by David Weber
"You bastard!" Lieutenant Colonel Sandra Tillotson breathed.
"Me?" he said bitterly. "What about you, Sandy?"
His voice was like a blow. Her head jerked, and her eyes widened, their hatred buried in sudden disbelief as she saw him - him, not just another killer - for the first time.
"Colin?!" she gasped, and her reaction puzzled him. Surely the mutineers had known who they were trapping! But Sandy closed her mouth with an almost audible snap, her gaze flitting to the two dead bodies in the Fleet uniforms, and he could actually see the intensity of her thoughts, see a whole chain of realizations flickering over her face. And then, to his utter shock, she lowered her weapon.
His muscles tightened to leap across the intervening space and snatch it away. But she shook her head slowly, and her next words stopped him dead.
"Colin," she whispered. "My God, Colin, what have you done?"
It was the last reaction he had expected, and his own eyes narrowed.
"I found them like this. Those two - " his head gestured at the uniformed bodies, hands motionless " - were waiting for me. They … killed Sean, too."
Sandy jerked around to stare through the doorway, and her shoulders sagged as she finally recognized the savagely maimed body. When she turned back to Colin, her eyes were closed in grief and despair.
"Oh, Jesus," she moaned. "Oh, dear, sweet Jesus. Not Sean, too."
"Sandy, what the hell is going on here?" Colin demanded.
"No, you wouldn't know," she said softly, her mouth bitter.
"I don't know anything! I thought I did, but - "
"Cal tripped his emergency signal," Sandy said tonelessly, and looked at the dead scientist, as if impressing the hideous sight imperishably upon her mind. "I was closest, so I came as quick as I could."
"You? Sandy - you're in with Anu?"
"Of course not! Those two - Girru and Anshar - were two of his hit men."
"Sandy, what are you talking about? If you're not - "
Colin broke off again as his sensors tingled, and Sandy stiffened as she saw his face tighten.
"What is it?" she asked sharply.
"Those two bastards called in reinforcements," Colin said tautly. "They're coming. Don't you feel them?"
"I'm a normal human, Colin. One of the ‘degenerates,' " Sandy said harshly. "But you aren't, are you? Not anymore."
"A norm - " He broke off. "Later," he said tersely. "Right now, we've got at least twenty sets of combat armor closing in on us."
"Shit," Sandy breathed. Then she shook herself again. "If you've got yourself a bio-enhancement package, grab one of those energy guns!" She bared her teeth in an ugly smile. "That'll surprise the bastards!"
Colin snatched up Anshar's weapon. It had suffered no damage in their struggle and the charge indicator read ninety percent, and his fingers curled almost lovingly around the grips as he grasped Sandy's meaning. No normal human could handle one of the heavy energy weapons. Even Sandy's grav gun would be a problem for most Terra-born humans. For the Imperium, it was a sidearm; for Sandy, it was a shoulder-slung, two-handed weapon.
"How are they coming in and where are they?" Sandy demanded tersely.
"Twenty of them," Colin repeated. "Closing in from the perimeter of a circle. About six klicks out and coming fast."
"Too far," Sandy muttered. "We've got to suck them in closer…"
"Why?"
"Because - " She broke off, shaking her head. "There's no time for explanations, Colin. Just trust me - and believe I'm on your side."
"My side? Sandy - "
"Shut up and listen!" she snapped, and he choked off his questions. "Look, I had my suspicions when we didn't find any sign of you in that wreck, but it seemed so incredible that - Never mind. The important thing is you. What kind of implants did you get?"
Questions hammered in Colin's brain. How did Sandy, who obviously had no biotechnics, even know what they were? Much less that there were different implant packages? But she was right. There was no time.
"Bridge officer," he said shortly.
"Bridge - ?! You mean the ship's fully operational?!"
"Maybe," he said cautiously, and she shook her head irritably.
"Either it is or it isn't, and if you got the full treatment, it is. Which means - " She broke off again and nodded sharply.
"Don't just stand there! See if it can get our asses out of here!"
Colin gaped at her. The hurricane of his grief and fury, followed by the shock of seeing Sandy, had blinded him to the simplest possibility of all!
He activated his fold-space link, then grunted in anguish, half-clubbed to his knees by the squealing torment in his nerves. He shook his head doggedly.
"Can't!" he gasped. "We're jammed."
"Shit!" Sandy's face tightened again, but when she spoke again, her voice was curiously serene. "Colin, I don't know how you found Cal, or exactly what happened here, but you're the only man on this planet with bridge implants. We've got to get you out of here."
"But - "
"There's no time, Colin. Just listen. If we can suck them in close, there's an escape route. When I tell you to, go down to the basement. There's a switch somewhere - I don't know where, but you won't need it. Go down to the basement and move the furnace. It pivots clockwise, but you'll have to break the lock to move it. Go down the ladder and take the right fork - the left's a booby-trapped cul-de-sac - and move like hell. You'll come out about a klick from here in the woods above Aspen Road. Got it?"
"Got it. But - " he tried again.
"I said there's no time." She turned for the door, stepping carefully over Sean's body. "Come with me. We've got to convince them we're going to stand and fight, or they'll be watching for a breakout."
Colin followed her rebelliously, every nerve in his body crying out against obeying her blindly. Yet she clearly knew what she was doing - or thought she did - and that was a thousand percent better than anything he knew.
Sandy scurried down the hall and moved a wall painting to reveal a small switch. Colin's sensors reached out to trace the circuitry, but she threw it before he got far, and his skin twitched as he felt the sudden awakening of unsuspected defenses. He'd sensed additional Imperial technology as he approached the house, but he'd never suspected this!
"This wall's armored, but it faces away from the mountain, so we couldn't risk shield circuits in it," Sandy explained tersely, turning into the living room and kneeling beside a picture window. She rested the muzzle of her heavy grav gun on the sill. "Too much chance Anu's bunch would notice if one of 'em happened by. But it's the only open wall in the house."
Colin grunted in understanding, kneeling beside a window on the far side of the room. If they were trying to hide, they'd taken an awful chance just covering the roof and side walls, but not as big a one as he'd first thought. His own sensors were far more sensitive than any mutineer's, and he realized the shield circuits were actually very well hidden as he traced the forcefield to its source. He'd expected Imperial molecular circuits, but the concealed installation in the basement was of Terran manufacture. It had some highly unusual components, but it was all printed circuits, which explained both its bulkiness and their difficulty in hiding it. Still, the very fact that it contained no molycircs was its best protection.
The shield cut off his sensors in three directions, but he could still use them through the open wall, and he grinned savagely as the emission signatures of combat armor glowed before him. They were far better protected than he, but they were also far more "visible," and he lifted his energy gun hungrily.
"They're coming," he whispered, and Sandy nodded, her face grotesque behind the light-gathering optics she'd clipped over her eyes. They were the latest US Army issue, hardly up to Imperial standards but highly efficient in their limited area. He turned back to the window, watching the night.
A suit of combat armor was a bright glare in his vision, and he raised his energy gun. The attacker rose higher, topping out over the slop
e, and he wondered why they were no longer using their jump gear. The mutineer rose still higher, exposing almost his full body, and Colin squeezed the stud.
His window exploded, showering the night with glass. The nearly invisible energy was a terrible lash of power to his enhanced vision as it smashed out across the lawn, and it took the mutineer dead center.
The combat armor held for an instant, but Colin's weapon was on max. There was a shattering geyser of gore, and a dreadful hunger snarled within him as the mutineer went down forever and he heard a rippling hisss-crrackkk!
The near-silent grav gun's darts went supersonic as they left the muzzle, and Sandy's window blew apart, but its resistance was too slight to detonate them. A corner of his eye saw gouts of flying dirt as a dozen plunged deep and exploded, and then another suit of combat armor reared backwards. It toppled over the side of the yard, thundering on the road below, and Sandy's hungry, vengeful sound echoed his own.
Their fire had broken the silence, and the house rocked as Imperial weapons smashed at its side and rear walls. Colin winced as he felt the sudden power surge in the shield circuits. The fire went on and on, flaying the night with thunder and lightning, and the homemade shield generator heated dangerously, but it held.
Then the thunder ceased, and he looked up as Sandy spoke again.
"They know, now," she said softly. "They'll be coming at us from the front in a minute. They can't afford to waste time with all the racket we're making. They've got to be in and out before - " She broke off and hosed another stream of darts into the night, and a third armored body blew apart. " - before someone comes to see what the hell is happening."
"We'll never hold against a real rush," he warned.
"I know. It's time to bug out, Colin."
"They'll follow us," he said. "Even I can't outrun combat suits with jump gear." He did not add that she stood no chance at all of outrunning them.
"Won't have to," she said shortly. "There should be friends at the end of the tunnel when you get there. But for God's sake, don't come out shooting! They don't know what's going on in here."
"Friends? What - ?" He broke off and ripped off another shot, but this time the mutineers knew they were under fire. He hit his target squarely, but his victim dropped before the beam fully overpowered his armor. He was badly hurt - no doubt of that - but it was unlikely he was dead.
"Don't ask questions! Just get your ass in gear and go, damn it!"
"Not without you," he shot back.
"You stupid - !" Sandy bit off her angry remark and shook her head fiercely. "I can't even open the damned tunnel, asshole! You can, so stop being so fucking gallant! Somebody has to cover the rear and somebody else has to open the tunnel! Now move, Colin!"
He started to argue, but his sensors were suddenly crowded with the emissions of combat armor gathering along the roadway below the slope. She was right, and he knew it. He didn't want to know it, but he did.
"All right!" he grated. "But you'd better be right behind me, lady, or I'm coming back after you!"
"No, you mule-headed, chauvinistic honk - !"
She chopped herself off as she realized he was already gone. She wanted to call after him and wish him luck but dared not turn away from her front. She regretted her own angry response to his words, for she knew why he had said them. He'd had to, pointless as they both knew it was. He had to believe he would come back - that he could come back - yet he knew as well as she that if she wasn't right on his heels, she would never make it out at all.
But what she had carefully not told him was that she wouldn't be following him. She'd said there would be friends, but she couldn't be certain, and even if there were, someone had to occupy the attackers' attention to keep them from noticing movement in the tunnel when Colin passed beyond the confines of the shield. And she'd meant what she'd said. If he had a bridge officer's implants, they had to get him out. She didn't understand everything that was happening, but she knew that. And that he needed time to make his escape.
Lieutenant Colonel Sandra Tillotson, United States Air Force, laid a spare magazine beside her and prepared to buy him that time.
Colin raced down the basement stairs, sick at heart. Deep inside, he suspected what Sandy intended, and she was right, damn it! But the thought of abandoning her was a canker in his soul. This night of horrors was costing too much. He remembered what he'd thought when Dahak's cutter deposited him here, and his own words were wormwood and gall. He hadn't realized the hideous depth of what would be demanded of him, for somehow he'd believed that only he must lose things, that he must risk only himself. He hadn't counted on people he knew and loved being slaughtered like animals … nor had he realized how bitter it could be to live rather than die beside them.
He sensed the stuttering fire of her grav gun behind him, the fury of energy weapons gouging at the house, and his eyes burned as he seized the heavy furnace in a mighty grip. He heaved, wrenching it entirely from its base, and the ladder was there. He ignored it, leaping lightly down the two-meter drop, and hit the tunnel running. Even as he passed under the edge of the shield and it sliced off his sensors, he felt the space-wrenching discharges of her grav gun, knew she was still there, still firing, not even trying to escape, and tears and self-hate blinded him as he raced for safety.
The tunnel seemed endless, yet the end was upon him almost before he realized it, and he lunged up another ladder. The shaft was sealed, but he was already probing it, spotting the catch, heaving it up with a mighty shoulder. He burst into the night air … and his senses were suddenly afire with more power sources. More combat armor! Coming from behind in the prodigious leaps of jump gear and waiting in the woods ahead, as well!
He tried to unlimber his energy gun, but a torrent of energy crashed over him, and he cried out as every implant in his body screamed in protest. He writhed, fighting it, clinging to the torment of awareness.
It was a capture field - not a killing blast of energy, but something infinitely worse. A police device that locked his synthetic muscles with brutal power.
He toppled forward under the impetus of his last charge, crashing to the ground half - in and half-out of the tunnel. He fought the encroaching darkness, smashing at it with all the fury of his enraged will, but it swept over him.
The last thing he saw was a tornado of light as the trees exploded with energy fire. He carried the vision down into the dark with him, dimly aware of its importance.
And then, as his senses faded at last, he realized. It wasn't directed at him - it was raking the ground behind him and cutting down the mutineers who had pursued him…
Chapter Ten
Colin swam fearfully up out of his nightmares, trying to understand what had happened. Something was wrong with his senses, and he moaned softly, frightened by the deadness, the absence, where he should have felt the whisper and wash of ambient energy.
He opened his eyes and blinked, automatically damping the brilliant light glaring down over him. He made out a ceiling beyond it - an unfamiliar roof of an all-too-familiar, bronze-colored alloy - and his muscles tightened.
It had been no dream. Sean was dead. And Cal … his family … and Sandy…
Memory wrung a harsh, inarticulate sound of grief from him, and he closed his eyes again. Then he gathered himself and tried to sit up, but his body refused to obey and his eyes popped open once more. He tried again, harder, and his muscles strained, but it was like trying to lift the Earth. Something pressed down upon him, and he clenched his teeth as he recognized the presser. And a suppression field, as well, which explained his dead sensory implants.
A small sound touched his ear, and he wrenched his head around, barely able to move even that much under the presser.
Three grim-faced people looked back at him. The one standing in the center was a man, gray-haired, his seamed face puckered by a smooth, long-healed scar from just under his right eye down under the neck of his tattered old Clemson University sweatshirt. His leathery skin was the ol
ive-brown of the Fourth Imperium, and Colin recognized the signs from Dahak's briefings; this man was old. Very old. He must be well into his sixth century, but if he was old, he was also massively thewed, and his olive-black eyes were alert.
A woman sat in a chair to his left. She, too, was old, but with the shorter span of the Terra-born, her still-thick hair almost painfully white under the brilliant light. Her lined, grief-drawn face was lighter than the man's, but there was a hint of the same slant to her swollen eyes, and Colin swallowed in painful recognition. He'd never met Isis Tudor, but she looked too much like her murdered grandson to be anyone else.
The third watcher shared the old man's complexion, but her cold, set face was unlined. She was tall for an Imperial, rivaling Colin's own hundred-eighty-eight centimeters, and slender, almost delicate. And she was beautiful, with an almond-eyed, cat-like loveliness that was subtly alien and yet perfect. A thick mane of hair rippled down her spine, so black it was almost blue-green, gathered at the nape of her neck in a jeweled clasp before it fanned out below, and she wore tailored slacks and a cashmere sweater. The gemmed dagger at her belt struck an incongruous note, but not a humorous one. Her slender fingers curled too hungrily about its hilt, and her dark eyes were filled with hate.
He stared silently back at them, then turned his face deliberately away.
The silence stretched out, and then the old man cleared his throat.
"What shall we do with you, Commander MacIntyre?" he asked in soft, perfect English, and Colin turned back to him almost against his will. The spokesman smiled a twisted smile and slipped one arm around the old woman. "We know what you are - in part - " he continued, "but not in full. And - " his soft voice turned suddenly harsher " - we know what you've cost us already."
"Spend not thy words upon him," the young woman said coldly.
"Hush, Jiltanith," the old man said. "It's not his fault."
"Is't not? Yet Calvin doth lie dead, and his wife and daughters with him. And 'tis this man hath encompassed that!"