The woman smiled knowingly, pain in those haunted amber eyes. She stood. "My name is Chrysla Marie Attenasio. "
"Chrysla? But you . . . you're . . . "
"Dead? Almost. MacRuder recognized me when he seized the Sassan freighter, Markelos. You see, Skyla, you now have yet another element to your double bind. How will you deal with your conflicting data? Surrender to insanity?
Build fanciful castles in the sky? I think not. I'm gambling that you can't allow yourself that kind of an easy way out.
"Meanwhile, someone who loves you very deeply is here to see you. He'll explain it all."
Skyla glanced uneasily about as the woman turned and left, a slight limp in her walk. Pain? In Arta's eyes? Skyla shivered, blinked, and shook her head.
This strange Artano, not Arta, but Chrysla . . . Chrysla Attenasio . . .
Staffa's . . . "Wife. "
Chrysla heard, hesitated, and touched the lock plate before she stepped out into the corridor.
Rotted Gods, Skyla. What do you believe? Aboard Chrysla? Impossible! Last she remembered was being strapped to that pus-dripping chair in Ily Takka's interrogation room. Skyla clamped her eyes shut, sweat beginning to form on her brow. Don't even think about it. Not now.
So where was she? If this were some sort of psychological game, some trick for interrogation, Ily had created a masterpiece. Damn it, the place even felt like being aboard Chrysla-and Chrysla Attenasio was dead! Blown apart off Myklene . . . if she'd ever existed at all.
Skyla checked quickly, discovering herself half-encased in the med unit. She slipped a furtive hand along the cool, smooth side of the machine, seeking the disconnect mechanism. She punched the latch release and froze as she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Someone in gray, a big . . . she gaped as Staffa entered, a shy smile on his lips. He rushed forward, charcoal gray cloak billowing behind him as he reached for her.
Hesitantly, she touched his hand, feeling the familiar warmth, and then he'd plucked her from the soft cushions of the med unit, crushing her to him.
"Staffa? How? Rotted Gods, you're real!" She clamped frantic arms around him in a grip so tight her arms began to ache.
He finally pushed her back, anxious gray eyes searching hers. "I was so worried about you. We scrambled the entire fleet, spaced in record time. I knew better! I should never have let you go out there alone. "
She buried her face against his shoulder, strength suddenly vanished. How could she explain what had happened? How could she tell this man she loved more desperately than life itself that she'd failed him?
"Staffa, listen, I have to tell you. Arta, she . Skyla pressed her eyes shut against the tears.
"It's all right. I don't care what happened. We'll deal with it."
"But, Staffa .
"I said, we'll deal with it. For the moment, Rega is crushed. Ily got away, but she won't get far. Free Space is ours. The war is over."
Ily? Escaped? Questions spun crazily in Skyla's head. Who was that woman?
She's almost an exact duplicate of Arta. Is she . . . is she really Chrysla?"
"Yes. She's a psychologist. She'll tell you more when she feels the time is right." He smiled warmly and ran his fingers gently along her cheek.
Chrysla? A twisting sensation pulled at Skyla's guts. "But how? I mean, she .
. . " What does this mean for us, Staffa ? As if he read her mind, he smiled and ran fingers through
her long blonde hair. "We'll work it all out. I love you more than I can ever tell you. You need to rest, get your strength back. Now, how about something to eat?"
Skyla nodded dumbly, the miserable feeling welling inside to supplant any appetite she might have had.
From the medical observation center contiguous to the hospital, Chrysla Attenasio watched the reunion. A deepening sorrow stitched her heart as she cataloged Staffa kar Therma's reaction. Her mouth tightened at the panic in Skyla Lyma's fragile expression as she stared up at the man she loved.
With a slim finger, Chrysla killed the connection. For long moments, she stood in silence, head bowed, eyes closed. Finally she shut the equipment down and walked to the corridor hatch.
By the time she entered the corridor, she'd masked the hollow longing within, her stride only marred by the other nagging pain-the physical one on her maimed leg.
A couple of days in a med unit would fix that, but for now she needed a counterbalance
for her suffering.
CHAPTER 5
Wiley Jenkins had followed events like everyone else on Ashtan. For two days, he'd waited anxiously for information from the planetary comm. He'd found out about the trouble when he entered his genetics lab on the third day after the stunning news of the Conquest.
Wiley had taken his morning ride from the Northside of Ashtan City to the genetics laboratory he owned and operated on the outskirts of the old city.
His tube dropped him, at the Grand Palace Lodgings, a sprawling hotel and resort for the very well to do.
Wiley would stroll through the gardens from the tube riser and then proceed the half kilometer to his laboratory, the entire way lined by the overhanging cottonwoods that made this section of Ashtan City so charming.
Wiley's bioengineering lab had been a labor of love for most of his life. His triumphs consisted of a jersey-Holsteinbison cross that produced milk in the harshest of northern plains environments. His cross allowed some agricultural factories on the fringes of the polar caps to produce dairy products for the first time. Thanks to this cross, along with smaller successes, the firm had grown to employ a staff of sixteen plus three other geneticists.
Wiley pressed his thumb to the lock plate and entered the building as the first rays of red light brightened the morning horizon. He made it a habit to get to work several hours before the others. He did his best work in those tranquil hours.
Shrugging out of his coat, he stuck a cup into the stassa dispenser, and checked the messages on the comm. Nothing. Only when he walked into the huge computer room to the right of the lab proper did he realize anything was wrong. There, the big Rega General mainframe should have been sorting probabilities for a bovine eye disorder known to occur in 0.4 percent of the derivative Hereford population on the planet.
Wiley barely noticed it when his stassa cup slipped from his stunned fingers.
Along with two years of work, his entire project had been spit out on the floor in endless sheets of flimsy.
A half an hour later, any attempt to sort through the mess had been proved beyond a doubt to be fruitless. In desperation, Wiley input the number for his genetic assistant.
The comm told him: ALL SERVICES ARE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. COMM
ERROR F-16 A. REPEAT: ALL SERVICES SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. COMM ERROR
F-16 A. And the message repeated over and over again.
Wiley Jenkins screamed and kicked stassa-stained flimsies around the room while his fingers flexed with the desire to strangle someone. Anyone!
It's a new day and a new way, Division First Ben MacRuder insisted to himself as he walked down the main corridor that curved through Gyton's guts. The atmosphere in the Regan warship had a stifling effect compared to that inside one of the Companions' vessels. Cables ran in ropy masses along the ceiling panels, and reinforcing strakes arched around the passage like ribs in a snake's belly. Worse, in the finest traditions of the Regan military, the paneling and bulkheads had been painted a nasty shade of puke-green.
Mac reached the conference room and slapped a hand to the lock plate. The hatch opened to admit him into an oval room ten meters across. A similarly shaped table filled the center of the room and Mac stepped around it, triggering the floor stud. A seat rose from the deck plating.
Mac dropped wearily into the chair, leaning back and closing his eyes. The entire universe had changed, gone suddenly grease-slippery under his feet.
But I should be used to that by now.
Nothing would be the same from this point forward.
An empire had died in the blink of an eye. Enemies were now allies. His relationship with his best friend had been forever
metamorphosed. The only woman Mac had ever fallen hopelessly in love with was forever beyond his reach. When Mac had sneaked away for a couple of hours, his father, the man he'd once held in such awe, had seemed like a rather mild individual-and so alien. After the horrors of Targa and the insane gamble to attack Imperial Sassa, any common ground they'd once shared had vanished like spit in the Etarian desert.
His life had changed, and there was no going back. But that wasn't what kept him from sleeping at night. He couldn't forget Chrysla. Amber eyes haunted him, lurking like phantoms in the back of his mind. If he but let go, she'd be there, smiling, the light shining in copper glints throughout her auburn hair.
Her scent lingered in his nostrils, sensual and teasing. He could reach out, feel her melting against him.
And see her running into Staffa's arms. She's another man's wife, Mac. Forget her.
But he never would.
"You know, I've seen some cases in my day, but yours takes first prize."
Rysta's rusty voice scattered Mac's thoughts to the solar wind.
He cranked an eye open and shot a hard glance at the old woman who was seating herself on the chair beside him. "I didn't hear you come in."
"Rapt as you were, boy, you wouldn't have heard a star go nova."
"Stop calling me boy."
"Remind me in fifty years or so, and I'll consider it." Mac straightened and gave the old woman a thorough inspection. Well over two hundred years old, even rejuv had ceased to work on Commander Rysta Braktov. She wore a crisp Regan Fleet uniform. Her knotty gray hair had been pulled into a severe bun.
That dark-skinned face had more crinkles than a zero-g lava flow, and her undershot jaw thrust forward defiantly. Age had gnarled her fleshy nose and given a bitter, sunken pucker to her brown-lipped mouth. Outside of the uniform, she could have been mistaken for a derelict, but behind that ancient facade lay one of the sharpest military minds in Free Space.
We make quite a team, Mac decided. Ancient Rysta Braktov, dark and withered, and young MacRuder, all blond,
tall, muscular, and blue-eyed. In place of Rysta's natty uniform, Mac wore the satin-textured, supple armor of an assault infantryman. The tightly woven synthetic consisted of ceramic and graphite micro-tubing that contained hydrocarbon
polymers in some threads and an oxycatalyst in others. Upon impact the tubes ruptured and the mixture set instantaneously, absorbing the impact of projectiles. Upon contact with blaster or pulse fire, the material hardened and flaked in ablative scale. Such armor was vacuum capable and a belt-pack powered choker generated a force field around the head. Otherwise, a helmet could be employed.
Mac didn't look his age, but when a man started counting off campaigns like Targa, Makarta Mountain, the Regan pacification, the strike on Imperial Sassa, and fomenting revolt and civil war, the sprews and angular flashings of youth got ground away in a hurry.
"She really got to you, didn't she, son?" Rysta asked in a low voice.
Mac lifted a shoulder. "I did my duty, that's all. She's back where she belongs."
"So? I'd heard through the scuttlebutt that Staffad dropped everything because of Lyma. Rumor has it that she's his lover. And Chrysla's his wife? That ought to make quite a situation for the old Star Butcher.
Mac's shoulders slumped. "More of a 'situation' than you know. The Praetor of Myklene abducted Chrysla more than twenty years ago. Kept her prisoner all that time because he knew Staffa would eventually be coming for him. When the Companions struck, they took the Praetor by surprise. The old villain never had time to use his trump card. Chrysla escaped. I guess in the meantime Staffa had come to love Skyla. Now he has them both."
After a pause, Rysta said, "I watched you and Chrysla, boy. She may look like a china doll, but that woman's got guts. I told you before, I get a lot of enjoyment watching youngsters. She doesn't know what she wants anymore than you do."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're important to her. Treated her like a human being. Given the way she looks, that's probably a first." Mac studied her, uneasy at the calm understanding in
those obsidian eyes. "Spill it. Do you know something I don't?
Maybe. I've been around a bit. But for the moment, let Is get down to business, shall we? " Rysta gave him a curious squint. "Well, you heard the Lord Commander, what's the verdict? Have we lost it all?"
Mac shook his head slowly. "I don't know, Rysta. I guess all we can do is navigate with the current . . . see where it carries us."
"Fill me in, boy. What happened down there on Rega? Mac placed his hands on the table and stared pensively at the shining surface as if he could scry the truth of what had occurred over the last couple of days. "We were right. Ily Takka had arrested Sinklar and most of the loyal Division Firsts. We'd have been in real trouble if Dion Axel hadn't chosen our side. After you left, we deployed around the Ministry of Internal Security and waited for Shiksta's opening shots. " He shook his head. "You know, I've never been so nervous.
It's one thing to go into combat, quite another to initiate a civil war that's going to tear your home and people asunder. "
"So what was that Rotted jamming that started just before the battle? It even screwed up our comm. "
Mac chewed at his lip. "Honestly, I don't know. Something of Staffa's. He calls it Countermeasures. "
It's that all right. Takes a lot to blot out battle comms, but he did it. I couldn't do a thing, couldn't even keep score.-
It sil!-e left us totally high and dry. Shik was right on schedule though, communication or not. He blew holes in the top of the Internal Security Ministry, and we dropped First Section in. Thought we'd get Ily, but she slipped away somehow. "
:'Rotted bad luck that," Rysta growled to herself. 'That's when the Companions dropped. The war was over before it even started. Staffa smashed the Regan government within seconds. I watched it, Rysta. From up there on the roof, I watched one administration building after another collapse under a gravity shot. Then Ryman Ark's STU teams were all around us."
Mac fingered the smooth surface of the table, eyes unfocused. "Funny, isn't it? There we were, starting a civil war,
and we ended up conquered before it even started. Makes me wonder if we didn't deserve what we got."
Wouldn't have happened if Ily hadn't been such a greedy bitch. "
"One of these days, I'll find her, and when I do . "Threats are just words, boy, and words don't pass water. What about this deal you cut with Staffa?"
"What could I do? Since we were both after Ily, I told Staffa if he'd stop shooting, we could sort it all out later." "So much for the sorting. We're surrounded, outgunned,
and with Comm Central destroyed and Orbital Defense paralyzed by that Rotted Countermeasures device of Staffa's, we couldn't effectively spit into a bucket. " Rysta sighed. "It's over, boy. All over. "
For long moments they sat quietly, each lost in thought. "Never thought I'd see it come to this." Rysta spread her fingers, looking at her withered palm.
"Three Tybalts, from the Imperial Fifth to the Seventh, shook this hand. I served my Emperors well." She grunted to herself. "So now what? You're one of the insiders. What's next? Staffa the First?"
"You were at that meeting. You know as much as I do. Rega's dead, Commander.
So is Sassa-and you know damned well who killed them. " Mac suddenly felt sick. "Latest reports are that a billion and a half people are dead on Imperial Sassa. Three more Companion vessels are spacing for Sassan territory as we speak. They're going to provide protection to crucial planets."
Rysta gave him a sober appraisal. "I've studied that data cube Staffa gave us.
Without Comm Central, who's going to coordi nate redistribution? I mean, our entire economy . . - "
"Yeah, same with the Sassans. Maybe Staffa can pull something out of this Seddi machine he's talking about. I
talked to Sinklar. He's going back to Targa with Staffa. Back to Makarta. "
:'Pus licking hell
'It won't all fall apart at once. The systems will break down over time. Sort of like suffocating very slowly." Rysta rubbed the back of her leathery neck.
"We've got
cargo lighters in bays six and eight. I checked the manifest. We're being resupplied for deep space. You called this meeting, said it was a briefing.
You want to tell me about
it? Did Sinklar get some other bright idea about how to save this situation? "
Mac looked down at his hands, knotting his fists until the tendons stood out.
"We've got a pretty good idea about what happened to Ily. She slipped away during the attack on her Ministry building. She had a shuttle available, and Arta Fera had Skyla Lyma's yacht. Gyton is spacing to find Ily Takka-and her Seddi assassin."
"Someone wants her real bad, huh? But then I'll bet Sinklar's still red-eared with shame over the way she twisted him around her finger. "
Mac bridled, then bit it off. "Sink isn't the only one. Most of this, I mean, everything that's happened, it's mostly Ily's fault. She assassinated Tybalt, goaded the Sassans, abducted Wing Commander Lyma, arrested Sink. Rotted Gods, what didn't she do?"
"Start the Targan rebellion," Rysta countered.
"No, she didn't. That was Bruen's doing-but Ily used it, kept it fermenting and boiling when Sinklar could have finished it."
"So what do you want from me? Or did you just call me up here to tell me you're stealing my ship?"
"Change of plans. First we have to drop in on Ashtan. Restore social order.
Thought maybe you'd like to go along." Mac raised an eyebrow. "Sinklar called a couple of hours ago and I had to beg to get you.
"You? Beg? My withered ass, boy."
"It's either that, or they're going to put you in charge of Fleet operations.
They want you to coordinate escort and patrol of vital space lanes . . .
ensure that supplies get through while they try to patch the system and keep people from running out of food, medicine, water, power, and the other necessities. In short, they've offered you command of Fleet and logistics. "
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