Deegan looked around; no one was close to them. He wasn't even breathing hard. He looked like he was trying to reach some kind of decision.
Maybe he's just trying to make peace with himself, Ghost suggested.
"You're not going to die at all," he said. He abruptly reached out and touched both Tonya and Ghost, and then there was a sickening dislocation.
Tonya stumbled, hit her head against a beam, and fell to her knees. They were back in the basement of the house where Deegan and his associates had been staying. Kendall's blood was still on the floor from earlier. How they had gotten here, Tonya couldn't even guess.
"What the hell?" She was too surprised to be scared; what had happened was outside her experience.
"You might want to get up against the wall," Deegan said, as calm as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Ghost moved past her; Tonya was too stunned to do anything.
"What the hell?" she said again.
Then the house fell on her.
Tebrey had repeatedly reviewed the information given to him by the Concord admiral, but it still didn't make much sense. The pattern of attacks on Concord and Federation ships pointed to the Centauri system, not Chi Orionis. There was old data suggesting that some attacks had originated from there, but that data was a decade old. There was nothing recent to corroborate the supposition.
Still, the Wolf Empire had been doing something unwholesome on Serendipity. It made the most sense to believe that the entire operation had been staged to lure a Theta to the planet, but why? Surely the world wasn't that important to the Empire. Or had they simply been trying to capture one of the things?
Simply.
Tebrey shuddered at the thought of trying to capture one. He could think of a few ways it might be possible, but he wouldn't have wanted to try. And what would they want with a Theta? A terrorist weapon? It would be far easier and safer to drop a bomb on their target.
Had they wanted it for some darker purpose?
He hadn't really understood everything the Concord admiral told him about the suspected origin of the creatures. Tebrey had spent a few months training with Rhyrhans during the Nurgg war; he'd found their philosophies intriguing. He didn't know if he could buy into the idea that some of the Thetas had once been human, but if it was possible to become one of the things – and Tebrey remembered what the entity had said to him amidst the torture and pain, about him joining them – then it made a sick kind of sense that the Empire would want one.
He was somewhat surprised that the Federation hadn't gone the same route.
Or maybe it had. He didn't know where the entities that infiltrated the Admiralty had come from, and he wasn't naive enough to think that that was the only place in the government where they were influencing things. Could his own government have experimented with creating Thetas? Could something have gone terribly wrong? He knew the answer to both questions was yes, which made him doubt his own loyalty.
Could he put his faith in people who would do that?
And what about the anomalies in his own DNA. Had he been tampered with? Had his own government been trying to make him into a Theta? Could the attack on the Kirov have come from within, and not from hyperspace like he'd been led to believe? His own memories of the incident had been interfered with by the Fleet psychologists during his recovery. Could he trust anything he remembered?
He was even beginning to suspect that the resurgence of the Drennanist movement in the Federation was a product of Theta influence. If true, it was ironic. The Drennanists wanted to destroy the very people who could save them from true damnation.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Tonya screamed involuntarily as Deegan pulled her out from under the fallen beams. A quick consultation of her medical suite showed that at least half of her ribs were broken, and she had greenstick fractures in both legs. Ghost was limping from her own injuries, but she assured Tonya that she was not hurt too badly. Tonya clung to the neo-panther for support and tried not to breathe too deeply. Her neural shunts could keep a lot of the pain at bay, but her ribs were giving her hell.
She suspected she had internal bleeding, as well, but her medical suite was glitching. That was not a good sign. Her implants were hardened against electromagnetic pulse by being mostly wetware. Only extensive physical damage to the sensors would account for the malfunction.
"Are you going to be okay?" Deegan shouted over the roar of the wind.
"I'll live," Tonya said. "We need to get out of here."
She rubbed grit and ash from her eyes. Everything around her was burning. The heart of the city was simply gone. Fires blazed all across the rest of the city. The waves of psionic pain rolled in against her like a beating surf. She didn't seem to be suffering from radiation poisoning, so at least the bomb had been relatively clean. Only the area near the center of the blast was likely to be dangerously radioactive, and everyone there had been vaporized instantly anyway.
"I'm certainly open to the suggestion. Did you have someplace in mind?" Deegan knelt close by so he wouldn't have to yell. His clothing was torn, but he appeared unhurt.
"Are you planning to apport us again?"
"I'm afraid I strained myself a bit with the last one. I'm not sure it would safe for us to do it again so soon."
Tonya sighed. It had been too much to hope for anyway. "I have a ship waiting just outside the city, but we're going to have to walk there. They can't come in here without being spotted, and right now I imagine the Federation ships in orbit are going to be a bit paranoid."
"Yeah, a nuked city will do that," said Deegan. "This kind of thing isn't common around here, is it?"
"Not really," Tonya replied.
"Are you sure you can make it?"
"I don't seem to have a choice." She stood upright despite the pain that made her legs weak. "You coming with me?"
"I'll at least see you to your ship. I'm not going to abandon you at a time like this." He stood and offered his arm, but she ignored it and started limping her way to the north and her ship.
The devastation was heartbreaking.
Away from the center of the blast, where the firestorm and shockwave had blasted apart the buildings, burned and broken bodies lay everywhere. Some of those bodies still screamed and clawed at their shattered limbs. Other people had been trapped in the rubble of the collapsed buildings. Their cries for help brought tears to Tonya's eyes, but there was nothing she could do for them.
"We could really use you," Tonya said to Deegan, fighting off despair. "We're trying to fight the Thetas, trying to stop things like this from happening. If you're working for a group trying to do the same thing, we could be allies. Share information and technology."
Deegan nodded. "I'll think about it. I have to warn you, though, I'm not really authorized to make a decision like that."
"At least come back to Dawn with us and talk to Admiral Shadovsky. Listen to what he has to say." She absently wiped the blood she'd coughed up from her mouth. "I think that he'd make you a good offer."
"I said I'll think about it. I am, and will continue to."
They made it to the ring of mostly intact buildings before Tonya stumbled and fell. It took her a moment to get back to her feet; she felt dizzy and lightheaded.
"Are you okay?" Deegan asked.
"Well, I'm bleeding internally, and I'm having trouble breathing because I have lots of broken ribs, and one of my lungs is punctured and keeps filling up with blood, but other than that, I'm swell."
"So that would be a no."
Tonya started to laugh and ended coughing up more blood. "Don't fucking make me laugh. It hurts too much." She sagged to her knees. Ghost came close, but couldn't do much more than offer moral support. Tonya would have crawled onto her back, but cats' spines weren't evolved to support weight like that, even cats as big and strong as Ghost.
Suck-up.
You love it, Tonya thought back.
"How much further to your ship?"
"It's in the woods two
kilometers outside the edge of town -- say four to five kilometers from here."
"Do you think you can make it that far?"
"Do I have a choice?"
Deegan came over and, with her permission, gently picked her up in his arms. Given the shape her ribs were in, a firefighter's carry was out of the question. He wasn't going to be able to carry her like this very far. Tonya was heavier than she looked because of dense muscles and implants.
"I'll try not to cough any blood on you."
"I appreciate that. I'm terribly fastidious, you know."
They were both covered in blood and grime.
Tonya didn't laugh again; it would have hurt too much. She datalinked the ship as Deegan carried her through the city. Out in the intact areas, emergency services were trying to put out fires, and many people seemed to be running around and screaming to no purpose. Tonya must have blacked out at some point, as the next thing she noticed was that they were outside the city.
From the woods to the north, the city of Sinclair looked mostly intact. A pall of smoke covered the worst of the destruction. Sirens blared from everywhere, and the waves of pain, anger, and despair were overwhelming.
"Where do we go from here?" asked Deegan.
"Just keep going north for about a kilometer," Tonya replied. Her voice sounded weak, even to herself. "The ship is hidden near a stream. It has an adaptive camouflage net over it, so it's going to be hard to see, but the crew knows we are coming. They'll be waiting."
She blacked again. The next thing she knew, she was aboard the ship, and the medic was standing over her, frowning.
"We just don’t have the medical facilities to help her," the woman said. "I could put medical nanotech packs over her ribs, but I'm afraid she's lost too much blood for it to do any good."
"So what can you do?" Deegan asked. "Surely there must be something."
"We'll put her in stasis for the trip back to Dawn. They won't have any trouble with her injuries there."
Tonya wanted to protest, but she was too weak. She didn't want to go into stasis. Not when she was hurt. Not ever. That was too much like what had happened before. She tried to resist, but Deegan and the medic overpowered her and carried her to a waiting pod. It looked like death to her.
Rest, Ghost soothed her. I'll be with you. No one will hurt you.
The last thing Tonya saw before the stasis field activated was Ghost standing guard in front of her. She knew Ghost would be waiting there for her when she came out.
Chapter Thirty-Five
War had finally come to Atlonglast.
Smoke hung heavily in the air from the fires that no one was even trying to put out. It had only been two weeks since the nuke had destroyed half the city. Jennifer Patterson didn't even know who had detonated the bomb. She suspected it had been the corporal, or even Tonya, but no one really knew. No one had seen any of those people since then, but they may have been killed in the blast.
The Federation blamed the separatists, and for all Jennifer knew, they were right. The separatists certainly tried to take advantage of the situation. The idiots had started shooting Federation personnel who'd been helping with the relief efforts. Wrong move. Federation soldiers had started rounding up everyone even suspected of being a separatist.
The resistance found itself in a difficult place. Which side did they take? Jennifer had only wanted to have equal rights under Federation law, but that wasn't going to happen now. The Federation had made up their minds for them when they started shooting people in the streets, many of whom had nothing to do with the resistance or the separatists. Violence and chaos had swept the streets, and before anyone knew it, there was outright rebellion and civil war.
Jennifer was just trying to stay alive.
She'd had her part to play in what had happened, certainly. She'd fought for her freedom with the rest, but what good had it done? She hadn't wanted this. The only good thing that she could see was that Cassandra seemed to have been killed by the nuke. The blast had been centered almost directly where she'd been staying. Cassandra's death had put Jennifer in charge of an organization that suddenly didn't trust anybody, not even each other. People who had known each other for years had starting shooting at one another.
The fighting was currently heaviest around the starport. The Federation soldiers were pulling back. Jennifer could think of only one reason why they would do that, and she didn't want to be in the city when it happened. She was making her best speed to the north and the potential cover of the caverns in the foothills.
"Jennifer!"
She looked around, keeping her flechette pistol ready. A man waved to her from the cover of a hastily fortified shop front. She recognized him as John Cook, the militia leader. She hadn't seen him since before the nuke.
"John? So this is where you ended up."
"Yeah. What the hell are you doing wandering around? You need to get under cover, or did you forget about the curfew?"
"No curfew anymore," Jennifer said. "The Federation is pulling out!"
"What?"
"They're leaving, and so am I, because you know what comes next."
"Well, shit," John drawled. "That isn't good."
"No," said Jennifer. "Look, I'm heading up to the caves north of town. Why don't you and your people join me? Got to be safer than staying here."
"A couple of my people are injured. I don't think they can make it."
"They certainly won't if they stay here," she said. "How many people do you have?"
"You're right," John sighed. "Shit." He turned and shouted for the others to come out and join them. "I've got about half of my militia company, half a dozen police, and a dozen or so people who've joined us over the last week."
"What about supplies?"
"We've stockpiled guns, ammunition, power packs, medical supplies and enough food for a few weeks."
"Damn, John." Jennifer was impressed.
"I knew things were going to get bad, but I didn't think it would be like this." John explained to his people what was happening. No one panicked; no one prone to that kind of behavior would have survived this long. A few of the wounded ones looked grim but resolved. No one questioned the need to get out of the city. They started packing up the gear.
Jennifer felt a lot better having a band of armed men and women with her as she made her way out of the city. No one tried to stop them, and they didn't even shoot the looters that they saw, as they once might have. There didn't seem to be any point to wasting the ammunition. If they were right, the Federation was going wipe the city from the face of Atlonglast as soon as the troops lifted from the starport. They could hear the shuttles lifting off as they reached the woods.
No matter what happened, life was never going to the same as it had been. Anarchy was going to descend on the planet. Their little band was going to have to stick together and continue to recruit if they hoped to survive. The problem was, most of the manufacturing was done off planet or even imported from other systems. Without access to a ship, they were going to run out of manufactured goods quickly. They didn't even have any learning equipment. When the ammunition and power cells ran out, they were going to be reduced to the Stone Age.
If we live that long, Jennifer thought. I hope that someone knows how to hunt, because this food isn't going to last long.
"Jennifer!" John was pointing at the sky.
It was falling.
The Federation ships must have fired on the orbital smelters. Millions of tons of machinery and ore fell from orbit. Meteors streaked, roaring, across the sky. Flashes from over the horizon said that at least some of the debris was reaching the surface. The rumble of those distant impacts reached them moments later.
"We have to get to those caves!" Jennifer yelled.
People began running. Jennifer was blown from her feet as something screamed down and hit the starport. People who had been looking in that direction were blinded by the flash as the starport and most of the city exploded.
"Kin
etic strike!" John yelled.
Jennifer could only nod mutely. She was too shocked by the chaos. What had been an orderly march had turned into a rout. People screamed and threw down what they carried as they ran. That's stupid, Jennifer thought. We're going to need that stuff. Of course, if we're dead, it won't matter.
John pulled her to her feet. "Come on!"
She shook herself out of her shock and ran with him; there was nothing else they could do.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ana was nervous as Bruce once again showed her into Mandor's office. This time there were others present: Jeroen, two women she didn't know, and a neo-panther. The neo-panther was much smaller than Hunter was, but still huge.
"Ana, good. Come on in," Mandor said to her. "Let me introduce you to the others."
She walked forward, trying not to blush or trip.
"Ana Tebrey, let me introduce you to Captain Johari Mellouk of the CSS Fagan, the courier you'll be taking to Cedeforthy. You know Jeroen, of course, and these Lt. Commander Tonya Harris and her companion Ghost."
She curtsied and smiled hesitantly. "Pleased to meet you." She shook the hand of the captain, who as tall as her husband, slender, and the darkest-skinned person she had ever seen. Ana wondered where she was from.
"Likewise," the captain said. She had a crisp voice, accustomed to command.
Tonya held out her hand. The commander was also lot taller than Ana, by at least eighteen centimeters, although shorter than the captain. She had a muscular but curvy frame and startling blue eyes. Ana couldn't tell how old she was, but guessed that she was about Hrothgar's age. Ana thought she was very attractive. She looked capable and confident, the way Ana had always wished she could be.
"Looks like I'm to be your bodyguard for a while," Tonya said. She didn't smile, and Ana could tell she wasn't happy with the assignment, although Ana couldn't pick up any thoughts from her or Ghost. They were both shielding extremely well.
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