tisiphone's answering start of surprise-and something like concern behind it-and looked down with a frown. Her clasped hands were actually trembling! Confusion flickered through her for just a moment, a vague sense of something wrong, but she brushed it aside and reached for a thought to distract her from it.

"Think they'll bite, Megaira?"

Sure they will. I admit this is a bit more complicated than being Star Runner, but I can handle it.

Alicia nodded, though "a bit more complicated" grossly understated the task her cybernetic sister faced. Pretending to be a freighter was complex yet straightforward for an alpha-synth's electronic warfare capabilities, but this time the deception was multi-layered and far more difficult. This time Megaira was pretending to be a battlecruiser pretending to be a destroyer-and failing. The "pirates" were supposed to see through the first level of deceit, but not the second … and if they pierced the first too soon, Monkoto's entire plan would come crashing down about their ears.

"Definitely a destroyer drive," Commander Rendlemann announced several hours later, and Howell allowed himself an ironic smile. Of course it was a tin can. Arriving at this godforsaken star on that heading it could only be Harpy. No one but Alexsov and Control knew where to find them, and any dispatch boat from Control would have come in on a completely dif -

"Still," Rendlemann murmured to himself, "there's something odd about it."

"What?" Howell twisted around in his chair, eyes sharpening.

"I said there's some-"

"I heard that part! What d'you mean, 'odd'?"

"Nothing I can really put a finger on, Sir," Rendlemann frowned as he concentrated on his link to Procyon's AI, "but they're decelerating a bit slowly. There's a slight frequency shift in the forward nodes, too." He rubbed his chin. "Wonder if they've had drive problems? That could explain the delay, and if they had to make shipboard repairs it might explain the frequency anomaly."

Howell reached for his own headset. Unlike Rendlemann, he couldn't link directly with the dreadnought's cyber-synth, but a frown gathered between his brows as he studied Tracking's data. Rendlemann was right. Harpy was coming in faster than she should have-in fact, her current deceleration would carry her past her rendezvous with Procyon at more than seven thousand KPS.

His frown deepened. Harpy was well inside his perimeter destroyers, little more than ninety minutes from Procyon at her present deceleration, and she hadn't said a word. She was still 17.6 light-minutes out, so transmission lag would be a pain, but why hadn't Alexsov sent even a greeting? He had to know how Howell must have worried, and … .

"Com, hail Captain Alexsov and ask him where he's been."

The message fled towards Megaira at the speed of light, and she raced to meet it. Eight hundred seconds after it was born, Megaira's receptors scooped it out of space, and Alicia swore.

"I wanted to be closer than this, damn it!" Her own displays glowed behind her eyes, and thirteen light-minutes lay between her and Procyon. She was already in the dreadnought's SLAM range … but Megaira mounted no SLAMs. She had to close another sixty-five million kilometers, fifteen more minutes at this deceleration, before her missiles could range upon her enemy-and seventy-two million before she could "break and run" on the vector to Monkoto's rendezvous.

"Can we steal enough delay, Megaira?" she demanded.

I don't think so, the AI replied unhappily. No reply will be the same as answering, unless this Howell's a lot dumber than we think, and battlecruiser three's in position to cut us off short of course change.

Better to answer, Little One. We are more like to gain time by tangling him in confusion, however briefly, than by silence.

A corner of Alicia's mind glanced at the clock. Eighty seconds since the signal came in, and Megaira was right; if she delayed much longer, her very delay would become a response … .

Something hot and primitive boiled in the recesses of her mind, something red that smoked with the hot, sweet incense of blood, and her lips thinned over her teeth.

"Oh, the hell with it! Talk to the man, Megaira."

Transmitting, the AI said simply.

James Howell's fingers drummed on the arm of his command chair, and he frowned in growing, formless uneasiness. That had to be Harpy, but Gregor was taking his own sweet time about replying.

He glanced at the chronometer and bared his teeth at his own thoughts. Barely twenty-seven minutes had passed since he sent his own signal; a reply could scarcely have arrived this soon even if Gregor had responded instantly. He knew that, but …

He bit the thought off and made himself wait. Twenty-eight minutes. The range was down to eleven light-minutes. Twenty-nine. Thirty.

"Sir," his com officer looked up with a puzzled expression, "we have a response, but it's not from Captain Alexsov."

"What?!" Howell rounded fiercely on the unfortunate officer.

"They say they have battle damage, Sir," that worthy said defensively. "We don't have visual, and their signal is very weak. I think-Here, let me route it to your station."

Howell leaned back, glaring at Harpy's blue star. Battle damage? How? From whom? What the hell was go -

His thought died as a faint voice sounded in his ear bug.

"… nal is very faint. Say again your transmission. Repeat, this is Medusa. Your signal is very weak. Say again your trans-"

Medusa?! Howell jerked upright in his chair with an oath.

"Battle stations!"

His shocked bridge crew stared at him for an instant, and then alarms began to howl throughout Procyon's eight million-tonne hull.

Howell snapped his chair around to face Commander Rendlemann across his own battle board. The ops officer's eyes were almost focused, despite his concentration on his cyber-synth-link, and questions burned in their depths.

"It's not Gregor," Howell snapped.

"But-how, Sir?"

"I don't know how!" Yet even as he spoke, Howell's mind raced. "Something must have given Gregor away to a regular Fleet unit." He slammed a fist against his console. "They took him out and reset their transponder to bluff their way in, but they can't have taken Harpy intact. If they had, they'd know the Medusa transponder codes were bogus."

"But if they didn't take her intact, how did they know to come here?"

"How the hell do I know? Unless-" Howell closed his eyes, thinking furiously, then spat another curse. "They must've picked him up leaving Wyvern, before he wormholed out of the system. Damn the luck! They got a read on his vector and extrapolated his destination."

"Extrapolated well enough to hit us dead center?"

"How the hell many other stars are there within twenty light-years?" Howell snarled. "But they can't've known what they were heading into. If they knew, they wouldn't have sent a single tin can to check it out." He glared at the blue dot again, yet a grudging respect had crept into his angry eyes. "Those gutsy bastards are decelerating straight toward us, and they're already inside sensor range. They can't see us on gravitics with our drives down, so they're hanging on as long as they can to get a full count for their SLAM drones, and if they do-"

He cut himself off and bent over his board. That destroyer was still outside its own range, and no destroyer could stand up to the SLAM salvos of a dreadnought. He glanced at his plot, at the two escorting battlecruisers tying into Procyon's tactical net as his ships rushed to battle stations. A third battlecruiser was far closer to the intruder, already wheeling to close her jaws upon her prey.

Here they come, Alley! Megaira warned, and Alicia watched the battlecruiser rounding upon her.

The initial surprise must have been total, but the battlecruiser's weapons were ready at last. Megaira's sensors read her as HMS Cannae, and Alicia felt a sensual, almost erotic shiver as her/their targeting systems reached out and locked. Unlike Procyon, Cannae was barely three light-minutes from Megaira … yet she, too, thought she faced only a destroyer, for the alpha-synth's ECM still hid both her identity and the shoals of sublight missiles deployed about her on tractors. Their maximum velocity was going to be slightly but significantly lower without the initial boost of internal launchers, but pre-spotting them more than tripled the salvos Megaira could throw.

Alicia felt them through her headset, felt them like her own teeth and claws, and hunger fuzzed her vision like some sick delirium. A part of her stood aghast, stunned by her own blood-thirst. This was wrong, it whispered, no part of Monkoto's plan, but it was only a tiny whisper. She hung on the crumbling brink of a berserker's madness … and embraced its ferocity.

"Take her!" she snapped.

The gravitic plot showed it first. Its FTL capability could see only the gravity wells of starships, SLAMs, and SLAM drones, but unlike Procyon's light-speed sensors, it gave a virtual real-time readout at such short range. Howell was watching it narrowly, waiting for the blue stars of Cannae's first SLAMs, when the battlecruiser's Fasset drive disappeared.

Megaira's missiles erupted into Cannae's face, and the battlecruiser's cyber-synth had too little time to react to the impossible density of that salvo. It did its best, but its best wasn't good enough.

Battle screen failed, Cannae vanished in a boil of light and plasma, and Alicia DeVries' eyes were emerald chunks of Hell. The orgiastic release of violence exploded within her, brighter and hotter than Cannae's pyre. It took her like a shark, snatching her under in a vortex of hate, and her madness reached out like pestilence. It flooded through her link to Megaira, engulfing the AI as it had engulfed her, and Tisiphone stiffened in horror.

This wasn't Alicia! The fine-meshed precision and deadly self-discipline had vanished into a heaving chaos of raw bloodlust. There was no reason in her, only the need to rend and destroy … and the Fury realized almost instantly from whence it sprang. She'd set a wall about Alicia's loss and hate to make that distilled rage her weapon, but this mortal was stronger than even the Fury had guessed. She would not be denied what was hers of right, and somehow she had breached that wall.

Alicia DeVries forgot Simon Monkoto's plan. Forgot the need to survive. She saw only the fleet that had murdered her world and family, and her madness locked Megaira close as they charged to meet its flagship.

James Howell went white as light-speed sensors finally showed him the details of Cannae's death. God in Heaven, what was that thing?! The one thing it wasn't was a destroyer-and whatever it was had stopped decelerating. It was accelerating straight towards him at seventeen KPS per second!

SLAMs raced to meet Megaira, and Alicia dropped the Fasset drive's side shields. The black hole's maw sucked them in, and she snarled, shuddering in the ecstasy of destruction, as she flashed past Cannae's four escorting destroyers and her/their weapons wiped them from the universe.

Procyon's engineering crew broke all records bringing her drive on-line. They completed the fifteen-minute command sequence in barely ten, and the dreadnought began to accelerate. But the intruder simply adjusted its course, charging straight for her, and James Howell swallowed terror as he realized the other's suicidal intent.

Tisiphone battered uselessly at the interface of human and machine. If she could have broken Megaira free, even for an instant, the two of them might have reached Alicia, but the AI was trapped in her mother/self's blazing insanity. Yet Tisiphone had sworn to avenge Alicia upon those who had ordered her family's murder; if she allowed Alicia to die here she would stand forsworn. She would have betrayed the mortal who had trusted her with far more than her life, and so she gathered herself.

The strength of Alicia's mind had already made a mockery of her estimates. It might even be enough to survive … this.

Alicia DeVries shrieked as a white-hot guillotine slammed down. There was no finesse; Tisiphone was a flail of brutal power smashing through the complex web that bound her to Megaira. Another part of the Fury invaded her augmentation, goading the heart and lungs shock had stilled back to life, and she writhed in her command chair, screaming her agony.

Somehow Tisiphone held the impossible balance, forcing Alicia to live even as she killed her, but then the balance slipped. She felt it going, and screamed at Megaira like the tocsin of Armageddon.

And suddenly Megaira was free. The Fury reeled as the AI slashed back in a blind, instinctive bid to protect Alicia, but only for an instant. Only long enough to realize what had happened and hurl herself into the struggle at Tisiphone's side. For one incandescent sliver of eternity Alicia's madness held them both at bay, and then it broke at last. Megaira surged through the maelstrom to gather her in gentle arms, and Tisiphone was a shield of adamant between them both and the hatred. She faced it, battered it back, and Alicia jackknifed forward in her chair, soaked in sweat and gasping for breath.

But there was no time, and she jerked back erect as the Fury triggered her pharmacope and lashed her shuddering system back from the brink of collapse. Reason returned, and she raised her head, her eyes no longer pits of madness, to discover she had committed herself to a death-ride.

James Howell stared helplessly at the display. The accelerating intruder's Fasset drive devoured his fire, and it was barely four light-minutes away, tracking Procyon's every desperate evasive maneuver. Rendlemann and the dreadnought's AI fought desperately to escape, but they simply didn't have the velocity. His ship had eighteen minutes to live, for there was no way those charging madmen would relent. They couldn't. If they broke off their suicide run now, Procyon and her consorts would tear them apart to nothing as they passed.

Horror and disgust reverberated somewhere inside Alicia, sickening her with the knowledge of what she had become, but there was no time for that. The tick flooded her system, goading her thoughts, and Megaira and Tisiphone snapped into fusion with her, a three-ply intelligence searching frantically for an answer. The enemy capital ships were spreading out, and their own velocity was back up to ninety-two thousand KPS and climbing. They were barely seventeen minutes from the dreadnought, but one or both of the battlecruisers could bring their weapons to bear around the shield of Megaira's Fasset drive within twelve.

Thoughts flashed between them like lightning. Decision was reached.

Commodore Howell winced as no less than six SLAM drones flashed away from the intruder. A battlecruiser. At least a battlecruiser, to carry that many. But if it was a battlecruiser, where had its own SLAMs been this long?

It didn't matter. He was about to die, but stubborn professionalism drove him on. The drones were charging directly away from Procyon, and he snapped an order to his com officer. A light-speed signal flashed after them, and he bared his teeth in a death snarl of triumph. Unless those bastards were clairvoyant, they couldn't know he had the authenticated self-destruct codes. Their precious sensor data would die with their ship … and his own.

Alicia monitored the signal as it burned past her, and bared her teeth in an icy smile of her own. Monkoto's plan was back on track. Now if only Megaira could get them out of the trap she'd shoved them all into ….

The AI named Megaira gathered herself. What she was about to try had been discussed in theory for years, but only in theory. No opportunity to attempt it had ever arisen, and most Fleet officers had concluded it wouldn't work, anyway. But none of them had expected to try it with an alpha-synth AI.

It had to be timed perfectly. She had to get in close, cut the transmission lag to the minimum, yet launch her attack before the hostile battlecruisers could engage her, for what she/they planned would reduce her defensive capability to a ghost of itself, but there was no other way.

She felt Alicia's warm, supporting presence and the Fury's hungry approval pulsing within her, and the chance of failure scarcely even mattered. They were together. They were one. Live or die, she knew no other AI would ever taste a fraction of the richness that was hers in this moment, and she waited while the seconds trickled past.

The accelerating SLAM drones exploded in spits of fire, but Howell hardly noticed. It was down to the final handful of minutes. Either his battlecruisers would stop the onrushing hammer of that Fasset drive by destroying the ship which mounted it, or Procyon would die.

Megaira struck.

The "pirates" had used their ability to penetrate Fleet security systems to kill her own SLAM drones, but it had never occurred to them that a Fleet unit might pierce their systems in return, and she was into their tactical net before they even realized she was coming.

The battlecruisers' AIs were slow and clumsy beside Procyon's; by the time they could respond, she had slashed them from the net with a band saw of jamming. This was between her and Procyon, and the dreadnought's cybernetic brain roused to meet her, but she had a fleeting edge of surprise, for she had known what was about to happen.

And she wasn't alone; Tisiphone rode her signal into the heart of the enemy flagship.

Howell lurched back in his chair as chaos exploded in his synth-link. Cries of anguish filled the flag bridge, hands scrabbled to snatch away tormenting headsets, and one high, dreadful keen of agony rose above them all as Tisiphone left Megaira to her battle. She sought a different prey and stabbed out, searching the net for a mind which held the information she needed, and Commander George Rendlemann screamed like a soul in Hell.

Procyon's AI was more powerful than Megaira, but it was also more fragile, and she was far faster. She was a panther attacking a grizzly, boring in for the kill before it brought its greater power to bear, and she drove a stop thrust straight to its heart. She made no effort to oppose the other AI strength-to-strength; she went for the failsafes.

Those failsafes were intended to protect Procyon's crew from the collapse of an unstable cyber-synth, not to resist another AI's attack. They didn't even recognize it for what it was, but they sensed the turmoil raging in the systems they monitored, and they performed their designed function.

Procyon's entire control net crashed as Megaira convinced it to lobotomize its own AI.

Procyon writhed out of control, systems collapsing into manual control, leaving her momentarily defenseless as Megaira rampaged through them. Circuits spat sparks and died, backup computers spasmed in electronic hysteria, and Howell did the only thing he could. His hand slammed down on the red switch on his board. HMS Procyon vanished into the security of her shield, and he wondered if it was enough. In theory, nothing could get through an OKM shield-but no one had ever tested that theory against a battlecruiser's full-powered ramming attack.

If she'd had even a moment longer, Megaira might have stopped the shield before it activated, but she didn't have a moment. There was barely time to snatch Tisiphone out of the dreadnought's circuitry before the shield chopped off her access, and even that delay was nearly fatal.

She'd cut her margin too close. HMS Issus opened fire with every weapon, and Megaira was locked into too many tasks at once. Her defenses were far below par. She was too close for SLAMs, but at least six sublight missiles and three energy torpedoes went home against her battle screen.

The alpha-synth writhed at the heart of a manmade star. Screen generators screamed in agony, local failures pierced her defenses, and elation filled Issus' captain. Nothing short of a battleship could survive that concentrated blow!

A battleship … or an alpha-synth. Megaira staggered out of the holocaust, blistered and broken, trailing vaporized alloy and atmosphere. A third of her weapons were twisted ruin, but she was alive. Alive and deadly, no longer distracted, as she turned upon her foe.

Her holo projector was gone, and the battlecruiser's captain had one instant to gawk in disbelief as Megaira stood revealed. Then answering fire slammed back. A direct hit wiped away Issus' bridge. More fire ripped past her weakened defenses, and panic flashed through Howell's squadron. Their flagship had been driven behind her shield. Cannae and her escorts had been destroyed. Issus was a shattered, dying wreck … and now they knew their enemy. Knew they faced an alpha-synth which had carved its way through the very heart of their battleline.

Only the battlecruiser Verdun stood in her path, and Verdun refused to face her. She spun away, interposing her own Fasset drive, and Megaira screamed past at thirty-six percent of light-speed.

Chapter Sixty-Three

The lethal chaos receded astern, and Alicia cursed herself viciously. Monkoto had planned for her to play the part of a battlecruiser, slightly damaged in the inevitable engagement with Howell's screen, and she'd blown it. Howell had killed her SLAM drones-exactly as intended-but she could carry the same word in person … unless he stopped her. Yet thanks to Megaira's damage, he knew what she was. Dreadnoughts were built for speed as well as power; Procyon might have overhauled a battlecruiser with battle damage, but nothing he had could hope to overtake an alpha-synth. So he wouldn't even try, and -

Her head jerked up as Megaira's drive died. The ship sped onward, but she was no longer accelerating, and Alicia's mouth twisted bitterly.

"Nice try, but you don't really think you can trick them with a fake drive failure, do you?"

Who the fuck is faking? Megaira snarled back. I just lost the entire after quadrant of the drive fan!

"You what?"

I said somebody threw a goddamned wrench into the works! The AI snapped as diagnostic programs danced. Shit! The bastards took out both Alpha runs to the upper node generators!

Can they be repaired? Tisiphone demanded quickly.

Sure-if you can think of some way to keep those creeps from killing us while I do it! The alpha-synth's point defense stations took out the first spattering of incoming missiles even as her maintenance remotes leapt into action. In the meantime, no drive means no evasion and no nice SLAM-eater. If those battlecruisers get their shit together, we're dead.

Alicia gripped the arms of her command chair, face white, monitoring remotes that ripped out huge chunks of broken hull and buckled frame members to get at the damaged control runs. There was no time for neatness; Megaira was inflicting fresh and grievous wounds upon herself as she raced to make repairs which should have taken a shipyard days.

More missiles sizzled in from Verdun-but only missiles. She must have exhausted her SLAMs against Megaira's mad charge, yet her two surviving sisters hadn't, and they were closing fast. One would reach firing range within fifty minutes; the other in an hour; and Procyon still had SLAMs in plenty once she came out from behind her shield.

James Howell sat grimly silent as damage control labored. Commander Rahman had replaced the shrieking, drooling Rendlemann, but Procyon no longer had a cyber-synth. No one knew how it had been done, but her AI was gone, and massive damage to the manual backups left the big dreadnought defenseless. There wouldn't even be battle screen until damage control could route around the wrecked subsystems, and even if they replaced them all, Procyon would be at little more than half normal capability without her AI.

Which meant he dared not drop his mauled flagship's shield despite a desperate temptation to do just that. Verdun and Issus had almost certainly killed those madmen, assuming they hadn't destroyed themselves against the shield. But if they had somehow survived and fled, his people might need Procyon's SLAM batteries to stop them-except that if they'd survived and hadn't fled, a single missile salvo would rip his crippled ship apart. And so he sat still, watching his crew wrestle furiously with their repairs, and waited.

"Why the hell aren't they coming after us?" Alicia worried, watching lightning glare as Megaira's point defense dealt with incoming missiles.

Little One, Tisiphone observed with massive restraint, I see missiles enough, and two of their battlecruisers are pursuing us.

"Not them-Procyon. Why doesn't she drop her shield and fry us?"

You're complaining? Megaira flung half a dozen missiles back at Verdun. They had little chance of penetrating the battlecruiser's point defense at this range, but they might make her a bit more cautious. Alley, I gave that cyber-synth piece of crap a terminal migraine. Unless I miss my guess, they're scraping fried molycircs off the deck plates and wondering what the hell hit them.

"Yeah, but for how much longer?"

How do I know? Damn it, I've got more to worry about than-

"I know, honey. I know!" Alicia said contritely. "It's just that-"

Just that this waiting wears upon the nerves, Tisiphone finished. Yet think, Little One-none but the truly mad would linger within SLAM range of that dreadnought if they could flee. Hence, they must believe our drive damage genuine, which means we may yet complete our original intent.

Unless they get their act together and kill us, Megaira muttered.

The battlecruiser Trafalgar raced towards rendezvous with Verdun. Another twenty minutes. Just twenty, and her SLAMs would have the range.

Okay, people, Megaira murmured. Now just pray it holds … .

Circuits closed. Power pulsed through jury-rigged shunts and patches, and the alpha-synth began to accelerate once more. At little more than two-thirds power, but to accelerate, and Megaira turned her attention to other wounds. She could do little for slagged down weapons, but her electronic warfare systems' damage was mainly superficial, and it as looked as though she might need them badly. Soon.

"Engineering estimates another fifty-five minutes to restore Fasset drive, Sir," Rahman reported, "but we've restored as much basic combat capability as we can without cyber-synth."

"Understood. Stand by to drop the shield."

Megaira was back up to .43 C when the OKM shield's impenetrable blot disappeared from Alicia's sensors. She stiffened, checking ranges, then relaxed. The dreadnought was over twenty light-minutes astern, and it was her sublight sensors which had reported the shield's passing. Her gravitics still didn't see a thing, and that meant the dreadnought must have engineering problems of her own. Now if she'd just go on having them long enough ….

Howell watched his plot replay Issus' destruction from Verdun's sensor records in bitter silence. An alpha-synth. No wonder it had done such a number on them! And it explained the lack of SLAMs, too.

But Issus had gotten a piece of it. A big piece, judging from its subsequent behavior, and he cursed his own caution for not dropping the shield sooner. Yet the critical point was that the alpha-synth's speed had been drastically reduced. Even Procyon could make up velocity on it, now that her drive had been restored, and he had no choice but to do just that.

Pieces fell into place in his brain as the big ship accelerated in pursuit. That had to be the rogue drop commando-only a madwoman would have come after them alone and launched that insane attack down Procyon's throat-so Fleet didn't know a thing. A part of him was tempted to let DeVries, go, trusting to the Fleet's own shoot on sight order to dispose of her. But mad or not, she had the hard sensor data to prove her story; all she had to do was get into com range of any Fleet base or unit and pass it on.

He could not permit that, and so he dispatched his freighters to the alternate rendezvous and went in pursuit. His cruisers and remaining battlecruisers could have overhauled sooner than Procyon, had he let them. He didn't. Lamed though that ship was, God only knew what it could still do, and Procyon could hang close enough to break into the same wormhole space and close to combat range. She still had the weapons to take even an alpha-synth, and if it took time, time was something he had. On this heading, he'd overtake DeVries eleven light-years short of the nearest inhabited star system.

Looks like we're back on track, Megaira said.

The entire squadron was in pursuit, and its faster units were hanging back. They'd managed to pull out of Procyon's SLAM range before she lumbered back to life, but she'd regain it eventually, and Megaira's drive couldn't be interposed against fire from astern. Which might be just as well, given its current fragility.

"What happens when they get the range on us again?"

Depends. We'll be into wormhole space, and I think I'll have most of my EW back on line by then. If I do, they'll have a hard time localizing us. They can't throw the kind of salvos Soisson's forts could, and SLAMs can't go supralight relative to us in wormhole space, either. I'll be able to track 'em and do some fancy footwork, and even that damned dreadnought can't carry a lot of 'em. I expect they'll choose not to waste them and hold off until they can get to missile or even beam range. That's what I'd do.

"I just hope they're as smart as you are, then."

Me too, Megaira snorted, and Alicia nodded and shoved herself up out of her chair. Hey! Where're you going?

"To the head, dummy." Alicia managed a weary smile. "I'm coming off the tick, and I've got an appointment with the john."

Uh, you might want to reconsider that.

"Sorry." Alicia swallowed a surge of nausea. "Already in process."

Damn! Alicia's eyebrows rose, and Megaira sighed. Alley, we took a lot of hits. There's no pressure in the bridge access passage.

"You mean-?"

I mean I'm working on it, the AI apologized, but I need another hour before I can repressurize.

"Oh, crap," Alicia moaned in a stifled tone. " 'Get your tractors ready, then, because-"

Her voice broke off as biology had its way.

Half an hour later, a pale-faced Alicia sat huddled in her chair. Her uniform was almost clean-Megaira's tractors had caught most of the vomit and whisked it away-but the stink of fear and sickness clung to her, and she scrubbed her face with the heels of her hands as a new and deeper fear rippled within her. Now that the immediate terror of combat had receded, she had time to think … and to realize fully why she had done what she had.

She'd lost it. She hadn't panicked, hadn't frozen, hadn't tried to run. Instead, she'd done something worse.

She'd gone berserk. She'd forgotten the objective, the plan, the need to survive, even that Megaira would die with her-forgotten everything but the need to kill … and it hadn't been temporary. She'd felt it again the instant tick reaction let her go. Bloodlust trembled within her even now, like black fire awaiting only a puff of air to roar to life once more.

It was madness, and it terrified her, for it was infinitely worse than the madness Tannis had feared, and she had infected Megaira with it. The Fleet had been ordered to kill her; now, she knew, that order was justified. If a drop commando's insanity was to be dreaded, how much more terrible was the madness of an alpha-synth pilot?

No, Little One. Alicia winced, for the soft voice held something she'd never heard from the Fury: sorrow. She gritted her teeth and turned away from it, clutching her self-loathing to her, but Tisiphone refused to be evaded. It is not you who have done this thing. It is I. I have … meddled unforgivably. Do not blame yourself for the wrong I have done.

"It's a bit late for that," Alicia grated.

But it is not your fault. It-

"Do you really think it matters a good goddamn whose fault it is?!" She clenched her fists as barely leashed madness stirred, and tears streaked her face.

Alley-

"Shut up, Megaira! Just shut up!" Alicia hissed. She felt Megaira's hurt and desperate concern, and she shut them out, for Megaira loved her. Megaira would refuse to face the thing she had become. Megaira would protect her, and she was too dangerous to be protected.

Silence hovered in her mind and her breathing was ragged. She still had enough control to end it. She could turn herself in … and if Fleet killed her when she tried, perhaps that would be the best solution of all. Yet how long would that control remain? She could feel her old self dying, tiny bits and pieces eaten away by the corrosion at her core, and the horror of her own demolition filled her.

Little One … Alicia, you must hear me, Tisiphone said at last. Alicia hunched forward, covering her ears with her hands, digging her nails into her temples, but she couldn't shut out the Fury's voice.

I am arrogant, Little One. When first we met, I saw your compassion, your belief in "justice," and I feared them. They were too much a part of you, too likely, I thought, to cloud your judgment when the moment came.

I was wrong. Oh, Alicia- the pain in the Fury's voice was terrible, for she was a being who had never been meant to feel it -I was so wrong! And because I was, I built a weapon of your hate. Not against your foes, but against you, to bend you to my will at need, and in so doing I have hurt one innocent of any wrong. Once that would not have mattered to me. Now it does. You must not hate yourself for what I have done to you.

"It doesn't matter who I hate." Alicia slumped back and opened tear-soaked eyes, and her voice was raw and wounded. "Don't you understand even that? It doesn't matter. All that matters is what I've become!"

The debt is mine, the Fury's voice had hardened, and mine the price to pay. I swear to you, Alicia DeVries, that I will not let you become the thing you fear.

"Can-" Words caught in her throat. She swallowed and tried again, and they came out small and frightened. "Can you stop me? Make me better?"

I do not know, Tisiphone replied unflinchingly. I swear that I will try, but I am less skilled at healing than hurting, and what I have done to you grows stronger with every hour. Already it is more powerful than I believed possible, perhaps powerful enough to destroy us both, yet I have lived long enough-perhaps too long. I will do what I may, and if I fail, her voice turned gentle, we will end together, Little One.

No! Megaira's protest was hot and frightened. You can't just kill her! I won't let you!

"Hush, Megaira," Alicia whispered. Her eyes closed again-not in terror this time but in gratitude-yet she felt her sister-self's pain and made herself speak gently. "She's right. You know she is; you're part of me. Do you think I'd want to live as that?" She shuddered and shook her head. "But I'm so sorry to do this to you, love. You deserve better, unless … Do you think-is our link different enough for you to-?"

I don't know, tears glittered in the AI's soundless voice, and it doesn't matter, because I won't.

"Please, Megaira. Don't do that to me," Alicia begged. "Promise you'll at least try! I don't … I don't think I can bear knowing you won't if I … if I …"

Then you're just going to have to try real hard not to. You're not going anywhere without me-not ever.

"But-"

It is her right, Little One, Tisiphone said quietly. Do not deny her choice or blame her for it. The fault is no more hers than yours.

Alicia bowed her head. The Fury was right, and if she tried to force the AI, she would only twist the time they still had with pain and guilt.

"All right," she whispered. "All right. We've come this far together; we'll go on together."

Megaira's warm silence enfolded her, answering for her, and fragile stillness hovered on the bridge, filled with a strange, bittersweet sense of acceptance. What she was becoming could not be permitted to live, and it would not. That had to be enough, and, somehow, it was.

It was odd, she thought almost dreamily, but she didn't even blame Tisiphone. She would have died long since if not for her, and the Fury's pain was too genuine. If Alicia had become something else, so had Tisiphone, and the bond which had grown between them no longer held room for resentment or hate.

The stillness stretched out until the Fury broke it at last.

In truth, Little One, my promise to you may not matter in the end. I have not yet told you what I have learned.

"Learned?" Alicia stirred in her chair.

Indeed. While Megaira dispatched Procyon's AI, I sought a mind which could tell us more. I found one, and in it I found the truth.

Alicia snapped back to full alertness, driving the residual flicker of madness as deep as she could, and felt Megaira beside her in her mind.

The Fleet personnel who pursue us were most carefully selected by their commander, and their objective is to create such havoc as must force your Emperor to commit much of his fleet to this sector.

"We already knew that, but why? What can they possibly gain from it?"

The answer is simple enough, the Fury said grimly, for he who truly commands them is the one called Subrahmanyan Treadwell.

For just an instant the name completely failed to register, and then Alicia flinched in disbelief. "The Sector Governor? That-that's crazy!"

There is no question, Little One. It is he, and his objective is no less than to place a crown upon his own head.

"But … but how?"

He has requested massive reinforcements to "crush the pirates." Indeed, he has been promised the tenth part of your Fleet's active units and perhaps a third of its firepower. Once they arrive, Admiral Gomez will be relieved or die-it matters little to him-and replaced by Admiral Brinkman.

For a time, the pirates will prove even more successful. Their raids will spread across the border into the Macedon Sector, which is but lightly held, until they seem an irresistible scourge. And when the terror has reached its height, when the people of both sectors have come to believe the Empire cannot protect them, Treadwell will assume personal command of the Fleet and declare martial law. Brinkman will accept this, and they will relieve those captains most loyal to the Empire, replacing them with men and women loyal only to them, until Treadwell's control is total. And at that point, Little One, he will declare that the Empire has proven incapable of defending its people so far from the center of power. He will declare himself ruler of both sectors in the name of their salvation, offering to submit to a plebiscite when the "pirates" have been destroyed, and from that moment the raids will become less frequent. In the end, a carefully chosen squadron of his most loyal adherents will fight a false battle in which the "pirates" will appear to be utterly destroyed. He will then face his plebiscite, and even without manipulation of the votes, he will probably win.

"But the Emperor won't stand for it!" Alicia protested sickly.

Treadwell believes he will. That is the reason he seeks such naval strength. Surely the Emperor will realize that a civil war-and it would require nothing less, once Treadwell's plan has played itself out-will but invite the Rishathan Sphere to intervene? And remember this: none save Treadwell and his closest adherents will know what actually passed. All will believe, even the Emperor and his closest advisers, that he truly dealt, firmly and decisively, with a threat to the people he is sworn to protect. These sectors lie far from the heart of the Empire. Will the Emperor be able to rally sufficient public support for a massive operation against a man who but did what had to be done in so distant a province?

"Dear God," Alicia whispered. She licked bloodless lips, trying to grasp the truth, but the sheer magnitude of the crime was numbing.

"Megaira, did you get any of this from Procyon's computers?"

No, Alley. Even the brash AI was subdued and shaken. I didn't have time for data searches.

It would not have mattered, Megaira. There was no data for you to find. The details of the plan have never been committed to record-not, I venture to say, unreasonably.

"Yeah." Alicia inhaled deeply. The numbness was passing, and the flame of her madness guttered higher. She ground her heel upon its neck, driving it back down, and shook herself.

"Okay. What do we do with the information?"

Tell Ferhat? Megaira suggested hesitantly.

"Maybe. He'd believe us, I think, though it's for damned sure no one else will. I mean, who's going to take the unsupported word of a madwoman who talks to Bronze Age demons over that of a sector governor?"

I suppose I should resent that, but I fear you are correct.

"Yeah, and even if Ferhat believes us, he needs proof. They could never convict on what we can give them, and I doubt even O Branch would sanction a black operation against a sector governor."

Agreed. And that, Little One, is why my promises to you may stand meaningless in the end. I see only one way to destroy this traitor.

"Us," Alicia said grimly.

Indeed.

Now wait a darn minute! Do you two actually think we can get to a sector governor? What do you want to do, nuke the damned planet?!

It will not be necessary. Treadwell dislikes planets. His quarters are aboard Orbit One.

Oh, ducky! So all we have to do is fight our way in and punch out a six million-tonne orbital fortress with a third of my weapons so much junk? I feel lots better now.

"Are you saying you can't do it?" Alicia tried to make her voice light. "What happened to all that cheerful egotism when we busted out?"

Out is easier than in, Megaira said grimly, and you know damned well they'll have reworked their systems since, just in case we come back.

"So we can't get in?"

I didn't say that, Megaira replied unwillingly. I'll know better when I finish repairs-remember, that battlecruiser shot the hell out of me-but, yeah, I imagine we can get in. Only, if we do, I don't think we'll get out again, and I doubt anything I ever had was heavy enough to take out that fort. I certainly don't have anything left that could do the job.

"Oh yes, you do," Alicia said very softly. "The same thing that could have taken out Procyon."

Ram it? There was less shock in the AI's voice than there should have been, Alicia thought sadly. Like her, Megaira saw it as the possible answer to her fear of what she might become. I think we could do it, Megaira said at last, slowly. But there are nine thousand other people on that fort, Alley.

"I know."

Alicia frowned down at her hands and her shoulders hunched against the ice of her own words.

"I know," she whispered.

Chapter Sixty-Four

The black-and-gray uniformed woman looked up as a quiet buzzer purred. A light blinked, and she slipped into her synth-link headset and consulted her computers carefully, then pressed a button.

"Get me the Old Man," she said, and waited a moment. "Admiral, this is Lois Heyter in Tracking. We've got something coming in on the right bearing, but the velocity's wrong. They're still too far out for a solid solution, but it looks like our friend hasn't been able to hold the range open as planned." She listened, then nodded. "Yes, Sir. We'll stay on it."

She went back to her plot, and the close-grouped ships of war began to accelerate through the deep gloom between the stars. There was no great rush. They had hours before their prey dropped sublight-plenty of time to build their interception vectors.

James Howell glared at the enemy's blue dot and muttered venomously to himself.

He'd fired off over half the squadron's missiles, and he might as well have been shooting spitballs! It was maddening, yet he'd given up on telling himself things would have been different if Procyon's cyber-synth had survived to run the tactical net. To be sure, Trafalgar's AI was less capable than the dreadnought's had been, but not even Procyon's could have accomplished much against the alpha-synth's fiendish EW.

He knew that damned ship was badly damaged; the debris trail it had left at AR-12359/J would have proved that, even if its limping acceleration hadn't, yet it refused to die. It kept splitting into multiple targets that bobbed and wove insanely, and then swatted down the missiles that went for the right target source with contemptuous ease. What it might have been doing if it were undamaged hardly bore thinking on.

But its time was running out. His ships would be into extreme energy torpedo range in seventy minutes, and even an alpha-synth's defenses could be saturated with enough of those. If they couldn't, he'd be into beam range in another eighteen and a half minutes, and no point defense could stop massed beam fire, by God!

"Admiral," Lois Heyter said tensely from Simon Monkoto's com screen, "we're picking up a second grav source-a big one-and it's decelerating hard."

"Put it on my plot," Monkoto said, and frowned down at the display. Lois was right; the second cluster of gravity sources, almost as numerous as those speeding towards them from AR-12359/J, was decelerating. He tapped his nose in thought. He supposed their arrival might be a coincidence … except that there was no star in the vicinity, and Simon Monkoto had stopped believing in coincidence and the tooth fairy years ago.

He juggled numbers, and his frown deepened as the newcomers' vector extended itself across the display. If those people kept coming as they were, things were about to get very interesting indeed.

A fresh sheet of lightning flashed and glared against the formless gray of wormhole space as Megaira picked off yet another incoming salvo, and Alicia winced. Thank God Megaira had no need of little things like rest! The "pirates" had been in missile range for over two hours, and if their supply of missiles was finite they seemed unaware of the fact. Anything less than an alpha-synth would have been destroyed long since.

They hadn't been supposed to reach missile range before turnover, but "supposed to" hadn't counted on Megaira's damage. Alicia's nerves felt sick and exhausted from the unremitting tension of the last hundred and thirty minutes, yet the end was in sight.

"Ready, Megaira?"

I am. I just hope the repairs are.

Alicia nodded in grim understanding. Megaira had labored unceasingly on her drive since their flight began, ignoring less essential repairs, and all they could say for certain was that it had worked … so far.

Maintenance remotes had built entirely new control runs in parallel with those cobbled up in such desperate haste, but they hadn't dared shut down long enough to shift over to test them with Howell's squadron clinging so closely to their heels.

Nor had they been able to test Megaira's other repairs. Twenty-five percent of her drive nodes had been crippled or destroyed outright by the same hit that smashed the control runs, and she'd had spares for less than half of them. Her theoretical grav mass was down five percent even after scavenging the less damaged ones, and while she'd bench-tested the rebuilt units, no one cut suspect nodes into circuit while underway in wormhole space.

Unfortunately, the maneuver they were about to attempt left them no choice. They'd been forced to leave their turnover far later than planned because of how much more quickly the "pirates" had closed the gap, and they would need every scrap of deceleration they could produce, tested nodes or no.

Coming up on the mark, Alley. Megaira broke into her thoughts quietly, and Alicia drew a deep breath.

"Thanks. Tisiphone?"

I am prepared, Little One. Relax as much as you may.

"I'm as relaxed as I'm going to get." She heard the quaver in her own voice and forced her hands to unclench. "Come ahead."

There was no spoken response, but she felt a stirring in her mind as Megaira extended a wide-open channel to the Fury with no trace of her one-time distrust. They reached out to one another, weaving a glowing web, and Alicia forced down a stir of jealousy, for she was excluded from its weaving. She could see it in her mind's eye, taste its beauty, yet she could not share in its creation. Beautiful it might be, but it was a trap-and she was its prey.

Currents of power crackled deep within her, and then the web snapped shut. She gasped and twisted, stabbed by agony that vanished almost before it was felt, and her eyes opened wide.

The seductive glitter of her madness was gone. Or, no, not gone-just … removed. It was still there, burning like poison in the glowing shroud Tisiphone and Megaira had woven, but it could no longer touch her. Blessed, half-forgotten peace filled her like the hush of a cathedral, and she sighed in desperate relief as her muscles relaxed for the first time in days.

"Thank you," she whispered, and felt Megaira's silent mental caress.

It is little enough, and I do not know how long we may hold it, Tisiphone replied more somberly, but all we may do, we will.

"Thank you," Alicia repeated more levelly, then gathered herself once more. "All right, Megaira-let's do it to these bastards."

Lois Heyter hunched over her console in concentration, then stiffened.

"Tell the Old Man we have decoy separation!" she snapped.

No more missiles fired. James Howell's lips were thin over his teeth as he waited out the last dragging seconds to energy torpedo range. If he were aboard that alpha-synth, this was when he'd go for a crash turnover -

There! The fleeing Fasset drive suddenly popped over, and he started to bark orders-then stopped dead. There were two sources on his display! One continued straight ahead at unchanged acceleration; the other hurtled towards him at a starkly incredible deceleration, and he swore feelingly.

He gritted his teeth and waited for Tracking to sort them out. Logic said the genuine source was the one charging at him in a frantic effort to break sublight and lose him … only it was coming at him at over twenty-five hundred gravities! How in hell could the alpha-synth produce that kind of power after its long, limping run? A fraction of that increase would have kept it out of his range, and alpha-synth point defense or no, not even a madwoman would have endured that heavy fire if she could have avoided it!

The source continuing straight ahead maintained exactly the same power curve he'd been watching for days, which might well indicate it was genuine, and that made his dilemma worse. If he decelerated to deal with the closing source and guessed wrong, the still fleeing one would regain a massive lead; if he didn't decelerate and the closing source was the genuine ship, he'd lose it entirely. One of them had to be some sort of decoy-but which one?

Whichever it was, he had to identify it quickly. The peculiarities of wormhole space augmented the deceleration of the closing source to right on three thousand gravities, and his squadron's acceleration translated it into a relative deceleration of more than forty-seven KPS per second. He had barely four minutes before it went sublight, and if he didn't begin his own deceleration at least thirty seconds before it did, he'd lose it forever.

Fasset drive generators were virtually soundless, their quiet hum as unobtrusive as a human heartbeat. But not now. Alicia clung to the arms of her command chair, teeth locked in a white, strained face, and the drive screamed at her like a tortured giant, shaking Megaira's iron bones like a hurricane until her vision blurred with the vibration.

The decoy, one of only two SLAM decoys Megaira carried, streaked away on their old course, and shipboard power levels exploded far past critical. Meters blew like molycirc popcorn, rebuilt control runs crackled and sizzled, patched-up generator nodes shrieked, and it went on and on and on and on … .

"Turnover!" Lois Heyter barked. "We have turnover!" Her eyes opened wide, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Dear God, look at that deceleration rate! How in hell is she holding it together?"

The cybernetic brain of the battleship Audacious noted the changing gravity signatures and adjusted its own drive. Vectors would converge with less than ten percent variance, it calculated with mild, electronic satisfaction.

Time was running out. Howell found himself pounding on the arm of his chair. If Tracking couldn't differentiate in the next ten seconds, he was going to have to go to emergency deceleration just to play safe. Losing distance on the alpha-synth if he'd guessed wrong would be better than losing it entirely, he told himself, and it did his frustration no good at all.

The leading source flickered suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. There! It flickered again, power fading, and he knew.

The range was down to four and a half million kilometers when Howell's entire squadron flipped end-for-end and began to decelerate madly.

Fifty seconds to sublight. Blood streaked Alicia's chin, her hands were cramped claws on her chair arms, and her battered brain felt only a dull wonder that they were still alive, but Megaira's mental voice was unshadowed by the hellish vibration. Forty. Thirty-fi-They've flipped, Alley!

"Here they come, boys and girls," Simon Monkoto murmured over his command circuit. He sat relaxed in his command chair, but his eyes were bright and hard, filled with a vengeful hunger few of his officers had ever seen in them. His gaze flicked over his display, and his mouth sketched a mirthless grin. The second group of gravity sources would drop sublight in nine minutes-out of range to hit the "pirates" but on an almost convergent vector.

"Cut your drives!" he snapped as Alicia DeVries broke sublight, and every one of his ships killed her Fasset drive.

There's Simon-right on the money! Megaira announced as the mercenaries appeared on her display and then vanished in the equivalent of a deep-space ambush. Without active drives, they were invisible to FTL scanners; the "pirates" wouldn't be able to see them until their light-speed sensors picked them up.

Alicia nodded in understanding, then gasped in relief as Megaira cut the drive's power levels far back. The dreadful vibration eased, yet there was a grim undertone to her relief as she felt the AI prepping her own weapons. If the SLAM drone had lasted just a little longer, Megaira might have broken back past Howell's ships to join Monkoto. She hadn't, and Monkoto or no Monkoto, she was still in the "pirates' " range, with no choice but to decelerate towards them or lose the shield of her Fasset drive. But if she decelerated too rapidly-or if they began to accelerate once more and overran her-the range would be less than two light-seconds when she penetrated their formation.

A jolt of sullen fire went through Alicia at the thought. She clenched her teeth as her madness lunged against its restraining net, hungry for destruction, and felt Tisiphone at her side as she fought it down. It subsided with an angry grumble, and sweat beaded her forehead. She'd won-this time-but what would happen once the shooting started?

Alley! Check the gravitics at two-eight-oh!

The dreadnought Procyon erupted from wormhole space with her entire brood, and the alpha-synth was still there, decelerating into their teeth.

James Howell bared his own teeth. DeVries was a drop commando, not a Fleet officer, or she would've known better. If she'd simply cut her drive, he might not even have been able to find her; as it was, she was bidding to break back through his formation in another suicide attack.

That was the only explanation for her maneuver, but this time her ship was hurt and he knew what he was up against.

Orders crackled out, and his formation opened to receive its foe.

"Commodore!" It was Commander Rahman, his face taut. "We're picking up another grav source! It's still supralight, but decelerating quickly. Estimate breakout in … six-point-one minutes at thirty-one light-minutes, bearing two-eight-six, one-one-seven. At least thirty sources."

Howell stiffened, and his stomach tightened as Rahman's data appeared on his plot.

Those other sources were decelerating, if far less madly than DeVries had, and their vector converged with his own. Not perfectly, by a long chalk, but close enough they could match it if he tried to accelerate back up to supralight. Jesus! Could DeVries have known they'd be here?!

It didn't seem possible. If an ambush had been intended the ambushers would have arrived ahead of time to lie doggo without revealing drive signatures. But what else could it be?

Numbers tumbled across the bottom of his display as Tracking calculated frantically, and he swore. Yes, they could go sublight on a converging vector or accelerate back supralight with him even if he went back to max acceleration, but they'd never be able to engage him as long as he continued to decelerate. They'd have to kill their own velocity, then go in pursuit, and his people were already killing speed. He'd have too much of a head start to be caught short of wormhole space on a reversed course … which was the coldest of comforts.

Jaw muscles lumped as he turned his hating gaze back to DeVries. They might not be able to engage, but they'd still get good scanner readings, and that meant his entire pursuit had been for nothing.

He glared at the alpha-synth's dot. All for nothing. Everything they'd done, all the people they'd killed, and it was all for nothing! Once his ships were fingerprinted, Treadwell's dream of building a new empire on the "pirate threat" would be dead. It might take months for Intelligence to put it together, but the true nature of the "pirate" squadron would be a glaring arrow pointed in the right direction.

Yet there was one last thing he could do. DeVries wasn't racing to meet the newcomers. She was still decelerating towards him. The shoot on sight order still held; she dared not confront the Fleet any more than he did, and she was accepting the threat she knew in a desperate effort to evade the new one.

Which meant he could still kill her, and perhaps -

"SLAMs!" Rahman screamed. "SLAMs bearing oh-oh-three, one-two-seven!"

Howell's head whipped up in horror as malignant blue dots speckled his display. Where had they come from?! There was nothing out there! It was -

And then his sublight sensors finally picked up the ships ahead and "above" him, firing down past his drive masses as he decelerated towards them.

Go, Simon! Megaira shrieked, and Alicia's bloodlust spasmed against the web. A strand parted, and Tisiphone hurled herself at the weakness, blocking the thrust of madness. She didn't get it all. A tentacle of fire groped through Alicia's brain, and breath hissed between her teeth.

The SLAMs flashed in, and Howell's ships lunged into frantic evasive action. The short range meant the SLAMs were still building velocity when they arrived, and she snarled as Procyon evaded an even dozen, but two battlecruisers were less fortunate, and she twitched in ecstasy as they died.

Eleven capital ships hung on James Howell's flank, their velocity within ten percent of his own, and he'd lost Trafalgar and Chickamauga. Verdun replaced Trafalgar in the tactical net, but only she survived to support Procyon. Had the dreadnought's AI remained, she alone might have matched all eleven of her opponents, but it didn't. She retained her brute firepower and defensive strength-not the fine-meshed control to make it fully effective.

Understanding filled him. There had been an ambush, but not of Fleet units. The energy signatures told it all. Somehow, DeVries had linked up with the mercenaries at Ringbolt. An alpha-synth-and only an alpha-synth-might have nailed Gregor and had the speed to reach Ringbolt before making for the rendezvous to bait the trap. There was only one way those slow-footed battleships could have brought him to action, and he'd swallowed the bait whole. But what about the ships even now breaking sublight? They couldn't have been part of the plan; he knew Monkoto's reputation, and the mercenary would have been in place long since with every unit he had.

Conjecture raced through his mind in split-second flashes of lightning. The other units couldn't be from Gomez's Fleet district-not unless Brinkman had been found out and the whole operation broken from the other end, and in that case there'd be a hell of a lot more than thirty drive sources! Could they be still more mercenaries? Some last minute ally of Monkoto's who'd arrived late?

It didn't matter. What mattered was that the only way to avoid fighting both enemy forces was to take Monkoto head on … and that was suicide.

But perhaps not for everyone. If any of his people could break through the mercenaries, they might turn true pirate, or perhaps take service with a Rogue World far enough from Franconia not to realize what they'd been. It wasn't much, but it was all he could offer them-that and a chance to kill some of the bastards who'd ambushed them.

"Come to poppa, you bastards," Simon Monkoto whispered.

He'd hoped for still more SLAM salvos, but then he'd expected the renegades to accelerate back up to wormhole out. They hadn't, and now they were hidden behind the drives pointed straight at him. The battle to come had just turned even uglier, but his own ships matched the "pirates' " maneuver. Thanks to the battleships, their maximum deceleration was less than the enemy's, but it would be enough to insure a long and deadly embrace.

"Up their asses, Megaira!" Alicia snarled.

Are you sure, Alley? I'm not in good enough offensive shape to add much to Simon's firepower.

Megaira's worried voice tore at the corona of violence building in Alicia's mind. She clenched her teeth, sweating, trying to make herself think, and a part of her screamed in warning. The web about her madness sang with stress, and it was crumbling. She felt Tisiphone between her and it, felt the Fury pouring herself into the fraying web.

She writhed in her chair, fighting to keep her jaws locked on the order to engage. She could break off. She could curl away from Howell and leave him to Monkoto's unwounded ships, and she knew she had to. She and her companions were the only ones who knew the truth about Treadwell. They couldn't let themselves die yet. She knew it; yet she couldn't let go. She held her course, and the most she could do was strangle the order for Megaira to redline her deceleration.

The edge of James Howell's squadron "overtook" Monkoto's. Screening destroyers and light cruisers suddenly found themselves broadside-to-broadside at ranges as low as fifty thousand kilometers, and energy torpedoes and beams ripped back and forth. Point defense was irrelevant; misses were almost impossible, and battle screens were blazing halos wrapped about fragile battle steel. Two renegade destroyers and a light cruiser vanished in star-bright fury, but Commodore Falconi's heavy cruiser flagship went with them, and the death toll was only starting.

Monkoto and his allies had known what it would be like the instant they realized Howell wasn't going to run for it. They could have broken off, but they hadn't come to break off. The two fleets interpenetrated and merged, racing side-by-side while the hammering match raged.

Procyon's massive beam and energy torpedo batteries opened fire, and a dozen destroyers and cruisers died in the first salvo. Verdun poured her own fire into the maelstrom, but two of O'Kane's battlecruisers locked their batteries on her, and her fire slackened as more and more of her power was shunted frantically into her battle screen. She writhed, cored in their fire, and Procyon blew one of her attackers to vaporized wreckage.

Not in time. Verdun's screens failed, a tight-focused salvo of particle beams ripped through them, and she vomited flame across the stars.

Procyon rounded vengefully upon her killer, but Audacious and the battleship Assassin were on her like mastiffs. They were far smaller, slower, less heavily armed, but their cyber-synths were intact, and thunder wracked the vacuum as the leviathans spread their arms in lethal embrace. Two more battlecruisers raced to join them, then a third, and all six rained javelins of flame upon the dreadnought.

Eight million tonnes of starship heaved as something got through a local screen failure, and Monkoto's wolves set their fangs in the flanks of the crippled saber-tooth. Howell ripped his attention away from them long enough to check the main plot and swallowed a groan. Procyon was attracting more and more of the mercenaries' attention, but there were more than enough destroyers and cruisers to pair off in duels with his own units. Ships flashed and vanished like dying sparks, damage signals snarled in his synth-link, and Tracking had finally identified the newcomers: Fleet battlecruisers, already gaining on Procyon with their higher rate of deceleration.

He glared at the red switch on his console. He could engage the shield and laugh at Monkoto's attack … but there was no point. He couldn't accelerate with the shield up; only drift, knowing that when he finally lowered it, the enemy would be waiting. He raised fiery eyes to Commander Rahman.

"Get the battleships!" he snarled.

Alicia's nails drew blood from her palms as the battleship Assassin blew apart. She remembered Esther Tarbaneau's gentle brown eyes, and her lips writhed back from her teeth as the red holocaust broke free within her.

The hell with Treadwell! The hell with everything! The mercenaries were fighting her fight, dying her death. She felt Megaira and Tisiphone battling to turn her madness, and she didn't care.

"Now, goddamn it!" she snarled. "Everything we've got now!" and Megaira wept as she obeyed.

The drive thundered and shrieked in agony, and the alpha-synth began to close on the cyclone of dying starships.

Simon Monkoto's teeth met through his lip as Assassin vanished. First Arlen, now Tadeoshi and Esther-but he had the bastards. He had them! His flagship's AI noted a fluctuation in Procyon's defenses, a wavering the dreadnought would have sensed and corrected had her own AI survived. But it hadn't, and Audacious flashed orders over the net. One battleship and four battlecruisers threw every beam and energy torpedo they had at the chink in Procyon's armor, and her Fasset drive exploded.

Alicia's banshee howl echoed from the bulkheads as the dreadnought's drive died, and her eyes were mad.

The mercenaries peeled away from Procyon, for they no longer needed to endure her close-range fire. They'd broken her wings, destroyed her ability to dodge. Once their own ships got far enough from her to avoid friendly SLAM fire, she was dead, but Alicia didn't think about the mercenaries' SLAMs, didn't care about the short-range weapons still waiting to destroy her. All she saw was the lamed hulk of her enemy, waiting for her to kill it.

HMS Tsushima decelerated towards the savage engagement, and her captain's brain whirled as she digested the preposterous sensor readings. Fleet units locked in mortal combat with mercenaries?! Insane! Yet it was happening, and Brigadier Keita's briefing echoed in her ears. If the mercenaries were here to engage pirates, then those Fleet units must be pirates, for no engagement this close and brutal could be a mistake. Both sides had to know exactly who they were fighting … didn't they?

Tsushima was the lead ship of the task force, already approaching SLAM range of the fighting, but Captain Wu held her fire. Even if she'd been certain what was going on, only a lunatic would fire SLAMs into that tight-packed boil of ships, for she would be as likely to kill friends as enemies. But what was that one ship doing so far behind the melee? It was moving at preposterous speed, overhauling the others, but something about its drive signature …

"Captain! That's an alpha-synth!" her plotting officer said suddenly, and Wu's face went white. There were no Fleet alpha-synths in this sector; the only two previously assigned to it had been ordered out so that there could be no confusion.

Wu swallowed a bitter curse and looked at her plot. She'd heard the gossip, knew how close Keita and that Cadre major, Cateau, were to Alicia DeVries, but Keita's flagship was ten light-minutes astern of her. DeVries would vanish into the maelstrom in half the time it would take to pass the buck to him, and when she did, Tsushima could no longer fire her SLAMs in pursuit.

She didn't want to do this. No Fleet officer did. She knew each of them had prayed that he or she wouldn't be the one it fell to. But she was here, and the order still stood.

SLAMs, Alley! SLAMs!

Megaira's shriek of warning-small and faint, almost lost in her hunger-touched some last fragment of reason. Alicia saw the SLAMs racing after her, and that sliver of sanity roused, intellect fighting instinct run mad.

Tisiphone hurled herself into the tiny flaw in the hurricane, and Alicia jerked back in her command chair, gasping as the Fury smashed through to her. The terrible roaring eased, and understanding filled her.

"Break off, Megaira." She choked the words out, thoughts as clumsy as her thick tongue. She clung to her guttering sanity by her fingernails, feeling the blood-sick chaos reaching for her yet again.

"Evasion course. Wormhole out," she gasped, fighting for every word, and reached for the only escape from her madness. "Tisiphone, put me out!" she screamed, and slithered from her chair as the Fury clubbed her unconscious.

Chapter Sixty-Five

A broken behemoth drifted against pinprick stars, flanks ripped and torn, and Simon Monkoto sat on his flag bridge and glared at its image.

He turned his head to glower at the man beside him. Ferhat Ben Belkassem's dark face was pale from the carnage, but he'd been the first to note the hole in Procyon's fire where an entire quadrant's batteries had been blown away, and Monkoto had yielded to his appeal to hold the SLAMs.

He still didn't know why he had. They'd have to destroy it sooner or later-why risk his people on the O Branch inspector's whim? But he'd taken Audacious into the hole and worked his way along the dreadnought's hull, and there'd been something sensual in the slow, brutal destruction of Procyon's weapons, in the lingering murder of her crew's hope.

His eyes returned to the main plot, still bemused by what it showed. Thirty Imperial Fleet ships, eighteen of them battlecruisers. They'd been a more than welcome help, but the mercenaries' losses had still been horrendous. Assassin, three of nine battlecruisers, four of seven heavy cruisers… . The butcher's bill had been proportionately lighter among the destroyers and light cruisers, but the total was agonizing, especially for mercenaries who lacked the resources of planetary navies.

Yet none of the renegade fleet had escaped, and only two destroyers had surrendered. The mass murders on Ringbolt-yes, and Elysium-were avenged . . or would be, when Procyon finally died.

A com signal chimed, and he hid a flicker of surprise as he recognized his caller's craggy face.

"Admiral Monkoto," a voice rumbled, "I'm Brigadier Sir Arthur Keita, Imperial Cadre. Please accept my thanks on behalf of His Majesty. I'm certain His Majesty will wish to personally express his own gratitude to you and all your people in the very near future. The Empire is in your debt."

"Thank you, Sir Arthur." Monkoto's heart rose, despite the pain of his losses. Sir Arthur Keita was not known for meaningless praise. When he spoke, it was with Seamus II's voice, and the Terran Empire paid its debts.

"I also wish to thank you for not destroying that dreadnought." Keita's face hardened. "We want its crew, Admiral. We want them badly."

"I also want them, Sir Arthur." Monkoto's voice took on the steely edge of a file.

"I understand, and we intend to give you the justice you and your people deserve, but we need live prisoners for interrogation."

"That's what Inspector Ben Belkassem said," Monkoto acknowledged, and Keita's tight face eased just a bit.

"So he is with you. Good! And he's right, Admiral Monkoto."

"Fine, but how do you intend to collect them? We've pulled most of their teeth and disabled their shield generator, but they have to know what the courts have waiting for them. Do you really think they'll surrender?"

"Some of them will," Keita said with flat, grim finality. "I've got an entire battalion of Cadre drop commandos over here, Admiral. I believe we can pry them out of their shell."

"Drop com-" Monkoto closed his mouth with a snap. A battalion? For just a moment he felt a shiver of hungry sympathy for the bastards aboard that hulk. He shook himself and cleared his throat.

"I imagine you can, Sir Arthur, as long as they don't blow their power plants and take your people with them."

"They won't," Keita said. "Watch your plot, Admiral."

Monkoto's eyes dropped to the display as four battlecruisers moved towards Procyon. For a moment he thought they were about to launch assault shuttles, but they didn't. Keita had something no one else did-the complete blueprints for a Capella-class dreadnought-and the battlecruisers' short-range batteries stabbed into Procyon's hull. It was over in less than two seconds; long before the renegades could have realized what was happening, every one of Procyon's fusion plants had become an incandescent ruin.

"As I say, Admiral," Keita said with cold satisfaction, "they won't be blowing those plants." He paused a moment, then nodded as if to himself. "Another thing, Admiral. I don't know if it'll be possible to salvage that ship. If it is, however, she's yours. My word on it."

Monkoto sucked in in astonishment. Badly wrecked as Procyon was, she was far from beyond repair if a replacement Fasset drive could be cobbled up, and the thought of adding that eight-million-tonne monster to his fleet …

"But now," Keita said more briskly, "my people have a job to do. I'll speak with you again later, Admiral."

Tannis Cateau closed her armor's visor. The soft "shusssssh" of a solid seal answered her, and she checked her battle-rifle's servos. Many drop commandos preferred plasma guns or lasers for vacuum. Energy weapons weren't very popular in atmosphere, where their range was drastically reduced, and even in vacuum a well-timed aerosol grenade did bad things to lasers, but the laser's lack of recoil made it popular in zero-G. Of course, lasers had horrific power requirements, and plasguns could hardly be called pinpoint weapons, especially in the confines of a starship's passages, yet most seemed to feel their advantages more than compensated. Not Tannis. The battle-rifle was her chosen precision instrument, and using her armor's thrusters to offset the recoil had become instinct years ago.

She shook off her woolgathering thoughts with a wry smile. Her brain always insisted on wandering in the last moments before action was joined … unlike Alley, who only seemed to focus to an even greater intensity.

She pushed that memory away quickly and watched the troop bay repeater as the assault shuttles formed up. At least Alley had gotten away. She hadn't been killed by her own, and there was still hope -

The last shuttle slid into place, thrusters flared, and they swooped across the kilometers towards Procyon's savaged hulk.

Monkoto felt his stomach tighten as the silvery minnows darted towards the wounded leviathan. They were such tiny things-little larger than an old pre-space airliner-and if he'd missed even a single energy mount … .

But no weapons fired. The Bengals snarled down on their prey, belly-mounted tractors snugged them in tight, and hatches opened.

Tannis ducked instinctively and swore as a blast of penetrators spanged off her armor. One of her headquarters section reared up between her and the fire, staggering back a meter as the heavy-density projectiles slammed into him. They were from a standard combat rifle, and fiery ricochets bounced and leapt as his armor shrugged them aside. His weapon rose with the deadly economy of tick-enhanced reactions, and Tannis winced as a gout of plasma spewed up the passage, silent in the vacuum. The rifleman vanished-along with twelve meters of bulkhead.

"Prisoners, Jake," she said mildly. "We want prisoners."

"Sorry, Ma'am." The hulking commando, a third again Tannis's height, sounded almost sheepish. "Got carried away."

"Yeah, well, thanks anyway."

Her lip twitched as her team picked its way past the glowing wound. Jake Adams sometimes forgot how drastic the consequences could be when he got "carried away." Combat armor gave anyone the "muscle" to use truly heavy weapons; Adams also had the size, and his "plasma rifle" was the equal of a shuttle cannon.

Her amusement faded as she focused on her display. Boarding assaults were always ugly. Even though they knew every nook and cranny of their battlefield, there were still too many places for die-hards to hole up, and no pirate had any illusion about his or her ultimate fate. Her HQ section's circuitous route had been planned to reach their real objective while her other wings distracted the enemy rank and file to clear her path. They were doing it … but they were taking losses despite their equipment.

She peered about her, checking corridor traffic markings against her display, and grunted in satisfaction.

"Wolverine-One, Ramrod has cleared route to Tango-Four-Niner-Lima down Zebra-Three. Form on my beacon."

Captain Schultz's acknowledgment came back, and she tucked away her display and swung her rifle into fighting position as Bravo Company began closing on her current positions.

"All right, Jake. You see that hatch down there?"

"Yes, Ma'am. I surely do."

"Well, this piece of shit's flag bridge is on the other side of it." She smiled up at him and waved a hand with the tick's dance-like fluidity. "Feel free to get carried away."

James Howell crouched behind his useless console in his vac suit. The laser carbine was alien to him, clumsy-feeling in his grip, but he waited almost calmly, his mind empty. There was no room for hope, and no point in fear. He was going to die, and whether it happened in a few minutes or a few hours-or even in a few months, if he was taken alive-didn't matter. He'd betrayed all he was sworn to uphold to play the great game; now he'd lost, and his own stupidity had brought all of his people to the same degrading end.

Echoes of combat quivered through the steel about him, and he glanced across the bridge at Rachel Shu, small and deadly behind a bipod-mounted plasma rifle. Others crouched with them, waiting, eyes locked on the hatch. Any moment now -

The heavily-armored hatch shuddered. A meter-wide circle flared instantly white-hot, and a tongue of plasma licked through it, a searing column that leapt across the bridge. Someone got in its way and died without time even to scream as the heart of a sun embraced him.

Another bolt of fury blew the hatch from its frame in half-molten wreckage, and the first drop commando charged through it.

Howell braced his laser across the console and squeezed the stud. A dozen others were firing, flaying the armored figure with tungsten penetrators and deadly beams of light, and the invader staggered. His battle-rifle flashed white fire as he went down-an unaimed spray of heavy-caliber penetrators that chewed up consoles and people with equal contempt-and then Rachel's plasgun fired, and what hit the deck was a less than human cinder.

Tannis Cateau swallowed a curse as her point man went down.

It was her fault. Other teams had already taken heavy fire; hers hadn't, and she'd let herself grow overconfident. Now she slid forward, hugging the bulkhead and trying not to think about Adams and his monster gun behind her. Her racing mind rode the tick, and she reached out through her armor sensors. She couldn't get a clear reading, but with a little help …

A hand signal brought her HQ grenadier up on the other side of the passage, and she unhooked a small device from her armor harness, then nodded.

The grenadier opened up on full auto. It was a mixed belt, mostly smoke and pyrotechnics with only a handful of light HE, for they wanted prisoners, but it did its job. Anyone beyond that hatch was hugging the deck as flash-bangs and anti-laser vapor exploded in his face when she tossed the sensor remote with a smooth, underhand motion. It bounced across the deck, unnoticed under the cover of the grenades, and she smiled the cold, distant smile of a drop commando as she keyed it alive.

Ah! She oriented her remote perspective, tallying threat sources and taking careful note of the plasma rifle, then nodded to the grenadier a second time. He ripped off another burst; then Tannis Cateau flowed into the hatchway with the uncoiling deadliness of a bushmaster, and her battle-rifle's powered mounting was an extension of her own nerves. Her target was invisible behind the last of the grenade bursts, but the rifle rose without an instant's waste motion, and she squeezed off a three-shot burst. The rounds left the muzzle at XXXXX hundred meters per second; the two-millimeter sub-caliber projectiles reached their target virtually instantaneously and cut its legs from under it.

Even most drop commandos found it difficult to direct aimed fire from a remote sensor, but Tannis Cateau was an artist. Answering fire ripped back at her despite the blinding effect of the greandes, and she ignored it. She knew it was unaimed; they couldn't see her, but her eyes were in their midst.

Her rifle was a magic wand, spewing agony and death with merciless precision, and for once there was no pity in her. Her ammo belt burned through the feed chute in three- and four-shot bursts, and the answering fire ebbed. A last spattering of penetrators whined off her armor, and she went through the hatch like a panther, already calling for the medics.

"My God."

Ben Belkassem's words hung in the sickbay air, and he wondered if they were a curse or a prayer. He sank back into his chair, as nauseated as Tannis Cateau had been as she came down from the tick.

Sir Arthur Keita said nothing, only stared down at the woman in the hospital bed. Tannis's fire had sliced away her legs like a jagged scalpel, but no one pitied her. She lay there, smiling a bemused, cheerful smile, and Keita wanted to strangle her with his bare hands.

Rachel Shu was the only member of the renegades' field staff to be taken alive. He knew he should be grateful, that no one except James Howell himself could have given them more information, but simply listening to her fouled him somehow. She carried an invisible rot with her, a gangrene of the soul all the more terrible for how ordinary she looked, and she'd explained it all with appalling cheerfulness under the influence of Ben Belkassem's drugs.

Under normal circumstances, no imperial subject could be subjected to truth drugs outside a court of law-which, Keita knew, wouldn't have stopped Ben Belkassem or Hector Suares for a moment. For himself, the brigadier was just as happy that no laws had been broken. Bent, perhaps, but not broken. Shu had been taken in the act of piracy; as such, she had no rights. Keita could have had her shot out of hand, and he wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to! But she was far too valuable for that. His medicos would cosset and pamper her as they would the Emperor himself, for her testimony would put Subrahmanyan Treadwell and Sir Amos Brinkman in front of a firing squad.

He stepped back from the bed as from a plague carrier and folded himself into a chair opposite Ben Belkassem. Tannis Cateau was a white-faced ghost at his side, and silence hung heavy until the inspector broke it.

"I can't-" He shook his head. "I heard it all, and I still can't believe it," he said almost wonderingly. "All these months hunting for the cold-blooded bastards behind it, only to find this at the end of them."

"I know." Keita's lips worked as if he wanted to spit on the deck. "I know," he repeated, "but we've got it all. Or enough, anyway." He turned to Inspector Suares, standing at Ben Belkassem's shoulder. "We won't need Clean Sweep after all, Inspector."

"I can't say I'm sorry," Suares said, "but this is almost worse. I don't think any sector governor's ever been convicted of treason."

"There's always a first time," Keita said grimly. "Even for this, I suppose." He shook himself. "I'll speak to Admiral Leibniz myself; I don't want this going any further than the people in this room until we reach Soissons."

He inhaled deeply, then summoned a sad smile.

"This may even help, in a way." The others looked at him in astonishment, and his smile grew a bit wider. "We'd never have gotten this far without Alley, Tannis." He nodded at Ben Belkassem. "Add it to what the Inspector has to say, and we may get that shoot on sight order dropped."

Tannis's face lit with sudden, fragile hope, but Ben Belkassem sucked in air as if he'd been punched in the belly. Keita turned at the sound, and his eyes narrowed as he saw the inspector's face.

"What?" he asked sharply

"Alicia," Ben Belkassem whispered. "My God, Alicia!"

"What about her?"

"She knows. Dear God in heaven, she knows about Treadwell!"

Keita twitched in surprise. "That's ridiculous! How could she?"

"The computers." Ben Belkassem's hands gestured in frustration as they eyed him blankly and he tried to put his racing thoughts into words. "Procyon's computers! When Megaira took out the AI, Alicia tapped into the net along with her!"

"What are you talking about?" Tannis demanded. "That's-I don't think that would be possible for a trained alpha-synth pilot, much less Alley! Even if she could, Shu just told us Treadwell wasn't in the computers."

"Don't you understand yet?" Ben Belkassem snarled so fiercely Tannis stepped back. "She's not crazy-not the way you thought! Tisiphone is real!"

Tannis and Keita exchanged quick glances, then turned wary eyes upon the inspector, as if they expected him to begin gibbering any moment, and he forced his anger and frustration back down.

"You weren't listening to me earlier," he said urgently. "I told you what she did to Alexsov. She didn't question him, she read his mind. Call it telepathy, call it rogue psi talents, call it any damned thing you want, but she did it!"

Keita sank back in his chair, Tannis drove her hands deep into her pockets and hunched her shoulders, and Ben Belkassem nodded slowly.

"Exactly. You may think Tisiphone is a product of Alicia's own mind-I don't. I sat across a dinner table and talked to her, for God's sake! I don't know what she is, but she's real, and she really can read minds … among other things. Think about how Alicia broke out of the hospital and stole Megaira. Think about how she tracked down the 'pirates,' damn it!"

"All right," Keita said at last. "All right, let's grant that Alicia-or this Tisiphone-can read minds. If she didn't get it from Alexsov, where could she have gotten it since?"

"From Rendlemann." Ben Belkassem pointed at Shu. "Remember what she said about what happened to him when Megaira took out Procyon's AI? That was Tisiphone. It had to be."

"Oh, come on!" Keita protested. "The man was linked to a crashed AI!"

"Oh?" Ben Belkassem turned to Tannis. "What normally happens to a cyber-synth operator when that happens, Major?"

"Catatonia," Tannis said promptly. "He goes out like a light."

"Then why did they have to sedate Rendlemann to hold him down?"

"Crap!" Tannis breathed. "He's right, Uncle Arthur-that's totally outside the profile. If Alley really can read minds now …"

There was a long moment of silence, and then Keita sighed.

"All right. Suppose she can-and did. Why the sudden concern?"

"If she knows about Treadwell, she's going to go for him," Ben Belkassem said flatly.

"Wait-just wait a minute!" Tannis protested. "What do you mean 'go for him'?"

"I mean she and Megaira-and Tisiphone-will try to kill him. She doesn't know we got any of Howell's staff alive. As far as she knows, she's the only person who knows the whole truth, and everyone thinks she's crazy. She thinks no one would believe her-that she has to get him herself."

"But she can't," Tannis said reasonably. "Treadwell's on the Soissons command fortress-she knows that."

"And she doesn't care. My God, it was all I could do to stop her from going after Howell by herself!"

"But it would be suicide. Alley would never do anything like that. I know her."

"You knew her," Ben Belkassem corrected grimly. He folded his hands tightly and stared down at them, choosing his words with care. "She's not crazy the way you thought she was, but-" He paused and inhaled deeply. "Major Cateau, Sir Arthur, there's something else going on inside her now. It wasn't there at Soissons. There's a … fanaticism. I saw it after Wyvern. She was fine before she found out about Alexsov and Brinkman, but then-"

"What are you saying, Ferhat?" Keita asked quietly.

"I'm saying she doesn't care about anything but destroying the 'pirates.' Nothing else is real to her anymore. She'll kill herself to get them … and she'll kill anyone else who stands in her way."

"Not Alley," Tannis whispered, but it wasn't a protest. She was pleading, and Ben Belkassem hated himself as he nodded. Keita stared at the inspector, and his mouth tightened.

"If you're right-I'm not certain you are, but if you're right-there are nine thousand other people on that fortress."

"I know."

"But could she even get through the defenses?" Suares asked.

"She already got through them once," Ben Belkassem said. "She cut right through the middle of Howell's entire squadron. I don't know if she can get through the forts again. I wouldn't bet against it … but I doubt she could get back out alive."

"She wouldn't want to." Tears sounded in Tannis's voice. "Not Alley. Not after killing nine thousand innocent people." A sob caught in her throat. "If she could do that, she's turned into something she wouldn't want to live."

"She'll ram," Keita said softly. "She'll take the fort out with her Fasset drive. It's all she's got that could do the job."

"We have to warn them," Suares said. "If we have Treadwell taken into custody, removed from the fortress, and tell her so-"

"We can't." Ben Belkassem smiled bitterly. "We don't have a starcom, and nothing we've got is as fast as Megaira."

"No," Keita said slowly, "but …" His voice trailed off, then he nodded decisively and stood. "We do have a dispatch boat. That's almost as fast, and she wormholed out of here almost directly away from Franconia. I doubt she had time to pre-plot it, either, so God only knows where she'll come out. I'll have Admiral Leibniz run the figures, but she's got to decelerate and reorient herself before she can even start for Soissons. If we leave immediately, we should beat her there with time to spare."

"And do what, Uncle Arthur?" Tannis asked in a tiny voice.

"I don't know, Tannis." He sighed. "I just don't know."

Chapter Sixty-Six

The shrill bell jarred her sleeping brain. She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes, then glared at the chronometer and punched the com button.

"Horth. What is it, damn it?!"

"Sorry to disturb you, Admiral," her chief of staff said, "but Perimeter Tracking's just picked up two incoming drive signatures."

"So?" Vice Admiral Horth managed not to snarl. "We've got thirty, forty arrivals a day in this system."

"Yes, Ma'am, but these two both look like Fleet drives. Neither is scheduled, and they're coming in very, very fast on reciprocal bearings. If they're headed for rendezvous here, they must be planning crash turnovers."

"Crash turnovers?" Horth swung her feet out of bed and fumbled for her slippers with them. "What sort of vectors are we talking about?"

"The more distant bogey's turning just over fourteen hundred lights and bears roughly oh-seven-three by three-five-oh, Ma'am; the closer one is making twelve-sixty lights from two-five-five by oh-oh-three. Unless they change heading after they break sublight, they'll meet right at Soissons."

Horth frowned in surprise. Two Fleet units headed for rendezvous here and no one had even mentioned them to Traffic Control? But then the speeds registered. Twelve hundred times light-speed was moving it even for a dispatch boat, but nothing moved at fourteen hundred lights except -

She forgot her slippers and reached for her uniform.

"ETAs?" she snapped.

"If they both go for minimum distance turnover from Franconia's Powell limit, Bogey One-the closer one-will drop sublight at approximately ten-forty-one hours, Ma'am. Bogey Two will do the same at eleven-forty-six."

"Um." Horth slid out of her nightgown and started climbing into clothes. "All right. Alert all fortress commanders. We've got time, but I want all forts on standby by ten hundred hours. Then get hold of Admiral Marat. See if he's completed that estimate of the alpha-synth's capabilities and get it to me ASAP." She zipped her blouse and reached for her tunic. "Is Admiral Gomez back from Ithuriel with the Capital Squadron?"

"No, Ma'am. The maneuvers aren't due to end until late tomorrow."

"Damn. Admiral Brinkman?"

"He's already aboard Orbit One for your morning conference, Ma'am."

"Ask him to join me in PriCon immediately, but I don't see any reason to wake the Governor General so soon."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Horth grunted and cut the circuit, and her face was worried. They hadn't managed to keep that lunatic from stealing the alpha-synth. Somehow, even after all the fire control upgrades since, she didn't think they'd do a lot better keeping her out.

The ponderous orbital forts of the Franconia System lumbered to life and began their equipment tests. People were people, and the crazy drop commando had been the butt of tasteless jokes for months; now she was coming back, and Alicia DeVries' madness was no longer an amusing subject.

A half-crippled starship sped through wormhole space, vibrating to the harsh music of a damaged Fasset drive far too long on emergency overboost. One sleek flank was battered and broken. Splintered structural members and shattered weapons gaped through rent plating, the slagged remnants of a cargo shuttle were fused to a twisted shuttle rack, and there was silence on its flight deck. Its AI hugged her wordless sorrow, and a bodiless spirit four thousand years out of her own time brooded in mute anguish over the evil she had wrought. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say. The arguments had been exhausted long ago, and the woman in the command chair no longer even heard them. Her uniform was stained and sour, her skin oily, her hair unwashed and lank, and her red-rimmed eyes blazed with fixed, emerald fire.

The starship Megaira hurtled onward, and madness sat at her controls.

"Hoo, boy! Look at that sucker," Lieutenant Anders muttered at his post in Tracking. Bogey One had timed its turnover perfectly; now it was sublight, ninety-three light-minutes from Orbit One and decelerating at thirteen hundred gravities. Whoever that was, he must have been in one hell of a hurry to get here. He was going to overshoot Soissons by almost a light-hour before he could kill his velocity, even at that deceleration.

The dispatch boat was crowded.

Keita hadn't even asked Tannis to stay behind-he recognized the impossible when he saw it-and Inspector Suares had been almost as insistent. Keita didn't really need him, for his own legal authority was more than sufficient for the distasteful task in hand, but having a Criminal Branch chief inspector in the background couldn't hurt. Ben Belkassem hadn't insisted on anything; he'd simply arrived aboard with an expression even Keita wouldn't have cared to cross.

All of which meant they'd been living in one another's pockets for almost a week now, since the eight-man craft had designed accommodations for only two passengers. They'd packed themselves in somehow-and, at the moment, it seemed everyone aboard was crowded onto the flight deck.

"How do I play the com angle, Sir Arthur?" the lieutenant commanding the dispatch boat asked. "They won't expect anything from us for thirty minutes or so, but the way we're coming in has to've made them curious."

"You've got urgent dispatches," Keita rumbled. "Don't say a word about who's on board. If anyone asks, lie. I don't want anyone knowing we're here-or why-until I'm actually aboard that fortress."

"Yes, Sir. I-"

The lieutenant paused and pressed his synth-link headset to his temple, then gestured at a screen. Unarmed dispatch boats had neither the need nor the room for a warship's elaborate displays, but the view screen doubled as a plot when required. Now it flashed to life with a small-scale display of the Franconia System. The blue star of their Fasset drive moved only slowly on the display's scale, but a second star rushed to meet them at an incredible supralight velocity. Numbers scrolled across the bottom of the screen, then stopped and blinked with the computers' best guess.

If that other ship executed a crash turnover of its own, it would drop sublight in sixty-four minutes at a range of two-point-eight light-hours.

"Well, Bogey One's a dispatch boat, all right," Lieutenant Anders announced as Perimeter Tracking's light-speed sensors finally confirmed the gravity signature analysis.

The watch officer nodded and turned to pass the information in-system to Orbit One, and Anders swung his attention back to Bogey Two. He had no idea why that dispatch boat had arrived just now, yet he couldn't shake the conviction that it had to have something to do with Bogey Two-and he knew what Bogey Two had to be.

"Jesus!" he muttered to the woman at the next console as Bogey Two streaked towards Franconia's stellar Powell limit. "If she doesn't flip in about fifteen seconds, she's gonna have fried Fasset drive for lunch."

"Are we ready, Admiral?"

"As we can be, Governor." Vice Admiral Horth sat in her command chair, already wearing her headset, and studied her plot. "I wish I knew what she's up to this time around."

"It doesn't really matter, does it, Becky?" Sir Amos Brinkman asked, and Horth shook her head with a sigh.

"No, Amos. I don't suppose it does," she said softly.

Coming up on turnover, Megaira murmured hopelessly. Please, can't we-?

"No!" Alicia DeVries' contralto was as harsh and gaunt as her face. Cords showed in her throat, and somewhere deep inside she wept for her cruelty to Megaira, but the tears were far away and lost. "Just do it!" she snarled.

"It's got to be Alley. But how did she get here so soon?"

"I don't know, Tannis," Keita replied. "Coming in on that vector after the way she wormholed out… . It just doesn't seem possible. She must have had her drive redlined all the way here."

"Should we warn Orbit One?" Ben Belkassem asked quietly.

Keita stood silent for a moment, then shook his head.

"No. They already have her course plotted. Nothing we can tell them could change their defensive responses, and the truth would only disorganize their command structure at the critical moment." He glanced at the lieutenant. "Continue your deceleration, Captain, but have your com section ready. We'll just barely have the range to reach her when she breaks sublight."

Ben Belkassem looked up sharply, then glanced at Tannis. The major hunched forward, staring at the plot, and the inspector moved even closer to Keita, pitching his voice too low for her to overhear.

"Do you really think you can talk her out of this, Sir Arthur?"

"Honestly?" Ben Belkassem nodded, and Keita sighed. "Not really. She's got a damned low opinion of imperial justice-God knows she has a right to it-and from what you've told me about her mental state-"

He exhaled sharply.

"No, I don't think I can talk her out of it, but that doesn't mean I don't have to try."

"Here … she … comes," Lieutenant Anders whispered. Then, "Turnover! Christ! Look at that decel!"

Megaira whipsawed on the brink of self-destruction as her maltreated Fasset drive took the strain. Her velocity wound down insanely, dropping towards the perimeter of wormhole space, and fittings rattled and banged. Alicia felt the vibration, felt the starship's pain in her own flesh, and her fixed stare never wavered.

"Bogey Two dropping sublight … now," Tracking reported to PriCon. "Deceleration holding steady at twenty-three-point-five KPS squared."

Horth nodded and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her chin. Odd. DeVries was piling on an awful lot of negative G for someone in such a big hurry to get here.

Megaira bucketed through space, just below drive overload, and her velocity dropped rapidly. A vector projected itself behind Alicia's eyes, one that stretched one and a third billion kilometers to a dot invisible with distance, and she smiled a death's-head smile.

Two starships raced toward one another, converging on the distant spark of Franconia, and a message reached out across the gap between them. Even light seemed to crawl at such a range, but Megaira sped to meet it even as she decelerated. The outer ring of orbital forts brought their fire control on line, searching for her, dueling with her ECM, and the AI noted the changes in their sensors. She was well outside range-for now-but she was committed to enter it, and the upgrades of the last few months would reduce her ECM's efficiency by at least forty percent.

She considered reporting to Alicia, but there was no point.

"Look! She's still decelerating!" Tannis Cateau exclaimed. "Maybe we were wrong!"

"Maybe we were," Keita agreed, but he met Ben Belkassem's eyes behind her and shook his head minutely.

"Admiral Horth, Bogey One is transmitting."

"Well?" The admiral eyed the com rating narrowly, alerted by something in the man's voice. "What does he say?"

"We don't know, Ma'am. It's an awful tight beam and it wasn't addressed to us-we just caught the edge of the carrier as it went past, and it's encrypted."

"Encrypted?" Treadwell's voice was sharp, and the com rating nodded.

"Yes, Sir. We're working on it, but it's going to take time. It's imperial in origin, but we've never seen anything quite like it."

"And it's being sent to the alpha-synth?" Horth pressed.

"Yes, Ma'am."

The admiral nodded, then watched Brinkman and Treadwell exchange glances and wondered just what the hell was going on.

Only three of the outer forts could range on Megaira, but SLAMs streaked out from them, and a low, harsh growl quivered in Alicia's throat as she watched their deadly sparkles come. They were beautiful, their threat lost in the elemental splendor of destruction, and part of her wanted to reach out and embrace their glory. But she couldn't. She must dance with them, avoiding them, cutting through them to reach the object of her hate.

She watched Megaira flirt with death, trolling the SLAMs off course with her electronic wiles, flipping aside to evade the ones she could not enmesh, and the AI's pain was a knife in her own heart. Yet she was beyond pain. Pain only fed her hunger, whatever its source.

Tisiphone stood silent and helpless in Alicia's mind. It was all she could do to keep Alicia's blind savagery from dragging Megaira under and clouding the lightning-fast reflexes which kept them both alive.

She'd never guessed what she was creating, never imagined the monster she'd spawned. She'd seen the power of Alicia DeVries's mind without recognizing the controls which kept that power in check, and only now had she begun to understand fully what she had done.

She had shattered those controls. The compassion and mercy she'd feared no longer existed, only the red, ravening hunger. Yet terrible as that might be, there was worse. She'd found the hole Alicia had gnawed through the wall about her inner rage, and she couldn't close it. Somehow, without even realizing it was possible, Alicia had reached beyond herself. She'd followed Tisiphone's connection to the Fury's own rage, her own destruction, and made that incalculable power hers as well.

For the first time in millennia, Tisiphone faced another as powerful as herself, a mortal mind which had stolen the power of the Furies themselves, and that power had driven it mad.

Vice Admiral Rebecca Horth sat silently, lips pressed firmly together, as the renegade alpha-synth evaded her SLAMs. More forts were firing now, and some of them, at least, were coming closer … but not close enough.

She checked the converging vectors again and frowned. The dispatch boat would pass within a few thousand kilometers of Soissons on its course to meet the alpha-synth, but if the alpha-synth maintained its present deceleration, it would pass well behind the planet when it crossed Soissons's orbit. Which made no sense, unless … .

She stiffened in her chair and started punching new numbers into Tracking's extrapolations, and her face paled.

Ben Belkassem stood silent, chewing the inside of his lip raw, and smelled the tension about him. The dispatch boat's velocity was down to seventy-two percent of light-speed, but Alicia's more powerful drive had Megaira down to barely .88 C despite her far shorter deceleration period.

No one spoke, and he wondered if Keita suspected what he did. Probably. Did Tannis? He glanced at the major's white, strained features and looked away. She might not admit it to herself, but she must be beginning to.

He returned his gaze to the plot. Thank God he'd left Megaira the O Branch codes. At least they could talk to each other without Defense Command-and Treadwell-listening in.

"What the-?" Lieutenant Anders twitched in surprise and looked up at his supervisor. "Sir, Bogey Two's just made a second turnover! She's stopped decelerating and started accelerating again."

Emotionless computers considered the changed data, and Anders gasped.

"Oh my God-she's on a collision course for Orbit One!"

Tannis groaned as Megaira turned end-for-end and aligned her Fasset drive on the point in space Orbit One would reach in forty-two minutes and sixteen seconds. It turned the drive into a shield against the heavier fire of the inner fortress ring-and at the moment she reached Orbit One, the alpha-synth would have regained virtually all the velocity she'd lost. Alicia would be moving at .985 C when she rammed.

Fifty-seven minutes after it had been sent, Keita's desperate message converged with Megaira's receivers.

Alicia looked up incuriously as a com screen blinked to life. She recognized the face, but the person who had known and respected-even loved-that man was dead, and the powerful voice meant less than the brutal vibration lashing Megaira's over-stressed hull.

"Alley, I know what you're doing," the voice said, "but you don't have to. We have independent confirmation, Alley; we know who you're after, and I swear we'll get him. You've done enough-now you have to break off." Sir Arthur Keita's eyes pled with her from the screen and his voice was raw with pain yet soft. "Please, Alley. Break off. You don't have to kill nine thousand people. Don't turn yourself into the very thing you hate."

Alley? It was Megaira's pleading mental voice. Alley, they know about Treadwell. You don't have to-

"It doesn't matter! They knew about Watts and let the bastard live! You think someone like Treadwell won't have something to trade them for his life?!"

But Uncle Arthur's given you his word! Please, Alley! Don't make me help you kill yourself!

Alicia only snarled in response. She turned her eyes from the screen where Keita's face still begged her to relent. She closed her ears to his voice, and deep at her very core, where even she could no longer hear it, a lost soul sobbed in torment. She locked her attention on Orbit One, ignoring the SLAMs still flashing towards her. All that mattered was that distant sphere of battle steel. Her smoking bloodlust craved the destruction to come-and the last, dying fragment of the person she once had been embraced it as her only escape from what she had become.

"She's not breaking off," Tannis whispered, and Keita nodded. Ten minutes had passed since Alicia must have received their message, and Megaira held her course unflinchingly. He glanced at the plot. The dispatch boat had crossed Soisson's orbit eleven minutes ago, and the range to Megaira had fallen to thirty light-minutes. The handful of warships in the system were converging on the alpha-synth, but none of them could reach her in time.

He closed his eyes, then turned to the dispatch boat's commander.

"I need two volunteers. One in the engine room and one on the helm. Put the rest of your people into your shuttle and get out of here."

The lieutenant looked up in confusion, but Ben Belkassem understood.

"I'm a pretty fair helmsman, Sir Arthur," he said.

"What-?"

Tannis broke off, eyes widening, and stared mutely at Keita. The brigadier gazed back, sad eyes unflinching, and she bit her lip.

"Go with them, Tannis," he said gently.

"No. Let me talk to her! I can stop her-I know I can!"

"There's no time … and there's only one shuttle. If you don't leave now, you can't leave at all."

"I know," she said, and he started to make it an order, then sighed.

"Admiral, that dispatch boat's shuttle just separated."

Admiral Horth tore herself away from the intensifying fire ripping ineffectually towards the alpha-synth and checked her plot as the shuttle arced away from the dispatch boat's base course. It was fourteen light-minutes from Soissons, still streaking for the far side of nowhere at sixty-five percent of light-speed, and no shuttle could kill that kind of velocity. Which meant its crew must be counting on someone else's picking them up … and must have a very urgent reason for abandoning ship.

The dispatch boat's vector curved very slightly, and Horth swallowed in sudden understanding. Its course had been roughly convergent with the alpha-synth's from the start; now the match was perfect, and the dispatch boat was no longer decelerating.

A blue dot swelled ahead of Megaira on Alicia's mental plot, far larger and more powerful than any SLAM. Her nostrils flared and she bared her teeth as hate boiled within her. She knew what it had to be-and that, unlike a SLAM, it possessed onboard seeking capability.

She hunched down in her command chair, eyes bloodshot and wild, but her course never deviated. She would reach Treadwell or die trying, and dying would be a triumph in itself.

Sir Arthur Keita glanced at the chronometer. Ben Belkassem had the helm. The dispatch boat's skipper had taken over Engineering, and Tannis manned the communications console. No one else was aboard, and they had eight-point-nine minutes-under seven, given relativity's dictates-to live. It seemed unfair, somehow, to be robbed of those few, precious seconds by Einstein's ancient equations, but he pushed the thought aside.

"Talk to her, Tannis," he said softly.

"Alley-it's Tannis, Alley."

Alicia's eyes jerked back to the com, and her wrath faltered. A strange sound hung in the air, and she realized it was herself, the unbroken, animal snarl of her rage. She sucked in breath, frowning in slow, painful confusion as she peered at the screen. Tannis? What was Tannis doing here?

"I'm on the dispatch boat ahead of you, Alley," Tannis said, and Alicia's heart spasmed. Tears gleamed on Tannis's face and hung in her soft voice, and a tattered fragment of the old Alicia writhed under them. "Uncle Arthur's with me, Sarge-and Ben Belkassem. We … can't let you do this."

Alicia tried to speak, tried to scream at Tannis to get out of her path, to let her by to rend and destroy, to run for her own life, but nothing came out, and Tannis went on speaking as the hurtling vessels raced together at a closing speed one and a half times that of light.

"Please, Alley," Tannis begged. "We know the truth. Uncle Arthur knows. We've brought the warrants with us. We'll get him, Alley-I swear we will. Don't do this. Don't make us kill you."

Agony stabbed Alicia. She wanted to tell Tannis it was all right, that she had to be killed. Death didn't twist her with anguish and startle tears back into her glaring eyes at last. It was Tannis's voice, Tannis's sorrow, and knowing the only way that unarmed dispatch boat could kill her.

"Please," she whispered to the bulkheads. "Oh, please, Tannis. Not you, too."

But her transmitter was dead; only Megaira and Tisiphone heard her anguish, and Tannis drew a deep breath on her com screen.

"All right, Alley," she whispered. "At least it won't be a stranger."

Alicia DeVries staggered up out of her command chair and pounded the com with her bare fists. Shattered plastic slashed her hands bloody, and her animal shriek of loss drowned even the howl of Megaira's tortured drive. She ripped the unit from the console and hurled it to the deck, but she couldn't kill the memory, couldn't stop it, couldn't stop knowing who she was about to kill, and hatred and loss and grief were an agony not even death could quench.

"She's not going to break off," Keita whispered through bloodless lips, and Tannis sobbed silently in agreement.

Ben Belkassem only nodded and adjusted his course slightly.

The being called Tisiphone had no eyes. She had never wept, for she had never known sorrow, or compassion, or love. Those things were alien to her, no part of the thing she had been created to be.

Until now.

She felt Megaira's frantic grief beyond the barrier she held between Alicia's madness and the AI, felt it like a pale, anemic shadow of Alicia's agony. The agony she had created. The torment she had inflicted upon an innocent. Only the tiniest shadow of Alicia DeVries survived, and the fault was hers. She had reduced the greatest warrior she had ever known to a hate-maddened animal who could be stopped only by death, and-far, far worse than that-Alicia knew what had happened. Somewhere deep inside, she stared in horror at the thing she had become and begged to die.

Tisiphone looked upon the work of her hands and recoiled in horror of her own. She'd been corrupted, she realized. She'd broken Alicia DeVries, shattered her concepts of justice and mercy, of compassion and honor, and even as she stripped them from her victim, they had infected her. She'd seen herself in Alicia from the outset; now she had perfected the Fury in Alicia, but she had become something else, and what she saw appalled her.

She fought against the paralysis of her own self-disgust. Alicia's bottomless hate and hunger hissed and crackled before her, and she feared them. She, who had never known fear, knew terror as she confronted her equal. It would be so easy to hold her hand, to wait out the last fleeting minutes and let death separate her from that seething well of power, for Alicia DeVries was a Fury, fit to destroy even an immortal.

But Tisiphone had learned too much, changed too fundamentally. It was her fault, she'd told Alicia, and hers the price to pay.

She paused for one blazing second, drawing in her power, and attacked.

Alicia DeVries howled and lurched to her feet, pounding her head with clenched, bloody fists. She staggered, writhing in her agony, and rebounded from the uncaring battle steel of a bulkhead. She went back to her knees, beating her face against the padded deck sole in a blind, demented frenzy, and chaos raged behind her eyes.

The blood-red ferocity of her madness shuddered as Tisiphone drove into it, and thunderbolts of raw, unfocused power flayed the Fury with spikes of agony she had never been meant to know. Fury opposed Fury, clawing and gouging, and there was no mercy in Alicia. She lashed out, frantic to kill, to destroy, to avenge all her loss and torment and betrayal and suffering even if she must drown a universe in blood, and Tisiphone screamed in soundless pain under the avalanche of hate.

She could not reply in kind-she would not! She had said she was more skilled to wound than heal, and it was true, but this time she would heal or perish herself. She refused to strike back. She absorbed the killing blows without riposte, and drove a tortured sliver of her being towards the wound in Alicia's mind-the bleeding hole to Hell that filled Alicia with madness.

She touched it, only for an instant, and staggered as she was hurled away. Bits and pieces of her own being were ripped from her, added to the holocaust reaching to consume her, and she clawed her way back into its teeth. Somewhere behind it she heard the sobbing of a little girl-a mortal girl alone and terrified in hellspawned darkness-and groped blindly for her hand.

Tannis Cateau sat silent at the com station, face bloodless. Sir Arthur Keita stood beside her, one arm around her shoulders, and a display at Ben Belkassem's elbow raced downward, counting off the moments left to live.

Ninety seconds. Eighty. Seventy-five. Seventy. Sixty-five. Sixty. Fifty-five. Fifty -

And then the oncoming Fasset drive swung aside, clawing away from its deathride with frantic power, and Ben Belkassem wrenched his own course to the side while Sir Arthur Keita leapt for the com and began bellowing orders for Vice Admiral Horth to cease fire.